It will be difficult for Donald Trump to create his own social media platform if it is banned from the services of Apple and Google, which have monopolized the market, author and professor of liberal studies Michael Rectenwald told RT.
“The App Store and Google Play are definitely the biggest obstacles to the emergence of any other platform that would have Trump as a primary resource,” said Rectenwald, who was a professor of liberal studies at New York University.
Technological oligarchs have ways of getting people out of the public square entirely. They also share profiles of all users and ensure that certain users have no access across the full range of platforms.
“It is not the end of the day for Trump, unless he no longer has a platform. And this is exactly what they are trying to do … This is politically motivated censorship, ” Rectenwald said.
The scholar noted that social media giants, such as Facebook and Twitter, received “An advantage” for the government “This allowed them to completely monopolize the market.”
“In part, they received special privileges from the government. The state has exempted them from being treated as editors, and yet they continue to act as editors and editors, ” he said.
At the same time, some of Trump’s supporters are now distancing themselves from the outgoing president, because his name was “wrecked” for the dramatic takeover of the Capitol.
“At the moment, the name ‘Donald Trump’ is really something you don’t want to be associated with,”Said Rectenwald.
Also at rt.com
Shock and joy: U.S. President Donald Trump’s Twitter ban evokes the shadow of the Orwellian corporate dictatorship
On Wednesday, a crowd of Trump supporters dominated the police and stormed the Capitol building in Washington, DC, briefly interrupting the debate over the certification of the 2020 presidential results. Four people died in the ensuing chaos, including a woman who was shot by the Capitol police, and an officer later died of injuries sustained during the clashes.
Although Trump urged his supporters to be “Pacific” and “go home,” he was accused of inciting violence and permanently banned from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, which are owned by Facebook.
We believe that the risks of allowing President Trump to continue using our service during this period are simply too great, so we are extending the blocking we put on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and at least for the next two weeks. pic.twitter.com/JkyGOTYB1Z
– Facebook Newsroom (@fbnewsroom) January 7, 2021
In a series of tweets deleted from the official @POTUS account, Trump said he was studying “The possibilities to build our own platform in the near future,” and promised that it wouldn’t be “Muted.”
On Saturday, Google suspended the social network Parler from its Play Store, citing a failure to remove “Notorious content”. Founded in 2018, Parler became popular with conservative users, including Trump supporters.
BuzzFeed News cited an email from Apple threatening to remove Parler from the App Store, unless moderated “Objectionable content” on your platform. “The app also appears to continue to be used to plan and facilitate even more illegal and dangerous activities,” Apple was quoted as saying.
Parler CEO John Matze confirmed to Reuters that Apple has threatened to remove the social media platform from the App Store unless its content moderation policy changes.
“We are not going to give in to politically motivated companies and those authoritarian people who hate freedom of speech!” Matze wrote in Parler.
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