Opinion: Amid the Capital Chaos, Big Tech Sought to Protect Democracy

Share This Article:President Trump’s Twitter account during the 12-hour lockout. By Chris Jennewein The online revolution centered in California’s Silicon Valley came to the rescue of democracy Wednesday by temporarily locking out President Trump from social media platforms.Support Times of San Diego’s growthwith a small monthly contribution When Trump refused to quickly condemn the riot he incited at the Capitol, and later offered only mealy-mouthed calls for calm that reiterated his big lie about the election being stolen, Twitter and Facebook acted on their own. Twitter locked out the President for 12 hours. Facebook went further, making the ban indefinite, as did Snapchat. That did this to prevent Trump for possibly inciting further violence. Unlike many, perhaps most countries, media is the United States is almost entirely in private hands. We don’t have a public broadcaster like the BBC, an official newspaper like the People’s Daily, or a state news agency like ITAR-TASS. It’s entirely up to private American owners to decide how to cover the news. A lot of politicians throughout the world hate independent, privately owned media because they can’t control it. This is especially true of the new media types spawned by the creativity of Silicon Valley.…
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