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.

/1

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.

/2

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.

/3

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.

/4

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.

/5

The dust hasn't yet settled, but we can draw some early conclusions from today's protests in #Russia. TL;DR: The Kremlin and the opposition are at a stalemate.

/1

I don't see reliable nationwide turnout figures, but this feels similar in size & scale to the 2017 Dimon protests, which brought out 60-100k nationwide. This may be bigger. Either way, more than the Kremlin was hoping to see, but probably less than the opposition wanted.

/2

The Kremlin went to extraordinary lengths to keep people off the streets - including preventive arrests, online censorship, and threats to workers and students - and there's little indication it worked (though, I suppose, turnout could have been even higher).

/3

The opposition demonstrated that it can turn out significant numbers of people nationwide, even when its leaders are in jail and there is a credible threat of violence.

/4

Meanwhile, the Kremlin is sticking to the tactics it used against the Moscow protests in the summer of 2019: random but not overwhelming violence, enough to create fears of bodily harm, but not enough to keep people off the streets.

/5

We need to recognize how remarkable this

Part of me, of course, wants to see this as mundane -- as the Supreme Court doing exactly what it _should_ have done, exactly what every non-quack legal expert said it would do. But it would be wrong to dismiss the fears of those who worried it would do the opposite.

/2

As someone who studies authoritarian politics for a living, I would encourage all of us who have the privilege of living in democracies to retain a healthy appreciation of institutions working the way they _should_.

/3

The argument that SCOTUS _would_ rule this way because it _should_ rule this way was always specious, in my view. Of course it should. But 106 GOP congressmen and 17 state attorneys general _should_ also have refrained from filing amicus briefs.

/4

The GOP and Trump _should_ have recognized defeat, even if they don't like it. Fox News _should_ not be giving a platform to lies about 'illegal' ballots. Shall I continue?

/5