Twitter Now Purging Regular Conservatives (Purge of Alex Jones was proof-of-concept)

Stream.org ^ | Published on December 10, 2018 | RACHEL ALEXANDER

[E. Pluribus Unum]

If Twitter hasn’t suspended or banned you yet, don’t feel relieved. You may be next.

When Twitter and other big tech companies started banning fringy rightwing characters over the past year or so, few people objected, because even most conservatives weren’t sympathetic to those purged. It’s hard to feel sympathy for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. But once the radicals were banned, it became far easier to ban others.

Now, people tend to talk about public issues mostly on the big tech platforms. Minority viewpoints can use them to get around the mainstream or legacy media. A biased article in The New York Times or The Washington Post is more likely to be challenged by a small website communicating with its readers through Facebook and Twitter, than by a conservative magazine.

Need to be Concerned We need to be concerned when big tech starts censoring certain types of speech, even if we disagree with it. Big Tech doesn’t have to provide platforms for free speech, since they’re private companies. The First Amendment doesn’t apply. The tech companies can censor as much as they want to without violating the Constitution’s free speech protections.

But when they censor conservative speech, they corrupt the free exchange of ideas they claim to value. Each one declares itself a place for people to freely exchange ideas. They claim to be neutral as to politics, religion, and other matters. But they’re not.

Google, Facebook and Twitter have all censored those on the right. How do they do it? By treating some speech as hate speech — even when it’s not. Criticism of Islam or transgender activism has become a top reason for censorship. Twitter recently revised its terms of service to prohibit this type of speech...

[adorno]

Twitter is a shareholder financed company and the Saudis and other major investors can’t keep the company operating without an adequate number of users on board. For certain, it’s not just the Saudi princes and other major investors who keep Twitter and Facebook and Google alive.

[Paladin2]

I dunno.

One can easily sign up here, and if reasonably well-behaved, stay for a while.

Willie Green comes to mind.

[adorno]

Cause and effect:

Twitter stock plunges 20% in wake of 1m user decline

(That was a real headline back in July).

[snarkpup]

The money these people invest/lose in the social media monopolies is money well spent from their point of view. Soviet-style censorship of a huge fraction of human communication is what they're buying. When they can swing elections here and elsewhere, the payoff for their "investment" is in the trillions.

[snarkpup]

These people don't care about shareholder value. The reason they are going to unheard-of lengths to kill Gab is because they are scared to death it will succeed and they'll lose control over a big chunk of human communication and the trillions of dollars of influence that goes with it.

[Sharin]

But there is court precedent for a private business to be considered “public” - such as the public areas of a mall... and can be required to permit first amendment activities. This is the angle that should be pursued with the big ones, YouTube, FB and Twitter. They are in every sense of the word, the new “public square”. They are so large as to have effectively taken over public discourse.

——————-
FR is not “public square” social media, which is what the issue is here.

[adorno]

People built a FOX news, and a FR, and a Rush and a Hannity and other conservative outlets.

Why can’t conservatives build their own Twitter or Facebook or Google?

FOX news, for example, is hated by liberals like it’s the devil. Why not build a similar social-media outlet to outdo Twitter and Facebook, just like FOX became the most successful cable news channel?

[robel]

wake up, people. They don’t care about the diehard conservatives. They are only eliminating the voice of conservatives so that the swing voters will only hear the liberal propaganda. The swing voters will decide the next election.

[steve86]

“We can hit them even harder in the pocketbook by having the conservative/republican investors pull their money out”

Except in the case of withholding funding to IPOs this makes no sense. When you sell shares someone else buys them.

[snarkpup]

By "public square" I mean the place where everyone in the world goes to hear stuff and be heard. FR is a small discussion board for like-minded people to compare notes, talk strategy, etc. It is not where one goes to reach out to the public. Almost by definition, a public square social medium must be a natural monopoly and must be handled as such.

[Don W]

http://www.freerepublic.com/~williegreen/index?U=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freerepublic.com%2Ffocus%2Ff-bloggers%2F3712022%2Fposts

[JudgemAll]

Twitter et al are becoming media mouthpieces, not social media, if not anti social medias.

Time to set up alternatives

[snarkpup]

Why can’t conservatives build their own Twitter or Facebook or Google?

1. It's called Gab. It's non-partisan and they allow all legal speech. Big Tech is going absolutely nuts trying to shut them down. They are practically in a situation where they need to invent their own world banking system to do money transfers. I just sent them a check in the mail for 6 months of their premium service. "Paper checks in the mail" is currently the only payment system open to them. They've also gone through hell getting domain name service, etc. BitChute, which is trying to serve as a YouTube alternative, is running into similar problems with basic services being cut off.

2. At least on a small scale, we've got FR.

3. Try starting a <airquotes>conservative</airquotes> alternative to Twitter—on the scale of Twitter. Watch as all the factions of "conservatism" bring out their own lists of what they want censored. To avoid such a war, it's going to have to be either a small discussion group run by one guy (like FR) or a Gab-like open forum.

[Paladin2]

Hunh, no mention of Trains nor public rail transportation, nor the economics of same.

I had not read that before, thanks....

[Kipp]

Trump should start posting 80% of his remarks on Gab instead of Twitter.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Sadly, these companies will eventually have to be regulated as utilities under the appropriate state and federal laws. I do NOT want it this way, but it will be coming if Facebooger, Twatter, etc. do not allow the exchange of legitimate, non-hateful ideas.

[Don W]

LOL, now go to “In Forum”. His last post was a small snark at JimRob on October 14, 2010 around 2 in the afternoon.

We haven’t seen wee Willie since...

[Paladin2]

I was more or less online at the time.

It was humorous and WAY better than most Opuses.

WG was set in his thoughts about gov’t funded passenger rail.

[Revel]

Leave twitter and go where they are terrified that you will go. Go to Gab if you are into the tweet thing.

Last Wednesday was supposed to be a big day in congress for exposing the Clinton foundation. It had actually been planed for months and was called D5. Somehow the bad actors managed to get a state funeral to take place on that day. So the hearing was postponed to This Thursday. If we don’t get any more “big events” then Thursday will be a big day.

Twitter is just preparing to minimize the damage by locking conservatives out. They don’t want any bad news to be able to propagate.

[snarkpup]

The concept of "legitimate, non-hateful ideas" has no meaning in the American legal system (or in America itself, for that matter); so they censor anything they don't like under the pretense that it's "illegitimate and hateful".