There has been a great deal of controversy surrounding the seemingly arbitrary bans that large social media companies make against certain individuals. Facebook has just added to that controversy by announcing that they have banned seven people from their platform for what they consider to be hate speech. Among these people are minister Louis Farrakhan and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Facebook had allowed these people to remain on their platform for many years despite being criticized for doing so. The company did not have any rules in place that specifically detailed hate speech until recently. However, the social media giant recently made the decision to jettison these people because of the negative publicity that they bring to the platform.
Social media companies have come under fire for having a bias towards liberal people. President Donald Trump recently had a meeting with Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter. In fact, Trump has said that Twitter is discriminatory in the way that it deals with its users. Trump uses Twitter on a daily basis to get his messages out to the public. He said the meeting with Dorsey went well and he will keep in touch with the leaders of the company. Dorsey denied that Twitter has a liberal bias when he made a recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast.
The banning of Jones and Farrakhan by Facebook could set a precedent where any person who is engaging in what is perceived to be hate speech will be banned from the platform immediately. Jones had already been banned from Twitter for his views which are often controversial and offensive. Prior to these bans, Facebook would only remove specific posts that are deemed to be offensive and violate the rules of the platform. They would not ban a person completely. However, it would appear that they now believe that strategy is not effective.
Alex Jones was also banned by YouTube, which is owned by Google. He had said previously that these large social media companies would only be helping him by banning him. However, it turns out the opposite is true. The reality is that visits to his own site have dropped off a lot after being taken off all of the largest social media platforms. This shows just how powerful the large social media companies are. They have the ability to silence someone as popular and prominent as Alex Jones in an instant.
Dil Bole Oberoi
