As a former exec at a social media platform ( @yikyakapp -- a location-based social media app used [mainly] by college kids a few years ago), I wanted to make 4 observations on the recent Facebook/Twitter censorship controversy based on my experiences. 1/15

First: Censorship is only censorship when the government does it. One could argue this is just semantics but the reason to make this distinction is both legal (in the US, we have the First Amendment and we enshrine the rights of platforms to moderate content in Sec 230) 2/15

and moral (because government suppression of speech often leads to government suppression of dissent). It's an issue if the government outlaws Trump & his supporters from talking -- it's a private commercial issue if a company decides to ban their content. 3/15

Second: Yes, the big tech platforms (Facebook and Twitter) have way too much influence in how we get our news. But it doesn't change that they have the legal right to do what they want with their platforms 4/15

In much the same way that the Daily Stormer and Breitbart can put forth whatever opinions they want. Denying the platforms the right is more or less equivalent to denying alt-right conspiracy mags the right to publish whatever they want. 5/15

Third: it's important to put everything in perspective. Yik Yak set out to do bold things and we took a huge amount of (I'd argue undeserved) flak around some of the less savory content that naturally happens when people can say whatever they want. 6/15

We faced constant pressure by Google/Apple to change our policies. And we instituted content rules and policies -- not always perfectly -- for both moral reasons (because we didn't set out to promote the bad content, let alone violence) and commercial ones 7/15

The idea that Parler is being targeted unfairly is hilariously untrue if you know the history of Google/Apple's dealings with social apps. 8/15

The only part of it that pisses me off is I can't believe Apple/Google let it get this far: why force a message board for college kids like @yikyakapp to implement all kinds of policies and procedures but not a cesspool of violence and conspiracy theory like Parler? 9/15

Lastly, at Yik Yak, we had internal conversations about what content to allow and what not to. We consulted with legal experts and others. These were not fun conversations. This is my opinion, but we didn't and most platforms don't want to be arbiters of content 10/15

This is for both legal reasons (we were warned that restricting posts could create the case in the future that we were responsible for it) and moral ones (what business do we have determining what's valuable free speech). 11/15

In the end, we chose to create & enforce rules -- again, not always perfectly -- to try to create a better environment for our users (and hopefully for future monetization). But, no matter what we did, we took criticism for it 12/15

One example was that one of our policies to ban spammers abusing our platform (a common complaint from users) was reported in the press as an active effort on our part to suppress competition. . 13/15

To be clear, I'm not a fan of how Facebook, Twitter, and others acted only mere days before Trump is leaving office -- nothing spells out lack of moral principle than taking a moral stance only when its practical and easy. 14/15

But my experience being in a social media platform operators' shoes tells me these choices are not made lightly -- so the idea that they are casually embracing cancel culture / only pushing one side is bonkers to me. 15/15