![]() ![]() ![]() The idea that social-media companies censor conservative voices is something Trump Jr. "My only goal and my myopic focus is making sure my father gets re-elected because I want to keep the winning continuing," he said. may run for president in 2024, though he told Axios in March that he has "no intention" of that. Republican strategists and pundits have suggested that Trump Jr. Trump Jr., who was called his father's "ambassador to the fringe" by Politico in 2018, is a popular conservative figure with over 5 million Twitter followers. Since 2016, he has amplified conspiracy theories related to Hillary Clinton, shootings, birtherism, and QAnon-supporting Twitter accounts. This instance is just the latest in Don Jr.'s long history of posting misinformation on social media. The suspension lasted 12 hours before the tweet was removed from the platform and replaced with a banner noting that the tweet violated the platform's COVID-19 misinformation policy. Twitter suspended Donald Trump Jr.'s account on July 27 after the president's son posted a viral video with COVID-19 misinformation in it. That examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. (The CDC subsequently removed the guidance.) Platforms may have become more comfortable stopping Trump, his family, and his allies from sharing harmful content, but as long as the White House can exert pressure on institutions like the CDC, social media may be partly in thrall to what the president considers to be the truth. Reuters revealed, though, that the CDC had crafted the guidance at the request of the White House’s coronavirus task force. Barrett points out that, for a while, Twitter did not consider the promotion of hydroxychloroquine as a coronavirus cure to be misinformation, partly because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a highly unusual guidance noting that there was anecdotal proof that the drug might work. That’s likely why Facebook and Twitter pounced so quickly on these coronavirus tweets. The Real Problem With Being a Dad As Old As Robert De Niro and Al PacinoĪs Bridget Barrett outlines in Slate, social media platforms tend to be willing to be arbiters of truth for “health, manipulated media, tragic events, and civic processes,” because diverting from the institutional consensus on these issues can cause demonstrable harms. Here’s How to Factor It Into Your Workouts.įlying Is About to Get Even More Frustrating-but There’s a Way Out Sports Scientists Missed Something Crucial for Years. Though CEO Mark Zuckerberg argued that platforms should not be the “arbiters of truth,” he apparently thought Facebook should serve that role for health information. For example, when Facebook tried to take a free speech stand in October by allowing politicians to disseminate misinformation in ads, it did carve out an exception by asserting that the platform would remove anti-vaccine ads, no matter who purchased them. While social media platforms have traditionally been permissive when it comes to hate speech and conspiracy theories, they’ve generally treated medical misinformation as a third-rail issue. for sharing a viral video of medical professionals discussing their views on Hydroxychloroquine is further proof that Big Tech is intent on killing free expression online and is another instance of them committing election interference to stifle Republican voices.” ![]() Andrew Surabian, a spokesperson for Trump Jr., said in a statement, “Twitter suspending Don Jr. Twitter took similar actions against Arizona GOP chairwoman Kelli Ward after she shared the same video.Īlready, Trump Jr.’s confederates have been using this latest incident to sharpen their allegations that tech companies are engaging in political censorship. One of those users was Donald Trump Jr., who tweeted out the video with the caption, “This is a much watch!!! So different from the narrative that everyone is running with.” As a consequence, Twitter blocked the president’s son tweeting, retweeting, following, or liking anything on the platform for 12 hours. A viral video, which touted the discredited coronavirus remedy hydroxychloroquine and claimed that people don’t need to wear masks, caught the attention of millions of users, leading the platforms to remove posts of the video and ban accounts. On Monday and Tuesday, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter tried to put out a misinformation wildfire. This article is part of the Free Speech Project, a collaboration between Future Tense and the Tech, Law, & Security Program at American University Washington College of Law that examines the ways technology is influencing how we think about speech. ![]()
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