It feels like a lifetime ago now but itâs actually less than a week since Twitter called time on US President Donald Trump. And, even this soon afterwards, itâs interesting to note the onward chain reaction of one decision by an influential but still private US-based tech company.
First, the big players.Â
Google,Â
Apple andÂ
Amazon made moves to prevent the distribution of Parler, where many of Trumpâs supporters had already congregated and were heading following his suspension.Â
YouTubeÂ
removed content on Trumpâs channel and suspended him from uploading content for a minimum of seven days.Â
Airbnb, who rarely have to limit users, started reviewing reservations in Washington and
banned users that were involved in the attack on the Capitol whileÂ
Twitter followed up the ban by making
changes to its civic integrity rules and launching a new strikes policy (three for a 12-hour lock, four strikes for a one week ban, five for a permanent ban).
Jay Pinho, who writes the Networked newsletter,
wrote that the events of last week mean weâre all looking at a âlarger, more chaotic, but still, very much ad-hoc amalgamation of disparate content policies forged in the wake of increasingly horrifying behaviour.â Thatâs certainly what it feels like to me.
But at least it will make writing, and hopefully reading, EiM very interesting over the coming months.