User:Lwarrenwiki/sandbox/Deplatforming

Deplatforming, also known as "no-platforming", refers to a form of Internet censorship in which social media and other technology companies suspend, ban, or otherwise shut down controversial speakers or speech.

Law professor Glenn Reynolds dubbed 2018 the "Year of Deplatforming", in an August 2018 article in The Wall Street Journal. Technology journalist Declan McCullagh wrote, "Silicon Valley's efforts to pull the plug on dissenting opinions" began with Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube denying service to individuals with free user accounts on their platforms, "devising excuses to suspend "ideologically disfavored accounts." According to Reynolds, in 2018 "the internet giants decided to slam the gates on a number of people and ideas they don't like. If you rely on someone else's platform to express unpopular ideas, especially ideas on the right, you're now at risk."

Deplatforming has typically targeted individuals or organizations using free accounts on social media platforms. Reynolds cited Alex Jones, Gavin McInnes, and Dennis Prager as prominent 2018 victims of deplatforming based on their political views, noting, "Extremists and controversialists on the left have been relatively safe from deplatforming."

In February 2019, McCullagh predicted that paying customers would become targets for deplatforming as well, citing protests and open letters by employees of Amazon, Microsoft, Salesforce, and Google who opposed policies of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and who reportedly sought to influence their employers to deplatform the agency and its contractors.

Supporters of deplatforming have justified the action on the grounds that it produces the desired effect of reducing what they characterize as hate speech. Angelo Carusone, president of the progressive organization Media Matters for America, pointed to Twitter's ban of Milo Yiannopoulos, stating that "the result was that he lost a lot.... He lost his ability to be influential or at least to project a veneer of influence."