Republican digital agents are worried about themselves and their customers after major tech companies cracked down on prominent conservative websites and organizations.
Why it matters: Amazon’s decision to remove the popular conservative social media site Parler from its hosting services, and Twitter’s suspensions of President Trump and tens of thousands of his supporters, have some of the online judges fearing they themselves will be “deported”.
What’s new: A handful of conservative digital professionals huddled virtually this week on an email list they share. The tone was despondent as they tried in a series of emails forwarded to Axios to figure out how to stay on the right side of technology industry standards.
Between the lines: The crackdown has mainly focused on platforms where conspiracy theories have spread since Trump’s election loss and, in some cases, where last week’s Capitol violence was sparked, encouraged and celebrated.
- But the digital strategists on that email list were convinced that they could soon find themselves in a seemingly imminent wave of online censorship.
- They see them as arbitrary and politically motivated.
- “What is the barrier to knowing whether a project is likely to be started up and closed?” Colorado GOP strategist Allen Fuller asked. “Obviously, fueling insurrection and violence is pretty obvious … but the line from there isn’t.”
- “It just comes down to where the left wants to draw the line and they have no idea where that line is at this point, and they don’t seem to care,” wrote Thomas Peters, the peer’s founder and CEO. -peer text messages. software company RumbleUp.
Driving the news: Trump’s permanent suspension from Twitter on Friday was seismic. But it was far from the only platform to ban him.
- His supporters flocked to rival social media platforms targeting his political brand. The most popular, Parler, was suspended by Amazon’s AWS cloud service and is now suing.
- GoDaddy launched the web’s most popular firearms forum, AR15.com, on Tuesday from its domain registration system. The company told Axios it had discovered content on the site “that both promoted and encouraged violence.”
For some conservativesthe answer is to remain as technologically self-sufficient as possible.
- Tom Elliott, a former talk radio producer who founded the television and video clip service Grabien, said his decision to build his own digital infrastructure behind the company is paying off.
- “I have specifically avoided outsourcing functionality to third-party tech vendors who are willing to be used on behalf of ‘social justice battles,'” Elliott said in an email to Axios.
Editor’s Note: This piece has been updated with information about the email list after it was accidentally cut during the editing process.