SPECIAL REPORT: How Loopholes for Trumps Social Media Enabled The Global Rise of Far-Right Extremism

[Celerity]

https://globalextremism.org/reports/democracies-under-threat/





Executive Summary

The decision by multiple social media platforms to suspend or remove ex-American President Donald Trump after he incited a violent mob to invade the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, was too little, too late. Even so, the deplatforming was important and it should become the standard for other political leaders and political parties around the world that have engaged in hate speech, disinformation, conspiracy-mongering and generally spreading extremist material that results in real world damage to democracies.

For years, Trump violated the community standards of several platforms with relative impunity. Tech leaders had made the affirmative decision to allow exceptions for the politically powerful, usually with the excuse of “newsworthiness” or under the guise of “political commentary” that the public supposedly needed to see. For example, last year Facebook decided to allow a Trump tweet targeting social justice protesters that read “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” The tweet was cross-posted to Facebook and remained on the platform (Twitter took it down). Within days, the post had been shared over 71,000 times and reacted to over 253,000 times. The message was also overlaid onto a photo shared on Trump’s Instagram account, which quickly received over half a million likes.

Why did Trump’s clearly violative post stay up? Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the decision, though it was one criticized by many of his employees. “I disagree strongly with how the President spoke about this, but I believe people should be able to see this for themselves, because ultimately accountability for those in positions of power can only happen when their speech is scrutinized out in the open,” was Zuckerberg’s explanation.

Facebook in particular gives considerable latitude to public figures, codifying in its policies an exception that allows speech by political figures that violate its rules to stay up and prevents political ads from being fact-checked. The policy was created during the 2016 campaign specifically to allow hate and violative material posted by Trump to stay up. In the last year, Twitter, which has long allowed unfettered discourse, rethought its position stating that Trump will not be allowed back on the platform and began to sanction other political figures and political parties in the same way it deals with ordinary citizens. However, this change has not been wholesale and much violative content remains.

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The Full Report:

https://globalextremism.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/GPAHE_Democracy-under-threat.pdf

[yankee87]

1. Laws don't apply to Reich wing

There will always be two sets of standards in the country, one for the rich and powerful, the other for normal folks. Most of the rich in this and every country only care about maintaining their wealth and privilege. If the country has to burn, oh well, they got theirs.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

2. Disinformation should be dealt with swiftly and the spreaders banned.