MOSCOW – Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has described Twitter’s decision to ban President Donald Trump from its platform as an “unacceptable censorship”, arguing that the move opened the door for the Kremlin to demand social media enterprises Russian opposition figures must suspend permanently.
“In my opinion, the decision to ban Trump was based on emotions and political preferences,” Navalny said. wrote in a long Twitter thread posted Saturday night. ‘Do not tell me that he was banned for violating Twitter rules. I get death threats here every day for years, and Twitter forbids no one (not that I ask for it). “
On Monday, a spokeswoman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the German leader considered Twitter’s decision – followed by other social media companies – ‘problematic’.
Merkel’s spokesman elaborated, saying the chancellor regards freedom of speech as a fundamental and basic right that should only be legally restricted, rather than the decisions of social media executives. However, she believes that social media companies have a significant responsibility to prevent the further erosion of civil dialogue.
Twitter announced that it was permanently banning Trump from its platform on Friday in response to a series of tweets the company claimed to incite glorification and violence. The move came days after a pro-Trump mob, encouraged by the president’s rhetoric as well as offline, stormed the US capital in an attempt to halt the certification of Joe Biden as elected president.
Twitter’s decision to ban Trump is seen by its critics as correct and overdue, but it also brings questions into sharp focus on the role of social media companies in facilitating and moderating political discourse.
The American Civil Liberties Union concern expressed about the implications of banning a president from an ‘indispensable’ platform, but even some of the Internet’s most ardent advocates of free speech have struggled to push back the Trump ban.
“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 extremely powerful,” said the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which supports privacy and freedom of speech online. , said in a statement Thursday.
Navalny, for his part, is no supporter of Trump, and he celebrated the 2020 presidential election as a sincere and transparent race. He has been the sharpest critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin for a decade. He is currently in Germany recovering from an assassination attempt in Siberia last year with a deadly nerve agent.
But for Russian opposition figures like Navalny, the dangers of banning social media are immediately apparent.
‘This precedent will be exploited by the enemies of freedom of speech around the world. Also in Russia. Every time they have to silence someone, they will say, “It’s customary, even Trump has been blocked on Twitter,” Navalny wrote in a rare series of English-language tweets.
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He added: “If you replace ‘Trump’ with ‘Navalny’ in today’s debate, you will get an accurate 80 percent answer from the Kremlin as to why my name cannot be mentioned on Russian TV and that I may not participate in any elections. ”
This sentiment was widely shared over the weekend by other Russian opposition figures.
But not everyone agrees with Navalny. Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank specializing in Russia’s domestic politics, says Navalny’s warnings are overwhelming. The whole situation surrounding Trump’s last days of rule is a gift to the Kremlin in that it easily points out American hypocrisy.
“As leader of the opposition, Navalny is simply uncomfortable advocating to ban anything, not to mention censorship, not even controversial figures,” Kolesnikov said. ‘Maybe it’s not his views that motivate these comments, but rather his situation. But he could not avoid talking about such a heated discussion that divides liberals in Russia.”