Deplatforming of invited speakers In the United States, the banning of speakers on university campuses dates back to the 1940s. This was carried out by the policies of the universities themselves. The
University of California had a policy known as the Speaker Ban, codified in university regulations under President
Robert Gordon Sproul, that mostly, but not exclusively, targeted
communists. One rule stated that "the University assumed the right to prevent exploitation of its prestige by unqualified persons or by those who would use it as a platform for propaganda." This rule was used in 1951 to block
Max Shachtman, a
socialist, from speaking at the
University of California at Berkeley. In 1947, former U.S. Vice President
Henry A. Wallace was banned from speaking at
UCLA because of his views on U.S.
Cold War policy, and in 1961,
Malcolm X was prohibited from speaking at Berkeley as a religious leader. Controversial speakers invited to appear on college campuses have faced deplatforming attempts to disinvite them or to otherwise prevent them from speaking. In the United States, recent examples include
the March 2017 disruption by protestors of a public speech at
Middlebury College by political scientist
Charles Murray. , the
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a speech advocacy group, documented 469 disinvitation or disruption attempts at American campuses since 2000,
Twitter On November 18, 2022,
Elon Musk, as newly appointed CEO of Twitter, reopened previously banned Twitter accounts of high-profile users, including Kathy Griffin,
Jordan Peterson, and The Babylon Bee as part of the new Twitter policy. As Musk exclaimed, "New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach".
Alex Jones On August 6, 2018, Facebook,
Apple, YouTube and
Spotify removed all content by Jones and
InfoWars for policy violations. YouTube removed channels associated with
InfoWars, including The Alex Jones Channel. On Facebook, four pages associated with
InfoWars and Alex Jones were removed over repeated policy violations. Apple removed all podcasts associated with Jones from
iTunes. On August 13, 2018,
Vimeo removed all of Jones's videos because of "prohibitions on discriminatory and hateful content". Facebook cited instances of dehumanizing immigrants, Muslims and
transgender people, as well as glorification of violence, as examples of
hate speech. After
InfoWars was banned from Facebook, Jones used another of his websites,
NewsWars, to circumvent the ban. Jones's accounts were also removed from
Pinterest,
Mailchimp and
LinkedIn. , Jones retained active accounts on
Instagram,
Google+ and
Twitter. In September, Jones was permanently banned from Twitter and Periscope after berating
CNN reporter
Oliver Darcy. On September 7, 2018, the
InfoWars app was removed from the
Apple App Store for "objectionable content". He was banned from using
PayPal for business transactions, having violated the company's policies by expressing "hate or discriminatory intolerance against certain communities and religions." After
Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter several previously banned accounts were reinstated including Donald Trump,
Andrew Tate and
Ye resulting in questioning if Alex Jones will be unbanned as well. However Musk denied that Alex Jones will be unbanned criticizing Jones as a person that "would use the deaths of children for gain, politics or fame".
InfoWars remained available on
Roku devices in January 2019, a year after the channel's removal from multiple streaming services. Roku indicated that they do not "curate or censor based on viewpoint," and that it had policies against content that is "unlawful, incited illegal activities, or violates third-party rights," but that
InfoWars was not in violation of these policies. Following a social media backlash, Roku removed
InfoWars and stated "After the
InfoWars channel became available, we heard from concerned parties and have determined that the channel should be removed from our platform." In March 2019, YouTube terminated the Resistance News channel due to its reuploading of live streams from
InfoWars. On May 1, 2019, Jones was barred from using both Facebook and Instagram. Jones briefly moved to
Dlive, but was suspended in April 2019 for violating community guidelines. In March 2020, the
InfoWars app was removed from the
Google Play store due to claims of Jones disseminating
COVID-19 misinformation. A Google spokesperson stated that "combating misinformation on the Play Store is a top priority for the team" and apps that violate Play policy by "distributing misleading or harmful information" are removed from the store.
Donald Trump On January 6, 2021, in a
joint session of the United States Congress, the counting of the votes of the
Electoral College was interrupted by a
breach of the United States Capitol chambers. The rioters were supporters of President
Donald Trump who hoped to delay and overturn the President's loss in the
2020 election. The event resulted in five deaths and at least 400 people being charged with crimes. The certification of the electoral votes was only completed in the early morning hours of January 7, 2021. In the wake of several
Tweets by President Trump on January 7, 2021
Facebook,
Instagram,
YouTube,
Reddit, and
Twitter all deplatformed Trump to some extent. Twitter deactivated his personal account, which the company said could possibly be used to promote further violence. Trump subsequently tweeted similar messages from the President's official US Government account @POTUS, which resulted in him being permanently banned on January 8. Twitter then announced that Trump's ban from their platform would be permanent. Trump planned to rejoin on social media through the use of a new platform by May or June 2021, according to
Jason Miller on a
Fox News broadcast. The same week Musk announced Twitter's new freedom of speech policy, he tweeted a poll to ask whether to bring back Trump into the platform. The poll ended with 51.8% in favor of unbanning Trump's account.
Andrew Tate In 2017,
Andrew Tate was banned from Twitter for tweeting that women should "bare some responsibility" in response to the #MeToo movement. Similarly, in August 2022, Tate was banned on four more major social media platforms: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube. Tate has since been unbanned from Twitter as part of the new freedom of speech policy on Twitter. In September 2016,
Vox reported that demonetization—as it pertained to YouTube specifically—involved the following key points: • "Since 2012, YouTube has been automatically 'demonetizing' some videos because its software thought the content was unfriendly for advertisers." • "Many YouTube video makers didn't realize this until last week, when YouTube began actively telling them about it." • "This has freaked YouTubers out, even though YouTube has been behaving rationally by trying to connect advertisers to advertiser-friendly content. It's not censorship, since YouTube video makers can still post (just about) anything they want." • "YouTube's software will screw things up, which means videos that should have ads don't, which means YouTube video makers have been missing out on ad revenue."
Other examples Deplatforming tactics have also included attempts to silence controversial speakers through various forms of personal
harassment, such as
doxing, the making of false emergency reports for purposes of
swatting, and complaints or petitions to third parties. In some cases, protesters have attempted to have speakers
blacklisted from projects or fired from their jobs. In 2019, students at the
University of the Arts in Philadelphia circulated an online petition demanding that
Camille Paglia "should be removed from UArts faculty and replaced by a queer person of color." According to
The Atlantics
Conor Friedersdorf, "It is rare for student activists to argue that a tenured faculty member should be denied a platform." Paglia, a tenured professor for over 30 years who identifies as
transgender, had long been unapologetically outspoken on controversial "matters of sex, gender identity, and sexual assault". In December 2017, after learning that a French artist it had previously reviewed was a
neo-Nazi, the
San Francisco punk magazine
Maximum Rocknroll apologized and announced that it has "a strict no-platform policy towards any bands and artists with a Nazi ideology". == Legislative responses ==