Banning Trump Feels Good — For Now

Corporate Censorship May Target Trump Now, But Could Shut Down the Left Later

I’m supposed to be happy that Twitter and Facebook have removed Donald Trump from their platforms. My friends are gleeful. They see it as kneecapping Trump where he lives, cutting off his access to the adulation he craves. Shutting him up, so that we can finally move on from the four-year nightmare that was his presidency. // I’m sympathetic. Trump was and remains a menace. He has legitimized the big lie. Questioned even the most verifiable of basic facts. He’s attacked the press, urged his followers to violence. And shows no contrition for anything he’s done. // Banning seems responsible. But it carries significant danger to freedom of expression. Puts unpopular opinions in the crosshairs. On Facebook, the cartoonist Ted Rall writes, “Right or left, you’re naive if you’re not terrified that social media corporations control political expression.” // Cross the line and you lose access to a public platform. // Twitter cites (https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension.html) a “risk of further incitement of violence.” So does Facebook. Google. Amazon. Apple. // A friend says Facebook is Zuckerberg’s platform, “I pay nothing to use it. I can either abide by their rules or I can go elsewhere.  It's simple.” // But it’s not. We pay Facebook with our data. Twitter, too. They’ve monopolized the market. Directed all social media traffic through their sites. Violate their codes and lose your voice. // Kevin Rose called them “corporate autocracies masquerading as mini-democracies.” They follow the money, have no accountability to anything but the bottom line. They “have a kind of authority that no elected official on earth can claim.” // And that’s what makes them dangerous. //

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ACLU pushes back. Says in a statement that it understands “the desire to permanently suspend him now.” Says “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 – especially when political realities make those decisions easier.” The danger, it says, is “many Black, Brown, and LGTBQ activists who have been censored by social media companies” do “not have that luxury.” // This is not theoretical. Dottie Lux and Lil’ Miss Hot Mess, advocates for LGBTQ+ rights wrote in Wired (https://www.wired.com/story/facebooks-hate-speech-policies-censor-marginalized-users/) that Facebook has used its moderation algorithm haphazardly and in ways that “constitute a form of censorship” for their community. // Black activists and civil rights groups (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2019/04/24/facebook-while-black-zucked-users-say-they-get-blocked-racism-discussion/2859593002/) have been critical of social media moderation systems and hate-speech policies. “Not only are the voices of marginalized groups disproportionately stifled,” USA Today reported in 2019, “Facebook rarely takes action on repeated reports of racial slurs, violent threats and harassment campaigns targeting black users, they say.” // Activists “now think twice before posting updates on Facebook or they limit how widely their posts are shared.” But “few can afford to leave the single-largest and most powerful social media platform for sharing information and creating community.” // And that’s the issue. The danger. //

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Echoes of the past. The Comic Code. Warning labels on records. On television shows. Film. // In the early 1950s, a backlash against sex and violence in comic books. Congressional hearings. Threats of government action. Enter the Comics Code Authority. A publishers’ regulatory committee. A stamp of approval. The code, says the CBLDF (http://cbldf.org/comics-code-history-the-seal-of-approval/), was “the bible of comic book censors.” It imposed “41 provisions (that) purged sex, violence and any other content not in keeping with critics’ standards.” // “Respect for government and parental authority was stressed, and censors even became the grammar police, eliminating slang and colloquialisms. Comics books received the Seal of Approval only if they were suitable for the youngest readers.” // And retailers refused to sell books without the stamp, helping drive many adult comic companies out of business or underground. // Fast forward. The eighties and nineties. Tipper Gore. The Washington Wives. Record labels. Walmart refused to sell music without the stamp of approval. Walmart, then the largest record retailer in the country. Only place for many in small towns to buy music. // These were private actions. But industry groups. Not government action. // 

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Facebook. Twitter. Social media more broadly. It is the new de facto public square. The place we visit to debate. Argue. Organize. // Over the summer, organizers turned to social media. Posted marches. Called for change. Protests swept the nation. Attacked the nation’s underlying racism. Their cause became popular. Their popularity, ephemeral in the best of times, offered protection. For now. When that popularity wanes. And it will wane. It always does in the United States, because of racism’s deep roots and embedded structures. When it wanes, then what? // Popularity equals profitability. Profit is the chief driver of their decisions. // Trump has lost his popularity. Has become a pariah. This is good. This is necessary. But it shows the tenuousness of the private-sector model speech model. When you cede your authority to protect speech, give it over to tech companies like Facebook and Gooogle you have no protections. Money will rule. The good speech will get washed away with the bad. //

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I don’t have a solution. I don’t have answers. Only questions. Only concerns. I admit this. Forcing private companies to host bad speech is no different than allowing them to use their power to shut some speech off. Maybe worse, because it would be imposed by the government. // Perhaps our best bet is not to treat this only as a speech issue. Perhaps, the only way out is to attack it at its root. To acknowledge the power capitalism confers on the rich. On the largest corporations. To attack that power. To break it up. To move from the corporate and capitalist model. // Facebook is too big. Twitter is too big. Apple. Google. Amazon — all are too big. Too powerful. Control too much of our lives. Perhaps the issue isn’t one of speech at all.

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