Less than a week after Donald Trump encouraged a mob of supporters to storm the US Capitol, some Coalition politicians here in Australia are concerned that Twitter’s decision to ban him is an example of big tech overreach.
Social media platforms started suspending the president following last Wednesday’s chaos, with Twitter on Friday announcing it was permanently suspending Trump “due to the risk of further incitement of violence”.
But among Scott Morrison’s Trump-curious party room, there appears to have been far more hand-wringing over what Twitter did than what the president’s supporters did.
A broad church?
Hours after Twitter removed Trump, Liberal backbencher Dave Sharma wrote in a tweet that he was “deeply uncomfortable” with big tech companies “making decisions about whose speech, and which remarks, are censored and suppressed”.
“Such decisions should be taken by a publicly accountable body, on basis of transparent reasoning & principles,” Sharma wrote.
Sharma, the member for Malcolm Turnbull’s old seat of Wentworth, bills himself as a relatively progressive “modern Liberal”. But his concerns about social media companies brought him together with the party’s hard-right fringe.
Over the weekend, Coalition MP George Christensen called for Communications Minister Paul Fletcher to introduce laws stopping social media platforms “censoring lawful speech” following Trump’s ban. He has a website and is running a “campaign” to influence his own party.
An outspoken supporter of Trump who has consistently promoted disinformation about the US election, Christensen recently shared articles falsely attributing Wednesday’s riots to left-wing agitators.
But sympathy for Trump and anger at tech companies wasn’t the only response from Coalition MPs.
Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce told Crikey while Twitter was right in banning President Trump, nobody should mistake the platform for a “benevolent force”.
“[I think] it’s the right call, it shouldn’t just stop with Trump,” Joyce said.
“The result of Trump’s statements was an incident where five people were killed. You can’t say that’s OK. That’s garbage.”
The former deputy prime minister did not buy in to calls from his colleagues to compel tech platforms to stop removing material.
“I think they’ve confounded their philosophical beliefs,” Joyce said.
Queensland LNP Senator Gerard Rennick told Crikey while he thought tech platforms should be able to remove content in some instances, Trump’s actions did not warrant a suspension.
“Given that he came back on and there was a pretty conciliatory couple of tweets, I didn’t think that in itself warranted it. It was definitely unfair what they did with Trump,” Rennick said.
But Rennick also said Twitter had failed by not taking down Chinese official Zhao Lijian’s tweet attacking Australian soldiers in Afghanistan.
“We should’ve laid the boot into Twitter over that.”
Left hits back
The Coalition’s Trump problem could shape up to be a rare political gift for Labor. They’ve gone hard on Christensen and Craig Kelly’s support for conspiracy theories, which Prime Minister Scott Morrison has refused to take action on.
Speaking on 2SM radio this morning, Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese hit out at the Coalition’s conspiracy corner: “I can’t understand how someone like Craig Kelly can be allowed to promote these theories, along with George Christensen and others, and remain a part of mainstream society.”
Albanese agreed that the decision by tech platforms to ban Trump was the correct one. Meanwhile, Labor’s acting communications spokesperson Tim Watts said social media companies had “self-regulatory policies that align pretty well with norms in democratic societies”.
“Social media platforms have a responsibility to stop people from using their platforms to incite violence, engage in hate speech or spread dangerous medical misinformation during a pandemic,” Watts said.
Regulator wades in
Regardless of whether it was the right call, the decision to essentially deplatform the president speaks to the incredible power social media companies have in shaping the discourse. And the calls for greater scrutiny of that power haven’t just come from the embittered George Christensens of the world.
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) chairman Rod Sims told the Nine papers he favoured rules which could bring greater clarity to when social media companies could close accounts.
And while the Trump ban has emboldened progressives in the United States, many on the left have long been concerned about the destructive power of these platforms.
Greens communications spokesperson Sarah Hanson-Young told Crikey while the decision to ban Trump was the right one, there still needed to be a conversation about regulating tech platforms.
“What the events of the past week have shown is proper regulation of social media is needed so these decisions are made transparently and with regulated appeals processes,” Hanson-Young said.
“The time for tech giants to operate unregulated needs to end.”
I am baffled about the concerns about Twitter and other media deleting Trump’s accounts. Twitter and the other media are under no obligation to allow any person to use their service. It’s their company and they can make the rules and decisions about who may use their service as they see fit.
Yes, I see it as similar to a restaurant or pub, who do have the right to refuse service, to obnoxious drunks who constantly abuse other customers.
Under recent legislation in the US, designed to ward off the threat of gay wedding cakes, and private company can refuse to provide service to anyone they want.
“…any…”
I’m not baffled. That’s what the masses have come to think, without even thinking about it; that those ‘social media’ are free and unrestricted to anyone at all who wants to post anything at all. That would make them very different from Murdoch’s media, for example, who provide access only to the loony right.
Add the SMH to that crew too, now.
In the mid 2000s the 612 ABC talkback host, Spencer Howson announced that I was banned from his talkback show because I was “too consistently critical of the Howard government.”. The Queensland Manager of the ABC at the time was a former Media adviser to a Liberal Minister.
Now the Coalition want to protect freedom of speech- give me a break!
Barry Welch
The ABC have some real good guard dog filters to get past ..the waiting time is a good one…..It’s best to pretend you’re just an ordinary classless middle class Australian who likes to swat blowflies in summer..
Unlike many other users, the president of the United states still has a fairly well guaranteed platform of conventional media. All he has too do is go outside and talk and it will be all over the news.
Regarding speech on commercial platforms though, there is an XKCD that nails it: https://xkcd.com/1357/
In the mean time, apparently his followers have moved to telegraph, along with Isis et al.
…and these petty complainants want to censor the right of private companies to limit the amount of mis- and dis-information that gets posted on their sites.
No such criticism of the activities of the News Limited in editing out comments which they do not like nor of the Sky TV mob denying the rights of scientists to get their research material to their public.
Hypocrisy 101.
Yep; you’ve nailed the hypocrisy which is rampant in the LNP. What chance your, or my, or anyone who’s not a Morrison toady’s letters to The Australian will get ‘freedom of speech’ publication, eh?
Like a NewsCorp associate, the LNP Senator stating “We should’ve laid the boot into Twitter over that.”
Says it all about tactics used by white nativist libertarian ideologues in controlling other communication channels, that impinge on ‘their’ messaging and PR……
Nice cartoon.
Censorship is a government action whereby they can jail or otherwise punish you for what you say.
However, no private company has to provide you with a platform in which to say it. That’s not censorship, that’s withdrawing permission to say things ON THEIR PLATFORM.
I’m a bit old school myself..I take freedom of speech as the right for a piss ant peasant to call out the King for being a prick and not being subjected to arbitrary hung drawn and quartered in the public square for the family outing bemusement of my fellow peasants. A lot of the other rest of the serious stuff, comes up short as talk is cheap…
I’m a bit old school myself…I take a good deal of freedom of speech as the right for a p*ss ant peasant to call out a King for being a despotic pr*ck and not being subjected to summary arrest & arbitrarily hung drawn n quartered in the public square for the family outing entertainment of my fellow peasants..A lot of the other rest of the stuff, can come up short as talk is cheap……** are for the censored i i’s…
Ha ha – it’s so funny, all the right wing ideologues, who for the past 40 years have said government should get out of the way and let “the market” sort things out, now want to interfere in the market.
When unions and labour organisations say big business has too much power and should be regulated, the right won’t have a bar of it.
Twitter et al make their own TOS, and can boot off anyone they like. They are not the ABC which the right seems to think they can beat into submission.
Suck it up Sharma and the rest.
A disturbing insight into how radical right libertarian ideologues view the world; freedom for the top 1-10% and serfdom for the remainder.
The NuRite are the Old Wrongs in mufti.
‘Twas ever thus.