It’s official. Trump has been banned from most social networks. My (mostly left and liberal) filter bubble is rejoicing. “At last” I hear, “they’ve done what should have been done long ago”. As his presidential term came to an end, Trump’s communication reach shrank. Whether or not a political figure with 80+Million followers should in fact be banned is a debate I do not wish to enter in this post.
Consequences on polarization
One clear adverse effect of banning Trump is that his audience will become even more polarized. By confronting him, major social media such as Twitter, Facebook have emerged as one powerful consortium that sent a very strong message to Biden: they indirectly sided with the new president’s political agenda by censoring his main detractor.
The direct effect on Trump supporters is particularly dangerous because they will progressively depart from the most prominent social media that are banning the last president, and converge towards niche, unorganized networks such as Parler. On those networks, less initiatives are rolled out to filter out hate speech due to unsophisticated processes in place and, likely, unwillingness to do so to pursue their own far-right agenda, which has left them from being banned from the Google Store and to lose their hosting rights from AWS. Fake news can spread extremely fast on those platforms, and lead to more disinformation that will eventually create more violence between Americans.
Concerns about the American establishment
There is a long history of human rights abuses that can be tied to the United States. Tell Me No Lies by John Pilger illustrates the role of journalists to uncover the truth behind events that were unlawful and strategically hidden from the public. Unsurprisingly, the US government was involved in a lot of those.
Because of his aggressive rhetorical style and attempts to appeal to the emotions of his base, Trump was probably the most criticized and denounced president that the US ever had. His uncommon lack of filters in discussing controversial topics, and repeated lies on many subjects took most observers aback from the moment he started running for the presidency back in 2016. Yet year after year, fact-checking became irrelevant and the public grew accustomed to his style, shifting our expectations to detect such agendas.
With Biden’s presidency around the corner, I am worried that watchdogs will be tamed because his political-correctness will deviate so much from Trump’s explicit manipulation tactics. It is crucial that journalists remain extremely vigilent, as the political agenda of the US, especially military-wise, will still remain unchanged.
A distraction from other topics that matter
From the insurrection of neo-fascists on the Capitol to this following censorship of Trump on social media, most of the world failed to notice that Julian Assange was denied bail during his latest hearing in London. He will need to remain in prison, while his mental illness is at the lowest, and he confessed attempting to take his own life.
Our collective failure to stand up for whistleblowers is one of the most tragic and infuriating matters of our times.