Why Purging Social Media of Extremist Speech Might Not Make Us Safer

It's been a wild week on social media. Twitter and Facebook permanently suspended President Trump following the Capitol riots; Twitter removed 70,000 accounts for allegedly promoting violent and conspiratorial content; Facebook mistakenly locked former congressman Ron Paul out of his account, an incident that demonstrates the perils of overly broad moderation; Apple and Amazon moved to eliminate Parler from the former's app store and the latter's servers, effectively destroying the alternative platform used by many Trump supporters.

The social media companies' treatment of both Trump and Parler has prompted furious criticism from conservative pundits and politicians. "Big Tech wants to control what we see, how we behave, and what we say," said Rep. Matt Gaetz (R–Fla.) in a statement entirely characteristic of the right's response.