Member-only story
The Case for Removing All Politicians From Twitter
Political omnipresence has gone too far
Many celebrated when Jack Dorsey announced that Twitter would stop accepting political advertising. Perhaps it was a shot at Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s self-serving defense of political ads, and it probably wasn’t a major sacrifice for Twitter. And even though I believe it’s a step in the right direction, albeit with some problems, I would argue for a more radical move of not letting anyone holding political office use Twitter as a platform or a mouthpiece for that office. It’s dangerous and disruptive to allow individuals with political power to have the ability to broadcast propaganda and political noise, without intermediaries, into the private space of individuals.
It is one of the hallmarks of a totalitarian state that the politically powerful have the ability to force their messages into the private lives of the populace. George Orwell anticipated it in 1984 with “telescreens” that constantly broadcast propaganda, and North Korea has reportedly implemented a similar system, wiring each individual home with a one-way radio. There is no way to turn off the voice of Kim Jong Un, the Great Successor, and removing the device is criminal.
Twitter gives those in power, like President Trump, the ability to deliver their messages to our pockets and screens at any time of day. This provides a constant barrage of reasons to fear or cheer, depending on your side, the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth. Unlike the North Korean radio, of course, I can decide not to follow the president. I don’t, in fact, follow him on Twitter for this very reason. I’ve found that doesn’t help. His tweets unleash a fusillade of retweets, comments, and outraged reactions that are frankly unavoidable.
There’s no need for Twitter to serve as a tool of political omnipresence.
You can try blocking the president too, but others will retweet his tweets to comment on them and although you’ll see a message that the tweet is unavailable, that’s almost worse. You can even go so far as to block words that might show you his tweets, but what else will that block? Even if we decide to abandon Twitter, the media will be delighted to tell us about it…
