Free market at play

Heh:

As I might have expected, Claire Lehmann has an opinion piece at The Australian: Censorship must be taken out of Big Tech’s hands.

She says, ridiculously:

 Almost all avenues of communication and commerce available to Donald Trump have been removed, virtually overnight.

He's a President with an entire Press Office, able to call press conferences at a drop of a hat and 200 journalists and TV cameras would come running to the White House to cover it.   Once he's no longer President, he's free to set how ever many private websites he wants, with frequent updates, video messages, live feeds from his toilet if wants.  Someone will host him. 

She goes on to allow this:

Trump’s permanent suspension may well be supportable from a national security point of view, if these companies, in concert with US law enforcement, have credible evidence of further political violence. 

Um,  aren't the hundreds or thousands of messages on (say) Parler about taking up arms to reverse the election enough evidence of a national security problem, without waiting for law enforcement to agree?

 She then says:

Yet the co-ordinated movement of these companies and their swift removal of Trump’s presence on the internet has chilled observers around the globe.

She cites two people.   Meh, I think she might just be exaggerating.  

As usual, she then complains about what Twitter hasn't taken action against.   This is typical Right Wing whataboutism - although I am not suggesting Twitter or other platforms are above criticism.   But it's irrelevant to the urgency to take action about Trump and the danger his lies and disinformation present to the nation. 

Her answer though is regulation of platforms:

In the absence of regulation that would help tech companies make decisions with transparency, and an appeals process, tech CEOs respond to public outcry with ad hoc censorship.

Sounds all enormously clumsy and costly to me.

I think it safer to leave this question up to the market.