Media power: Twitter, Facebook kick off Trump
President Trump’s purge from social media has raised urgent questions about the thought of “so much control resting in so few hands,” said Kevin Roose in The New York Times. Twitter’s permanent suspension of Trump’s account last week was “cheered” by many liberals “as an overdue and appropriate step to prevent more violence,” after his posts falsely claiming a “stolen” election incited a bloody coup attempt at the U.S. Capitol. Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg also suspended Trump’s account, at least until Inauguration Day. The bans have “turned up the heat on a simmering freespeech debate.” Stripping the president of his cherished access to more than 88 million followers on Twitter and 35 million on Facebook revoked his “ability to commandeer the world’s attention with a push of a button.” Trump could start his own social network, but “it’s doubtful the president will ever have what he had in Facebook and Twitter.” That means that Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey “have a kind of authority that no elected official on earth can claim.”
Trump hasn’t really been “silenced,” said Michael Hiltzik in the Los Angeles Times. He still “has plenty of opportunity to reach out to a vast audience,” via speeches, right-wing websites, and Fox News. Social media companies have struggled “with how far to go to rein in political speech,” but “that wasn’t the issue here.” Trump’s incendiary tweets “went far beyond political speech” and were the equivalent of shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater. The tech giants are finally recognizing their impact on people, said Peter Singer in DefenseOne.com. “They are not just tech creators or even the equivalent of news-media editors. After years of dodging it, they get that they are running information war zones,” with real-world consequences.
Those consequences may bring down Parler, which “appeared poised to capitalize on growing anger at Silicon Valley in conservative circles,” said Jack Nicas and Davey Alba in The New
York Times. The right-wing social network surged in popularity when Trump was blocked by Twitter and “was even a logical choice to become Mr. Trump’s next megaphone.” But Google and Apple quickly banned it from their app stores, and Amazon kicked it off its cloud platform after citing “98 examples of posts on its site that encouraged violence.” Now Parler’s “future appears bleak.”
Social media companies are trying “to act responsibly in the face of Trump’s irresponsible words and actions,” said John Harris in Politico.com, but such actions could have unintended effects. “If there’s any unifying thread of the conservative movement,” it is the hope to make the filters of the media establishment obsolete. The efforts of tech giants to “reassert the filter” will be met with fierce resistance. Silicon Valley is just trying to “truckle to the progressives who will soon dominate Washington,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. But “political segregation” of the internet will only deepen the country’s tribalism and mistrust. Consider the words of Alexei Navalny, the Russian dissident who was poisoned last year. He said that while Twitter is a private company, “we have seen many examples in Russia and China of such private companies becoming the state’s best friends.”
The president’s posts were “arguably no worse than stuff he’s posted before,” said Evelyn Douek in TheAtlantic.com. “Meanwhile, the Taliban’s official spokesperson still has a Twitter account.” So was the Trump ban “just political expediency,” or the start of a new era of “coherent and consistent decision making”? I now believe that Twitter and Facebook’s Section 230 liability shields should be revoked, said Joe Nocera in Bloomberg.com. That would force them to “quickly change their algorithms to block anything remotely problematic.” People could still discuss politics but without libeling opponents or “hurling anti-Semitic slurs.” It would harm their business models, but “they have done the country a lot of harm,” and it would be worth it.