On January 8th, Twitter permanently suspended President Donald Trump’s account from the platform after a mob of protesters ransacked the legislator’s offices in the Capitol. Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram also booted the president off their apps and many other companies followed suit soon after. And while this move was unprecedented for the most part, it wasn’t exactly unexpected.

The big picture: Balancing concerns over misinformation, hacking and foreign meddling against free-speech principles is already hard enough. Tackling it in real-time in the middle of a political knife fight is almost certainly going to go awry.

More often than not, there is very little communication from these agencies on how they enforce their policies. On other occasions, they offer a vague explanation citing policy violation without describing the actual reasons in full detail. And while it’s no easy task to moderate millions of accounts, the collective consensus is that uniform enforcement is still a distant dream.

These companies didn’t set out to be the gatekeepers of political news. They’d rather write code, make money, and feel good about “connecting the world.”

But their success made them ubiquitous and they came to dominate the distribution of news and information. Now they can’t duck making tough calls.

But let’s suppose platforms do start consistently moderating content.  Is it an effective strategy to curb hate and misinformation? Well, we don’t know yet. But what we do know is that on some occasions, the very act of de-platforming can have the opposite effect as originally intended. When Twitter blocked a story from the “New York Post” about President-Elect Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, the suppression only drew more attention to the article. It was almost as if the very act of censoring information aided in its discovery. So one could argue that de-platforming Trump only furthers his cause. Maybe a new echo-chamber will emerge somewhere else. Maybe Trump and his followers will create a new platform.