I support Twitter’s decision to ban Trump. After 1/6/21 it was clear that he simply couldn’t be trusted with so large a platform. I didn’t see his suspension as an infringement of his freedom of speech so much as a (long overdue) decision to simply treat him like any other user. There’s nothing wrong with a platform choosing not to give a user extra latitude.
I’m much more worried about Amazon, Google, and Apple’s joint decision to essentially delete Parler. I don’t use Parler and, from what I understand, it’s not the kind of site I’d enjoy. But it seems to me that what these tech giants have done (and bear with me here, because I’m not the most technically minded of people) is essentially decide to treat Parler as a publisher, responsible for any and all content that anyone may post on it. That’s clearly not what it’s designed for. It’s supposed to be a hosting service, just like Twitter.
There’s no doubt that there’s lots of unpleasant people on Parler saying lots of unpleasant things. But there are plenty of equally unpleasant people on Twitter saying equally unpleasant things. On Friday, the Chinese Government (@ChineseEmbinUS) tweeted:
Study shows that in the process of eradicating extremism, the minds of Uygur women in Xinjiang were emancipated and gender equality and reproductive health were promoted, making them no longer baby-making machines. They are more confident and independent
For the avoidance of doubt I’d just like to clarify that the Chinese government used Twitter to boast about forcibly sterilizing Uighur women. The tweet was deleted, but the @ChineseEmbinUS account is still fully operational. Much of the insalubrious content on Parler consists of bigots ranting about immigrants or swapping the latest Q-Anon fantasies. As unseemly as that is, it pales into insignificance compared to an organ of a dictatorship literally bragging about an ethnic cleansing program that they’re carrying out in broad daylight.
And, of course, on top of that, you’ve got accounts like @LouisFarrakhan, who has posted such delightful insights as I’m not an anti-Semite. I’m anti-Termite, as well as a video entitled Thoroughly and completely unmasking the Satanic Jew and the Synagogue of Satan. His account is still up and running. Indeed, he has nearly 350,000 followers, at least some of whom, I presume, hold equally vile accounts of their own. And let’s not forget Twitter’s well publicized problem with Islamic extremism.
The difference, of course, between Twitter and Parler, is that Twitter is simply much too big and much too powerful for anyone else to shut down. As far as I’m aware, there exists no mechanism short of government intervention which could inhibit Twitter’s ability to function. When it comes to Twitter, might, unfortunately, seems to make right.
And that’s why the sanctioning of Parler bothers me. Any social media platform is going to have trolls. And the larger the platform, the more trolls it’ll inevitably attract. There now exists a market in which every entrant save one can be punished for this.
In effect, this decision means it’s no longer possible to compete with Twitter. How could you? Let’s say you start your own micro-blogging platform. You may have the best of intentions, but if you’re in any way successful you’re eventually going to have your fair share of bigots, shitposters, and trolls. It’s inevitable. You may take every measure at your disposal to ban them as quickly as you can, but there’s no way you’ll ever be able to keep up. This is just a reality of running a social media platform. The government recognizes this, and that’s why, in the eyes of the law, sites like Twitter and Parler are classed as platforms and not publishers. If they were held legally liable for everything their users posted it would be impossible for them to function.
However, thanks to this precedent, Big Tech will always have an excuse to shut down smaller, weaker social media sites before they can pose a credible threat to Twitter. This effectively places Twitter’s primacy beyond the reach of market forces, which means there’s no practical corrective to Twitter’s influence on our politics.
I don’t dispute Amazon, Google, and Apple’s legal right to take the action they have, but from an ethical perspective it’s very troubling. It sets a dangerous precedent, one far more harmful than anything that could’ve feasibly resulted from just leaving Parler alone.
