Debate Prep: Social Media Misinformation and Censorship

Felix Beilin

This week, we’re trying something new. Instead of writing up an article of our own attempting to prepare you for our debate this week, we’re compiling a number of articles, podcasts, and videos that you can pick from as you learn more about social media censorship and platform regulation. ​

Let’s begin with the obvious: President Donald Trump was permanently banned from Twitter on January 8, following a series of Tweets about his supporters, the results of the November election, and his decision to not attend President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration this Wednesday. Twitter laid out its reasoning for their decision in a lengthy blog post, citing violations of their “glorification of violence” policy. Facebook banned President Trump at least until the end of his term on January 8; since then, YouTube and Google have moved to limit access to much of Trump’s digital content as well. 

Since then, the new and less-moderated social media platform Parler has had its web hosting service canceled by Amazon, and Twitter and Facebook deleted thousands of accounts, including many belonging to high-profile, blue-checkmarked conservative figures.

Perspectives on these events:

• The Wall Street Journal editorial board: The Progressive Purge Begins (5 mins)
• The Economist: Silicon Valley should not be given control over free speech (3 mins)
• Ryan Calo and Woodrow Hartzog in the Los Angeles Times: Banning Trump from Twitter and Facebook isn’t nearly enough (5 mins)
• Evelyn Douek in The Atlantic: Trump Is Banned. Who Is Next? (10 mins)
• Spencer Bokat-Lindell in the New York Times: Deplatforming Trump Could Work. But at What Cost? (10 mins)
• Adonis Hoffman for Fox News: Twitter, Facebook right to block Trump (9 mins)
• If you prefer your information in podcast form: 
  • Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway on Twitter’s choice to ban President Trump and Amazon’s decision to revoke service to Parler on Pivot (Listening time: 47 mins/1 hour)
  • Megyn Kelly spoke with Parler CEO John Matze, Substack CEO Chris Best, and journalist Glenn Greenwald on the Megyn Kelly Show (Listening time: 2 hours)

But all this happens against the backdrop of a larger debate about the power and presence of misinformation on social media:

• A 2018 explainer and position paper on misinformation from Brookings (8 mins)
• An analysis of the growing number of interactions with unreliable news on social media, from NewsGuard and published in Axios (5 mins)
• Research on cognitive deficiencies and psychological phenomena that lead to the spread of misinformation, published in Scientific American (25 mins)
• If you want to have the coolest stats out of anyone at our debate, check out these findings on the effects of social media misinformation from MIT Sloan researchers over the last few years (11 mins)
• Finally, if you’re just looking for a primer on how to spot misinformation and disinformation on social media (we all need one!), here’s a useful list of tips (7 mins)

For more information about Google and Facebook’s ongoing legal troubles, which may come up in Tuesday's debate, check out our explainer from December. Thanks for reading--and let us know if you like this choose-your-own-adventure debate prep format better!