Trump EO is targeting social media sites.

Twitter hit President Trump’s executive order targeting social media companies on Thursday, saying it threatens the future of online speech and Internet freedoms.

“This EO is a reactionary and politicized approach to landmark legislation,” Twitter’s Global Public Policy Committee said in a statement.

The directive instructs federal agencies to see if the new rules can be placed on tech companies such as Twitter, Facebook and Google, which own YouTube.

Specifically, Trump wants to remove or replace part 2 of the Communications Decency Act, 1996, the landmark law that protects social media companies from liability for the materials their users post.

This allows them to be considered “sites” rather than “publishers” who can sue for defamation.

“Section 230 protects American innovation and freedom of expression and is supported by democratic values,” the Twitter statement said.

“Unilateral Erosion Efforts [Section 230] It threatens the future of online speech and Internet freedoms, ”it added.

Trump signed the order two days after Twitter slapped a pair of fact-check labels on his pair of missives for the first time in a mail-in vote.

The president said the case was that social media sites that were in bad faith – in “editorial decisions” – in his view, including adding fact-check labels – had to remove their immunity from prosecution.

“In a country that has long respected freedom of expression, we cannot allow a limited number of online sites to hand over text that Americans can access and report on the Internet,” the order states.

“This practice is fundamentally anti-American and anti-democratic. When large and powerful social media companies censor opinions they disagree with, they use deadly force.”

A Facebook spokeswoman said that scrapping or weakening section 230 would curb more talk online and encourage sites to censor anything that offends anyone.

A Google spokesperson said that “the undermining of section 230 in this way will affect the US economy and its global leadership on Internet freedom.”

With Post Wires