US right shifts tone on social media censorship after Charlie Kirk’s murder

For years, US tech giants were criticised by conservatives for censoring speech on social media.

Now, social media platforms are facing pressure to do more to police content from many conservatives incensed over the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.

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Kirk’s killing during a speaking event in Utah last week unleashed a wave of negative commentary about the activist online, ranging from criticism of his conservative views to morbid celebrations of his death.

Graphic footage of Kirk’s murder also ricocheted across platforms, exposing millions of people to gory images of his final moments.

In the hours after the killing, Republican House Representative Anna Paulina Luna urged Meta, X and TikTok to take down videos of Kirk’s death, warning that “at some point, social media begins to desensitise humanity”.

Utah Governor Spencer Cox, a Republican, blasted social media as a “cancer” that had played a “direct role” in every assassination or attempted assassination of recent years.

Louisiana Representative Clay Higgins promised to use his influence to “mandate an immediate ban for life of every post or commenter that belittled” the assassination.

Controversy over the role of social media deepened after the chat platform Discord on Monday confirmed that the suspected killer, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, appeared to have taken responsibility for the crime in a message to other users.

On Wednesday, a Republican-led US House of Representatives committee said it had asked the CEOs of Discord, Steam, Twitch and Reddit to testify at an October hearing on the “radicalisation of online forum users”.

The response to the social media reaction to Kirk’s death marks a shift for some of the political right, which until recently railed against the alleged censorship of posts about topics ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

The same Republican-led committee that is investigating Discord and other platforms in 2023 held a hearing on “protecting speech from government interference and social media bias,” prompted by Twitter’s decision to suppress a news report about documents contained on a misplaced laptop belonging to Hunter Biden, the son of then-President Joe Biden.

After pledging to curtail misinformation and hateful content amid the fallout of Brexit and the political rise of Donald Trump, tech firms have embraced looser moderation in recent years amid shifting political winds.

X, formerly called Twitter, scaled back its fact-checking and content moderation programs after tech billionaire Elon Musk’s purchase of the platform in 2022.

In January, days before Trump’s return to the White House, Meta announced the end of its third-party fact-checking initiative, saying its previous content moderation efforts had “gone too far”.

Even as the tone of Republicans’ rhetoric on free speech and social media has changed, it is unclear what changes – if any – they might seek to implement.

While Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson referred to social media as a political “toxin” after Kirk’s death, he has yet to propose any related legislation.

US Attorney General Pam Bondi on Monday pledged to use her Department of Justice to crack down on “hate speech”, a concept not recognised under the US Constitution.

Bondi later walked back her comments in the face of a backlash, including from prominent conservatives, clarifying that officials would focus on violent threats and incitement.

Trump, an avid social media user, has offered mixed signals on the issue, telling reporters this week that while online platforms could become “cancerous,” they could also be “great”.

The US Constitution offers broad protections for speech under the First Amendment, but it does not bar private companies from firing their employees over their commentary online – a point made by Republicans who have cheered the firing of numerous people deemed to have reacted insensitively to Kirk’s murder.

On Wednesday, ABC announced that it had suspended TV host Jimmy Kimmel’s long-running show “indefinitely” over a monologue in which he suggested that the suspect in Kirk’s murder was a follower of Trump’s MAGA movement.

Blurring the lines between private sector and government efforts to police speech, Kimmel’s suspension came after the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, suggested ABC could face regulatory action over the host’s remarks.

Cecilia Garcia and Dawn Thomas, in Westminster, California, react as they learn on social media of Charlie Kirk being shot at a college event in Utah, on Wednesday, September 10, 2025 [Damian Dovarganes/AP]

“The attorney general herself made comments about limiting hate speech online that have actually drawn a backlash from other conservatives, but other conservatives are fighting with each other about this,” John Wihbey, director of the AI-Media Strategies Lab at Northeastern University, told Al Jazeera.

“This is materially different from prior controversies in this space, in that conservatives are seemingly conflicted about the policy consequences of a terrible online event.”

Meta, X, and Reddit did not answer questions about whether they would change their content moderation policies following Kirk’s death, instead directing Al Jazeera to existing moderation practices.

Those include labelling – and in some cases removing – violent or graphic content, and removing content deemed to glorify, incite, or call for violence.

“We are applying a warning screen to graphic videos … around the shooting and age-gating it to adults,” a Meta spokesperson said.

A Reddit spokesperson said the company had “reached out to ensure moderators understand and abide not only by the Reddit Rules, but also our Moderator Code of Conduct”.

Bluesky, Discord, YouTube, and Snap did not respond to requests for comment.

Dave Karpf, an associate professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University, said the reaction to Kirk’s death has more to do with the changing political landscape under Trump than principles about content moderation or speech.

“I haven’t seen any calls for a pendulum swing back towards content moderation. What they are calling for instead is outright purges of the regime opponents,” Karpf told Al Jazeera.

“The basic difference is that both the government and the platforms used to behave as though they had to design processes that were fundamentally fair and neutral. The current government has little use for fundamental fairness or neutrality,” Karpf said.

“And the platforms are trying to stay on the current government’s good side. We are less likely to see a return of content moderation than we are to see the appointment of government censors.”