A few weeks ago I wrote an article in which I defended the freedom of the American people to vote for Trump. The article was uploaded to all Politiquill accounts, as usual. A few days later, however, I was informed that the article was deleted by Facebook for reasons that were not sufficiently explained to me. This is the experience of other pages with political content, which testifies to a culture that is illiberal towards political content in general or towards specific views.
The official explanation the platform gave me was that the deletion was due to its spam policy. They define spam as “the deceptive use of links or content with the intent to deceive users into visiting or staying on a website.” Of course, it was just one article among many that have been uploaded without any problems. So it’s not the post that had a problem, but rather who it was about.
It seems that merely referencing Trump's name creates problems on these platforms. And there is a point to which it is understandable: there are many things that platforms need/should monitor during an election period and there are many bot accounts that are used by other countries to influence the election result in the US. However, the article was written after the election, which shows a bias against Trump. Personally, while I would never support Trump, for a number of reasons, I am firmly against censorship, which, in this case, seems to have a political connotation.
Let’s start with the most important thing: social media companies are private and therefore have every right to do whatever they want with the content on their platforms. They therefore have the right to have a political agenda and to promote content that is more favorable towards it, but also to delete content that contradicts it. Public opinion, of course, views censorship very unfavourably all throughout the political spectrum. That is why these companies always talk about protecting free speech, so as not to drive away users-customers who disagree with their agenda.
Censorship, then, must have a reasoning behind it: for my post it was spam, for someone else's it might have been disinformation, and for others it was hate speech. That way, these companies bend their promise of free speech, with convincing justification. Of course, in some cases, they go to extremes and the veil of "protection" of public opinion disappears. Irregardless of who Trump is, it is inconceivable that the profile of a former world leader was silenced on social media (Twitter, Facebook and Instagram). Therefore, there is a culture of censorship whose political connnotation is unimportant, because the most important thing is that censorship does exist on these platforms.
In conclusion, this story is important for all of us. The fact that this censorship is being applied somewhere else and to some others neither negates its undemocratic nature, nor the fact that it can also be done to us. In Greece, we are surrounded by directed information and we live with the belief that on social networks we will come into contact with the unaltered truth. That is a lie. Whether through censorship that is done with (or without) a political purpose, or through the promotion of material that is in agreement with our beliefs (echo chambers), social media is not an oasis in a world of disinformation: it is the same. Therefore, we must stay vigilant and know what is really happening around us. Let's hope that this will not be taken down...
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Ισχύουν όλα αυτά που είπες. Είναι πολύ κρίμα που οι πλατφόρμες αυτές περιορίζουν περιεχόμενο όταν δεν συμβαδίζει με την ατζέντα τους, αλλά ταυτόχρονα προωθούν περιεχόμενο πολύ χαμηλής ποιότητας, ή brain rot όπως λέμε και στο χωριό μου, για να εθίζουν και να κοιμίζουν τον κόσμο. Είναι σημαντικό για όλους από εμάς που θέλουμε να έχουμε μία παρουσία στα social να διαφοροποιούμαστε και να χτίσουμε κοινό σε όσες το δυνατόν περισσότερο. Επίσης, είναι κρίσιμη και η ανάπτυξη κοινού στο blog αλλά και σε μία λίστα email, που θα ανήκουν στον creator και όχι στις εταιρείες.