Michelle hits this exactly right. There isn't a happy answer here. If you feel conflicted, you're right.
But that reflects a deeper fact of Trump, and those like him: They leave us with no good options.
But that reflects a deeper fact of Trump, and those like him: They leave us with no good options.
https://twitter.com/michelleinbklyn/status/1348799809965051904
The media faced a version of this for years. Ignore Trump's worst comments, his most noxious followers, and you're normalizing horrifying behavior. Cover them and you're giving them exactly what they want: Attention, energy.
It was always lose-lose. There was no good strategy.
It was always lose-lose. There was no good strategy.
The same is true with the platforms. Allow Trump and his minions untrammeled use and you become planning and promotional infrastructure for, eventually, a murderous insurrection. Kick them off and you're censors, wielding power few are comfortable you have.
Politics and society rely, to some degree, on virtue and self-restraint. It's not all rules and laws. The worse Trump got, the more awful the choices everyone else faced became.
That's how trolls operate: They push until they win, and your platform/conversation/country collapses, or until you censor, thus feeding their persecution complex, showing the powers-that-be really are silencing them.
The platforms didn't want to make these choices. That's why they refused to make them for years and years. They did nothing and more nothing, and the result was a violent attack on the Capitol that left people dead. They're acting now because inaction failed so totally.
Is this a good equilibrium? No! But there wasn't a good equilibrium on offer. Trump made certain of that. We elected a troll to the presidency, and the results were predictable to anyone who's ever been on a message board.
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