May 28, 2020 - Washington, D.C. – Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued this statement on the President’s Executive Order rolling back liability protections for social media companies over user-generated content:

“Allowing the proliferation of disinformation is extremely dangerous, particularly as our nation faces the deadliest pandemic in history.  Clearly and sadly, the President’s Executive Order is a desperate distraction from his failure to provide a national testing strategy to defeat COVID-19.  As we pray for the families of the 100,000 who have tragically lost their lives, we must focus all our energy on protecting lives and livelihoods, starting with making The Heroes Act law.

“The President’s Executive Order does nothing to address big Internet companies’ complete failure to fight the spread of disinformation.  Instead, the President is encouraging Facebook and other social media giants to continue to exploit and profit off falsehoods with total impunity – while at the same time directing the federal government to dismantle efforts to help users distinguish fact from fiction.

“Again and again, social media platforms have sold out the public interest to pad their corporate profits.  Their business model is to make money at the expense of the truth.  Recently, rather than removing lucrative campaign ads, which contain debunked falsehoods, Facebook changed its rules to ensure that it can continue to allow and profit off these lies.

“While Twitter’s decision to put up fact checks of the President is an important first step to protecting the integrity of our elections, much more must be done to ensure that fact-checks are applied fairly and across all platforms.”  

Source: Rep. Nancy Pelosi