How Twitter -and not Trump- succeeded in Making America Great Again: why banning Trump from social media is not censorship but a clear act of Corporate Social Responsibility.
In the last weeks of his presidency, president Trump clearly played poker only meant for advanced players. In the end however he overplayed his hand. From shouting ‘stop counting’ during the presidential election night, over all failed court attempts to get the election results turned in his favor, until the ridiculous expectations that he could get Mike Pence decide on his own to pick manually Trump as the next president of the United States… in the end the American institutions succeeded in securing the correct functioning of its democracy.
But for some time already Trump was working on a back-up plan, and I personally think it’s strange how little attention this dimension of his thoughts has received the last months.
Way before the elections, speculations rose if Trump would ever concede if he lost the elections. Let me rephrase that: observers where stating there were preliminary signs that the most important democracy in the world would not be a democracy anymore in 2021.
In this context, during a pre-election debate with Biden, Trump was asked live on television if he would condemn any white supremacist groupings violence, but instead of unambiguously condemning any violent act, he just asked them to ‘stand back and stand by’. Why would you ask militia groups to stand by? You can spin it any way you want, that message has clearly been picked up in some of the darkest parts of the US. Nobody at that time has held Trump accountable for these words.
Later on, after the elections, when losing court case after court case, according to an article published by the NYT, Trump is questioning again the idea if martial law could not be introduced in the states that he lost in order to rerun the elections. Martial law. Activate the army. Put all civil laws on hold. Overturn fair elections. It might be untrue, as no official source has confirmed publicly these talks have effectively happened, but Mr. Flynn, who was in the room with Trump during these alleged conversations, had pushed the same idea on television. Flynn, that’s the one who pleaded guilty of lying to the FBI regarding his role in the Russian interference wrt the American elections of 2016. And got recently pardoned for it by Trump. He was in the same room as Trump discussing tactics how to overcome the election results. And he thought martial law could be a solution to it.
The culmination of the poker game Trump was playing can be found in the events of January 6th with a mob storming into the Capitol screaming they would lynch Pence and shoot Pelosi.
Some will still think Trump’s last speeches and tweets were not inciting the violent acts that were to happen on January 6th but this is an ideological interpretation. The signs were continuously there, and nobody has been able to put a stop to his behavior. For the sake of this article, let’s assume that all evidence is there that Trump incited this violence.
In that case, would it be appropriate that Twitter suspends his account?
Remember that the same question was asked when Trump, during election night, gave a press conference. Some American news networks decided to interrupt the live conference due to the explicit misinformation that was being spread. Some observers stated that news networks need not to take a position, and just need to report. However multiple networks defended themselves that such pertinent lies were deeply misinforming the public in order to force a different outcome. Today we now that a large part of the American population still believes the elections were rigged, and due to these believes America has since then even been more divided than ever.
The decision to ban Trump permanently from Twitter and other ongoing reflections regarding Facebook, Instagram and even AWS’ decision to stop hosting Parlor brings up the reflection if Big Tech is not censoring free speech.
Anyone is free to make use of these platforms, as long as they comply with their respective terms and conditions. That’s the simple game rule.
What makes the debate interesting is Big Tech’s autonomy to decide themselves what can be published on their platform. Almost by coincidence, this was a hot topic the weeks before January 6th in American Congress & Senate. Trump was a strong advocate to review the so called section 230 that currently protects internet players from being sued by what’s being published on their platforms. Without this law, observers claim that there would be no internet, no Twitter, no YouTube. Reason being that no company would risk for being sued for anything that could be published beyond their control on their platforms.
Last decade however, pressure on the Big Tech companies is rising to show at least a minimal level of decency and moderate what is and what is not possible. There is no decent company in the world not moderating their forums & platforms. They all have published guidelines to which one needs to comply, and banning comments and users is a general and normal policy for all these Tech players. It is common to ban users. This is business as usual.
Great, you could say, Big Tech is protected of being sued by the law for any inappropriate content and in parallel it is also moderating to make sure no inappropriate content is published. Not so great others say because each Big tech company can decide for itself what it considers as appropriate and what not, which is a big thing of course. Instagram and Facebook have a free nipple policy, as long as it’s a women’s nipple. Men can show all the nipples they want. Discriminatory? Perhaps, perhaps not. But is it really up to Facebook to decide upon what is inappropriate content?
You can agree or not agree with a companies policy, but in the end it’s better having a policy than having no policy at all. Social responsible companies will moderate their platforms in order to prevent inappropriate behavior. What is inappropriate will of course always be a point of discussion, but inciting violence, hate speech, etc. are acceptable standards. Most Tech players have these kind of policies which are absolutely not exotic. If needed, law makers can have their say on the limits of what Big tech players can ban from their platforms.
Twitter did nothing more than applying its policy. A policy which is explicit that no violence can be incited. And Twitter waited incredibly long with banning his account. It waited until the Capitol was stormed, and 5 persons died in the event of these actions. Instead of criticizing Twitter, intellectuals and law makers should work together to make sure that the current autonomy Big Tech players have in moderating their platforms, is in line with the set of values of the community for which their platforms are served.
Just someone in the crowd 