Trump blocked from Twitter forever: right or wrong?

The case is that of Donald Trump, but the question goes far beyond Twitter’s choice to forever block the personal account of the current American president, leaving only the official one. If in fact the condemnation of the assault on the US Capitol was unanimous in the world, the position on the social case is not equally compact. Yes, in Trump’s tweets there were explicit invitations not to accept the election result and to oppose the confirmation of Biden’s election, but who should decide the exclusion from a platform: the private individuals who manage it or a third authority?

It is the technology experts, sociologists, jurists and philosophers who discuss it, but the political world also takes a stand.

«The chancellor Angela Merkel finds it problematic that Donald Trump’s Twitter account has been completely blocked, ”said his spokesman Steffen Seibert. “What shocks me is that Twitter decides to close,” said the French Minister of Economy, Bruno Le Maire, “The regulation of the giants of the web cannot take place through the same digital oligarchy.”

It is the problem already presented by Massimo Cacciari, philosopher and teacher, as universal. “It is unheard of for private entrepreneurs to be able to control and decide who can speak to people and who cannot. There had to be an obviously third authority, of a political nature that decides whether any message circulating on the net is obscene, as Trump’s certainly are. The former mayor of Venice, speaking to the AdnKronos agency, added: «It is one of the most unheard of symptoms of the collapse of our democracies. There is no doubt. Because as Trump is today, tomorrow it could be anyone else, and Zuckerberg decides it ».

According to Cacciari, a form of political authority that decides would be needed. It could be in the form of an authority for social media as it exists for competition and privacy, «Who decides“ these messages on the net are racist, they are sexist, they incite violence ”and so on».

Unlike it seems to Thomas Ederoclite, expert in policies for the digitization of the Public Administration, interviewed by The Reformist. “Facebook and Twitter have legitimately limited Trump’s presence from social media. Social networks are private companies that have their own policies and Trump has violated them, more than once to have already received various measures for incitement to hatred in the past, also according to what has been recognized by the major world leaders “.

You may also like