U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday attacked social media juggernauts for “silencing millions,” taking to Twitter to criticise “censorship” and once again labeling AT&T’s CNN as “fake news.” The head of the state did not mention any other names or clarified on the matter in another capacity, though the move itself was preceded by dozens of similar ones just this year; earlier this week, President Trump specifically accused Facebook and Twitter of practicing “dangerous” censorship and has publicly threatened the microblogging platform in late July over silencing of select Republican politicians, a notion that the company denied, stating that all evidence of the thereof comes down to isolated incidents which were a result of algorithm changes and already rectified.
The President has been complaining about what he perceives is unfair media treatment of his person and policies since before taking office and often targeted publications such as CNN and The Washington Post for supposed leftist bias. More recently, he started speaking about alleged Republican censorship on social media, albeit without substantiating those claims. President Trump’s latest wave of criticism aimed at such platforms comes shortly after Facebook and Apple’s iTunes removed content from Infowars, a right-wing outlet run by known conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Jones, a staunch Trump supporter, publicly called for the President to aide him in his perceived fight against censorship following the development. Both platforms said they removed his content due to various policy violations, with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly suspecting him of intentionally seeking a ban in order to generate publicity for his brand.
U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller so far indicted three entities and 25 people from Russia over attempts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. The stateside intelligence community has been warning about similar foreign meddling efforts being expected to target the November mid-terms. Earlier this week, Facebook Twitter, and Google all disclosed that they’ve identified and eliminated certain misinformation efforts abusing their digital services such as YouTube and Instagram, stating that the campaigns originated from Russia and Iran.