Content warning: This article contains mentions of racial slurs, anti-semitism and racially-motivated violence.
The short answer: no, it doesn’t.
On Jan. 6, Trump’s Twitter account was suspended following the insurrection at the Capitol last week. Twitter claimed that he was banned for violating their user agreement, specifically their “glorification of violence” policy.
Following suit, Google and Android took the popular right-wing app “Parler” off their respective app stores. This was an attempt to discourage further conversation that risked inciting a second attack on the Capitol, potentially during the upcoming inauguration.
While many conservatives are railing against the recent “Big Tech” censorship, it is justified under the current circumstances. The POTUS encourages violent riots. Unhappy with the election outcome, his right-wing supporters planned attacks using the uncensored Parler app (founded by two DU alumni). Now, with Parler officially banned, previous users are already moving on to other “free-speech” apps such as “Gab.” Is this app and those like it not a case study in what social media could look like with zero monitoring or censorship?
“My wishes for a race war have never been higher. I find myself thinking about killing n––s and jews more and more often” is among the many violent and racially-charged comments found on Parler.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said their goal “is to disarm as much as we can, and ensure we are all building towards a greater common understanding and a more peaceful existence on Earth.”
Twitter, like other large social media sites, has been open about providing a space for anyone to represent themselves on their platform. Yet the desire to ban incitement of violence is somehow viewed as a liberal agenda. The censorship of comments encouraging violence and spreading misinformation is not political bias; rather, it encourages a space for all people to feel welcome rather than attacked based on their status as a member of a protected class.
While social media sites ramped up censorship during the 2020 election season, this is not a violation of First Amendment rights. The First Amendment states “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble.” Simply put, censorship by private social media companies is in no way a violation of first amendment rights—only censorship by the government is.
Social media may be the quickest and often most effective means to disseminate information, but it is certainly not the only way to do so. If the president really wanted to make himself heard, he could call a press conference or put out a press release. Any other internet user could start their own blog to share their thoughts, post a YouTube video, or write an op-ed for a newspaper, media outlet or blog. There are other ways to make your voice heard.
“It’s become a secondary version of the Second Amendment: ‘They want to take your guns away.’ Now it’s become ‘they want to take your speech away,’” said an investigative reporter with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). This details just how quick many conservative Trump supporters jump to worst-case scenario conclusions about their constitutional rights being “stolen.”
The government has not made an attempt to take everyone’s guns away—they simply called for better regulation. We are seeing a similar instance now with free speech. The government is not trying to silence free speech. This is censorship by private companies who are completely within their means to limit and ban users as they see fit.
There has been an ongoing attack on “fake news” in the past four years, so the burden to stop the spread of false information has fallen into the laps of social media bigwigs. But Twitter does not plan to continue the current trend of removing tweets and suspending accounts. It aims to encourage a positive experience on the platform in whatever form that may take.
When you make a social media account, you sign a user agreement that gives a private company the right to monitor and remove content or information at their discretion. Most people do not read these agreements in depth. Nevertheless, a social media user’s ignorance of the agreement they signed is not reason enough to call for unlawful censorship. This is not a conspiracy theory to silence the masses, as many have accused “Big Tech” of doing. These measures ensure the safety of our country by refusing to give domestic terrorists a platform on which to congregate and barring leaders of this country from enabling said violence.
