By Ryan Tracy 

WASHINGTON -- A "Social Media Summit" at the White House this week will offer a platform for supporters of President Trump who say they face censorship by left-tilting Big Tech -- and a preview of a likely theme in Mr. Trump's re-election campaign.

Attendees include the Claremont Institute think tank, media company Prager University and the Media Research Center, a nonprofit critical of national news organizations. Also expected to attend are more familiar Washington conservatives, including the Heritage Foundation.

Not on the guest list: social-media giant Facebook Inc., which said it didn't get an invitation. Twitter Inc. and Alphabet Inc., which owns YouTube and Google, also weren't invited, according to people familiar with the situation.

The firms declined to comment on the event, but have said in the past that they seek to police harmful or fake content without regard to politics.

The invitation list for Thursday's summit suggests the event is about Mr. Trump firing up his loudest social-media supporters, said Paul Gallant, a policy analyst for investment bank Cowen Inc.

"It's all about 2020," Mr. Gallant said. He sees it as a stage for Mr. Trump to tell "the base that the media and internet companies are against us" as well as "pressuring Facebook, Twitter, and Google to tilt content in Trump's direction."

The event grew out of complaints the White House has received about bias online, a spokesman said Thursday.

"Earlier this year the White House launched a tool to allow Americans, regardless of their political views, to share how they have been affected by bias online," said the spokesman, Judd Deere. "After receiving thousands of responses, the President wants to engage directly with these digital leaders in a discussion on the power of social media."

In May, the White House briefly opened an official website for the public to share information about "action against your account" by social-media platforms. Last month it described Thursday's event as "a robust conversation on the opportunities and challenges of today's online environment."

Charlie Kirk, who leads the student group Turning Point USA, said alleged bias by social-media companies resonates with the president's supporters, calling it "one of the top, if not the top issue with people that I interact with on social media."

Bill Mitchell, chief executive of YourVoice Inc., will be making his first official White House visit at the event. Like others invitees, he says he has seen anecdotal evidence that his pro-Trump videos and tweets should be reaching a larger audience. "We just want a level playing field so that everybody can have free speech," he said.

The event has brought more media attention to Prager University's lawsuits alleging YouTube is restricting its advocacy videos on topics such as gun laws, said chief marketing officer Craig Strazzeri. (A federal court dismissed Prager University's claims last year. The firm is appealing.)

Thursday's event is being coordinated by Ory Rinat, chief digital officer at the White House, people familiar with the matter said.

It isn't known whether the event will lead to any concrete policy changes or directives. Mr. Trump has hinted he wants the government to take action against social-media companies, without being specific. "What they are doing is wrong and possibly illegal and a lot of things are being looked at right now," he said in a July 1 Fox News interview.

A 1996 law protects internet services that host third-party speech from liability for content, however, and proposals to remove that protection aren't likely to pass Congress soon. U.S. agencies are preparing for potential antitrust investigations of large firms including Google, but it remains to be seen if bias concerns will be a factor in those possible probes.

Mr. Trump "can't do much" to change the way social media platforms operate, said Sam McGowan, an analyst at Beacon Policy Advisers, a research firm based in Washington, D.C. "What he can do is hold these sorts of summits...That in itself is a way to rally Trump's base."

The limited ability of Mr. Trump to change the way social media works was reinforced Monday when a federal appeals court ruled that his practice of blocking some users on Twitter violates the free-speech protections of the First Amendment.

At a June hearing hosted by the Federal Trade Commission, a Texas official said regulators should consider using laws against deceptive business practices to charge social-media platforms with making false statements about neutrality.

"Are big tech companies misleading users about whether they are truly viewpoint neutral, as they have represented?" Texas First Assistant Attorney General Jeff Mateer asked in a presentation that quoted the CEOs of Google, Facebook and Twitter "Evidence suggests that [they] may not be living up to those representations."

Short of tangible action, calls to rein in tech firms could be a political winner on the campaign trail. In a March Wall Street Journal/NBC survey of 1,000 American adults, 54% said they weren't satisfied with federal government regulation and oversight of social-media companies, compared with 36% who were satisfied and 10% who weren't sure.

Write to Ryan Tracy at ryan.tracy@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 10, 2019 05:44 ET (09:44 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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