How to answer the censorship question.
Soon after the Capitol Riots that plunged the nation into fearful darkness, came a precedent that hasn’t been thoroughly discussed. A precedent following a conversation about censorship that, to be clear, makes the impacts of this decision less clear than ever before- when Silicon Valley, all within a matter of hours, was able to silence the President of The United States of America at a historic scale. All without committing a crime.
The impacts of such a decision fall within both the areas of rather nonpartisan thinking, with some people believing that such provocative behavior is an action that, not even the President of the United States can get away with, while others believe it sets the groundwork for the world of social media to control the electorate in ways never seen before.
The important thing to note here isn’t whether or not the president’s tweets incited violence, but rather, whether or not national governments need to be held to a different standard when it comes to the policies that follow companies like Twitter, Facebook, or Snapchat. The specific question, in this case, is- if a government official- especially at the federal level, does happen to habitually use provocative messaging- should they be censored by major platforms and distributors?
This is a tricky thing to answer, because, if Donald Trump’s access to social media becomes limited due to a threat of violence, shouldn’t other major governments that are undergoing even greater, present violence, also be censored? Governing parties such as the BJP in India, CCP in China, as well as governments in Nigeria, Congo, Syria, Yemen, Poland, and Nicaragua- all have histories of political unrest, oppressive violence, and provocative messaging that all exceed the unrest within the United States. If Donald Trump has to go- then should the same be said of the leaders of the 2 countries that have populations of over a billion people?
Thinking, in just the context of morality, the answer can very, very, very easily be made in the agreement. But at the same time, that’s a very substantial reduction in ease of access to the messages of governing officials, and then the question comes past just right or wrong- should a private company, whose votes are made through dollars instead of a check, have the power to silence the largest governments in the world?
Now, before that question is answered there’s something that needs to be detailed- the part about silencing. By any account, the government still has a vastly expansive reach. Public statements and state broadcasts are just some of the few ways they can easily communicate with their coincidence. But then, so arises another question- don’t other publishers have the same moral obligations as the tech that censors politicians?
It’s safe to say that, there will likely be publishers who have no problem with spreading whatever it is politicians might say, but those publishers depend on mediums as well. A case in point is the app Parlor, a free-speech-promoting app, which wasn’t just shut down by app stores, but Amazon Web Services themselves, which makes the site unable to operate. Now they themselves may not have provoked anything, but their platform was a still central medium that allowed the violence on Capitol hill to happen. When you think of news broadcasts, videos, or even text messaging- that same concept can apply to any medium that minimizes policy monitoring on content, yet can still be held responsible for the consequences.
Many of these questions can’t be easily answered- but what a strong precedent would be would, in fact, to give governments an exceptional case, permitting a new set of policies that garner to public, political individuals whose decisions can affect countries and the world at a global scale. Such measures would in fact cite a history in which the platforms that would also, in a way, become a separate entity for governmental publishing and broadcasting.
While historic- such actions would actually be in line with the legal jurisdiction that oversees differentiation over public and private entities, established in New York Times v. Sullivan (1964). This court case was a case filed when a police commissioner, L.B Sullivan, felt as though information that was presented about him by the Times had been false, and thus felt as though their actions fell under libel. However, since he was a public commissioner- the standard for malice was determined to be different towards a public figure, and private citizenry tested through the determination of reckless disregarding of information that determines such publishing false.
Based on such a case, say, a platform, like Twitter, upholding government and public individuals to a different standard over private citizens might actually make sense. So long as such policies do not openly inhibit the spreading of information, or campaigning material, the same logic used by the courts could theoretically be upheld by platforms, by being able to determine if the language used was intending or, did, incite violence, for example. In extension, they also would be able to outline a policy that makes it country-specific- the country of their headquarters would be where such pressure would be most emphasized (for example). Either that, or it could be equally enacted in every nation.
Dividing the reality that is government-run media, and private run media is important, and it stops Big Tech from having to answer questions about censorship when transparent policies have the capacity to layout the standards for constituents and politicians.
