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President Donald Trump is poised to sign an executive order on social-media companies Thursday, escalating his war on Twitter Inc., although it remains unclear what it will entail.
A White House spokesperson confirmed the order late Wednesday, a day after Twitter TWTR, -2.76% issued its first fact-checking warning label to some of his tweets.
See also: Twitter adds fact-check warning label to Trump’s tweets for first time
Twitter declined comment. Late Tuesday, a company spokesperson said it issued fact checks because Trump’s tweets “contain potentially misleading information about voting processes and have been labeled to provide additional context around mail-in ballots. This decision is in line with the approach we shared earlier this month.”
In a series of tweets Wednesday, Trump threatened to “regulate” or even “close” social-media platforms. Legal experts scoffed at the president’s ability to moderate f social-media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook Inc. FB, -1.31% and Snap Inc. SNAP, -2.35% .
Twitter shares were down 2.6% in after-hours trading, while Facebook and Snap were down less than 1%.
Speculation centered on whether Trump would push for new legislation or pressure U.S. regulators to sue the companies. Facebook and Google parent Alphabet Inc. GOOGL, -0.07% GOOG, +0.05% are currently under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice, respectively, for possibly violating antitrust law.
