Twitter headquarters in San Francisco, California, US. Twitter said it ended a policy designed to suppress false or misleading information about Covid-19, part of Elon Musk's polarising mission to remake the social network as a place for unmoderated speech. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
I am in trouble over Twitter. I responded approvingly to a post (more slapstick than violent, I thought) captioned something like “This is how I deal with a Nazi”, showing someone wearing swastikas being punched out.
Now I am accused by Twitter of “Violating our rules against abusive behavior” and the specific detail is Twitter’s “rules around:” — and it stops there. I have been unable to get a further explanation. If I’ve been evil, I would like to know why so I don’t offend again (and it is not clear to me what the cause of offence is here).
Here is the actual text of my post: “@conureCC Was this in the US? Nazis there support Trump. Nice punch by antifa guy.” I still have my post because it features in Twitter’s message to me. The post I responded to appears to have been taken down, so I can’t verify its content.
This is interesting because the Donald Trump camp, including Roger Stone, is being welcomed back to Twitter, despite the use of abusive language in the past, up to and including inciting a violent insurrection. Trump himself has not used the lifting of his suspension, preferring to stick with his own Truth Social, where he is in charge of what constitutes truth.
I post something that could at a stretch be considered inciting violence against an anonymous Nazi or Nazis in general so I am persona non grata, unless I am prepared to delete the post myself.
I am still at a loss as to why this is so bad even if it did rise to the level of incitement to violence. There are frequent posts on the Russia-Ukraine war, for example, showing actual violence and posts from both sides with derogatory language and calling for more death and destruction.
What this overall combination says to me is that far from a neutral platform aiming to maximise free speech, Elon Musk is pushing it towards being a safe space for the hard right. It is possible that all this is an artefact of his aggressive downsizing of the workforce and stupid mistakes are being made. I have appealed my removal from the platform three times without any clarification of the actual reason. I probably will eventually cave in and delete it as there is no evidence that my repeated appeals are being taken seriously.
Then again, my rather innocuous blog, Opinionations, is blocked from Facebook. If you try to use its “Share on Facebook” link, you get: “Your message couldn’t be sent because it includes content that other people on Facebook have reported as abusive.” If I try to post something like this on Facebook:
My take on whether Ramaphosa was set up.
https://opinion-nation.blogspot.com/2022/12/was-ramaphosa-set-up
I get:
This URL goes against our Community Standards on spam:
opinion-nation.blogspot.com
To protect people on Facebook from spam, we don’t allow content that contains such URLs.
I have appealed this numerous times with no response. What is interesting here is that the reasons for the ban differ. If I try to share from the blog, I am told that it was reported as abusive. If I try to post on Facebook, it claims that the blog contains spam. These two things are not the same issue.
Spam is unsolicited content — originally email — advertising a product or service. For a blog to qualify as spam, it would have to contain irrelevant links or advertising. Mine contains Google ads, which are a normal occurrence on many sites, ads for my own books and pointers to other content. None of this would qualify as spam by any reasonable definition.
Is the blog abusive? If you are a Trump cultist, a climate change denier or hold hard-right views, it may seem so. But there is nothing there that couldn’t appear anywhere else. Well, that was my view before I got blocked on Twitter.
The far-right (with no hint of irony, given their mindset towards contrary views) argue strongly for “free speech” whenever they are shut down. Yet views from the opposite side regularly get shut down and at least some of this must come from their side complaining.
The boundaries of free speech will always be contested but my experience illustrates that neither Facebook nor Twitter represents ideological consistency. Facebook bans innocuous content because someone has complained and then gets confused about the actual reason, indicating sloppy record keeping. Twitter blocks content without a clear reason (at least, that they can furnish on appeal).
Are social media providers obligated in any way to their users?
In the US, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 protects service providers against responsibility for content. Section 230(c)(2) specifically protects providers against liability if they undertake content moderation even though they are not required to do so by law.
The main effect of this is to protect service providers; it does not create an obligation to moderate or limit free speech. As soon as the government ventures into the free speech space in the US, the First Amendment would become an issue. A private business is not the government so it is not regulated by the First Amendment. This is a complex matter and there are no easy solutions.
Social media is transnational so US law is not the only factor. In the European Union, the Digital Services Act takes effect in 2024 and regulates what is acceptable speech. With fines of up to 6% of their annual revenue, big players like Twitter, Google and Facebook will be under pressure to comply, which means complying internationally, unless they want a variant of the Great Firewall of China that would segregate the EU from the rest of the world.
The Digital Services Act also requires that reasons be given for decisions, which could help with situations like my run-ins with Facebook and Twitter. None of this is contrary to US law, so the easy option is to comply with the EU and use this as an excuse if anyone complains.
If Twitter and Facebook have annoyed me, why do I stick with them? For the same reason as I still sometimes use Microsoft products where there are better alternatives. They are where (almost) everyone else is.
I am trying a new platform called Post (http://post.news), which is in beta testing and has limited new sign-ups for now. It looks good but there is far more going on over at the old platforms. However, if they annoy enough people, other options are out there and might take off.
Philip Machanick is an associate professor of computer science at Rhodes University.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Mail & Guardian.