It’s been another period of self-inflicted tumult for rapper and fashion designer Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, after the one-time presidential candidate was temporarily suspended from Twitter and Instagram and announced plans to buy his own social media platform.
Following anti-Semitic posts, the social media companies restricted Ye’s access to his accounts, saying his comments violated community guidelines.
Kanye West attends the Balenciaga Womenswear Spring/Summer 2023 show as part of Paris Fashion Week on October 02, 2022 in Villepinte, France.Credit:Anthony Ghnassia/Getty Images For Balenciaga
Given it’s not the first time Ye has been suspended from social media and is unlikely to be his last, the enforced time-out raises a question of whether temporary restrictions, and even permanent bans, for celebrities actually work in reducing hate speech and spreading harmful views.
Dr Jonathon Hutchinson, senior lecturer of online communication and media at the University of Sydney, says the success of suspensions and bans hinges on not just the level of fame a user has, but also the purposes for which they use social media.
“Unlike influencers or other types of celebrities, Kanye West has these other cultural products that he creates and social media is sort of just used to integrate all of those,” he said.
“In that sense, it’s unclear how successful a suspension for someone like him who doesn’t necessarily need it to survive; it’s really dependent on how integrated their presence is to their public profile.”
In other words, the impact of these kinds of bans is minimal when the figure in question is an enormously popular musician who is regularly interviewed on TV and radio.
Dr Matt Beard, program director of the Vincent Fairfax Fellowship at the Cranlana Centre for Ethical Leadership, says that temporary restrictions are less directed toward at those who breach the rules and more about sending a message to minorities targeted by hate speech.
“The damage was done when Kanye tweeted out anti-Semitic remarks, you can’t put that genie back in the bottle,” Beard says. “But what you are doing when you put a ban or restriction in place is making a very public and deliberate statement that these kinds of statements do not belong and that they do have consequences. It’s a signal to the people on the receiving end of that hate speech that they are welcome and that this is a place for them.”
But there is a risk that suspensions and bans are just a form of kicking the can down the road for another Silicon Valley exec to deal with, rather than addressing the root cause.
“When it’s not in your backyard it’s not your problem, is it?” Hutchinson says. “But as we’ve seen before with sites like 4chan and 8chan, when you restrict that content from mainstream social media platforms and suppress it, that content doesn’t go away and the problem isn’t solved, it’s just pushed to another part of the internet.”
Having the problem pushed to another arm of the internet now looks increasingly likely after Ye announced plans to buy Parler, a social media app best known for its ultra-far-right user base. It was also one of the apps removed from Apple and Google app stores last year following the January 6 riots in the United States.
For American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, whose personal and company accounts were permanently removed from Spotify, Youtube, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter in 2018, following years of spreading misinformation such as water supplies homosexualising frogs, de-platforming seems to have strengthened his power.
Public records show that in the three years to December 2018, Jones’ company averaged an annual revenue of US$53.2 million. In 2021 alone, his company took home US$64 million.
For former US President Donald Trump, a permanent ban appears to have had a mixed impact. Prior to being de-platformed, his political rallies, heavily promoted on social media, saw crowd numbers in the tens of thousands. Recent rallies have seen attendance numbers dwindle to just 27 people in Washingotn DC.
Parler reports having a total of 16 million users worldwide but it’s believed only a fraction of those are active users. Given West alone boasts 31 million followers on Twitter and 18 million on Instagram, it’s unlikely he’ll leave mainstream platforms and the lucrative followings he’s amassed there any time soon, even if Parler does afford him and others a forum to “freely express ourselves” without consequence.
This is what Hutchinson says represents the heart of the issue.
“Suspensions and bans are a good branding process for platforms to show they’re aligned with progressive ideals and thoughts, but they’re not really a solution to the problem of hate speech itself.”
Beard agrees: “It’s the easiest thing in the world for social media companies to send someone into the naughty corner and then welcome them back… It says they’re doing something without addressing the much larger issues of these platforms.”
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