The social media giants aren’t priests or free speech platforms, they are simply ad sales businesses, says Tom Hodgkinson, in a piece first published in 2021

It’s been a bumpy few days for social media. First Trump is banned by Twitter, and then by all the other so-called platforms. Now we’re reading that millions of people are dumping the Facebook-owned WhatsApp for two other messaging systems, Telegram and Signal. Commentators on left and right condemned the Twitter ban. Angela Merkel’s spokesman announced: “The fundamental right to freedom of opinion is a fundamental right of elementary importance, and this fundamental right can be interfered with, but through the law and within the framework defined by the legislature, not according to the decision of the management of social media platforms. From this point of view, the Chancellor considers it problematic that the accounts of the US president have been permanently blocked.”

Columnists on various libertarian publications and websites complained that banning Trump was a ban on free speech. Such commentators are breathtakingly naïve. They seem to fail to realise that Twitter/X, Facebook/Meta, Google, YouTube and the rest are not free speech platforms, though this is how they have marketed themselves. In fact, they are simply ad sales companies with no morals whatsoever. They can do what they want. Their main aim in life is to sell as many ads as possible in order to increase their share price and the personal wealth of the owners. That is where any sense of morality starts and stops. Mark Zuckerberg gets excited by signing a massive deal with Unilever, not by allowing people to express themselves. Most tech bosses and their investors are greedy, amoral, ruthless capitalists who have presided over a massive redistribution of wealth away from small newspapers and magazines and into their pockets, as I attempted to point out in 2008.

The ad sales business Twitter – now X – has cleverly got the whole world working for it for free. But the vanity of the users prevents them from realising how they’re being exploited. To take one example, Guardian columnist Owen Jones argues that writers shouldn’t work for free. A laudable position. But he has written thousands of words for Twitter/X without receiving a single penny. And alongside his words, Twitter sells ads for the massive capitalist corporations that Owen is likely to criticise elsewhere! Right now advertisers in the UK include those well-known socialists Sky TV, Nescafé, Tesco, Disney and the UK government.

Trump is being banned now that he no longer matters. For the tech groups it’s more important to lobby the new administration, fearing, as they do, the coming crackdown on their power. I also suspect that the ban would have followed pressure from advertisers. In other words, it’s a commercial decision dressed up as a moral one.

What’s interesting is that the new pretenders, Telegram and Signal, are not ad sales businesses. Signal is run by WhatsApp founder Brian Acton, who made a fortune when he sold WhatsApp to Facebook. He put $50 million in to get it moving. It appears to be run on donations. Telegram is run by Russian brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov, and again it claims to be a non-commercial idea.

So if you want to communicate with friends without being spied on and without ads being chucked at you, maybe take a look at these two.

Or better still, get your fountain pen out, place a blank sheet of paper on your desk, and write a letter.

SELECTED COMMENTS

These comments were mailed to us after an earlier version of the above piece was sent as a newsletter. We like to publish a selection and reserve the right to edit them for clarity. Feel free to drop us a line with your thoughts.

It only took 12 years for people to catch on. Better late than never I suppose.
Kristina Wirz

What do you think of Berners-Lee & Inrupt? It may end up in the pocket of an oligarch in 10 years’ time but is it, at present, a plausible way of breaking up Big Tech?
Duncan Fallowell

Enjoyed the article, but I’d be wary of promoting Telegram. All the batshit crazy Trump-supporting QAnon worshippers seem to have moved to Telegram. Worrying.
Katherine Hunter

Jarett Kobek’s brill novel I Hate The Internet sets this idea to music.
Stewart Lee

What these “libertarian” commentators fail to understand is that the 1st Amendment does not protect “incitement”, i.e. speech that incites violence and/or the overthrow of the government. You can say anything you like [almost] but the incitement to violence is an entirely different matter. Why do you think certain jihadist preachers have been banned from universities in this country? For inciting violence against non-Muslims and so-called apostates. Shouting “fire” in a crowded cinema when there’s no fire is not “free speech”. Finally, I always thought that the fundamental principle of libertarian thought was: Do as you wish, think as you wish, say as you wish, so long as you don’t harm others. As an American and a New Yorker – and a registered Republican (who usually voted for Democrats) – I am sick and tired of excuses being made for this narcissistic, bullying grifter. He went to DC to “drain the swamp”; the problem is, he is the swamp.
George Rafael

The libertarians hate social media companies because they think they’re part of the woke left, which individually they might be but that’s irrelevant. The libertarians are beginning to like Merkel – because she thinks “the fundamental right to freedom of opinion” should only ever be taken away by governments! The left love them because they forget why there was a left in the first place, and no it’s not to link up with billionaire monopoly capitalists, but the left love banning things, so it doesn’t matter. I blame old media. You warned them, and so did I. “YouTube are stealing your content and selling it”… ‘Oh, but we’ll look ‘anti-digital’ and uncool if we take them on”. And anyway this huge wooden horse is a gift, bring it in… But what to do? Those who don’t like it can start a Twitter campaign.
Simon Jameson

Our September/October issue is available is available in Waitrose, Waterstones, Smiths Travel outlets, select Smiths high street branches and in around 100 indie stores. Click here for your nearest stockist.