I think it depends. And I think Twitterâs response is, generally, the right way to go.
You must also remember they are an international company, so they have to comply with laws in every country they operate in. Here, it is illegal for people to glorify national socialism (extreme right wing), call people to violence against individuals or groups of people, holocaust denial and there are also liable laws, among other things they have to take into account.
Here, such tweets as those issued by Trump over the last few years would have been immediately taken down and the account banned, over here, even if they came from a politician. A president calling people to take to the streets and his son calling it outright war, just over an election, would not be tollerated. Twitter and Google would be in serious trouble if they didnât censor such tweets over here.
Taking his tweets as an example (I donât know enough about the other cases you have mentioned to make an informed comment), he has incited people to hatred, called for violence, been openly racists and has repeatedly and demonstrably, to use his own words, spread âfake newsâ. It is little wonder his tweets are currently being censored, when he is blatantly lying or trying to cause disent among the population.
You have him claiming voting fraud and the election was stolen, yet you have his own, Republican observers in the voting halls giving interviews saying that everything was above board, that they have monitored the whole process and there is no sign of any fraud.
He hasnât put forward any evidence that there was any fraud, other than his own appel on his supporters to not vote by post, but to do it in person, whilst the Democrats called more for postal votes and people to remain safe. Then he claims foul play, when the Republicans forced the vote counters in many states to not start counting postal votes until after the in-person votes have been tallied.
So, of course it looks âfishyâ to anyone who hasnât followed the news over the last 6 months, that after the in-person votes have been counted, suddenly the Democrats start gaining ground rapidly - because Trump / the Republicans wanted it that way.
With COVID, things are more nauenced, but there is a lot of misinformation being posted and the demonisation of the actual medical experts in the USA, by the President himself, makes it even harder for US English speakers to make an informed opinion.
On the other hand, you have countries like New Zealand, which has all but eliminated the virus on their shores, by being hard from the start and enforcing a severe lock down and taking to the population in a calm and rational manner.
The same in Germany. We have open borders and free movement and our lockdown wasnât as extreme - and a lot of politicians were calling it unconstitutional as well. But Merkel and her cabinet have managed to keep relatively good control of the situation until the last couple of weeks - the numbers are now around 20,000 a day infected and a couple of hundred deaths - but they had a lot of opposition to their policies.
But, Merkel this week sat down for around an hour to do a non-scripted Q&A with the press to calmly discuss her policies and how the policies should see us opening up again enough by Christmas that families will be able to come together for the holidays. When was the last time you saw Trump sit down and rationally discuss his policies in an hour long, unscripted Q&A with anyone from the media?
The other thing with the USA was that Trump ignored his medical advisers and vilified or ridiculed them. The UK to a great extent as well. NZ and Germany, the Prime Minister and Chancellor not only listened to medical advisers, they actually didnât answer questions beyond their competence, they just handed over the stage to the experts. At nearly every news conference in the first months, the medical experts explained the virus and how it was spreading and Merkel then discussed how policies were being implemented to curb its spread.
There are still people here who claim that it is a hoax or that it isnât bad enough to encroach on their freedoms, but the majority of people understand the situation and while they might not be happy with it, they follow the official advice, for the greater good.
The US Government has done the opposite, it has demonstrated that it doesnât think much of medical experts and the messages have been mixed, so it is little wonder that other theories are flourishing there. Does that mean that everyt theory should be given equal weight? What about theories that go against what the WHO and other medical experts are saying? I think putting a warning on them, that they donât agree with the commonly understood facts and people should take their content and advice with a pinch of salt is the right way to go.
I donât use Facebook (it is actually physically blocked at the network layer in my house), so I canât comment on how Facebook is reacting.