U.S. President Donald Trump early on Wednesday morning threatened to “strongly regulate” or shut down social media platforms after Twitter fact-checked him for the first time.
Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen. We saw what they attempted to do, and failed, in 2016. We can’t let a more sophisticated version of that….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 27, 2020
The president accused social media platforms of silencing “conservative voices,” a charge that has been leveled against other platforms like Facebook.
“We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen,” Trump said, later adding, “Social Media. Clean up your act, NOW!!!!”
The U.S. President does not have the power to unilaterally shut down a company.
On Tuesday, the President sent out a tweet claiming that instituting a mail-in ballot system for voting in the U.S. would lead to widespread voter fraud, a charge that has no data to support it.
Twitter attached a fact-check message to Trump’s tweet allowing users to “Get the facts about mail-in ballots.” The link leads to a fact-checking page that describes Trump’s mail-in voting claim as “unsubstantiated.”
Twitter had been rolling out fact-checking mainly for coronavirus misinformation. Before Tuesday, it had never attached such a notice to one of Trump’s tweets.
The notion of regulating social media platforms has been a question for lawmakers since the 2016 election after various platforms were accused of fomenting divisive politics and proliferating of inaccurate statements.
Tech leaders pushed back against Trump’s threat Wednesday. Information Technology and Innovation Foundation vice president Daniel Castro said the president was “mistaken.”
“Social media does not have an anti-conservative bias. Social media provides a valuable platform for voices across the political spectrum to share ideas and information,” Castro said. “Online misinformation is a serious problem, and social media companies have rightfully stepped up to address the problem in partnership with civil society and governments around the world. While there may be occasional missteps, the private sector has shown a tremendous commitment to addressing this problem in a fair and transparent manner.”
You just opened X and started typing your thoughts. Imagine the jump scare when a hand suddenly pops up on your screen, pointing at the promote button. It doesn’t say a word and simply points. For a growing number of X users, this isn’t a made-up scenario but something they have been seeing since yesterday, and very few of them are amused.
Most of us have learned to tune out the usual in-app upsells, whether it’s a glowing upgrade banner or a pop-up about a premium plan. A floating hand hovering over your draft is much harder to ignore, and that’s probably the whole point.
Scroll through any app for five minutes, and you’ll find someone maxxing something. Their skin, their sleep, their protein intake, even their Friday night on the couch. That little suffix has been everywhere this year, and now it has a trophy to show for it. In a recent announcement, Dictionary.com named maxxing its 2026 Word of the Year.
What are people actually doing when they’re maxxing?
Instagram is testing a new format for long-form videos called Features. It allows select creators to upload horizontal videos running up to 90 minutes long. Instagram has already tested the new format with creators in Brazil, and now, it's expanding to tens of thousands of creators across the US.
How will Instagram's new Features format work?