It’s time to demand accountability from social media platforms

When Twitter locked the account of United States President Donald Trump for 12 hours, I tweeted that I hope it would be forever. Trump had been using Twitter as his platform for lies and delusions for too long. Shortly after, Facebook banned Trump from posting on his accounts “indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete.” In Twitter’s strongest-ever action against the president’s account, it announced a permanent ban on Trump’s account in response to the “risk of further incitement of violence.” Other platforms removed Donald Trump’s account or accounts affiliated with pro-Trump violence and conspiracies, like QAnon and #StoptheSteal. Aside from Facebook and Twitter, other platforms include Reddit, Twitch, Shopify, Google, Instagram, Snapchat, Tiktok, Apple, Discord, Pinterest, Amazon’s AWS cloud, Stripe, Okta and Twilio. The latest action came from Google’s YouTube, which blocked Trump’s official channel from uploading new content for at least a week, citing the potential for violence following the deadly Capitol siege.

The ban and restriction of Trump’s social media accounts and related accounts brought several reactions about free speech and censorship. “There is no free speech argument in existence that suggests an incitement of lawlessness and violence is protected speech,” Katharine Gelber wrote in “No, Twitter is not censoring Donald Trump,” at The Conversation. “His account is not just a threat to democracy but to human life,” says the Real Facebook Oversight Board in its Jan. 6, 2021 statement. “As long as conspiracy theories and disinformation flourish on social media, democracy is not safe.”