Twitter's Trump ban raises social media regulation questions, says Hancock
Social media firms are 'taking editorial decisions,' according to the health secretary
Social media companies ' decision to ban Donald Trump from their platforms raises a "very big question" regarding regulation, UK Health Secretary (and formerly Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport) Matt Hancock.
Twitter, Facebook and Instagram announced last week that they were blocking Trump ' s accounts from their respective platforms, following the Capitol Hill violence on Wednesday. YouTube announced a similar ban on the 13th January.
Speaking to Sky News on Sunday, Hancock said the move "raises a very important question" about social media companies "taking editorial decisions".
"And that is a very big question, because then it raises questions about their editorial judgments and the way that they ' re regulated," he stated.
"They're choosing who should and shouldn't have a voice on their platform," Hancock noted - which suggests that social media firms are not just platforms.
"It is obviously one for the Culture Secretary - but as a former Culture Secretary I can tell you that I think it does lead to very interesting questions about the role of social media and the role of the social media companies...in the editorial decisions that they take."
Mr Hancock, however, declined to state whether he supported or regretted the decision.
On Friday, Twitter announced that President Trump ' s personal account on its platform was being permanently suspended "due to the risk of further incitement of violence".
The firm added that after assessing the language of two of Trump's tweets, it determined they were in violation of Twitter ' s "Glorification of Violence Policy" and that "the user @realDonaldTrump should be immediately permanently suspended from the service."
Twitter ' s Glorification of Violence policy "aims to prevent the glorification of violence that could inspire others to replicate violent acts and determined that they were highly likely to encourage and inspire people to replicate the criminal acts that took place at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021," it stated.
What followed was a Benny Hill-esque farce, where the President of the United States tried to evade the ban by taking over his staffers' accounts, using them to rant about liberal conspiracy - and forcing Twitter to close them down, too. The company also deleted tweets sent from the @POTUS account, in which Trump called his followers "great patriots" and made liberal use of the caps lock key.
Facebook and Snapchat announced similar bans last week, over the Capitol building violence.
In an online post on Thursday, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Trump's accounts on Facebook and Instagram were being banned "indefinitely" because "the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great".
Zuckerberg stated that the ban would remain "for at least the next two weeks, until the peaceful transition of power is complete."
Parler loses its platform
On Sunday, Amazon removed right-wing microblogging service Parler from AWS, over its failure to act quickly enough against violent content on the platform.
'We've seen a steady increase in this violent content on your website, all of which violates our terms of service,' Amazon told Parler in a letter.
The suspension means that Parler will remain offline unless it is able to find another hosting service.
The move came after a group of Amazon employees called on the firm to take tough action against Parler, noting "we cannot be complicit in more bloodshed and violent attacks on our democracy." Trump supporters were already using Parler to organise attacks like the one on Capitol Hill.
The decision also followed similar steps from Apple and Google, who last week suspended Parler from their respective app stores over its sloppy approach to content moderation, which constituted a violation of their terms of service.
Parler is seen as a haven for people censored by other social media platforms. Thanks to its hands-off approach to policing user content, the platform has become an ideal spot for Trump supporters to post messages celebrating violence, encouraging "patriots" to march on Washington, DC, with weapons on 19th January.
In a post on Saturday, Parler CEO John Matze said the social network might remain "unavailable on the internet for up to a week as we rebuild from scratch."
"This was a coordinated attack by the tech giants to kill competition in the market place. We were too successful too fast," he added.