European leaders have a point—up to a point
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire condemned decisions by Twitter, Facebook, Apple, et al to shut down Donald Trump’s social media accounts. Le Maire accused Big Tech of forming a “digital oligarchy,” and called for public regulation of big online platforms.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel criticized a “breach” of the “fundamental right to free speech” as “problematic.”
I get it. “Digital oligarchy” is apt. I applaud the efforts of Europeans to hobble Big Tech as they have been doing and will continue to do; we should have been doing a lot more of it on our side of the Atlantic. If it weren’t for the unshackled free market ideology dominating American politics for the last 40 years, we might have been doing it.
Nevertheless, maybe they should butt out of the Trump social media lockdown controversy for the time being . . . at least until the dust settles around the transition to the Joe Biden administration.
The old analogy of “freedom of speech doesn’t give you the right to yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater” applies in this situation.* If Angela Merkel had had to live in a country with its leader shouting ‘fire!’ every day for four years straight, ultimately leading to an attack on the nation’s Capitol building by a lawless, violent, gun-toting mob bent on overthrowing the government, she might be willing to bend a little to the practicality of muting that voice as soon as possible, whether by Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Jeff Bezos, or my local mail carrier (I’d rather entrust the power to her than to the aforementioned, but that’s going to have to wait for The Revolution).
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