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January 8, 2021
Twitter said it would only allow President Trump to violate its rules one more time, and on Friday decided he'd done so.
From the Twitter blog: "After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them — specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter — we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence."
Of course, Trump still has access to @potus and various other White House-associated accounts until Inauguration Day, but Twitter's ban cuts off one of his largest pulpits and most important platforms right before he leaves office.
The ban seemed practically inevitable after Wednesday, when Twitter forced Trump to remove three tweets from his account and banned him for at least 12 hours. When Trump returned to the platform, he posted one conciliatory video before returning to something like his old ways.
He tweeted: "The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!" (We would embed the tweet, but of course, we can't anymore.)
That tweet, and the one that followed, announcing Trump wouldn't be going to the Biden inauguration on Jan. 20, were evidently the last straw. "[T]hese two Tweets must be read in the context of broader events in the country and the ways in which the President's statements can be mobilized by different audiences," Twitter's policy enforcement analysis said, "including to incite violence, as well as in the context of the pattern of behavior from this account in recent weeks.
In a vacuum, it seems, those tweets didn't violate any of Twitter's policies. But given the recent history with @realdonaldtrump and the framework by which his tweets were now being reviewed, they were deemed "highly likely to encourage and inspire people to replicate the criminal acts that took place at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021." Twitter also seems to have had some evidence that that was the case. The company said "there are multiple indicators that they are being received and understood as encouragement to do so." Indeed, Twitter and other platforms have already been used to plan further attacks around the country.
Trump did try to get around the ban, using the @POTUS account to tweet his anger about Twitter's decision. His tweetstorm ended with a "...STAY TUNED!" that surely would have been cause for Trump to be banned, if he hadn't already been banned. Twitter immediately deleted those posts as well. Soon after, he tried the same with the @TeamTrump account, which met the same fate. Then he tried other accounts. Same fate
So now the question remains: Where does Trump go? He's locked out of posting on Facebook, at least for the next two weeks. All over the internet, Trump-related communities including The Donald on Discord and the_donald on Reddit have been shut down. There's been a massive shift in the tech industry's thinking, caused both by a changing political climate and the disturbing images from the riots at the Capitol this week.
For Trump, Parler would seem the obvious choice, but Parler's days may be numbered: The company reportedly received a letter from Apple demanding that it create a plan for content moderation within the next 24 hours, BuzzFeed reported, or it would be removed from the App Store. The tech companies clearly feel more empowered than ever to remove the kind of content they've been reluctant to touch for the last several years, and it could leave Trump without many ways to reach a massive audience.
Twitter, meanwhile, has to decide what kind of precedent this will set. The company already permanently suspended Sidney Powell and Mike Flynn, two other right-wing users, for spreading QAnon-related account. Twitter cited its policy against Coordinated Harmful Activity in announcing the bans. Of course, those are hardly the only people on Twitter still talking about QAnon. And there are politicians around the world using Twitter to incite violence and rile up their supporters in ways similar to President Trump. Twitter may not have changed its rules to ban Trump, but it certainly changed the way it enforced them. Now it has to decide how far that goes.
David Pierce
David Pierce ( @pierce) is Protocol's editor at large. Prior to joining Protocol, he was a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, a senior writer with Wired, and deputy editor at The Verge. He owns all the phones.
Politics
What tech policy could look like in Biden’s first 100 days
More antitrust laws and bridging the digital divide should be top of mind for the incoming administration.
Antitrust enforcement is one of the big lessons going into the Biden administration.
Photo: Alex Edelman/Getty Images
January 19, 2021
Penelope Blackwell is a reporting fellow at Protocol covering ed-tech, where she reports on the decisions leading up toward the advances of remote learning. Previously, she interned at The Baltimore Sun covering emerging news and produced content for Carnegie-Knight’s News21 documenting hate and bias incidents in the U.S. She is also a recent graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and Morgan State University.
January 19, 2021
Although it is too soon to tell with certainty how President-elect Joe Biden will address the questions surrounding tech policy, it is clear that his inaugural transition on Wednesday will affect the world of tech.
Protocol reporters Issie Lapowsky and Emily Birnbaum, virtually met up with panelists Tuesday to discuss what tech policy and regulation could look like in Biden's first 100 days in office — as well as the next four years.
<p>According to Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, more antitrust laws that promote competition and protect consumers from anticompetitive mergers and business practices should be implemented. But she also mentioned that much of the backlash on this issue stems from users who "resist government antitrust intervention."</p><p>"What we are seeing is, on the one hand, imminently appropriate actions being taken by companies to stop violence. And on the other, we're seeing really important questions surface about the fact that those decisions are lying in the hands of private companies with enormous market power," Slaughter said.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>As the FTC seeks to enforce these laws that address outsized market share, investigations are looming. Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, who is leading a suit of 38 AGs against Google for anticompetitive conduct, said he thinks the depth of Google's totality needs to be examined.</p><p> "We would like to see the DOJ [Department of Justice] broaden their case against Google. We believe that the breadth of Google's anticompetitive conduct needs to be examined because it hurts consumers by limiting choice and hurts innovation," Weiser said, referring to the <a href="https://www.protocol.com/google-justice-department-lawsuit-antitrust" target="_self"><u>DOJ's antitrust suits</u></a> against the company.</p><p>Antitrust enforcement is the big lesson going into the Biden administration, Weiser said. And bridging the digital divide should also be top of mind, said the Brookings Institution Director for the Center of Technology Innovation Nicol Turner Lee.</p><p>"It's not just about tech for certain functions, it's about tech for all of reality. Not just in terms of getting kids online, but the ability to have an environment where people are being trained on how to build the infrastructure and how to use the technology," Lee said. "With over 100,000 business permanently closed as a result of the pandemic, we are going to be trusting tech to be the new economic driver, which means we need more multi-stakeholder conversations."</p>
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Penelope Blackwell is a reporting fellow at Protocol covering ed-tech, where she reports on the decisions leading up toward the advances of remote learning. Previously, she interned at The Baltimore Sun covering emerging news and produced content for Carnegie-Knight’s News21 documenting hate and bias incidents in the U.S. She is also a recent graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and Morgan State University.
Politics
'Woke tech' and 'the new slave power': Conservatives gather for Vegas summit
An agenda for the event, hosted by the Claremont Institute, listed speakers including U.S. CTO Michael Kratsios and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
The so-called "Digital Statecraft Summit" was organized by the Claremont Institute. The speakers include U.S. CTO Michael Kratsios and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, as well as a who's-who of far-right provocateurs.
Photo: David Vives/Unsplash
January 16, 2021
Emily Birnbaum ( @birnbaum_e) is a tech policy reporter with Protocol. Her coverage focuses on the U.S. government's attempts to regulate one of the most powerful industries in the world, with a focus on antitrust, privacy and politics. Previously, she worked as a tech policy reporter with The Hill after spending several months as a breaking news reporter. She is a Bethesda, Maryland native and proud Kenyon College alumna.
Issie Lapowsky (@issielapowsky) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering the intersection of technology, politics, and national affairs. Previously, she was a senior writer at Wired, where she covered the 2016 election and the Facebook beat in its aftermath. Prior to that, Issie worked as a staff writer for Inc. magazine, writing about small business and entrepreneurship. She has also worked as an on-air contributor for CBS News and taught a graduate-level course at New York University’s Center for Publishing on how tech giants have affected publishing. Email Issie.
January 16, 2021
Conservative investors, political operatives, right-wing writers and Trump administration officials are quietly meeting in Las Vegas this weekend to discuss topics including China, "woke tech" and "the new slave power," according to four people who were invited to attend or speak at the event as well as a copy of the agenda obtained by Protocol.
The so-called "Digital Statecraft Summit" was organized by the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank that says its mission is to "restore the principles of the American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life." A list of speakers for the event includes a combination of past and current government officials as well as a who's who of far-right provocateurs. One speaker, conservative legal scholar John Eastman, rallied the president's supporters at a White House event before the Capitol Hill riot earlier this month. Some others have been associated with racist ideologies.
<p>Government officials listed on the agenda include United States Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is leading a multi-state antitrust lawsuit against Google and is currently <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2020/11/17/texas-ken-paxton-fbi/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">under federal investigation</a>. A source familiar with Kratsios' planned remarks said he intended to speak about artificial intelligence and China. Also on the agenda: Josh Steinman, the White House National Security Council's recently departed senior director for cyber, who now describes himself as the founder of a "stealth startup" on LinkedIn. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>Newly confirmed FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington was also listed on the agenda, but he told Protocol he did not end up attending. "Despite initial plans to do so, I did not attend or otherwise participate in the Claremont event this weekend, and I did not prepare or submit remarks," Simington said. </p><p>The event is happening as Las Vegas <a href="https://lasvegassun.com/news/2021/jan/13/las-vegas-hospital-capacity-crisis-covid-19-soar/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">experiences a spike in COVID cases</a>.</p><p>Claremont Institute President Ryan Williams refused to answer Protocol's questions about "the new slave power" panel, what COVID-19 safety protocols are in place during the in-person gathering or the range of speaker backgrounds on the agenda.</p><p>"The Claremont Institute has been a leading voice against political censorship by the Big Tech oligarchs, and we have no interest in commenting on an obvious hatchet job by a publication so clearly beholden to the pieties of Silicon Valley," Williams said in an email to Protocol. "Your questions are riddled with false premises, but we welcome the fire."</p><p>The list of speakers included several people with controversial pedigrees. One speaker, blogger Curtis Yarvin, otherwise known as Mencius Moldbug, has written that there is "no question that biological differences made Africans better slaves than indigenous Americans" because they were less susceptible to tropical diseases. He also once <a href="https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2007/11/why-i-am-not-white-nationalist/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">wrote</a> in a blog post, "although I am not a white nationalist, I am not exactly allergic to the stuff." Yarvin was listed to speak on the panel about "the new slave power," along with Michael Anton, former deputy national security adviser under President Trump, who recently wrote an essay in Claremont's The American Mind publication suggesting that Democrats were "openly talking about staging a coup." </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>Another speaker on the agenda, Adam Candeub, is the current acting head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. Previously, as a lawyer, he <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/05/trumps-commerce-department-just-hired-a-lawyer-with-ties-to-white-nationalists/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">represented</a> white nationalist Jared Taylor in a lawsuit against Twitter. Eastman recently retired from his position as a law professor at Chapman University amid an <a href="https://www.ocregister.com/2021/01/13/controversial-law-professor-john-eastman-retires-from-chapman-university/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">uproar</a> over a speech he gave alleging election fraud at the pro-Trump rally preceding the Capitol attack on Jan. 6.</p><p>One of the final speakers listed on the agenda, Soylent founder Rob Rhinehart, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/28/technology/politics-tech-start-ups-culture-war.html?" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">made waves earlier this summer</a> with a 5,300-word blog post about why he <a href="https://www.robrhinehart.com/why-i-am-voting-for-kanye-west/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">supported hip-hop artist Kanye West</a> for president. "I am so sick of politics. Politics are suddenly everywhere," he wrote, before jumping into a lengthy post about Joe Biden, why the media is "actually evil" and the importance of biofuels. </p><p>One attendee said they had not been given any information on who would be speaking as of midday Friday, hours before the event was set to kick off, and Claremont Institute did not appear to be promoting the event on social media Saturday as the first panels began. "Maybe they're trying to keep it under wraps," the attendee said. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>The attendee said they understood that the tenor of the weekend would be "very critical of tech, very pro some type of intervention."</p><p>"There's going to be some discrepancy and debate around what intervention looks like," the attendee said.</p><p>The other topics on the agenda include a panel on "restoring law" and a fireside chat titled, "What happened?" The summit takes place 10 days after a violent mob of Trump supporters breached the Capitol Hill complex, resulting in five deaths and forcing a reckoning within the Republican Party over its alignment with Trump and right-wing conspiracy theorists.</p>
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Emily Birnbaum ( @birnbaum_e) is a tech policy reporter with Protocol. Her coverage focuses on the U.S. government's attempts to regulate one of the most powerful industries in the world, with a focus on antitrust, privacy and politics. Previously, she worked as a tech policy reporter with The Hill after spending several months as a breaking news reporter. She is a Bethesda, Maryland native and proud Kenyon College alumna.
Doxxing insurrectionists: Capitol riot divides online extremism researchers
The uprising has sparked a tense debate about the right way to stitch together the digital scraps of someone's life to publicly accuse them of committing a crime.
Rioters scale the U.S. Capitol walls during the insurrection.
Photo: Blink O'faneye/Flickr
January 16, 2021
Issie Lapowsky (@issielapowsky) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering the intersection of technology, politics, and national affairs. Previously, she was a senior writer at Wired, where she covered the 2016 election and the Facebook beat in its aftermath. Prior to that, Issie worked as a staff writer for Inc. magazine, writing about small business and entrepreneurship. She has also worked as an on-air contributor for CBS News and taught a graduate-level course at New York University’s Center for Publishing on how tech giants have affected publishing. Email Issie.
January 16, 2021
Joan Donovan has a panic button in her office, just in case one of the online extremists she spends her days fighting tries to fight back.
"This is not baby shit," Donovan, who is research director of Harvard's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, said. "You do not fuck around with these people in public."
<p>Which is why Donovan has been so worried about what she's seen happening online in the days since a violent mob overtook the U.S. Capitol. Scores of amateur sleuths are combing through terabytes of footage and openly trading tips on Twitter in hopes of piecing together the rioters' identities and bringing them to justice. To Donovan, these Twitter detectives aren't just running the risk of misidentifying innocent people; they may also unknowingly be putting themselves at risk by publicly pursuing potentially dangerous people.</p><p>Even more worrisome to Donovan: the role some prominent researchers are playing in organizing the hunt. So this week, she went on Twitter and shared some blunt words of warning. "This is one of the most dangerous uses of social media by a researcher," Donovan <a href="https://twitter.com/BostonJoan/status/1349358629846183936?s=20" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">wrote</a>. "Research ethics now. We must hold each other to account."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>Her remarks were directed at another academic, John Scott-Railton of the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, who has gained a following for his crowdsourced investigations of the riot, which most notably led to the successful identification of an Air Force veteran who was photographed in full tactical gear on the floor of the Senate. Two days after The New Yorker's Ronan Farrow used Scott-Railton's tip to <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/an-air-force-combat-veteran-breached-the-senate" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">confirm</a> the veteran's identity and published a story with his findings, the suspect was arrested in Texas. </p><p>Scott-Railton shares Donovan's concerns — and admires her work — but says those concerns have led him to a different conclusion. He argues that in the wake of any public event caught on camera, be it a confrontation on a bike trail or the Boston Marathon bombing, there are bound to be crowds of extremely online people using digital techniques to assign blame. His goal is to harness that energy in productive ways and model appropriate behavior. </p><p>"I think the conversation has to be one that involves being very intentional in thinking about harm reduction and in trying to do one's best to always model the behavior you want to see from others," he said, noting that he has repeatedly urged his followers not to name potential suspects on Twitter and, instead, to funnel any specific names to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>Besides, with the inauguration around the corner and the vast majority of the Capitol rioters still on the loose, Scott-Railton argues it's critically important to use the power of crowdsourcing to stop those people from committing any more violence. "There may be people who intend to do violent things around the inauguration," he said. "We urgently need to understand who they are."</p><p>The Capitol riot was a boundary-busting event in almost every way, and its impact on the digital privacy debate was no different. The insurrectionists' acts were so galling, so frightening, that suddenly, even those who might oppose digital surveillance and forensics techniques in other contexts, like, say, identifying peaceful protesters at a Black Lives Matter rally, feel justified in deploying those tools against the rioters. The shifting goalposts have sparked a tense debate among researchers of online extremism about the right way to stitch together the digital scraps of someone's life to publicly accuse them of committing a crime — or whether there is a right way at all.</p><p>Shortly after the riot, Vivian Schiller, executive director of the Aspen Institute's digital department, <a href="https://twitter.com/vivian/status/1347556058487787521?s=20" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">asked</a> her followers a question on Twitter and stressed that it was not rhetorical: "Is there such a thing as 'ethical doxxing'?" </p><p>"Not really," replied Kate Klonick, an assistant professor of law at St. John's University, who studies online content moderation. </p><p>Others disagreed vehemently. "Yes, absolutely," wrote Sasha Costanza-Chock, an associate professor of civic media at MIT. "I would argue that in fact we have an ethical responsibility to expose people who are literal nazis and ensure there are consequences for their actions. Of course, this requires extreme care to verify so that innocents are not wrongfully accused."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>Scott-Railton tends to see things that way, as does Aric Toler, a researcher with the group Bellingcat, which has been archiving vast troves of footage of the riot to help with identification. "The crowdsourcing element is obviously powerful and can go both ways, but I think it's overall more positive than not," Toler said. </p><p>The Capitol riot was virtually unprecedented in terms of the amount of digital exhaust it gave off. That's partly to do with the fact that the uprising was largely organized on social media, partly to do with the fact that some of the rioters were there <a href="https://www.protocol.com/trump-coup-social-networks" target="_self">explicitly to broadcast their actions</a> on social media and partly to do with the fact that Parler, the go-to social platform of the far-right, <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/parler-hack-data-public-posts-images-video/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">had a bug</a> that enabled a hacker to <a href="https://gizmodo.com/every-deleted-parler-post-many-with-users-location-dat-1846032466" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">scrape and archive</a> every public post and GPS coordinate before deletion.</p><p>Now, before anyone can get named and blamed, there's a virtual ton of information to sift through first. Toler sees much of the crowdsourcing work going on as a responsible way to divvy up the labor. "A lot of the work is just around sifting through ungodly amounts of photos and videos," Toler said.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
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</div></p><p>Of course, a lot of it isn't. Already, a retired Chicago firefighter was <a href="https://patch.com/illinois/chicago/trolls-wrongly-accused-retired-firefighter-capitol-riot-murder" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">wrongly accused </a>of being involved in the riot, after Twitter detectives digitally enhanced a blurry photo of a man throwing a fire extinguisher at a cop and accused him of being "Extinguisher Man." In fact, he was back in Chicago, he said, celebrating his wife's birthday. "This story has fucked my life up," the man told a local news outlet.</p><p>Both Scott-Railton and Bellingcat had been seeking footage of that suspect on Twitter before he was misidentified. Though neither of them encouraged their followers to name names, and in some cases even actively discouraged it, the effort went sideways anyway. </p><p>That's to be expected, Donovan argues. Once you animate a crowd around a particular purpose, it's impossible to control what they'll do next, which she says is all the more reason for researchers to avoid such public investigations in the first place. "I have this overarching thesis that the internet turns us all into cops," Donovan said. "These are technologies of surveillance, and so use of them by the public to turn crowds into cops seems to me to be a very dangerous impulse."</p><p>That's to say nothing of the danger amateur investigators put themselves in, Donovan said. For all of the digital records the rioters have left behind, she stresses that the people looking into them often have their own digital trail that leaves them vulnerable to retaliation. "Say you identify some neo-Nazi militia member and think you're doing a good job, but you have your kid's birthday photos up on a Flickr account, which has the geotag of the apartment complex that you live in," Donovan said. "People don't understand how much is being revealed about them as they participate in these public campaigns."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="5">
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</div></p><p>It's not that only trained researchers or law enforcement should be able to do this work. Donovan argues there's a way to carry out crowdsourced investigations in private channels, where participants are educated about the risks they're taking and how to protect themselves. Anything less, she argues, is malpractice. "If you don't educate people before you call them into action," Donovan said, "you put them at risk."</p><p>Scott-Railton has tailored his approach somewhat in response to feedback from Donovan and others. For one thing, he's begun <a href="https://twitter.com/jsrailton/status/1349914986278252553?s=20" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">deleting</a> old threads investigating people who have already been arrested to avoid leaving any misleading leads out in the open. He's also since deleted the tweet that Donovan first called him out on, in which he was seeking footage of people wearing earpieces at the riot. Donovan pointed out that such a directive could risk outing members of the media, who also regularly wear earpieces.</p><p>Perhaps, most importantly, on Thursday night, he <a href="https://twitter.com/jsrailton/status/1349919058922250240?s=20" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">tweeted</a> an official notice to his now more than 100,000 followers. He told them that he was now moving to a "form-based intake model" for tips, in collaboration with Bellingcat, writing, "I feel this approach better balances the *many* reasonable concerns about a participatory & crowdsourced model done on Twitter."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="6">
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Issie Lapowsky (@issielapowsky) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering the intersection of technology, politics, and national affairs. Previously, she was a senior writer at Wired, where she covered the 2016 election and the Facebook beat in its aftermath. Prior to that, Issie worked as a staff writer for Inc. magazine, writing about small business and entrepreneurship. She has also worked as an on-air contributor for CBS News and taught a graduate-level course at New York University’s Center for Publishing on how tech giants have affected publishing. Email Issie.
Politics
Trump wants to strike back at Big Tech. There’s not much he can do.
He's already exhausted most of his options.
Trump wants to spend his final week as president getting back at Twitter and Facebook for suspending him.
Photo: Oliver Contreras/Getty Images
January 12, 2021
Emily Birnbaum ( @birnbaum_e) is a tech policy reporter with Protocol. Her coverage focuses on the U.S. government's attempts to regulate one of the most powerful industries in the world, with a focus on antitrust, privacy and politics. Previously, she worked as a tech policy reporter with The Hill after spending several months as a breaking news reporter. She is a Bethesda, Maryland native and proud Kenyon College alumna.
January 11, 2021
President Trump has been telling anyone who will listen that he wants to do something to strike back at Big Tech in the final days of his presidency, promising a "big announcement" soon after Twitter permanently banned him last week.
In a statement that Twitter has taken down multiple times, Trump hammered usual targets — Section 230, the "Radical Left" controlling the world's largest tech platforms — and pledged he would not be "SILENCED." But at this point, as he faces a second impeachment and a Republican establishment revolting against him in the waning days of his presidency, there's likely very little that Trump can actually do that would inflict long-lasting damage on tech companies.
<p>With a little more than a week left in his presidency, and facing existential questions about the role that he played in inciting violence in the nation's capitol last week, Trump and top Republicans have every incentive to change the conversation to target Big Tech, their favorite bogeyman. But any efforts would likely amount to performative theatrics that do nothing to wear down the power of the tech platforms, and simply serve to distract from the conversation about whether the president should be immediately removed from office after helping to incite a riot. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>"I don't think he has any power," said one Republican technology adviser who is sympathetic to the president's efforts. "It's not like he has any friends right now."</p><p>Rachel Bovard, a Capitol Hill veteran and senior adviser for the right-wing Internet Accountability Project, said she would like to see the White House act aggressively against the tech companies, but she's unconvinced the president "can do anything at this point." President-elect Joe Biden could immediately reverse most moves from Trump after his inauguration, which is nine days away. </p><p>"Any executive order he puts out will be undone, there's no more regulatory road he can go down with the [Federal Communications Commission]," Bovard said. "I don't know what else can be done." </p><p>The Trump administration has already launched significant antitrust investigations and lawsuits into the major platforms, including Google and Facebook. The president signed a social media executive order that went largely ignored by the FCC, Federal Trade Commission and executive branch. (FCC Chairman Ajit Pai <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=pai+protocol.com&oq=pai+protocol.com&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i60.8241j1j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">confirmed to Protocol</a> last week that he would not move forward with a rule-making on Section 230, one of the executive order's central requests.) And Trump lost his political clout on Capitol Hill virtually overnight last week: As Democrats took back the Senate, Republican senators <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/us/politics/trump-politicians-donations-degrees.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">condemned his involvement</a> in the riots on Capitol Hill, which resulted in five deaths. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>Trump won't be able to push through a Section 230 repeal at the eleventh hour as his top allies in Congress are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/10/capitol-attack-republican-senators-josh-hawley-ted-cruz-face-resign" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">enduring their own controversies</a> over their refusal to certify the Electoral College vote. Though Trumpworld advisers, including Trump's former campaign manager Brad Parscale, are newly <a href="https://twitter.com/parscale/status/1347723758467997699?s=20" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">calling for antitrust reform</a> to beat back the unprecedented power of the platforms, serious efforts to reform the antitrust laws hit roadblocks from Republicans, including Trump ally Rep. Jim Jordan, last year. </p><p>Trump is expected to make a public statement about Big Tech this week, two sources familiar with conversations at the White House told Protocol, though it's unclear what the medium or message would be. He's been suspended from Facebook, Twitter and many other social networks. (There's always <a href="https://twitter.com/Nash076/status/1348301387944370177" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">cable news</a>, though.) </p><p>There's a number of levers he could try to pull, experts said. After all, he is still the most powerful political leader in the world, with access to a range of unilateral executive powers that he's tapped throughout his presidency. </p><p>It's within his power to sign an executive order barring federal agencies from using Twitter and Facebook, for example, though agencies have <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/5/28/21273878/trump-executive-order-twitter-social-media-section-230-free-speech-implications" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">largely ignored</a> the last social media executive order's request to pull back their ad spending from major social media platforms. </p><p>"The main power at his disposal is still executive orders," said Daniel Castro, vice president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a tech-funded think tank. But any effort to pull federal agencies off of social media likely would prove a bigger headache for the government than for the platforms. "It would be disruptive, it would cause confusion, it would be trending on Twitter, but it wouldn't cause any permanent impact, especially because the Biden administration would probably ask them just to undo those changes," Castro said. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>Trump could tap his Justice Department to bring a splashy lawsuit against Twitter or Facebook for censoring him. That would've been easier before former Trump loyalist Attorney General Bill Barr <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/14/politics/william-barr-out-as-attorney-general/index.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">resigned</a> amid escalating tensions with the White House last month. And a lawsuit against any of the tech platforms would immediately face the near-insurmountable roadblock of <a href="https://www.protocol.com/tag/section-230" target="_blank">Section 230</a>. </p><p>A lawsuit "wouldn't be quick," said Ellen Goodman, a professor at Rutgers University who specializes in information policy law. "And as long as they have 230 immunity, it won't succeed." </p><p>Trump could model a lawsuit against the platforms after PragerU's suit against YouTube, in which the conservative group <a href="https://www.natlawreview.com/article/youtube-schools-prageru-lanham-act-censorship-case" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">claimed</a> that YouTube violated the Lanham Act, which protects against misleading advertising, when it filtered out PragerU's videos. That attempt was <a href="http://v" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">shot down by a judge</a> who said YouTube, a private company, isn't bound by the First Amendment and can therefore remove any content that its policies deem offensive. </p><p>There's a nuclear option that Trump could turn to, which some policymakers have been warning about for years: Under Section 706 of the Communications Act of 1934, the president is empowered to to shut down or take control of "any facility or station for wire communication" if he declares that there is a threat of war in the U.S.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
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</div></p><p>"They could claim Parler is being blocked from Google's service and that's a disruption," said Berin Szóka, president and founder of TechFreedom, a tech think tank. "It has not been used, so it's a little hard to know exactly how far the president could go."</p><p>But there is no indication that Trump or his advisers have considered that option, or any other aggressive move that could actually harm the tech platforms, especially beyond Jan. 20. </p><p>Trump has signaled that he's interested in setting up his own social media network to compete with the platforms that booted him this week. That long-shot effort would likely require enormous amounts of money, time and resources, especially given that he'd likely have to own every part of the internet stack that his network would rely on to ensure it isn't kicked offline. "Trump would have to have a cable company, his own web servers, his own DNS provider, his own version of Cloudflare," Goodman said. </p><p>Trump is the most powerful politician in the world, but ultimately, he may be no match for the tech platforms. </p>
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Emily Birnbaum ( @birnbaum_e) is a tech policy reporter with Protocol. Her coverage focuses on the U.S. government's attempts to regulate one of the most powerful industries in the world, with a focus on antitrust, privacy and politics. Previously, she worked as a tech policy reporter with The Hill after spending several months as a breaking news reporter. She is a Bethesda, Maryland native and proud Kenyon College alumna.
Politics
Trump got all he needed from Twitter. Now, he still has all the power.
President Trump used Twitter to become the most powerful man in the world. Now, that power is his to keep.
Trump became the most powerful man in the world thanks to Twitter. Now that he's banned, he'll take that power with him.
Photo: Joshua Hoehne/Unsplash
January 11, 2021
Issie Lapowsky (@issielapowsky) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering the intersection of technology, politics, and national affairs. Previously, she was a senior writer at Wired, where she covered the 2016 election and the Facebook beat in its aftermath. Prior to that, Issie worked as a staff writer for Inc. magazine, writing about small business and entrepreneurship. She has also worked as an on-air contributor for CBS News and taught a graduate-level course at New York University’s Center for Publishing on how tech giants have affected publishing. Email Issie.
January 8, 2021
On Friday night, Twitter announced that it was forever banning President Trump from the digital podium where he conducted his presidency and where, for more than a decade, he built an alternate reality where what he said was always the truth.
There are moral arguments for not doing business with the guy who provoked a violent mob to invade the U.S. Capitol, leaving several people dead. There have been moral arguments for years for not doing business with the guy who spent most of his early mornings and late nights filling the site with a relentless stream of pithy, all-caps conspiracy theories about everything from Barack Obama's birthplace to the 2020 election. There are also moral arguments against tech companies muzzling the president of the United States at all.
<p>Wherever you stand, there's a hard truth to Twitter's decision to stop doing business with Trump now: Trump has already gotten all he needs from Twitter. He's already used the platform — and the company — to become the most powerful man in the world, bending Twitter's carefully-crafted rules and dancing across its neatly-drawn lines, knowing that by virtue of his position, he'd never face repercussions. Now that he has, that power is still his to keep, and it will follow him wherever he winds up next. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>Deplatforming a controversial or even dangerous figure doesn't always work that way. Remember Milo Yiannopoulos? The conservative provocateur was credibly threatening to launch his <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/milo-yiannopoulos-media-company-2017-4" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">own media company</a> after being removed from Twitter and resigning from Breitbart in scandal — but when Yiannopoulos lost access to these forums, he lost his audience and effectively disappeared from public view. </p><p>But the fact that Twitter's decision is unprecedented also means that no one as powerful as the president of the United States has ever been permanently banished from any social media platform. Yes, he will soon lose the office of the presidency and the <a href="https://www.protocol.com/facebook-ban-trump-democrats-power" target="_self">levers of power</a> that office holds. But Wednesday's show of force by his adherents was evidence that there are many thousands of people willing to commit open insurrection in his name. And that's just the people who could afford a ticket to D.C. in the midst of an unemployment crisis. So it goes without saying that this time will be different. </p><p>As soon as Twitter <a href="https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">broke the news</a>, explaining that Trump's most recent tweets could be interpreted as incitements to violence in the context of this week, conservative commentators announced (on Twitter, of course) that they were <a href="https://twitter.com/marklevinshow/status/1347692115615219717?s=20" target="_blank">boycotting the site</a>, and invited their followers to seek them out on Parler, the far-right echo chamber of the moment. Shortly after, Google suspended Parler from the Play Store, saying in a statement that the company was "aware of continued posting in the Parler app that seeks to incite ongoing violence in the U.S.," including threats on elected officials and plans for a militia march. Apple also <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/apple-threatens-ban-parler" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">reportedly</a> threatened a ban on Parler as well, giving the company 24 hours to develop a moderation policy.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>The president also briefly breached Twitter's blockade, tweeting Friday night <a href="https://twitter.com/Kantrowitz/status/1347717828359516160?s=20" target="_blank">from the official @POTUS account</a>, which remains unaffected by the ban, to say he was looking into "building out our own platform in the near future." That tweet quickly disappeared, too. </p><p>Whether Trump takes his diatribes to Parler or Rumble or 4chan or any of the other platforms that would love his help in quadrupling their engagement, the man who was a media mogul long before he was president will find his venue. The only question is whether the mainstream media will, out of habit, morbid curiosity or concern for public safety, follow him there. If they — if we — do, the next four years will be no different from the last in terms of Trump's chokehold on the national conversation. If not, his audience might be smaller. But it won't be any less angry, any less capable of the violence that Twitter and Google and Facebook and the other tech companies that have taken action this week are afraid of. It will only be more insular, more tunnel-visioned, more removed from a world of information that Trump has said all along is fake news anyway.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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Issie Lapowsky (@issielapowsky) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering the intersection of technology, politics, and national affairs. Previously, she was a senior writer at Wired, where she covered the 2016 election and the Facebook beat in its aftermath. Prior to that, Issie worked as a staff writer for Inc. magazine, writing about small business and entrepreneurship. She has also worked as an on-air contributor for CBS News and taught a graduate-level course at New York University’s Center for Publishing on how tech giants have affected publishing. Email Issie.
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January 15, 2021 13:45 EST
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