Twitter and Facebook Just Proved That Deplatforming Works

POSTED BY: reaverfan
UPDATED: Thursday, May 29, 2025 22:32
VIEWED: 2466
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REAVERFAN

Friday, January 22, 2021 11:49 PM

The peaceful protests on Inauguration Day show what happens when social media companies refuse to let white supremacists use them to organize and incite violence.
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/twitter-facebook-free-speec
h/

What changed between January 6, when these people gathered in significant numbers to invade the Capitol, and January 20, when these people couldn’t maintain the intensity of John Cusak in Say Anything?

There are a lot of factors, but I would argue that the biggest one is that the social media companies took away their toys. One protester at the Texas state capitol in Austin even said so. Kaley Johnson, a reporter at the Fort-Worth Star-Telegram, cited a man who said he “expected more people to be here, but was banned from Facebook so didn’t know if anything was planned.”

This is a truth that the social media companies have been denying all along in their attempts to justify making money off the forces that threaten democracy. Twitter and especially Facebook act like they are neutral platforms that are not responsible for the recruitment and aggregation of violent extremists. But we’ve seen report after report from experts in radicalization who have exposed how social media platforms are tools that are used to coordinate violence.

January 20 is what happens when these platforms take even minimal steps to block violent extremists from their services. After the Capitol siege, Facebook finally decided to ban QAnon accounts. It didn’t even ban that many accounts: Reports suggest it restricted around 2,000 Facebook groups and around 10,000 Instagram accounts, barely a dent in its overall user base. Yet, scarcely two weeks after removing some of the most obvious bad users, the “violent insurrectionists” are already reduced to a couple of randos milling around state capitols with arts-and-crafts projects, wondering where the party went.

Facebook and Twitter also removed the most notorious bad user: Trump. The last 10 days have been blissfully void of his inane complaints about the election and terrifying love notes to white supremacists.

And look what’s happened. The New York Times reports that the Proud Boys, who pledged themselves to “Emperor Trump” not three months ago, are now calling him a “total failure.” Removing Trump from his Twitter account for only two weeks has already helped to cause a rift between the militant forces of white supremacy and the head of the Republican Party.

I will always believe that if Twitter had banned Trump’s account the moment he started lying about the results of the election, five people would not have died in a riot at the Capitol. I will also believe that if Twitter had banned Trump’s account the moment he started lying about the coronavirus, hundreds of thousands of people might have been saved from this disease. And I will always believe that if Twitter had banned Trump’s account the moment he started lying about Barack Obama’s nation of birth, he would never have been president in the first place.

That tells us a lot more about Twitter and the social media universe that distorts reality than it does about Trump. After all, it’s not like the man was “silenced.” It’s not like he, or anybody else who had their accounts blocked in the wake of January 6, were stripped of their First Amendment rights. Indeed, to me, the most beautiful thing about these state capitol protests around the inauguration was not the schadenfreude but how those protests proved that the First Amendment is alive and well, and people who exercise their rights pose no real threat to free elections or democratic self-government.

One guy showed up at the state capitol in Idaho holding up a sign that read, “Legalize Arson.” He was not, to my knowledge, arrested or harmed by the government. In Georgia, two people were spied holding a sign that said, “I Hate My Government.” No constitutional crisis ensued. A guy in North Carolina had a sign calling the new president an “imposter.” Another man, in Washington, brandished a sign calling him a “traitor.” No Tomahawk miss

REAVERFAN

Saturday, January 23, 2021 12:05 AM

WHY WON'T FOX CELEBRATE AMERICA?

6IXSTRINGJACK

Saturday, January 23, 2021 12:19 AM

Quote:
Twitter and Facebook Just Proved That Deplatforming Works

Nobody is going to argue that censorship works short term.

Keep it up and see what happens.

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A government is a body of people usually, notably, governed by Mark Zuckerborg and Slack Dorsey.

WISHIMAY

Saturday, January 23, 2021 4:44 AM

"I will always believe that if Twitter had banned Trump’s account the moment he started lying about the results of the election, five people would not have died in a riot at the Capitol. I will also believe that if Twitter had banned Trump’s account the moment he started lying about the coronavirus, hundreds of thousands of people might have been saved from this disease. And I will always believe that if Twitter had banned Trump’s account the moment he started lying about Barack Obama’s nation of birth, he would never have been president in the first place."

YOU GONNA START SOMETHING 6ix?? Smoke signals from the roof maybe??

It's ALLL Chumps fault and you are to dumb to see it. If he hadn't lied over and over and over again, Rethuglicans would still be crawling on the interwebs.

Chump did the intelligent parts of the world a YUUUGE favor, I guess

1KIKI

Saturday, January 23, 2021 5:35 AM

If the news would just give us information based on IMPORTANCE, COMPLETENESS, AND ACCURACY, I'm sure people would start paying attention, again. As it is, it's nothing more than propaganda. No wonder people turn to alternate 'sources'.

Every bit of news treats us like we're simpletons, unable to understand a complicated and nuanced reality. And that we need to have our thoughts guided with simple stories and real-sounding factoids (without evidence) told to us by sincere-faced news-actors and instant experts and tptb mouthpieces.

THO I GUARANTEE ALL THIS THEATER TO GUIDE US FOR OUR OWN GOOD. I'M SURE OF IT. /sarcasm

And so reading a simple news article or watching a news show is like writing a fucking PhD dissertation, where I have to track down every original research paper or project report or 'source' background just to try to figure out what the fuck is going on with any particular presentation.

What an obvious crock they're shoveling at us, from all directions.

SIGNYM

Saturday, January 23, 2021 6:04 AM

REAVERBOT attributes to censorship what was actually accomplished by military occupation.

But he's in favor of both!

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

THUGR posts about Putin so much, he must be in love.

6IXSTRINGJACK

Saturday, January 23, 2021 7:39 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by WISHIMAY:
YOU GONNA START SOMETHING 6ix??

Not me. I ain't going to throw the first stone. I've got way too much to lose and a relatively easy life I set myself up with.

Haken allows me to use the RWED as my political toilet to purge my thoughts for now, and I'm sure there's 10,000 other low-profile websites that aren't Twitter where I could do that if the signal ever stopped here.

I've got plenty of things to keep me busy.

But the next four years when you're pretending that everybody is loving what's going on because anybody who doesn't agree that things are great now that Biden* is president, just remember that half the country voted against him, and you have no idea what they're thinking anymore because you silenced them.

Sweet dreams, Princess.

--------------------------------------------------

A government is a body of people usually, notably, governed by Mark Zuckerborg and Slack Dorsey.

WISHIMAY

Saturday, January 23, 2021 12:34 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:

If the news would just give us information based on IMPORTANCE, COMPLETENESS, AND ACCURACY, I'm sure people would start paying attention, again. As it is, it's nothing more than propaganda. No wonder people turn to alternate 'sources'.

Propaganda machine whines about propaganda, then tries to justify Qanon

WISHIMAY

Saturday, January 23, 2021 12:40 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
... just remember that half the country voted against him, and you have no idea what they're thinking anymore because you silenced them.

I already know how Gullibullz think. It's not too hard.

Just add 25% paranoia, 25% inability to be logical, 24% willingness to follow whatever crass racist piece of crap presents itself, and 25% whiny toddler behavior.
Oh, and 1% willingness to shoot anything that moves, even children.

That was easy!

G' night!

REAVERFAN

Saturday, January 23, 2021 1:04 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by WISHIMAY:
"I will always believe that if Twitter had banned Trump’s account the moment he started lying about the results of the election, five people would not have died in a riot at the Capitol. I will also believe that if Twitter had banned Trump’s account the moment he started lying about the coronavirus, hundreds of thousands of people might have been saved from this disease. And I will always believe that if Twitter had banned Trump’s account the moment he started lying about Barack Obama’s nation of birth, he would never have been president in the first place."

YOU GONNA START SOMETHING 6ix?? Smoke signals from the roof maybe??

It's ALLL Chumps fault and you are to dumb to see it. If he hadn't lied over and over and over again, Rethuglicans would still be crawling on the interwebs.

Chump did the intelligent parts of the world a YUUUGE favor, I guess

This. ^

You can't reason with the unreasonable.

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