Twitter ban: Trump vows to fight back
Some analysts think the action may be a turning point for tech moderation worldwide.
On Monday Facebook announced it had removed a network of accounts it says were directly linked to the Ugandan government, and being used to allegedly manipulate the forthcoming election.
Privacy attorney and technologist Whitney Merrill suggests the move points to a change in moderation stance from the tech giants.
“Social networks’ rules and guidelines are evolving over time which is normal. But they aren’t being consistently applied throughout the world. I think the president’s removal might be the beginning of a purge for similar behaviour globally.”
In his final hours on Twitter, Mr Trump once again blamed a piece of US legislation called Section 230 for “banning” free speech. During his presidency he threatened to repeal the law which makes social networks largely exempt from liability for their users’ post.
Many argue that removing the protection would actually harm free speech as networks would be forced to moderate far more than they currently do.
US President-elect Joe Biden has also stated that he would like to repeal the law to increase moderation and reduce the spread of fake news.
In the same final tweet Mr Trump said that he has been negotiating with “various other sites” and that there would be “a big announcement soon”.
If the events of recent days are anything to go by, Mr Trump and some of his supporters face an uphill struggle against not just lawmakers but tech giants too before they can establish themselves on mainstream social media.
Not unprecedented
Technology and ethics researcher Stephanie Hare says it’s not the first time a major US tech firm has taken a site down for similar reasons.
“Amazon’s action against Parler is not unprecedented, as we have seen other US companies such as Cloudflare remove content delivery services and DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) protection and support to white supremacist website The Daily Stormer in 2017 and 8Chan in 2019 after that website was used by a gunman to post materials before he went on to massacre people in El Paso, Texas,” she said.
According to BBCnews…
