With just days to go before his term ends, US President Donald Trump was stripped last week of his favourite tools—access to his social media accounts—through which he had spread misinformation, sacked officials, set foreign policy and, eventually, incited violence.
While Facebook indefinitely suspended the President’s account, Twitter, to which he was uncommonly attached, permanently suspended his account. Twitter has since started a purge of QAnon, neo-Nazi and white supremacist accounts, removing 70,000 of them over the past week. Meanwhile, Google, Apple and Amazon have deplatformed Parler, a social media site favoured by the alt-right.
The companies acted in the aftermath of an attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters on January 6, the most significant breach of the complex since 1814 when the British captured and set fire to the building. However, the action is too little, too late. Both Twitter and Facebook have faced calls to enforce community standards against hate speech and abuse for years, to little effect.
The companies had also resisted enforcing standards on Trump (and elected officials) on the ground of ‘public interest’. When they finally acted, it was not only violence Trump had incited in an attempt to overturn the results of the elections but also intense pressure from employees that tipped the balance.
That the White House, Senate and Congress will now be controlled by Democrats no doubt made the decision easier. Why then have some—including German Chancellor Angela Merkel—expressed concern over the action? They fear, and rightfully so, the concentration of such vast power in the hands of a few billionaires, acting not in accordance with any laws but with arbitrary self-evolved, sometimes opaque standards.
This power, that can silence Nazis and bullies, can also be used to silence dissidents, human rights activists and others deemed as problems to a state. States and users must be vigilant to the dangers this poses to freedom and democracy, and find ways to check, if not dilute, these powers through policy and innovation.
