Of the moment Elon Musk announced his intention to buy Twitter and impose his version of free speech, speculation swirled about whether he would allow Donald Trump, the ultimate Twitter mocker, to return to the platform. Well, the tension is over. On Tuesday, Musk confirmed what most people suspected, announcing on a Financial times conference that he would undo “the permanent ban” from the former president’s account. As you recall, Trump was booted from Twitter on January 6, 2021, after his tweets during the Capitol riots violated Twitter’s rules against glorifying violence.
As usual, the precise logic of Musk’s reasoning is difficult to follow. He previously suggested that Twitter would allow any content under its ownership that does not violate the law. But on Tuesday, he said Twitter must still suppress tweets or temporarily suspend accounts “if they say something illegal or otherwise just, you know, destructive to the world.” In case that was too precise, he added: “If there are tweets that are wrong and bad, they should either be deleted or made invisible, and a suspension – a temporary suspension – is appropriate, but not a permanent ban. ”
If anything, deleting tweets that are “wrong and bad” suggests a broader, more easily abused standard of content moderation than Twitter currently uses. (Who thinks wrong and bad?) The most likely explanation for Musk’s conflicting statements is that he’s just making this up along the way and hasn’t given much thought to how content rules should work on the social platform he’s trying to spend $44 billion on. to buy. And yet, buried in Musk’s acquittal word salad, is a crouton of wisdom worth chewing. Perhaps Twitter really needs to rethink the use of permanent bans — not just for Trump, but for everyone.
Trump’s Twitter ban has always been difficult to analyze. A set of equally valid competing values point in opposite directions. On the one hand, Twitter is a private company that can do whatever it wants. On the other hand, it plays an important role in American politics and public debate, so that its choices have broad implications for the functioning of democracy in the US. On the one hand, the public has a particularly keen interest in hearing what political figures have to say; if the president has deranged or abhorrent beliefs, that’s important information to know. On the other hand, there is something inappropriate about exempting the most powerful members of society from rules that ordinary people must abide by. Especially since rule violations by someone in Trump’s position are Lake more dangerous than by any random Twitter user.
Getting rid of permanent bans provides a way to substantiate these seemingly incompatible positions: in general, don’t hand out lifetime bans to average users or political figures. A permanent ban on Twitter is a severe punishment. The platform occupies a unique place in American political life, which is exactly why Trump and other political figures are so obsessed with it. It is where the highly educated ‘elite’, who are disproportionately large in the political class, especially the media, spend far too much of their time and attention.
This is unfortunate, but it is the reality. If you want key people in the media and politics to pay attention to your ideas, the best and most direct way to do it is to get into their Twitter feeds. Cutting someone off from Twitter — or from other major social platforms — can severely limit their ability to participate in public debate. As the Supreme Court ruled in 2016, “to completely shield access to social media prevents the user from engaging in the legitimate exercise of First Amendment rights.” That referred to an act of the government, not a private enforcement decision. That distinction is important for legal purposes, but from the user’s perspective, the impact is the same regardless of who implements the ban. (Facebook first closed Trump’s account “indefinitely” after the riots, but later agreed to the Facebook Oversight Board’s recommendation to reconsider his case after a two-year suspension. YouTube hasn’t said anything about if or when put Trump back on his platform.)
