Journalist Zaid Jilani said that recent moves by social media platforms to ban President Trump and several of his supporters in an effort to eliminate the spread of unproven claims of a “stolen” election could actually lead people to “become more conspiratorial.”
In an interview on Hill.TV’s “Rising” on Monday, Jilani argued that the actions following last week’s deadly pro-Trump riots at the Capitol, including suspensions of Facebook and Twitter accounts, as well as Amazon’s suspension of conservative social media platform Parler, could actually have adverse effects on the spread of misinformation.
“We’re dealing with a complete lack of trust and faith in a wide range of institutions and it seems that the way those institutions have responded to that is by simply eliminating a lot of people’s ability to speak,” Jilani explained.
“They’re trying to basically eliminate certain ideas from being able to be communicated altogether,” he added. “I don’t think that works.”
Instead, Jilani argued that “typically what happens when you do that is that the people who are being suppressed, they become more conspiratorial.”
“They think, ‘oh they won’t let me even voice this opinion? There must be something to it if they’re suppressing it.’ Typically, the thing that works best is to have more and more contact between people who believe different things.”
Watch part of Jilani’s interview above.
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