De-Platforming as a Public Relations Strategy

Is de-plat­form­ing a sound pub­lic rela­tions strategy?

De-plat­form­ing is one of the most aggress­ive tools that an online mod­er­at­or can utilise. 

Should an online mod­er­at­or use this tool, wheth­er it’s a social net­work restrict­ing user accounts or an organ­isa­tion delet­ing com­ments? The short answer is … maybe.

When is de-plat­form­ing a sound course of action from a PR perspective?

Analysing the Situation

Whether or not an organ­isa­tion should attempt to de-plat­form depends on how your organ­isa­tion would answer three questions:

A Rational Understanding

By ask­ing three fun­da­ment­al ques­tions, you’ll get a sense of what kind of scen­ario your organ­isa­tion is deal­ing with. De-plat­form­ing is typ­ic­ally asso­ci­ated with raw emo­tion (anger, sad­ness, frus­tra­tion etc.), so it’s advis­able to approach the situ­ation rationally.

1. Is the de-platforming grounded in a publicly accessible policy?

Suppose a social net­work shuts down an account based on user beha­viour that viol­ates their terms of con­di­tions. In that case, in states that viol­ate laws or reg­u­la­tions, a social net­work has every prerog­at­ive to end that account.

Why have con­di­tions if they aren’t being enforced?

Afterwards, the sus­pen­ded user can press charges against the social net­work. Still, if the viol­a­tion is doc­u­mented and the terms of con­di­tions are law­fully com­pli­ant, there’s not much more to be said about such a termination.

This is a rel­ev­ant insight for PR depart­ments as well:

It’s good prac­tice to put great effort into your policies. Because you should mod­er­ate your online chan­nels fiercely, you should elim­in­ate unwanted sub­scribers on your email lists. You should remove com­ments that dis­respect the rules of engage­ment your brand has put forth. Delete, block, ban — whatever tools you have, use them.

And therein lies the prop­er under­stand­ing of chal­len­ging and com­plex mat­ters like these.

In your policies, you would­n’t state that you’re going to delete, block, or ban con­tent or users just because you feel like it. If you remove people because you can­not face their truths con­veyed fac­tu­ally and respect­fully, then you don’t have a troll prob­lem. You have a cul­tur­al man­age­ment prob­lem that you must address first.

2. Is the de-platforming a response to abuse of general democratic principles or criminal behaviour?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m firmly against can­cel cul­ture in gen­er­al — and de-plat­form­ing in particular.

Yes, loud minor­it­ies will fire each oth­er up and find safety in num­bers for oth­er­wise socially less accept­able pos­i­tions. Algorithmic fil­ter bubbles will gen­er­ate online echo cham­bers that amp­li­fy the band­wag­on effect.

But the uncom­fort­able hypo­thes­is here is that we can only grow as demo­crat­ic soci­et­ies if we col­lect­ively decide to hash these dif­fer­ences out using com­mu­nic­a­tion instead of violence.

In crude terms, com­mu­nic­a­tion and viol­ence are human­ity’s only tools for nego­ti­at­ing power. Violence — or the threat of it — has been a fun­da­ment­al real­ity through­out his­tory. And com­mu­nic­a­tion is the bed­rock of our civilisation. 

Violence, used as a form of nego­ti­at­ing power, is more pre­val­ent in our demo­crat­ic soci­et­ies than we might think. Refuse to com­ply with any form of demo­crat­ic legis­la­tion for long enough, how­ever subtle the refus­al, or how­ever minor the non-com­pli­ance, someone with a fire­arm and gov­ern­ment­al author­ity will even­tu­ally show up at your doorstep.

To mit­ig­ate peace (as in the absence of viol­ence) through com­mu­nic­a­tion must, by inher­ent design, be upheld by a major­ity pos­i­tion. This is also why demo­cracy is an act­ive state of affairs; demo­cracy must be rein­forced by its con­stitu­ents on a recur­rent basis.

In a demo­crat­ic soci­ety, can­celled cul­ture and de-plat­form expres­sions of viol­ence — not com­mu­nic­a­tion. They are inher­ently anti-demo­crat­ic measures. 

Yes, allow­ing groups with some­times anti-demo­crat­ic agen­das to com­mu­nic­ate freely exposes our demo­cra­cies to viol­ent altern­at­ives. But one would be mis­taken to think of demo­cra­cies as weak.
The cost of free­dom is pre­cisely that — a cost.

If someone is instig­at­ing viol­ence against demo­crat­ic prin­ciples nego­ti­ated via vari­ous forms of com­mu­nic­a­tion, the demo­cracy has been giv­en the full man­date of its con­stitu­ents to defend those prin­ciples — also with violence.

So, de-plat­form­ing is most def­in­itely a demo­crat­ic tool when com­mu­nic­a­tion breaks down and is replaced by viol­ence or instigation.

3. Will the PR effects of de-platforming hurt the organization both short- and long-term?

Deplatforming is a final pub­lic rela­tions chal­lenge. If the account own­er or con­tent cre­at­or feels wrong­fully pun­ished, that rela­tion­ship might escal­ate bey­ond repair imme­di­ately. Being de-plat­formed is often tied with a strong emo­tion­al response. 

Such a broken-down rela­tion­ship might scale socially if the account own­er is fol­lowed by like-minded peers who can become highly vocal and act­ive adversaries.

There is also con­sid­er­able poten­tial blow­back in decid­ing not to shut down a spe­cif­ic account. Many accounts, espe­cially polit­ic­al ones, cre­ate divi­sion and spark debates. When such reports step over the line, there will be blow­back from dis­gruntled interests either way.

Potentially adverse PR effects should be a sig­ni­fic­ant con­sid­er­a­tion in decid­ing when to de-plat­form and cre­ate and revise the pub­lic policy.

De-Platforming Scenarios

When con­sid­er­ing de-plat­form someone, you can use these scen­ari­os to determ­ine the right course of action:

A Complex PR Matter

De-plat­form­ing is, without a doubt, a com­plex mat­ter in PR.

On the one hand, we have a rampant can­cel cul­ture that hurts free speech (and, by exten­sion, all stra­tegic PR work) in the long term.

On the oth­er hand, organ­isa­tions must have integ­rity and fight back whenev­er their brands are attacked.

To make the situ­ation even more com­plex, we have a prob­lem where autonom­ous tech giants estab­lish rules as they see fit.

So, when it comes to de-plat­form­ing, the answer still has to be … maybe.