TIME TO REIN IN SOCIAL MEDIA AND TRUMP
President’s unsupported insinuation of murder a new low, Diane Francis writes.
My definition of freedom is: Everyone should have the right to swing an arm, but not hit anybody with it. When it comes to freedom of speech, everyone has a right to their opinion as long as it is not inaccurate, hateful, defamatory or malicious. If that line is crossed, the perpetrators are legally liable for damages. But in America, the world’s most irresponsible media empires — Twitter, Facebook and Google (now Alphabet) — have become giants that allow anyone to spew anything without legal consequences. They have gotten away with it by claiming that they are platforms, not publishers, and are therefore exempt from having to edit or curate what people post. They’ve also spent billions of dollars lobbying and supporting political campaigns, in order to retain this corrosive privilege.
By contrast, traditional media is hobbled with the costs of curating responsible advertising and editorial content.
This free pass to social media is the loophole through which that reckless, self-promoter named Donald Trump tweeted his way into the White House. It’s how he and other trolls intimidate, bully and slander their foes.
Europe has begun reining in social media, but elsewhere, these companies operate with impunity and claim that they are entitled to self-regulate. But monkeys cannot guard bananas, and Trump’s recent, and most vile, gaming of Twitter illustrates why the same rules should apply to social media as they apply to everyone else.
Last week, Trump smeared a critic, MSNBC’S Joe Scarborough, blaming him for the death of his assistant, Lori Klausutis, when Scarborough was serving in Congress in 2001, even though there is no evidence of any wrongdoing. The president tweeted on the subject six times, calling the woman’s death a
“cold case” that should investigated, then essentially accusing Scarborough of murder. Twitter refused to remove the tweets, even after the woman’s widower, T.J. Klausutis, wrote to Twitter’s president and pointed out the injustice and the social network’s hypocrisy.
“Nearly 19 years ago, my wife, who had an undiagnosed heart condition, fell and hit her head on her desk at work. She was found dead the next morning,” he wrote. “The president’s tweet that suggests that Lori was murdered — without evidence (and contrary to the official autopsy) — is a violation of Twitter’s community rules and terms of service. An ordinary user like me would be banished from the platform for such a tweet, but I am only asking that these tweets be removed.”
Twitter refused to comment on the issue. Meanwhile, Facebook, to which Trump’s unsupported allegation and libel was cross-posted, responded arrogantly: “We do not remove political speech solely because people may find it offensive, as this content understandably is to the family of Lori Klausutis and others. Speech from candidates and heads of state is among the most scrutinized content on our platform, which helps ensure people are held accountable for their words.”
This week, Twitter finally did something to bridle this presidential misbehaviour when it labelled a pair of Trump’s tweets, which claimed that mail-in balloting in this fall’s election would result in widespread voter fraud, as misleading. (No labels have been applied to the Scarborough tweets.)
Trump erupted and has threatened to take action against Twitter and social media in general. Then he conflated this with a fight for freedom and tweeted: “Big Tech is doing everything in their considerable power to CENSOR in advance of the 2020 election. If that happens, we no longer have our freedom. I will never let that happen! They tried hard in 2016, and lost. Now they are going absolutely crazy. Stay tuned!!!”
This from a president who labels all critical media as “fake news” and has driven his tank through social media’s anything-goes loophole to damage people, organizations, groups and democracy.
What’s next is that Trump will character assassinate all his opponents and, if he loses the election, he will simply tweet that it was stolen and he’s not leaving. Then what?