Twitter’s Dangerous Ban on Trump
"The Art of Twitter" by mkhmarketing is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Donald Trump’s Twitter account was permanently suspended by Twitter on January 8, 2021, following the infamous, violent capital riot on January 6. Twitter justified their decision “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” This permanent suspension is not only unjustified, but dangerous. Twitter’s ban on Trump’s account attacks the freedom of speech and citizens who use Twitter as their news source.
Twitter permanently banned Trump because of the following two tweets:
“The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”
“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”
Twitter argues that these two tweets must be understood in the context “of broader events in the country and the ways in which the President’s statements can be mobilized by different audiences, including to incite violence, as well as in the context of the pattern of behavior from this account in recent weeks.” The broader context was the then-recent capital riots. Over three hundred protesters stormed, vandalized, and looted the Capital, and were subsequently prosecuted. Some even assaulted the Capitol Police. Four protesters and one police officer died from the rampage.
Twitter picks out specific words from the tweets and attacks not the meaning of the words, but the interpretation of the words themselves. For instance, Twitter believes the use of the words “American Patriots” can be interpreted as “as support for those committing violent acts at the US Capitol”; “GIANT VOICE” can be interpreted as “President Trump does not plan to facilitate an “orderly transition” and instead that he plans to continue to support, empower, and shield those who believe he won the election.”
These interpretations are unjustifiable for a few reasons. First, on January 8, Trump was still the President of the United States, a politician that represented millions who voted for him. He has the right to issue political statements. The nature of political statements is that they can evoke controversy and perhaps instigate people’s emotions. However, it is unclear what specific languages in these tweets incite violence, or if have violence-tendency ingrained in them. The causal relationship between Trump’s tweets and the violence is conjured from arbitrary interpretation, rather than valid logical chains.
Second, Twitter needs to establish that these interpretations are the only valid interpretations of those words. After all, interpretation is inherently subjective, fluid, and not deterministic. There can be different interpretations that Trump’s tweets do not directly incite violence. Permanently banning Trump because of one loosely established interpretation of inciting violence is unjustified. If this false line of reasoning is justified, then Twitter should ban many other accounts of politicians because they can all be interpreted as inciting violence. For example, on the day of riot at the Capitol, Senator Josh Hawley tweeted that “today I have the opportunity and the obligation to speak for my constituents and to object during the electoral college certification.” What motivated the mob to storm the capital was to protest the outcome of the 2020 presidential election based on alleged election fraud. If this tweet is understood in this broader context of motivation of the mob, and Hawley’s “fist raised in solidarity” with them, then Hawley’s twitter account should also be permanently suspended because it incites violence. But to this day, it is not banned. This discrepancy shows that Twitter’s permanent ban on Trump is unjustified.
Even if Twitter is allowed to ban unpopular opinions from leading politicians, the repercussion is that social progress can be impeded: unpopular opinions can challenge the dominant social norms and potentially help promote social progress. Trump’s tweets are unpopular opinions. They deserve criticism and scrutiny, rather than being silenced, like all other opinions.
This excessive suspension prevents all future communications from Trump via Twitter. Even if Twitter validly claims that they ban Trump due to risk for inciting violence, they cannot possibly defend their rationale that all Trump’s future tweets can and will incite violence.
A counterpoint may be that Twitter does not need to prove that all tweets will incite violence. They can, and should, silence Trump because his recent tweets threaten public safety. But this kind of rebuttal first has to accept the premise that Trump’s tweets threaten public safety, which is precisely what I argue against above. Second, since the ban is permanent, one has to consider the long-term danger versus benefits.
Twitter’s ban on Trump is dangerous in the long term. The danger lies in the fact that Twitter functions as a public forum on which Trump can deliver his messages directly without filtering. Even though only 22 percent of adult Americans use Twitter, its significance extends beyond its own users. Trump, or any politician for that matter, can use Twitter to deliver their messages without selection, distortion, or interpretation by other news outlets. Trump’s opinions, and himself as a person, are often conflated and demonized by the media. It is hard to disentangle constructive criticism from personal attacks when it comes to Trump. One can readily accept this fact by glancing over the New York Times op-ed titles or, if still unconvinced, reading a few paragraphs of them after Trump declared his presidential campaign. This is not to say that all of Trump’s comments are truthful, reasonable, or even decent. But he is entitled to share them without being re-manufactured or represented by the media outlets. In this regard, Twitter becomes a particularly significant platform for Trump to accurately and directly get his message across.
More importantly, the voters are entitled to access and assess what politicians like Trump actually say, rather than the media representation of it. No matter how accurately the media represents or reports politicians, they are only interpretations after all. Voters should decide for themselves the merits or weaknesses of a politician's opinions. The bedrock of democracy is informed citizens making sound decisions, which do not come without exposures to all opinions. Twitter allows citizens to expose themselves to different voices, and now it dangerously stifles it.
After this precedent, Twitter, as a private company, essentially has the power to influence what millions of Americans consume to make their political opinions. There is already considerable literature on how Twitter influences election outcomes, particularly for Trump's presidency. Since the decision made by Twitter to ban Trump is deliberated by a handful of executives from Twitter, those executives potentially meddle with voters’ political preferences. CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey characterized such a ban as “a failure of ours ultimately to promote healthy conversation.” Indeed, Twitter’s permanent ban on Trump is a sobering reminder that citizens’ right to decide what kind of information they receive is eroded by private companies.