LAST week, Twitter and Facebook shut down US President Donald Trump’s accounts on their platforms. This will be old news by the time this is released but it’s still worth examining.
If social media companies can shut down a sitting US President, then that implies they are more powerful than a sovereign government.
The move was entirely political and is based on the fear that Trump or his supporters might threaten the US bureaucracy.
However, none of this makes any sense because Trump goes out on Jan. 20. He’s a lame duck and has no more political power. The only reasons I can think of why Facebook and Twitter would ban a sitting US President is that they are paranoid about what he might say on the internet; that he might insight rioting, which I think is very unlikely.
There are other theories; theories that involve high intensity conflict and civil war, but I don’t want to discuss those.
At any rate, regardless of their motivations, one thing clear: social media companies have banned the US President, which brings me to the main point of my article: Big Tech Censorship.
Facebook, Twitter and other social media companies have shown that by banning Trump they have the power to control information. And if they can do that to Trump, they can do it to any other government and state leader, including President Rodrigo Duterte, who isn’t exactly popular in the Western World.
This represents a dangerous vulnerability, because information is critical in all aspects of society. The only way we can overcome this vulnerability is by creating our own information infrastructure, our own Filipino versions of Twitter and Facebook and all the related services to support it.
Basically, I’m calling for the creation of a Philippines-specific internet which, in critical situations, we can shut off from the rest of the world. I don’t want our country dependent on foreign social networks.
Some might say that’s unrealistic or extreme, but we are living in an age where information (or lack thereof) can be weaponized. And if you still don’t believe me here’s a quote from Barrack Obama:
“It’s not going to be finished just because Donald Trump was defeated, because you see examples of this in the Philippines, in Hungary and a variety of countries.”/PN
