Why All Countries Should Ban Facebook and Twitter

Before it’s too late

Four countries have banned Facebook.

I wish it was more.

Social media networks like Facebook and Twitter have unprecedented influence, control, and power over most of the developing world.

And instead of remaining neutral marketplaces to exchange ideas, these companies strongarm their own Western values onto their platforms.

“They’re taking on political stances and standing up for whatever they believe is right in their world according to Western values or whatever the values of the CEO happen to be at the time,” said former Facebook Tech Lead Patrick Shyu.

Shyu added sardonically that bans are based on “whatever the CEO had for lunch or however they’re feeling.”

It’s not even far from the truth. So let’s talk about why this problem is going to get worse.

Choose: Conformity or Censorship

Social media isn’t a place to exchange ideas. It’s a place to exchange certain kinds of ideas.

Let’s look at the evidence:

• Twitter and Facebook censored the COVID-19 lab leak theory up until recently. Both networks repealed that decision when it became comfortable to discuss this possibility. Too little too late.
• Twitter and Facebook censored a New York Post article discussing Hunter Biden’s potential email scandal. This was done two weeks before the presidential election. Furthermore, the Post’s follow-up article was banned on social media as well.
• Facebook and Twitter have both banned far-right accounts and left-wing voices. Social media thinks you’re too stupid to handle ‘dangerous’ ideas. Twitter has become an amusement park where they maximize safety and control. Are you having fun yet?!

Judge, Jury, Executioner

Social media companies are judge, jury and executioner.

If you aren’t subscribed to the ultra-liberal Silicon Valley way of thinking then you aren’t welcomed into this new digital society. As the New York Times put it in an article last year, “Silicon Valley has long leaned blue.”

Indie journalist Tim Pool pointed this out to Jack Dorsey and one of his network security heads in a JRE podcast:

Tim Pool: “Your platform restricts speech.”

Vijaya Gadde [Twitter Trust & Safety Lead]: “Our platform promotes speech unless people violate our rules.”

Tim Pool: “If they violate your rules in a specific direction… You have a pattern and practice of only banning one faction of people. Reulet recently published an article where they looked at 22 high profile bannings from 2015 and found 21 of them were on one side of the cultural debate.”

This abuse of power isn’t just limited to our country either.

WhatsApp plays a leading role in elections in India. And in 2016 it was determined by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that social media was used to influence elections in at least 18 countries.

How does Facebook or Twitter decide on who to ban? They have no clue. Their decisions are arbitrary, inconsistent, and worst of all, absolute.

Facebook’s Genocide

All of this manipulation hit a breakpoint in 2018 when the Myanmar government incited genocide against its own people.

The military made a series of Facebook posts pitting the Muslim and Buddhist populations against each other. It worked.

In the months after, more than 24,000 people were killed, 18,000 Rohingya Muslim women were raped and 730 children were murdered in the first month of the massacre.

Facebook actually admitted it had failed to prevent its platform from being used to “incite offline violence” in Myanmar. They were complicit in genocide.

Sure, the Silicon Valley company can swiftly remove a series of MAGA-hat-wearing shitposters. But when it came to genocide they didn’t step up to the plate.

We’re All F*cked, Probably

Ironically, Americans love to mock censorship in China.

You can’t find the Tiananmen Square massacre on the internet in China; Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are all banned there; and the Chinese Communist Party controls all of the information.

Politics aside, however, we have our own version of the Chinese Communist Party in America. It’s called big tech.

You can’t say certain things online in America, information is siloed, and anyone who doesn’t follow the rules is removed from the digital society.

Choose: Conformity or censorship.

Slowly big tech will get you to believe 2+2=5 or that you can only have one set of values to exist in society. They’ll increase the scope of their bans and soon all language will be regulated.

We’re all fucked, probably.

Our Only Solution

What these social media companies should have done is leave their networks alone as much as possible. Let all the information flush down the pipes. The only regulation necessary should have been what falls under the first amendment.

Speech that incites imminent lawless action, violence, and true threats should be banned. But that’s it.

Trust that people are smart enough to encounter these so-called ‘dangerous’ ideas.

We don’t need spoiled, rich Silicon Valley hipsters regulating the world.

I can’t think of anyone worse to give that much power to.

The Solution

Decentralized systems like blockchain technology are definitely one solution to fixing this problem.

It makes me glad, however, that Jack Dorsey was booed at the 2021 Bitcoin Conference.

Dorsey is no ally of decentralization.

He’s a modern dictator.

Another solution to this problem is that other countries begin to develop their own social media networks. China, for instance, houses WeChat (WhatsApp competitor), Alibaba (Amazon competitor) and Baidu (Google competitor).

In other words, the future of the world is either highly centralized or radically decentralized thanks to blockchain and web 3.0. And in all honesty, I’m not sure which is going to win out in the end.

Thanks for reading.

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