Following a move by Facebook to uphold former President Trump’s ban from the social media site, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that Biden believes “major platforms have a responsibility” to “stop amplifying untrustworthy content, disinformation, and misinformation.”
“The president’s view is that the major platforms have a responsibility related to the health and safety of all Americans to stop amplifying untrustworthy content, disinformation, and misinformation, especially related to COVID-19, vaccinations, and elections. And we’ve seen that over the past several months, broadly speaking. I’m not placing any blame on any individual or group; we’ve seen it from a number of sources,” Psaki told reporters in Washington.
Psaki insisted that Biden believes in First Amendment rights, but maintains that platforms have the ability to police speech that they deem as ‘misleading’.
“He also supports better privacy protections and a robust anti-trust program. So his view is that there’s more that needs to be done to ensure that this type of misinformation; disinformation; damaging, sometimes life-threatening information is not going out to the American public,” Psaki said.
Meanwhile, Twitter recently decided to ban an account that the company believed was connected to Trump, although the origins of the account are still unclear.
The account, “@DJTDesk”, seemed related to the former president’s recently launched communications platform, named ‘From the Desk of Donald J. Trump.’
“As stated in our ban evasion policy, we’ll take enforcement action on accounts whose apparent intent is to replace or promote content affiliated with a suspended account,” a Twitter spokesperson told The New York Post.
Although, the news outlet reported that sources close to Trump said that the account was not created by anyone affiliated with the former president.
