Posted on by Andy Yen @ protonmail.com
So many of today’s issues are viewed through a political lens, and that includes Big Tech deplatforming. But in reality, deplatforming is a problem worthy of deeper critical reflection as it touches on topics that are fundamental to democracy itself.
Once thought of as an untameable jungle of free speech, the internet is now a walled garden, increasingly monitored and controlled by a handful of unregulated monopolies. The gatekeepers to the walled garden, companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple, serve as the judge, jury, and executioner for the internet.
The latest display of their power came on late Jan. 29, when Google banned Element, a chat application that uses the federated Matrix chat protocol. Without warning, and through no fault of its own, Element was cut off from the Google Play Store, losing access to the 2.5 billion mobile devices that run on Android globally. Google claimed there was “abusive content somewhere on Matrix,” but this is like banning web browsers because there is abusive content somewhere on the internet.
After a public outcry, Google reversed its decision less than 48 hours later, saying the ban was made in error. Yet “errors” like this have become disturbingly common. There are hundreds of cases of these “inadvertent bans” by Big Tech. Google has also mistakenly blocked Reddit and podcast apps.
Regardless of your politics, all instances of deplatforming should be deeply disturbing, even when it might seem justified, like in the case of Parler and Trump. The problem is not that Trump (or any other individual) was deplatformed but that deplatforming is possible in the first place. It is a deep societal problem that the public town squares of the 21st century, which are essential for civil discourse, are entirely controlled by a small number of unelected tech oligarchs.
Read more at:
https://protonmail.com/blog/big-tech-deplatform-antitrust/#comment-24797
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