Katie Roche's Blog

Was Twitter Right to Ban Donald Trump?

I’ve written several posts about free speech in the past. As regular readers will know, I don’t like Trump. I’ll be glad to see him go. I don’t agree with the storming of Capitol hill either. Five people lost their lives in the pursuit of overturning democracy. I don’t doubt for a second that Biden won the election fair and square. But I do have an issue with banning Trump and his supporters on Twitter.

Now, free speech doesn’t feel like a big issue to most people. Most people don’t want to be involved with violent protests or conspiracy theories or anything else being targeted. Furthermore, it seems people are increasingly perceiving that free speech is an excuse to say hurtful things online. And that hate speech laws and social media bans only affect bad people. That’s not true. Here’s how restricting free speech could hurt you:

Free speech doesn’t include using speech to cause harm. It could be argued that Trump was causing harm by incorrectly claiming he won the election. People shouldn’t be able to spread misinformation intentionally. But people should be able to say if they have genuine concerns. Just because we have democracy now doesn’t mean it will last forever. We have democracy because people won’t accept corruption. There might not be voter fraud on a large scale, but there are issues with gerrymandering (where the boundaries of seats are designed in a certain way to give an advantage to a certain party or candidate. Voter suppression is also a major problem. As well, the distinction between misinformation and alternative opinions can be tricky. Trump genuinely believes the election was stolen from him. He’s wrong, but at the same time, should we stop a person saying what they believe? Also, Trump’s bitterness and paranoia might be his undoing. Trump has made it clear he plans to run in 2024. His bad reaction to losing isn’t endearing to voters.

There’s another argument that Trump should be banned for encouraging the uprising. But many political movements could be regarded as seditious. Take the case of the Catalan independence movement in Spain. The region held a referendum, which wasn’t given legal authorization from the federal government. This referendum came in favour of independence. They then attempted to declare themselves independent from Spain. However, the leaders were arrested for sedition and fled the country. And Catalonia is still not independent from Spain. In the UK, there is the possibility that similar laws could be used to ban Scottish or Welsh nationalists for instance.

There are also implications for other countries. Twitter and other social media companies are global. What is to stop them applying the same standards to countries who don’t have free and fair elections? Where people are sharing genuine concerns? For instance, much of the Arab Spring- was organized on Twitter. Most westerners perceived this uprising to be a good thing. These activists were getting rid of long-maligned dictators in the hope of bringing democracy to their countries. However, many dictatorships have corrupt elections so that they are, on the face of it, democratically elected. If another revolution were to arise, what is to stop them from saying that Twitter is giving a platform to sedition and implementing British-style laws to make them ban revolutionaries?

As a private company, Twitter can do what it pleases. Having said that, they enjoy considerable financial support from the US government. There’s an argument that they should be bound by first amendment because of this financial support. It’s difficult to determine either way if that should apply. But it was wrong to take the editorial decision to ban Trump. Because one day, they could take the editorial decision to ban somebody you support.

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