It is possible to believe that Twitter and Facebook did the right thing to block Trump, and that, having done so, it lays bear a real problem for American democracy. The Biden Administration and the incoming Congress need urgently to address the power of online social media.

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First, Twitter’s cancellation of Trump is NOT a First Amendment violation. Twitter has a right to moderate the speech distributed on its network, and a responsibility to take the public interest into account.

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Moreover, Trump has not been deprived of the ability to speak. He has merely been deprived of the ability to speak on Twitter and Facebook. I am not overly troubled by the ability of private corporations to decide how consumers use those corporations’ resources.

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I am, however, troubled by the fact that depriving someone of access to Facebook and Twitter has an effect roughly equal to government censorship. It has that effect because we have allowed these two networks to become public goods, rather than merely private interests.

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In other words, the impact of Facebook and Twitter is not limited to the private benefit enjoyed by their users, employees and shareholders. As we have seen, these and other networks can unintentionally become a powerful force for liberation - or for fascism.

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