Shahid Bolsen discusses his Tiktok ban

The last time we spoke on this, your social media profile was rising dramatically, and some would say too dramatically because you seem to have already been canceled. TikTok banned your account with nearly 300,000 followers. Do you believe that your free speech is being muted because your content challenges official narratives?

Well, no. Not exactly. I mean, as I've talked about many times before, the private sector is not democratic. None of the values of the enlightenment apply to the private sector. There's no guarantee of free speech on a privately owned social media platform.

Platforms like TikTok and Twitter and Facebook and YouTube and so on, these are basically like big rooms inside of a corporate building, and the owners of that building decide what you are allowed to talk about on their property. It's our mistake to think that these rooms are public spaces, you know, are the commons just because people gather there. I mean, we've allowed ourselves to be corralled into these spaces because, it's convenient and it gives you access to an easy audience. I mean, easy access to an audience. I mean, we could all just host our content on our own websites, but no one would see it.

I mean, when's the last time you actually visited somebody's website? These platforms gather people. So if you say something in those corporate conference rooms that we call social media platforms, people will hear you. But you are restricted in what you can say because you have to follow the rules of the venue just like any other venue, just like a physical venue. And if you wanna say whatever you want without those restrictions, without having followed those rules, you can still do that, but no one will hear you.

We allowed this to happen. We allowed this to develop. So we can't really complain, when the private owners of these platforms enforce their rules. I mean, for The United States, for, like, for a US based platform, say, if the values of the enlightenment, if the democratic liberal values apply to the private sector, then the community guidelines for a US based social media platform would be the American constitution and nothing more. So if your if your speech is constitutionally protected, then it wouldn't be censored.

But business is not subject to the constitution in that way. It's a parallel power system. They have their own rules, and they implement them, in an authoritarian manner. Democracy doesn't apply. Now do I think that I was, banned from TikTok because of some conspiracy, to silence me?

Not really. No. I had just accumulated, community guidelines violations, and I reached the threshold, and they banned me. It's that simple. I had violations for, a video about I had a violation for a video about the Anwar Ibrahim government.

I had a violation, for a video about Western hypocrisy with regards to concubinage and, about a video about the Islamic position on homosexuality. And I think there were a few others, but I can't remember them. And these were, based on complaints by users. So, yes, TikTok agreed with those complaints, but TikTok didn't initiate those complaints. So, I mean, if no one had ever complained, then I doubt that my account would have been banned.

So that's a problem with people being able to shut someone down because they just disagree with them. Because it has become too easy on social media, for any sort of person to participate in discourse even when they are not qualified to do so. You know, they can participate in discourse even when they have no business interacting, with what someone is saying. Because again, everyone, is in these rooms. All different types of people are in these rooms that we call social media platforms, and the rooms are not partitioned according to subject matter or level of expertise or IQ or what have you.

So someone who in the real world would never, say, attend a lecture on geopolitics or religion, and who knows nothing about those subjects, can inadvertently wander by that kind of content and get offended or not understand it, and then complain about it. And that complaint will be taken seriously. In the real world, natural partitions exist because, it takes some effort to go to a lecture or to read a book, and that means that you must be genuinely interested in the subject. But with social media, someone who spends all day watching frivolous content can still get exposed to serious content, and they can get offended by it. They can interact with it when they shouldn't, and they can get offended by it when it's because they don't understand it.

I don't know any way to get around that with social media. You know, it used to be back in the day that you had to sort of earn the right to be heard. You had to sort of work your way up to have a platform. Now it's very easy, and we all benefit, from the easy access to a platform. We all benefit from that, but we're also all exposed to the downside of that.

Now I did think for a minute that TikTok was maybe targeting me or was out to get me because immediately when I posted, on an alternate account, I got a community guidelines violation within seconds. But then somebody explained to me that it was probably because TikTok has my IP address, and they recognized the IP address as belonging to an account that had been banned. So they flagged my post. Now I don't know if that's right, but it sounds reasonable. It makes sense.

That's probably why. But I mean, my content is being shared across multiple platforms by many people. And as far as I know, those people are not getting, banned or suspended or being threatened with a suspension, for sharing my content. So I can't really say, that it's some kind of a conspiracy, to prevent me from being heard. But having said that, I do think it's interesting, in this kind of situation to think about what freedom of speech or freedom in general means, really.

Because the actual restrictions on speech are not based on what you're saying. No one is restricted on the basis of what they say. The determining factor isn't content, but impact. And impact is determined by who is listening, and how many are listening, and how they are responding, and how they are reacting to what you're saying. I mean, think about this.

The, in Turkey, under Ataturk, when they banned the Adhan, they banned the hijab, and they banned all the outward signs of Islam, because they were influenced by the French. And the French, until today, think that secularism means state imposed atheism. But these restrictions in Turkey were applied almost only exclusively in the urban centers. Out in the rural areas, in the villages, they still had the adhan, they still had hijab. Not much really changed in the countryside under Ataturk, from when they were living under the Ottomans because their practice had no impact.

I mean, everyone says that there's no freedom in the Muslim world, in the Arab world, because they say that we have dictators. I mean, it's debatable whether or not we have dictators. In some countries, maybe they do, some countries they don't. But either way, that's the impression people have. So they think that we have no freedom.

But actually, if people are really being honest and if they've experienced it, then they'll see that there's actually zero difference between the freedom that is enjoyed by most people in their daily lives, whether they live in the Arab world, in the Muslim world, or in the West. You don't have more freedom than we do in the Muslim world, and we don't have less freedom than you in the West. Here or there, people carry on their lives more or less undisturbed, their regular daily lives. Only if they want to protest or to be intensely politically active will they ever face any restrictions or repression, and that's the same everywhere in the world. That's not unique to the Arab world.

It's not unique to the Muslim world. It's not unique to the global South. And that only ever affects a minority of people, because only a minority of people are ever intensely politically active. I've lived half my life in the West. I grew up in the West, and I've lived the other half of my life, the second half of my life in the Muslim world, in a variety of different countries.

And I can tell you that there's qualitatively no difference in the level of freedom that you have in your normal daily life, except maybe, quantitatively. You tend to have more free time in the Muslim world than in the West. But restrictions on freedom, whether that's freedom of speech, freedom of expression, or freedom of assembly, or protest, or what have you, restrictions tend to be imposed based on the impact of what you're doing. If there's no impact, then there are no restrictions. And again, this is the same everywhere, whether it's in the West or in the East, or whether it's in the global North or in the global South, or in a democratic country or an authoritarian country.

The difference though is then in the West, it's really important to you to emphasize repeatedly how free you are. You have to tell yourselves that to make you feel special and unique and superior, but the freedom you have is not special. It's more or less universal all around the world with only maybe a few exceptions of particularly repressive regimes. And like I've said, the freedom that you have is derived primarily from the fact that your freedom is of no impact. The moment you have impact, you lose your freedom.

Your freedom is contingent upon your irrelevance. And if your freedom in any way, even in a minor way, interferes with the system of power while the full fury of that system will be unleashed against you. And in that regard, The United States is no different, from Syria or Egypt or anywhere else that you like to call autocratic. The only difference is maybe, that in The United States or in the West generally, the power structure, just has greater diversity of weapons to use against you. They have the advantage of a more sophisticated arsenal of ways to destroy you.

And this is because, in The United States or in the West, they in fact have an even greater degree of control over their society than exists anywhere else in the world. So I mean, it is possible that I was banned as a result of this type of controlled repression, but I think it was probably more mundane than that. But I guess time will tell.