Gone Forever

The way Donald Trump capped off his presidency was nothing short of a wild ending. On January 8th, Twitter announced that Trump’s account with over 88 million followers would be permanently banned “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” This, of course, came two days after Trump supporters recklessly stormed the United States Capitol costing many lives and a large disruption to Washington D.C.

The tweets that ultimately lead to Trump’s ban are in the attached screenshot. According to Twitter, these tweets can be directly linked to encouraging violence because “the words ‘American Patriots’…is also being interpreted as support for those committing violent acts” and “the second Tweet may also serve as encouragement to those potentially considering violent acts that the Inauguration would be a ‘safe’ target, as he will not be attending.”

As one can imagine, there were strong opinions on both sides of the political spectrum regarding this ethical dilemma. Some argued that Trump deserved to be banned permanently because nobody is above the law and he should be punished for his actions. However, others thought Trump only deserved a temporary ban or even no ban at all because people of the United States should hear what the President has to say in case there is important or urgent information. Some also made the case that this is an infringement of the freedom of speech.

Clearly, Twitter was faced with an extremely important ethical dilemma that will have long-term implications. An interesting point that Castells mentioned in his article Communication, Power and Counter-power in the Network Society was that the “media act as gatekeepers of the information flows that shape public opinion.” Basically, this means that the media holds a great deal of power since they can control what information is on their platform. This is especially true when you consider the fact that they can ban the President of the United States from communicating with the world on one of the most popular social media platforms available. Furthermore, Castells writes, “We are indeed in a new communication realm…whose senders are globally distributed and globally interactive.” Castells believes in the power of communicating digitally, but of course, there must be a balance between what is right and wrong. Now more than ever, social media is an increasingly important part of society in regards to spreading information quickly between people. Social media companies will continue to make difficult decisions while trying to balance the effectiveness of their platform with ethics.

“Permanent Suspension of @RealDonaldTrump.” Twitter, Twitter, 8 Jan. 2021, blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension.html.