Those close to Donald Trump who have been banned from Twitter and other major social networks are outraged and disapprove of censorship, but their options to make their voices heard are very limited for now.
Giants like Google on Friday and Apple on Saturday also removed Parler, a platform used by right-wing extremists and conservative commentators, from their app stores.
Amazon also decided to suspend Parler’s account on January 10. Since the group hosts Parler’s data on its cloud service, it should at least temporarily prevent the operation of that social network.
“Freedom of speech has died and is controlled by leftist bosses,” said Donald Trump Jr, son of the outgoing president.
“Who will be the next to be silenced?” Asked Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo raised his voice against “the left”.
“Unfortunately, this is not a new tactic from the left. They have worked for years to silence the voices of those who oppose them,” he said.
Influential Republican Senator Ted Cruz called the social media decisions “absurd and very dangerous.”
‘Why do a handful of Silicon Valley billionaires have the monopoly on political speech?’ He wondered.
Paradoxically, the comments were made on Twitter, Trump’s favorite social network, which dismissed him from school on Friday because he felt his posts incited violence.
Twitter’s decision was made two days after Trump supporters stormed the Washington Capitol, where they clashed with security agents and destroyed the building. Five people, including a police officer, were killed in the incidents.
Facebook and other networks such as Instagram, Snapchat and Twitch have indefinitely suspended Trump’s accounts.
The normally tolerant Reddit discussion platform closed a forum of fans of the president on Friday for breaking the rules against hate speech.
What could be the sounding board for Trump and his supporters?
Afraid not to fall on Twitter, his son Donald has already offered to his followers to send his email to his website to keep them informed.
– Create a new platform? –
In a quickly deleted tweet, President Trump mentioned the idea of creating his own platform on Friday night, but he didn’t go further.
Conservative platforms popular with the most energetic Trump supporters, such as Parler and Gab, are attracting a growing audience.
Given the “record” number of visits on the night from Friday to Saturday, Gab had to add servers, creator Andrew Torba said.
Launched in 2016, Gab says it promotes “freedom of speech” and “individual freedoms”. It is mainly used by far-right people and even neo-Nazis.
It was in Gab that the perpetrator of a shooting attack that killed 11 in a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 posted numerous anti-Semitic messages.
Several companies refused to provide Gab services, including PayPal, Visa, Google and Apple.
And now it was Parler that was removed from the Google Google Play and Apple AppStore application stores.
“We are aware of the ongoing messages on the Parler app inciting continued violence in the United States,” Google said Friday in response to a question from AFP.
Apple similarly responded on Saturday, stating that “Parler has not taken adequate steps to combat the proliferation of threats to human security.”
In a letter to the conservative site, Amazon says it has “recently observed a sustained increase in violent content.”
Parler is no longer what it was at the beginning of 2018, when it was used almost exclusively by extremist extremists. It currently welcomes more traditional conservative voices, such as the Fox presenter and close to Trump, Sean Hannity, or South Dakota’s Republican Governor Kristi Noem.
Influential political commentator Mark Levin, also active in Parler, announced the suspension of his Twitter account on Friday evening “in protest against the fascism” of that social network and urged his followers to join the conservative platform.
Levin also mentioned his account on Rumble, a YouTube-like site that promises its users “never to be censored for political or scientific content.”
All those alternative platforms are followed by users on the right or far right. However, it doesn’t seem certain that they will have a very large following, like the 88 million Trump had on Twitter.