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As the world adapts to a Twitter without @realdonaldtrump, the next big question is, “What now?”
Big tech platforms, long accused of giving President Donald Trump special treatment not given to regular users, have shown him the door following his incitement to violence by supporters on the U.S. Capitol on January 6. It’s gone from Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat – even Shopify.
But in many ways, starting the president was the easiest part.
Will companies now impose the same standard on other world leaders? Will they continue to decide what is allowed and what is not allowed on their platforms, which could alienate a large part of their user base? Will all of this lead to a bigger split online, pushing those who flirt with extreme views to fringe sites and secret chat groups?
Although they have long sought to remain neutral, Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms are slowly waking up to the active role that they and their algorithms have played in shaping a modern world filled with polarized and growing groups. anger and huge factions falling into false plots and disinformation about science, politics and medicine.
“What we are seeing is a shift of platforms from a position of absolutism to free speech, to an understanding of moderation of speech as a public health issue,” said the civic media professor. Ethan Zuckerman of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
None of this can be fixed soon, if ever. Certainly not by blocking a president a few days away from his mandate.
But there are plans for future action. Remember “Plandemic?” It was the misinformed 26-minute, carefully produced video promoting the COVID-19 conspiracies that seemingly came out of nowhere and racked up millions of views. in a few days. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube scrambled to remove it – too late. But they were ready for the sequel, which failed to grab even a fraction of the first’s attention.
“Sharing misinformation about COVID is a danger because it makes it harder for us to fight the disease,” Zuckerman said. “Likewise, sharing disinformation about voting is an attack on our democracy.”
Unsurprisingly, it’s been easier for tech giants to take decisive action on public health issues than on politics. The business bans of the US president and his supporters have led to loud, though generally unfounded, cries of censorship, as well as accusations of left-wing bias. It even drew criticism from European leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel. – not exactly a friend of Trump.
Merkel’s spokesperson Steffen Seibert said freedom of opinion is a fundamental right “of elementary importance”.
“This fundamental right can be intervened, but according to the law and within the framework defined by the legislators – not according to a decision of the management of the social media platforms,” he told reporters in Berlin. “Seen from this angle, the Chancellor considers it problematic that the accounts of the American president are now permanently blocked.”
From this German perspective, it should be the government, and not private companies like Facebook and Twitter, that decides what is considered dangerous speech on social platforms. This approach may be feasible in Europe, but it is much more complicated in the United States, where the First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects free speech from government interference, but not from corporate policy on private communication platforms.
Governments, of course, remain free to regulate tech companies, another booming area. Over the past year, Trump, other Republicans and some Democrats have called for the revocation of a fundamental 1996 legal provision known as Section 230.. This protects social platforms, which can host billions of messages, from being chased into oblivion by anyone who feels wronged by something someone else has posted. But so far there has been more heat than light on the matter.
Yet few are happy with the often slow, after-the-fact, three-knockdowns and suspensions that have characterized Twitter and Facebook for years. Particularly in light of the Capitol Uprising, the murderous Charlottesville rally in 2017 and the mass shootings broadcast live.
Sarita Schoenebeck, a professor at the University of Michigan who focuses on online harassment, said it might be time for platforms to re-evaluate how they approach problematic content on their sites.
“For years, platforms have assessed what types of content are appropriate and not by rating content in isolation, disregarding the larger social and cultural context in which it takes place,” she said. “We need to review this approach. We need to rely on a combination of democratic principles, community governance, and platform rules to shape behavior. “
Jared Schroeder, a social media and First Amendment expert at Southern Methodist University, believes Trump’s bans will encourage his follower base to shift to other social platforms where they can organize and communicate with less. restrictions, if any.
“It is likely that the bans will fuel the us versus them narrative – and it is also likely that other forums will get increased traffic, as we saw after the 2020 election,” he said. “The bans took away the best tools for organizing people and for Trump to speak to the general public, but they are by no means the only tools.”
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