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The US Capitol has been devastated, society (not just in the US but around the world) has been fragmented, and the reputation of the media is not the best, but the public opinion of an “ordinary person “Believing in alternative facts has gained more value than scientific findings. This is the kind of crop that irresponsible populist politicians have sown and cultivated in the fertile field of social media, influencers seeking popularity or power, states unfriendly to Western thought, or elemental scammers and their persuasions.
On the one hand, it is unfortunate that the social tensions that were emerging and that were being very actively fueled through social media were answered only after the abscess had already erupted in the form of violence on Capitol Hill. On the other hand, the backlash, the decisive removal of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, his closest supporters, who constantly spread false information, supporters of the conspiracy theory QAnon from Twitter and other social networks, is better than no reaction and the legalization of the law of the jungle.
Immediately after the assault on the Capitol, Republicans and supporters of the United States began to assure them that social networks violated their right to freedom of expression, but the truth is that all social networks blocked consumers and deleted their accounts not because they were “leftists”. If you read the Terms of Service more closely, you will find that by creating your account or accepting an updated set of Terms of Service each time, you agree to abide by the terms offered by your service provider. You do not meet the conditions, there will be no service. And attempts to defend the constitutional protection of free speech will not be effective here: contracts between companies and consumers are not constitutionally regulated.
What do the biggest social networks demand?
Let’s take a look at the terms that Facebook offers to users.
And Facebook declares that you may not use the product (that is, the social network) to do or share anything that violates Facebook’s terms of service, community standards and other terms related to your use of Facebook, and that the Users are prohibited from disseminating information. that is illegal, misleading, discriminatory or misleading.
And in community standards, Facebook says it wants content to be authentic, so it asks users not to lie when presenting who they are or what they do. Facebook also claims that this social network cannot distribute information that could discriminate, intimidate or silence others.
The much more detailed terms of use also apply to Twitter users who have agreed to abide by those terms. These rules include a prohibition on threatening or perpetuating violence, as well as the publication of misinformation about COVID-19, which can be harmful to others. Additionally, Twitter prohibits members of terrorist organizations, members of pro-violence organizations, and supporters of those members from having accounts.
YouTube also prohibits the dissemination of false information about COVID-19 in videos, prohibits hate speech, distributes harmful or violent content, and does not allow the distribution of content to violent criminal organizations.
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) described proponents of the QAnon conspiracy theory half a year ago as a “domestic terrorism threat” because the conspiracy theorizing consortium has the potential to incite extremist violence. .
So it’s no wonder that after a few months on Twitter, the US President called for distrust of the US democratic system, and its hottest fans, representing conspiracy theory groups. of QAnon, for many years they have been reluctant to share their comments about how Trump was about to start mass arrests and executions of Democrats, or that a “storm” has already started (like that wave of “arrests of pedophile Democrats and the Hollywood Elite Cabal “).
AFP / Scanpix photo / Donald Trump’s Twitter account has been blocked
Interestingly, the wave of mass arrests actually took place. After January 6. It is not “pedophile Democrats” or actors who are being arrested, but angry Trump supporters who have raged on Capitol Hill.
Not surprisingly, such a company, which sparked a grudge in Washington, smashed Capitol windows and eroded its walls from the inside, is undesirable on civilized social media, and such behavior is not tolerable. How to encourage that behavior for three months, day after day, with 88 million viewers stumbling, that the election was stolen, that the political system and the media are biased, and that only one Trump is a beacon of truth, light and love.
And it’s quite natural that Twitter has irreversibly blocked not just Trump, but more than 70,000 as well. QAnon Theory Reseller Accounts. And it’s only natural that slightly more moderate Republicans, who have so far pledged their allegiance to Trump, wept crocodile tears that suddenly lost tens of thousands of Twitter followers.
Tidal wave
As major social networks pushed instigators of violence, coups, and conspirators off their platforms without lengthy ceremonies, they had to urgently search for new places to interact. Sort of like big tech platforms, only with less strict rules or a more flexible approach to enforcing them.
Parler, a Twitter analog that was well-liked by US Republicans before the Capitol storm, is likely to shut down for good from moderate to extreme: web host Amazon (more specifically, the company owned by Amazon AWS) due to a failure. provided a secure service, terminated the contract with Parler, and the owners of this social network could not find a new hosting partner for the same reason: no one wants to keep in touch with a customer, who is like a bomb with a clock.
So the biggest winner in this situation was the telegram matching app Telegram. And here in the United States, the right wing, having assumed the role of victim after the assault on the Capitol (because it lost its “voice” and its followers), seems to be able to find a safe haven. The founders of Telegram, the Durova brothers, had already shown their backbone in Russia when Roskomnadzor officially announced that Telegram was a banned service in Russia, but only in shame: the legal order could not be implemented by any technical means. Not only that, even high-level Russian politicians didn’t stop using Telegram after the service was banned.
Sigismund Gedvila / 15min photo / Telegram application
It’s only here that a major difference needs to be made: What Roskomnadzor tried to do could actually be called censorship and a violation of free speech, as it was a state effort to shut down a difficult-to-run correspondence service. Meanwhile, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social networks made the decision to remove the accounts of Trump and QAnon without state pressure and without agreement, which was simply a violation of the rules of use with sad consequences.
Thus, the wave of Telegram exiles from Twitter was enormous: the number of Telegram users increased by 25 million in the last week and reached 500 million. global consumption threshold. And the account, which appears to be run by Trump or his team, has posted a list of accounts it asks to monitor: comrades and “right-wing influencers” like Candace Owens, Beno Shapiro, Dinesho D’Souza, and others, plus – accounts from organizations (Turning Point USA, Students for Trump) or pro-media (Breitbart, Daily Caller, The Daily Wire).
Sigismund Gedvila / 15min photo / Sign application
Another incredibly popular service is the Signal messaging app, which can really compete with Telegram in terms of growing popularity: Signal suddenly took the top spot on the list of the most downloaded Android apps, and Telegram came in second. It is true that the popularity of Signal is somewhat surprising: the main strength of this device is the ability to encrypt direct mail and encrypted calls, it is not a suitable tool for a greater dissemination of information. Interestingly, the popularity of these private correspondence devices tends to increase in regions where political unrest is taking place.
The CloutHub social network also attracted new users. On its website, the network accuses the main social media platforms of censorship and lack of freedom of expression and promises that its network will not be subject to such practices. And CloutHub’s tagline seems to show a bit of its political orientation: Social Media Done Right. This may have attracted fans of the #stopthesteal hashtag since December, such as the perhaps still remembered Lithuanian actor Kevin Sorbo, who played Hercules on the popular TV series.
Sigismund Gedvila / 15 minute photo / “CloutHub” app
It is true that this social network is currently inaccessible to European consumers: new users are verified through their American or Canadian phone numbers.
A similar liberal approach to content moderation is being followed by other fast-growing social networks recently. For example, on MeWe you will easily find an account of Eric Trump, the QAnon conspirators and Trump’s son (although the latter is still silent and no public content has been distributed through him). Another very similar social network is Minds.com, which offers to “regain control of your social networks.”
Sigismund Gedvila / 15 minute photo / MeWe app
Apparently, the social network Gab was dedicated to the dissemination of right-wing views and conspiracy theories; for some time the official mascot of this site was the frog. And the image of a frog is a sign that QAnon conspiracy theory fans often use. The Guardian notes that since 2016, when Gab was founded as “a response to the oppression of major social networks,” the social network has become a “hate speech bubble.” It is true that it seems that the influx of new users to this social network has been unexpected and too great; recently there have been major technical problems and extremely slow performance of the site.
Sigismund Gedvila / 15 minute photo / Rumble app
In addition to social networks and correspondence services, there are sites that can be called YouTube analogues without content moderation (or with different moderation rules). Rumble and BitChute have gained the most popularity in recent months, with a lack of racist, neo-Nazi content and covert threats against right-wing journalists and activists, The Guardian said.
According to USA Today, alternative social media sources are being actively exploited to stage more acts of violence and riots against legitimate US authorities, with plans announced on Joe Biden’s inauguration day.
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