January 8, 2021 was the day that Twitter finally took a stand. Late in the afternoon Twitter announced that it had permanently suspended Donald Trump’s account.
The company then clarified that not only had they suspended Donald Trump’s Twitter account, Donald Trump himself would not be allowed to use Twitter in any fashion, and any new accounts or Tweets created by him would be removed. This came to fruition not long after his account was banned, when Donald Trump posted a four tweet thread on the @POTUS account, which Twitter removed shortly after it was posted.
However, Twitter was not done there. Throughout the early evening, the company also removed the accounts of several prominent far right individuals, QAnon supporrters, and others. These include the convicted felon Michale Flynn (who did receive a pardon from Donald Trump), and Sidney Powell, a lawyer who has been representing Donald Trump and pushing conspiracy theories and pusing demonstrably false information. It is not known exactly how many accounts have been removed, but it appears to be a number at least in the thousands.
That Twitter finally took a stand should be applauded. That Twitter waited until July 8, 2021 to take that stand should be scrutinized. Banning hate groups and people who try to incite violence will always be a whack-a-mole effort, but Twitter had been slower than some of the other content platforms on banning this kind of hate speech. YouTube and Facebook instituted blanket bans on QAnon in 2020, for example. Yes, that content still exists on those platforms, because it is impossible to remove, but the companies had taken a stand to remove as much of the content as they could. It isn’t perfect, but they were trying. Twitter had not actively taken such efforts. Yes, every so often there would be a token attempt, but Twitter continued to allow far right hate speech to continue en masse. And while the company was not directly responsible for the attack on The Capitol that took place on January 6, the leaders at the company who allowed hate speech to propagate throughout its platform should be looking themselves in the mirror.
In fact, it is notable that Twitter did not even announce the suspension of Donald Trump and the removal of the other far right accounts until after the markets closed. Even in doing the right thing, Twitter proves again and again what it cares most about is its stock price, and company value. Removing Donald Trump and other far right accounts will likely lead to a short term contraction in user engagement on the platform, which is bad for the company in the markets.
There were other developments throughout the afternoon and evening. Buzzfeed news obtained a letter sent from Apple to the developers of Parler, a Twitter-like service which has become popular with the far right because they do not engage in any form of content moderation. Media outlets have reported that many of the people who participated in the attack on The Capitol planned it on Parler, and that the hate speech and false information on that platform is significantly more substantial that it is and was on Twitter. The letter Apple sent demanded that the developers of Parler immediately create a robust content moderation policy which would clamp down on hate speech, content that encourages violence, and other illegal activities within 24 hours or the company would remove the Parler app from its app store. Google did not even wait that long, and removed Parler from the Google Play Store for Android in the evening. As of this writing, Parler was still available on the Apple App Store, but I do expect it to be gone on Saturday.
This does not mean Parler will go away, of course. Parler does exist as a website, and can be accessed from any web browser. This has led to some amusing exchanges on various other networks like Reddit where far right users attempt to teach each other how to use it without an app. Parler’s website functions as a PWA, which is short for Progressive Web App. This is the name of a web technology that allows websites to function like apps. They can be “installed” on a device, run like an app, and if relevant, even work offline. It is a relatively new technology that has the chance to replace traditional apps in certain circumstances. Twitter uses a PWA for its app on certain platforms, for example.
Amusingly, some users of Parler are taking issue of it being a “Progressive” Web App, stating they don’t want to use it anymore because it is called “Progressive.”
These moves will not eliminate far right hate speech. They will not end the groups of white supremecists that have always been there, but have been operating more in the open. They won’t eliminate the deep divides that exist. But platforms like Twitter are at least partially responsible for what has gone on over the past few years. All it took was rioters attacking the US Capitol for them to realize it. And now, we will forever have this.
