While many defenders of this corporate censorship tried to minimize it by claiming the President could still be heard by giving speeches and holding press conferences, several leading news outlets followed suit by announcing that they would not carry his speeches live and would only allow to be heard the excerpts they deemed to be safe and responsible.
In response, numerous world leaders -- including several who had clashed in the past with President Trump -- expressed grave concerns about the dangers posed to democracy by the ability of tech monopolies to effectively remove even democratically elected leaders from the internet.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel argued through her spokesperson that "it is problematic that the president's accounts have been permanently suspended," adding that "the right to freedom of opinion is of fundamental importance." Attempts to regulate speech, the Chancellor said, "can be interfered with, but by law and within the framework defined by the legislature -- not according to a corporate decision."
The European Union's Commissioner for Internal Markets Thierry Breton warned: "The fact that a CEO can pull the plug on POTUS's loudspeaker without any checks and balances is perplexing." Commissioner Breton noted that this collective Silicon Valley ban "is not only confirmation of the power of these platforms, but it also displays deep weaknesses in the way our society is organized in the digital space." (CNBC, "Germany's Merkel hits out at Twitter over 'problematic' Trump ban," Jan. 21, 2021).
The Health Secretary for the United Kingdom, Matt Hanckock, sounded similar alarms. Speaking to the BBC, he said "'tech giants are 'taking editorial decisions' that raise a 'very big question' about how social media is regulated," adding: "That's clear because they're choosing who should and shouldn't have a voice on their platform." (CNBC, "Trump's social media bans are raising new questions on tech regulation," Jan. 11, 2021).
Objections to Silicon Valley's removal of President Trump from their platforms were even more severe from officials with the government of French President Emmanuel Macron. The French Minister for European Union Affairs Clement Beaune pronounced himself "shocked" by the news of President Trump's banning, arguing: "This should be decided by citizens, not by a CEO." And France's Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said: "There needs to be public regulation of big online platforms," calling big tech "one of the threats" to democracy (Bloomberg News, "Germany and France Oppose Trump's Twitter Exile," Jan. 11, 2021).
Perhaps the most fervent and eloquent warnings about the dangers posed by this episode came from Mexican President Andre's Manuel LÃ ³pez Obrador. In a press conference held the day after the announcement, he said:
"It's a bad omen that private companies decide to silence, to censor. That is an attack on freedom. Let's not be creating a world government with the power to control social networks, a world media power. And also a censorship court, like the Holy Inquisition, but in order to shape public opinion. This is really serious."
The Associated Press further quoted President LÃ ³pez Obrador as asking: "How can a company act as if it was all powerful, omnipotent, as a sort of Spanish Inquisition on what is expressed?." And AP confirmed that " Mexico's president vowed to lead an international effort to combat what he considers censorship by social media companies that have blocked or suspended the accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump," and is "reaching out to other governments to form a common front on the issue" (Associated Press, "Mexican President Mounts Campaign Against Social Media Bans," Jan. 14, 2021).
Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald
Please listen to the Mexican President's warnings about Silicon Valley censorship when asked about the Trump ban. Following the center-right Chancellor Merkel, the leftist AMLO said they were becoming "a world media power" anointing themselves "judges of the Holy Inquisition":January 11th 2021
4,700 Retweets 10,916 LikesThese world leaders are expressing the same grave concern: that Silicon Valley giants wield power that is, in many instances, greater than that of any sovereign nation-state. But unlike the governments which govern those countries, tech monopolies apply these powers arbitrarily, without checks and without transparency. When doing so, they threaten not only American democracy but democracies around the world.
3. Critics of Silicon Valley power over political discourse for years have heard the same refrain: if you don't like how they are moderating content and policing discourse, you can go start your own social media platform that is more permissive. Leaving aside the centuries-old recognition that it is impossible, by definition, to effectively compete with monopolies, we now have an incident vividly proving how inadequate that alternative is.
Several individuals who primarily identify as libertarians heard this argument from Silicon Valley's defenders and took it seriously. They set out to create a social media competitor to Twitter and Facebook -- one which would provide far broader free expression rights for users and, more importantly, would offer greater privacy protections than other Silicon Valley giants by refusing to track those users and commoditize them for advertisers. They called it Parler, and in early January, 2021, it was the single most-downloaded app in the Apple Play Store. This success story seemed to be a vindication for the claim that it was possible to create competitors to existing social media monopolies.
But now, a mere two months after it ascended to the top of the charts, Parler barely exists. That is because several members of Congress with the largest and most influential social media platforms demanded that Apple and Google remove Parler from their stores and ban any further downloading of the app, and further demanded that Amazon, the dominant provider of web hosting services, cease hosting the site. Within 48 hours, those three Silicon Valley monopolies complied with those demands, rendering Parler inoperable and effectively removing it from the internet (See "How Silicon Valley, in a Show of Monopolistic Force, Destroyed Parler," Glenn Greenwald, Jan. 12, 2021).
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