# Justifying The Trump Twitter Ban I strongly agree that the freedom of speech is vital to any free society, but I also wholeheartedly believe **Twitter was ==justified in banning Trump because it was done to prevent immediate harm==.** **John Stuart Mill ([[On Liberty]]) said it much better than I ever could: “the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection.** That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.” I closely followed the news and listened to Trump himself during the Capitol siege, and I believe **his actions were provocative enough to warrant banning him from Twitter to prevent him from inciting further violence**. He wasn't using Twitter to spread ideas that day (popular or otherwise), he wasn't participating in a civilized debate, he was instead calling an angry mob, which was using violence to achieve their goals, “great patriots.” And people died. Words matter. Words that are spoken by a political figure who is perceived as a leader by at least 74 million people who voted for him matter even more. Those words incited violence. The community was thus justified, if not morally required, to silence him. To quote **Mill again** (yes, [[On Liberty]] is one of my favorite philosophical essays): **“Acts, of whatever kind, which, without justifiable cause, do harm to others, may be, and in the more important cases absolutely require to be, controlled by the unfavorable sentiments, and, when needful, by the active interference of mankind.”** This is **==not unprecedented. Countries across Europe limit the freedom of speech of extremist organizations all the time==.** It also doesn't matter who those people are (on the fringe, in the minority, or the majority), what is important is what impact their words have.