Social Media and Censorship: Close Your Accounts

I don’t have a Twitter account, but I read content on the platform more than I would like to admit even to myself. One particular tweet caught my eye. On June 6, the Wall Street Journal’s Vatican correspondent, Francis Rocca, retweeted a video of a dad dancing for his child who was born with Down syndrome and had been diagnosed with leukemia. The baby is clearly amused and claps along with his dad. It’s impossible to watch the video without being moved. Rocca tweeted: “Let’s just ban everything except this sort of content from Twitter and we’ll all be better off.”

Of course, I thought. If Twitter had been conceived of and marketed as Chicken Soup for Our Collective National Soul, no one would question its right to ban content it deemed contrary to that vision. So why do we get upset about censorship now? Because insofar as social-media platforms have become extensions of our very beings, censorship of our lives on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram is a violation of our freedom of speech. What is speech if it’s not on Facebook?

About the Author

Sam Sweeney

Sam Sweeney, a writer based in the Middle East, is the president of Mesopotamia Relief Foundation, which works in northeastern Syria.

I don’t have a Twitter account, but I read content on the platform more than I would like to admit even to myself. One particular tweet caught my eye. On June 6, the Wall Street Journal’s Vatican correspondent, Francis Rocca, retweeted a video of a dad dancing for his child who was born with Down syndrome and had been diagnosed with leukemia. The baby is clearly amused and claps along with his dad. It’s impossible to watch the video without being moved. Rocca tweeted: “Let’s just ban everything except this sort of content from Twitter and we’ll all be better off.”

Of course, I thought. If Twitter had been conceived of and marketed as Chicken Soup for Our Collective National Soul, no one would question its right to ban content it deemed contrary to that vision. So why do we get upset about censorship now? Because insofar as social-media platforms have become extensions of our very beings, censorship of our lives on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram is a violation of our freedom of speech. What is speech if it’s not on Facebook?