MOSCOW – Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny criticized Twitter’s decision to ban President Donald Trump from his platform as “an unacceptable act of censorship”, arguing that the move opened the door for the Kremlin to demand that social media companies suspend permanently the figures of the Russian opposition.
“In my opinion, the decision to ban Trump was based on emotions and political preferences,” Navalny wrote in a long Twitter topic posted on Saturday night. “Don’t tell me that he was banned for violating Twitter rules. I get death threats here every day for many years, and Twitter doesn’t prohibit anyone (not that I ask for it). “
On Monday, a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the German leader views Twitter’s decision – followed by other social media companies – as “problematic”.
Merkel’s spokesman elaborated, saying that the chancellor considers freedom of expression to be a fundamental and basic right that should only be limited by legal means, rather than decisions by executives of social media companies. However, she believes that social media companies have a considerable responsibility in preventing further erosion of civic dialogue.
Twitter announced that it was permanently banning Trump from its platform on Friday in response to a series of tweets that the company argued that glorified and incited violence. The move came days after a pro-Trump crowd, encouraged by the president’s rhetoric both online and offline, invaded the U.S. capital in an attempt to prevent Joe Biden’s certification as president-elect.
Twitter’s decision to ban Trump was hailed by its critics as correct and backward, but it also raises questions about the role of social media companies in facilitating and moderating political discourse.
The American Civil Liberties Union concern expressed about the implications of banning a president from an “indispensable” platform, but even some of the Internet’s most fervent free speech advocates have struggled to resist Trump’s bans.
“A platform should not apply a set of rules to the majority of its users and then apply a set of more permissive rules to politicians and world leaders who are already immensely powerful,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which supports privacy and freedom of speech online, said Thursday in a statement.
For his part, Navalny is not a fan of Trump and celebrated the 2020 presidential election as a genuinely competitive race that was conducted in a fair and transparent manner. He has been the biggest critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin for a decade. He is currently in Germany, recovering from an assassination attempt in Siberia last year with a deadly nervous agent.
But for Russian opposition figures like Navalny, the dangers of social media bans are immediately obvious.
“This precedent will be exploited by enemies of freedom of expression around the world. In Russia too. Whenever they need to silence someone, they will say: ‘This is just common practice, even Trump was blocked on Twitter,’ wrote Navalny in a rare series of English tweets.
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He added: “If you replace” Trump “with” Navalny “in today’s discussion, you will receive an 80% accurate response from the Kremlin as to why my name cannot be mentioned on Russian TV and I should not be allowed to participate in any elections. . “
This sentiment was widely shared by other Russian opposition figures over the weekend.
But not everyone agrees with Navalny’s opinion. Andrei Kolesnikov, senior researcher at the think tank Carnegie Moscow Center, specializing in Russian domestic policy, says Navalny’s warnings are overblown. The whole situation surrounding Trump’s last days in power is a gift to the Kremlin as it makes it easier to point out American hypocrisy.
“As an opposition leader, Navalny is simply uncomfortable speaking out in favor of banning anything, not to mention censorship, even controversial figures,” says Kolesnikov. “Perhaps it is not your opinions that motivate these comments, but your situation. But he couldn’t help talking about a discussion so heated that it divides liberals in Russia.“