Big Tech's decision to censor Trump will have repercussions well beyond the US
One of the primary lessons from Silicon Valley’s less than successful dealings with the Chinese state is that you can’t make concessions to Beijing and expect other countries not to notice.
When Google was revealed in 2018 to be working on a censored search app in an attempt to get back into China, one thing that frustrated many critics both internally and externally was the apparent refusal to learn from the experience of Google.cn, which was not just a reputational disaster for the company, but also, in the words of one executive, became “a stick to beat us with” around the world.
Prior to Google.cn, the search giant could argue with a reasonably straight face that it offered a consistent product around the world, free from official interference. Once it agreed to censor Chinese results however, any other authoritarian government could use this as justification to pressure Google into filtering results it didn’t like, and threaten to ban the company should it disagree.
The same pattern has played out when it comes to rules forcing companies to store data on servers in a given country (making it susceptible to court orders and government surveillance). Apple and others agreed to do so in China, afraid that a refusal could see them cut off from the world’s largest internet market, and almost immediately faced pressure from Russia and other countries to do the same for them.
That is why the actions of Big Tech in the wake of the storming of the United States Capitol this month are so concerning. In particular, the decision to censor US President Donald Trump, and the defenestration of right-wing Twitter alternative Parler from most hosting services, could have major repercussions for global internet freedom, undermining the ability of platforms to push back against foreign governments when they are instructed to remove “illegal” content.
In a piece last week ($), former Facebook executive Sam Lessin notes that “other countries are now going to rightly look at American internet service providers and say, if you were willing to shut off service to Donald Trump, you must also be willing to shut off service to our enemies of the state.”
An expectation of worldwide monitoring would be bad enough just in terms of the challenge it presents to global social networks and speech. What is even worse is that as internet infrastructure providers like AWS and Stripe (whether or not they felt forced to by employee activism or politics) have moved to block Trump, that decision has now implicated the entire internet in this problem.
Many countries are now going to feel fully justified in taking matters into their own hands and saying that they need to put up firewalls, build their own internet infrastructure and take control of who gets to speak inside their borders.
This might sound alarmist, but I think that this rapid unraveling of the internet is possible in today’s environment, to the extent that American internet companies have shown they will take a side in their own domestic affairs.
Apple has already faced major criticism for agreeing to demands from the Hong Kong government to remove an app used to track police during protests in the city in 2019. What will Big Tech do when the Hong Kong authorities call for the blocking of LIHKG, a Reddit-style forum that serves as a key organising platform, or the banning of encrypted messaging app Telegram from Hong Kong app stores?
Such considerations do not seem to have occurred to the companies banning Trump and his supporters this month, focused as they were on obviating criticism at home from the media and liberal politicians. Equally, many in the US, even those normally critical of Big Tech, have defended the platforms’ right to censorship, ignoring longstanding complaints about how they have monopolised the public sphere.
But beyond the country’s borders, there has been widespread shock, with a spokesperson for German Chancellor Angela Merkel saying that any interference with the “fundamental right” of freedom of expression should be “according to the law and within the framework defined by legislators — not according to a decision by the management of social media platforms.” Many leaders outside the US, particularly in less stable parts of the world, may be deeply alarmed to see platforms ban a politician just after they lost an election, and therefore any influence they had over the companies in question.
In a gleeful editorial on the matter last week, nationalist Chinese state-run tabloid Global Times said that “the boundary of freedom of speech and freedom of speech itself are both defined by those in power. Trump lost the election, but persisted, and consequently he was pushed out of the boundary of freedom of speech by pro-Democrat social networks.”
Those networks would likely refute the “pro-Democrat” description, but it is surely no coincidence that they took this action just as that party — many members of which have spoken of pushing forward anti-monopoly action over Big Tech — takes power.
Zephyr Teachout, a leading anti-monopoly campaigner, has described the move against Trump and platforms like Parler as “an exercise of extraordinary governing power.”
“We’ve so deeply accepted the idea that these are governing institutions, and that we should sort of go beg them and petition them as if they are [politicians],” she said in a recent podcast episode. “Instead of saying, ‘hey, I’ve got a problem, let’s call the police,’ it’s ‘I’ve got a problem, let’s call Apple’.”
In the past, platforms have always pointed to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — the law which protects them from potential legal repercussions as a result of content posted by users — as a reason for not exercising this power. But in one hectic week, Big Tech threw this argument out of the window, a move that could have major repercussions, not only in the US but around the world.
Flagged for review 🚩
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni declared victory in the country’s general election Saturday, meaning the 76-year-old will serve a sixth term in office. Like previous polls, this month’s vote was marred by accusations of intimidation and fraud, and Museveni’s government blocked first social media and then the entire internet to clamp down on opposition organising. At CNN, I argue that this approach, illiberal as it may be, has worked well for Museveni, something other countries will be taking note of.
Hong Kong’s domain registrar, which is responsible for the .hk TLD, said it will reject any sites promoting “illegal acts.” The news comes after several ISPs appeared to block a pro-democracy site that had doxxed police officers. This isn’t the Great Firewall by any sense, but the signs are not encouraging, and the National Security Law passed last year gives the authorities broad remit to censor content online.
Over the weekend, Google Translate was found to be rendering “China breaks promise” as 中国信守诺言 or "China keeps its promise,” which, you may notice, is entirely the opposite meaning. Switching “China” with the name of another country resulted in a correct translation, leading many to speculate Google Translate was being manipulated in some way. The bug has since been fixed, but without an explanation as to how it came about.
Nigel Ng, the British-Malaysian comedian behind the “Uncle Roger” character, pulled a video he made with Mike Chen, a YouTuber who has often criticised Beijing’s human rights record. Ng made the announcement on Weibo as if it was in response to public pressure, but few commenters seemed to have any idea what he was on about, suggesting instead the work of a Chinese partner or PR firm, afraid that Chen’s links to Falun Gong could sink whatever chance Ng has of building a Chinese audience.