Twitter, Facebook and others silenced Trump. Now they learn what comes next.

apple Inc.,

Amazon.com Inc.

and Alphabet Inc

GOOG 1.12%

Google also took steps to launch Parler, a social media app and website that has grown in popularity among conservatives and that some riot police had used to promote Wednesday’s attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to screenshots who saw the Wall Street Journal

Actions against Trump and Parler illustrate more than ever the influence of companies on online conversation and the political nature of their decisions. While praised by many, expelling the president and some of his supporters also infuriated others who said it amounts to censorship, and the moves risked expelling some users in a way that, especially for Twitter, could reshape their business. It also illustrates the political nature of how they determine what content to delete, what content to allow, and what to amplify.

“For better or worse, they made a political decision,” said Jonathon Hauenschild, director of the communications and technology working group at the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative nonprofit group, on corporate movements. Attention to the tech giants “was there to begin with. Now the spotlight is on, ”he said.

Technology companies acted in response to Wednesday’s attack by Trump supporters in Washington, in which five people were killed. That crowd mobilized largely on social media, and Trump’s messages before and during the episode were criticized by Democrats and Republicans for inflaming and supporting the crowd. Many outraged by the event, including employees working for these companies, demanded that Twitter, Facebook and others take more aggressive action than they had in previous controversies about Trump. Companies said removing Trump and Parler from their platforms was necessary to prevent online posts that could lead to more violence.

“It’s a seismic change,” said Chris Nolan, chief executive of San Francisco-based spot buying firm Spot-On, about companies ’actions to ban the president. “It’s a step for platforms to recognize that what happens on their platforms has consequences in real life.”

The decisions added fuel to a debate that was already raging about whether platforms do too much to control the content of their platforms or not enough.

Many Conservatives, including Senator Marco Rubio (R., Florida) and others, said the impact of platform decisions suggests that the influence of the technology industry on public conversations is too great.

“Now we live in a country where four or five companies, unelected, irresponsible, have the power of monopoly to decide, we will eliminate people, we will erase it from any digital platform, whether it is to sell things and the like,” he said. tell Fox News on Sunday.

Some of Mr. Trump’s allies have said they would move their Twitter activity to other platforms, including Parler and Gab, which were considered more tolerant of speech. On Friday, Twitter also suspended some other accounts related to Trump and his sponsors, including those in his campaign and one of his senior officials, as well as several associates with far-right conspiracy group QAnon that Twitter said violated its coordination policy. harmful activity.

For Twitter, in particular, it’s unclear how the decision will affect the company’s business. The president’s personal Twitter account had more than 88 million followers, which equated to nearly half the total number of daily Twitter users. And while Trump was not the most followed member of Twitter, his tweets encouraged the conversation and engagement of Twitter users across the political spectrum. The fact that the president embraced Twitter as a chosen platform reinforced the company’s launch for the wider public, which serves as an ideal place to find out what’s going on.

At the same time, Trump’s often controversial tweets also created headaches for the company as it tried to enforce its rules and ensure the platform was hospitable to reputable advertisers.

“From a business standpoint, I don’t see it as a problem for social media companies,” said Eric Ross, chief strategist at Cascend Securities, which covers publicly traded technology companies. “They seem to be already moving in the direction of limiting people’s commentary and political discourse, and advertisers seemed to be following them.”

A Twitter spokesman declined to comment.

Facebook and other companies could feel less impact on their businesses if they moderate the accounts of Mr. Trump and his followers. Still, his actions showed how companies have evolved during the Trump era.

Before Trump took office, most major platform operators preferred to moderate as little content as possible, employing teams of fairly small content moderators. Some Twitter executives called his company “the wing of free speech of the free speech party.”

Now, companies like Facebook employ thousands of moderators and use artificial intelligence and other technology to control their users ’posts. On Twitter, the acrimony on the platform began to represent a responsibility for business, a former executive said.

“It got to a point where Twitter was expected to need to control it more, or people would not use the platform for fear of being abused,” the former executive said.

Corporate actions are likely to come under even greater scrutiny as regulators pursue antitrust cases against various tech giants and as Congress and the incoming Biden administration want to renew 25-year-old legislation known as in section 230, decisions of platforms on content regulation.

In recent months, Parler had become a haven for some conservatives annoyed by what they saw as excess and bias for the mainstream platforms. On Friday, Parler had downloaded 182,000 times in Apple and Google app stores, a 14-fold increase in the number of downloads the previous Friday, according to app analytics firm Sensor Tower Inc.

However, Parler has also faced criticism for his practical approach to moderation, including the discourse of neo-Nazis and other groups calling for violence.

The future of Parler is unclear. Amazon AMZN 0.65%

said it would stop providing cloud computing services to Parler as of Sunday, Pacific time, which could underpin the platform’s operations. Google and Apple have removed it from their app stores, meaning even if it can be restarted, its app would not be available to many smartphone users.

Apple and Google require apps in their stores to moderate content. Google pointed to examples of content it found in Parler threatening elected officials and calling for plans to organize a militia march. One user posted, “How do we get our country back? It’s simple … we’re chasing them!” Google also tagged images of shared flyers on Parler asking armed militias to march on Washington, DC, on the opening day.

Parler executives told the newspaper that the company has doubled its team of volunteer moderators and instructed them to look for “hot” hashtags to measure whether users incite violence. Parler chief executive John Matze said the company has been eliminating users who breach its terms.

Matze said keeping his business running will be difficult because suddenly the companies he has trusted have stopped working on it. “Our vendors dropped us all at once,” he told the newspaper. With Amazon’s intention to cut Parler’s data storage and processing contract at 11:59 p.m., Sunday, Pacific time, it expects Parler to be temporarily unavailable. “At best, 12 hours will pass. In the worst and worst cases, weeks, ”he said.

While Parler and other smaller platforms could grow, longtime social media observers say the significant scale of Twitter and Facebook makes these platforms not lose their influence.

Smaller spaces full of like-minded users do not offer users the opportunity to reach a new audience, leaving participants to compete with each other to attract attention, said Joan Donovan, Shorenstein’s director of research. Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. “Once someone has been removed from mainstream networks,” he said, “they tend to be very marginal.”

—Keach Hagey and Jeff Horwitz contributed to this article.

Write to Sarah E. Needleman at [email protected] and Georgia Wells at [email protected]