(Image source from: thehindu.com)

If you have been on Twitter for quite some time now, you’d know that the US President leverages the platform for getting his words out to the public. From immoral tweets to “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”, things have been pretty heated.

An advocacy group that has been backed by the tech industry has issued a lawsuit against President Trump on Tuesday over the imposed executive order that directly impacts the laws protecting online platforms including several of the popular social media platforms including Twitter and Facebook.

Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), which is based out of Washington reported in their lawsuit that the executive order imposed by Trump violates the First Amendment rights of the social media companies. The decision by Trump was taken in retaliation against Twitter Inc which flagged one of his tweets as “plainly retaliatory”.

The lawsuit further argues that this decision by Trump will further chill future online speeches by some of the other speakers and reduce the freedom of speech of the Americans.

Trump, with the notion of regulating the social media platforms where he has been vehemently criticised for his immoral and insensitive posts said last week that he is going to introduce a legislation that will either scrap of weaken the law that helps conceal and protect the internet companies, including Twitter and Facebook.

The legislation was part of an executive order that Trump signed on Thursday. Following flagging one of his tweets, Trump had even accused Twitter of being unstantiated claims of the fraud.

He further reported that he wants to bring forth changes to the provision of law under Section 230 that shields majority of the social media companies from the liabilities for the content that is posted by its users. Trump further reported that Attorney General William Barr is also going to impose and draft the legislation immediately to help regulate the social media companies.

Twitter took to their official account to mention that attempts to unilaterally revoke or remove the law could affect the freedom of speech of the people across the globe. The White House and the Justice Department have not responded yet to the lawsuit.

“Twitter appended the President’s tweets... in immediate retaliation, the President issued the Executive Order,” mentioned the lawsuit.

Some of the donors for CDT include Alphabet’s Google, Facebook Inc, Microsoft, as per the reports that have surfaced.

By Somapika Dutta