- [Reporter] Twitter took unprecedented action recently
on two tweets from President Donald Trump.
The first was adding a fact-check notification
to a tweet about mail-in voting.
And the second was to place a warning
in front of a tweet that insinuated looters would be shot
amidst the protests over the death of George Floyd,
that the platform said violated its policies
about glorifying violence.
The fact-check of the first tweet
sparked ire from the president.
That was only increased by the warning label
placed on the second tweet.
While Twitter has intervened
into the president's posts, Facebook hasn't.
Both messages appeared unaltered
on the president's Facebook page.
- We have a different policy I think than Twitter on this.
You know, I just believe strongly that Facebook
shouldn't be the arbiter of truth
of everything that people say online.
- [Reporter] Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has said
the platform will continue
to fact-check information about elections.
But how did Facebook and Twitter
come to take different views
on moderating the president on their platforms?
It's the latest question in an ongoing debate
about the responsibility tech companies have
in policing speech online.
You can think of online content moderation
a bit like book publishing.
If a book with objectionable content
like hate speech was written,
the publisher would be responsible
for editing that stuff out before it shipped to book stores.
If that stuff somehow made it into the book,
and that book somehow made it onto shelves,
the bookstore couldn't be held responsible
for what was in the book
since it had no say in its creation.
- Unlike say a newspaper or a traditional publisher,
the platforms operate completely differently
with the idea that they're providing the place
to put this stuff for individuals to publish themselves.
- [Reporter] In the 1990s, many early online forums
like CompuServe chose to not actively moderate content
on their sites,
while other sites like Prodigy did.
A series of court rulings determined that sites
that actively moderated their content
were more like publishers and therefore,
could be held liable for defamatory content.
- And this was viewed as kind of being a thing
that was just going to greatly, sort of, slow down
the development of the internet in general,
and really sort of threaten the ability
to build a functional ecosystem.
- [Reporter] To address this issue,
Congress included a provision
in the 1996 Communications Decency Act called Section 230.
- So, Section 230 allowed them to be focused on
being platforms and not on being publishers.
They could intervene when they wanted to
for the good of their platform,
but they didn't have any responsibility
beyond sort of making sure
that they weren't becoming sort of
a cess pool of illegal behavior.
- [Reporter] But this prioritization of growth
over moderation came with consequences.
In 2016, social media disinformation campaigns
during the election put pressure on Facebook and Twitter
to step up their moderation efforts.
- We were too slow to spot this
and too slow to act.
- Propaganda through bots and human coordination,
misinformation campaigns, and divisive filter bubbles.
That's not a healthy public square.
- There was a sense that this was getting to be pre-lawless
and also that these ecosystems
were extremely vulnerable to manipulation.
- [Reporter] Facebook and Twitter both ruled out
fact checking operations to combat misinformation.
- Facebook's had sort of
an independent fact-checking program.
Twitter's done a bit more stuff internally.
But the general idea is that neither of the platforms
want to do much regulation of speech,
particularly when it comes to things
like censoring the President of the United States.
- [Reporter] But both internally and externally,
tech companies have faced mounting pressure to confront
what the president posts on their platforms.
None more so, than Twitter.
- Trump has been a very aggressive user of Twitter.
It's kind of his native medium.
And Twitter recently took a step.
- [Reporter] Twitter's decision to add its fact-check label
to the president's May 26th tweet
was the first time the platform had fact-checked information
outside of the coronavirus pandemic.
Two days after the tweet,
the president signed an executive order
seeking to limit the broad legal protections
tech companies have under Section 230.
- Currently, social media giants like Twitter
receive an unprecedented liability shield
based on the theory that they're a neutral platform,
which they're not.
- Section 230 doesn't have anything to do
with political bias.
In fact, the whole point of 230 was to allow them
to intervene without fear of legal repercussion.
So, this isn't kind of something
that is a natural outgrowth of the law.
- [Reporter] The morning after the executive order
was signed, Twitter placed a warning message
on the president's tweet about looters,
while Facebook let the post appear unaltered.
Mark Zuckerberg said that while he personally
had a visceral negative reaction to the post,
it didn't violate Facebook's policies.
- When Twitter sort of stepped in
to this thing, Facebook ducked.
Facebook has, for years,
tried to stay out of regulating political speech,
in particular political ads.
They have sort of resisted calls
from what might have been natural allies
to restrict this stuff.
- [Reporter] Twitter has also applied another warning label
in front of a tweet by Congressman Matt Gaetz,
saying it also glorified violence.
- Twitter does seem to be making a decision
that there are some limits it wants to put
within US politics.
And that's something that has been kind of a third rail
for American technology companies.
- [Reporter] Meanwhile, Zuckerberg has continued
to defend his decision despite employees' calls
for Facebook to moderate the president's posts.
- Where exactly the president's order
and attempts at legal restrictions on the platforms
and on their moderation go, is unclear.
This certainly seems like it's gonna
draw them deeper into politics,
and that's something that, you know,
Mark Zuckerberg I think has been
desperately trying to avoid.