The toxic side-effect of the Trump Twitter ban

Almost two weeks on from the storming of the US Capitol it’s becoming plainer that the most substantive changes to our political and public spheres are brewing not in Congress but on the internet.

First, let’s be clear: Twitter had to act against Trump. By deleting his account, it shut down a large part of his ability to provoke civil unrest. Trump has not been unfairly ‘censored’ and free speech does not give someone the right to stoke violence and insurrection: either in principle or in law.

The wider ethical and even philosophical ramifications of gagging the leader of the free world are a different story. Angela Merkel called the ban ‘problematic’ and even Twitter’s CEO acknowledged the problems inherent in a handful of tech bosses having the ability to decide who does and does not have a voice on the internet. They’re not wrong.

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But I want to discuss the narrower, practical ramifications. The social media ban will help to silence Trump (as it did Milo Yiannopoulos and Alex Jones) but at what cost? I watch online spaces and believe it’s putting in motion a chain of events that could empower society’s most extreme elements. Trump’s social media ban has begun a rapid flow of resources, brains and attention toward creating something unmanageable, and therefore terrifying: decentralised, encrypted vertical versions of Facebook or Twitter. Social media communities free not just of moderation but of oversight.

We must be clear on what this means. ‘Alternative’ sites and messaging apps like Parler and Telegram already exist, and they are encrypted and free from content moderation. But they are not decentralised. They still rely on the architecture of Big Tech through the Apple App store or the cloud hosting service, Amazon Web Services (AWS).