Rex Murphy: Don't even try to pretend there's such a thing as free speech anymore

The suspended Twitter account of U.S. President Donald Trump is seen on an iPhone screen on Jan. 8, 2021. PHOTO BY PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES

 

Dorsey and his plutocratic allies may have the ‘right’ to strip-mine all opposing views from their platforms, but they should not simultaneously be allowed to preach that they are speaking truth to power

A palace guard: Sire, the peasants are revolting.

The King: You can say that again.

It’s an old line, with many variations, and none the worse for wear. The best lines, for me, were in the newspaper comic The Wizard of Id, especially for the depiction of the king — always pictured squat, grumpy, and dragging a tattered robe full length behind him.

I cannot imagine why both the line and the king reminded me over the weekend of the Confucian overlord of Twitter, Jack Dorsey. For he is not squat nor does he drag a long robe behind him — at least not in public. On the «grumpy» side the jury, as the saying goes, is out.

However, he surely does have the manner of a king. Purely on his own say-so he cancelled the account of the president of the United States, just days before a new one is to be sworn in. Jack, as most twitterers refer to him, has had four years to do this, but he waited till the last moment, using the attack on the Capitol as his excuse, when the backlash would be minimal, with his many anti-Trump confrères ready to toast him at the next Silicon Valley jamboree, and of course so many in the madly partisan anti-Trump press ready to dish out screeds telling him how brave and wise he is.

But, for the nonce, we may take Trump out of the equation, for Mr. Jack has hit the «off» button on a myriad of accounts, big and small, in the past, and if reports over the weekend are anything to go by, has been having a purgative go on Twitter users.

So when Twitter bans a site in Red Deer, or takes down some vendor selling cakes, or some retired hobbyist with a taste for tweeting supportive Trump mini-missives, it’s speaking truth to power. Good one, Jack. This is the pyramid moaning over the power of the grain of sand.

Google, Facebook, Apple and Twitter — name a quartet of equal presence and power over communications anywhere in the world today. In this world, where to a degree not known in any other time in history, communication, the distribution of opinion and information is — outside of active armies — the greatest source of power that exists. And now all that power rests with a clutch of super-rich billionaires, with little restraint on how they exercise it.

They are plainly partisan. They ban in one direction only. Their influence is insidious in that it is so very difficult to quantify, but that it is great, no one denies. Whole political campaigns are built around internet and «social media» strategies. The entire protest movement these days gets its energy and even its tactical support from social media.

Source: Rex Murphy | NP