Trump’s Tweets Were Never Just Tweets
After the Capitol riot, Twitter had no defense for keeping the president on the platform.
Updated at 11:12 a.m. ET on January 7, 2020.
The internet is real life.
This was the lesson of Pizzagate in 2016, which made clear that conspiracy theorizing on message boards can lead to a man carrying a rifle into a restaurant. This was the lesson of the deadly Charlottesville rally in 2017, which made clear that online hate is a precursor to offline violence.
This was the lesson of the Christchurch mosque shootings in 2019, which were carried out by and . And this was the lesson after of a planned militia event that led to a double shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, this outside a ballot-counting center in Pennsylvania this fall.
