Should we celebrate the removal of Trump from social media and Parler from Amazon Web Services?
Both it seems are guilty of breaches of 'the terms of use/service' - of course, any suggestion of violence against individuals, inciting violence, in general, is going to be a red flag and a breach, but are we on the left happy with the 'gatekeepers' - are we now not also at risk of being silenced as the social media lumps those on the left and right together as persona non grata.
David Renton writing in Roar
The fallout of Wednesday’s events will continue to echo for months, perhaps years to come. For all their seeming partisan difference, the center-left and center-right of US politics have a shared response for dealing with the crisis: it is to demand a greater number of cops and the removal of the social media accounts of the worst perpetrators. But neither strategy is in the interests of the majority of Americans or in particular of the US left.
Who is to say that AWS will not view an anti-capitalist website as unwelcome on their servers and boot the organisation. AWS is the largest cloud-based server farm and runs (controls) over 40% of the web - we often view the web as a neutral operating space but it is far from it, almost every program/application run on your computer has ToS and a breach can see you turned off. While it is in the interest of capital for your platform to be visible it will be, but put the capitalist's revenue stream at risk and you will be gone - the 'rules' will be applied by the 'big tech gatekeepers' (would the government be any better?) and these could damage the left just as much as the right.