Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey agreed to ban Donald Trump from Twitter after tearful all-hands meetings, bitter dialogues, and employee pushback, knowing that this would be the biggest decision his company had ever faced.
On the morning of Jan. 6, I was cackling over “Stop the Steal” rally attendees’ clueless posts about parking in Washington. Future Tense contributor Faine Greenwood was lurking on TheDonald.win, a Trump fan discussion site, and tweeted the best examples of out-of-towners fretting about the logistics. (I particularly loved the person who thought that 6 a.m. pandemic D.C. traffic was “psycho.” Buddy, you have no idea.) By the end of the day, everything seemed a bit less funny. But as a new and furious round of discussion about deplatforming erupted, it still seemed perfect that the morning began for me with screenshots of TheDonald.win.
Online Extremism to Dominate Section 230 and Encryption Debates SHARE
Last week’s attack on the Capitol removed any doubts that the regulation of social media will continue to be a Congressional priority after the Trump administration ends. The president and his allies have argued for legislative changes to address alleged anti‐conservative bias within the most popular social media companies. These complaints have often overshadowed concerns from Democratic lawmakers, who have expressed unease for years about the proliferation of extremist content online. Many of these lawmakers no doubt view last week’s tragedy as a vindication of their concerns, and they will act. We should expect renewed policy debates on Section 230 and encryption to center around political extremism.