US President Donald Trump and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini | Bloomberg and http://english.khamenei.ir/ Text Size: In the aftermath of the US elections and ensuing ruckus and violence at the Capitol on 6 January, social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram blocked or barred accounts of then sitting US president Donald Trump. Now, Twitter has banned Iranian Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s account. The Twitter handle @khamenei_site was linked to a website of Khamenei. This site had posted a picture of Trump with the caption, “Revenge is Certain”. Twitter later clarified that the handle it took down was fake, without giving any further explanation on how it concluded the account was fake. This has raised concern about the users’ agency on social media vis-a-vis the owners of the platforms. Banning, blocking, or barring users from posting content on social media, and that too without any legal process is problematic. Restricting certain people and ideas can cause a cascading effect that may herald the demise of social media as universal platforms for conversation. Universality is the masonic stone of the entire edifice, which we know as social media. Once this masonic stone is gone, the whole structure could crumble…
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Twitter without gatekeepers will save public conversation. Not Khameini, Trump bans
