Censoring or Silencing: In an overdue effort to limit violence and the spread of misinformation, social media companies banned the President

This is the opinion of a staffer and not the Harbinger as a whole

“They just happened to find 50,000 ballots late last night. The USA is embarrassed by fools. Our Election Process is worse than that of third world countries!” 

Out of the 22 tweets from the President on Jan. 6, yet another false claim of election fraud was one of them.

Among the slew of social media platforms that have banned President Trump in the past week, including Tiktok, Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitch, Instagram, Snapchat and Apple, Twitter has been the most prominent. 

Twitter, Mr. Trump’s social media platform of choice, made the decision to permanently suspend his account, citing “the risk of further incitement of violence” after Pro-Trump rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol. While this was the right move, the damage has already been done. 

Since the decision to ban Trump, many Republicans have come out against the decision, saying it’s an attack on the first amendment and that it censors conservatives. Though Republicans seem to have a point here, it’s a mere distraction from the fact that Republicans, like the President, have been spreading lies and inciting violence.

Since elementary school, we’ve been taught the five freedoms of the First Amendment: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom to assemble and the freedom to petition the government. Conservatives argue that the current violation lies with the right to free speech.

It’s important to remember that companies like Twitter and Facebook are private companies. In fact, you could argue the First Amendment protects these companies from the government, not the other way around. 

There is a distinction that must be made about what is protected by the First Amendment, and what is not. In this case Twitter, the private company, has the ability to remove people who are violating their personal community guidelines, including the President.

I can walk up to a police officer and yell the F-word. Though vulgar, that is protected. On the other hand, I can’t go into a packed movie theatre and yell “Fire!” when there isn’t one. That can cause a rush of people, which could lead to injuries. Speech that can lead to violence, injury or death of other people is not protected by the First Amendment.

The language used that incited an insurrection on the United States Capitol, leading to the death of five people, does fall into the unprotected section of the first amendment. 

In the speech the President gave just before the insurrection, he riled up his supporters with fallacies about the election and the Biden family. Just before he concluded his speech, he implied for his supporters to march to the capitol.

“So we’re going to, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we’re going to the Capitol,” President Trump said in the speech. “ The Democrats are hopeless. They’re never voting for anything, not even one vote. But we’re going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones, because the strong ones don’t need any of our help, we’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.”

Though he did not explicitly ask his supporters to storm the capitol, he said exactly what the crowd of die-hard Trump supporters — convinced that the left is trying to steal the election — wanted to hear.

President Trump has always used Twitter with a fast-and-loose attitude. Like when he retweeted a video of a supporter yelling “White Power!” This was made especially clear when he decided against using the official @POTUS account in order to continue using his personal account, @realdonaldtrump.

By using his own account, he was able to use Twitter how he wanted — unfiltered and with no regards to the norms of the presidency. 

Instead of following in the steps of his predecessors who used press briefings and/or releases  to communicate to the public — and even their own staff — he chose to do so in an instant, unrestricted way. 

Many of Trump’s supporters praise him for being a man who isn’t afraid to speak his mind. Though that is a strong characteristic for anyone else, not so much for the Commander in Chief. The office of the President is supposed to be formal and respectful. 

These large social media companies aren’t indiscriminately banning, suspending or removing accounts just because they’re Republican or Conservative — it’s because they’re breaking the rules of the terms and services agreement. The same terms and services agreement that everyone agrees to when they sign up, but few actually read.

There is a difference between censoring a group of people simply because of their politics and censoring a group of people because they’re inciting violence or spreading misinformation.