Someone really needs to give the New Yorker some serious credit for publishing what can genuinely be described as a thoughtful, well written, and objective article on social media and big tech. Bravo. I'm honestly convinced that at some point this kind of big tech social media witch burning will eventually lead to private lawsuits aimed at non-combatants like Signal and Wickr. Please leave a comment if you disagree -…
One can simultaneously roll their eyes about slippery slopes, argue that this is simply banning obvious illegal activities, etc.--and be at least a little bit discomfited that a bunch of private companies can basically disappear someone from public discourse if they want to. Mind you. Historically most people didn't have access to a platform anyway. And the record from at least some players like AWS is that their ban…
And so on.
This is not about disappearing people. Or businesses. This is about disappearing politicians.
The real game here is that the mainstream media - especially on the far right - have suddenly discovered they're no longer owners of the narrative space, and their game tokens can be removed without notice.
Of course they're unhappy about this.
So if we're going to talk about concentrated media influence, we should be questioning the international reach and centralised narrative control of the Fox network (and others) at least as much Twitter or Amazon's ability to ban someone who was literally planning an insurrection in the US.
There is no free speech issue here, because the kind of "free" political speech we're talking about is very, very expensive, and only available to a tiny selection of headline operators.
Everything else in the social media space is noise farmed for engagement, and is unlikely to unduly trouble anyone who matters.