I was the speaker at a virtual meeting on the 6th of Jan 2020 when I noticed the attendees’ attention wandering quickly. I could see their faces light up with a white flash as they opened their browsers and tuned into their preferred news websites. Concerned by the looks on their faces, I stopped talking and opened The New York Times. Like most people, I was shocked by what happened at the Capitol building that day.
The President of The United States of America had instigated a violent siege to the Capitol building that killed 5, including a police officer. The assaulters had been encouraged by the POTUS himself on his (now defunct) Twitter account. Both Twitter and Facebook decided to ban Donald Trump from their sites. We learned soon after that both Apple and Google had decided to ban Parler (an aspiring social media site that wanted to cash in on the ban) from their app stores since banned government officials turned to it to spread lies.
Most people have praised the tech giants’ moves. In contrast, others have cautioned against what we’ve really seen: corporations exhibiting more veto power than ever seen before. They left the most powerful man on earth without his main source of influence in a couple of hours.
The debate about Freedom of Speech is not new at all. Usually, the angle has been that Freedom of Speech has too much potential to offend and harm people, so we should limit it. While there’s truth in that, I think the most important point has nothing to do with us needing protection. Of course, taking away a common space where we can all converse doesn’t fix the problem at all.
Radicals will still be there. But now they will collude in secret. We won’t be able to see what they think, why they think it, or what they’ll do in consequence.
Imagine we didn’t ban ISIS accounts. You’d be likely to notice that your neighbor’s son, for example, has liked a post on Facebook that might not directly be tied to ISIS but sympathizes with some of their radical discourse. It’s not common nowadays because the channels for ISIS to captivate and radicalize young minds are underground and not mainstream. The fact is thousands of young men and women born in the EU have joined the ranks of the terrorist organization. This is what might happen to alt-right groups from now on: they’ll consume “bottled” mediums where only adepts to the same ideologies will post.
I believe that instead of removing these radicals, we’re effectively radicalizing them more by forcing them onto untapped, uncontrolled, echo-chamber alternative channels that will increase their anger and sense of repression.
I’m glad the POTUS can’t coordinate a new assault on the Capitol building using Twitter or Facebook. Still, I worry we’ve created the necessity for new underground channels that will be far more effective and harder to control. Isolation, after all, is a key part of radicalization.
Further reading:
How Does Democracy Survive Demagoguery?
Extremism and radicalisation leading to violence
