The mob which managed to storm the Capitol violently on Wednesday for preventing a peaceful transfer of power took shape mostly on two social sites, Twitter and Facebook. During Trump’s term, Twitter, Facebook, and their peers spent lurching and avoiding crises, scrambling for raising their misinformation policies, violence incitement policies, and hate speech policies for responding to the ever-growing challenges from organizations and prominent figures supporting President Trump.
On Wednesday, there was another test of a whole different dimension, one rally planned and promoted by Trump on these platforms for protesting the presidential election theft and disrupting the certification of President-elect Biden’s win. However, when that incident turned violent like the online extremism experts forecasted and arrived at the Capitol, these platforms seemed unready.
Critics And Experts Believe The Policies of Twitter And Facebook Have Become Outdated
Although they took their strongest and most aggressive enforcement actions including temporarily locking out Trump’s Facebook and Twitter accounts, critics are saying that the two platforms’ half-measures are responsible for precipitating this crisis of U.S. democracy. Roger McNamee, tech investor plus early advisor of Mark Zuckerberg stated that blame for this Capitol violence should fall on the right-wing media, Trump’s enablers, and Trump himself. He also said that many internet platforms like Twitter, YouTube, Google, Instagram, and Facebook should take the blame as well.McNamee argued that all these internet platforms are responsible for amplifying conspiracy theories, disinformation, and hate speech and selectively enforcing the terms and conditions of service.
Alex Stamos, former Facebook CSO, and professor at Stamford said that the policies of these platforms have become outdated. Stamos tweeted that although there have been good arguments regarding the silencing of elected officials by private companies, those arguments have been based on protecting constitutional governance. After some hours later, the two social media giants decided to cut Trump off. Following his encouragement of the crowd for protesting at D.C., the President posted one video where he reiterated his false election fraud claims and urged his followers to remain peaceful.
