Did what to you? You have the same capacity to use FB, Twitter, etc as I do. Most of the iconic MAGA supporters are allowed and very much active on social media.
The ones who were kicked off the platforms were people like Alex Jones - I mean if you are going to defend someone taunting the parents of dead children and suggest that social media companies have to carry that, I suppose you're entitled to your own ideas but most well-adjusted folk find that repulsive. Just sayin'.
If you're arguing that social media sometimes makes these kinds of decisions arbitrarily, I would actually...agree? And that is why I've suggested that if there's one change we could make - one that I think would satisfy most people on both sides of the political spectrum - it would be to do more to make social media companies adhere as strictly as possible to their terms of service.
That, IMO, is what gets social media companies into these kinds of debates, and needlessly so. They tolerate all kinds of shit from Alex Jones that would have gotten lesser known users suspended or banned sooner because they know that it attracts lots of followers and increases engagement. For all the pearl clutching from the right, that is the bottom line for social media companies: they have an incentive to get the extreme provocateurs because it increases engagement, and that increases ad revenue.
Progressives have been complaining for years to get Alex Jones and Trump off the platform. It was only when they were both so repulsive and so dangerous that Twitter and other platforms took action. Why? Because the harm done to their brand and their reputation outweighed the good that came from the engagement. We need to get social media to move beyond simple the line item business calculus and to focus on a more socially responsible product. Reddit, actually, has done this. It's not what people think of when they think of social media but it's in the same category of website in many ways, and it has had the same problems.
www.linkedin.com
