Twitter And Its Uncomfortable Censorship Question

On the 8th of January, 2021, the President of the world’s most powerful country lost his voice. Or well, the voice he was the most interested in using. In an unprecedented move, Twitter and its founder Jack Dorsey had permanently shut down the personal account of Donald Trump, as well as his presidential campaign account.

The move came in  the aftermath of the violence that took place during the 2021 Capitol attack, where Trump supporters had attempted to prevent the formalization of Joe Biden as the next president. The move was widely lauded as well as criticized at the same time, and brought the question of Twitter censorship to the forefront.

Even though platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp continue to have a greater number of active members, Twitter has been the hub of global minute-to-minute conversations, and is the preferred tool of most to connect with the masses.

So, what are the various opinions on Twitter censorship?

Character Limit, Moral Limit, and Issue of Influence

Like all social media platforms, Twitter has a self-made and self-imposed terms of service, which includes certain things that people are not allowed to Tweet about. This covers everything from terrorism to leaking out private data of ordinary citizens. Contrary to what some may believe, social media isn’t actually public.

They are privately owned companies, and just like a restaurant can kick out people for, say, insulting the waiter, Twitter too, can kick out or censor people who do not agree with its rules. But you can start to understand the problem already. What if the waiter misunderstood your words?

What if the insult you hurled at the waiter was actually justified? How can you even protest your innocence or your point of view to all the people at the restaurant (who now think you are evil) if you are simply kicked out without a chance to explain yourself? Trump’s suspension also indicates some other important dimensions.

The first is the matter of the public sphere. Almost 70% of the US population is on Twitter. For the longest time, Twitter refused to suspend Trump’s account on the argument that as President, his words, no matter how incendiary or problematic, had to reach the people.

As soon as it was known that he was no longer in power, Twitter swiftly suspended his account. Of course, some have argued that this act of Twitter censorship only came when Trump could no longer do harm to Twitter. Even though they are omnipresent Goliaths, social media companies are ultimately at the mercy of the American law.

Perhaps censoring Trump at the height of his power could have spelled legal trouble for Twitter – and possibly physical trouble for its workers.

A Slippery Slope?

A pattern to note has been that most accounts that are suspended from Twitter are usually right-wing in nature. However, many on the left have also criticized Twitter censorship. For them, censorship, no matter who it is of, is nothing to celebrate.

It is not the job of social media companies to select and feed us narratives – it is our job to take in all viewpoints as they come to us and then decide what we want to believe in. In a nutshell, nobody should get to decide what somebody else gets to hear. Then, there have also been suspensions that have irked rather than been celebrated.

One of the most contentious issue in academia today is that of publisher paywalls – authors often pay to publish their researches in reputed journals, and then, students and researchers have to pay to access these papers. Thus, both parties end up facing a monetary burden and a crunch of data.

This system has been widely criticized, as the high costs of these paywalls usually keeps out students from poorer nations as well as unaffiliated, independent researchers.

Since 2011, this system has faced a thought clapback from Alexandra Elbakyan, a Kazakhstani  computer programmer who created Sci-Hub, an online shadow library that allows access to research that is otherwise locked by paywalls.

In January 2021, on the same date as Donald Trump was booted out of Twitter, Sci Hub’s Twitter account was quietly banned, permanently, for violating Twitter’s counterfeiting policy. These are the kind of bans that many find problematic.

The fact that this news was completely overshadowed by the Trump drama was suspicious to many.

Elbakyan said that her account, which had operated for 9 years without any issue, was banned because of the controversial case that was ongoing in India at that time, which is still raging to an extent. Multiple publishing houses had filed a case to block Sci-Hub and Libgen, another shadow library, in the country.

Academicians around the world saw the Twitter censorship as a gross and hurtful attack on the critical case of educational rights and freedom. By pulling out Sci-Hub from its platform, Twitter has left Elbakyan friendless in a fight against some of the most powerful institutions of the academic world.

If It’s Them, It’s You

In conclusion, the question of Twitter censorship is a tough one. Some argue that many are indifferent or supportive of Twitter censorship because it is happening to others – if (or when) Twitter turns its sights to themes that you personally find precious, the other shoe will drop.

The question of Twitter censorship is the same as any form of censorship – do people have the right to prevent others from seeing, hearing, or experiencing something? If you have your own answer to that, you have your answer to this debate.