ii

 

After the siege of the Capitol, and the subsequent statements by the President of the United States, Twitter & Facebook moved expeditiously to ban the President Trump from their platforms.  Amazon pulled Parlor (a conservative social media platform) from its server, and Apple removed it from its app store.  Their justification was that many conspiracy theories, and the attack itself (not to mention potential future attacks), were planned and organized on these platforms. 

In addition, known members of Q’anon (one of the groups that organized the attack) were also purged from social media platforms.  It is important to note, that these are private companies doing this.  This is not the state, so these businesses have every right to do this (just as a restaurant has every right to remove someone from their property who starts saying inflammatory things about it’s staff or other patrons). 

BUT, free speech & free assembly (or in this case, virtual assembly), is one of the founding principles of this country and a sacred value.  And the tension between putting a greater emphasis on security versus freedom has long been debated and will continue to be in the future, so this discussion is nothing new.  So, I want you to pretend that you were the CEO of Twitter and/or Facebook on January 7th.  Would you have taken the same steps they did?  Would you have banned the President of the United States and Q’anon supporters from your services in fear of a future attack?  Or is does our value of free speech and assembly take higher precedent?