When does free speech really just result in the spread of lies?
When the leader of the most powerful country in the world is spouting claims that the 2020 American presidential election was rigged to his 88 million followers, it becomes deeply concerning that the public are so easily infiltrated by such false information. Dozens of tweets written by President Donald Trump all alluding to the claim that Joe Biden’s victory was fraudulent is greatly disturbing for many reasons.
Twitter has put a disclaimer under many of Trump’s tweets about the election of ‘this claim about election fraud is disputed’ yet it is clear that is not enough to stop the spread of fake news and restore faith in democracy for the American people.
On the 6th January 2021, a mob of angry Trump supporters stormed the Capitol and caused huge destruction to not only the building, but the foundation that democracy is built on. Four people were killed in an attempt to retain control by the police and 68 people were arrested, but perhaps they were all doing what they thought was right. What they felt needed to be done to in order to restore the justice that Mr Trump encouraged.
The scenes that played out were grim; guns, violence and power surged through one of the most powerful buildings in the world — all because of the American president’s inability to concede gracefully and childishly claim the votes were fraudulent.
This all comes down to the power that social media holds; four lives were lost in attempt to retain what the violent mob thought was justice, when really the spread of fake news resulted in the insanity of the events to happen. However, due to free speech, Mr Trump legally can write what he feels necessary on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to his millions of followers all over the world and deal with the consequences of that later. Yet this time it seems he has gone too far.
Mark Zuckerberg announced on the 7th January 2021 that President Donald Trump’s Facebook and Twitter accounts have been suspended ‘indefinitely’. After four years of presidency, has the world finally had enough of Donald Trump’s inability to concede defeat and his incoherent social media rampages? For a man who hates ‘fake news’, which really is news he does not agree with, his huge social media platform allows him to spread so much it.
