Opinion: Tech censorship is the real gift to Putin

Trump’s suspended Twitter account appears on an iPhone screen. One could argue that even if US-based tech platforms have rushed to align themselves with the political winners in their country to avoid a costly confrontation, they won’t do the same for Putin or Erdogan. It’s more complicated than that. — AFP

Alexey Navalny, the opposition leader whom the Russian secret police nearly killed with military-grade poison last year, is worried about Twitter’s decision to shut down Donald Trump’s account.

Navalny is no Trump fan; he is far to the left of the outgoing US president. The reason he is worried is that the way US tech has ganged up on Trump and his most radical supporters can lead to his own deplatforming in Russia, where he has no access to state-controlled media and relies on mostly US-based social networks – YouTube, Facebook, Twitter – to spread his message. That’s a valid concern.