this post was submitted on 10 May 2022
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The consensus is: yes, platforming alt-right authoritarians like Trump leads to more harm, including more people radicalized, and more people silenced by abuse they and their followers dish out on such platforms.
Yes he did, in the article he talks specifically about Trump.
The problem is not that Company X decides to ban a person or platform a person. The problem is that such a decision by Company X has such gigantic consequences. And that comes directly from the fact that Twitter is a centralized walled-garden monopoly.
Think of it this way: if any e-mail provider (even Gmail) "banned Trump", that would be way less of an "issue". Why? Because there are many other mail servers he can go set up an account on. So this particular e-mail provider's decision is no longer "censorship" really, it's "I really don't want to do business with that toxic person".
And that's where we need to get to with social media. Centralization is a danger to democracy.
i could certainly see how it might be worse, because they just statistically reach fewer people. and perhaps also because it helps establish a line for what constitutes being too obnoxious, so other people will tend to moderate themselves a bit too because they know we dislike this offensive attitude.
what worries me is we're only seeing our side of that line, where we think its nice now because the problem has "gone away" - and honestly it has been nicer lately lol.
but has it really gone away? or are we just more comfortable now because its happening behind a fence we can't and don't want to see past?
imo it seems a bit too early to call where all the harm is eventually going to land and take root. i imagine at this stage, although it could very well be true, calling it a consensus is pretty optimistic, unless there's details i've missed?
i read the article, imo its not yet clear whether he singled trump out or journalists steered it that way. if he has general ban policies which trump doesn't (yet) fall under, that is an entirely different conversation than if musk is specifically unbanning trump because he wants more people like trump in the world. if i'm missing something or there's a much more complete source out there let's know.
100% agree with everything you said about centralized walled-garden monopolies. that was part of my point, who made twitter this central power to begin with? it's completely ridiculous.
I think we mostly violently agree here.
One thing I'll add is that banning Trump from Twitter is not a "solution", it's harm reduction. Nobody is saying the problem "went away". And in the end it doesn't matter why Musk would un-ban Trump. The end result is the same, and so he's actions would either be willfully malicious or woefully ignorant.