SINGAPORE
A political leader uses social media to spread misinformation and hate. Followers are spurred to violence. People are killed.
It is a toxic brew that has surfaced repeatedly across the world in Myanmar, India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Brazil and now the United States.
Facebook, Twitter and YouTube banned President Trump from their platforms for inciting last week’s deadly mob attack on the Capitol. But in other countries, social media giants have been far slower to shut down misinformation and hate speech, often failing to remove inflammatory posts and accounts even after they’ve contributed to lynchings, pogroms, extrajudicial killings or ethnic cleansing.
The Los Angeles Times on President Donald Trump, social media and the open internet:
Thanks to the 1st Amendment, government in the United States has little power to stop people from speaking their minds. But the Bill of Rights doesn’t constrain Facebook, Twitter and other Big Tech companies, which decided in the wake of last week’s attack on the U.S. Capitol that the world has heard enough from President Trump.
On one level, it’s understandable that private companies would not want their services and platforms used to foment violence and undermine democracy. On another, their actions show just how much power over global speech we’ve ceded to a handful of companies whose primary incentive is profit, not free expression.
Editorial Roundup: US
Last Updated Jan 13, 2021 at 9:14 am EDT
Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:
Jan. 12
The Miami Herald on “blue lives matter” and the deaths of two police officers after the U.S. Capitol riot:
Do blue lives only matter when Black lives are perceived as the threat to them?
Up until the weekend, when videos began to receive wide circulation, we had heard more about that idiot Adam Johnson a Floridian of course accused of stealing Nancy Pelosi’s lectern than we did about the law enforcement officers whom a frenzied mob of white extremists were allowed to bash, beat, slur and kill during their rampage through the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. And, not so shockingly, some white police officers from across the country proudly stepped over that thin blue line and joined the lawless mobs.
Social media companies should prevent their services from being used to foment insurrection. But some aspects of Big Tech's recent moves are troubling.