President Trump's latest confrontation with Twitter was set off after the tech company placed fact-checking warnings on two of his tweets.
Evan Vucci/AP
Updated at 9:00 p.m. ET
President Trump signed an executive order Thursday aimed at limiting the broad legal protections enjoyed by social media companies, two days after he tore into Twitter for fact-checking two of his tweets.
"We're here today to defend free speech from one of the gravest dangers it has faced in American history, frankly," Trump said from the Oval Office. "A small handful of powerful social media monopolies control the vast portion of all private and public communications in the United States."
The president said the tech companies have "unchecked power to censor, restrict, edit, shape, hide, alter" a large sphere of human interaction. "They have points of view," he said.
The Trump administration hopes the order will eventually set the stage for new regulations on tech platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.
