It is not for social networks to play the regulators of democracy … Foto: geralt / Wikimedia Commons / CC0 1.0
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(KL) – For months, US President Donald Trump had infested social networks with lies, “fake news” and incitement to hatred. To this day, he maintains that the election was “stolen” from him and he has stimulated the feeling among his 78 million voters, of being victims of a massive fraud which deprives their star of the “Oval Office” . While all allegations of possible fraud were struck down by the courts, Trump had continued to urge his followers not to accept the verdict of the ballot box and his hate speeches led straight to the assault on the Capitol in Washington. – and despite the warnings, Trump had continued to spread his lies. Consequently and by applying the rules in force for any user of these networks, Twitter and Facebook have permanently blocked the accounts of the future ex-president of the United States. It was necessary, but is this really their role?
Twitter and Facebook were right, Donald Trump had to be prevented from causing further damage in the midst of an attempted coup. And no, the communications of the American president were not covered by “freedom of speech”, it was about incitement to criminal behavior. So we had to act and react immediately and Twitter and Facebook did it.
In view of the last few years, however, it is clear that the role of social networks goes beyond all limits. It is not up to the large social networks to act as a democratic regulator, but, as various observers suggest, it will be necessary to set up a “neutral” body which will decide what to tolerate and what to do. does not tolerate on social networks. But already the implementation of such a body promises to be difficult – who would sit in such a body, free from any personal interest, truly neutral?
In any case, we must be careful not to transform our societies into a “Twitter democracy”, even if in practice, this is exactly what has been happening for 4 years in the United States. Calling for criminal acts is not covered by the right to “free expression” and this is valid as much for the American president as for Jacques Dupont. Therefore, the deletion of Donald Trump’s accounts was a completely justified measure, to avoid other slippages that could have gone wrong.
But for the future, it will take real thought – it is inconceivable that private companies would have such an impact on democracy. Facebook and Twitter are economic players who pursue their own business goals – so they cannot take on the role of ” arbiter of elegance In our democracies. However, they were right to prevent Donald Trump from continuing his dirty work which almost pushed the United States into a most dangerous coup. But tomorrow, we will not be able to do otherwise than to review the role of these networks in the life of our democracies – it will be necessary urgently to create bodies of neutral control. It is our parliaments that must be the guarantors of democracy and not social networks.
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