A Key Source of Political Power

NYT caption: Losing his huge online following would deprive 

Mr. Trump of cultural influence. It takes away the privilege 

he seems to covet most: the ability to commandeer the 

world’s attention with a push of a button.

A New York Times article, In Pulling Trump’s Megaphone, Twitter Shows Where Power Now Lies, points out the power that social media has. The NYT writes:

The ability of a handful of people to control our public discourse has never been more obvious.

In the end, two billionaires from California did what legions of politicians, prosecutors and power brokers had tried and failed to do for years:

They pulled the plug on President Trump.

Twitter’s decision to permanently suspend Mr. Trump’s account on Friday “due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” after a decision a day earlier by Facebook to ban the president at least through the end of his term, was a watershed moment in the history of social media. Both companies had spent years defending Mr. Trump’s continued presence on their platforms, only to change course days before the end of his presidency.

Why these companies’ chief executives — Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook — decided to act now is no mystery. They have been under pressure for years to hold Mr. Trump accountable, and that pressure intensified enormously this past week, as everyone from Michelle Obama to the companies’ own employees called for a permanent ban in the wake of Wednesday’s deadly Capitol riot.

These companies, corporate autocracies masquerading as mini-democracies, often portray their moderation decisions as the results of a kind of formulaic due process, as if “don’t incite an insurrectionist mob” had been in the community guidelines all along. But high-stakes calls like these typically come down to gut decisions made under extreme duress. In this case, Mr. Dorsey and Mr. Zuckerberg considered the evidence, consulted their teams, weighed the trade-offs and risks of inaction — including the threat of a worker revolt that could damage their ability to attract top talent — and decided that they’d seen enough.

There you have it, corporate autocracies masquerading as mini-democracies hold major political power. Together, social media along with major political donors, probably hold more power than all other sources of political and social power in the US. The other major contenders are politically active Christianity and authoritarian radical right political and Christian Nationalist ideologies.

What power do the people and voters have? That's not so clear.