When I woke up yesterday, an alert came through on my phone telling me that pro-Trump supporters, now a mob, had breached the Capitol Building in Washington DC. And as what I had dreaded for months unfolded before my eyes on Twitter, and the President began tweeting, something became very clear: Twitter has never done enough to bear responsibility for democracy. The very platform I was using was complicit in this insurrection, and so was every social media company and Big Tech at large.
The past 24 hours have been excruciating to watch—saddening and yet so unsurprising. Never in my lifetime did I expect to see a noose at the Capitol. Never did I expect to see a mob siege or ransack the Capitol, in the supposed leader of the free world. Not to mention that a Confederate flag has not been seen in the Capitol, ever, until 6 January, 2021.
But all this could have been avoidable. This is the logical conclusion of the President’s violent stoking of white supremacy, hate, racism, bigotry, anti-Semitism, and disinformation, online.
Deplatforming the President
The President sent out three tweets, including a video where he lied that the election was stolen and “asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful”. Within four minutes, the first was flagged for inciting violence, and it could not be reshared or engaged with. It has now been deleted, for repeated and severe violations of Twitter’s Civic Integrity policy.
Another two tweets were also deleted, and many called for the President’s account to be deleted as well. And it happened:
During those 12 hours, a statement saying a peaceful transition would occur on 20 January from the President was tweeted through Dan Scavino (White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications and Director of Social Media). The President also said, “it’s only the beginning of our fight”.
The President has since tweeted another video, in which he lies, saying he “immediately” called in the National Guard and federal law enforcement. I personally think he should be permanently deleted for that, though a spokesperson at Twitter said this was not misinformation at a level high enough to be labelled. 🤷♀️
Meanwhile, on Facebook, employees were being shut down in internal communications. By the time Facebook took down the video, Twitter had announced it would lock the President’s account for 12 hours until he deleted the tweets, or it would remain locked. Another violation of Twitter Rules would lead to permanent suspension.
Finally, Mark Zuckerberg announced the President’s page on Facebook and Instagram would be suspended at least until the Inauguration on 20 January.
Snapchat and Twitch have also suspended the President’s accounts. Twitter should follow suit. (This is also to say that social media platforms look to each other for cues.)*
It begs the question of whether other people who have incited violence in the past should be banned from social media platforms. Steve Bannon, for instance, called for the beheading of government officials.
And it also begs the question of whether it is possible to do anything in the short-term regarding right-wing social media platforms like Parler.
Deplatforming, while related to free speech, is not a breach of the First Amendment per se, since the US Constitution only protects individuals against government censorship. And fears that deplatforming could mean doing so to the wrong people fails to take note that left-wing individuals have been targetted far more often in the past, even if not explicit. Yet a private company should not have the ability to decide the parameters of public discourse. Both statements can be true.
Nevertheless, saying whatever a person likes without consequence is a privilege.
Social Media and Democracy
As the New York Times so clearly wrote, “This has been a striking repudiation of the idea that there is an online and an offline world and that what is said online is in some way kept online.”
Frankly, while the President is the terrorist in chief, this is simply way too little, far too late.
Not only have we seen this in other societies, genocide in Myanmar included, but Facebook shutting down the Stop the Steal Facebook group in October 2020 should have been a huge warning that groups were spreading disinformation and conspiracy theories, “grooming” people, and planning violence—the Women for America First Facebook group organised the March for Washington rally.
Radicalisation and “home-grown” domestic terrorists have long been a national security threat. Facebook has helped radicalise 2 million people, as its pages and groups associated with QAnon have at least 3 million members; Facebook’s own research also revealed that 64% of the time a person joins an extremist group, the algorithms recommended it. The reality is that no one has taken the role of social media seriously enough, despite the fact that this attack on the Capitol by white supremacist terrorists was planned online, in plain sight.
Google itself funds websites which persuade millions of people that the election was stolen, which is a complete lie, and makes millions of dollars in profit as well.
And the lies and the rewriting of history have already begun: as above, the President tweeted in a video that he called the National Guard immediately, which is a lie.
And Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz lied when he claimed that a facial recognition company had claimed that Antifa stormed the Capitol, not far-right terrorists. That came from a Washington Times article, which was the 11th most popular link on the entire US internet in the last 24 hours, according to Newswhip.
Fascism is not new to America; in fact, the term originates from there. But the difference is social media. The public square for discourse is no longer on equal terms—we know that inflammatory and right-wing statements are amplified and even preferred by the algorithms that have been created by the people working at these companies.
Social media is always for profit, and in the billions of dollars for that matter, and I think that free-market capitalism and true political democracy cannot co-exist. And so it seems to me that social media is incompatible with democracy as it currently exists.
Performative Social Media
One of the things that struck me as I watched footage of the white supremacist terrorists was that there did not seem to me to be a clear reason for the siege. Sure, the President incited insurrection at rallies and in tweets. But otherwise, QAnon followers believed there was going to be a showdown between the President and the global elites running the child trafficking ring; others believed they were overthrowing, even killing, the government, on behalf of “we the people”.
I have seen many comments in the following hours questioning why the white supremacist terrorists are so brazenly putting their faces on social media. And the answer is this: they are creating content.
These white supremacist terrorists live in an online alternate reality.
This was planned online in plain sight, whether or not we were too holed up in our online bubbles to notice. There is a gleeful sense to the insurrection, with everyone’s phones out and even selfies being taken with police. And there is a particularly disgusting video of the President and his family watching the scenes prior to the white supremacist terrorists breaking the barriers of the Capitol Building at what seems like a watch party.
The livestreams of the siege are being monetised by white supremacist terrorists. The symbolism of their clothes, flags, and posters is for a reason. The photos that are clearly for the purpose of content (legs on Speaker Pelosi’s desk, the Viking hat, carrying a Senate podium, posing with statues; in my mind, the worst was a re-enactment of George Floyd’s murder).
This was a performance for social media. I am in two minds about this. On the one hand, sharing their photos across the internet is exactly the spectacle they want. But on the other hand, there is the very real possibility that these white supremacist terrorists will attempt to rewrite history (they’re already trying).
Whatever we do in the public arena, these white supremacist terrorists are in it because they are social media influencers, influencing and radicalising their pro-Trump, right-extremist, white supremacist followers. This is the modern aspect of yesterday’s insurrection, and the most concerning part is that it’s all an alternate universe. And these white supremacist terrorists know exactly what to do as influencers—change the framing as they need to.
The Legal Implications
There are many possible legal implications. Ongoing suits against Facebook and Google remain on foot, though they are largely geared towards antitrust law and breaking up Big Tech, not constitutional or election law. But I don’t think there is any way for government to not step up, despite the relationship between government and Silicon Valley.
Often free speech is argued to protect social media platforms. Nevertheless, it should be noted that the First Amendment and free speech does not apply to private platforms, as the US Supreme Court has affirmed, though the internet and social media are not specifically mentioned.
Moreover, Section 230, which the President has repeatedly attempted to repeal in various Congress bills including the latest COVID-19 stimulus bill, is often the target of regulation. Section 230 is the law that provides some legal immunity for internet platforms regarding certain kinds of liability that may arise due to user-generated content. A repeal would create the gargantuan task of moderating every single thing on the internet, which social media companies already supposedly struggle with. (In reality, profit is the bottom line.) So if repeal basically breaks the internet, what then?
Privacy rights, which are often opt-in or piecemeal, get swept under the carpet, perhaps even because privacy is no longer private. Instead, epistemic rights and epistemic injustice, ideas that there are now extreme asymmetries of information and power in this age of surveillance capitalism.
Safety, privacy, and competition are the three areas that need government regulation. We must rethink how we assign responsibility between algorithms and their engineers. We must rethink how we protect against trading in human behaviour predictions for all. And we must rethink how we re-balance competition, not just break up Big Tech. Big Tech and social media are advertising and data mining businesses. They are not for the people.
There must be consequences for social media platforms, for the insurrectionists, for the media apparatus, for the Republican financiers and enablers, and for the President. But most of all, we must challenge the very moral fabric of our world. America is not alone in this, and Australia is undoubtedly complicit in fomenting the violence, not to mention the Murdoch media’s footprint all over Australia is also present in the US.
And we have a duty to young people desensitised to national tragedies and government atrocities and to prevent permanently traumatising a generation because of the distorted way we process these events like yesterday’s through social media.
In the short-term, we have just days to ensure there is no more incitement of violence on social media. There must be consequences to breaking the Terms of Service of a social media platform, but there must also be consequences for failing to prevent the incitement of violence in the first place.
We already know that this siege was just a warning. There will be more violence, and insurrectionists are planning online once more for a militia at the Inauguration on 20 January. Deplatforming is the first step.
We need to put principles over short-term political expediency or economic gain. Unless we challenge the root systems of capitalism, at this very low point in history, democracy will never recover.
*Update (9/1/2021 11PM AEST) – Twitter permanently suspended the President’s account (@DonaldJTrump), with a fair amount of context in its blogpost. When the President tried to tweet using the @POTUS account and the @teamTrump account, these were swiftly deleted, though the former is a government account and so itself cannot be deleted. (His references to Section 230 are rather ridiculous, since repealing it would likely mean platforms increase moderation to cover their increased liability, but he seems to intend to build new platforms and some kind of new media empire, which is concerning.) Gary Coby (Digital Director for the Trump campaign) allowed the President to change his handle and was also suspended.
Others were suspended as well, including lawyers for the Trump campaign Lin Wood and Sidney Powell, as well as recently pardoned Michael Flynn.
Parler was pulled from the Google Play Store, and the Apple Store pulled it for 24 hours unless it changes its moderation. Amazon provides their hosting.
Twitch suspended the President, while Discord banned the server The Donald, which was connected to TheDonald.Win and the Donald subreddit, which was also deleted.
Youtube deleted Steve Bannon’s podcast channel.
BUT, all this is too little, too late. I hope it escapes no one’s attention that this is happening as Democrats will lead House Oversight Committees, and that with two weeks in the Presidency, there is little for these social media platforms to lose. The insurrection, and now five deaths, should have been prevented in the first place.