Republican digital agents worry about themselves and their customers after major tech companies cracked down on major conservative websites and organizations.
Why it’s important: Amazon’s decision to remove the popular conservative social media site Talking about its hosting services, and the Twitter suspensions of President Trump and tens of thousands of his supporters, have segments right online fearing they will they “deform” themselves.
What’s new: A handful of conservative digital professionals gathered virtually this week on a shared email list. The tone was discouraging as they tried, in a series of emails forwarded to Axios, to figure out how to stay on the right side of technology industry standards.
Between lines: The crackdowns have focused primarily on platforms where conspiracy theories have proliferated since Trump’s election loss and, in some cases, where last week’s violence at the Capitol was encouraged, encouraged, and celebrated.
- But the digital strategists on this email list were convinced they could soon find themselves dragged down by a seemingly imminent wave of online censorship.
- They consider them arbitrary and politically motivated.
- “What is the threshold for whether a project is likely to start and close?” asked Allen Fuller, Colorado GOP strategist. “Viously, obviously, encouraging insurrection and violence is pretty clear … but the line here isn’t.”
- “It just comes down to where the left wants to draw the line and right now they have no idea where that line is or seem to care,” wrote Thomas Peters, the founder and CEO of equal text messaging. to the same software company RumbleUp.
Driving the news: Trump’s permanent suspension from Twitter on Friday was seismic. But it was far from the only platform that exiled him.
- His followers turned to rival social media platforms that catered to his political brand. The most popular of them, Parler, was suspended by Amazon’s AWS cloud service and is now suing.
- GoDaddy on Tuesday kicked off the web’s most popular firearms forum, AR15.com. The company told Axios that it discovered content on the site “that both promoted and encouraged violence.”
For some conservatives, the answer is to stay as technologically self-sufficient as possible.
- Tom Elliott, a former radio producer who founded the Grabien television and video recording service, said his decision to build his own digital infrastructure behind the company bore fruit.
- “I have specifically avoided outsourcing functionality to external technology vendors who have shown their willingness to be used on behalf of‘ social justice ’fighting sessions,” Elliott said in an email to Axios.
Editor’s Note: This piece was updated with information from the email list after being accidentally cut during the editing process.