Commander in Tweet
Social media, Section 230 - what happens when tech scions become the arbiters of free speech?
I wrote this piece about Trump’s Twitter deplatforming in Spring 2021. Given the recent turn of events at Twitter, I thought it might be interesting to look back.
Social media has radically transformed communication between presidential candidates and their public. Former President Donald Trump mobilized social media in his 2016 campaign to share his voice and visions with the American public on his own terms. No one had ever seen anything like this: a presidential candidate thinking and emoting out loud without mediation by handlers on the biggest platform in the world. Social media allowed this so-called political outsider to demand that the world take him more seriously. This social media platform enabled new forms of communication and formation of political communities.
In the past, Trump had courted controversy on Twitter repeatedly: he used the platform to question where President Obama was born and make racist remarks. His social media comments in and around January 6, 2021, following the attacks on the Capital, created a new kind of controversy. Trump did not explicitly encourage his followers to overthrow the government, but he did condone their violence. De-platforming any individual, and especially a sitting American President, raises complex questions about the power of social media and platforms’ ability to limit free speech in the United States and around the globe. This case study will investigate whether Twitter should or should not have banned the former President due to incitement of violence and the potential political repercussions.
How Twitter Was Born
Twitter was born in 2006. It began as the podcasting company Odeo, Inc.. Facing competition from Apple and other heavyweights, Odeo decided to pivot into "a service that uses SMS (short message service) to tell small groups what you are doing." Twitter co-founder and current CEO, Jack Dorsey, intended to "make [Twitter] so simple that you don't even think about what you're doing, you just type something and send it."
In July 2006, Twitter launched to the public. It faced initial skepticism, particularly from users who were concerned about the costs of paying per SMS message and raised questions about the significance of constant status updates. As a way to curtail mounting SMS bills for users, Twitter imposed its 140-character limit. The common SMS carrier limit was 160 characters, and longer messages would be split into multiple texts and delivered sequentially. Despite the initial challenges of Twitter's launch, it gained prominence through the 2007 South by Southwest Conference (SxSW), the MTV Music Awards, and the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). By 2008, Twitter grew quickly to 100 million tweets posted per quarter. By March 2011, 140 million tweets were posted daily. During the interim, Twitter added the ability to reply, like, share articles, as well as hashtags to create conversations and group relevant content.
Dom Sagolla, an early Twitter employee, wrote of the growing phenomenon, “People still didn’t quite ‘get it’ but at least some people had heard about it. The team created permalinks and RSS feeds. @Blaine pushed for IM integration. Each major feature added tremendous gains in users, and in usage per user. Still small by social networking standards, Twitter delivered something immediate and vital that no other service could attain.”
Section 230: The Origin of Social Media Moderation
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) allowed social media platforms to facilitate online conversations. Senator Ron Wyden (OR) co-authored Section 230, which was passed into law in 1996 to protect the internet and encourage innovation. Wyden intended to “relieve the burden [of content moderation] on fledgling tech companies,” enabling them to focus on hiring engineers instead of hiring lawyers. Under Section 230, platforms that host user-provided content have extensive freedom to decide which of that content to allow and which to remove. There are a few categories of content — such as CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) and copyright infringement — where a platform faces legal liability if it does not act. But for the most part, rules like Section 230 give platforms a baseline of immunity against which to act. Websites have immunity when users post something offensive or harmful. The user is liable for the speech, not the internet company that hosted it. Unlike traditional media companies, who can be sued for what they publish, Twitter is not liable for what users tweet. Also, internet companies have freedom to moderate content. If they take down a post that is offensive, they will not be held liable for that either.
However, since Section 230 was written, the reach and influence of internet platforms has increased significantly in scale and with it, the frequency of online political discussions. In 1996, only 20 million American adults had access to the Internet. Today, that number has increased more than tenfold: the United States now has over 313 million active internet users nationwide. The problems that exist on social media are not always a result of the platform policies or structures, but the network effects associated with the viral spread of information within an expanded user base.
Consequently, legislators have called for Section 230 reforms. Republicans claim that Section 230 facilitates the suppression and censorship of conservative voices on the Internet. Big tech firms can obstruct the flow of information to benefit one political ideology. Democrats argue that internet companies are not active enough in moderating violent and false information about elections and profit from the virality of disinformation. Others, including former SEC commissioner Susan Ness, worry that limiting the liability protection in Section 230 can limit free expression. They fear that internet companies have too much leeway for moderating content and call for increased transparency.
Why Moderation Matters: The Rise of Online Political Discourse
Over time, social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit have become vastly popular for public discourse of societal, economic, and political issues. The digital sphere has become integral to political participation: citizens share their views, seek out information, and form the basis for their choices, including how they will vote, online. Although social media has not entirely replaced traditional channels for political campaigning (TV debates, advertising, rallies, door knocking, press conferences), it has impacted all of them and changed the way users consume traditional media. For politicians to succeed in social media, they must have “performative flexibility” to connect with voters - comfortably moving between formal and informal, professional and personalized interactions.
Since the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election, social media has become a more prominent communication channel for US campaigns, becoming increasingly various and omnipresent. In 2008, both the Democratic and Republican campaigns used four platforms: Facebook, Youtube, Myspace, Flickr. In 2012, the Democratic Obama campaign used nine social media platforms, and the Republican Romney campaign used five. In 2016, both Trump and Clinton used Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and Instagram; their use of social media reflected an increase in image and video content, in part due to photo-sharing made possible by improved mobile technology. By 2016, candidates and voters had begun using social media platforms as direct sources of news, bypassing the editorial media. In fact, Clinton announced her campaign via Twitter in April 2015. In the last quarter of 2016, Trump had 17.6 million followers on Twitter to The New York Times’s 1.2 million.
Despite this growth, election campaigns use social media primarily as a marketing tool, rather than an authentic forum for dialogue. Politicians are still reluctant to make use of the greater interactivity of the platforms to engage directly with voters. For instance, the act of “retweeting” on Twitter, through which a user reposts or forwards a message posted by another user, is a more passive, less demanding way for candidates to engage with followers on social media. As John Herrman argued in a New York Times article, “[Twitter] is effective not for deliberation or argument, as plenty of prominent Twitter users seem frustrated to still believe, or for building durable communities, but for making yourself seen, finding your people and letting them find you, borrowing or building a following through performance, and for manifesting all of the above into some sort of power that, if not exactly external, was connected to the world outside Twitter.” New media still reverts to the reinforcement of existing power hierarchies; political campaigns’ usage of social media replicates the one-way communication pattern established by mass media campaigning.
How Twitter Governs Speech
“We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we’ve sucked at it for years. It’s no secret and the rest of the world talks about it every day...We’re going to start kicking these people off right and left and making sure that when they issue their ridiculous attacks, nobody hears them.” - Dick Costolo, CEO, speaking internally at Twitter, leaked to The Verge, February 2015
For years, Twitter faced criticism for its insufficient regulation of harassment against women, the LGBTQ community, racial and ethnic minorities, participants of various subcultures, and public figures. The most common types of harassment included misogyny and hate speech, explicit threats of rape and violence, relentless attacks against particular individuals, and doxxing (publicizing the victim’s personal information as a veiled threat). Following the 2014 #Gamergate controversy, Twitter fell under increasing pressure to recognize the scope of the problem and to protect victims.
Twitter first added rules concerning impersonation, trademarks, privacy, violence and threats, copyright, and unlawful use in 2010. By 2013, Twitter included provisions against targeted harassment. Between 2014 and 2016, Twitter frequently suspended accounts related to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a transnational Sunni insurgent group and direct successor to the militant Sunni Islamist terrorist group Al-Qaeda. In May 2016, Twitter suspended multiple parody accounts that satirized Russian politics; the public raised concerns about where the company stands on freedom of speech. In response to the backlash, Twitter restored these accounts.
Under its current moderation policies, Twitter outlines three main categories for safe and free public discussion: safety, privacy, and authenticity. The first category is safety: Twitter prohibits content related to violence, terrorism, child sexual exploitation, abuse/harassment, hateful conduct, suicice or self harm, sensitive media, illegal or certain regulated goods or services. The guidelines stipulate, “You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.” The second category is privacy, and these policies primarily concern the sharing of private information and intimate photos without consent. The third category is authenticity. Violations under this third section include platform manipulation and spam, impersonation, synthetic and manipulated media, copyright and trademark infringement. Twitter’s civic integrity policies fall under this section, and they prohibit “[using] Twitter’s services for the purpose of manipulating or interfering in elections or other civic processes.” In particular, Twitter has banned the posting or sharing of content that may suppress participation or mislead people about when, where, or how to participate in a civic process. Twitter’s policies concern different levels of content moderation: consequences for violations range from temporary to permanent suspensions.
Despite the positive consequences of Twitter’s content moderation, there have been cases when content moderation has negatively impacted the number of active users, and in turn, Twitter’s revenue. On 27 July 2018, Twitter's stock went down by 20.5% (equivalent to $6 billion), with one market analyst stating that it may go down even lower. The number of monthly average users worldwide declined to 325 million, down from 326 million during the first quarter as a result of efforts to remove fake and abusive accounts. Twitter has established clear standards for regulating normal user accounts, but has struggled to define similar standards for world leaders, which has been most notably highlighted by Trump.
Commander in Tweet: How Trump Mobilized Twitter
A savvy exploiter of the media, Trump mobilized his voter base on Twitter, winning with his amateurish yet authentic style. In doing so, he defied the precedent set by Obama’s 2008 campaign, which relied heavily on campaign managers and digital marketers and used advanced, research-based methods for mobilizing voters.
Although the majority of Trump’s tweets were not in line with stylistic standards, he used his authenticity as a rhetorical strength. Trump wrote most tweets himself after 7:00pm at night, tweeting under the handle @real_DonaldTrump. More than a third of his tweets had what social media researchers termed ‘authenticity markers’: impoliteness, political incorrectness, all capital letters. For many voters, these authenticity markers reflected his sincerity, spontaneity, and engagement. In comparison, Clinton inherited the professionalism of the Obama campaign. Campaign staffers oversaw most of Clinton’s tweets, many of which made her seem too tech savvy, too distanced from general image to be believable. Even the tweets Clinton authored herself were well-crafted and policy-oriented, coming across as less spontaneous and genuine.
Research from Gunn Enli also found that social media platforms have a strong agenda-setting impact and constitute a powerful arena for constructing and maintaining a candidate’s image. Some theorize that Trump won the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, in part because his candidate image on social media was much closer to his self-presentation. Since Trump delegated much less social media work to professionals, he appeared more consistent and authentic. Politicians who come across as too professional lose public trust, for they can seem calculated and cynical. Through his social media presence, Trump successfully constructed the image of an “outspoken outsider,” creating a rhetorical claim to authenticity that manages to compete with the professionalism of a more polished campaign.
Trump’s Impact on Content Moderation
After Trump was elected, Facebook and Twitter established a special content moderation policy for world leaders, which would err on the side of leaving content up if there is a clear public interest in doing so. This policy listed many exemptions to the Twitter rules which apply to normal users. If a tweet from a world leader violates Twitter rules but provides a clear public interest value, it would remain on the platform, although it may be placed behind a notice providing context about the violation. For instance, Trump was allowed to threaten nuclear war with North Korea and call for a ban on Muslim immigrants, because both would fall under political and foreign policy commentary.
In the second half of the Trump presidency, Twitter tightened its restrictions. When Trump posted misleading and inaccurate information about the coronavirus pandemic and exaggerated the risk of mail voting fraud, both Twitter and Facebook responded. Twitter implemented “fact-checks'' for misinformation about mail-in voting. Twitter staff placed a blue exclamation mark alert beneath these tweets to redirect users to resources on mail-in ballots. When Trump asserted on Facebook that mail-in ballots “cannot be accurately counted,” Facebook also flagged readers with a notice that read, “Visit the Voting Information Center for election resources and official updates.”
January 6
By January 2021, Trump was among the most followed people on Twitter, with 88.7 million followers. Around noon on January 6, Trump repeated his claim that he had won the election during his "Save America" rally. When Trump finished his speech, crowds had already started to gather outside the Capitol. As Congress gathered to certify Biden's electoral win, a mob of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol: scaling walls, breaking into federal offices, and taking over the Senate floor. As lawmakers were evacuated and the Capitol was put on lockdown, Trump posted multiple incendiary messages.
During and after the Capitol riots, Trump pushed the narrative of a stolen election and encouraged his supporters to protest. When the riots turned violent, he did not rebuke their actions. At around 4pm, Trump posted a video address to Twitter encouraging his followers to go home, but he also emphasized to the mob, “We love you,” and “You’re very special.” Twitter initially labeled the video as disputed and prevented it from being liked or retweeted, but users continued sharing the video through quote-tweets. At 6pm, Trump continued repeating his baseless claims of widespread election fraud, that “A sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long.” Later that day, Twitter removed the video and the tweet. Twitter also put Trump’s account on a temporary lock to prevent him from posting statements that might provoke more violence.
On January 8, Trump tweeted the following:
“The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”
“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”
Immediately, critics called on Twitter to de-platform Trump. Their arguments revolved around two main reasons. First, they interpreted Trump’s tacit approval of the rioters’ actions as incitement of violence. These critics, including Casey Newton, the founder and editor of The Verge newsletter about Big Tech and democracy, and Joan Donovan, a sociologist at the Harvard Kennedy School, asserted that threats of violence should not fall within the realms of free speech. Donovan viewed the imagery of guns and QAnon calls to “[do what] the US had done “in 1776” as direct threats to journalists and Congress members. The Senate chaplain, Barry C. Black, also acknowledged the violence and emphasized that “words matter and that the power of life and death is in the tongue.” Second, these critics saw Trump’s behavior as advocating for the overthrow of the government, which is illegal. In part due to Trump’s implicit support, his followers attempted to destroy the Constitutionally mandated certification of Electoral College ballots.
Others urged caution. Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany, expressed her discomfort, emphasizing that “The right to freedom of opinion is of fundamental importance.” Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU speech and privacy project and counsel to Edward Snowden, noted that arbitration of free speech is highly subjective: everyone believes that free speech applies to their own speech, and not to speech “they consider offensive or dangerous.” Moreover, they argued that productive disagreement, or putting opposing ideas in conversations, is fundamental to the health of democracy. Jacobin Magazine writer Branko Marcetic warned that de-platforming Trump would set a dangerous precedent for censorship, and once a precedent is set, the bounds of what is considered acceptable or wrong will continue to expand. Banning Trump from Twitter could pave the way for de-platforming other world leaders or political speech.
Some raised concerns about the platforms themselves, particularly regarding anti-trust and transparency. A small number of companies should not have unprecedented dominance over public discourse, especially when there is limited transparency. Susan Nossell, CEO of Pen America, called for social media companies to publicize how content moderation decisions are made, especially in individual cases - akin to disclosure agreements in financial regulation. Lastly, Marcetic stressed the neglected role of traditional media in inciting the attacks. He notes that Trump did not directly incite the violence on Twitter, and that major television networks broadcast his speech. In addition to social media, conservative news outlets spread Trump’s claim that the election was stolen.
Afterword
On January 8, Twitter decided to permanently ban Donald Trump, finding his tweets in violation of the Glorification of Violence policy. Though this act was swift, Twitter’s chief executive, Jack Dorsey, expressed reservations. In a Twitter thread, Dorsey wrote that he did “not celebrate or feel pride in our having to ban @realDonaldTrump” because “a ban is a failure of ours ultimately to promote healthy conversation.” However, Dorsey felt compelled to act because of the “offline harm” spurred by “online speech.”
Twitter moderators argued along a similar line of reasoning, that although Trump’s tweets on January 8 may seem innocuous on their own, they were problematic in the context of the riots. Trump’s statement that he will not be attending the Inauguration implies that the election was illegitimate, that there would not be an orderly transition, and that the Inauguration would be a “safe” target for those planning violent acts. Despite his earlier messages encouraging the protesters to go home, Trump’s use of the words “American Patriots” and the mention of his supporters having a “GIANT VOICE long into the future” implies his support.
Other tech companies took similar steps against Trump following the riots. Facebook announced an “indefinite” suspension. Snap locked Trump’s account. Reddit banned the subreddit r/DonaldTrump, a forum where Trump supporters congregated. In total, Trump lost his ability to speak directly to 88 million followers on Twitter, 32 million on Facebook, and 24 million on Instagram, unimpeded by the gatekeeping of traditional journalism.
Since being de-platformed, Trump has lost considerable social influence. In May, Trump launched a blog on his website titled “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump.” On the blog, Trump posts statements similar to those on his now-defunct Twitter feed, continuing to opine on politics and criticize his opponents. However, Trump’s voice is his impact, and that voice depends on shortform platforms such as Twitter. His short quips which demanded attention and drove engagement on Twitter are now effectively powerless. This phenomenon is in part due to the “authenticity markers” in Trump’s writing, including his excessive use of exclamation points and capital letters, which are ill-suited for long-form content of his blog. The same rambling style that won him attention on Twitter now reduces the legibility of his writing.
Beyond experiencing reduced readability, users can’t comment or engage with the actual posts beyond sharing them to Twitter and Facebook, which few appear to be doing. According to data from the social media analytics firm BuzzSumo and the Facebook-owned content-tracking tool CrowdTangle, users have shared posts from Trump’s new blog fewer than 2,000 times per day - a stark decrease from the tens of millions of interactions and responses Trump previously received on social media. Social engagement across the web with Trump’s blog has been on an exponential decline, plummeting from 159,000 interactions on the first day to less than 15,000 interactions from the third day onward. Trump’s entire website received roughly 4 million visits in the week of May 18 from desktop and mobile devices in the United States, which is fewer than visits to the websites Delish and Petfinder. Although Trump is reportedly in talks to join a conservative social media network in exchange for a licensing fee, or to buy or lease code to launch his own social media network, it is unclear if he will be able to win back the media spotlight he previously enjoyed.
Given how effectively the de-platforming limited Trump’s audience, there is reason to be concerned about the power that social media companies have over public discourse. In 2020, 72 percent of Americans believed that social media companies have excessive sway in politics. The collision of politics with social media is a stark and important one because of the way it redistributes power as it pertains to politics and public interest. These platforms have become places where citizens share and shape their views, but they have little direct accountability to their users. Government has evolved to involve a complex series of checks and balances to ensure that power is not concentrated in one person. Now, an individual tech billionaire who has never been elected to any public office is able to unilaterally silence one of the most impactful voices of the free world. The digital de-platforming of a sitting US president has far-reaching consequences for the future of digital societies and their democratic organization.
Key Questions
Should private social media companies have unprecedented power to decide who says what, especially with no government oversight?
Free speech promotes tolerance and civil engagement, but is this form of engagement possible given the scale of social media? To what extent should free speech protections apply?
Should social media companies grant special privileges or exceptions for world leaders?
As social media platforms grew over time, they have abetted violence against minority groups, aided disinformation campaigns, and promoted terrorism. Should social media companies be held accountable for these abuses? How can Section 230, the legislation that provides social media companies with immunity from civil liability for user content, be reformed?
What alternative solutions (aside from censorship, de-platforming) exist for social media moderation?
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