In the week after Donald Trump incited a deadly riot in Washington, D.C., Twitter banned more than 70,000 users including the former president himself. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images hide caption

In the week after Donald Trump incited a deadly riot in Washington, D.C., Twitter banned more than 70,000 users including the former president himself.

Removing disinformation and users who spread it can come at a cost for web hosts and social media platforms. But studies indicate "deplatforming" does stem the flow of disinformation.

Kate Starbird with the University of Washington explains why it's easier to see the effects of deplatforming in the short-term. And NPR's Shannon Bond looks at how one growing social media site is dealing with new attention and new challenges.

Additional reporting in this episode from NPR's Bobby Allyn, who's reported on the removal of Parler by Amazon Web Services.

In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.

Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

This episode was produced by Brianna Scott and Brent Baughman. It was edited by Lee Hale with help from Shannon Bond and Wynne Davis. Our executive producer is Cara Tallo.

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Does Deplatforming Work? Big Tech And The 'Censorship' Debate : Consider This from NPR - NPR

Contributing Author: Bryan Sullivan

Amazon, Apple and Google have all booted Parler from their platforms in a span of a little more than ... [+] 24 hours.

The shocking events of the Trump-fueled January 6, 2021 Capitol Riot had very visible and, in some cases, unexpected consequences. Within days of the violent Capitol insurrection, some social media and web service platforms suspended the accounts of Donald Trump and many of his supporters, who participated in inciting and organizing the Capitol breach. The sweeping suspensions included over 70,000 Twitter accounts, as well as the ban of free speech social media platform Parler by Amazon AMZN , Web Services, Apple AAPL , and Google GOOG . Right-wing megaphones are now ringing loudly, with cries of censorship and free speech. But have anyones rights been violated? The simple answer is no.

In some instances, the suspensions were a surprise - most social media platforms had bent over backwards NOT to remove Trump or his followers accounts and posts, slowly and reluctantly adopting content disclaimers and warnings. The reaction was far more expected, as many conservative voices began to rail against social media and tech giants. Among the claims: that this is a violation of free speech, and that a private company restricting access to its services is somehow either illegal or even unconstitutional. Neither of these is true.

The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America is one sentence and, fittingly, 45 words. It restricts only what Congress may do as far as making a law that infringes on freedom of speech. A private company cannot violate this amendment by disallowing access to its platform(s). More importantly, in the case of extremism, deplatforming has been shown to be an effective tool, including in a 2016 Brookings Institute study on ISIS. Notably, the vocal minority who are decrying their deplatforming had no problem with the deplatforming of ISIS, and likely wouldnt have an issue if Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other members of the Squad were deplatformed.

Users agree to (usually boilerplate) contracts when signing up for a social media, hosting, or other digital service and courts have held that these are enforceable. These Terms Of Use/Service can be many pages long, and almost always insulate the company from its users, including an explicit right to terminate services for conduct that the companies determine in their sole discretion is dangerous. Companies are well within their rights when enforcing these contracts, which are voluntarily entered into as a condition of use. In the case of both AWS and Twitter, the terms are clearly indicated and presented to the user to read and accept at the point of signup. As discussed in the Second Circuit decision in Specht, a decision written by now-Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, this distinction, having the terms clearly indicated, prominently featured, and affirmatively assented to, is the threshold for enforceability. AWS and Twitter certainly meet this requirement.

Twitter cited two inflammatory Trump tweets in its decision to remove his account. One of Twitters rules states You may not threaten violence against an individual or a group of people. We also prohibit the glorification of violence. Trump violated Twitters glorification of violence policy on January 8, 2021, two days after the Capitol was stormed: The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!! (Capitalization in original.) He later tweeted: To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.

In this photo illustration a notification from Twitter appears on tweet by U.S. President Donald ... [+] Trump that the social media platform says violated its policy on May 29, 2020 in San Anselmo, California.

While these tweets are relative tame compared to some of Trumps other far more boisterous tweets, Twitter still rightfully pointed to its Terms of Service and the global context in which these tweets were made. Twitter stated: Due to the ongoing tensions in the United States, and an uptick in the global conversation in regards to the people who violently stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, these two Tweets must be read in the context of broader events in the country and the ways in which the Presidents statements can be mobilized by different audiences, including to incite violence, as well as in the context of the pattern of behavior from this account in recent weeks. After assessing the language in these Tweets against our Glorification of Violence policy, we have determined that these Tweets are in violation of the Glorification of Violence Policy and the user @realDonaldTrump should be immediately permanently suspended from the service.

Parlers agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS) falls under two different agreements that are included in any new account signup, a Customer Agreement and an Acceptable Use Policy. In addition to the right to modify or change the terms (and services) with applicable notice, AWS Customer Agreement includes Section 4, on responsibilities of the account-holder (in this case Parler). Section 4.2 states You will ensure that Your Content and your and End Users use of Your Content or the Service Offerings will not violate any of the Policies or any applicable law. This question of violating any policies or applicable law is of the utmost importance in addressing Parlers dismissal from the hosting platform. Section 8.2(c) of the Customer Agreement goes on to say that the accepting party represents that none of Your Content or End Users use of Your Content or the Service Offerings will violate the Acceptable Use Policy.

That Acceptable Use Policy begins as follows:

No Illegal, Harmful, or Offensive Use or Content

You may not use, or encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to use, the Services or AWS Site for any illegal, harmful, fraudulent, infringing or offensive use, or to transmit, store, display, distribute or otherwise make available content that is illegal, harmful, fraudulent, infringing or offensive.

Certainly inciting, organizing, and then attempting to cover up an armed insurrection and forceful seizure of a government building, with the intent to detain, harass, and harm people must qualify as a violation of these terms. Moreover, it has been reported that various conversations on Parler involved people openly advocating the overthrow of President Biden and alluded to the assassination of Democratic politicians and Republican politicians who were not supportive enough of Trump.

Parlers lawsuit, which accuses AWS of acting based on political animus and violating antitrust law by cutting off their service, has been dismissed by Amazon in a statement as having no merit. "It is clear that there is significant content on Parler that encourages and incites violence against others, and that Parler is unable or unwilling to promptly identify and remove this content, which is a violation of our terms of service," the company said. As far as an antitrust claim, Parler could argue that the tech giants conspired, but the conspiracy would have to be aimed at overall market disruption, not targeting a single company.

It is understandable that Trump, Parler, et. al. would attempt to take legal routes, regardless of viability. Rejection sucks. But in this case it is legal and just.

Bryan Sullivan, Partner at Early Sullivan Wright Gizer & McRae, advises and represents his clients as a legal strategist in all their business affairs. He has significant experience on the litigation and appeals side of the practice, as well as with entertainment and intellectual property contracts, investment and financing agreements, and corporate structure documents on the dealmaking side.

Continued here:

Amazon And Twitter Deplatforming Parler And Trump; Is It Legal? - Forbes

The suspended Twitter account of U.S. President Donald Trump (Photo Illustration by Justin ... [+] Sullivan/Getty Images)

Shortly after the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, a number of social media companies, starting with Twitter, kicked President Donald Trump off of their platforms. Following Twitter, Facebook banned Trump from its platforms including Instagram, and then other social media companies, including YouTube followed suit. Within a few days, Trump found himself with no digital means of getting his word out.

Of course he wasnt muted as President he could call a press conference any time he wished, and he could be confident that the media would attend. But like many politicians who had learned about the power of unfiltered access to the internet, Trump had grown used to being able to have his say whenever he wanted it. Now, through the actions of a couple of large companies, he couldnt get his word out in the way he wished.

This raised questions in many circles at the time, and those questions havent gone away in the time since. What are the implications of silencing a sitting President? Is it legal or ethical to shut off access to those platforms?

Deplatforming

To answer that question, the Georgetown University Law Center held a panel discussion with four of its top legal experts to examine the question of deplatforming a sitting President.

The first question, whether its legal for the companies to remove a sitting President from a publicly available social media platform such as Twitter or Facebook, was answered at the beginning of the panel discussion by moderator Hillary Brill, acting director of Georgetown Laws Institute for Technology Law and Policy. Brill noted the outcry by many when it happened that it was somehow a limitation on free speech, noting that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution only protects free speech against limitations from the government, She noted that Twitter, Facebook and the other companies were private companies. There is no First Amendment issue regarding their actions to block the President from posting on their services.

"White-Gravenor Hall of the Georgetown University, Washington DC."

But that didnt mean there werent concerns. Professor Erin Carrol, who teaches on communications and technology and the press, said that she was concerned about the power of big tech and the lack of transparency. When you clear away disinformation, will there be truth behind it? she asked.

Unfortunately, there may not be. Carroll pointed that when Trump and his sympathizers were booted from the mainstream social media, they moved to other platforms, such as Telegram and Signal, which are message services where law enforcement has little access, and Gab, which makes little attempt to control the content of messages. Another social media site, Parler, initially benefitted as a sort of home away from home for refugees from Twitter, but sponsors didnt like its lack of moderation, and Amazon, which was hosting the service, refused to carry it. That effectively killed Parler.

Speech doesnt go away

Speech doesnt go away, Carroll said, it just finds other places.

According to Professor David Vladeck, the A.B. Chettle Chair in Civil Procedure at Georgetown Law and former head of the FTC Consumer Protection Bureau, much of the issue about removing someone such as Trump from a platform is rooted in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. He said that Section 230 enables a lot of the problems. It gives very broad immunity for publishing harmful or defamatory information. He said that while he doubts that Section 230, which protects internet providers from liability for material that others post on their sites, will be repealed, he thinks its likely to be changed. He noted that former President Trumps desire to repeal that section was based in his lack of understanding of what it did. In effect, he said, it would have allowed much greater control over what he posted, rather than less.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey testifies remotely during a hearing to discuss reforming Section 230 of the ... [+] Communications Decency Act (Photo by Greg Nash / POOL / AFP) (Photo by GREG NASH/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

That then raised the question of just how online content should be controlled. Professor Anupam Chander, who teaches communications and technology law, suggested that changing Section 230 to bring more content moderation might not be a good thing. It could lead to a Disneyfied universe, he said. That would be one in which no negative information exists.

Transparency needed

Instead, Carroll said that whats needed is for the industry to adopt greater transparency in how it makes decisions. She said that when new rules, such as a revision of Section 230 are done, it needs to be done by people who understand it, and who understand the way online services such as Twitter and Facebook work.

How do we have policies that promote facts versus propaganda, Carroll asked. She suggested that there needs to be some accountability into who makes decisions such as deplatforming a President.

So far, however, there seems to be no obvious answer to the question about when or if to remove such a platform from the President (or anyone else for that matter). But it appeared clear that the first step should be to update current legislation to at least reflect how these services work, and to make sure that theres transparency/

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Georgetown University Discusses The Great Deplatforming: Removing Trump From Social Media - Forbes

Though we are in the midst of a techno-reckoning that has been neatly packaged as the Great Deplatforming, the measures taken by individual companies following the attack on the Capitol have been varyingly radical. Applying their now-customary methods of content moderation to high-profile U.S. users, major social media companies like Facebook and Twitter took action against many on the right, including President Donald Trump, Representative Majorie Taylor Greene, and 70,000 accounts linked with QAnon for inciting violence and violating terms of service. More atypically, those operating the previously mostly invisible digital infrastructure that platforms like Facebook and Twitter are built on also displayed their power, taking down Parler, a free-speech alternative to Twitter. Apple, after issuing a short-fuse warning Parler couldnt possibly heed, removed Parler from its App Stores, Google removed the social network from its Google Play store, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) took down its service entirely. These emergency measures should not be taken lightly, but they have reportedly greatly reduced the spread of election disinformation online. While new technologies and technology companies have contributed to, perhaps even caused, some of the problems that lead to the events on Jan. 6, Pandoras box has been opened. Conspiracy theorists and disinformation remain in the world and online. At the end of the day, solving that problem will require more than just a technical solution.

The App Store and Google Play store are the gatekeepers to hundreds of millions of American smartphones. Despite the fact Parler had been previously warned of its bad behavior, the landscape shifted quickly after the events of Jan. 6. When Parler was taken off the App Store and Google Play store, would-be users were no longer able to download it onto their phones, and the company was restricted from pushing updates to their app. While the statistics for Parler are not public, 93 percent of video views on Twitter come from mobile. When Google and Apple remove an app from their respective stores they do not quite issue a platform like Parler a death sentence, but such actions are extremely damaging to a networks ability to grow and maintain a user base.

While Apple and Google can create serious or even fatal business problems, a web hosting company can spark an immediate crisis for a hosted service should it pull the plug. AWS provides computing and data storage for much of the internet; in 2019, the company maintained about 45 percent of the internets cloud infrastructure. When the company abruptly canceled Parlers contract after the Capitol attack, the website went down. But death on the internet is short lived. About a week after being taken down, Parler registered its domain with Epik, a company known for hosting far-right content, and announced, We will resolve any challenge before us and plan to welcome all of you back soon. It is possible that Parler will follow in the footsteps of the far-right social network Gab and host its own servers at an undisclosed data center. This lifeline is more expensive and more difficult to set up and maintain.

The internet has many entry points for the moderation of content. Anything providing for the movement of bits could theoretically become a selective barrier: With varying degrees of precision, a cloud provider, wifi router maker, ISP, or owner of a copper fiber wire can determine what passes across some portion of the internet, whether through literal technical intervention, or use of its broader leverage to compel an application provider, who relies upon it to function, to take action. But the deeper into the infrastructure one goes further removed from specific instances of communication between people and the specific apps theyre using to make it the rarer and more significant a deplatforming becomes. AWS justified the take down of Parler by noting that its acceptable use policy states that users may not host certain content, including content that violate[s] the rights of others, or that may be harmful to others. Nor may they use the service in a way that poses a security risk to the Service Offerings or any third party. These broad terms are seldom enforced outside of services engaged in outright fraud or hacking against their own users.

In its opposition to Parlers application for a temporary restraining order on the basis of breach of contract and antitrust claims, AWS noted that it reported to Parler dozens of examples of content that encouraged violence, including calls to hang public officials, kill Black and Jewish people, and shoot police officers in the head. Crucially, on Parler, hatred did not lurk on the fringes and calls to violence werent isolated voices lost in a sea of content. Instead, it was common to come across posts and comments calling for violence or civil war. And this dozens figure cited by AWS is only a fraction of a fraction of the content that incited violence.

As part of my research, I joined Parler in early November, right before the election. It was clear that the network facilitated and bred hatred and disinformation. Its ecosystem was immediately evident. A prominent figure, such as Republican Senator Ted Cruz or Fox News commentator Sean Hannity, would post a provocative article, usually with no direct incitement to violence. However, their post or Parley was meat for the piranhas. For instance, on both Parler and Twitter, Cruz posted an article from the Washington Examiner titled: Graphic warning: Reported Black Lives Matter counterprotesters sucker punch and stomp on man leaving DC Trump rally, commenting Why is the media ignoring this? Why are Dems silent? The response to the posts on the two platforms was drastically different.

On Twitter, many of the responses are critical of the article, noting that the video was edited to remove the beginning of the incident where the man who is eventually sucker punched shoves a man to the ground and kicks him as other Trump supporters shout kill them. Some even condone the sucker punch, with someone tweeting [] he got exactly what he deserved. Make better choices, then. Other commenters bash the media and liberals, tweeting They blame the victim and make up lies, or, Because theyve gotten away with it since it started. [] There are no politicians that will hold them accountable. A small minority foreshadow future violence: We are only going to put up with the crap for a little while [] We will stand and fight and have no mercy on them.

But, on Parler, the comments were far more extreme. The comments on the platform read: []We have the 2nd amendment on our side. Put a damn mask on to cover you[r] identi[ty] lock and load, and start cleaning the streets of this vial filth, and [If] I see any BLM or ANTIFA and I am going to pull my gun and start shooting! F[***] those a[******] communist f[****]!.

Even more dangerously, conservatives used Twitter and Parler differently. For instance, Sean Hannity posted on Parler that Antifa and Stalinist Sympathizers Disguised in Trump Gear Identified in DC Protests, a claim based on an article that is false. There is no such reciprocal post on his Twitter account. Politicians and commentators can additionally post different messages on different social media. As journalist Nick Martin noted, Representative Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) seemingly parleyed in support of the Jan. 6 raid of the Capitol while simultaneously tweeting a soft condemnation of it.

Thus, when it comes to political purpose, Parler served two main roles for those on the right: It was a community, a safe space to express and consume disinformation and radical viewpoints, and it allowed a forum to collect and re-interpret mainstream messages. To hear a dog whistle, you need a dogs ear, after all. Parler is not the first network to have served these functions. It wont be the last, either. In fact, even without the internet, Parler can be replaced.

Without Parler or Twitter, disinformation and hatred coded or overt will continue to be broadcast. The Trump White House and Fox News were, by some researchers findings, the largest spreaders of fake news. Even without Twitter or the White House, Trump will retain a spotlight, if only through right-wing new organizations. Plus, the U.S. Congress now has at least two members who have publicly supported QAnon, including Marjorie Greene Taylor, who in 2017 expressed her belief that having Trump as president provided the country with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take [the] global cabal of satan-worshipping pedophiles out. Hannity no longer has his Parler, but he still spewed disinformation about Antifa masquerading as pro-Trumpers at the Capitol on his cable show, which averages 4.5 million viewers a night.

And without Parler or Twitter, disinformation and hatred coded or overt from radical elites will continue to be noted and interpreted. As recently as this summer, QAnon Facebook groups had millions of members. When these groups were shut down, many moved to Parler, a platform that consisted of adults who consensually joined it, presumably to have discussions like the ones they were having and to consume content like what they were seeing. With Parler gone and Twitter and Facebook cracking down on conspiracy theories, millions have downloaded the encrypted messaging apps Signal and Telegram, which allows for groups of up to 200,000 people. This doesnt absolve Parler of responsibility, nor does it mean any action taken is helpless. But conspiracy theorists wont disappear; theyll migrate.

In the wake of this, the question arises: What is there to be done? Already, Big Tech has answered that question in its own way, with Apple, Google, and AWS taking aggressive measures to disable the platform. The moves they made were probably the right ones, at least in the short term, but problems remain. Millions of Americans believe the big lie that the 2020 election was stolen, a problem for which there is no technical solution. At a certain point, the question about what to do with Parler is only part of the broader one about how society should cope with the fact that segments of the population are living in different realities. And thats a far trickier problem one that, when the dust settles, and platforms are unable to reasonably cite the imminent threat of violence, we will have to solve.

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De-platforming Is a Fix, But Only a Short-Term One - Just Security

Online social media platforms accepted the role of moderating content from Congress in 1996. The Great Deplatforming that occurred after January 6 was less a silent coup than a good faith effort to purge online platforms of toxic content.

After former President Trump and many of the extremist followers he goaded were removed from a variety of online platformsmost notably Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, as well as Redditmany saw the subsequent silence as a welcome relief. But is that, as Luigi Zingales posits, an emotional reaction to a wrong that is being used to justify something that, at least in the long term, is much worse?

The Great Deplatforming (aka the Night of Short Fingers) has exposed the fact that a great deal of political discourse is occurring on private, for-profit internet platforms. Can these platforms be trusted as our guardians of free speech?

Recognizing that the Internet and other interactive computer services offer a forum for a true diversity of political discourse, unique opportunities for cultural development, and myriad avenues for intellectual activity, and with the intent of preserving the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet and other interactive computer services, unfettered by Federal or State regulation, Congress granted immunity in 1996 to interactive computer services (which are equivalent of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other online social media platforms) for any information published by the platforms users. Without this immunity, social media platforms would simply not exist. The potential liability for the larger platforms arising from the content of the millions upon millions of posts would be far too great a risk.

Congress also granted social media platforms immunity for any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected. This provision gives platforms an incentive to moderate content to weed out objectionable and illegal content. It can be a vile world out there, as evidenced by some of the hateful, harmful, and obscene comments that are posted in online forums. As noted by Cloudfare founder Matthew Prince, What we didnt anticipate, was that there are just truly awful human beings in the world. The situation has devolved to such an extent that experts now recognize that some human moderators suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder-like symptoms.

What do we do when the moderation we have encouraged social media platforms to conduct is applied to what some consider political speech? Many fear that platforms have difficulty differentiating between racist and/or extremist posts advocating violence against individuals or institutions based on political views, and simple political opinion. Indeed, Facebooks own executives acknowledge that the companys algorithm-generated recommendations were responsible for the growth of extremism on its platform. Concerns have also been raised that, with bad intent, some platforms refuse to make that differentiation to promote their executives own political agendas. Social media platforms have also been accused of moderating such political speech with a bias toward a particular party.

One approach is to amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the law that provides internet social media platforms their immunity. Republicans introduced five bills in the 20192020 Congressional session calling for amendments, as well as the full repeal, of Section 230. For example, Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo), claiming a lack of politically neutral content on social media platforms, sponsored the Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act. Under the bill as introduced, online social media platforms with 30 million or more active monthly users in the US (or 300 million or more active monthly users worldwide, or more than $500 million in global annual revenue) would have to obtain an immunity certification from the FTC every two years. The social media platform would be denied a certification and lose Section 230 immunity if it was determined to be moderating in a politically biased manner, which would include disproportionately restricting or promoting access to, or the availability of, information from a political party, political candidate, or political viewpoint. As one article noted, Hawley wants to stop internet censorship by censoring the internet, not to mention regulating political speech.

The Parler lawsuit amplifies a point made by one commentator: If you are so toxic that companies dont want to do business with you, thats on you. Not them.

In May 2020, President Trump signed an Executive Order claiming online platforms are invoking inconsistent, irrational, and groundless justifications to censor or otherwise restrict Americans speech, and stating that online platforms should lose their immunity, because rather than removing objectionable content in good faith as required under the law, they are engaging in deceptive actions by stifling viewpoints with which they disagree. The Executive Order called on the FCC to propose new regulations to clarify immunity under Section 230 and for the FTC to investigate online platforms for deceptive acts. Both Tim Wu and Hal Singer have provided cogent arguments on ProMarket as to why these are doomed approaches.

Online moderation is enforced through each platforms terms of service (TOS) that each user must agree to before being able to post to each respective platform. After the January 6 siege of the US Capital, the tech companies that deplatformed a large number of users, including former President Trump, and deleted tens of thousands of posts, did so on the basis of users violating their respective TOS. For example, Amazon Web Services (AWS) stopped hosting Parler because of Parlers alleged violations of the AWS TOS, which include an Acceptable Use Policy. Parlers subsequent lawsuit against AWS could have served as a bellwether case for the application of TOS to regulate speech. Unfortunately, the case Parler presented is appallingly weak (one lawyer referred to it as a lolsuit). For example, the AWSParler hosting agreement clearly gives AWS the power to immediately suspend and terminate a client that has violated AWSs Acceptable Use Policy.

In its swift denial of a preliminary injunction in this case, the court also noted the lack of any evidence that Twitter and AWS acted together either intentionally or at all to restrain Parlers business.

Parlers causes of action continue with a claim that Twitter was given preferential treatment by AWS because similar content appeared on Twitter, for which Twitters account was not suspended, while Parlers account was terminated. There are two issues with this assertion: First, we return to the role of moderation. Twitter actively (though, to some degree, imperfectly) moderates the content on its platform. In contrast, Parlers home page stated its users could [s]peak freely and express yourself openly, without fear of being deplatformed for your views.

Even more damaging to Parlers assertion is the fact that the evidence in the case demonstrates that AWS doesnt even host Twitter on its platform and therefore did not have any ability to suspend Twitters account even if it wanted to. But the Parler lawsuit amplifies a point made by one commentator: If you are so toxic that companies dont want to do business with you, thats on you. Not them (which would seem to apply to Zingaless justification for Simon & Schusters cancellation of Senator Josh Hawleys book deal).

In denying Parlers request for a preliminary injunction that would order AWS to restore service to Parler pending the full hearing, the court rejected any suggestion that the public interest favors requiring AWS to host the incendiary speech that the record shows some of Parlers users have engaged in. While this ruling does not end the case, it does substantiate the weakness of at least some of Parlers arguments.

The corporate owners of the social media platforms are permitted in our free enterprise system to set the terms under which content may be posted or removed from the platforms.

Although the AWS-Parler case before the court will ultimately resolve this particular dispute, the underlying issues will remain far from resolved regardless of the outcome of the case. The explosion of social media over the last ten years, and its supplanting of traditional media to a large degree, has created a new and untested playing field for public discourse. Some of the issues raised are similar in scope, if not size, to the issues our courts have dealt with in the past. The corporate owners of the social media platforms are permitted in our free enterprise system to set the terms under which content may be posted or removed from the platforms. As non-government actors, the First Amendments freedom of speech protections do not apply to the speech of a private company, a fact confirmed by the court in denying Parlers preliminary injunction. The audience of the social media platforms at issue, however, has grown to exponentially. While deplatforming will, at least temporarily, silence those voices promoting violence on specific platforms, the long-lasting implications are less clear.

While it is true that Trump lost the popular vote in the 2020 election by 7 million votes, the fact remains that 74.2 million Americans did cast their votes for Trump. Once Twitter permanently banned Trump from its platform, and many surmised that he would join the less restrictive Parler, nearly one million people downloaded the Parler app from Apple and Google before it was removed from those stores and Parler was suspended from AWS. Moving the conversation off of mainstream social media and driving it into less balanced platforms whose subscribers are more homogeneous, much to the dismay of even Parlers CEO, John Matze, encourages an echo chamber of ideas in smaller encrypted platforms that are more difficult to monitor and potentially amplifies the most angry and passionate voices.

If the touted exodus of conservatives from Twitter to other platforms that they view as more welcoming comes to fruition, could our public discourse become even more divided, with opposing viewpoints feeding upon their own biases rather than potentially being tempered by responses and dialogue with each other? An informed public exposed to conflicting opinions is the best chance for resolving political differences. These issues are important and warrant further discussion, but the current termination of Parler from the AWS platform does not seem to result in heightened concern that public discourse is truly harmed. There are alternatives to AWS, and in fact, Parler already seems to have found one that will bring it back. While there is a significant amount of talk of conservatives leaving Twitter, there seems to be little evidence that has happened on a large scale. For the moment, at least, the largest social media platforms seem to be retaining users on both sides of the political spectrum, which we believe is good for democracy.

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The Great Deplatforming: Can Digital Platforms Be Trusted As Guardians of Free Speech? - ProMarket