Only reason was because he was POTUS. Otherwise he would have been removed long ago. The moment he wasn't potus anymore he was to be removed from these platforms.
The consequence of this however will be political division. If you thought the political division was bad now because of 'echo chambers'. Wait until the camps are no longer talking because they arent on the same platforms.
No, the effect is the opposite. First of all, they haven't been talking to each other in a constructive way on these platforms anyway, they merely exchange hateful messages. There is no dialogue between those sides on social media, because social media are generally not conducive to reasonable and rational discussion (with exceptions like HN, of course, where there is appropriate moderation).
Second, pushing radicals out of mainstream platforms is a good thing because they will go to many different places, break up into smaller fractions, and therefore not be able to reach as many people at once. The division and reality-denial we see today is the result of small minorities reaching to large audiences and looking much larger than they are, thereby allowing radical and violent positions to become seemingly more socially acceptable.
It's perfectly fine if people who want to storm the Capitol (or behead Fauci, etc.) get to talk in their own, small little echo chambers. They do that already. Law enforcement is used to infiltrating closed circles and should know how to deal with those who become terrorists.
>No, the effect is the opposite. First of all, they haven't been talking to each other in a constructive way on these platforms anyway, they merely exchange hateful messages.
So nothing lost?
>Second, pushing radicals out of mainstream platforms is a good thing because they will go to many different places, break up into smaller fractions, and therefore not be able to reach as many people at once.
The thing about banning people on facebook, twitter, reddit, etc. You just create a new account. Nobody has gone anywhere. When there is a push for different platform like parler, then the migration occurs and there won't be cells. thedonald.win for example just as popular as thedonald was. There's no splintering. Though I can bet you within the next 2 weeks those sites will be taken down.
>The division and reality-denial we see today is the result of small minorities reaching to large audiences and looking much larger than they are, thereby allowing radical and violent positions to become seemingly more socially acceptable.
The political divide is on the democrat side. More specifically... it was just the democrats. That's not the case anymore. The republicans just moved to the right increasing the divide.
>It's perfectly fine if people who want to storm the Capitol (or behead Fauci, etc.) get to talk in their own, small little echo chambers. They do that already. Law enforcement is used to infiltrating closed circles and should know how to deal with those who become terrorists.
That's the thing with reality. Those who arent involved in certain subjects can see it objectively. I'm not american nor am I there.
I have never seen the politics so divided in the usa. It WAS the democrats, It's now both. The political divide has never been so bad.
I'm also not in the US and the examples I gave were just examples. I also don't think that "the blame game" makes any sense. The effects of modern media are world-wide and don't have much to do with particular party divides or "left" and "right." Notice I spoke of radicals, regardless of political affiliation.
As I've said, in my opinion the increasing division is partly a result of the fact that radical minorities nowadays have platforms through which they can easily reach millions.[1] This leads to an amplification of radical opinions and makes them appear to be more acceptable, hence also more accepted by people who would otherwise not even consider them. This in turn has to do with in- and out-group behaviour and corresponding cognitive biases.
One way to counter-act the trend while still allowing free speech is to ensure that radical fringe groups do not have large amplifying platforms. They can still have free speech, just like they had in the 80s, but it should be made hard for them to reach out to millions. I agree that this is technically non-trivial, but many experiences have been made already and there are many methods like moderation, karma systems, IP banning, shadow-banning, banning by degrading service, limiting amplification/re-distribution of messages, identifying sockpuppet and bot accounts, and so on.
[1] There are other reasons, of course, that have nothing to do with social media.
>As I've said, in my opinion the increasing division is partly a result of the fact that radical minorities nowadays have platforms through which they can easily reach millions.[1]
this is the funny thing. Trump and the right wing are the ones being banned but it's the democrats who have created the divide.
> I agree that this is technically non-trivial, but many experiences have been made already and there are many methods like moderation, karma systems, IP banning, shadow-banning, banning by degrading service, limiting amplification/re-distribution of messages, identifying sockpuppet and bot accounts, and so on.
I also find it funny that to justify banning and other moderation that it's only being done to the 'radical minority' but it's absolutely not. This is about political opposition being silenced.
Which again comes back to the first problem. The political division in 2019 was 100% democrats. In 2021? Not 100% democrats anymore. The republicans are now adding to the division and that's not going to end well.
I was only talking about radicalized people who are advocating violence or are completely detached from reality (e.g. people who claim Covid-19 does not exist, or people who claim vaccination is a way to implant microchips into people). I have not talked about the political opposition in general. Your claims about 100% divides are or who caused it, as far as I can see, completely made up and without any evidential support. As I've said, it's also irrelevant who "causes a divide." The political divide is between two sides, so of course both of them are affected and responsible for it. I argued that the divide is partly a consequence of how social media work, because these allow in-group behavior that fosters radicalization. You chose to ignore that argument. Okay, so be it. I certainly don't buy into your argument insofar as I can reconstruct it.
You claim that the political opposition is silenced in the US, a claim for which there is zero evidence. Bans and other measures are put out for concrete violations of ToS such as directly inciting violence or advocating a coup d'etat by storming the Capitol to prevent US Congress from certifying an election result. Bans are very rare in numbers on social media. In fact, the people we're talking about already have their social media accounts on Discord and Parler. But it's a good idea to limit their ability to reach millions. That's not even silencing them, it's just common sense. Nobody should have a platform to post vitriol and hatred to millions, these kind of posts play no constructive role in politics whatsoever.
On a side note, the vast majority of Republicans is moderate and many of them do not even like Trump, as evidenced by opinion polls who have shown that he's one of the least popular presidents in US history. Trump's fan base is quite small, and the people who were storming the Capitol were an even smaller fraction of that. The problem of the Republican party is a systemic problem of any two-party system and could have just as well happened to the Democrats. Moderate Republicans have to continue to cater to a radical minority because they cannot risk the party to be split. If the Republican party split up into two, then both of these new parties would always lose against the Democratic Party. That explains the complete lack of a spine in many leading Republicans. They do not support Trump, they want to prevent the destruction of their party.
The same could happen to the Democrats. It's a general weakness of the US electoral system and the two party division.
This is what scares me. We're already seeing this start with Parler being conservative Twitter. Youtube clones are already popping up. The only saving grace is that such platforms will have difficulties finding advertisers and thus surviving, but if their movement gains traction then corporations will follow the flow of power/money and jump on board.
The issue is not platforms. The issue is the lack of trust in the political system. Deplatforming is just a band-aid.
The consequence of this however will be political division. If you thought the political division was bad now because of 'echo chambers'. Wait until the camps are no longer talking because they arent on the same platforms.