To Ban or not to Ban

Through all the chaos that has occurred in the year 2020 and even in the beginning of 2021, one of the more interesting developments was the actions of various social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter from censoring certain people, most importantly former President Donald Trump. The most noteworthy event occurred on January 8th when Twitter took a strong stance by permanently suspending Trump’s account “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” This, of course, came two days after the Trump supporters recklessly stormed the United States Capitol costing the lives of many people and a large disruption to Washington D.C. There were many strong opinions on both the left and the right about the decision to suspend Trumps account. Some would argue that Trump did deserve to be banned because nobody is above the law and he should be punished for his actions in regards to inciting violence. However, there were also those that argued the general population should hear what the President has to say in case there is important or urgent information. Some could also make the case that this is an infringement of the freedom of speech.

As we can see with this example, Twitter was faced with an extremely important decision that has ethical implications. It is no secret that social media and the Internet have become an extremely effective mode of communication. One of the main points in Castells’ article is the importance of media and technology being the connecting point of information between people. The article states, “There is a growing use of these horizontal networks of communication in the field of mass communication… We are indeed in a new communication realm, and ultimately in a new medium, whose backbone is made of computer networks, whose language is digital, and whose senders are globally distributed and globally interactive.” 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.