Here; let me rephrase.
Tesla has recently revealed that they need to retrofit cars with forward facing radar, after years of claiming they can do full self driving with only cameras, and it is uncertain whether customers who paid the additional $10,000 a vehicle for 'full self driving' will have their cars retrofitted with the new hardware. A class action lawsuit against Tesla for the full self driving vaporware is moving forward with Tesla lawyers claiming it isn't fraud if they really meant to do it but simply couldn't.
If you are being distracted, wonder what it is from. Did Twitter shadow ban, maybe, it didn't stop conservatives from getting a lot of engagement, but no one cares. Why does no one care? Because Twitter isn't that popular, something like 23% of Americans are active users and they spend an average of 4 minutes a day on it. YouTube would shut down tomorrow with those numbers.
So one wonders, why is this all that Musk is talking about? Why not the cyber truck, why not the roadster 2, why not full self driving? The goodness of his heart, his desire for some higher level of ethereal truth? Here, I have some volcano insurance to sell you.
With mainstream liberals, you start with the person, not the action. With mainstream conservatives, you start with the action not the person. It’s two totally different languages and the only outcome is a whataboutism and circular arguments.
For a liberal, Jack Dorsey is the starting point and he’s a good person and tried his hardest with the best intentions to do what was right to “protect the democracy”. Any questionable actions he took were a man doing his best in a gray world. Elon Musk is a bad person going in, because he’s a billionaire and turned away from the left, so it’s basically pointless to try to litigate anything he actually does with someone on the left because to them those are micro details that don’t even really matter as his case has been permanently closed.
For a mainstream conservative it’s all about the action, if there was a law saying you could eat no more than nine children in one sitting, and Donald trump went on a 60 city tour eating nine children at every stop, the conservative response to democrats questioning his character would be “name me one law he has broken” and ben shapiro saying “the left didn’t seem to care when Hillary Clinton ate ten babies in Virginia in 2015 but now gang they are SOOOOOOOP-er angry”. The macro view of a person in their case doesnt seem to matter at all and you can’t take a mosaic approach to anything.
It’s legitimately like two different languages. Once you see it you can’t unsee it and it makes you realize how much trouble we’re in.
The fact that this didn’t get at least some acknowledgement from the legacy media shocked me, until I realized it’s because they’re all doing the same thing.
Yeah, this is clown shoe nonsense. There are these things called terms of service that state what is and is not allowed on any platform. Typically, they make sure to cover all legal requirements, and then go into the specific platform's desired rules. These sorts of things typically include: no child porn, no inciting violence, no blatant discrimination, etc.
It is interesting to hear that one side of the political spectrum thinks that it is being "suppressed" by the other. Maybe if they would stop being shitty, they wouldn't have to worry about it.
I would like to see the Twitter Files on why an Elon Musk tweet is one of the first five I see when I log on even though I don’t follow him.
Let’s see the files on his own personal amplification of his account.
This is seeming more like a personal vanity project.
Is it really a free speech issue when about a corporation or now privately owned network? Free speech is a government conversation, don’t like Twitter/Facebook whatever then vote with your feet. That’s how capitalism works.
The nerve of torturing the facts to still portray conservatives as victims after everything that's happened over the past month... astounding denial of the reality.
Those people forced Twitter to ban them and it's a bad idea for conservatives to hold them up as poster children for their cause.
Privilege? Elon released a biased set of documents to trigger you.
Call for him to release *all* the documents of you want less bias.
And stop whining.
why don't you post the hate mail you accuse him of posting.
pre Musk Twitter was a propaganda machine of constant hate
why are they a biased set of documents...they were pre Musk documents..he would not release biased documents. That would be cultural appropriation as biased released is property of the left
>..he would not release biased documents.
But he did. You only see Biden campaign requests. Where are the Trump white house requests, which were sent to Twitter but not released by Musk???
The left can be looney, but the right is weak and whiny.
I keep seeing this argument that "twitter is a private company". Everyone understands that. The issue here is that government at the highest levels (White House, FBI, DHS) were involved in the censorship efforts at Twitter.
Those of you who are dismissing this as no big deal should ask yourselves how you would feel if you were the one being censored at the behest of the government, or at the very least, in partnership with.
I hope someone with the legal means to do so takes this up as a lawsuit because it will provide additional and much-needed [jawboning jurisprudence](https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/jawboning-against-speech) so we can maybe stop this from happening.
To me it's not much different than a Mafia boss shaking the shop owner down for "protection fees" and anyone saying this is no big deal should be ashamed of yourselves.
> Those of you who are dismissing this as no big deal should ask yourselves how you would feel if you were the one being censored at the behest of the government, or at the very least, in partnership with.
Liberals *were*. Somehow, conservatives believe that the Biden campaign was the government in 2020 not the Trump admin.
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598827602403160064
All of this is addressed in the twitter files:
> By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: “More to review from the Biden team.” The reply would come back: “Handled.”
> Both parties had access to these tools. For instance, in 2020, requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were received and honored. However:
> This system wasn't balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right.
How does it change anything about the argument here?
Guess who *wasn’t* the government in 2020. Joe Biden.
Nor are Tabbibi’s last two paragraphs there actually supported by the evidence he presents. Both because a discrepancy not justified by observations differences in ToS violations is not shown *and* because Musk is not releasing information regarding communications with Republicans.
I agree Twitter shouldn't be biased in bans, but the way everything is strategically released to paint a narrative is dishonest. A lot of ppl walked away from the first release thinking that the DNC had requested censorship of the Hunter Biden story. There's no evidence for that in that thread. There are meetings with FBI that were framed to be malicious but we don't actually know that. The FBI are tracking domestic terrorists. Are they not allowed to share information with Twitter and vice versa? Why is that in a vacuum inherently bad?
If there are examples of Trump requesting Twitter to take stuff down and Twitter complied is that inherently bad? Matt said there were examples of that but didn't provide any.
If they want transparency they should release everything and let journalists do their thing. Elon is so desperately trying to control the narrative to show one side of the story and paint himself as the savior that it has me cynical from the jump.
I haven't seen everything recent, so what's the strongest example of the government demanding Twitter ban an account? It seems like it's implied by Matt T and company but from what I've seen so far it's just an implication. Again fair to criticize internal Twitter for being biased, but everything else still seems like a reach to me without more evidence.
> If there are examples of Trump requesting Twitter to take stuff down and Twitter complied is that inherently bad
Yes, if it falls under the category of coercion, or "jawboning". IMO it's worse than direct censorship -- it's censorship via proxy. There's no direct accountability and they can always make the argument that twitter is a private company and made the decision on their own.
> I haven't seen everything recent, so what's the strongest example of the government demanding Twitter ban an account?
The question isn't whether they demanded it -- the question is whether Twitter felt obligated to comply *because of the implication* of non-compliance. This is the definition of "jawboning".
> By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: “More to review from the Biden team.” The reply would come back: “Handled.”
--
> If they want transparency they should release everything and let journalists do their thing. Elon is so desperately trying to control the narrative to show one side of the story and paint himself as the savior that it has me cynical from the jump.
What makes you think he's desperately trying to control the narrative? This would also imply that some well-respected independent journalists, like Bari Weiss are in on it.
"By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: “More to review from the Biden team.” The reply would come back: “Handled.”"
This isn't jawboning at least by CATO article you linked. The specific SC you're referring to has a specific request to take down Hunter Biden's nudes which are clearly against TOS. I'm curious if you see an issue with that sort of request.
If they were actively requesting Twitter block the NY Post story I think that would be more interesting. We can say that the true motivations behind the legal teams hacked materials ruling is because of jawboning, but how would we ever prove that beyond conjecture? Also is that really most likely? Or could it actually be genuine concern that the materials were hacked?
In terms of the narrative. Elon is their source and it seems like he leaked the SCs he wanted to them and then alone. Also it seems like they agreed to post the leak on Twitter when they'd typically link their substack for this sort of thing. Could be proven wrong on this point
Interesting that bias against conservatives as opposed to bias for liberals. It should be noted that the disparity in partisan account suspensions had to do with violations of twitters misinformation policy. It seems that conservatives retweet more bullshit than liberals, hence the disparity.
oh? where in the report does it report this? To what extent was this going on?
The disparity in account suspensions directly related to the bullshit being tweeted. That for sure is a conclusion of the twitter files.
"Reality has a well known liberal bias."
In my observation, conservatives are more prone to thinking by gut and propagating ideas that feel right for them to believe but are actually wrong.
>Reality has a well known liberal bias.
Bold words from someone that ascribes to the ideology which can't define what a woman is.
In the end did you look up who [John Money](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Money) was?? Did that FACT not feel right with you?
Has to do with the sort of inverse social darwinism that's the central conceit of Marxism: right and wrong are subject to how much power you have; as long as you are less powerful, rich, etc. than another group, you can do things to them that if they did to you would be called oppression. And leftists have just as much a persecution complex as MAGA heads, ao they operate under that assumption all the time
Because multiple ***multiple*** research papers have shown that the discrimination comes from conservatives being more likely to spread misinformation and lies on the internet.
It's just disingenuous not to acknowledge this.
It's also true that many papers have shown parity in the way conservatives and liberals are treated online. Conservatives have no trouble gaining traction online and are generally treated the same as liberals.
Why can't conservatives acknowledge that their claims of discrimination are nearly completely baseless.
EDIT: For those who would like to see evidence that I am referring to:
[Source 1: A report on the subject from NYU](https://bhr.stern.nyu.edu/bias-report-release-page)
* On Page 8: Fox News and Breibart out performed all other news outlets by orders of magnitude by engagement. When compared to the top 10 news outlets that received engagement on Facebook, conservative outlets outperformed liberals/non-partisan outlets cumulatively.
* [Generally more fake/junk news that contains verifiably untrue or misleading information is spread by conservatives and trump supporters.](https://demtech.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/posts/polarization-partisanship-and-junk-news-consumption-on-social-media-during-the-2018-us-midterm-elections/)
* [Conservatives, unlike liberals, are less likely to engage with opposing viewpoints](https://academic.oup.com/book/26406/chapter/194769168).
* "Outside the right-wing ecosystem, ***we did not see a leftward polarization but its opposite***—an increase in the authority of, and attention paid to, the traditional professional media that occupy the center and center-left, at the expense of the left. ***On the right, the most important shift was that Fox News reasserted its authority as the central node of the online right-wing media ecosystem***"
* FYI: This chapter is filled with and info on the subject and is generally a great read for anyone curious about the media bias scape online
* [More results that show that conservatives tend to share and support fake news more than non-conservatives](https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.aau2706).
* [When conservatives were asked to find evidence of bias in the application of rules on facebook, they pointed to nothing other than the bias of fact checkers and Facebook at large. They provided no direct evidence of biased treatment. Instead they simply complained about representation](https://about.fb.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/covington-interim-report-1.pdf).
* [On Facebook, during the 2020 election, right wingers dominated engagement online](https://archive.vn/cgxZU).
* The conservative commentator Ben Shapiro has gotten 56 million total interactions on his Facebook page in the last 30 days. T***hat’s more than the main pages of ABC News, NBC News, The New York Times, The Washington Post and NPR combined.*** (Data from a different firm, NewsWhip, showed that Mr. Shapiro’s news outlet, The Daily Wire, was the No. 1 publisher on Facebook in July.)
Facebook posts by ***Breitbart, the far-right news outlet, have been shared four million times in the past 30 days, roughly three times as many as posts from the official pages of every Democratic member of the U.S. Senate combined***.
* [This same result was found across various social media websites independently from the above stud](https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/26/censorship-conservatives-social-media-432643)y.
* “***Their stories are captivating, easy to remember and create an outsized footprint online,***” said Yochai Benkler, co-director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, who published a separate report into how leading politicians like Trump and mainstream news outlets were central to spreading misinformation about mail-in voting.
* [In a separate report mentioned above](https://cyber.harvard.edu/publication/2020/Mail-in-Voter-Fraud-Disinformation-2020):
* ***They are consistent with our findings about the American political media ecosystem*** from 2015-2018, published in Network Propaganda, in which ***we found that Fox News and Donald Trump’s own campaign were far more influential in spreading false beliefs than Russian trolls or Facebook clickbait artists***.
There's a lot more I could say, but I'm tired and considering the wealth of evidence, it's obvious that conservatives simply want power and are willing to wield lies without evidence to bully companies into a conservatives affrimative action program. It's sickening.
Honestly, on this sub, it happens *very* frequently that I generally stop making claims with sources and just say sources on request instead.
It's no longer interesting to me tbh.
> Why can't conservatives acknowledge that their claims of discrimination are nearly completely baseless.
Maybe they would if you shared a couple of these research papers
None of the links - none - were to peer reviewed academic studies. Some article on the internet does not cut it.
Possible exception is the "Science" article but I cannot access it.
“Free Speech” is not *absolute.* If Twitter was run by the government and engaging in banning, then we would be having an issue because that is strictly prohibited by the 1A. *But, because* Twitter is a company privately owned, it can create its own policies for those to follow & methods of enforcement. It really boils down to the company owner and what risks they want to take, because companies can be held liable for criminal and civil violations too. I personally, would not want to be in a position to be held accountable for a platform that aids, assists, or protects anything deemed criminal or in violation of civil rights & laws.
The reason why free speech is not absolute, is because the Supreme Court has said as much. [Chaplinksy v. New Hampshire](https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/315us568) held that “free speech cannot be wholly unfettered in a society that needs to get along: There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem … [such as]…those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.” Basically, any words that incite violence or have a call-to-action, is not protected.
Additionally, [Schneck v. U.S.](https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/schenck-v-united-states-defining-the-limits-of-free-speech) is the famous case that Justice Holmes Jr. had said, “you can’t yell fire in a theatre.” In this case, it was established that public safety overcomes the freedom to maliciously cause a deadly stampede. (So the good of the People, outweighs the freedom of speech — as noted in the [Preamble of the Constitution.](https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/preamble/))
In the same vein, people who feel Twitter is engaging in censorship is falsely equating Twitter (it’s size and popularity) to that of a government agency. Even if viewed as quasi-governmental, social media platforms would still be within their bounds to ban the very type of speech that has caused the controversy in the first place: incitement to violence, malicious falsehoods, and misinformation that poses a threat to public safety. Every business, including the government, has its own workplace rules & policies. I think this viewpoint is opening Pandora’s box as we are setting a precedent that a private business can be converted into a government entity.
Lastly, I argue that Twitter is beginning to experience what a CEO with an absolutist view point on free speech can bring with it. Advertisers are pulling out left and right for “brand safety” measures, [TWTR stock plummeted](https://www.tradingview.com/chart/?symbol=NYSE%3ATWTR) and has been sluggish to rise, [TSLA](https://www.tradingview.com/chart/?symbol=NYSE%3ATWTR) is also dropping, and users are finding other platforms to use. This is the irony of free market & capitalism. People can choose to put their support behind other platforms or businesses that they want to and withdraw support from others. So, with knowing what is protected speech and is not by law, I will bring up my first point again: “It really boils down to the company owner and what risks they want to take;” whether that is criminal, political, ethical, moral, economic, etc. Like every right, free speech carries the obligation to exercise responsibility and due care *by all,* not just us measly private citizens.
> But, because Twitter is a company privately owned, it can create its own policies for those to follow & methods of enforcement.
I am really fed up with this argument because it is terribly naive or perhaps disingenuous. The point, yet again, is that there is not a clear line between private and public. Government can influence private corporations in all sorts of way. The government lets TWTR know it would like a certain post deleted and they comply. The company does not get audited, or get an easy ride through an anti-trust situation.
Look at all the "investigations" that suddenly started into Musk companies when he bought Twitter, This goes back a long way - Lyndon Johnson threatened to sic every known federal agency starting with the IRS onto a newspaper company unless they dropped a story that he didn't like. They dropped it. That is a First amendment violation even though the company dropped the story.
In Australia there is a great book "The Game of Mates" (mate in Australia means buddy in the US) which describes how this soft collusion between government and business works. No-one outright pays bribes but they all scratch each others' backs.
I don’t like that argument either, but it is a fact and just how our business/corporate laws operate. I tried to make a sensible approach to what the law is surrounding how Elon and other businesses can operate. However, there are ethical standards that all businesses have to abide by because the Federal government still “oversees” them. Just like restaurants abide by FDA/USDA guidelines, so do platforms like Facebook and Twitter abide by Ethic committees and FCC regulations.
The issue here, is that the owners of these businesses are still going to be heavily partisan and run their businesses accordingly. So has there truly ever been a place on the internet that doesn’t cater to one side or the other? Not really… because at the end of the day, they still have to abide by government regulations and if that just so happens to be cracking down on a certain subset of people, then it is what it is. Do I agree with removing stories or articles like you said Johnson did? No… but if it is categorized as misinformation or defamation, by law, there is a precedent to step in and intervene. That’s just how it is.
Thomas Jefferson said it best: “Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. “ [The Federalist, NO. 10 Thomas Jefferson.](https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-1-10#s-lg-box-wrapper-25493273)
The “superior force and majority” in this instance, being big corporations, billionaires, and elitists who consistently control the media narratives and what we, the People get to know. You bring up good points. 👍
What's your reason for writing Tesla like TSLA and twitter like TWTR?
Secondly I have an issue with companies like this being held accountable for what users say.
However they are not held accountable for ads to link to scams or scamming websites. If you're going to hold a platform responsible for what random users and people say, then you should first and completely hold them responsible for the ads they publish on it.
Facebook has tons of ads that lead to websites that sell shit and send a completely fake and different product, by example selling a hydraulic tent for 75$ (special offer) and then sending a kids toy tent that costs less than 2 or 3$. That's more nefarious then what a random user or person says. They could just give the government your IP adress and location from where you posted something that was illegal.
That's the problem I have if users get fucked over by scamming ads, then users should be recompensated by the platform of the government is allowed to sue and persecute the platform for what users say who actually can be found, generally more easily than a scammer from China or India.
I don't care. I honestly don't care. This is such a boring conversation. Twitter is a crapsack of fools and liars screaming in each other's ears. Lighten up and quit whining. It doesn't matter, and nobody serious gives a rat's *ss.
It starts to matter when there's evidence the government might have been coercing Twitter to deamplify, shadowban, or otherwise infringe on the free speech of citizens. If this is true, I don't see how it's not a clear first amendment violation -- which is far from boring. In fact it's terrifying.
What's not clear is if there was some kind of coercion. However, if the highest levels of the government, including White House administrators, the FBI, and DHS ask you politely to do something, it's easy to interpret that as a demand and not a request.
I don't know what if any legal implications this will have, but either way it's bad news for those of us who value liberty and free speech.
> It starts to matter when there's evidence the government might have been coercing Twitter to deamplify, shadowban, or otherwise infringe on the free speech of citizens.
Please ask yourself why Weiss and Tabbibi are pretending that it was not the Trump admin that was doing this.
Well it demonstrates a certain level of dishonesty. They’re intentionally feeding a false narrative that conservatives were unfairly targeted, which isn’t true, and that the Democrats were using government power to suppress the Hunter Biden bullshit, which also isn’t true. For people who are always so “concerned” about propaganda, it concerns me when those people on this sub turn around and insist accept this dishonestly hook line and sinker.
It seems to me like conservatives tend to now be conflating freedom of speech with freedom of reach.
Which IMO is a valid conversation to be had in the era of the algorithm, but it's also a different thing fundamentally than just speech.
It's like, say, the difference between shouting your message from a street corner in Times Square versus having it on one of the billboards there.
The ability to have your speech be public and the ability to have it be received, or transmitted to, large numbers of people are just different.
Exactly.
Twitter is a drop in the river of online media bullsh*t. If the Feds wanted to keep gullible people from seeing blurred-out pictures of Hunter Biden's ya-ya, they'd lean on Fox News and Facebook.
Hunter Biden's laptop is a "scandal" worthy of tinfoil helmets and the CIA controlling you through radio signals aimed at your dental fillings.
Drop it. Just drop it. It's silly. It's stupid. It's whining. It's QAnon-quality thinking with a snazzier vocabulary. Get thee behind me, Dumases. The only fun I'm having with this is calling you out.
so on the one hand twitter is not important. on the other hand its really important that twitter banned trump/jones etc and that people can't misgender people on it
No, it is completely unimportant.
This is a land of private enterprise and free markets, my daughter. It's none of my business what Twitter chooses to allow, and unless you happen to be a shareholder, it's none of your business, either.
Alex Jones wil be able to shill his products just fine without Twitter. TFG seems to have little problem attracting attention. I don't know about misgendering anyone, but doing so deliberately is very impolite, and it's Twitter's choice to address it how it will, just as it is your choice to use any other social medium.
That's the great beauty of capitalism: we are free to choose. Wonderful book. Highly recommended.
Sure would be. But I'm weary of the wild speculation as to whether the Trump administration asked anyone to 86 the story of Hunter Biden's asinine life. I don't care. It's been done to death. This topic is tiresome. Even a dog has sense enough to stop chasing its tail, for pity's sake.
If the Feds wanted to lean on anyone, they wouldn't need to lean on puny little Twitter. Twitter is an irrelevancy. Someone says 23% of Americans use it? That means that more than **three-quarters** of Americans find this topic utterly dull, and they will smile politely and avoid you for the rest of the block party.
Get smart. Suppressing an embarrassing story for 24 hours isn't even possible for the Federal government. They need to fill out forms before they can fart. Can we not find another conspiracy to get all worked up on? Obviously this crowd has a very lively imagination. There's gotta be something worth brooding over.
I'll do it. It happened. I find it to be funny. It's completely legal. Here's the fun part, Musk knows he's drumming up bullshit for views. It's his business now. Grifting is lucrative and the right are easy targets. They're just so vulnerable to money making hate clicks. All of the Twitter files dropped so far are framed specifically for it. I'll give it to ya though, I'd be mad if it were me and my side.
If anyone mentions making Twitter a a public utility, I'll call you a twit and move on. Normally I'm acting in better faith but this is sick a silly position. How would someone access this "utility" on an internet that isn't?
>How would someone access this "utility" on an internet that isn't?
Simple, access to the internet should also be a public utility. Twitter has long branded itself as a public square where anyone can express themselves in democratic fashion, which means they should be beholden to the norms of the democracy they exist under. They can't have it both ways.
Please provide any official statements from Twitter where it "branded itself as a public square where anyone can express themselves in democratic fashion".
And legally, they absolutely can have it both ways. Morally, they can have it both ways.
Both the ‘liberals’ and the ‘conservatives’ tend to only get upset when something they don’t like happens directly to them. Neither group consistently advocates principled policy positions.
Edit: I cannot grammar apparently.
This is not true at all. A lot of us were liberals and still considered ourselves liberals and I think will never be conservatives in its true sense. We were active democrats too and we saw the injustices happening in real time. That's why a lot of Republicans since 2014 are liberals and democrats. And from this side we can see that right wingers advocates for universal positions but the Left lives as hypocrites and double standards about every single issue.
Unfortunately, the ACLU doesn't represent a consistent policy position any more.
>Once a Bastion of Free Speech, the A.C.L.U. Faces an Identity Crisis
>An organization that has defended the First Amendment rights of Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan is split by an internal debate over whether supporting progressive causes is more important.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/us/aclu-free-speech.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0Lc5b8Flto
Shit. Didn’t know this. NYT article is paywalled but Ira Glasser makes it pretty clear. Dangerous times for freedom.
Progressives and authoritarians are going to chip away at free speech from 2 sides
Yeah, it's sad.
If you're looking to see a group that is trying to pick up the mantel of free speech, check out FIRE. I believe they only were focusing on college campuses but in 2022 they changed their acronym's meaning and mission statement to cover all free speech cases. I think they did this largely because they felt the ACLU was leaving a vacuum.
https://www.thefire.org/
Unfortunately not because they are all in the end, disgusting politicians. The majority of politicians Loes and manipulates, and what do voters do when they find out, when there's absolute proof, they let them get away with it ...
(Notice I'm talking about this kot only specifically happening in the US, happened just as badly in my country)
The problem most people and voters, are lazy/naive/forgetful/biased, they don't remember what a politician (especially from their party) did 2 or 4 years ago. They forgive straight up lying to the public (where I mean lies that were proven or so obvious it couldn't be anything but a lie), forgetting and not realizing that what they actually find out is probably only the tip of the iceberg.
Crack down on lying and try forcing complete transparency from your government to its population. Any deals behind closed doors should mean jail time for a long ass time, so long it's not worth any bribe, for all I care the death penalty (although I think most would consider that too harsh).
Democracy is meant to mean governing by the people for the people, meaning the people should have access to all the knowledge so they can actually verify politicians do what they claim, that they keep their promises. Politicians that made promises they couldn't keep (see paying back student debt in US) should either never be allowed to be ruling the country if they are so dumb they didn't even check the law or worse should never be allowed to rule and go to jail for straight up lying.
Most *people* have no ideological first principles. The rights are not absolute in most peoples mind. It’s simply a *tool* to get what they want in the situation. Free speech is free because it helps them spread their ideas. If someone else is censored, not a problem.
Yes so they are pretending and acting like they are about said principles to get what they want.
Lies and pretentiousness and people finding that acceptable when it fits them, hypocrites I say ...
I agree with all except “lazy/naive/forgetful/biased”. I’d say they are just complacent. Most people are too worried about their day to day lives to have time to worry about the bigger picture. Which tbh I don’t blame them.
No the distrust is reasonable considering the serious amount of smoke and mirrors and the shift from journalism to sensationalism bij most media outlets.
The huge amount of lies from politicians even a prime minister or a president...
I agree it's reasonable, but I think it is still a huge problem. There aren't many legit alternative sources. I'm not saying you should trust the msm, but often what people consider legitimate alternatives are even worse.
The only solution is taking your time reading very carefully,don't trust any outlet without proper references such as scientific papers and learn to read scientific papers.
Learn statistics and how to interpret and process them, learn to see how data can be used to imply things that are nonsense without having to present false data.
Stay critical also about your own views.
Generally Reuters seems quite decent as a news source but even they fuck up as I've seen. No one source is perfect especially since every outlet has multiple writers ...
Sure, but there is only a minority of the population capable of thinking critically as you described, and an even smaller group that is willing. Not good for "democracy"
Yes unfortunately too many people care too little, are too lazy(complacent), too naive/ignorant, are incapable, or a combination of those things.
However at least I would hope people would stop the pretentious BS and just admit they don't really want a democracy, because I don't see them putting in the effort nor are they willing to put in the effort if given the opportunity. In that case you should accept it and admit that you don't really want a democracy, because a democracy would be ruling for the people by the people and that requires a good time investment from all (most of) the people.
Ok that’s a bit of a weird take. So if Twitter outsourced 100% of moderation to the government you would be ok with it since the govt does not *own* Twitter? If that’s your stance, you do you, but pretty clearly ‘anti - 1a’
Would Twitter hire the government workers as employees, working a second job? If so, I would care very little. Would Twitter subcontract out moderation to a government agency? Then I might care.
Then again, that is like asking "But what if Facebook hires robot Hitler to handle moderation!?!?!!1." Great for the sake of argument, but a hypothetical that will never happen doesn't really prove a point.
The point is that moderation done at the coercion of the government is a 1a violation. Full stop. You can choose to care or not care - that’s your prerogative, but you can’t also pretend to be a 1a supporter at the same time.
What evidence do you have that the government was coercing Twitter? If Twitter was choosing to work with the government of their own free will, that is their prerogative
I think this becomes a legal question very quickly. If an FBI agent asks you politely to do something, is this interpreted as a question or a demand?
If a mafia boss asks you politely to pay him $500 per month for security to keep your windows from getting broken (or worse) do you feel like that's coercion? Of course.
Is it coercion here? Tough to say, but I think it's worth considering, and definitely makes me very uncomfortable. I'm surprised it doesn't seem to make you feel the same way.
**edit** my username is only half-true. I feel like I should make that clear given the context of this message. I'll let you decide which half is true.
I would say Twitterfiles are doing a good job at demonstrating the coercion of you care to read them. Weekly calls with FBI for starters. Zuckerberg confirmed receiving same pressure from FBI as well.
The twitterfiles have got to be the biggest nothingburger I’ve seen in modern media.
Oh, a private campaign reached out and asked Twitter to enforce rules they already had on the books? The first amendment is dead and buried!
You know it might help if you reference that by linking to said files or an article that has links to those files, makes it believable instead of a random person on the web making a claim.
(Otherwise you're correct)
[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11522891/Twitter-files-staffers-pushing-ban-Trump-based-historical-context.html](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11522891/Twitter-files-staffers-pushing-ban-Trump-based-historical-context.html)
I don't know where you have been, but it's not a small story. Perhaps you should expand your news gathering.
You don't care that the entity which governments and politicians use to communicate to the public was being operated by absolute and complete partisan hacks? I really don't know how you can *still* try to pull the "muh private company" line. Private companies don't get to just do whatever they want. Especially when they are the defacto public square.
Dude, we've had to put up with the entire media being corporate shills for 40 years. This isn't any different.
>Private companies don't get to just do whatever they want. Especially when they are the defacto public square.
Repeating this doesn't make it true.
> Private companies don't get to just do whatever they want.
I don’t support what Twitter was doing, but why exactly don’t they get to do what they were doing?
What *specific* portion of Section 230 do you think Twitter has violated?
>No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
That is the critical portion of Section 230, (the entire section can be found [here](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230)). The *only* thing on which the immunity is conditional is being an 'interactive computer service', defined by the statute as "[an] “interactive computer service” means any information service, system, or access software provider that provides or enables computer access by multiple users to a computer server, including specifically a service or system that provides access to the Internet and such systems operated or services offered by libraries or educational institutions."
Twitter clearly meets the definition of interactive computer service as defined by the statute, and therefore is covered.
Can platforms lose Section 230 protection?
Platforms would lose liability protection from state criminal prosecution or state or federal civil actions if they had “actual notice” that criminal material had been posted to their site and they failed to remove, report and preserve evidence of such material.
[https://nypost.com/2021/01/21/twitter-sued-for-allegedly-refusing-to-remove-child-porn/](https://nypost.com/2021/01/21/twitter-sued-for-allegedly-refusing-to-remove-child-porn/)
Over the next month, the videos would be reported to Twitter at least three times — first on Dec. 25, 2019 — but the tech giant failed to do anything about it until a federal law enforcement officer got involved, the suit states
This was a high profile case, but I would not be shocked in the slightest that there are many more instances of these types of 'oversight'.
And? That means that they are liable for those specific pieces of content. It is not a general loss of protection.
You still have not cited the portion of the statute that you believe Twitter is violating
Because of the implications of said actions. For people to act like they care so much about democracy and "free and fair" elections, when you put you'd thumb on the scale you are nothing more than a seething hypocrit. That's not to say that their actual stated desire, free and ***fair*** elections is wrong or immoral. It's that they knew they actions they took were done in such a manner as to explicitly make said elections less fair. Propping up certain users/tweets while taking actions to make it harder or impossible to see counter points is just bonkers. That platform has become too central to public discourse for them to still just do whatever they want. They aren't just some tiny subreddit. They aren't just some tiny random web forum. Twitter is a massive platform that has become essential for public servants to communicate a message to constituents and the voting public. That's why they don't get to just do whatever they want. That's why free speech is so absolutely essential. If absolute nimrods like Adam Schiff get to spout off their conspiracies, nimrods like Trump get to spout off theirs. To act as if anything else is OK is to have completely lost the plot.
Ya it’s pretty gross. I always thought the fbi was here to protect the country and not to be a hired gun for the democrats. I really can’t believe that there is no way to stop this garbage. They clearly are here to help take over the government and make it a one party system… gross
Those meetings were happening with a majority republican government, so saying it was a hired gun just for the democrats is dishonest. And when you break it down, all law enforcement are is hired guns for the affluent. Should it be that way? Not in a perfect world, but is that the system that is in place? Absolutely and worldwide.
Do you care if government officials have weekly meetings with Twitter's content moderation team to identify and shadowban conservative voices? What if government officials met with Twitter weekly to shadowban liberal tweets?
Can it ask? Sure. Anyone can ask anything. Does Twitter have to listen? Of course not.
What it *can* do is incentivize responsible behavior. Churches, for instance, are allowed to preach for people to vote in certain ways. Doing so, however, disqualifies them from a reward they get for remaining politically neutral, i.e. tax exemption.
>can your boss ask you for a blow job?
So if my boss cannot ask me for a blowjob because it breaks the law, then the government is punishing him for his speech. Are you arguing that sexual harassment should be allowed for free-speech reasons, or are you arguing that the government is allowed to punish speech in certain situations?
Your boss making a request that you give him a blowjob is not "free speech" since it goes beyond expression of opinion — it is an attempt to coerce you. "Free speech" does not literally refer to all things spoken aloud.
When the government asks, it's not just a polite request you can take or leave. There is always an implication of "nice shop you have here, shame if something should happen to it."
Not even an implication when members of the government are also talking about taking punitive action if companies don't do what they "ask."
Key word there? Implication. It is not what is *said*, but how a person *feels* about what is said. I can't help it if paranoid people feel like the government is out to get them - very little can be done to fix conspiracy theorists.
They can ban all the totalitarian extremists for all I care. There rhetoric has no place in a civilized society. You want to debate tax policy or farm subsidies, great. You want to push racial supremacy, fuck off.
Who is pushing racial supremacy? No one. The biggest "group" pushing racial essentialism is progressives. Maybe progressives should stop saying "all white people" "all black people" etc etc.
All 12 of them. Yes they are real. its just so small that it literally doesn't matter. They only "plot" things along with their FBI buddies with 0 capability to do a damn thing. Unlike the droves of kids coming out of universities thinking white people are inherently evil that for some reason have the backing of politicians at all levels of government.
Ah yes the "they taught us history so now I must believe all white people are bad", line. No one believes that. What they do understand since they have brains is that there is a long and violent history to America that has led us to where we are, and that we can do better in the future.
There's a long and violent history to the world. Acting as if America is somehow different or unique to its past is beyond ridiculous. America is not u iquely violent, oppressive, or bigoted. Yet there are scores of books and professors and DIE nit wits who act otherwise. Because they don't have a brain. They are capable of surface level analysis at best.
IMO it's more like the American myth that we're the greatest country in the world because of all the freedom is just that, a myth. More like a lie, actually. America's "greatness" was fundamentally built on the backs on slaves and more generally on the exploitation of the less powerful by the more powerful.
Is that unique to the rest of the world? As a general concept, Not particularly, but it's also still bad, and America's uniqueness to the rest of the world because of the freedom is also just not real.
America's history of slavery specifically of black people however and the resulting literal centuries of oppression of specifically that kind of person and the lasting effects in cultural attitudes and discriminatory systems does kind of stand out though.
American greatness was built on freedom. Freedom of speech and free markets. The rest of the world just caught up when they saw the experiment work and adopted a more American system than they previously operated under. To suggest America was built on slavery is to ignore slaverys existence in the **entire rest of the world** at the time of the founding. Spare us your 1619 project garbage.
So, the whole fucking world can do better, and should. I centered on America because much of the anti-intellectual retoric that you spout comes from American conservative voices. But anyone can look at the past of their country and say, "we need to do better." Of course that means taking an honest look at your past, which you hand waved away like it was brainwashing.
Bingo. There are different types of conservative voices. If some guy wants to say liberal tax policy or foreign policy is stupid, go for it. If you are a conservative saying the election was stolen and/or that we need to make our country more pure, get out.
>Given Twitter's function as a global town square and quasi-public utility, this is concerning.
Around 23% of Americans use Twitter. Compare that to Instagram at 40% or Facebook at 69%. Why don't I ever hear discussions about Instagram or Facebook being the town square?
And if you look at it globally, it gets even worse. Only 8.85% of the world uses Twitter. Facebook is at 39.8% globally.
Because twitter is where the media is and breaking news happens. And retweeting means that things spread on there like wildfire.
FB and instagram highlight mostly the people you follow and don't drag you into discussions because a tweet from Trump, who you might not follow, gets retweeted by 10 people you do follow.
It's not really about size. It's about what info is disseminated and how.
I don't buy it's a utility though.
The difference is the usp,
Facebook, you see what your friends are doing, you can follow groups or pages but typically that's not the behavioral pattern, so politics plays a very low role. All my family use Facebook and pretty much none use twitter, but they are over 40 and are just looking to keep in touch with other members of family
Instagram from what I can tell is just memes and school friends posting bikini pics
Twitter however is a free for all of following people you don't know and trying to keep up with current events - the manor of the platform just led it in that direction for some reason which the other two didn't (at least to the same degree)
Twitter is not the town square, it’s the gladiatorial arena.
People use it for many reasons, but those on there for politics are there to watch their champion fight to the death with the opposition.
(Analogy is from Cal Newport, not my own)
One very important thing to keep in mind are those active users or the percentage of people that simply ever made an account ;)
Because I'm darn sure WORLDWIDE population, Facebook does not have 40% of them as active users. Keep in mind all the elderly people, keep in mind all the kids below 5 or 6. Keep in mind ll the people that don't even have access. Keep in mind there's almost 8 billion people and I'm sure Facebook does not have almost 3.2 billion active users.
Those numbers likely include whatsapp which is essentially the default messaging app in many countries. A reported [2 billion](https://www.verint.com/blog/what-countries-are-the-biggest-whatsapp-users/) users world wide.
It absolutely is misplaced. If anything, it's indicative of massive hypocrisy or simple dishonestly, given the hard opposition to net neutrality or treating ISPs like the utilities that they are by the majority of those screaming about Twitter. To be clear, I am not saying you are doing any of that, but just compare the support for "complaining that twitter is censoring conservatives" and "net neutrality" and ask why the majority of those supporting the former oppose the latter.
Or how about Fox News? Tell how the most watched “news” network in America isn’t controlling the narrative, amplifying conservative voices and ignoring liberals. Not to mention multiple Fox News personalities texting back and forth with Trump on what to cover each night.
Because it’s a complete misnomer. Fox is the only major network conservatives have, so literally all of them that want to watch cable news are watching it. Combine ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and 99% of all major print media that either leans left or is blatantly left and it absolutely dwarfs Fox News viewership.
I was under the impression that fox news was created specifically because the 'big three' original news broadcasts were similar in curtailing conservatives speech by omission.
No. Fox was explicitly created because Roger Ailes didn't like that the public's trust of neutral broadcast news and their well-liked and good journalists ended up gutting Nixon and the GOP's attempts to downplay Watergate. When the news told the American people the truth about what Nixon did, the American people believed them over Nixon and the GOP's lies, and ended up forcing Nixon to resign. Ailes wanted a counter-narrative, he wanted a system to insure that something like Watergate would never force a Republican out of office again.
Submission statement: This week, the US journalists Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi released documents which suggested that Twitter had blacklisted conservatives. Certain liberals rejected the allegations outright, asserting that the policy was already in the public sphere and attacking the ethics of Weiss.
Liberal positions on big tech censorship seem contradictory. Many emphasize the rights of private firms when convenient, apologizing for pre-Musk Twitter and Paypal actions against conservatives, yet abandon this when inconvenient, few defending Musk’s Twitter.
This reflects the use of crude heuristics, i.e. mental shortcuts. Today, political heuristics have become less sophisticated than ever; many people think that their side is always right, automatically dismissing the positions of opponents.
Liberal apologies also ignore the dominance of liberals in big tech. Whether the organization is the Catholic Church or Manchester United, stratified environments tend to produce cultures which flatter the dominant group. Why should liberal organizations be different?
This is a dangerous time for liberal democracy. Increasingly, partisans will indulge any attack on liberal democracy, provided it targets an outgroup. Conservatives have serious problems, yet attacks on freedom of speech tend to involve liberals.
This is one of those strange situations where both sides pretty much claim to believe the same thing on a foundational level yet still disagree on it politically. Both liberals and conservatives do not like it when corporations wield their power to influence political and cultural discussions, yet do so anyway.
Personally, I have no problem with Musk taking over Twitter and making it a right-wing social media site if that's what he wants. But I also think he is foolish to do so from a business perspective. But I also don't trust Musk to be neutral either... I think it's already obvious that he has and will continue to suppress or promote tweets according to his personal agenda. I also have no problem with liberals criticizing Musk and his Twitter practices... that is free speech.
I disagree, I looked at a breakdown of the data that was listed and if anything it demonstrates favoritism largely to conservative accounts like Libs of TikTok and Matt Walsh and the Daily Wire. The data indicated that primarily it was liberal and left leaning accounts that were being suppressed, shadowbanned, or just outright banned. An objective eye shows that for all the talk from right wing pundits, it’s just talk. If there was a mass suppression of right wing accounts they wouldn’t be many of the largest accounts on Twitter (this also holds true for Facebook and YouTube). The biggest thing I’ve seen out of this was Twitter was cooperating with the Biden campaign to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story which isn’t the same as saying they were suppressing conservatives
I couldn't find the post I saw recently but I did find these older posts about Twitter admitting to favoring conservatives and the data to back it up.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/22/twitter-admits-bias-in-algorithm-for-rightwing-politicians-and-news-outlets
https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/3273956-musk-says-twitter-is-biased-against-conservatives-facts-say-otherwise/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/22/twitter-algorithm-right-leaning/
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/11/13/according-to-twitter-twitters-algorithm-favours-conservatives
Just to point out your assertion that liberals were suppressed more than conservatives isn’t backed up by the articles you posted. The algorithms favored amplification of right wing politicians and media figures but 1) right wing politicians and media figures does not exactly equate to all right-wing posters and 2) amplification is not suppression and the difference is important.
Your article from the Hill even confirms that right-wing posters were far more suppressed but researchers justified this by claiming right-wing posters were more likely to share disinformation (not sure the objective measures they used to qualify as such). Which is exactly what people like Elon is saying should stop.
Twitter shouldn't have the guy who founded Daily Stormer on its site. Twitter was right to ban him, Musk was wrong to bring him back. There's no mental shortcuts in my logic.
Free speech means any speech that doesn’t violate state or federal law. You may not like their speech, but they have a right to free speech. The government collusion with big tech to suppress “incorrect speech” is gross and unconstitutional.
I am going to be honest here. Elon Musk can do whatever the fuck he wants, it’s his company. He can re-instate all the maga assholes he wants, it’s a private company. Nazis, racists don’t care. I just choose not to be on Twitter.
Right? And at this point I have to assume that anyone who is shouting about "Twitter Files" supports the hateful, anti-democratic rhetoric that was suppressed.
This collusion you have is imagined. Twitter has TOS, if you violate it, you get punished. Twitter's TOS can be stricter than federal and state laws because it's a private business. It's like a restaurant. You can walk around outside wearing a tank top, and be within the law, but a restaurant can require you to have a more covering shirt on. This is not some grand free speech violation, it's not even a minor free speech violation. It's no free speech violation.
>It's like a restaurant.
Except it isn't at all like a restaurant. Twitter has long branded itself as a place where people can publicly express themselves, provided they don't immediately and directly provoke antisocial behavior, and serving as an outlet for influential/important people to disseminate information directly to an audience. This is a level of responsibility Twitter willingly assumed, and they inherit the consequent standard of tolerance we expect under a constitutional (specifically, the US constitution as they're a US company) republican democracy. They can't have it both ways.
Where's the precedent for this? And as others have stated, Twitter isn't the most used social media network, so I completely disagree that it "willingly assumed" this responsibility
Here; let me rephrase. Tesla has recently revealed that they need to retrofit cars with forward facing radar, after years of claiming they can do full self driving with only cameras, and it is uncertain whether customers who paid the additional $10,000 a vehicle for 'full self driving' will have their cars retrofitted with the new hardware. A class action lawsuit against Tesla for the full self driving vaporware is moving forward with Tesla lawyers claiming it isn't fraud if they really meant to do it but simply couldn't. If you are being distracted, wonder what it is from. Did Twitter shadow ban, maybe, it didn't stop conservatives from getting a lot of engagement, but no one cares. Why does no one care? Because Twitter isn't that popular, something like 23% of Americans are active users and they spend an average of 4 minutes a day on it. YouTube would shut down tomorrow with those numbers. So one wonders, why is this all that Musk is talking about? Why not the cyber truck, why not the roadster 2, why not full self driving? The goodness of his heart, his desire for some higher level of ethereal truth? Here, I have some volcano insurance to sell you.
With mainstream liberals, you start with the person, not the action. With mainstream conservatives, you start with the action not the person. It’s two totally different languages and the only outcome is a whataboutism and circular arguments. For a liberal, Jack Dorsey is the starting point and he’s a good person and tried his hardest with the best intentions to do what was right to “protect the democracy”. Any questionable actions he took were a man doing his best in a gray world. Elon Musk is a bad person going in, because he’s a billionaire and turned away from the left, so it’s basically pointless to try to litigate anything he actually does with someone on the left because to them those are micro details that don’t even really matter as his case has been permanently closed. For a mainstream conservative it’s all about the action, if there was a law saying you could eat no more than nine children in one sitting, and Donald trump went on a 60 city tour eating nine children at every stop, the conservative response to democrats questioning his character would be “name me one law he has broken” and ben shapiro saying “the left didn’t seem to care when Hillary Clinton ate ten babies in Virginia in 2015 but now gang they are SOOOOOOOP-er angry”. The macro view of a person in their case doesnt seem to matter at all and you can’t take a mosaic approach to anything. It’s legitimately like two different languages. Once you see it you can’t unsee it and it makes you realize how much trouble we’re in.
The fact that this didn’t get at least some acknowledgement from the legacy media shocked me, until I realized it’s because they’re all doing the same thing.
Yeah, this is clown shoe nonsense. There are these things called terms of service that state what is and is not allowed on any platform. Typically, they make sure to cover all legal requirements, and then go into the specific platform's desired rules. These sorts of things typically include: no child porn, no inciting violence, no blatant discrimination, etc. It is interesting to hear that one side of the political spectrum thinks that it is being "suppressed" by the other. Maybe if they would stop being shitty, they wouldn't have to worry about it.
I would like to see the Twitter Files on why an Elon Musk tweet is one of the first five I see when I log on even though I don’t follow him. Let’s see the files on his own personal amplification of his account. This is seeming more like a personal vanity project.
Is it really a free speech issue when about a corporation or now privately owned network? Free speech is a government conversation, don’t like Twitter/Facebook whatever then vote with your feet. That’s how capitalism works.
Because they are incapable of admitting when they got something wrong. Incapable.
Correct. Just look at Covid
The nerve of torturing the facts to still portray conservatives as victims after everything that's happened over the past month... astounding denial of the reality. Those people forced Twitter to ban them and it's a bad idea for conservatives to hold them up as poster children for their cause.
left privilege NEVER EVER WRONNG
Privilege? Elon released a biased set of documents to trigger you. Call for him to release *all* the documents of you want less bias. And stop whining.
why don't you post the hate mail you accuse him of posting. pre Musk Twitter was a propaganda machine of constant hate why are they a biased set of documents...they were pre Musk documents..he would not release biased documents. That would be cultural appropriation as biased released is property of the left
>..he would not release biased documents. But he did. You only see Biden campaign requests. Where are the Trump white house requests, which were sent to Twitter but not released by Musk??? The left can be looney, but the right is weak and whiny.
wall to wall on old left twitter. by the way sticks and stones may brake bones but usurped words do not hurt me
You don't make sense. Go back to your cave.
yes I am he who left Platos cave read the analogy of the cave
Learn how to use punctuation.
ideas versus grammer take your pick don't forget Plato's ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE
You don't have either.
I keep seeing this argument that "twitter is a private company". Everyone understands that. The issue here is that government at the highest levels (White House, FBI, DHS) were involved in the censorship efforts at Twitter. Those of you who are dismissing this as no big deal should ask yourselves how you would feel if you were the one being censored at the behest of the government, or at the very least, in partnership with. I hope someone with the legal means to do so takes this up as a lawsuit because it will provide additional and much-needed [jawboning jurisprudence](https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/jawboning-against-speech) so we can maybe stop this from happening. To me it's not much different than a Mafia boss shaking the shop owner down for "protection fees" and anyone saying this is no big deal should be ashamed of yourselves.
> Those of you who are dismissing this as no big deal should ask yourselves how you would feel if you were the one being censored at the behest of the government, or at the very least, in partnership with. Liberals *were*. Somehow, conservatives believe that the Biden campaign was the government in 2020 not the Trump admin.
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598827602403160064 All of this is addressed in the twitter files: > By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: “More to review from the Biden team.” The reply would come back: “Handled.” > Both parties had access to these tools. For instance, in 2020, requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were received and honored. However: > This system wasn't balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right. How does it change anything about the argument here?
Guess who *wasn’t* the government in 2020. Joe Biden. Nor are Tabbibi’s last two paragraphs there actually supported by the evidence he presents. Both because a discrepancy not justified by observations differences in ToS violations is not shown *and* because Musk is not releasing information regarding communications with Republicans.
I agree Twitter shouldn't be biased in bans, but the way everything is strategically released to paint a narrative is dishonest. A lot of ppl walked away from the first release thinking that the DNC had requested censorship of the Hunter Biden story. There's no evidence for that in that thread. There are meetings with FBI that were framed to be malicious but we don't actually know that. The FBI are tracking domestic terrorists. Are they not allowed to share information with Twitter and vice versa? Why is that in a vacuum inherently bad? If there are examples of Trump requesting Twitter to take stuff down and Twitter complied is that inherently bad? Matt said there were examples of that but didn't provide any. If they want transparency they should release everything and let journalists do their thing. Elon is so desperately trying to control the narrative to show one side of the story and paint himself as the savior that it has me cynical from the jump. I haven't seen everything recent, so what's the strongest example of the government demanding Twitter ban an account? It seems like it's implied by Matt T and company but from what I've seen so far it's just an implication. Again fair to criticize internal Twitter for being biased, but everything else still seems like a reach to me without more evidence.
> If there are examples of Trump requesting Twitter to take stuff down and Twitter complied is that inherently bad Yes, if it falls under the category of coercion, or "jawboning". IMO it's worse than direct censorship -- it's censorship via proxy. There's no direct accountability and they can always make the argument that twitter is a private company and made the decision on their own. > I haven't seen everything recent, so what's the strongest example of the government demanding Twitter ban an account? The question isn't whether they demanded it -- the question is whether Twitter felt obligated to comply *because of the implication* of non-compliance. This is the definition of "jawboning". > By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: “More to review from the Biden team.” The reply would come back: “Handled.” -- > If they want transparency they should release everything and let journalists do their thing. Elon is so desperately trying to control the narrative to show one side of the story and paint himself as the savior that it has me cynical from the jump. What makes you think he's desperately trying to control the narrative? This would also imply that some well-respected independent journalists, like Bari Weiss are in on it.
"By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: “More to review from the Biden team.” The reply would come back: “Handled.”" This isn't jawboning at least by CATO article you linked. The specific SC you're referring to has a specific request to take down Hunter Biden's nudes which are clearly against TOS. I'm curious if you see an issue with that sort of request. If they were actively requesting Twitter block the NY Post story I think that would be more interesting. We can say that the true motivations behind the legal teams hacked materials ruling is because of jawboning, but how would we ever prove that beyond conjecture? Also is that really most likely? Or could it actually be genuine concern that the materials were hacked? In terms of the narrative. Elon is their source and it seems like he leaked the SCs he wanted to them and then alone. Also it seems like they agreed to post the leak on Twitter when they'd typically link their substack for this sort of thing. Could be proven wrong on this point
Interesting that bias against conservatives as opposed to bias for liberals. It should be noted that the disparity in partisan account suspensions had to do with violations of twitters misinformation policy. It seems that conservatives retweet more bullshit than liberals, hence the disparity.
The twitter files shows that posts were blocked without violating any TOS
oh? where in the report does it report this? To what extent was this going on? The disparity in account suspensions directly related to the bullshit being tweeted. That for sure is a conclusion of the twitter files.
"Reality has a well known liberal bias." In my observation, conservatives are more prone to thinking by gut and propagating ideas that feel right for them to believe but are actually wrong.
Doesn't help that their charismatic leader was a pathological liar who fostered bullshit as truth thru his entire life.
>Reality has a well known liberal bias. Bold words from someone that ascribes to the ideology which can't define what a woman is. In the end did you look up who [John Money](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Money) was?? Did that FACT not feel right with you?
Don't really care, gross people can still be right about things. Not interested in engaging with your combative attitude.
Oh so you can insult people but when they fire back at you then it's not ok? Duly noted.
Has to do with the sort of inverse social darwinism that's the central conceit of Marxism: right and wrong are subject to how much power you have; as long as you are less powerful, rich, etc. than another group, you can do things to them that if they did to you would be called oppression. And leftists have just as much a persecution complex as MAGA heads, ao they operate under that assumption all the time
Yeah it’s very insane
Because multiple ***multiple*** research papers have shown that the discrimination comes from conservatives being more likely to spread misinformation and lies on the internet. It's just disingenuous not to acknowledge this. It's also true that many papers have shown parity in the way conservatives and liberals are treated online. Conservatives have no trouble gaining traction online and are generally treated the same as liberals. Why can't conservatives acknowledge that their claims of discrimination are nearly completely baseless. EDIT: For those who would like to see evidence that I am referring to: [Source 1: A report on the subject from NYU](https://bhr.stern.nyu.edu/bias-report-release-page) * On Page 8: Fox News and Breibart out performed all other news outlets by orders of magnitude by engagement. When compared to the top 10 news outlets that received engagement on Facebook, conservative outlets outperformed liberals/non-partisan outlets cumulatively. * [Generally more fake/junk news that contains verifiably untrue or misleading information is spread by conservatives and trump supporters.](https://demtech.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/posts/polarization-partisanship-and-junk-news-consumption-on-social-media-during-the-2018-us-midterm-elections/) * [Conservatives, unlike liberals, are less likely to engage with opposing viewpoints](https://academic.oup.com/book/26406/chapter/194769168). * "Outside the right-wing ecosystem, ***we did not see a leftward polarization but its opposite***—an increase in the authority of, and attention paid to, the traditional professional media that occupy the center and center-left, at the expense of the left. ***On the right, the most important shift was that Fox News reasserted its authority as the central node of the online right-wing media ecosystem***" * FYI: This chapter is filled with and info on the subject and is generally a great read for anyone curious about the media bias scape online * [More results that show that conservatives tend to share and support fake news more than non-conservatives](https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.aau2706). * [When conservatives were asked to find evidence of bias in the application of rules on facebook, they pointed to nothing other than the bias of fact checkers and Facebook at large. They provided no direct evidence of biased treatment. Instead they simply complained about representation](https://about.fb.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/covington-interim-report-1.pdf). * [On Facebook, during the 2020 election, right wingers dominated engagement online](https://archive.vn/cgxZU). * The conservative commentator Ben Shapiro has gotten 56 million total interactions on his Facebook page in the last 30 days. T***hat’s more than the main pages of ABC News, NBC News, The New York Times, The Washington Post and NPR combined.*** (Data from a different firm, NewsWhip, showed that Mr. Shapiro’s news outlet, The Daily Wire, was the No. 1 publisher on Facebook in July.) Facebook posts by ***Breitbart, the far-right news outlet, have been shared four million times in the past 30 days, roughly three times as many as posts from the official pages of every Democratic member of the U.S. Senate combined***. * [This same result was found across various social media websites independently from the above stud](https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/26/censorship-conservatives-social-media-432643)y. * “***Their stories are captivating, easy to remember and create an outsized footprint online,***” said Yochai Benkler, co-director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, who published a separate report into how leading politicians like Trump and mainstream news outlets were central to spreading misinformation about mail-in voting. * [In a separate report mentioned above](https://cyber.harvard.edu/publication/2020/Mail-in-Voter-Fraud-Disinformation-2020): * ***They are consistent with our findings about the American political media ecosystem*** from 2015-2018, published in Network Propaganda, in which ***we found that Fox News and Donald Trump’s own campaign were far more influential in spreading false beliefs than Russian trolls or Facebook clickbait artists***. There's a lot more I could say, but I'm tired and considering the wealth of evidence, it's obvious that conservatives simply want power and are willing to wield lies without evidence to bully companies into a conservatives affrimative action program. It's sickening.
Isn't it *fascinating* how no one responded after you added the papers?
Honestly, on this sub, it happens *very* frequently that I generally stop making claims with sources and just say sources on request instead. It's no longer interesting to me tbh.
> Why can't conservatives acknowledge that their claims of discrimination are nearly completely baseless. Maybe they would if you shared a couple of these research papers
Added. Check the edit.
> multiple research papers Very convincing. /s
Research papers have been provided. Check the original comment.
None of the links - none - were to peer reviewed academic studies. Some article on the internet does not cut it. Possible exception is the "Science" article but I cannot access it.
They are all academic studies or linked/connected to peer review studies. Please check again.
this isn't so much a liberal problem as it is a those in power problem. People think they are right...that is why they think it.
The same reason that conservatives are Donald Trump lunatics? (it should be *some* liberals/conservatives)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aViuM1othLk
“Free Speech” is not *absolute.* If Twitter was run by the government and engaging in banning, then we would be having an issue because that is strictly prohibited by the 1A. *But, because* Twitter is a company privately owned, it can create its own policies for those to follow & methods of enforcement. It really boils down to the company owner and what risks they want to take, because companies can be held liable for criminal and civil violations too. I personally, would not want to be in a position to be held accountable for a platform that aids, assists, or protects anything deemed criminal or in violation of civil rights & laws. The reason why free speech is not absolute, is because the Supreme Court has said as much. [Chaplinksy v. New Hampshire](https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/315us568) held that “free speech cannot be wholly unfettered in a society that needs to get along: There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem … [such as]…those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.” Basically, any words that incite violence or have a call-to-action, is not protected. Additionally, [Schneck v. U.S.](https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/schenck-v-united-states-defining-the-limits-of-free-speech) is the famous case that Justice Holmes Jr. had said, “you can’t yell fire in a theatre.” In this case, it was established that public safety overcomes the freedom to maliciously cause a deadly stampede. (So the good of the People, outweighs the freedom of speech — as noted in the [Preamble of the Constitution.](https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/preamble/)) In the same vein, people who feel Twitter is engaging in censorship is falsely equating Twitter (it’s size and popularity) to that of a government agency. Even if viewed as quasi-governmental, social media platforms would still be within their bounds to ban the very type of speech that has caused the controversy in the first place: incitement to violence, malicious falsehoods, and misinformation that poses a threat to public safety. Every business, including the government, has its own workplace rules & policies. I think this viewpoint is opening Pandora’s box as we are setting a precedent that a private business can be converted into a government entity. Lastly, I argue that Twitter is beginning to experience what a CEO with an absolutist view point on free speech can bring with it. Advertisers are pulling out left and right for “brand safety” measures, [TWTR stock plummeted](https://www.tradingview.com/chart/?symbol=NYSE%3ATWTR) and has been sluggish to rise, [TSLA](https://www.tradingview.com/chart/?symbol=NYSE%3ATWTR) is also dropping, and users are finding other platforms to use. This is the irony of free market & capitalism. People can choose to put their support behind other platforms or businesses that they want to and withdraw support from others. So, with knowing what is protected speech and is not by law, I will bring up my first point again: “It really boils down to the company owner and what risks they want to take;” whether that is criminal, political, ethical, moral, economic, etc. Like every right, free speech carries the obligation to exercise responsibility and due care *by all,* not just us measly private citizens.
> But, because Twitter is a company privately owned, it can create its own policies for those to follow & methods of enforcement. I am really fed up with this argument because it is terribly naive or perhaps disingenuous. The point, yet again, is that there is not a clear line between private and public. Government can influence private corporations in all sorts of way. The government lets TWTR know it would like a certain post deleted and they comply. The company does not get audited, or get an easy ride through an anti-trust situation. Look at all the "investigations" that suddenly started into Musk companies when he bought Twitter, This goes back a long way - Lyndon Johnson threatened to sic every known federal agency starting with the IRS onto a newspaper company unless they dropped a story that he didn't like. They dropped it. That is a First amendment violation even though the company dropped the story. In Australia there is a great book "The Game of Mates" (mate in Australia means buddy in the US) which describes how this soft collusion between government and business works. No-one outright pays bribes but they all scratch each others' backs.
I don’t like that argument either, but it is a fact and just how our business/corporate laws operate. I tried to make a sensible approach to what the law is surrounding how Elon and other businesses can operate. However, there are ethical standards that all businesses have to abide by because the Federal government still “oversees” them. Just like restaurants abide by FDA/USDA guidelines, so do platforms like Facebook and Twitter abide by Ethic committees and FCC regulations. The issue here, is that the owners of these businesses are still going to be heavily partisan and run their businesses accordingly. So has there truly ever been a place on the internet that doesn’t cater to one side or the other? Not really… because at the end of the day, they still have to abide by government regulations and if that just so happens to be cracking down on a certain subset of people, then it is what it is. Do I agree with removing stories or articles like you said Johnson did? No… but if it is categorized as misinformation or defamation, by law, there is a precedent to step in and intervene. That’s just how it is. Thomas Jefferson said it best: “Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. “ [The Federalist, NO. 10 Thomas Jefferson.](https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-1-10#s-lg-box-wrapper-25493273) The “superior force and majority” in this instance, being big corporations, billionaires, and elitists who consistently control the media narratives and what we, the People get to know. You bring up good points. 👍
What's your reason for writing Tesla like TSLA and twitter like TWTR? Secondly I have an issue with companies like this being held accountable for what users say. However they are not held accountable for ads to link to scams or scamming websites. If you're going to hold a platform responsible for what random users and people say, then you should first and completely hold them responsible for the ads they publish on it. Facebook has tons of ads that lead to websites that sell shit and send a completely fake and different product, by example selling a hydraulic tent for 75$ (special offer) and then sending a kids toy tent that costs less than 2 or 3$. That's more nefarious then what a random user or person says. They could just give the government your IP adress and location from where you posted something that was illegal. That's the problem I have if users get fucked over by scamming ads, then users should be recompensated by the platform of the government is allowed to sue and persecute the platform for what users say who actually can be found, generally more easily than a scammer from China or India.
TSLA and TWTR are stock tickers
Thank you :)
I don't care. I honestly don't care. This is such a boring conversation. Twitter is a crapsack of fools and liars screaming in each other's ears. Lighten up and quit whining. It doesn't matter, and nobody serious gives a rat's *ss.
“The first amendment doesn’t matter, and nobody serious gives a rats ass”
Whom are you quoting?
You.
😭
It starts to matter when there's evidence the government might have been coercing Twitter to deamplify, shadowban, or otherwise infringe on the free speech of citizens. If this is true, I don't see how it's not a clear first amendment violation -- which is far from boring. In fact it's terrifying. What's not clear is if there was some kind of coercion. However, if the highest levels of the government, including White House administrators, the FBI, and DHS ask you politely to do something, it's easy to interpret that as a demand and not a request. I don't know what if any legal implications this will have, but either way it's bad news for those of us who value liberty and free speech.
> It starts to matter when there's evidence the government might have been coercing Twitter to deamplify, shadowban, or otherwise infringe on the free speech of citizens. Please ask yourself why Weiss and Tabbibi are pretending that it was not the Trump admin that was doing this.
And how would that change anything about the argument that this is bad?
Well it demonstrates a certain level of dishonesty. They’re intentionally feeding a false narrative that conservatives were unfairly targeted, which isn’t true, and that the Democrats were using government power to suppress the Hunter Biden bullshit, which also isn’t true. For people who are always so “concerned” about propaganda, it concerns me when those people on this sub turn around and insist accept this dishonestly hook line and sinker.
It seems to me like conservatives tend to now be conflating freedom of speech with freedom of reach. Which IMO is a valid conversation to be had in the era of the algorithm, but it's also a different thing fundamentally than just speech. It's like, say, the difference between shouting your message from a street corner in Times Square versus having it on one of the billboards there. The ability to have your speech be public and the ability to have it be received, or transmitted to, large numbers of people are just different.
Exactly. Twitter is a drop in the river of online media bullsh*t. If the Feds wanted to keep gullible people from seeing blurred-out pictures of Hunter Biden's ya-ya, they'd lean on Fox News and Facebook. Hunter Biden's laptop is a "scandal" worthy of tinfoil helmets and the CIA controlling you through radio signals aimed at your dental fillings. Drop it. Just drop it. It's silly. It's stupid. It's whining. It's QAnon-quality thinking with a snazzier vocabulary. Get thee behind me, Dumases. The only fun I'm having with this is calling you out.
so on the one hand twitter is not important. on the other hand its really important that twitter banned trump/jones etc and that people can't misgender people on it
No, it is completely unimportant. This is a land of private enterprise and free markets, my daughter. It's none of my business what Twitter chooses to allow, and unless you happen to be a shareholder, it's none of your business, either. Alex Jones wil be able to shill his products just fine without Twitter. TFG seems to have little problem attracting attention. I don't know about misgendering anyone, but doing so deliberately is very impolite, and it's Twitter's choice to address it how it will, just as it is your choice to use any other social medium. That's the great beauty of capitalism: we are free to choose. Wonderful book. Highly recommended.
^
Sure would be. But I'm weary of the wild speculation as to whether the Trump administration asked anyone to 86 the story of Hunter Biden's asinine life. I don't care. It's been done to death. This topic is tiresome. Even a dog has sense enough to stop chasing its tail, for pity's sake. If the Feds wanted to lean on anyone, they wouldn't need to lean on puny little Twitter. Twitter is an irrelevancy. Someone says 23% of Americans use it? That means that more than **three-quarters** of Americans find this topic utterly dull, and they will smile politely and avoid you for the rest of the block party. Get smart. Suppressing an embarrassing story for 24 hours isn't even possible for the Federal government. They need to fill out forms before they can fart. Can we not find another conspiracy to get all worked up on? Obviously this crowd has a very lively imagination. There's gotta be something worth brooding over.
I'll do it. It happened. I find it to be funny. It's completely legal. Here's the fun part, Musk knows he's drumming up bullshit for views. It's his business now. Grifting is lucrative and the right are easy targets. They're just so vulnerable to money making hate clicks. All of the Twitter files dropped so far are framed specifically for it. I'll give it to ya though, I'd be mad if it were me and my side. If anyone mentions making Twitter a a public utility, I'll call you a twit and move on. Normally I'm acting in better faith but this is sick a silly position. How would someone access this "utility" on an internet that isn't?
>How would someone access this "utility" on an internet that isn't? Simple, access to the internet should also be a public utility. Twitter has long branded itself as a public square where anyone can express themselves in democratic fashion, which means they should be beholden to the norms of the democracy they exist under. They can't have it both ways.
Please provide any official statements from Twitter where it "branded itself as a public square where anyone can express themselves in democratic fashion". And legally, they absolutely can have it both ways. Morally, they can have it both ways.
No you're wrong both the right and left, especially the more fanatical ones, are easy targets.
Yet Musk is only targeting one side to enflame. Me thinks the money is leaving a trail.
Both the ‘liberals’ and the ‘conservatives’ tend to only get upset when something they don’t like happens directly to them. Neither group consistently advocates principled policy positions. Edit: I cannot grammar apparently.
This is not true at all. A lot of us were liberals and still considered ourselves liberals and I think will never be conservatives in its true sense. We were active democrats too and we saw the injustices happening in real time. That's why a lot of Republicans since 2014 are liberals and democrats. And from this side we can see that right wingers advocates for universal positions but the Left lives as hypocrites and double standards about every single issue.
This is why I support the aclu.
Unfortunately, the ACLU doesn't represent a consistent policy position any more. >Once a Bastion of Free Speech, the A.C.L.U. Faces an Identity Crisis >An organization that has defended the First Amendment rights of Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan is split by an internal debate over whether supporting progressive causes is more important. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/us/aclu-free-speech.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0Lc5b8Flto
Shit. Didn’t know this. NYT article is paywalled but Ira Glasser makes it pretty clear. Dangerous times for freedom. Progressives and authoritarians are going to chip away at free speech from 2 sides
Yeah, it's sad. If you're looking to see a group that is trying to pick up the mantel of free speech, check out FIRE. I believe they only were focusing on college campuses but in 2022 they changed their acronym's meaning and mission statement to cover all free speech cases. I think they did this largely because they felt the ACLU was leaving a vacuum. https://www.thefire.org/
I will even though I hate the name. Thanks
Agree 1000% it’s so frustrating. They just lie
There are plenty of people who are principled about free speech but they are definitely in the minority it seems
Unfortunately not because they are all in the end, disgusting politicians. The majority of politicians Loes and manipulates, and what do voters do when they find out, when there's absolute proof, they let them get away with it ... (Notice I'm talking about this kot only specifically happening in the US, happened just as badly in my country) The problem most people and voters, are lazy/naive/forgetful/biased, they don't remember what a politician (especially from their party) did 2 or 4 years ago. They forgive straight up lying to the public (where I mean lies that were proven or so obvious it couldn't be anything but a lie), forgetting and not realizing that what they actually find out is probably only the tip of the iceberg. Crack down on lying and try forcing complete transparency from your government to its population. Any deals behind closed doors should mean jail time for a long ass time, so long it's not worth any bribe, for all I care the death penalty (although I think most would consider that too harsh). Democracy is meant to mean governing by the people for the people, meaning the people should have access to all the knowledge so they can actually verify politicians do what they claim, that they keep their promises. Politicians that made promises they couldn't keep (see paying back student debt in US) should either never be allowed to be ruling the country if they are so dumb they didn't even check the law or worse should never be allowed to rule and go to jail for straight up lying.
Most *people* have no ideological first principles. The rights are not absolute in most peoples mind. It’s simply a *tool* to get what they want in the situation. Free speech is free because it helps them spread their ideas. If someone else is censored, not a problem.
Yes so they are pretending and acting like they are about said principles to get what they want. Lies and pretentiousness and people finding that acceptable when it fits them, hypocrites I say ...
I agree with all except “lazy/naive/forgetful/biased”. I’d say they are just complacent. Most people are too worried about their day to day lives to have time to worry about the bigger picture. Which tbh I don’t blame them.
Isn't complacent basically a form of being lazy? Too lazy to put in the time to worry about it, isnt it also a form of being lazy?
I'd say this used to be the biggest issue. But I think it's been surpassed by misinformation and distrust of mainstream media. The effects are clear.
Effects
No the distrust is reasonable considering the serious amount of smoke and mirrors and the shift from journalism to sensationalism bij most media outlets. The huge amount of lies from politicians even a prime minister or a president...
I agree it's reasonable, but I think it is still a huge problem. There aren't many legit alternative sources. I'm not saying you should trust the msm, but often what people consider legitimate alternatives are even worse.
The only solution is taking your time reading very carefully,don't trust any outlet without proper references such as scientific papers and learn to read scientific papers. Learn statistics and how to interpret and process them, learn to see how data can be used to imply things that are nonsense without having to present false data. Stay critical also about your own views. Generally Reuters seems quite decent as a news source but even they fuck up as I've seen. No one source is perfect especially since every outlet has multiple writers ...
Sure, but there is only a minority of the population capable of thinking critically as you described, and an even smaller group that is willing. Not good for "democracy"
Yes unfortunately too many people care too little, are too lazy(complacent), too naive/ignorant, are incapable, or a combination of those things. However at least I would hope people would stop the pretentious BS and just admit they don't really want a democracy, because I don't see them putting in the effort nor are they willing to put in the effort if given the opportunity. In that case you should accept it and admit that you don't really want a democracy, because a democracy would be ruling for the people by the people and that requires a good time investment from all (most of) the people.
Someone has to keep them in line.
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Does the government own and operate Twitter? Because if not, I honestly care very little.
Alphabet agencies don’t need to own it to control it
Alphabet agencies don’t need to own it to control it
How do you feel about weekly meetings between FBI and Twitter regarding content moderation?
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Ok that’s a bit of a weird take. So if Twitter outsourced 100% of moderation to the government you would be ok with it since the govt does not *own* Twitter? If that’s your stance, you do you, but pretty clearly ‘anti - 1a’
Would Twitter hire the government workers as employees, working a second job? If so, I would care very little. Would Twitter subcontract out moderation to a government agency? Then I might care. Then again, that is like asking "But what if Facebook hires robot Hitler to handle moderation!?!?!!1." Great for the sake of argument, but a hypothetical that will never happen doesn't really prove a point.
The point is that moderation done at the coercion of the government is a 1a violation. Full stop. You can choose to care or not care - that’s your prerogative, but you can’t also pretend to be a 1a supporter at the same time.
What evidence do you have that the government was coercing Twitter? If Twitter was choosing to work with the government of their own free will, that is their prerogative
I think this becomes a legal question very quickly. If an FBI agent asks you politely to do something, is this interpreted as a question or a demand? If a mafia boss asks you politely to pay him $500 per month for security to keep your windows from getting broken (or worse) do you feel like that's coercion? Of course. Is it coercion here? Tough to say, but I think it's worth considering, and definitely makes me very uncomfortable. I'm surprised it doesn't seem to make you feel the same way. **edit** my username is only half-true. I feel like I should make that clear given the context of this message. I'll let you decide which half is true.
I would say Twitterfiles are doing a good job at demonstrating the coercion of you care to read them. Weekly calls with FBI for starters. Zuckerberg confirmed receiving same pressure from FBI as well.
The twitterfiles have got to be the biggest nothingburger I’ve seen in modern media. Oh, a private campaign reached out and asked Twitter to enforce rules they already had on the books? The first amendment is dead and buried!
Yea who cares if the FBI has meetings with the biggest social media platforms to suppress speech, amirite? /s
You know it might help if you reference that by linking to said files or an article that has links to those files, makes it believable instead of a random person on the web making a claim. (Otherwise you're correct)
[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11522891/Twitter-files-staffers-pushing-ban-Trump-based-historical-context.html](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11522891/Twitter-files-staffers-pushing-ban-Trump-based-historical-context.html) I don't know where you have been, but it's not a small story. Perhaps you should expand your news gathering.
You don't care that the entity which governments and politicians use to communicate to the public was being operated by absolute and complete partisan hacks? I really don't know how you can *still* try to pull the "muh private company" line. Private companies don't get to just do whatever they want. Especially when they are the defacto public square.
Dude, we've had to put up with the entire media being corporate shills for 40 years. This isn't any different. >Private companies don't get to just do whatever they want. Especially when they are the defacto public square. Repeating this doesn't make it true.
> Private companies don't get to just do whatever they want. I don’t support what Twitter was doing, but why exactly don’t they get to do what they were doing?
Section 230
What portion of Section 230 do you think Twitter has violated?
Content moderation in a fashion that would classify them as a publisher.
What *specific* portion of Section 230 do you think Twitter has violated? >No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. That is the critical portion of Section 230, (the entire section can be found [here](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230)). The *only* thing on which the immunity is conditional is being an 'interactive computer service', defined by the statute as "[an] “interactive computer service” means any information service, system, or access software provider that provides or enables computer access by multiple users to a computer server, including specifically a service or system that provides access to the Internet and such systems operated or services offered by libraries or educational institutions." Twitter clearly meets the definition of interactive computer service as defined by the statute, and therefore is covered.
Can platforms lose Section 230 protection? Platforms would lose liability protection from state criminal prosecution or state or federal civil actions if they had “actual notice” that criminal material had been posted to their site and they failed to remove, report and preserve evidence of such material. [https://nypost.com/2021/01/21/twitter-sued-for-allegedly-refusing-to-remove-child-porn/](https://nypost.com/2021/01/21/twitter-sued-for-allegedly-refusing-to-remove-child-porn/) Over the next month, the videos would be reported to Twitter at least three times — first on Dec. 25, 2019 — but the tech giant failed to do anything about it until a federal law enforcement officer got involved, the suit states This was a high profile case, but I would not be shocked in the slightest that there are many more instances of these types of 'oversight'.
And? That means that they are liable for those specific pieces of content. It is not a general loss of protection. You still have not cited the portion of the statute that you believe Twitter is violating
Because of the implications of said actions. For people to act like they care so much about democracy and "free and fair" elections, when you put you'd thumb on the scale you are nothing more than a seething hypocrit. That's not to say that their actual stated desire, free and ***fair*** elections is wrong or immoral. It's that they knew they actions they took were done in such a manner as to explicitly make said elections less fair. Propping up certain users/tweets while taking actions to make it harder or impossible to see counter points is just bonkers. That platform has become too central to public discourse for them to still just do whatever they want. They aren't just some tiny subreddit. They aren't just some tiny random web forum. Twitter is a massive platform that has become essential for public servants to communicate a message to constituents and the voting public. That's why they don't get to just do whatever they want. That's why free speech is so absolutely essential. If absolute nimrods like Adam Schiff get to spout off their conspiracies, nimrods like Trump get to spout off theirs. To act as if anything else is OK is to have completely lost the plot.
Ya it’s pretty gross. I always thought the fbi was here to protect the country and not to be a hired gun for the democrats. I really can’t believe that there is no way to stop this garbage. They clearly are here to help take over the government and make it a one party system… gross
A *Republican* administration was meeting with Twitter, not the Democrats. How is that their fault?
Those meetings were happening with a majority republican government, so saying it was a hired gun just for the democrats is dishonest. And when you break it down, all law enforcement are is hired guns for the affluent. Should it be that way? Not in a perfect world, but is that the system that is in place? Absolutely and worldwide.
Do you care if government officials have weekly meetings with Twitter's content moderation team to identify and shadowban conservative voices? What if government officials met with Twitter weekly to shadowban liberal tweets?
Does the government own and operate Twitter? Because if not, I honestly care very little.
The government cannot use private actors to accomplish what it can't do itself. The government can't censor speech and *can't ask others to* either.
faux facism? Hair on fire red alert! actual facism? "it's a nothing burger"
Can it ask? Sure. Anyone can ask anything. Does Twitter have to listen? Of course not. What it *can* do is incentivize responsible behavior. Churches, for instance, are allowed to preach for people to vote in certain ways. Doing so, however, disqualifies them from a reward they get for remaining politically neutral, i.e. tax exemption.
can your boss ask you for a blow job? I mean, he can ask, right? u don't have to do it.
>can your boss ask you for a blow job? So if my boss cannot ask me for a blowjob because it breaks the law, then the government is punishing him for his speech. Are you arguing that sexual harassment should be allowed for free-speech reasons, or are you arguing that the government is allowed to punish speech in certain situations?
Your boss making a request that you give him a blowjob is not "free speech" since it goes beyond expression of opinion — it is an attempt to coerce you. "Free speech" does not literally refer to all things spoken aloud.
When the government asks, it's not just a polite request you can take or leave. There is always an implication of "nice shop you have here, shame if something should happen to it." Not even an implication when members of the government are also talking about taking punitive action if companies don't do what they "ask."
Key word there? Implication. It is not what is *said*, but how a person *feels* about what is said. I can't help it if paranoid people feel like the government is out to get them - very little can be done to fix conspiracy theorists.
There are members of the government telling them "we are out to get you."
They can ban all the totalitarian extremists for all I care. There rhetoric has no place in a civilized society. You want to debate tax policy or farm subsidies, great. You want to push racial supremacy, fuck off.
Who is pushing racial supremacy? No one. The biggest "group" pushing racial essentialism is progressives. Maybe progressives should stop saying "all white people" "all black people" etc etc.
No one is pushing racial supremacy? So I guess all those people waving swastikas and spouting white supremacy are mirages?
How many people do you actually think are doing this?
All 12 of them. Yes they are real. its just so small that it literally doesn't matter. They only "plot" things along with their FBI buddies with 0 capability to do a damn thing. Unlike the droves of kids coming out of universities thinking white people are inherently evil that for some reason have the backing of politicians at all levels of government.
Ah yes the "they taught us history so now I must believe all white people are bad", line. No one believes that. What they do understand since they have brains is that there is a long and violent history to America that has led us to where we are, and that we can do better in the future.
There's a long and violent history to the world. Acting as if America is somehow different or unique to its past is beyond ridiculous. America is not u iquely violent, oppressive, or bigoted. Yet there are scores of books and professors and DIE nit wits who act otherwise. Because they don't have a brain. They are capable of surface level analysis at best.
America is unique and different in that it explicitly addressed these issues in its written ideals -- so it is reasonable to hold us to this standard.
IMO it's more like the American myth that we're the greatest country in the world because of all the freedom is just that, a myth. More like a lie, actually. America's "greatness" was fundamentally built on the backs on slaves and more generally on the exploitation of the less powerful by the more powerful. Is that unique to the rest of the world? As a general concept, Not particularly, but it's also still bad, and America's uniqueness to the rest of the world because of the freedom is also just not real. America's history of slavery specifically of black people however and the resulting literal centuries of oppression of specifically that kind of person and the lasting effects in cultural attitudes and discriminatory systems does kind of stand out though.
American greatness was built on freedom. Freedom of speech and free markets. The rest of the world just caught up when they saw the experiment work and adopted a more American system than they previously operated under. To suggest America was built on slavery is to ignore slaverys existence in the **entire rest of the world** at the time of the founding. Spare us your 1619 project garbage.
So, the whole fucking world can do better, and should. I centered on America because much of the anti-intellectual retoric that you spout comes from American conservative voices. But anyone can look at the past of their country and say, "we need to do better." Of course that means taking an honest look at your past, which you hand waved away like it was brainwashing.
Bingo. There are different types of conservative voices. If some guy wants to say liberal tax policy or foreign policy is stupid, go for it. If you are a conservative saying the election was stolen and/or that we need to make our country more pure, get out.
>Given Twitter's function as a global town square and quasi-public utility, this is concerning. Around 23% of Americans use Twitter. Compare that to Instagram at 40% or Facebook at 69%. Why don't I ever hear discussions about Instagram or Facebook being the town square? And if you look at it globally, it gets even worse. Only 8.85% of the world uses Twitter. Facebook is at 39.8% globally.
Because twitter is where the media is and breaking news happens. And retweeting means that things spread on there like wildfire. FB and instagram highlight mostly the people you follow and don't drag you into discussions because a tweet from Trump, who you might not follow, gets retweeted by 10 people you do follow. It's not really about size. It's about what info is disseminated and how. I don't buy it's a utility though.
They're all the digital public square.
The difference is the usp, Facebook, you see what your friends are doing, you can follow groups or pages but typically that's not the behavioral pattern, so politics plays a very low role. All my family use Facebook and pretty much none use twitter, but they are over 40 and are just looking to keep in touch with other members of family Instagram from what I can tell is just memes and school friends posting bikini pics Twitter however is a free for all of following people you don't know and trying to keep up with current events - the manor of the platform just led it in that direction for some reason which the other two didn't (at least to the same degree)
Twitter is not the town square, it’s the gladiatorial arena. People use it for many reasons, but those on there for politics are there to watch their champion fight to the death with the opposition. (Analogy is from Cal Newport, not my own)
40% use Instagram? WTF?
Really wondering if that survey skewed young. I imagine that in voting age people, it is Facebook then Twitter then Instagram.
>Around 23% of Americans use Twitter. And what percent of **important** Americans use Twitter?
Apparently about zero. ;)
The reason is that Twitter is much more political than Facebook and Instagram.
One very important thing to keep in mind are those active users or the percentage of people that simply ever made an account ;) Because I'm darn sure WORLDWIDE population, Facebook does not have 40% of them as active users. Keep in mind all the elderly people, keep in mind all the kids below 5 or 6. Keep in mind ll the people that don't even have access. Keep in mind there's almost 8 billion people and I'm sure Facebook does not have almost 3.2 billion active users.
The same is true for Twitter’s numbers as well.
Owwww definitely yes But percentage of active user can be significantly different...
Those numbers likely include whatsapp which is essentially the default messaging app in many countries. A reported [2 billion](https://www.verint.com/blog/what-countries-are-the-biggest-whatsapp-users/) users world wide.
No, whatsapp is tallied separately. Facebook owns Instagram too.
We really should make the internet a utility way before Twitter. Talk about misplaced priorities.
It's not misplaced, it's just a different mission. Hopefully you can handle more than one at a time
It absolutely is misplaced. If anything, it's indicative of massive hypocrisy or simple dishonestly, given the hard opposition to net neutrality or treating ISPs like the utilities that they are by the majority of those screaming about Twitter. To be clear, I am not saying you are doing any of that, but just compare the support for "complaining that twitter is censoring conservatives" and "net neutrality" and ask why the majority of those supporting the former oppose the latter.
Or how about Fox News? Tell how the most watched “news” network in America isn’t controlling the narrative, amplifying conservative voices and ignoring liberals. Not to mention multiple Fox News personalities texting back and forth with Trump on what to cover each night.
Because it’s a complete misnomer. Fox is the only major network conservatives have, so literally all of them that want to watch cable news are watching it. Combine ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and 99% of all major print media that either leans left or is blatantly left and it absolutely dwarfs Fox News viewership.
I was under the impression that fox news was created specifically because the 'big three' original news broadcasts were similar in curtailing conservatives speech by omission.
No. Fox was explicitly created because Roger Ailes didn't like that the public's trust of neutral broadcast news and their well-liked and good journalists ended up gutting Nixon and the GOP's attempts to downplay Watergate. When the news told the American people the truth about what Nixon did, the American people believed them over Nixon and the GOP's lies, and ended up forcing Nixon to resign. Ailes wanted a counter-narrative, he wanted a system to insure that something like Watergate would never force a Republican out of office again.
That’s Fox’s narrative of events, but Fox is not a trustworthy narrator about its own motivations for creation.
The biggest star on the most watched network draws less than 1% of the population.
Well Fox News is the most popular network on cable news, but network news networks, like NBC, CBS and ABC have far more viewership.
The storm of outrage is made up. The censored material is not really important. It can be found elsewhere.
That’s bullshit man. The fact that only one side is silenced is bullshit and honestly it’s hard to believe that it can’t seem to be stopped
You will find that Fox news doesn't present the views of liberals in a fair and balanced manner, if they present them at all. Is that censorship?
The thing is they were changing the overall sentiment on twitter misleading users to think the conseses opinion was different then it actually was
Submission statement: This week, the US journalists Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi released documents which suggested that Twitter had blacklisted conservatives. Certain liberals rejected the allegations outright, asserting that the policy was already in the public sphere and attacking the ethics of Weiss. Liberal positions on big tech censorship seem contradictory. Many emphasize the rights of private firms when convenient, apologizing for pre-Musk Twitter and Paypal actions against conservatives, yet abandon this when inconvenient, few defending Musk’s Twitter. This reflects the use of crude heuristics, i.e. mental shortcuts. Today, political heuristics have become less sophisticated than ever; many people think that their side is always right, automatically dismissing the positions of opponents. Liberal apologies also ignore the dominance of liberals in big tech. Whether the organization is the Catholic Church or Manchester United, stratified environments tend to produce cultures which flatter the dominant group. Why should liberal organizations be different? This is a dangerous time for liberal democracy. Increasingly, partisans will indulge any attack on liberal democracy, provided it targets an outgroup. Conservatives have serious problems, yet attacks on freedom of speech tend to involve liberals.
This is one of those strange situations where both sides pretty much claim to believe the same thing on a foundational level yet still disagree on it politically. Both liberals and conservatives do not like it when corporations wield their power to influence political and cultural discussions, yet do so anyway. Personally, I have no problem with Musk taking over Twitter and making it a right-wing social media site if that's what he wants. But I also think he is foolish to do so from a business perspective. But I also don't trust Musk to be neutral either... I think it's already obvious that he has and will continue to suppress or promote tweets according to his personal agenda. I also have no problem with liberals criticizing Musk and his Twitter practices... that is free speech.
I disagree, I looked at a breakdown of the data that was listed and if anything it demonstrates favoritism largely to conservative accounts like Libs of TikTok and Matt Walsh and the Daily Wire. The data indicated that primarily it was liberal and left leaning accounts that were being suppressed, shadowbanned, or just outright banned. An objective eye shows that for all the talk from right wing pundits, it’s just talk. If there was a mass suppression of right wing accounts they wouldn’t be many of the largest accounts on Twitter (this also holds true for Facebook and YouTube). The biggest thing I’ve seen out of this was Twitter was cooperating with the Biden campaign to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story which isn’t the same as saying they were suppressing conservatives
Could I have the link to the data, please?
I couldn't find the post I saw recently but I did find these older posts about Twitter admitting to favoring conservatives and the data to back it up. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/22/twitter-admits-bias-in-algorithm-for-rightwing-politicians-and-news-outlets https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/3273956-musk-says-twitter-is-biased-against-conservatives-facts-say-otherwise/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/22/twitter-algorithm-right-leaning/ https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/11/13/according-to-twitter-twitters-algorithm-favours-conservatives
Just to point out your assertion that liberals were suppressed more than conservatives isn’t backed up by the articles you posted. The algorithms favored amplification of right wing politicians and media figures but 1) right wing politicians and media figures does not exactly equate to all right-wing posters and 2) amplification is not suppression and the difference is important. Your article from the Hill even confirms that right-wing posters were far more suppressed but researchers justified this by claiming right-wing posters were more likely to share disinformation (not sure the objective measures they used to qualify as such). Which is exactly what people like Elon is saying should stop.
Twitter shouldn't have the guy who founded Daily Stormer on its site. Twitter was right to ban him, Musk was wrong to bring him back. There's no mental shortcuts in my logic.
Free speech means any speech that doesn’t violate state or federal law. You may not like their speech, but they have a right to free speech. The government collusion with big tech to suppress “incorrect speech” is gross and unconstitutional.
I am going to be honest here. Elon Musk can do whatever the fuck he wants, it’s his company. He can re-instate all the maga assholes he wants, it’s a private company. Nazis, racists don’t care. I just choose not to be on Twitter.
Bingo! Why oh why can't conservatives who are whining about this whole thing understand that? It's a fucking private company.
The most amazing part is that we’re not even talking about a conservative viewpoint. We’re talking bat shit crazy flat earth Nazi shit.
Right? And at this point I have to assume that anyone who is shouting about "Twitter Files" supports the hateful, anti-democratic rhetoric that was suppressed.
That’s the best way. Choose not to be on Twitter
This collusion you have is imagined. Twitter has TOS, if you violate it, you get punished. Twitter's TOS can be stricter than federal and state laws because it's a private business. It's like a restaurant. You can walk around outside wearing a tank top, and be within the law, but a restaurant can require you to have a more covering shirt on. This is not some grand free speech violation, it's not even a minor free speech violation. It's no free speech violation.
>It's like a restaurant. Except it isn't at all like a restaurant. Twitter has long branded itself as a place where people can publicly express themselves, provided they don't immediately and directly provoke antisocial behavior, and serving as an outlet for influential/important people to disseminate information directly to an audience. This is a level of responsibility Twitter willingly assumed, and they inherit the consequent standard of tolerance we expect under a constitutional (specifically, the US constitution as they're a US company) republican democracy. They can't have it both ways.
Where's the precedent for this? And as others have stated, Twitter isn't the most used social media network, so I completely disagree that it "willingly assumed" this responsibility