This has been one of the nagging ethical questions of the Trump era. Should he be banned from Twitter? But Ben echoes what so many others have said here ( @AlexandraErin, e.g.). Working the refs is a right wing strategy. And in this case it created a case of "Too Big to Ban." https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1265440356197371910

Ever since he began tweeting nuclear hellfire threats regarding North Korea, I've thought that the benefits outweigh the risks of banning him. But we are getting a preview of the risks: a distracting circus that plays into right wing grievance politics.

Imagine every annoying Twitter or Reddit troll you've ever encountered whining about free speech because they got told off for using the n-word, then multiply that by a factor of about a billion, cubed by that woodcut of Hobbes' Leviathan, and you get a sense of the shitshow.

And yet, as is always the case, it is the nature of this kind of bullying to leave people with no straightforwardly good options in response. To censure the bully is to invite his wrath, to hang back is to permit his abuses.

But while there will be unpleasant consequences, as we've seen from this pandemic the cost of doing *nothing* is just too great. The misinformation, the bigotry, the erosion of our collective will...

Twitter took an important step today but it's a half-measure that will leave extremists competing for the fact check as a badge of honour, proof of their oppression by evil elites. It's better just to ban them outright. Then, at least, you deny them a platform.

Trump has the ultimate platform, of course, as President of the United States. But Twitter is clearly important to him, to the point of defining his style. It also causes great harm, driving conspiracies and harassment towards his favoured targets.

Robbing him of it will cut off one means by which he is able to harm people, and a *significant* channel by which he pumps the raw sludge of his disinformation into public discourse. In a pandemic especially, this is a luxury we can ill afford.

For these reasons alone, he should be banned.