This past weekend was the latest in an ongoing series of (massive) “No Kings” protests held around the country (and in some cases around the globe). The latest one was part of a “get out the (early) vote” campaign to make sure people are voting in the upcoming midterm elections. And, in the middle of it, suddenly it was reported that the No Kings Instagram account was suspended for about an hour, with admin access locked out for a few more hours. Many supporters of the protests immediately suspected foul play, highlighting that Mark Zuckerberg has gone in hard in supporting Trump over the past couple of years. So, the implication was that Zuck must be fiddling the dials to help the guy he supports in the White House. For a variety of reasons, this is unlikely to be true.
I’ll explain some of those reasons towards the end of this article just to be thorough, but the point of this article is to highlight the argument that Will Robinson and Tim Chambers recently made in response to this, which is that it doesn’t even matter if it was done on purpose or not. Even if you believe that Zuckerberg and Trump were laughing their heads off and jointly pressing the button to silence the No Kings account, the real problem was that this was possible in the first place.
Our response should be the same either way.