Twitter Bans: a Portal into “the Synthetic State”

“Thus, corporate policy at Google, Apple, Amazon, et al. becomes a second set of laws by which Americans must live.”

On January 6th, a group of rioters battled police and broke into the United States Capitol while members of Congress were certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election. Their motivation was to protest or forestall the end of the Trump presidency. There has, understandably, been much talk about the significance of the riot (which some style an “insurrection”). However, what has followed offers, in my opinion, an even keener sign of the times.

In the aftermath of the riot, a stunning number of private companies moved to ban, block, or suppress the now-former President and his followers from their services. The sheer number of companies and the near-synchronicity with which they acted is jarring and worth summarizing. Here is a brief, incomplete overview: On January 6th, Twitter temporarily suspended President Donald Trump’s personal account and removed tweets made by President Trump from the official Presidential account, @POTUS; that suspension was made permanent two days later. Facebook and Snapchat suspended President Trump’s accounts the same day. (Both bans were later made permanent.) On January 7th, YouTube, Twitch, TikTok (sweet irony!), and Shopify followed suit.

President Trump’s supporters were not spared defenestration either. Reddit and Discord respectively banned the forums r/DonaldTrump and TheDonald.win from their sites. Pinterest has limited hashtags associated with President Trump (though to be clear, the company had been doing this since November). The social media platform Parler—which bills itself as “unbiased social media” and is favored by some supporters of President Trump—was kicked off Google Play, Apple’s App Store, and Amazon AWS between January 8th and 9th, meaning the platform has effectively been shut down. (As of January 21st, a federal judge in the state of Washington has declined to require Amazon to reinstate Parler.)