Circles close to Donald Trump, expelled from Twitter and other major social networks, are outraged and denounce censorship but, for now, their options for making themselves heard are very limited.
Giants like Google on Friday and Apple on Saturday also removed from their app stores Parler, a platform used by right-wing extremists and conservative commentators.
Amazon also decided to suspend Parler’s account from January 10th. As the group hosts Parler’s data in its cloud service, it should at least temporarily prevent the operation of this social network.
“Freedom of speech is dead and is controlled by left-wing leaders,” said Donald Trump Jr., son of the outgoing president.
“Who will be next to be silenced?” Asked Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo raised his voice against the “left.”
“Sadly, this is not a new tactic on the Left. They worked for years to silence the voices of those who oppose it,” he said.
Influential Republican Sen. Ted Cruz called social media decisions “absurd and deeply dangerous.”
“Why do a handful of Silicon Valley billionaires have a monopoly on political discourse?” He has been asked.
Paradoxically, the reactions were expressed on Twitter, Trump’s favorite social network and which expelled him on Friday for considering his messages inciting violence.
Twitter’s decision was made two days after Trump supporters stormed the Washington Capitol where they staged clashes with security guards and vandalized the building. Five people, including a police officer, were killed in the incidents.
Facebook and other networks like Instagram, Snapchat or Twitch suspended Trump’s accounts indefinitely.
The normally rather permissive Reddit discussion platform closed a forum of president fans on Friday for violating its rules against incitement to hatred.
What can now be the sounding board for Trump and his supporters?
Afraid of being left out of Twitter, his son Donald has already offered his followers to send him their email on their website to keep them informed.
– Create a new platform? –
In a quickly removed tweet, President Trump mentioned Friday night the idea of creating his own platform but gave no further details.
Popular conservative platforms among Trump’s strongest supporters, such as Parler and Gab, are attracting a growing audience.
Faced with the “record” number of visits on Friday-Saturday nights, Gab had to add servers, said its creator Andrew Torba.
Launched in 2016, Gab says it promotes “freedom of speech” and “individual freedoms.” It is mostly used by far-right people and even neo-Nazis.
It was in Gab that the perpetrator of a shooting attack that left 11 dead in a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 had posted numerous anti-Semitic messages.
Several companies refused to provide services to Gab, including PayPal, Visa, Google and Apple.
And now it was Parler who was removed from the Google app stores -Google play- and Apple -AppStore-.
“We are the target of continued posts in the Parler app that seek to incite ongoing violence in the United States,” Google had said on Friday in response to a question from AFP.
Apple responded similarly on Saturday, stating that “Speaking has not taken the right steps to combat the proliferation of threats to people’s security.”
In a letter to the Conservative site, Amazon notes that it has “recently observed a persistent increase in violent content.”
Talking is no longer like its beginnings in 2018, when it was used almost exclusively by marginal extremists. It currently hosts more traditional conservative voices, such as Fox presenter and person close to Trump, Sean Hannity, or South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem.
Also active in Parler, influential political commentator Mark Levin announced Friday night the suspension of his Twitter account “in protest of fascism” from this social network and urged his followers to join the conservative platform.
Levin also mentioned his account on Rumble, a site similar to YouTube that promises its users “that they will never be censored for political or scientific content.”
All of these alternative platforms are followed by right-wing or far-right users. However, it does not seem certain that they will have a very large number of followers, such as the 88 million that Trump had on Twitter.