EFF’s Response to Social Media Companies’ Decisions to Block President Trump’s Accounts

Like most people in the United States and around the world, EFF is shocked and disgusted by Wednesday’s violent attack on the U.S. Capitol. We support all those who are working to defend the Constitution and the rule of law, and we are grateful for the service of policymakers, staffers, and other workers who endured many hours of lockdown and reconvened to fulfill their constitutional duties. 

The decisions by Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and others to suspend and/or block President Trump’s communications via their platforms is a simple exercise of their rights, under the First Amendment and Section 230, to curate their sites. We support those rights. Nevertheless, we are always concerned when platforms take on the role of censors, which is why we continue to call on them to apply a human rights framework to those decisions. We also note that those same platforms have chosen, for years, to privilege some speakers—particularly governmental officials—over others, not just in the U.S., but in other countries as well. A platform should not apply one set of rules to most of its users, and then apply a more permissive set of rules to politicians and world leaders who are already immensely powerful. Instead, they should be precisely as judicious about removing the content of ordinary users as they have been to date regarding heads of state. Going forward, we call once again on the platforms to be more transparent and consistent in how they apply their rules—and we call on policymakers to find ways to foster competition so that users have numerous editorial options and policies from which to choose.