President Biden on Friday revoked several of former President Trump’s executive orders, including one that would have changed legal protections for social media sites and other online platforms.
Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act limits how much online platforms can be held liable for content users share on their platforms. The Trump order, titled “preventing online censorship,” would have allowed federal authorities to hold companies like Twitter, Google, and Facebook responsible if they were found to be infringing on users’ speech by deleting or otherwise modifying users’ posts.
Trump signed the order last May, just as Twitter started applying labels to his tweets as “misleading.” Trump was eventually banned from Twitter for tweets inciting the January 6th riot at the US Capitol. A similar ban by Facebook remains in effect while the company reevaluates it.
In addition to revoking the executive order that would have changed Section 230, Biden revoked a 2020 Trump order that would have allowed the government to prosecute people who caused damage to statues or monuments, and put a halt to Trump’s plan to create a National Garden of American Heroes.
President Biden also revoked a 2019 Trump order that would have required immigrants to the US to prove they could afford healthcare as part of their visa applications.