World leaders are popping up to explode Twitter’s suspension of President Trump’s account, and many of them call it outright censorship and a decision that should be left to the citizens and not a private technology company.
French European Union junior minister Clement Beaune said he was “shocked” to see social media platform pull Trump’s bill.
“It has to be decided by citizens, not by a CEO,” he told Bloomberg TV on Monday. ‘But yes, I’m shocked that it’s now entirely in private hands. It can not just be in private hands. ”
Beaune said there should be a ‘public framework of regulation’ in which social media platforms can argue that some content violates the law and that it should be removed or fined, but it should be decided by citizens and legislators.
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire has said that the responsibility for regulating the content lies with the state.
“The regulation of digital giants cannot be done by the digital oligarchy itself,” Le Maire said, adding that big technology is ‘one of the threats’ to democracy.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said it was a “bad sign” that social media had the power to censor Trump.
‘I do not like anyone being censored or taking away the right to post a message on Twitter or Facebook. I do not agree with that, I do not accept it, “Lopez Obrador said at a news conference last Friday.
“A court of censorship like the Inquisition to run public opinion: it’s really serious,” he said.
A spokeswoman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she considered Twitter’s ban on Trump to be ‘problematic’.
“This fundamental right can be violated, but according to the law and within the framework defined by legislators – not according to a decision by the management of social media platforms,” spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters in Berlin on Monday. .
“Seen from this angle, the chancellor considers it problematic that the US president’s accounts are now permanently blocked,” he said, adding that the president should have the ability to give his opinion.
Acting Australian Prime Minister Michael McCormack said Trump’s blockade amounted to censorship.
He questioned why Twitter could not remove a fake photo showing an Australian soldier decapitating an Afghan child, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
‘I would say to the owners of Twitter: if you have the remarks of who is still the US president, you should also think about the photo, the doctored image, on which a soldier, presumably an Australian digger, appears, with’ a child in his arms, to harm that child, ‘McCormack said. “It was not removed, and it’s wrong.”
Twitter marked the image as ‘sensitive’ following The Post in November.
The son of Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro Eduardo has expressed similar concern over Twitter’s treatment of Venezuela’s authoritarian leader Nicolas Maduro.
“A world where Maduro is on social media but Trump has been suspended can not be normal,” Bolsonaro said on Twitter.
He changed his Twitter profile photo into Trump.
With Post threads