Donald Trump has signed an Executive Order aimed at regulating social media companies.
The US President was furious at Twitter for fact checking a tweet he made about mail-in voting and threatened he would shut companies down if they tried to prevent people exercising their First Amendment Right to free speech.
The executive order will seek to modify Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which grants liability protections to social media companies.
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It would also try to prevent federal funds from being given to 'social media companies that suppress free speech'.
Legal experts have already cast doubt on the Executive Order being adopted as it would have to go through Congress. When that fact was raised during a press conference, Trump replied with: "I guess it's going to be challenged in court, but what isn't?"
He also didn't back down from his threat to shut down Twitter, adding: "If Twitter were not honourable... I think you shut it down, as far as I'm concerned. But I would have to go through a legal process to do that."
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The war with social media came after Trump posted a tweet about his concerns regarding mail-in voting fraud. This outrage was due to the Californian governor allowing citizens who were registered to vote the ability to mail in their ballot rather than go to a polling booth in November.
Trump said anyone would be able to vote, including non-Californian residents and non-citizens, which was picked up by Twitter and allowed users the chance to see news reports about the issue.
It had a message saying 'Get the facts about mail-in ballots' underneath the tweet, prompting outrage from Trump, who accused the social media giant of suppressing free speech.
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Trump continued his unfounded claim about mail-in voting during the signing of the Executive Order.
He told reporters: "There's such fraud and abuse. Anybody in California that's breathing gets a ballot."
According to the Guardian, records of voting fraud are incredibly low in America and only Californians who are registered to vote will be getting the mail-in ballot.
When a reporter tried to push Trump on the latter point, the US President replied with: "Oh really? So when he sends out 28 million ballots and they're in all the mailboxes and kids go and they raid the mailboxes and they hand them to people that are signing the ballots... you don't think that happens?"
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That claim hasn't been supported by any evidence and is so far completely unfounded. That's the whole point of Twitter's new fact checking feature.
Featured Image Credit: PATopics: News, Social Media, Trump