People use Facebook as a social media site – but it isn’t the only one. So Trump has been banned – people can discuss whether it is a good idea. There are questions about section 230.
In short, social media sites have been considered as libraries rather than newspapers. You can’t sue a library because of the books it holds – the authors of the books are responsible. But you can sue a newspaper because they perform an editorial function. A bit simplistic, but that is roughly it.
Trump has had his account blocked. That’s the background. Some will praise the block on Trump, some will hate it. Different people have different views.
Facebook have used fact checking to provide an answer back to some posts and have put temporary suspensions on others for potentially breaking rules. Some people have complained about posts in order to get them suspended. But in all of these cases they still claim to be a library, because their rules tend to be based around legal restrictions (like incitement of violence).
But now they have closed Donald Trumps personal account – they have gone beyond blocking items that are legally questionable, or answering back. They have chosen a permanent block – so he is not now allowed to say things that are acceptable. That probably will bring them in to the newspaper category. And the eventual outcome of this would be that Facebook would become liable for everything we post – so you could expect far greater restrictions on what you say.
But there is another side to what is going on. Parler is an alternative to Facebook – it tends to be populated by the far right. There are a few large groups on the internet – Google, Apple, Amazon. They are now all about to block Parler – the whole service. There are millions of people using the service (over 12 million).
Amazon have found just under 100 posts that incite violence – this is their excuse for dumping it.
Newspapers have carried numerous articles about porn on the site.
Just think about the posts you have seen on Facebook that incite violence, and the scams you have seen to direct you to sex sites. Parler is used by a lot of right wing folks that object to porn – so they actually have a configuration that says “block porn from appearing on my account” – paraphrased there. 99% of users choose the setting.
My take is that they do not want to be associated with the politics of most Parler users (neither do I, so I just don’t sign up to it). There really is no other valid excuse (well maybe they threaten to take away earnings).
What does that mean? Well, most apps depend on the big few to work. Despite my dislike for many of the views I think are on Parler (I have not signed up to it so I am just guessing) I do believe in freedom of speech.
This blog is hosted by one of the few big companies. Is it right that my views are blocked because they differ from that of the people that the company makes money from?
The internet is not perfect, but we desperately need a review of freedom of speech issues before our freedom to speak is removed.