Trump threatens to shut down Social Networks 

The president claims that Twitter is interfering with the U.S. presidential election.

UNITED STATES (Times Media Mexico) – Tensions between Trump and Twitter escalated Wednesday as he threatened to “strongly regulate” or shut down social media platforms, which he accuses of silencing conservative viewpoints.

Trump’s threats come one day after Twitter, for the first time, added a fact-check warning to a pair of his tweets. In them, Trump claimed without evidence that mail-in ballots are fraudulent.

Without offering any evidence, Trump reiterated his accusations of political bias on the part of these technological platforms in a couple of early Twitter posts.

“Republicans feel that social networking platforms silence conservative voices. We will regulate them vigorously or shut them down before we can allow that to happen,” he said.

Trump posted similar tweets yesterday, which led to Twitter’s adding a blue exclamation point under his messages, warning that his comments were false and taken down by verifiers.

The dramatic turnaround by the technology company, which has adjusted its policies in recent years amid criticism that its culture of non-interference allowed disinformation to flourish, led Trump to accuse it of interference in the upcoming U.S. presidential election.

The battle between Trump and the social-media companies has been brewing for a time. But now it feels as an all-out war between Trump and Twitter ahead of the US presidential election, in November.

Last week, the president tweeted: “The radical left is in total command and control of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Google.” And he intended to “remedy this illegal situation”.

Reports from the BBC mention that the White House will set up a special commission to investigate the claim.

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