“You know what hurts? That is the violence of the intolerant ideology of Islam, the fatwas and death threats by people from Pakistan, who are inspired by the false prophet Mohammed. We always choose freedom versus Islam. And you will never win.’ Is this message going too far? Twitter thought so and decided to reprimand the sender by temporarily suspending his account. That sender is Geert Wilders.
Twitter’s move is uncomfortable for several reasons. Anyone who takes the time to spend a day in the more obscure alleys of Twitter will soon come across messages that go far beyond what the politician wrote. It is not very clear at what point Wilders’ message in question goes too far. What chafes is the lack of transparency. Twitter would (according to Wilders himself) first have indicated that his tweet did not violate the house rules, only to come back to it later. The politician appealed his decision to the network. With success: Twitter apologized on Tuesday and Wilders got his account back.
Twitter users reacted differently to the collision. Nice that Elon Musk is finally taking over so that freedom of expression is respected, said one group. Others were just happy with Twitter’s intervention: finally freed from that terrible Wilders. Both attitudes are too short sighted. The radical form of freedom of speech that Musk advocates is a dead end. No medium will benefit if it is misused to spread hatred, (war) propaganda or disinformation.
At the same time, this cannot be a license to intervene apparently arbitrarily and not to be sufficiently accountable for it. Robbing a politician from his podium is quite something. The incident with Wilders shows above all how much we need clearer rules.
The good news is that those rules are coming. With the last week presented Digital Services Act (DSA) Europe is leading the way worldwide. Incidentally, that roaring text also sounds in the United States. ‘The DSA is going to redesign the online world’, wrote for example the authoritative American tech site the Verge. The big tech law is forcing tech companies to take more responsibility for what happens on their platforms and how they use their users’ data for targeted advertising. For the archaic looking laissez faireMusk’s approach will be out of place: the social platforms will have to act against the spread of disinformation and hatred.
At the same time, they will have to be very transparent about the decisions they take and set up sound complaint-handling systems. The often used argument ‘Twitter is a private company and can decide for itself what happens on its platform’ ends up on quicksand with the DSA. And that’s a good thing: the influence of TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and the likes has become far too great to deal with. ad hocpolicy.