When Twitter’s Jack Dorsey Dethrones President Donald Trump, You Know Who’s Really King

You may not be aware of this, but Donald Trump was impeached for a second time. More importantly, he was unceremoniously kicked off of Twitter and basically every other social media site, including Twitch and Pinterest. The funny thing is, I didn’t know Trump liked scrapbooking and gaming.

Jack Dorsey, the King of Twitter, wore a heavy crown. He soberly and judiciously contemplated the decision to ban the “bad orange man,” as if he were an ancient Greek scholar. Dorsey wrote about his thought process and decision in a series of self-serving tweets, “I do not celebrate or feel pride in our having to ban @realDonaldTrump from Twitter, or how we got here. After a clear warning we’d take this action, we made a decision with the best information we had based on threats to physical safety both on and off Twitter. Was this correct?”

Answering his own question, Dorsey tweeted, “I believe this was the right decision for Twitter. We faced an extraordinary and untenable circumstance, forcing us to focus all of our actions on public safety. Offline harm as a result of online speech is demonstrably real, and what drives our policy and enforcement above all.”

Dorsey continued, “That said, having to ban an account has real and significant ramifications. While there are clear and obvious exceptions, I feel a ban is a failure of ours ultimately to promote healthy conversation. And a time for us to reflect on our operations and the environment around us.”

“Having to take these actions fragment the public conversation. They divide us. They limit the potential for clarification, redemption, and learning. And sets a precedent I feel is dangerous: the power an individual or corporation has over a part of the global public conversation,” Dorsey added.

Dorsey succinctly and politely pointed out that if you don’t like my rules GTFO and tweeted, “The check and accountability on this power has always been the fact that a service like Twitter is one small part of the larger public conversation happening across the internet. If folks do not agree with our rules and enforcement, they can simply go to another internet service.”

The last part “they can simply go to another internet service” is disingenuous, coming from such a brilliant guy. This would be a reasonable thing to say if there were five other competitors to Twitter. If you don’t like Jack’s Twitter, you could easily go to the other versions that are equally as large, popular and offer a similar experience.

The thing is—there are no viable alternatives to Twitter. There was pipsqueak wannabe Parler that appealed to right-leaning conservatives. It was savagely shut down, in the wake of the chaos at the Capitol Building. All of the vendors and anyone having something to do with Parler ran away and terminated their relationships. So, the one possible—maybe 20 years from now—competitor does not exist.

Twitter is the modern-day public square. It’s the place to speak and be heard. If you’re kicked off of the platform, you won’t have a seat at the table and can’t be heard by a large audience. If you say, “Hey, if you don’t like it, build your own Twitter,” that doesn’t fly in this monopolistic system. How many real alternatives are there to Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter and Apple. You could argue there are some, but if you’re intellectually honest, you know the truth—a handful of near-monopolies control social media.

You may hate Trump, but you have to think past the guy. If the president can be banned, what chance does an ordinary person have to be heard if they raise an issue that deviates from the approved narrative of the social media gods?

Keep in mind, once you start silencing speech, it’s hard to stop. You may rejoice now when the people you dislike are shut down, but one day they will come for you and your team. That’s how it’s always worked in the past—or this time may be different. It could be free speech for one group, but none for others.

We enter a frightening Orwellian “Big Brother” world. If we don’t all pull together as a united country, as bad as things are, they could become even worse.