Research: A First Amendment Current Event

During a recent class, we were asked to research a current first amendment issue happening around the country. One of the most present right now is the permanent Twitter suspension of U.S. President, Donald Trump. 

On January 8th of this year, Twitter released a statement saying they’d permanently suspended the personal account of the President due to the risk of “further incitement of violence.” This sent many conservative users into an uprise, causing some to also be banned from the platform, and many others to freely leave on their own.

Alongside the argument that the President had not incited violence in his speech and subsequent tweets, many claimed Twitter had violated the President’s first amendment. However, as scholars of the first amendment, we know the government is the only thing that legally isn't allowed to take this freedom away. 

“Congress shall make no law,” tells us that a private company like Twitter has every right to limit our speech on their platform. We also submit to this when accepting the terms and conditions after joining the service. But should Twitter be allowed to silence the President of the United States over their far-fetched description of incitement? That opens a whole new can of worms to discuss. 

The issue of censorship is more present than ever. With unelected big-tech moguls like Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, Jeff Bezos, and others controlling our modern-day platforms of communication, should the government allow such powerful people make these decisions? It’s hard for me to believe that just because someone doesn’t agree with a certain political view of these big-tech leaders, they can be silenced completely. 

The scariest part is it isn’t limited to just these well-known social platforms. Even our cellphone providers have taken conservative apps and social media companies off of their app stores, making it nearly impossible to reach these alternative platforms.

With the amount of control these companies have over our everyday lives, the government must ask itself if these actions should be legal. I would encourage our citizens to continue speaking up, but how can they if they’re censored so heavily because of it?