White House Social Media Summit

Overview

The White House Social Media Summit is a meeting between President Donald Trump and a collection of social media users he claims to have been unfairly targeted for censorship by social media companies. These users generally consist of right-wing pundits, politicians and conspiracy theorists who have complained of so-called bias on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook; though, these claims have thus far been unfounded. A number of those invited have been disinvited due to allegations of hate speech, while some in the conservative social media sphere criticized the invites because none had actually been banned by social media companies.

Background

On July 2nd, 2019, the Washington Post^[1] reported that the White House had begun inviting various members of the conservative online community. In the report, they wrote:

The president’s top aides so far have said their scheduled, July 11 event aims to assemble “digital leaders” to discuss the “opportunities and challenges of today's online environment.” In doing so, though, the White House quietly has invited tech’s top conservative critics in politics and media, The Post has learned, some of whom say the solution to Silicon Valley’s perceived political bias is to break up the tech giants or more aggressively regulate them.

Developments

Invitees

Throughout the week, a number of right-wing online personalities announced that they would be attending the event. Those guests include conservative political pundit Bill Mitchell; U.S. Representative Matthew Gaetz; Ali Alexander, a right-wing conspiracy theorist who the Daily Beast^[6] called "a right-wing operative pushing a smear that Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Kamala Harris (CA) isn’t really 'an American Black," and conspiracy theorist James O'Keefe, who operates Project Veritas, a controversial group of right-wing operatives known for a series of heavily edited videos and sting operations aimed at left-wing advocacy groups; and infamous pro-Trump meme creator Carpe Donktum.

The various technology that have been routinely criticized by Trump, including Google, Facebook and Twitter, were either not invited or declined to join, according to the Mother Jones.^[7]

Ben Garrison's Invitation

On July 5th, 2019, controversial political cartoonist Ben Garrison tweeted^[2] an invitation to the summit. He wrote, "Honored to be invited to the White House! Thank You Mr. President!" The tweet received more than 13,000 likes, 3,600 retweets and 1,100 comments in less than one week (shown below, left).

The following day, CNN host Jake Tapper tweeted,^[3] "Man who drew a cartoon the @ADL^[4] calls 'blatantly anti-Semitic' says he was invited to the White House for a social media summit." The tweet received more than 3,600 likes, 2,200 retweets and 1,000 comments in one week (shown below, right).

Following the controversy, the White House disinvited Garrison from the event. On July 10th, the cartoonist published a statement on the controversy, claiming that he was not an anti-semite. He writes,^[5] "The Fake News Media is only attacking me to attack the President." The post received more than 8,700 likes, 3,900 retweets and 1,000 comments in 24 hours (shown below).

Criticism

Various personalities within the right-wing online community criticized the event for not including them. On July 9th, conspiracy theorist Paul Joseph Watson tweeted,^[8] "Have any of the people who got invited to the social media summit actually been censored by social media?"

The New York Times^[9] spoke with Madihha Ahussain, a lawyer with Muslim Advocates, who criticized the event and its guests. They said, “Enforcing basic standards of decency on social media isn’t censoring conservative speech. Hate speech is hate speech, regardless of whether the person spewing it has met with the president […] We urge social media platforms to ignore the circus at the White House and instead commit to enforcing their hate-content policies objectively and forcefully."

Trump's Comments

On the day of the event, President Trump tweeted^[10] a series of tweets about the Summit, claiming that it would address the "tremendous dishonesty, bias, discrimination and suppression practiced by certain companies." The first of his series of tweets received more than 30,000 likes, 7,000 retweets and 5,000 comments in less than three hours (shown below).

Related Memes

#StopTheBias

#StopTheBias is a social media hashtag often used to call for an end to anti-conservative bias on various online platforms. In mid-May 2019, the hashtag was used by Trump to promote a survey portal for conservatives to share their experiences with bias on the web.

Search Interest

External References