F

ollowing Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter in late 2022 and its subsequent rebranding as “X,” expectations emerged that the platform would undergo fundamental changes in the way it delivers content. The algorithmic “For You” feed, which largely replaced the chronological timeline, became the default main feed presented to users. That algorithm was introduced with the stated aim of ranking posts that users might find engaging regardless of whom they follow. However, over time, intense debates arose, particularly regarding political content in Türkiye, over whether the algorithm operates in a neutral and genuinely personalized manner.

In 2023, several journalists and researchers, together with Daily Sabah, argued that X’s recommendation algorithm was manipulating the content flow in Türkiye. According to those claims, X disproportionately amplified opposition-leaning content regardless of users’ interests or political preferences, to the extent that even pro-government users were consistently exposed to opposition posts in their feeds. In response to those criticisms, Elon Musk acknowledged that the algorithm had shortcomings and pledged to open the code for the sake of transparency and to implement improvements.

So what has changed since then? Does X’s content recommendation algorithm in Türkiye genuinely operate with political bias? And how does this affect user experience and public discourse? To address these questions, I conducted a series of experiments toward the end of 2025. From the final days of November 2025 through early December 2025, I closely examined X’s “For You” feed using a total of eight accounts that were created from scratch on entirely new devices. Those accounts were configured with different locations and distinct political orientations. The findings obtained indicate that X’s recommendation algorithm exhibits serious problems with both technical and societal dimensions.

The “for you” feed: Personalized or a uniform digital enforcer?

In our experiments, the situation Ix encountered when logging into X with zero-profile accounts (no followers, likes or prior activity) offered a striking illustration of this issue. Despite the complete absence of user data, the algorithm immediately presented political content and accounts belonging to political actors. Approximately 90 percent of the initially recommended accounts to follow were users known for opposition-oriented views. Of the remaining 10 percent, roughly half consisted of official accounts such as the Presidency and ministries, while the other half included one or two pro-government accounts.

Unless users explicitly switched to the “Following” tab, without having expressed any interests, new accounts were directly exposed to popular tweets featuring government criticism and accounts widely recognized for their oppositional stance in Türkiye. This pattern suggests that the algorithm prioritizes currently trending and sensational political debates on the platform rather than attempting to assess user preferences through gradual interaction signals.

Within the scope of the experiment, four of the accounts I created followed only pro-government politicians, journalists, and affiliated accounts. The remaining four accounts followed exclusively figures and accounts aligned with the opposition. Despite this deliberate differentiation, all eight profiles were predominantly presented with content featuring the rhetoric of opposition politicians, government criticism, and posts from popular opposition-oriented accounts, as well as misleading or false news that framed the political authorities in a negative manner. Pro-government profiles were rarely exposed in their feeds to posts from the accounts they explicitly followed. In some cases, even when a journalist’s original tweet from an account that the user followed was not shown in the feed, the user was nonetheless exposed to an opposition-oriented post because that same journalist had replied to it, thereby amplifying the visibility of the oppositional content.

Conversely, the profiles designed with an opposition-oriented stance were exposed to a similar feed structure. While posts from the opposition accounts they followed were consistently displayed, those were frequently supplemented by content from additional opposition-aligned accounts that the users did not recognize or follow. Notably, those opposition-oriented profiles were almost never recommended pro-government content. As a result, in both scenarios, the algorithm effectively enclosed users within a bubble dominated by opposition discourse.

That situation points to two possible explanations. The first is that the algorithm attempts to introduce viewpoint diversity by presenting opposing content but fails to maintain a meaningful balance. The second is the presence of a structural bias embedded within the system’s underlying architecture. Although X engineers argue that the recommendation system operates not on the basis of political labels but according to interaction networks and aggregate engagement metrics, the higher levels of engagement typically generated by opposition content in Türkiye inadvertently transform the algorithm into a one-directional echo machine.

The misinterpretation of comment-based engagement: the algorithm’s affective blindness

X’s algorithm interprets all forms of user interaction including likes, reposts, comments, and even views; as signals of interest. However, it does not differentiate between positive and negative forms of engagement. Following changes implemented after 2023, the tendency to treat all types of interaction as inherently positive has become even more pronounced. During the experiments, it was observed that when a pro-government profile commented on an opposition tweet with a remark such as “This information is false,” the algorithm did not reduce the visibility of similar content; on the contrary, it increased it. Even the act of commenting alone led to a higher volume of recommendations related to the same topic. Likewise, merely clicking on a controversial post or viewing that briefly was sufficient to cause similar content to proliferate within the feed.

At the core of those outcomes lies X’s failure to analyze the semantic content of posts and the qualitative nature of user engagement. This form of affective blindness causes undesirable content to cascade onto users’ feeds. In particular, posts that provoke anger or political polarization tend to generate large volumes of comments and quote reposts. The system interprets thas pattern as “high engagement equals high relevance” and consequently rewards such content.

Misinformation and algorithmic amplification

Perhaps the most alarming aspect of X’s recommendation algorithm is its capacity to enable the rapid and large-scale dissemination of posts containing misinformation. The claim examined in 2025 that “Türkiye donated 7,000 police vehicles to Syria” constitutes a striking example. Although this post lacked any official basis, it received millions of views, while subsequent corrections circulated only minimally. Whereas the false content exceeded 7 million views, the corrective post reached only 211,000 views. Moreover, when accounts that continued to amplify the false claim through quote reposts are taken into account, the total number of views was estimated to surpass 10 million.

A similar pattern emerged in a post shared by a politician affiliated with the İYİ (Good) Party. The user presented footage from a Christian religious ceremony as if it had been recorded in Türkiye’s İznik district, accompanying the video with a provocative message asking, “Are we christianized?” In reality, the video was neither recent nor filmed in Türkiye. It was older footage recorded in Spain, a fact that was uncovered shortly thereafter. Nevertheless, many users reacted with anger and outrage, initially accepting the fabricated “scandal” as genuine and responding emotionally before the correction became widely known.

These examples demonstrate how algorithmic amplification can pose serious risks to the information ecosystem. In psychology, the phenomenon known as the “truth effect” refers to the tendency for false information to be perceived as true through repeated exposure. X’s recommendation algorithm appears to intensify precisely this mechanism by repeatedly presenting the same false narratives to users, effectively imprinting them onto their cognitive frameworks. Users with low levels of media literacy or those unable to critically assess information to which they are repeatedly exposed are particularly susceptible to such waves of misinformation. In this way, “vibes” initially shape emotions and subsequently translate into behavior as an outcome of identity formation.

I

n April 2023, a war broke out in Sudan between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia. Thousands have been killed and millions have been displaced, not to mention the massive destruction of buildings and infrastructure.

With the world turning to social media to follow up on the news, the RSF militia started using X to deceive the public about the unfolding events and evade responsibility for the committed massacres and atrocities.

It’s time to deprive the RSF militia of the X platform and stop providing it with a megaphone to spread its lies.

The RSF militia was formed in 2013 after the restructuring of the notorious Janjaweed militia, which primarily supported the government’s counterinsurgency operations in Darfur and South Kordofan. In 2017, the Sudanese parliament passed a law legitimizing its activities.

According to several ​​independent reports, the RSF militia has committed countless crimes and atrocities, including destroying villages, killing protestors, sexual violations and rape, mass killings, unlawful detention, targeting hospitals and churches, ethnic violence, and restricting civilian movement during the ongoing war.

Reliance on social media

For years, the RSF militia has relied on social media to sway public opinion and wage its propaganda war. Most recently, after Facebook removed its official pages, the militia started to rely on its X accounts as its primary tool of misinformation.

In November, the RSF militia allied Arabia militias launched an attack on Ardmata, an area located in Darfur, Sudan, and populated by the Masalit people. According to the testimonies of the survivors and reports by international organizations such as the UN, more than 800 individuals were executed and killed based on their ethnicity. Despite the mounting evidence against it, the RSF’s official X account released a media statement falsely claiming the area was shelled by the Sudanese army forces and former regime members.

The militia provided no proof to back their concocted story. In June 2023, the RSF militia unabashedly tweeted condemning the assassination of the West Darfur governor, whom the militia themselves had killed. This crime pushed the U.S. to place sanctions against senior commanders of the militia.

Allegations of attacking churches

In other cases, despite confirmed reports and the official statement of the Sudanese Council of Churches that militia members had attacked several churches in Khartoum, the militia insisted on rejecting the allegations and described them as diverging attention from military losses.

During the ongoing war, the RSF members have engaged in large-scale looting of residential areas to the degree that several “Dagalo” markets, named after the militia leader, have been established across the country dedicated to the stolen goods. Contrary to all reports and eyewitness affirmations, the RSF responded with its usual tactic, tweeting that violations were a disinformation campaign by the Sudanese Armed Forces.

In a bid to boost engagement with their content, the militia has resorted to fake accounts and networks. For instance, in August 2023, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) revealed how more than 900 potentially hijacked accounts are copying and pasting positive replies to the RSF’s and its leader’s official accounts on the platform to make them appear more popular.

A similar and recently created network was also exposed by Beam Report, a local Sudanese fact-checking organization.

Violation of X rules

The X platform is also utilized to disinform the public about the militia’s activities and its ties to infamous groups such as the Wagner Group so as to avoid any repercussions from this hidden relationship. Both the militia and its political advisor categorically denied the CNN report that the Ukrainian special forces attacked the Wagner Group, which is allied to the RSF in Sudan and supports it with military equipment. It is worth mentioning that the U.S. State Department later accused Wagner of supplying the RSF militia with surface-to-air missiles.

The existence of the RSF militia on X clearly violates two of the social media platform’s rules: the crisis misinformation policy that does not sanction sharing false and misleading information, and the content policy that prohibits violent and hateful entities. X should adhere to these rules and protect its users from the harm the RSF militia has been causing.

X should also listen to the Sudanese people who have created the hashtag #removedaglo requesting X to remove the RSF militia accounts, citing its extended violations and crimes against the country’s citizens.

Continuing to give the RSF militia an online platform will have a dire outcome: it aids it with a powerful tool to legitimatize its existence and, even worse, to cover up its impending genocide in the region.

The RSF militia and its affiliated accounts also utilized X to attack the Sudanese National Army. A recent analysis by Beam Report exposed a network of accounts that praise the RSF militia leader, spreading disinformation that claims Iran is backing the national army to have a foothold in the Red Sea region.

Following international outcry and strong condemnation of its ongoing massacres in Darfur, the official RSF militia account shared a fake meeting for the leaders of the Masalit tribe to show their support for the militia, the same tribe whose members the militia has executed and targeted on the basis of their ethnicity. In fact, no known leaders of the tribe appeared at this purported gathering.

To deceive the world about its ongoing genocides in Darfur, the RSF militia is using the big lie tactic employed during Nazi Germany; it’s simply that if you tell a lie big enough and then keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it; the underlying premise, according to Adolf Hitler, who used it to justify the Holocaust, is that no one will think anyone is insolent enough to distort the truth to such a degree.

T

he United States is undoubtedly one of the world’s leading states in terms of its armed forces, economic prosperity, and cultural production. But experts predict that this will no longer be the case by 2050, as the global power structure undergoes major shifts.

The rise of China continues with the country steadily becoming a new superpower, and some even suggesting that in the foreseeable future it will surpass the United States in global influence.

Another candidate for superpower status is India, which has just surpassed China’s population to become the world’s most populous nation. India has combined its growing population with significant economic progress and has the world’s largest and youngest workforce.

The list of potential superpower candidates could go on, but there is another, less expected candidate that could change the balance as we know it: new technology companies.

Can big tech companies take over the global system?

Big tech has not yet “taken over” governments in the traditional sense. Nevertheless, they can wield significant influence over governments and societies due to their vast resources, data-collection capabilities, and technological reach.

Rewind to the early days of COVID19 when everything suddenly became virtual and every sector had no alternative but to become dependent on technology. On the political front, technology took a leading role in implementing governance systems and people went from being citizens of nation states to citizens of large technology companies.

This change is the result of technology companies exercising their authority over digital spaces. In terms of power, it’s clear that tech giants dominate certain sectors such as telecommunications which has raised concerns within governments, leading them to impose limits on the companies’ capabilities. However, regardless of what governments do, tech giants can have significant impacts on countries’ political and economic spheres.

Tech companies are not what we think

During the Russian invasion, NATO countries sent military equipment to Ukraine and technology companies helped Ukraine defend itself against Russian cyberattacks. Leading U.S. tech companies leveraged their resources, capabilities, and expertise to serve Ukraine and defend its sovereignty. Companies like Google have taken measures to block YouTube channels linked to the Russian state media across Europe, including Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik.

As seen in the table, U.S.-based tech companies have donated humanitarian aid to Ukraine. Apple promoted donations for aid and fundraised on several platforms; Airbnb users could book stays in Ukraine with no intention of going. Amazon added a donation button, and Etsy users bought digital stickers from Ukrainian shops.

Prominent technology companies, such as SpaceX, facilitated direct communication between Ukrainian military leaders, generals, and soldiers on the front lines. If it wasn’t for the Starlink internet satellite sent by Elon Musk, Ukraine could have lost its online connection within weeks after the conflict began.

Ukraine is using Chinese-made DJI commercial drones for reconnaissance operations which have been modified to drop weapons. Following this, China restricted its drone export to Ukraine.

European Union Artificial Intelligence restrictions: AI Act (AIA)

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the European Union will be regulated by the AI Act (AIA), the world’s first comprehensive AI law. The main objective of the AIA, the proposed legislation by the European Commission, is to ensure the trustworthy and ethical use of AI, and promote innovation and competitiveness.

Members of the European Parliament want to make sure AI is safe, transparent, traceable, non-discriminatory, and environmentally friendly. The idea is to govern AI based on four levels of risk starting with unacceptable risk, when AI is used for unethical acts such as biometric surveillance. High risk involves causing harm to people’s health, harm to the environment, or affecting people’s fundamental rights. Limited risk refers to AI systems with specific transparency obligations, and last, minimal or no risk includes applications such as AI-enabled video games or spam filters.

Brussels aims to adopt the AIA by the end of 2023. The United Kingdom is striving to position itself as a regulatory leader, showcasing its tech credentials at an international AI summit in the fall of 2023.

It is predicted that if everything goes as planned, by the second half of 2024, AI regulation could become applicable. These rules ensure that AI developed and used in Europe is fully in line with EU rights and values including human oversight, safety, privacy, transparency, non-discrimination, and social and environmental well-being.

Chinese government and its regulation of foreign AI

The Chinese government has also issued 24 regulatory guidelines to strike a balance between state control of technology and fostering an environment conducive to innovation within the sector. The regulation was published on July 10 and referred to as “Generative AI Measures.” It involves seven agencies taking responsibility for oversight, including the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) and the National Development and Reform Commission.

Beijing will enforce visible labels on AI-generated content such as images and videos to prevent misleading manipulation. China also demands AI models to be trained on “legitimate data” with disclosure to regulations. Regulation is scheduled to come into effect in August.

The regulation aims to create a middle ground between state control and a welcoming environment for innovation in the sector. China has been actively developing its AI scene with local tech giant Alibaba and has been working on the creation of a rival to the popular chatbot ChatGPT.

L

ove him or loathe him, there’s no denying that Donald Trump brought a whole new level of spectacle to the world of international relations through his unique approach. In the age of social media, Trump wielded his Twitter account like a magician’s wand, conjuring up tweets that sent shockwaves through the global stage. From the moment he stepped into the political arena, he turned traditional diplomacy on its head, replacing dignified speeches with 280-character proclamations.

It was a rollercoaster ride of mixed messaging, unexpected U-turns, and moments that left even the most seasoned diplomats scratching their heads. One moment he’d be locking horns with world leaders, engaging in diplomatic smackdowns with the best of them. The next, he’d be cozying up to erstwhile adversaries like long-lost buddies.

In his book, Donald Trump’s Digital Diplomacy and Its Impact on US Foreign Policy Towards the Middle East, Ahmed Y. Zohny skillfully delves into the intricate relationship between history, political science, and the digital age. With a meticulous blend of content analysis and critical discourse analysis, Zohny examines the profound implications of Trump’s statements and tweets, that explain the often puzzling nature of his foreign policy decisions. At the same time, Zohny’s analysis unveils the intricacies of this unique form of diplomacy, shedding light on its influence on global politics.

While the American public remained primarily engrossed in the domestic implications of Trump’s presidency, people around the world were deeply curious about how his foreign policy choices would reshape the geopolitical landscape. What emerged from Zohny’s research was a deeper understanding of Trump’s communication style, marked by mixed messaging and impulsive decision-making.

One of the most significant areas of focus in the book is the United States’ withdrawal from the Iran Accord. Zohny compellingly argues that this decision not only guaranteed the collapse of the agreement but also added to the volatility in the already turbulent Middle East. Through detailed analysis, he highlights how this move significantly impacted regional dynamics and strained diplomatic relations.

T

hroughout history, misinformation was a powerful weapon in the hands of people who fought to maximize their interests. Atrocity fabrication—the invention and reporting of atrocities committed by an adversary without knowledge that they ever occurred—has a centuries-long history at the heart of propaganda and power politics as an effective means of moving public and international opinion.

Now more than ever, the role and scope of misinformation has been able to expand and become an entrenched practice, almost a default extension to any given conflict. Understanding atrocity fabrication and its effects has become crucial to understanding contemporary geopolitics.

Geopolitics expert A.B. Abrams compiles the most significant cases of atrocity fabrication in eleven major conflicts shaping the world order from the Cold War to the present. These include Vietnam and Cuba, the Korean War, Tiananmen Square, the Yugoslav wars, the Gulf War, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and the emerging U.S.-China rivalry. The information sphere currently dominated by Western powers has roots tracing back to early colonial days, which the author initially touches upon to pinpoint a starting point for the evolution of its current-day form.

Atrocity Fabrication and Its Consequences: How Fake News Shapes World Order demonstrates atrocity fabrication in its many forms and varieties, the keys to its success, with the roles played by media and both government and non-governmental organizations in misleading the public, often engrained into larger self-reinforcing metanarratives that form a backdrop to new bits of information.

Abrams highlights how atrocity fabrication is used, and the consequences it has for the populations of the targeted countries, often paving the way for real atrocities such as military interventions committed against them on even larger scales of depravity than those described in the fabricated narratives. Furthermore, atrocity fabrication enforces an interventionist “World Order 2.0” by furthering Western geopolitical interests, an order of conditional sovereignty held by Western opinion of affairs elsewhere in the world, which, conceptually and in practice, has disastrous consequences.

Case by case, Abrams shows how its use can provide pretext for a range of hostile measures against its targets by triggering public moral outrage, transforming wars of unprovoked aggression into those of liberation, turning blockades to starve enemy civilians into humane efforts to pressure abusive governments under the moralistic label of sanctions, and delegitimizing and silencing criticism of one’s actions under accusations of siding with injustice.

Not only is understanding atrocity fabrication important to debunk misinformation about a set of events, but it is also reading how challengers of Western power will continue to be assailed. Atrocity Fabrication and Its Consequences provides an important selection of atrocity fabrication history which is crucial to understanding this mode of action on a broader context of international affairs. The book is a revealing account of how perception is reality by providing history, context, and analysis for a trend that is here to stay.

A.B. Abrams, Atrocity Fabrication and Its Consequences: How Fake News Shapes World Order (Clarity Press, 2023) ISBN: 978-1-949762-70-9, 424 pages

Social media came with a lot of promise. Initially, there was a hope that we may be able to reclaim the public space that traditional, collectivist society had to cede to an increasingly individualist, modern one. But the digital bridges that social media platforms built, made each one of us even more distant, leaving us permanently settling on secluded islands.

In some ways, we parted from ourselves in the process. Today, we write odes to nature, we tweet eulogies to photographers, we sing praises to artists, but hardly ever take the time to live through the delightful experiences delineated in these depictions. The gracious warmth of the sun, the hesitant whispers of the caressing winds, the shy glimmer of the defiant moonlight, almost each and every expression of nature has lost its meaning in “our reality,” eclipsed by the virtual.

The rare instances where we do get a chance to be at one with nature are again taken over by an excruciating impatience to share our experience with our “network.” The obsession with taking the right shot of the ethereal glide of a seagull has taken precedence over absorbing the breathtaking beauty of its carefree flight, clipping our own wings.

Nature has become a mere instrument for our own celebration – a thinly-veiled narcissism. We have lost the ability to be where we presently are. We stay in a state of projection, obsessed with illusive ideations of the “shareability” of a sight, at the cost of appreciation of its subtleties in the present.

Unfortunately, the profound appreciation we crave for, artificial intelligence cannot deliver at its finest mirage. Perversely, more or less, every share on social media brings some form of anxiety. Sometimes it’s from eagerness for more shares. Sometimes it’s a concern about possible reactions. Sometimes it springs from envy, when a friend’s post steals the limelight. It’s like being in the spotlight 24/7.

Perversely, more or less, every share on social media brings some form of anxiety.

As almost all teenagers with access to a smart device use social media, this becomes all the more concerning. According to research, 3 in 4 persons who develop a psychological issue are diagnosed before their 18th birthday.

On the other side of the coin of this bizarre flaunting epidemic lies obnoxious abuse, which social media tends to reward. Anyone is free to say anything, as thoughtless as it might be, about one’s religion, ethnicity, or even appearance, irrespective of the veracity of the contention. The algorithms are sometimes designed to even pick “dislikes” or “angry” reactions as a form of engagement, amplifying the reach of fake, polarizing content.

On the other side of the coin of this bizarre flaunting epidemic lies obnoxious abuse, which social media tends to reward.

A particular form of abuse, “trolling,” is a deliberate attack on a person for maximum “likes” from a specific cluster of users. Much to one’s dismay, a troll could be a 14-year-old anonymous user or a 64-year-old “thinker” who enjoys maintaining a provocative persona. With a bizarre air of righteousness, they could troll someone to prove the superiority of their favorite cartoon character or to establish the inferiority of an ideology that half the world adheres to.

Disrespect, in this appalling virtual world, is a brand; words are a weapon; images are mere toys; and the ability to enrage others is a prized virtue. No wonder, trolling behavior has been found to be correlated with psychopathic tendencies, sadism, and Machiavellianism.

Predictably, instead of constructive engagement and building bridges,  social media have effectively divided people into clusters and subcultures. A person reveling in being celebrated online and drawing consolation from being connected to people around the world is sometimes just networking with the worst of the animal spirits within. They are sinking deeper and deeper into their own cluster, with the outside, diverse world, starting to feel more alien. This becomes a lifestyle eventually and has lifelong effects on a person’s ability to respect differences of opinion and build empathetic relationships.

Social media have contributed to developing an “information superstructure” which is more powerful than the political and judicial institutions of control.

Of course, social media has a potential for good too. It has sometimes shown promise against entrenched power structures in the world. In fact, it has risen as a significant challenge against oppressive states and obscene occupations the world over, sometimes catching them completely off guard.

Nevertheless, social media have contributed to developing an “information superstructure” which is more powerful than the political and judicial institutions of control – noble in name and carriage, but motivated by little other than profits at the base.

At the micro-level, it’s a quagmire, painstakingly developed by “attention engineers” to monetize the adrenaline of unsuspecting users and capitalize on the digital addiction it creates. That benign-sounding “suggested” content may change the course of one’s life, bit by bit, forever – a theme brilliantly covered in the award-winning documentary “The Social Dilemma” featuring a hair-raising, insider account of the nuts and bolts of the Big Tech.

It would take a miracle to go back from how far we have come. But social media companies – motivated by a model aptly described as “surveillance capitalism” by the Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff – shouldn’t be given a blank check in programming behaviors and reshaping the globe. The world must come together to devise apolitical mechanisms to keep these tech giants in check, focusing foremost on psychological health and well-being at large. On the individual level, relatively active consumption of content, more perceptive interactions, and avoiding being sucked down the rabbit hole of arguing with the ultracrepidarian could be helpful.

In the final analysis, however, it may be said that whether or not we realize it, in this taxing world, every one of us is longing for a break: a deep silence in placid woods somewhere by a river, a moment of heartfelt love and overwhelming appreciation, either from us, or for us – things that social media, at best, can give us only a weak nostalgia for. If Wordsworth were here, he’d perhaps have rather written, “The digital world is too much with us.”

Two events in early January illustrated the growing control of social media and other Internet companies over political discussions and systems. Starting on January 6, hours after supporters of former United States President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., a series of tech giants, beginning with Twitter, moved swiftly to block the president and his supporters from using their services.

Along with social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, Reddit, and TikTok, media platforms including Spotify, Twitch, and YouTube, as well as marketing and financial services such as PayPal, Shopify, and Stripe, joined the near-complete embargo. Apple and Google banned Parler, a niche social network favored by the president’s supporters, from their online app stores before Amazon, which had hosted the service on its servers, removed it from the Internet altogether. Within a day, Trump found himself as silenced as effectively as the world’s most powerful man could possibly be.

On January 9, a number of Palestinian media companies and political organizations stopped posting on Facebook for two hours to protest the social media giant’s suspension of their colleagues’ accounts and deletion of their content. The gesture followed years of complaints about Facebook’s collusion with Israel and bias against Palestinians.

Zoom later blocked a number of events organized at various universities to protest its censorship. While these company’s suppression of Palestinian speech may have been nothing new, their obstruction of academic freedom at a public university in their home country certainly was, raising troubling questions about the role of private corporations in educational institutions that have, during the COVID-19 pandemic, largely become reliant on their services.

United States-based social media have previously waded directly into politics outside the country, often in ways seemingly conducive to U.S. foreign policy goals.

In 2018, after a failed attempt to assassinate Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro with a weaponized drone, Facebook suspended the pages of news site Venezuelanalysis and regional broadcaster teleSUR, both broadly supportive of Maduro’s administration, before reinstating them.

In 2019, as the U.S. moved to restrict travel to Cuba, Twitter suspended the accounts of numerous Cuban journalists and government officials. And both Facebook and Twitter have attached labels to content by certain public news agencies, like RT and Press TV, indicating their governmental affiliations, a policy from which Western state media like VOA, PBS, NPR, and BBC seem curiously exempt.

With their embargo against Trump, tech giants intervened more visibly than ever before in the political system of their own country, acting as a cartel to shape not only public debates, but also governmental processes.

Like Facebook, YouTube, and Zoom’s earlier efforts Leila Khaled and her supporters, their actions showed a new willingness to pursue their own collective interests with blunt force, even at the cost of unprecedented, direct confrontations with public institutions.

Critics of social media censorship took several distinct approaches to Trump’s sudden disappearance from cyberspace. Some noted that as private companies, online services are not bound by the United States’ First Amendment or other legal protections of free speech, although as their critics were quick to observe, in an age when nearly all means of communication are controlled by corporate giants, such distinctions offer little comfort.

Others worried that the ban might encourage similar measures against figures and organizations with politics quite different from Trump’s, something that has already happened, but could escalate.

But the significance of corporations, accountable only to their shareholders, acting in concert to effectively control political discussions and outcomes has drawn considerably less attention, despite its obvious importance not only for the quality of contemporary dialogue, but the viability of democracy itself.