In the FEE Daily newsletter, Brad Polumbo outlines the collusive mass deplatforming of President Trump and many of his high profile supporters:
Screencap of a Fox News report on the social media networks that have deplatformed President Donald Trump, January 2021.
Amid the fallout from the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, President Trump has been banned from just about every social media platform.
This crackdown is, frankly, unprecedented.
To be sure, social media and tech companies are private companies, and are not bound by the First Amendment. They have no legal obligation to host President Trump’s speech.
But there’s a question beyond can here that ranges into the should.
And I, for one, find it extremely disturbing that the elected President of the United States — who just weeks ago received roughly 75 million votes — is deemed beyond the pale of acceptable speech by Silicon Valley overlords who are overwhelmingly left-wing. Especially so given that these same platforms still allow the literal Chinese Communist Party to post pro-genocide propaganda and allow the members of the Iranian regime to openly foment violence.
The least consumers can demand is some consistency. Personally, I would find it much more reasonable for companies like Twitter to remove individual posts, including by President Trump, that violate rules — like fomenting violence — than to erase prominent political figures from the digital conversation entirely.
We should all want to see a free and open discourse online promoted by the companies we patronize. At the same time, none of this is cause for government control of the internet or meddling with the Section 230 liability shield.
If conservatives don’t like how Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey regulates content, they’d hate how Kamala Harris would do it.
