It’s concerning that tech executives can exercise so much power over who can use their platforms. But the alternative – government intervention – could be much worse.
Banning extremists from social media platforms can reduce hate speech, but the deplatforming process has to be handled with care – and it can have unintended consequences.
Fascists, neo-Nazis, anti-Semites and white supremacists have historically been agile adopters of the internet — and they know how to use it to their advantage.
The more than 26,000 tweets posted during Trump’s presidency are now a matter of public record. They’ve been archived and could be used against him in the future.
Millions of supporters of Donald Trump flocked to the far-right social media platform, where hate speech and calls for violence thrive. The US Capitol insurrection could be the platform’s undoing.
Freedom of speech emerged as a concept after the invention of the printing press, and that’s worth revisiting in the context of social media and Trump’s presidency.
In the absence of face-to-face interactions, people are using emojis to help express themselves. New research suggests that emoji use can drive engagement and make content more viral.
Timothy Graham, Queensland University of Technology; Axel Bruns, Queensland University of Technology; Daniel Angus, Queensland University of Technology; Edward Hurcombe, Queensland University of Technology, dan Samuel Hames, Queensland University of Technology
It only took a relatively small number of Twitter accounts to get hashtags #DictatorDan and #DanLiedPeopleDied trending. And “bots” weren’t really a part of the story.
As social media platforms fight Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism, online archives offer another possible approach: direct links to the historic truth.