By: Tomas Ressa
The decision by Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to close Donald Trump’s accounts for «inciting violence» after the incidents on Capitol Hill sparked a new debate: Is freedom of expression affected by the platforms’ behaviors? Do the latter become content publishers?
A few days ago, followers of outgoing President Donald Trump tried to storm the Capitol during the inauguration of the democratic Joe Biden in the United States. The violence left 5 dead and 14 policemen injured, in addition to a weakened image of democracy in the United States.
The consequences would continue and would be extended to social networks, with an exemplary and unprecedented sanction in digital platforms. Mark Zuckerberg (CEO of Facebook) announced Thursday that his company decided to block Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, at least for two weeks until the end of his term. Twitter also deleted messages and blocked his account permanently.
«We believe the risks of allowing the president to continue using our service during this period are simply too great,» Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post. For its part, Twitter said in an official statement that «after a thorough review of recent tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context in which they were posted we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement to violence.»
The measures were taken after considering that it was the outgoing president’s posts on his various accounts that encouraged the violence experienced on Capitol Hill. At the same time, the blockades sparked controversy about freedom of expression and the limits that can be reached with respect to the official accounts of leaders who move the masses.
Content editors
Bárbara Peñaloza, a lawyer specialized in computer law, analyzed in a conversation with Mirada Critica the scope of the closing of Donald Trump’s accounts in all social networks: «I dare to assert that the platforms are already content editors and this decision is an extreme example of that. The platforms decide, based on our behavior in the use of the same, what is the information we see on walls and feeds».
Peñaloza considered that digital platforms «are also arbitrarily deciding what is false and what is violent, in this case they have catalogued Trump’s statements and in many other cases, in which violence is palpable and denounced by the users themselves, they ignore and do not remove the content».
The lawyer added that in Argentina, in order to protect the human right to freedom of expression (and access to information) and to avoid prior censorship, «it must be an impartial and competent judge who decides the removal of content, but this requires trained judges who can protect violated rights in the digital environment and who resolve these cases in the times of such environment and not in the traditional times of Justice, in order to ensure effective judicial protection».
«Our National Constitution and the human rights treaties and conventions to which we have adhered, grant legal protection with the edition of content that these platforms can make, and those who are unjustly censored in the same, may resort to Justice in search of the protection of their freedom of expression» considered Peñaloza.
Freedom of expression?
For his part, Diego Armesto, a constitutional lawyer, cited the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in the case of Knight First Amendment Institute v. Donald J. Trump, which confirmed that President Trump’s practice of blocking critics from his Twitter account violated the First Amendment.
In that regard, Armesto posed a question, «Why are citizens being denied the right to read what President Trump says?»
«The speech of the public official is fundamental to know what he thinks, where he is going and what policies he takes, denying the right of public debate weakens democracy instead of strengthening it and allowing a greater participation of citizens in public affairs,» said the constitutionalist.
Asked by this media if the decision of the digital platforms to block the former president of the United States from his Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts transgressed the limit of freedom of expression, Armesto responded that «freedom of expression is the freedom of freedoms according to JSMill, that is why, limiting it from an editorialization of a private company can obstruct freedom of expression».
«There is an ulterior responsibility in front of the forbidden speech, but freedom can never be limited by a private company, since we run the risk that the deliberative democracy, the participation is limited by two or three webmasters or editors who define what to read», he said.
For Armesto, this is «serious for democracy and for the future of a more participative society», and considered that «we need the sanction to be from the Law and the institutions have the tools, to put this freedom and others at the mercy of one or two people is very serious».
