Trump’s Reinstatement on Social Media Platforms and Coded Forms of Incitement

Anika Collier Navaroli is currently a Practitioner Fellow at Stanford University. She previously worked in senior content policy positions inside Trusty & Safety departments at Twitter and Twitch and within research think tanks and advocacy non-profit organizations. This piece is cross-published at Just Security. Over the past few weeks, major social media companies including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube reinstated former President Donald Trump’s social media accounts and privileges. Now, in the aftermath of his indictment in Manhattan’s Criminal Court and likely future indictment elsewhere, their decisions will be put to the test.  After his day in court, Trump was back at Mar-a-Lago, where he addressed the media and streamed his remarks on Facebook Live. He used his platform to lay out a list of grievances against his perceived political opponents, including doubling down on unfounded conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and framing his legal troubles as “political persecution” designed to “interfere with the upcoming 2024 election.” As a whistleblower from inside one of those major social media companies, I can say with conviction that the path we are on is dangerous. I know first hand. As I testified to Congress, while an employee at Twitter I spent months warning the company’s leadership that the coded language Trump and his followers were using was going to lead to violence on Jan. 6, 2021. I am also the person who argued to Twitter executives that they would have more blood on their hands if they did not follow my team’s recommendation…Trump’s Reinstatement on Social Media Platforms and Coded Forms of Incitement