De-platformed : The slippery tech blocking slope
Looking at the future impact to technology companies and the slippery slope of blocking an elected representative and the worldwide impact
I hope you all are doing well and welcome (if you aren’t new then again) to Dozen Worthy Reads. A newsletter where I talk about the most interesting things about tech that I read the past couple of weeks or write about tech happenings. You can sign up here or just read on …
Given all the recent events (which even Wikipedia is having trouble naming, and that shows you how different people really are) and the deep link to tech, I thought it made sense to dig deeper into the impact of the recent Trump deplatforming. This amazing google doc covers all the companies that took an action (whether banning the account or removing infrastructure). For anyone who thinks that was the end, it isn’t, in fact it very much is the start. I don't want to go into if the decision was right or not (and folks who know me well enough my opinion on the matter is) but what I really would like to do but I’d like to start off with how this literally blew up TechMeme …at the same time almost!
The house of cards falls ...
The interesting thing here is not the news but the Penguin effect (which of course is also related to network effects) but at the end of it I think this is a classic penguin effect (description below), where no Social Media company wanted to take an action. Everyone had contemplated this for years and years but most of the Social Media CEO’s (Zuck included) spoke about differing viewpoints and that they should be allowed which of course was an excuse
The penguin problem is network-related issue where no one wants to be a first-mover and everyone is waiting for someone else to make the first move so that others can follow. This problem may lead to a slow adoption of a platform, or eventually, a failed platform.
Zuck on this issue ...
“We believe that the public has a right to the broadest possible access to political speech. But the current context is now fundamentally different, involving use of our platform to incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government.”
Think about it this way if you were one restaurant among a bunch of restaurants, everyone is basically waiting for everyone else to “kick someone out” for whatever the chosen reason. No one wants to be the first to do so..
This also ties into The bystander effect.
To understand this effect, we need to recognise that humans are ‘programmed’ to avoid potentially dangerous situations. When we observe unusual or potentially threatening behaviour in others, we exercise extreme caution. A strong automatic reluctance to intervene stems from a desire to avoid harm, and if more than one person is present there is also a tendency to rationalise the decision not to intervene by passing on responsibility to others.
This is the ‘bystander effect’, the phenomenon that when a person needs help or is in danger, most bystanders are reluctant to intervene and simply stand by without assisting.In fact, the more observers there are, the less the chance of any one person intervening because of “the diffusion of responsibility.” (i.e. ‘someone else will intervene’). At such critical situations, intervention is much more likely if only one person is present.
This is a great example of the bystander effect where no Tech CEO or in fact any other CEO wanted to take any action. Of course once someone takes action everyone else jumps on the bandwagon as witnessed by the Techmeme screenshots.
Platform Role
Platform companies create building blocks and as such they are just pipes to a great extent with of course the end “Application” where the user posts something offensive. In this case cloud companies declined to provide services to Parler which kinda announced that they’d never be back online (maybe just theater!) but the real question is should a platform company make that decision? Should they care what “posts” or “comments” that pass through their pipes are stored on their cloud storage? The answer should probably be NO! But if the companies at the top of the funnel are not doing their job, then it's up to someone else. Now I’m not a Parler user but effectively Amazon has literally nuked the app and to be fair all the users on were probably not bad eggs or inciting but then again its Amazon’s right not to do business with a company as there are other alternatives, which I absolutely agree with:
From TechDirt on content moderation:
It is possible to feel somewhat conflicted over this. I initially felt uncomfortable with Amazon removing Parler from AWS hosting, effectively shutting down the service, and with Apple removing its app from the app store, effectively barring it from iPhones. In both cases, those seemed like very big guns that weren't narrowly targeted. I was less concerned about Google's similar removal, because that didn't block Parler from Android phones, since you don't have to go through Google to get on an Android phone. But (and this is important) I think all three moves are clearly legal and reasonable steps for the companies to take. As I explored each issue, I kept coming back to a simple point: the problems Parler is currently facing are due to its own actions and the unwillingness of companies to associate with an operation so toxic. That's the free market.
If Parler's situation was caused by government pressure or because there were no other options for the company, then I would be a lot more concerned. But that does not appear to be the case.
….
But it's important to go back to first principles in thinking through these issues. It's quite clear that companies like Amazon, Apple, and Google have every legal right to remove services they don't want to associate with, and there are a ton of reasons why people and companies might not want to associate with Parler. But many people are concerned about the takedowns based on the idea that Parler might be "totally" deplatformed, and that one company saying "we don't want you here" could leave them with no other options. That's not so much a content moderation question, as a competition one.
If it's a competition question, then I don't see why Amazon's decision is really a problem either. AWS only has 32% marketshare. There are many other options out there -- including the Trump-friendly cloud services of Oracle, which promotes how easy it is to switch from AWS on its own website. Oracle's cloud already hosts Zoom (and now TikTok's US services). There's no reason they can't also host Parler.*
But, at least according to Parler, it has been having trouble finding an alternative that will host it. And on that front it's difficult to feel sympathy. Any business has to build relationships with other businesses to survive, and if no other businesses want to work with you, you might go out of business. Landlords might not want to rent to troublesome tenants. Fashion houses might choose not to buy from factories with exploitative labor practices. Businesses police each other's business practices all the time, and if you're so toxic that no one wants to touch you... at some point, maybe that's on you, Parler.
Platform Rules
How does any Platform decide their rules? How are laws made? Well they are made up as we go along. So similarly so do Social Media companies “make up” the rules as they go along. The problem is that we assume that all these companies have magical rules and that these magical rules will capture every single thing. I mean think about it if we had to only speak about things that EVERYBODY else in the world agreed on, then no one would be able to speak (another way of saying that all 7B people agree with what you just said and it could be the simplest thing!)
In the same vein, the problem with so much of the content moderation debate is that all sides assume these things. They assume that it's easy to set up rules and easy to enforce them which isn’t true at all. The only true thing about rules is that they have to change. I mean who’d have thought that in a modern superpower, followers of the current leader of the free world would have an insurrection? Who’d have predicted that in the beginning of Jan that Trump would be impeached by the House for incitement for insurrection”
Twitter and Facebook have had many years to decide on Platform rules and that timeline is going to become shorter and shorter as companies face more pressure, have more users, and have bad actors
In fact, Twitter doesn’t even want this responsibility of moderation. Twitter is experimenting with “open standards” (similar to the email or network standards, TCP/IP, SMTP, HTTP etc) where by the protocol is defined and this allows anyone to create a new product (think a new mail client) where anyone can access those tweets. Companies like Twitter can than selectively enable who gets to “play” and who gets “benched”
From Twitter's decentralized future:
What is bluesky?
Just as Bitcoin lacks a central bank to control it, a decentralized social network protocol operates without central governance, meaning Twitter would only control its own app built on bluesky, not other applications on the protocol. The open and independent system would allow applications to see, search and interact with content across the entire standard. Twitter hopes that the project can go far beyond what the existing Twitter API offers, enabling developers to create applications with different interfaces or methods of algorithmic curation, potentially paying entities across the protocol like Twitter for plug-and-play access to different moderation tools or identity networks.
A widely adopted, decentralized protocol is an opportunity for social networks to “pass the buck” on moderation responsibilities to a broader network, one person involved with the early stages of bluesky suggests, allowing individual applications on the protocol to decide which accounts and networks its users are blocked from accessing.
Social platforms like Parler or Gab could theoretically rebuild their networks on bluesky, benefitting from its stability and the network effects of an open protocol. Researchers involved are also clear that such a system would also provide a meaningful measure against government censorship and protect the speech of marginalized groups across the globe.
Bluesky’s current scope is firmly in the research phase, people involved tell TechCrunch, with about 40-50 active members from different factions of the decentralized tech community surveying the software landscape and putting together proposals for what the protocol should ultimately look like. Twitter has told early members that it hopes to hire a project manager in the coming weeks to build out an independent team that will start crafting the protocol itself.
Did anything really change?
The act of banning someone removes them from that platform (and that person's followers). In this case by banning Trump his followers you never really changed that person or their belief/values/rhetoric. You only pushed them out to Parler, Gab, Telegram, Signal. Sure enough there are not enough people on those platforms and sure enough Parler was booted from iOS, Android, and Amazon but they’ll be back. One of the core tenets to think about when building products is “Focus on what won’t change rather than what will”. In this case the people won’t change, the apps will! For the current moment we can make peace with the fact that misinformation went down by 73% after Trump was deplatformed (from a Zignal report)
There are products such as MeWe and Clouthub already filling in this gap right now. All this will do is make the echo chamber SO LOUD that hearing any other point of view is just practically impossible. At a time when we need more commonalities which is what makes America a truly great place we are making it worse!
Furthermore most of these companies don’t have sufficient moderation and that will only make things worse. I mean how did we even get here? Tech is partly to blame but cannot claim all responsibility
In my opinion CDA Section 230 is so rusty and abused that what Parler contributed to should be illegal.
Section 230 says that "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider" (47 U.S.C. § 230). In other words, online intermediaries that host or republish speech are protected against a range of laws that might otherwise be used to hold them legally responsible for what others say and do. The protected intermediaries include not only regular Internet Service Providers (ISPs), but also a range of "interactive computer service providers," including basically any online service that publishes third-party content. Though there are important exceptions for certain criminal and intellectual property-based claims, CDA 230 creates a broad protection that has allowed innovation and free speech online to flourish.
But its not and it wont be. Not until CDA 230 changes and today there is no way to stop someone from doing what they did! Here is a screenshot from MeWe from yesterday (and I subsequently deleted the app!)
Parler at the top of the charts pre-booting!
Political climate and sentiment
This is so obvious isn’t it? Again, to be clear, I am not saying that incitement was a small thing but it was pretty much an opportune moment for Social Media to boot Trump off. The real question I have is if the political winds were still in favor of Trump would the Social Media companies have done that? What happens in the future? Four years of a Biden administration is both long and short. What happens if a Republican government comes back? Would they be vindictive. Hell, four years is almost half a lifetime for a technology company. In some ways this seems short sighted.
Who protects the rest of the world?
The reason I also make the above statement is also the fact that Myanmar had a social media fueled genocide. What happened then? Who was blocked? How long did it take? The mere fact that this hit closer to home was a good reason to take action. After all, this affects the US! This is shocking! This is in MY backyard!
Lawmakers step in
This Twitter thread (which I got from a Stratechery article) lays out what all of us realize … That Social Media is not run by elected officials. Corporate America filled in a void. Why did this not happen before? Because there was no bullhorn and media, while human beings, either right or left wing, tempered their opinions.
This affects not only the United States but also every other single country where Faebook has a large user base and in the same vein Germany and France completely dissented with the actions taken by Social Media companies. German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the issue:
“The chancellor sees the complete closing down of the account of an elected president as problematic,” Steffen Seibert, her chief spokesman, said at a regular news conference in Berlin. Rights like the freedom of speech “can be interfered with, but by law and within the framework defined by the legislature — not according to a corporate decision.”
This opinion was also echoed by the French Govt. Junior Minister for European Union Affairs Clement Beaune said
“This should be decided by citizens, not by a CEO”
And BJP leaders (India’s ruling party) also expressed concerns. Tejaswi Surya said :
“If they can do this to the President of the US, they can do this to anyone. Sooner India reviews intermediaries’ regulations, better for our democracy”
So what does every other country do?
Well, they have the nuke option to completely block all these Social media companies, either temporarily or permanently but that would benefit no one, at least in the short run they’d lose their carefully curated online personalities and followers.
What's Next?
The impact of this as I started is going to reverberate far into the future, however I think there will be a few key things that will happen
Platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Discord, Youtube and more will block more users that uh well, cause “trouble”. The definition of trouble would change
All non US (and probably even US) will make specific rules on who can and cannot be banned as they are technically a matter of public record and in fact even a tweet should not be deleted. This is based on Congress passing the Presidential Records Act in 1978 out of concern that President Richard Nixon would destroy the tapes that ultimately led to his resignation. The law designated records of the president and executive office as public property and established guidelines for their preservation. Expect to see more of this from all countries
Newer Social Media sites start using subs (or a mix of subs and ads at least) to make $
Protocol standards start to get built around this and in the meantime companies such as Facebook continue to grow their moderation teams (and leverage AI to root out a variety of ills -- disinformation, toxicity, racism etc)
Thank you for reading. Stay safe, be well! If you enjoyed reading this please consider sharing with a friend or two (or sign up here if you came across this or were forwarded this)
If you’d like to dig in further the below articles will give you more context as well!
Articles on the issue
Not Easy, Not Unreasonable, Not Censorship: The Decision To Ban Trump From Twitter
Poland plans to make censoring of social media accounts illegal
Twitter bans Trump’s account, citing risk of further violence
All the platforms that have banned or restricted Trump so far
Google suspends Parler from app store after deadly U.S. Capitol violence
YouTube says it will punish Trump and other channels that continue to spread election lies
The other reason Facebook silenced Trump? Republicans just lost their power.
Google suspends Parler from app store after deadly U.S. Capitol violence
A Few More Thoughts On The Total Deplatforming Of Parler & Infrastructure Content Moderation
The Moderation War Is Coming to Spotify, Substack, and Clubhouse
As a mob attacked the Capitol, Wikipedia struggled to find the right words