Unfollow and Unlike: Well-Known Model Rips Into Big Tech After Capitol Incursion
Supermodel Emily Ratajkowski took to Twitter on Jan. 7 to denounce Big Tech in light of recent social media censorship against President Donald Trump.
The left-wing celebrity took special care to call out Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, expressing fear that successful efforts to silence Trump would enable the social media giant to blacklist just about anyone in the future.
“This gives Facebook/tech/Zuck THE MOST POWER,” the 29-year-old model wrote in a tweet.
“If he can shut the president up/off he can shut any of us up/off.”
This gives Facebook/tech/Zuck THE MOST POWER. If he can shut the president up/off he can shut any of us up/off
— Emily Ratajkowski (@emrata) January 7, 2021
“My concern is that this gives big tech the opportunity to shut down ‘leftist extremists’ who are important political organizers,” she added in a follow-up tweet.
My concern is that this gives big tech the opportunity to shut down “leftist extremists” who are important political organizers.
— Emily Ratajkowski (@emrata) January 7, 2021
Facebook had previously announced it was muting Trump’s accounts one day after a radical group of his supporters stormed the Capitol Building on Jan. 6.
“The shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden,” Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post detailing the decision.
“His decision to use his platform to condone rather than condemn the actions of his supporters at the Capitol building has rightly disturbed people in the US and around the world. We removed these statements yesterday because we judged that their effect — and likely their intent — would be to provoke further violence.”
Facebook was not the only company to silence the president, however.
Twitter announced in a statement on Jan. 8 that it had “permanently suspended [Trump’s] account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” The company said two of the president’s tweets from that day had prompted the ban.
In one tweet, Trump announced that he would not be attending President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration. In the second, Trump hailed his supporters as “great American Patriots” who will not be “disrespected or treated unfairly,” leading some to suggest the president supported the actions at the Capitol.
Twitter argued that the tweets could incite a similar attack and had therefore violated the platform’s “Glorification of Violence” policy. The company did not outline how exactly the tweets would encourage such violent acts, nor was it clear how the statements were any worse than other content present on the platform.
The Chinese Embassy, for instance, had tweeted on Jan. 7 that Uighur women were becoming “more confident and independent” despite reports of a mass sterilization and genocide campaign being carried out against the Muslim minority. Twitter allowed the propaganda from the Chinese Communist Party to remain up for a full day, and no disciplinary action appears to have been taken against the account.
Twitter did not accuse Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei of violating its terms of service either, despite his public calls for international “revenge” in a tweet published on Dec. 16.
“Those who ordered the murder of General Soleimani, as well as those who carried this out, should be punished. This revenge will certainly happen at the right time,” Khamenei wrote.
Those who ordered the murder of General Soleimani as well as those who carried this out should be punished. This revenge will certainly happen at the right time.
— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) December 16, 2020
If Twitter took steps to exile Trump from the platform for allegedly inciting violence, why was the same standard not applied in either of these cases?
The lack of consistency is not the only problem that arose in light of recent censorship efforts.
As The Daily Wire reported, many members of the media celebrated the decision to remove Trump from Twitter, with some going so far as to call for more censorship.
Yahoo News reporter Alexander Nazaryan tweeted on Jan. 8 that Twitter should ban The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway and Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. Sarah Jeong, a former member of The New York Times editorial board, made a similar demand on Jan. 9, when she called for the deplatforming of journalist Andy Ngo.
While some left-wing commentators saw the social media crackdown on Trump as an opportunity to censor their political opponents, Ratajkowski noted how easily those actions could backfire.
“People responding to my tweet somehow do not understand what license this gives big tech to continue to do so this time with people cheering,” she wrote. “Patriot act 2.0?”
I’m aware. And before tech leftists were being blacklisted by other means. People responding to my tweet somehow do not understand what license this gives big tech to continue to do so this time with people cheering. Patriot act 2.0?
— Emily Ratajkowski (@emrata) January 7, 2021
Ratajkowski’s bipartisan approach to the issue was not without its flaws, however. The model also tweeted conspiratorial speculation that Trump supporters had actually been allowed to breach the Capitol in order to provide Big Tech with justification for a “rollout of censorship.”
Anyone else feel like proper amount of capital police being absent/letting Trump people in/providing insane visuals of MAGA dudes on the floor of the house was wildly convenient to justifying big tech’s rollout of censorship?
— Emily Ratajkowski (@emrata) January 7, 2021
Still, Ratajkowski is at least willing to acknowledge that censoring conservatives would leave Big Tech plenty of room to silence left-wing voices.
The Democrats who are celebrating Big Tech censorship should remember that social media giants have used specious justifications to deplatform people on their side before. As the BBC reported in 2019, feminist Meghan Murphy was banned from Twitter for saying “men aren’t women” and “misgendering” a transgender person on the site.
By allowing Big Tech to suppress conservative opinions, Democrats have left themselves vulnerable to being banned from social media for not being progressive enough. Instead of weaponizing social media against one another, there should be bipartisan agreement that Big Tech should not wield excessive power over information technology.
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