INTERVIEW
Did Twitter have the right to indefinitely suspend the account of the president of the first world power Donald Trump – even if his term is coming to an end? The debate has raged since the decision of the social network – imitated by Facebook – after the intrusion of activists refusing the result of the US presidential election on Capitol Hill last week. For the writer and professor of philosophy Raphaël Enthoven, the question is irrelevant when the Head of State himself called for violence.
“The problem is the tweet where he calls for insurgency”
“I do not see anything shocking in the fact that a social network deprives itself of the word of a seditious, a thug, of a type calls for the insurrection, which is a pyromaniac firefighter”, launches the philosopher at the microphone of Europe 1. “They do what they want, in particular when it comes to a call for an insurrection which has left five dead and which shakes a democracy.” Because for Raphaël Enthoven, Twitter is neither “a right”, nor “a public service”. “It is a private company with rules, with a charter, which is perfectly justified, in my opinion, to exclude those who do not respect them.” In other words, “Twitter owes nothing to those who express themselves there.”
For the writer, the argument is all the more valid since “Trump never tweeted as president” – he did not invest le compte ofliciel “President of the United States” (@Potus), preferring to keep the subscribers of his personal account. “He has always seen himself as an individual endowed with new powers by the American ballot, but in no way has he embodied this function.” It is therefore not the president’s account but that of the individual that was suspended, in the eyes of Raphaël Enthoven. And for a specific reason: “Trump’s problem is not the fake news, the untruths, the conspiracy theories that he has been circulating extensively for four years. The problem is the tweet he calls for. the insurrection. “
“We are distorted by social networks”
And the philosopher emphasizes that “the knights of freedom of expression are in general either people who subscribe to Trump’s words and who defend the freedom of expression of those who agree with them, or people who agree with them. give the good part by saying: ‘I don’t like Trump, but hey, everyone has the right to speak.’ ” Positions that Raphaël Enthoven sweeps aside, always for the same reason: we are dealing with a private company. “Twitter is not a state that one could evaluate that way or judge that way. This is not an exercise in censorship. We must agree on the words: censorship, it is vertical, it comes from the law. “
The philosopher therefore believes that the reflections to be carried out are elsewhere, and in particular in the questioning of the “desire for identity” flattered by social networks. “This gives an extraordinary paradox: on Twitter, it is said that all opinions are free and that the debate is open, when in reality, there is never a debate. The reflex of the people there is a herd reflex, that is to say that after a while, even when we are warned against it, we turn to people who think like ourselves. So that we are more informed. distorted by social networks and that is a problem, for once, of pedagogy. “
Heard on europe1:
The challenge is to transform social networks into filters that do not let everything pass
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As for the messages conveying calls for facts condemned by the law, their prohibition and the suspension of the accounts which published them must be systematic, slice Raphaël Enthoven to close the debate. “It is absolutely urgent that social networks behave like editors,” he said. “They are not hosts, they are responsible for the content they publish. Twitter is a medium, that is to say an intermediary. (…) It is a medium which must therefore apply rules. The stake here is to transform social networks into filters that do not let everything go. “
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