Journalist Glenn Greenwald has criticized Silicon Valley tech companies for an increase in censorship following the recent suspension of President Donald Trump’s social media accounts. Greenwald expects the Masters of the Universe to quickly escalate their censorship as the belief that ” tech oligarchs should police our discourse is a virtual consensus.”
In a number of posts to Twitter, journalist Glenn Greenwald has heavily criticized the Silicon Valley Masters of the Universe following the recent suspension of President Trump’s social media accounts, noting that the companies exert their power “unilaterally, with no standard, accountability or appeal.”
Greenwald’s tweets can be seen below and come in response to former First Lady Michelle Obama’s call for tech companies to permanently ban President Trump from all of their platforms. So far only Facebook has permanently suspended President Trump while Twitter suspended the President for 12 hours.
Breitbart News recently reported that President Trump had been blocked from Facebook for 24 hours, since then his ban has been extended “indefinitely.”
Company CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated in a Facebook post:
The shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden.
His decision to use his platform to condone rather than condemn the actions of his supporters at the Capitol building has rightly disturbed people in the US and around the world. We removed these statements yesterday because we judged that their effect — and likely their intent — would be to provoke further violence.
Following the certification of the election results by Congress, the priority for the whole country must now be to ensure that the remaining 13 days and the days after inauguration pass peacefully and in accordance with established democratic norms.
Over the last several years, we have allowed President Trump to use our platform consistent with our own rules, at times removing content or labeling his posts when they violate our policies. We did this because we believe that the public has a right to the broadest possible access to political speech, even controversial speech. But the current context is now fundamentally different, involving use of our platform to incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government.
We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great. Therefore, we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete.
Twitter suspended President Trump’s account for 12 hours and it has since been reinstated. President Trump has posted a video to his Twitter account condemning the recent protests at Capitol Hill.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com
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