> Interestingly, both French ministers (economy and digital) severely condemned the "unilateral" and "oligarchic" decision to de-platform Tump and conservatives. Pointing the lack of "judiciary or democratic supervision".
They are afraid that eventually, Twitter or Facebook is going to remove their conservative speech, if it rubs Twitter or Facebook employees the wrong way, and they'd be right. That's exactly what is going to happen.
But I'd argue, why are they still flocking to thus promoting these platforms at first place? Promote open techs, open protocols so that anybody with any client can subscribe to their messages without being forced to go on Twitter and co... it exists, it's called RSS, ActivePub... the tools of freedom are here and they don't take much effort at all.
edit: I feel like people are missing my point or maybe I didn't expressed it very well. Twitter and Facebook should be entitled to ban whomever they want on their platform, that's not the point. The point is governments and politicians should start promoting open protocols and technologies for communication instead of voting law for fear of getting their 'conservative' speech banned by these platforms they decided to speak on, often exclusively. That's all I'm saying.
>They are afraid that eventually, Twitter or Facebook is going to remove their conservative speech
Have they (and who are they? The ministers? Every Frenchmen alive?) said this themselves or are you spreading FUD?
Censoring speech is "removing something he said". France and Germany are for this. Censoring people is "removing a person because of what he said". France and Germany are both against this. Of course Facebook and Twitter take the easy way out instead of the ethical one.
> Twitter or Facebook is going to remove their conservative speech, if it rubs Twitter or Facebook employees the wrong way
It's not what happened and it has nothing to do with Facebook or twitter employees (who have almost zero power, they haven't even unionized yet!).
Facebook or Twitter could have banned Trump & al. for content policy violation years ago (and they probably should have actually, because you know, policy violation) but they did not because conservatives were in charge and then had power to retaliate. Now they are banning them now, because now the democrats are in charge, and they are definitely going to retaliate hadn't social network ban Trump.
American social networks will do things which don't annoy the American government too much, so it leave them alone. What's happening here, is European govts wanting the same level of power than the US one.
First, [Redacted, since the parent comment has since been edited].
Second, Facebook and Twitter are banning hundreds of pages every month, extremists pages indeed, but sometimes also journalists or parody pages, most of these bans being done by bots, with a degree of false positive and with often little ways to react.
No has ever been kicked off Twitter for claiming that their left wing opponent's tax plan will have unintended consequences that can lead to long term slowdown of GDP growth or that a minimum wage increase will lead to higher unemployment.
They are afraid that eventually, Twitter or Facebook is going to remove their conservative speech, if it rubs Twitter or Facebook employees the wrong way, and they'd be right. That's exactly what is going to happen.
But I'd argue, why are they still flocking to thus promoting these platforms at first place? Promote open techs, open protocols so that anybody with any client can subscribe to their messages without being forced to go on Twitter and co... it exists, it's called RSS, ActivePub... the tools of freedom are here and they don't take much effort at all.
edit: I feel like people are missing my point or maybe I didn't expressed it very well. Twitter and Facebook should be entitled to ban whomever they want on their platform, that's not the point. The point is governments and politicians should start promoting open protocols and technologies for communication instead of voting law for fear of getting their 'conservative' speech banned by these platforms they decided to speak on, often exclusively. That's all I'm saying.