From X and Meta, onto LinkedIn and Bluesky – that’s out of the frying pan into the fire in the era of Trump

A post this morning caught my eye – German tech commentator Sascha Pallenberg had content about the cancellation of the Jimmy Kimmel show banned on LinkedIn. I tried to see if I could replicate the ban (here and here) but my content went through.

I don’t doubt the veracity of Pallenberg’s post – it could have been his commentary rather than the link itself that resulted in the ban perhaps? Or LinkedIn changed its policy between his post and mine in light of backlash?

But that is not really the point.

While it might have a more sober tone than X or Facebook, in the end LinkedIn is no different. Its home feed is algorithmically filtered by default, and what features on it or not is beyond users’ control, and appealing content take-downs on any social network is hard and often receives no response. At least – for now – Pallenberg knew his content was banned, which is more than can be said for posts on Instagram that have the “wrong” political content. And let’s not forget – Microsoft is LinkedIn’s parent company. American.

A few people tried to make the case to me that posting about Kimmel had no place on LinkedIn anyway, as it is meant to be a business-y network, but that entirely misses the point – it should be my decision as a user what I consider appropriate in terms of topic, and were my business comedy TV then cancellations of shows would even be my direct business. And as more and more politicians in Brussels EU politics seek refuge from the X hell hole, some see LinkedIn as an alternative – the days of LinkedIn as business only are definitely over, whether you like that or not.

And that then leads us to another refuge from X and Meta: Bluesky. As a place of escape for many democrats in the USA, UK based Will Davies mused whether some content take down effort on Bluesky would be next. “Not to worry!” said Steve Chambers astutely in response. “It is decentralised. You can tell this because there is only one place to sign up.” And yes, Bluesky is American. And yes, it is not really decentralised enough for users yet, although it might get there still.

This week – regardless of the rights and wrongs of the Jimmy Kimmel case – should come as a warning. Being present on US-owned social networks (as a European) is no longer a case of accepting that there is bad behaviour there, while assuming you and people like you are OK (and argument I hear regularly from those still on X).

The danger now is something darker: that if you post the wrong thing you can be summarily banned because you offended the wrong people on the US populist right, and platform owners fear their bottom line in the face of an authoritarian regime more than they protect their users – wherever those users are.

Replacing any US owned, commercially operated, social network or platform with another one is just jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.

What do you do about that, I hear you wondering?

There is really only one social network immune to this: Mastodon, that is genuinely decentralised. With full data portability, owned by no one. The regular web – with self hosted sites like this very blog – is likewise comparatively safe.

But ask yourself this: were you to have your account summarily deleted on X / Facebook / Instagram / LinkedIn / Bluesky / Substack for having posted the wrong thing, even if that thing were not unlawful and not against any community guidelines, how would you fare? Not least as – unless you’re fantastically rich or powerful (which is unlikely if you read this blog) – you’re in danger of not ever getting your content back.

If your response is “I better tone my content down” then you are complicit.

The right response is to act. To prepare alternatives. To build your presence in places more immune to political and business pressure in the USA. To ensure that if the worst happens at least personally you will be ok.

This post will be linked from both Bluesky and LinkedIn and we will see how it fares. But if I am banned from either now or in the future, I will be fine.