Sunday, January 10, 2021

On Friday <date>, US President Donald Trump’s Twitter account was permanently suspended, banning him from continued use of the popular online messaging service. According to Twitter, the reason for the ban was to mitigate “the risk of further incitement of violence”, referring to the riotous acts and injuries that occurred in and around the Capitol building on January 6, this following a massive Trump rally held nearby, earlier in the day. It should be noted that non-peaceful activists descended upon and entered the Capitol before the contemporaneous protest rally adjourned and attendees began marching toward the Capitol grounds.

The decision to ban the President has been widely criticized by both liberal and conservative leaders as unjustified, some going so far to say that “Twitter is the enemy of free speech”. Notably, as a matter practice, Twitter has refrainded from baning world leaders from using the service.

After Twitter announced the suspension of President Trump’s personal account, he posted a tweet to his official, office-holder account (@POTUS) criticizing Twitter for wrongly banning free speech. Further, he alleges that, “Twitter employees have coordinated with the Democrats and the Radical Left in removing my account from their platform, to silence me — and YOU, the 75,000,000 great patriots who voted for me”. Trump also said that he was searching for a new messaging platform and was even considering the possibility creating alternative service. The tweet was deleted minutes after it was posed.

Kate Ruane, a member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), condemned Twitter’s suspension the President’s account. She said that she generally did not agree with Trump’s tweets and understood Twitter’s decision to permanently ban him; but that, “It should concern everyone when companies like Facebook and Twitter wield the unchecked power to remove people from platforms that have become indispensable for the speech of billions”. She continued, saying that many activists will be affected by Twitter’s decision, especially since they might not always have alternative ways to share their opinions.

Lindsey Graham, a US Senator from South Carolina posted a tweet saying: “Twitter may ban me for this but I willingly accept that fate: Your decision to permanently ban President Trump is a serious mistake. The Ayatollah can tweet, but Trump can’t. Says a lot about the people who run Twitter.” He also told in a separate tweet that he is determined to repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act which many Conservatives claim offers unwarranted protection to Big Tech companies that participate in mass censorship.

Section 230 is a law passed in 1996 that shields Internet companies from being held responsible for things that individuals publish using their services. It says: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” This law has several exceptions. For example, in 2018, Congress made it possible to take legal actions against social media platforms that knowingly support sex-trafficking.

Many Republicans and Democrats agree that Big Tech companies have gained too much power and that they must be regulated. Most Democrats think that Congress should require Big Tech companies to delete “hate speech and extremism, election interference, and falsehoods”. However, most Republicans, including President Trump, blame Facebook, Google, and Twitter for censoring free speech, and want to pass laws that limit the extent in which social media platforms can limit “so-called harmful speech” in their platforms. The debate revolves around the perceived difference between incitement and protected political speech.

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