The closure of Donald Trump’s Twitter account after supporters of the president stormed the Capitol on January 6 was celebrated by some and denounced by others.
And, as can be expected , among the critics of the decision abound the followers of the American president. But these are not the only ones who have sounded alarm bells.
Chancellor Angela Merkel -who no one would describe as close to Trump- referred to the measure as “problematic” for limiting “the fundamental right to free expression” of his North American colleague.
While the Russian activist Alexei Navalny used the same Twitter to denounce her as “an unacceptable act of censorship” , in an example of the concern that the measure has generated among some defenders of freedom of expression, especially in countries where it is not guaranteed .
“Obviously Twitter is a private company, but we have seen many examples in Russia and China of private companies that have become the best friends of the State and facilitators of censorship,” he explained in his post Navalny.
For others, however, the most worrying thing is precisely that a private company could silence the who is supposed to be the most powerful man in the world , depriving him of his favorite megaphone -one with which he also reached more than 80 million users .
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“The fact that an executive director can disconnect the speaker from the president of the United States without any control and the balance is puzzling,” wrote the commissioner of the European Union, Thierry Breton , in an opinion piece published in Politico.
And even UK Health Minister Matt Hancock intervened in the debate, warning about the risks that technology platforms “decide who should and who should not have a voice.”
References to c Ensura and freedom of expression have also been frequent in criticism from Trump supporters, who have also been the subject of similar measures on various social networks.
Twitter announced on Monday the closing of “more than 70. 000 accounts ”linked to QAnon , the conspiracy theory that already before the elections had also been subject to blockades and closures on Facebook.
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Mark Zuckerberg’s social network also temporarily suspended Trump’s account and so did Instagram, Snapchat , Twitch and also YouTube .
Facebook further said that it was also removing t All the content that mentions the expression “Stop the Steal” (“Stop the robbery”), the slogan associated with Trump’s unsubstantiated claims that the presidential election last November were manipulated.
And as if that were not enough for Trumpism, the decision of Amazon to stop providing online hosting services to Parler forced the temporary closure of this alternative to Twitter, especially popular among followers of the American president.
The future of Parler is also compromised by the decision of Google and Apple to stop offering the application in their virtual stores, as well as the refusal of many other online hosting providers to provide them with space.
“ Freedom of expression is dead and under the control of the great lords of the left”, was the summary of the situation he made -on Twitter- the eldest son of the president, Donald Trump Jr.
But as David Díaz-Jogeix, director of programs of the NGO defense of freedom of expression Article recalls , even in the most advanced democratic societies this freedom is subject to certain limits that Trump (and several of his followers) seem to have
- Facebook and Instagram block Donald Trump at least until the handover is complete
Risk of violence
“Initially, messages were deleted due to the imminent and real risk of violence . That is the determining element, ”said Díaz-Jogeix, who also considers it mandatory to consider the immense number of Trump followers and his position of influence.
“ In this context, the elimination of these tweets has sense. And the account suspension is serious, but legitimate, although it could be disproportionate. And I say ‘could be’ because we do not know if it is a permanent or indefinite suspension, “he told BBC Mundo.
The potential threat of violence was also the main argument used by Amazon Web Services (AWS) to explain its decision to stop providing its services to Parler.
“It is evident that There is a significant amount of content on Parler that encourages and incites violence against others, and that Parler is unable or unwilling to quickly identify and remove this content, which constitutes a violation of our terms of service “, argued Amazon.
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Parler, who still filed a lawsuit against Amazon, he maintains that the real reasons were “political animosity” and to “reduce competition in the market for microblogging services for the benefit of Twitter.”
But as he explains from ethics and technology researcher Stephanie Hare, this is not the first time that a major US technology company has taken similar action.
“Cloudflare stopped providing content delivery, protection and support services to the white supremacist website The Daily Stormer at 2017 ya 8Chan in 13555, then that website was used by the perpetrator of a massacre in El Paso, Texas ”, highlighted Hare.
While Díaz-Jogeix recalled that Twitter reserves the right to restrict access to its platform according to their community standards and terms of service, which however could be legally questionable.
“In Europe , there have been several cases where some networks have removed people from their platforms – not on Twitter, but in other cases, I think it’s Facebook; in Italy, Poland and Germany- and people have taken them to court and the judges have forced the platforms to give them back the space “, said the Article expert 42
“But there is a lack of jurisprudence by the European Court of Human Rights, and also in the US, on whether there is an obligation to give space on these platforms to individuals ”, he told BBC Mundo
Public forum?
For Santiago Pardo Rodríguez, coordinator of the Laboratory of Design for Justice of the Universidad de los Andes, in the case of the closure of Trump’s account there are other particular elements to consider that make the case even more complex.
As the Colombian constitutionalist explains in an interesting thread on Twitter, in 2017 the Knight Institute for the First Amendment at Columbia University sued to Trump for blocking seven people from his Twitter account.
A year later a judge agreed with the plaintiffs and in 2019 another Court confirmed that Trump could not block anyone from his Twitter account for constituting a “public forum”: a space where freedom of expression enjoys broad constitutional protections against established government actions in the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of Justice of the United States.
“And the question now is: do these constitutional protections extend to private companies? I think it is a very interesting debate and something that has to be discussed “, Pardo told BBC Mundo.
The lawyer would like to for that discussion to take place in the US Supreme Court, which could happen if the court decides to review the appeal of the Knight Institute v. Trump,
But, for now, he warns that he does not necessarily consider Twitter’s action inappropriate.
“That is where the Brandenbrurg case also comes in, which I also mention in the thread, the one who creates a rule that says that the government can limit content under very specific conditions: when there is imminence that this violent speech could produce an illegal action “, He added.
That, however, also raises the question of why Twitter should not have acted before.
But also the question of whether this type of The decision can be left exclusively in the hands of social networks that have been accused at the same time of limiting freedom of expression and of not doing enough.
More rigorous
Indeed, so far one of the key rules of platforms like Facebook and Twitter had been not to interfere with the content posted by politicians considering it too important for public discourse, which meant that high-profile users – such as the US president – enjoyed more latitude than other users.
But since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, things began to change significantly, and companies began to take more action against world leaders.
In March, Facebook and Twitter deleted posts by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro by misinformation about the covid – 42.
But it was not until May, in the context of the Black Lives Matter protests, that Twitter took action against a message posted by Trump, placing a warning to a message that according to its moderators glorified violence: “When the looting begins, the shooting begins.”
And the actions of This type, which multiplied during the US electoral campaign, has increased even more since the events of January 6, worldwide.
For example, Facebook announced on Monday the Elimination of accounts linked to the Ugandan government that were allegedly being used to manipulate the upcoming elections.
And for the lawyer and technician privacy scientist Whitney Merrill this points to a change in the moderation stance of the tech giants.
“The rules and guidelines of the networks social networks are evolving over time, which is normal, but they have not been applied consistently around the world, ”he told the BBC.
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Merill, however, anticipates that the punishment of Trump could be the beginning of a purge of similar behaviors worldwide.
And the president-elect of the USA, Joe Biden, has already said that he would like to change the so-called Section 230 -a law that largely exonerates social networks from responsibility for posts by its users – to increase content moderation and reduce dissemination of e fake news.
Who controls the controllers?
More legislation is also what the European Union proposes.
In fact, Merkel’s criticism of Twitter’s action against Trump – made through her spokesperson, Steffen Seibert- stressed that freedom of expression can only be restricted “ in accordance with the law and within a framework defined by legislators” and not “by decision of the administrators of social media platforms. ”
And as Díaz recalls- Jogeix, although the main social networks come from a cultural context of “absolute freedom of expression”, guaranteed by the First Amendment of the US Constitution, international standards “give some guidelines that, and n certain moments, for example incitement to genocide, incitement to violence, or discrimination against marginalized groups, if freedom of expression can be limited “.
“Social networks are guided by community norms and what we criticize is that these norms are not based on international human rights standards. They cannot be a decision for (Mark) Zuckerberg or Jack (Dorsey), the CEO of Twitter, but must be based on international standards “, he tells BBC Mundo.
But for Article 19, there is also a risk in leaving the regulation of these platforms in the hands of governments,
“We do not want Twitter or Facebook to decide who can enjoy freedom of expression. But it doesn’t seem like a good idea for governments to do it either , because history has shown that letting governments regulate freedom of expression is a bad idea ”, says Díaz-Jogeix .
Alternatively, Article 19 is piloting in Ireland a version of the independent regulatory councils of the written press that already exist in several European countries, adapted to the reality of social networks.
And although the debate is far from over, Díaz-Jogeix believes that the current context offers a valuable opportunity .
“What we want is to refocus all this global discussion that is taking place about this by asking ourselves what international human rights standards say, in terms of freedom of expression, but also respect for privacy for example ”, he tells BBC Mundo.
And the quality of much of the information will depend on the result. ation that we consume, and with it, of our democracies.
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