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Mark Zuckerberg began to consider indefinitely suspending President Donald Trump’s Facebook account late on the night of January 6, just hours after a crowd of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol.
Facebook CEO Zuckerberg had for years taken a largely non-participatory approach to Trump’s bogus and inflammatory claims, defending free speech and the relevance of his statements amid a growing chorus of criticism from outside and inside the company called on him to take more aggressive measures. .
But after a series of conversations with her main lieutenants – including COO Sheryl Sandberg; Monika Bickert, Head of Global Content Policy; global affairs chief Nick Clegg; and Joel Kaplan, the company’s vice president of global public policy and its top Republican envoy in Washington – Zuckerberg had come to believe that Trump’s brazen incitement to violence to overthrow the election crossed a line, according to people familiar with the conversations who asked no to name because the discussions were private.
Earlier today, Facebook banned Trump’s account for 24 hours. Now Zuckerberg was preparing a much larger ban: one that would last at least until the end of Trump’s tenure.
Early the next morning, from his vacation home in Kauai, Hawaii, Zuckerberg made a phone call with Sandberg, Bickert, Clegg, Kaplan and other executives. Guy Rosen, vice president of Facebook integrity, was on the roll, alongside Neil Potts, director of public policy for trust and security policy, and director of diversity Maxine Williams, among others. .
Zuckerberg has said he has decided that Trump’s attempts to incite violence and undermine the democratic process are grounds for indefinite suspension. No one expressed a dissenting opinion, people familiar with the call said.
Shortly after, Zuckerberg posted an article on Facebook explaining that “the risks of allowing the president to continue using our service during this time are just too great.”
On the same day, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was considering a much more sweeping move, sources familiar with the Twitter deliberations said. Based on the advice of Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s legal chief and his most loyal lieutenant, Dorsey had come to believe that the proper action was to permanently ban Trump’s personal account on the grounds that his ability to post presented a risk to public safety.
Dorsey was in French Polynesia, having spent much of the past year away from San Francisco Bay, largely preoccupied with other projects: Square, his mobile payment company; the future of cryptocurrency; and a potential acquisition of Jay-Z’s music streaming platform, Tidal. (Dorsey has spent a lot of time with Jay-Z in recent months, in Hawaii and the Hamptons.)
After a series of conversations with Gadde and other senior Twitter executives, Dorsey approved a permanent ban, though he later expressed reservations about his power to influence “the global public conversation” so strongly. Twitter announced the ban on Friday.
The Facebook and Twitter suspensions were a defining moment for America’s social media giants and the most visible demonstration to date of their sheer power. With a few unilateral decisions, a small group of tech executives robbed the President of the United States of his most influential dissemination tools, reducing his ability to grab attention and steer the news cycle from his cellphone to any time.
For more than four years, Trump had tapped his social media accounts to drive the news cycle, set policy, move markets and shake his base, often issuing statements or making statements before his aides were out. aware of his projects. In no time, he had lost almost all access to his favorite microphone.
Twitter and Facebook were the first of many companies to take action. In the days that followed, Google suspended Trump’s YouTube channel, Reddit banned some pro-Trump forums, and Snapchat, which had previously limited Trump’s activity on its network, announced it would ban his account permanently. from January 20, the last day of his presidency.
Since then, Trump’s presence in the rapid information cycle has been relatively minimal. He was forced to post videos and statements through the news media, official press releases and, on Wednesday, to the White House Twitter account, which has just 26 million subscribers, or fewer. a third of the audience he had ordered through his personal account. . (Twitter said Trump’s use of the White House account did not violate its ban.) Otherwise, Trump was barely heard.
Executives at Facebook, Twitter and other companies say they think they made the right decisions, but they also have reservations about their own power.
“The cost of this decision is that it highlights the fact that a small group of individuals are getting to make these decisions,” said a Facebook executive involved in the Trump account suspension deliberations.
Platforms weren’t the only companies to highlight the concentration of the Internet’s power. Soon after Facebook and Twitter suspended Trump’s accounts, even more Internet-centric tech companies were flexible: Apple and Google pulled Speak, a social media app popular with Trump supporters, from their app stores for failing to prevent violent speech, and Amazon stopped hosting the app on its AWS web hosting service. Parler chief executive John Matze said on Wednesday that the app, which claims 12 million users, may never return.
In a long Twitter thread this week, Dorsey said Twitter’s decision to ban Trump could set a “dangerous” precedent, highlighting “the power of an individual or business over any part of the global public conversation.”
But he also pointed out companies that control more than their own platforms.
“This moment in time could call for that dynamic, but in the long run it will be destructive to the lofty goal and ideals of the open Internet,” Dorsey said of the decisions of Apple, Google and Amazon. “A company making the business decision to moderate is different from a government removing access, but it can feel the same.”
Trump and his allies have also sounded the alarm on these moves. Trump, in a video posted on the official White House Twitter account Wednesday criticized “the efforts of censorship, cancellation and blacklisting of our fellow citizens”.
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Democratic lawmakers, including those who have long been critical of the growing power of big tech companies, seem less troubled by platform actions against Trump and his supporters. They note that the First Amendment does not prohibit private companies from deciding what to host on their platforms, and they applaud the suspensions – some believe they should have happened sooner.
“Platforms are businesses. They have user agreements, ”said Rachel Cohen, spokesperson for Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., A strong advocate for greater regulation of big tech. “When someone breaks the standards of the platform, they must be held accountable.”
The two companies have long established special rules for Trump and other world leaders on the grounds that even their most controversial publications have significant information value. Most of Trump’s controversial messages had remained on the platforms, sometimes behind warning labels, sometimes not.
The Facebook and Twitter decisions were a response to a very specific situation, sources from both companies said. One particularly influential actor incited violence and threatened the democratic process, and his words had demonstrable effect in the real world.
Twitter didn’t just say that Trump’s words could inspire people to violence. He also cited “multiple indicators” that the words “were received and understood” as incitement to violence.
Now the precedent has been set. And while the platforms may never again be in such a dire and extreme situation as they faced last week, the world has seen how well energy technology companies are operating and growing. have realized that their leaders can take drastic action if necessary – change the course. of world history from tropical retreats in the Pacific Ocean – without any outside laws or guidelines.
“This is not normal,” said a Facebook executive. “These are extraordinary circumstances. We have no policy on what to do when a sitting president launches a coup.”
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