World Leaders Denounce Big Tech Censorship of President Donald Trump
Political elites worldwide have criticized big tech companies for banning President Donald Trump from their social media platforms.
At present, the president has been
banned from Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Snapchat, Reddit, and Instagram.
Twitter permanently removed Trump’s account, saying that his recent posts were in violation of the “Glorification of Violence Policy.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel called Twitter’s ban on Trump “
problematic,” and said that freedom of opinion is an essential right of “elementary significance,” her spokesperson, Steffen Siebert, said on Jan 11.
“This fundamental right can be intervened in, but according to the law and within the framework defined by legislators—not according to a decision by the management of social media platforms,” Siebert said.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel answers questions about the German government’s policy at the parliament Bundestag, in Berlin, Germany, on Dec. 16, 2020 (Markus Schreiber/AP Photo).
“Seen from this angle, the chancellor considers it problematic that the accounts of the U.S. president have now been permanently blocked,” he said.
Members of the French government agreed.
Clement Beaune, the junior minister for European Union affairs, said he was “shocked” a private company made this kind of decision.
“This should be decided by citizens, not by a CEO,” he told
Bloomberg TV on Monday. “There needs to be public regulation of big online platforms.”
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire also condemned the move and said that tech giants were part of a digital oligarchy that was a threat to democracy.
Manfred Weber, the leader of the European People’s Party—a centre-right political party—echoed Beaune and called for Big Tech firms to be regulated.
“We cannot leave it to American Big Tech to decide how we can or cannot discuss online. Today’s mechanisms destroy the compromise searching and consensus-building that are crucial in free and democratic societies. We need a stricter regulatory approach,” he wrote on Twitter on Jan. 11.
We cannot leave it to American Big Tech to decide how we can or cannot discuss online. Todays mechanisms destroy the compromise searching and consensus building that are crucial in free and democratic societies. We need a stricter regulatory approach.
#CapitolHill @POLITICOEurope https://t.co/ouJwTCT5B1
— Manfred Weber (@ManfredWeber)
January 11, 2021
Meanwhile, Norway’s left-wing Labor Party leader Jonas Gahr Støre said that Big Tech censorship threatens political freedom around the world.
He said Twitter needs to apply the same standard globally that it did to Trump.
“This is a line where freedom of expression is also at stake,” said
Støre. “If Twitter starts with this sort of thing, it means that they have to go around the world and look at other people completely astray, and shut them out.”
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