Citation
Goldberg, M. (2021, January 11). Opinion | The Scary Power of the Companies That Finally Shut Trump Up. Nytimes.com. Retrieved 16 April 2021, from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/opinion/twitter-facebook-trump-ban.html .
Summary
In the impending days when Trump supporters had mobbed up and tried to overrun the capitol desperately attempting to avert the certification of his defeat, various conservatives let their outrage known regarding the actual victims of the inconsequential putsch. It was an issue of the bill of rights being invaded on. For instance, Sarah Huckabee Sanders stated that she had lost more than 50,000 followers during that week when President Trump was banned from Twitter. Sanders, a former secretary to President Trump, complained of the radical left censorship and asserted that the United States is a free country with an enshrined bill of rights, not like China (Goldberg, 2021). Concisely, Trump's ejection from Twitter and Facebook is the opposite of the things that occur in China. It is primarily unimaginable that Weibo, a Chinese social media platform giant, ban their president Xi Jinping. Exiling president Trump from social media showed, in some ways, the libertarian dream of privatizing the public spaces, where the corporations and instead of the government are given the rights and opportunities to define the boundaries of permissible speech.
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As a non-libertarian, one could completely agree with the use of the powers of these technology giants. One could argue that President Trump ought to have been de-platformed. Trump also favourite social networker called Parler that threatened the president’s foes was also kicked off from Amazon’s web-hosting service. After Twitter and Facebook banned Trump, they seemingly started treating him like any other person. Furthermore, Twitter and Facebook decided to ouster Trump's supporters, including Steve Brannon and Alex Stones. The two social media giants claimed that the supporters had incited violence, threatened journalists, and spread hatred using their respective platforms. Trump was also implicated in those stories, but he was given special privileges because of his position as the United States president. The question of the First Amendment in taking away these privileges comes in. However, taking these privileges away does not have First Amendment because Americans are entitled to a constitutional right to have private companies disseminate their speeches. In contrast, the First Amendment also allows individuals and organizations to have the freedom not to relate to the speech they hate.
A heated debate, however, exists regarding the extent of this freedom. Liberals may believe that the freedom of association should not avert the civil rights law. For instance, bakeries are not supposed to deny wedding cakes to gays or lesbians. However, it is also obvious that the American Constitution does not force anyone or an organization to expound their seditious political claims (Varis, 2020). Regardless, the ability of Twitter and Facebook to act without coordination to shut up President Trump is surprising, and it shows the limitations of these social media platforms. In essence, Trump can freely and at any point or time call up a meeting or presser by Fox News. However, stripping Trump to access social media platforms present to other individuals on earth has degraded him so that the impeachment and the electoral defeat have not.
Critical Analysis
It is plausible that social media ban works in various ways. This can be noted among Villains such as Alex Jones. Social media reaches a wider population and drives critical conversation; therefore, it is not correct for these entrepreneurs to monetize it. It could be important to curtail the poisonous presence of President Trump. This shows that the private companies have implicated that they can act strongly and nimbly than the government by imposing bans on possible tyrants who have enjoyed corrosive levels of impunity in the country. However, by doing this, the companies seem to have used the power that exceeds the ones of many states, one they implement without the democratic perception of accountability (Zhang, 2017). For this reason, prominent leaders such as Angela Markel of Germany and Aleksei Navalny of Russia found it disturbing that Twitter and Facebook could take extreme measures of banning President Trump and others. Navalny, for instance, claimed that the social media platforms had set a precedent that would impede freedom of speech in the world. For instance, every time they want to make someone silent, they would use President Trump's case to justify it. Even though this seems to have an impact on the freedom of expression and association as enshrined in the American Constitution, the solution is not to give Trump the accounts. Banning Trump is arbitrary since various bad actors such as the autocrats, those denying Covid-19 existence, and those trolling factories can access these services. Therefore, these platforms should have a transparent procedure and appoint committees that can listen to the defendants’ claims to give people a chance to express themselves.
The technology monopolies should be broken up as a long-term solution, as suggested by many. The tech barons who decided to take action against President Trump after facilitating his activities for many years seem to have abdicated their roles for such a long period. The ruling against Trump was done judiciously, but they should not rule as much as they are doing. Suspending Trump permanently from social media platforms triggered controversial arguments regarding the freedom of speech in the United States. Supporters of President Trump claimed that Twitter had stifled free speech despite the support of the ban from the US mainstream media outlets and the president’s opponents. Lawyers for the First Amendment also claimed that the action from Twitter was not in violation of Trump’s rights. They indicated that the American constitution shields every American from government actions of censoring individual speech, and Twitter is a private entity (Strauss, 2018). If such an incident happened where an influential public opinion officer was banned on social media platforms in other nations, particularly the ones regarded as foes of the United States, the latter would accuse them of suppressing freedom of speech.
The US democracy seems to have taken a hypocritical stand. The media outlets do not take a position to protect the American Constitution but also think that freedom of speech is about those who hold the same political viewpoints as them (Kendrick, 2018). Trump supporters, and arguably, think that banning Trump on Twitter and other social media platforms is not the right step because it wrecks the freedom of speech. They think that the move is unacceptable. However, Trump's opponents think that it is needed because it is one of the measures of denouncing violence and protecting social order to stabilize the country. This shows that freedom of speech, in this case, is the equipment used by the United States to attack its opponents.
The US hypocrisy in banning President Trump's social media accounts provides everyone with an opportunity to redefine and comprehend the meaning of freedom of speech. The First Amendment of the American Constitution seems to be on trial in this case. Regardless. This shows that a country like the United States, which is a beacon of democracy, can also have limits to its freedom of speech. In summary, Free speech should not mean having irresponsible discussions, such as incitement, racism, and planned discrimination. Free speech is not about spreading lies under the disguise of freedom of expression.
References
Goldberg, M. (2021, January 11). Opinion | The Scary Power of the Companies That Finally Shut Trump Up. Nytimes.com. Retrieved 16 April 2021, from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/opinion/twitter-facebook-trump-ban.html
Kendrick, L. (2018). Another First Amendment. Columbia Law Review, 118(7), 2095-2116.
Strauss, D. A. (2018). Freedom of speech and the common-law Constitution. In Eternally Vigilant (pp. 33-60). University of Chicago Press.
Varis, P. (2020). Trump tweets the truth: metric populism and media conspiracy. Trabalhos em Linguística Aplicada, 59(1), 428-443.
Zhang, L. (2017). Retaliatory Arrests and the First Amendment: The Chilling Effects of Hartman v. Moore on the Freedom of Speech in the Age of Civilian Vigilance. UCLA L. Rev., 64, 1328.
