Revoke Social Media’s Legal Shield, But for the Right Reason
Twitter, Facebook and other platforms won’t get serious about cleaning up content until they face liability.
Time to take responsibility.
Photographer: Denis Charlet/AFP/Getty Images
Donald Trump has been undeniably good for Twitter Inc. In late 2015, when he announced that he was running for president, he was already a significant presence on the social media site, with more than 5 million followers. By last week, when Twitter finally banned him, he had almost 89 million followers. In the first three years of Trump’s presidency, meanwhile, Twitter’s revenue grew from $2.2 billion to $3.5 billion. Whether friend or foe, you had to join Twitter if you wanted to keep track of the U.S. president.
Were some of Trump’s 56,000 tweets — as well as many of his Facebook posts — often incendiary, full of lies, threats, conspiracies and insults? Of course they were. Did he regularly resort to the kind of hate speech that Twitter and Facebook insist they bar? Yes. Did he sometimes seem to be inciting violence? Without question.