The rat-tat-tat of the falls was an impressive demonstration of the technology industry’s power to shape the fate of even the President of the United States. And that comes after years of efforts by Democrats and Republicans in Washington to reduce Silicon Valley – including lawsuits that Trump’s antitrust authorities have taken in recent months against Facebook and Google, as well as efforts by both the right and the left to challenge Section 230, the provision in the communications law that limits the liability of online platforms for what users post on them.
These lawsuits, legislative efforts and a possible antitrust investigation of the Apple App Store echo the claim that notably Trump supporters, civil libertarians and some prominent Democrats are broadcasting this weekend: no handful of companies should have that much unilateral authority .
“[I]I must worry everyone when companies like Facebook and Twitter exercise the unrestricted power to remove people from platforms that have become indispensable for the speech of billions – especially when political reality makes these decisions easier, ”said American senior legislative counsel Civil Liberties Union Kate Ruane in a statement.
Of course, many on the left applauded Trump’s fall on Twitter. Rashad Robinson, president of the advocacy group Color of Change – which has long argued that Trump and his allies used social media to foment racism in the United States – called the action in a delayed but “monumental progress” statement. Congressman Frank Pallone (DN.J.), chairman of the Chamber’s Energy and Commerce Committee, called himself “relieved,” and House Intelligence President Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) tweeted that “social media companies have allowed this vile content to rot for a long time and need to do much more”.
Democrats’ anger at the tech industry remains real, however – and their imminent full control over Congress and the executive branch will give them an opportunity to try to tame Silicon Valley.
President-elect Joe Biden’s administration must continue to pursue the high-tech antitrust cases that Trump’s agencies have filed. This week, Biden chose a prominent Facebook critic, civil rights lawyer Vanita Gupta, to be number 3 authority in his Department of Justice. House Democrats have proposed a series of major legislative changes – despite Republican objections – to facilitate the division of giant tech companies and prevent them from growing.
Conservative Trump-era complaints against Silicon Valley focused mainly on accusations of censorship and cancellation of culture. The left has a different criticism: if powerful companies like Twitter and Facebook had more competition, they would behave more responsibly – even before it became a smart political move.
“It took blood and glass in the halls of Congress – and a shift in political winds – for the world’s most powerful technology companies to recognize, at the last possible moment, Donald Trump’s profound threat,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D -Conn.) In a statement. AND tweeted Jennifer Palmieri, former director of communications for the Obama White House and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, “It didn’t escape my attention that the day when social media companies decided there was actually more they could do to police behavior Trump’s destructive act was on the same day that learned Democrats would preside over all Congressional committees that oversee them. ”
As a long series of court cases points out, online platforms are private companies that can host or expel anyone they want. Still, for four long years, Silicon Valley companies tried to pave the way in the Trump presidency that would minimize the damage he could do, while circumventing the idea that they were censoring Americans’ freedom of political expression. All the while, they were under intense pressure from Democrats, many in the civil rights world and others to simply turn off Trump’s digital microphone.
So why did Silicon Valley decide it was fed up with Trump now, this week, after so many years of turmoil?
In retrospect, the Trump presidency arc and the course of recent events have conspired to make what we are witnessing almost inevitable.
Go back to last winter. Twitter and others in Silicon Valley said their experience in dealing with bad information that circulated about Covid-19 in its early days was a powerful lesson: they could restrict the information they thought threatened the public good and the sky would not collapse .
Move forward a few months, and in November, Trump became a lame duck – and a much less frightening political enemy.
Trump’s loss also undermined one of the loudest arguments from social media companies to keep Trump on the board: voters must know what their elected leaders think so they can decide whether to vote for them. On November 3, that ship was gone.
More recently, and most horribly, it was this week’s Capitol violence that left five people, including a Capitol police officer, dead. In recent years, technology companies have come to the idea that they need to act when online rhetoric does damage offline. The facts hit them in the face: what Trump was saying online was fueling violence in the real world.
And, they feared, the worst was yet to come. The inauguration day is approaching, less than two weeks from now, and companies fear that Trump and his supporters will use social media in their attempt to wreak havoc around Biden’s tenure.
Then, on Friday, Trump tweeted that he would not attend the transfer of power, tweeting: “To all those who asked, I will not go into office on January 20º. ”(With the Trump account suspended, the tweet is no longer visible.)
Despite being a bland and unsurprising statement of facts, the post was interpreted within Twitter as a potential signal to supporters that they should feel free to reunite in DC and become violent.
Twitter said this on its blog announcing Trump’s ban. Consider your decision, said the company, was that “[p]lans for future armed protests have already started to proliferate on and off Twitter, including a proposed secondary attack on the United States Capitol and state capitol buildings ”before the inauguration.
Kicking Trump off has now resolved a long-term headache and immediate crisis for Twitter.
In addition, most importantly, it had the benefit of a little Facebook coverage. When it comes to politics, Silicon Valley companies have traditionally been reluctant to stay ahead of others in their sector. Facebook opened the door with its short-term restriction on Trump, freeing Twitter to jump through it.
But as popular as Silicon Valley’s actions with many newly occupied Democrats in power in Washington, Biden may have been, it is, at best, a brief postponement for the industry.
“A late step,” tweeted Mark Warner from Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “But it is important to remember, this is much bigger than a person. It is all about an ecosystem that allows misinformation and hatred to spread and rot without control. “