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President Trump signs social media executive order

President Donald Trump signed an executive order targeting social media companies. Yahoo Finance's Alexis Keenan breaks down the details of the executive order on The Final Round.

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: Let's get to news out of Washington. Here, just minutes ago, President Trump signing an executive order aiming to limit protections for social media companies. Now this executive order comes after Twitter fact-checked the president's tweets, a couple of them, earlier this week.

I want to bring in Alexis Keenan on this. And Alexis, you're closely following this story. Let's just start broad. And what can you tell us about President Trump's effort to crack down on the online platforms and the likelihood about whether or not it will get some pushback?

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ALEXIS KEENAN: OK, Seana. So a draft that we've reviewed of this order-- we don't have the final order yet, despite that President Trump, we've heard, has just signed it-- it has to do with the Communications Decency Act, and it has to do with a specific section of that act. And it's Section 230. And what that does is it really allows online content platforms, like Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, to modify content without the fear that they'll also be held liable for defamation.

Now, you have to think about things like blocking content that's, for example, obscene, lewd, violent, of a harassing nature. That's the kind of thing that 230 addresses. However, there's a catch. The moderation that is done by these platforms-- it has to be done in good faith in order to keep that 230 section liability protection.

So this draft order that we've had a chance to review, what it does is it gives power over to the FCC in order to interpret how that good faith versus bad faith definition really comes down. So potentially, you have to look at it like it could expand the definition of what-- and I like to flip it around and say, expand the definition of what is bad faith.

So if you think about it, if you expand the definition of what could be bad faith, the more times any social platform, online platform, acts to moderate or edit content, then the more opportunities they're going to have to run afoul of that 230 Act and then lose their liability shield. So that's what this really addresses. And we did have a chance to hear from FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr earlier today on Yahoo Finance. I want you to take a listen to how he says the administration is interpreting its efforts here.

BRENDAN CARR: What these platforms have that other entities don't have that are also political actors are these special protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. And that existing law has always said that if you engage in bad faith takedowns, you don't get those bonus protections. And I think given what we've seen over the past few weeks, it makes sense to let the public weigh in and say, is that really what Congress meant when they passed and provided those special protections?

ALEXIS KEENAN: So Carr there mentioned-- he talked about letting the public weigh in. Now, that's part of this draft order. There's a tool that's embedded there to let citizens report incidents that they think are censoring political views and other controversial views. However, that is supposed to be also subject to review by both the Department of Justice, as well as the FTC, to decide whether those actions would violate law.

Now, there's no real legal issue with the forming a tool for citizens to use. Certainly, that investigatory power could be used by the administration. But really, what we're talking about here is a way to use an executive order to give more power to the FCC and to expand that 230 definition.

And guys, this definition has already been weighed heavily by courts across the country. It's not perfect, but using an executive order would be a really untraditional way of trying to go in and redefine what Congress meant by writing that law.

ANDY SERWER: You know, Alexis, I mean, this is-- boy, a real rat's nest of a problem. And it's interesting, because it's gotten both conservatives and liberals angry. And that's the only common ground, though, because they differ in terms of how they want to address the issue and their concerns.

It's interesting to me, too, that, you know, these companies could be construed as media companies, and perhaps should be, in that they sell advertising that's put up against content. And so that makes them very much akin to, say, a television station, where you could say, well, television stations don't have user-generated content-- except some of them do, which is to say, when they have public access and those kinds of things.

I was just talking to Steve Ballmer and-- the former CEO of Microsoft today. And he told me that he really thinks these tech giants, which is to say basically Twitter, Facebook, and Google, are missing a big opportunity to sort of co-opt the process and work more closely with Washington behind the scenes-- A. B-- let's face it. This is a nice, and as I was saying earlier in the show, a nice political football for President Trump to run down the field with as he heads towards November.

ALEXIS KEENAN: Yeah, certainly, Andy. You know, this issue, it really does cut both ways. There are certainly plenty of arguments on both sides of the aisle for reforming Section 230 as it stands. But going about it by way of this executive order will undoubtedly be challenged.

SEANA SMITH: Yeah, and Rick, I also want to bring you into the conversation here. And just taking a look, we had some headlines coming out as President Trump was signing the executive order. And some headlines that I thought were a little bit interesting, or comments, I should say, was he was saying that we're here today to defend the free speech from one of the greatest dangers, referring to the tech monopoly. He also went on to say that they've had unchecked power to censor and restrict human interaction and that we simply cannot allow that to happen. What are your thoughts on that?

ALEXIS KEENAN: Was that to Rick?

SEANA SMITH: Oh, Rick, you're muted.

RICK NEWMAN: I'm sorry, guys. I'm trying to remember why this happened. Twitter tried to correct, basically, lies Trump put in two tweets about mail-in voting fraud. So Trump is defending freedom of speech, but he's really defending the freedom to lie unchecked, which is why this is such an impossible-- I mean, as bad as the tech companies have been at dealing with problems in user-generated content, you know who would-- the one entity that would be worse at that would be the government.

So the government is gonna decide what's protected speech on a case-by-case basis, tweet by tweet. I mean, it seems impossible to happen. And Alexis, I mean, are you willing to say that this will probably get shot down in court, and only Congress can actually change this with another law?

ALEXIS KEENAN: You know, I think it would either-- Congress maybe, but probably unlikely to see change with a Republican majority at this point. But you know, there are users that could bring actions. There are many different parties that could end up having standing to bring a lawsuit to challenge this effort if it does, in fact, stick.

SEANA SMITH: All right, Alexis Keenan, thanks so much for bringing us the latest on that.