Twitter didn’t like what the president wrote, so the company created a new policy that allowed it to flag his tweets as “unsubstantiated, according to CNN, Washington Post and others.” [Emphasis added.] Never mind that hundreds of other sources could be provided to buttress the president’s concerns; CNN has spoken!

That warning (replete with its own bright blue exclamation point!) looked suspiciously like an editor’s note also, and it certainly was intended to call into question the legitimacy of Trump’s tweet. Moreover, the fact that Twitter chose to initiate this new policy because it was offended by the political speech of the president was suspicious at best.

I’m no lawyer, but common sense tells me that as soon as Twitter evaluates a tweet for content, it has stepped beyond its role as a neutral platform and has become a publisher. If so, then the president was entirely correct in his Thursday executive order calling for a review of the legal protections that have been granted to internet companies like Twitter and Facebook for decades.