WH doesn't seem to have invited anyone banned from major social media platforms to the “social media summit”, organized to lament alleged bias behind such bans
No one who is invited to the summit has actually been banned from social platforms. Tweets: @ashleyfeinberg , @juliadavisnews , @willsommer , @markknoller , @katierogers , @pbump , @cwarzel , and @oneunderscore__ Tweets: Ashley Feinberg / @ashleyfeinberg : why am i being deplatformed pic.twitter.com/DUL1tOT8fm Julia Davis / @juliadavisnews : Conspiracy theorists, far-right agitators head to White House w/ social media in their sights: Trump is scheduled to host several internet personalities at an event that disinformation researchers say legitimizes people who traffic in trolling & harassment https://www.nbcnews.com/... Will Sommer / @willsommer : Pro-Trump personalities who weren't invited to Trump's social media summit are fuming over the snub: https://www.thedailybeast.com/ ... Mark Knoller / @markknoller : “You see the hatred,” says Pres Trump of some social media platforms opposed to him, his policies and his supporters. “They don't allow free speech.” “It's a disgraceful thing,” he tells his social media supporters. " pic.twitter.com/IZmqtYaByW Katie Rogers / @katierogers : The president has also revealed how most of the 200 attendees have direct access to his White House social media director, @DanScavino, who then runs ideas by the president. “My Dan,” POTUS calls him. Philip Bump / @pbump : The perfect sentence. “In an Instagram post, Turning Point executive Benny Johnson promised to use the conference to give Trump ‘dank meme ideas.’” https://www.thedailybeast.com/ ... Charlie Warzel / @cwarzel : we talk about the two-universes concept a lot here. the stuff from this summit is maybe the most i've felt it. Ben Collins / @oneunderscore__ : For disinformation researchers like @3r1nG, the guest list for tomorrow's White House social media summit looks a lot like a physical meet-up of some who show up in network graphs and data for disinformation, harassment and coordinated troll campaigns. https://www.nbcnews.com/... https://twitter.com/... Expand More For Next Unexpand More For Next
Context & Ripple Effects
The summit is the second time Trump has convened a tech gathering while freezing out the companies at its center: back in December 2016 he held a tech summit in NYC without inviting Jack Dorsey despite his reliance on Twitter. This week's version goes further — the White House never invited Facebook and Twitter at all, and Trump's stated plan to call platform executives to a meeting has produced no invitations, per Reuters sources.
First-order effects
- Facebook and Twitter are absent from a summit convened to attack their moderation decisions, leaving the White House to litigate 'bias' with no one from the accused platforms in the room.
- The invitees — internet personalities whom disinformation researchers say traffic in trolling and harassment — receive official legitimization from the venue itself, despite none having actually been banned.
Second-order effects
- The event converts directly into reach: per the Washington Post's analysis, 15 attendees critical of the platforms gained a combined 197,000 Twitter followers after the summit, meaning the grievance tour grows the very accounts the platforms are accused of suppressing.
Third-order effects
- The pattern — pressure campaigns against platform moderation culminating in CEO-by-CEO confrontation — runs straight into the structure the New York Times later described, where ban decisions at Facebook and Twitter are gut calls made under duress by their CEOs, and it foreshadows Trump's own post-January 6 banning and the years-long effort by him and his allies to beat down election-lie filters.
The trend: Political pressure on platform moderation is escalating from symbolic summits that exclude the platforms to direct confrontations over who controls ban decisions.