Twitter Facebook blocked the account of U.S. President Donald Trump has caused public outcry. German Chancellor Angela Merkel stressed that Twitter’s closure of Trump’s account “is problematic.” Politicians from EU member states have also criticized Twitter’s threatening remarks. One European Commission commissioner likened the incident to “social network 9/11”.
The 2020 U.S. election has been marred by an unprecedented level of fraud. Amid the election fraud controversy, a joint session of Congress was held on January 6 to certify a new president. During the meeting, riots broke out at the Capitol, disrupting the election certification process, evacuating lawmakers and locking down the Capitol for a time.
Trump then tweeted a call to oppose violence and maintain peace, and instructed the National Guard to rush to the capital, Washington, D.C. However, Trump’s tweet was deleted by Twitter.
On Jan. 8, Twitter announced the decision to block Trump’s account. Trump’s more than 88 million followers, a record for many years, were gone forever. General Flynn, prominent barrister Sydney Powell and Lyn Wood of Trump’s team were similarly suspended permanently. Also deleted were tens of thousands of accounts that strongly supported Trump.
At the same time, Facebook, Google, Apple and other social media platforms and big technology companies collectively shut down Trump’s accounts on various platforms in an attempt to block all of Trump’s civilian voice channels.
The move has caused public outcry and netizens have launched a revolt, changing their account avatars to Trump avatars and filling the screen with Trump.
On January 8, many Twitter accounts have changed their avatars to Trump’s photo to protest against Twitter’s stifling of freedom of speech. (Twitter screenshot)
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted a warning: “Silencing is dangerous. It’s not American. Sadly, this is not a new tactic of the left. They’ve been working for years to silence their opponents. We can’t let them silence 75 million Americans. This is not the Chinese Communist Party.”
For her part, Kate Ruane, an attorney for the Civil Liberties Union, a powerful U.S. civil rights advocacy group, argued, “Everyone should be concerned when companies like Facebook and Twitter exercise unfettered power to remove people from what has become an essential speech platform for billions of people.”
Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, also tweeted that the immense power that social media platforms have as watchdogs of public discourse has never been more misrepresented – a power that should be very troubling to even supporters of Trump’s ban.
On Jan. 8, 2021, a laptop screen showed that President Trump’s Twitter account had been blocked.
The blocking of Trump’s account also drew criticism from dignitaries. German Chancellor Angela Merkel stressed that freedom of speech is a fundamental right, therefore, Twitter closed Trump’s account “is problematic.”
On Jan. 11, German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said in Berlin: “Freedom of expression is a fundamental right of central importance. Restrictions on this fundamental right must be based on the law and follow the framework defined by lawmakers, and not on the decision of a social platform’s management.”
He said that for these reasons, German Chancellor Angela Merkel considers it “problematic” that Twitter has permanently blocked President Trump’s account.
The Twitter blocking incident has also attracted the attention of the European Union. Politicians from the EU and other EU member states have also expressed their views on the issue.
French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire said that private companies should not be allowed to make the decision of whether to close their accounts. He told the French media that he was “shocked” that Twitter could make such a decision.
“The norms of cyberspace must not be decided by the cyber oligarchs themselves,” Le Maire said, arguing that “the digital oligarchy is one of the threats hanging over all countries and democracies.” The regulation of online platforms should not be left to the “cyber giants”, as this is the task of the state and the judiciary.
Russian opposition leader Navalny also tweeted that the social network’s shutdown of Trump’s account was a “censorship exercise,” based on a trade-off between political preferences.
Tech giants become the new “Great Dictator”?
EU Commissioner Thierry Breton compared Twitter’s decision to abolish Trump’s account to the “September 11 of social networks.
In an article on Politico, he said: “Since their inception, social networks have been sheltered by the 230 exemption, which prevents any prosecution for content published by third parties and exempts the social networks themselves from criminal and civil liability.
Breton noted that the dogma of Section 230, which has been the dogma of these online giants since their strong rise in 2000 …… but now collapsed, collapsed in the information space.
He said, “Just as 9/11 became a turning point in security policy, so now, 20 years later, we will be witnesses to a fundamental change in the online platform in a democracy.”
Li Datong, a famous Chinese media personality and the founder of Freeze, said that blocking the president’s information would lead to a great imbalance and skewing of social information, which is a kind of rogue behavior that deliberately tramples on professional rules and ethics, if not a crime.
He also said: private media to their own good or bad to take, block, distort the information of a country’s president, the result, will certainly make the government-run media legitimacy and justification, when the public finally found themselves brainwashed by the selected information, for these media, only then will be the end of the disaster.
George Washington once said: the prohibition of freedom of speech, there are only three explanations: first, it has done bad things in the past, afraid of people to mention; second, it is doing bad things, afraid of people criticism; third, it is ready to do bad things, afraid of people to expose. In short, the ban on freedom of speech must be related to bad things, definitely not good.
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