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Time to Audit Twitter Censorship
Townhall.com ^ | April 27, 2022 | Byron York

Posted on 04/27/2022 5:19:34 AM PDT by Kaslin

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To: glorgau
There is never going to be any audit. That could expose liability which would materially affect the value of the company.

That's a great point! I'm sitting here thinking maybe Musk goes in and rips the cover off of past practices and exposes it all. Your point convinces me to be a bit more practical and realistic about it.
21 posted on 04/27/2022 7:03:46 AM PDT by mmichaels1970
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To: TexasGator; semimojo

“Twitter is a PUBLIC company until Musk takes it PRIVATE.”

Besides that, private businesses do have a line they cannot cross with “private business rights”. They do not have complete Carte blanche immunity.

If you pull into a tire shop to have one tire fixed, they cannot stab the other three to force you to buy four new tires. And this is the new concept we are now entering with claimed “private business rights”.

Despite what the radical business rights extremists claim, there is indeed a limit to these rights.


22 posted on 04/27/2022 7:06:40 AM PDT by Openurmind (The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world it leaves to its children. ~ D. Bonhoeffer)
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To: V_TWIN

Don’t be fooled by this guy:

Musk said, “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by … authenticating all humans.”

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-wants-authenticate-every-200308848.html


23 posted on 04/27/2022 7:08:59 AM PDT by 9YearLurker
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To: CodeToad
Actually, they are in violation of the law...

What law? Twitter is clearly an "information service provider" and Section 230 explicitly says they can moderate their content.

24 posted on 04/27/2022 7:15:18 AM PDT by semimojo
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To: semimojo

“So you think Jim needs to report to the FEC if he zots a pro-Biden poster during the election cycle?”

FR is a privately owned forum. Twitter was not at the time. There’s also the little matter of scale. FR has maybe 100,000 users. Twitter has hundred of millions.

L


25 posted on 04/27/2022 7:20:28 AM PDT by Lurker (Peaceful coexistence with the Left is not possible. Stop pretending that it is.)
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To: semimojo

What law?

Try Section 230 is part of the 1996 Communications Decency Act. Go ahead, actually read it instead of ignorantly spouting off about it.

Once a provider censors in any way by deciding the content allowed, they become a publisher, not a provider. Go ahead, read the law instead of mouthing off about it.


26 posted on 04/27/2022 7:20:42 AM PDT by CodeToad (Arm up! They Have!)
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To: CodeToad
Once a provider censors in any way by deciding the content allowed, they become a publisher, not a provider.

Except, they don't.

"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."

Section 230 also says:

"No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—

(A)any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or

(B)any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1)."

So show me the text of 230 that supports your position.

27 posted on 04/27/2022 7:48:02 AM PDT by semimojo
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To: Lurker
FR is a privately owned forum. Twitter was not at the time.

So if Jim were to do an IPO he could no longer zot people?

Surely you realize that Twitter is a private entity. Other private entities, like you and me, may buy stock in it but that doesn't make it owned by all of us taxpayers, which is what a public company would would be.

There's a difference between 'public' and 'publicly traded'.

28 posted on 04/27/2022 7:52:38 AM PDT by semimojo
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To: semimojo

“So if Jim were to do an IPO he could no longer zot people?”

Sure he could. What he couldn’t do is conspire with a political party to squelch their constitutionally protected political activity without reporting it to the FEC.

Do try to keep up.

L


29 posted on 04/27/2022 8:05:38 AM PDT by Lurker (Peaceful coexistence with the Left is not possible. Stop pretending that it is.)
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To: Lurker
What he couldn’t do is conspire with a political party to squelch their constitutionally protected political activity without reporting it to the FEC.

Someone now has a Constitutional right to post on Twitter?

Do tell.

30 posted on 04/27/2022 8:07:18 AM PDT by semimojo
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To: semimojo

“Someone now has a Constitutional right to post on Twitter.”

Wow. You are dense. Of course they don’t. That’s not the issue.

L


31 posted on 04/27/2022 8:09:51 AM PDT by Lurker (Peaceful coexistence with the Left is not possible. Stop pretending that it is.)
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To: Lurker
Of course they don’t. That’s not the issue.

You said:

"...conspire with a political party to squelch their constitutionally protected political activity without reporting it to the FEC."

The activity we're talking about is posting to Twitter.

What other constitutionally protected activity were you referring to?

32 posted on 04/27/2022 8:20:21 AM PDT by semimojo
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To: semimojo

“The activity we’re talking about is posting to Twitter.”

No, it isn’t. The activity wasn’t done by the posters. It was done by Twitter to influence an election you bloody simpleton.

L


33 posted on 04/27/2022 8:37:46 AM PDT by Lurker (Peaceful coexistence with the Left is not possible. Stop pretending that it is.)
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To: Lurker
The activity wasn’t done by the posters. It was done by Twitter...

You're not making any sense.

You're saying the constitutionally protected activity that can't be squelched is Twitter's censorship?

I thought you meant the political speech that was censored by Twitter.

So Twitter's censorship is constitutionally protected? (Actually, you stumbled into the right answer)

34 posted on 04/27/2022 8:41:52 AM PDT by semimojo
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To: semimojo

“You’re not making any sense.”

You’re just not smart enough to see the difference.

“So Twitter’s censorship is constitutionally protected?”

Not when it’s done to further one political party over another during an election. Then it becomes an “in kind” political contribution that must by law be reported to the FEC.

Here’s the law, Scooter. Go read it for yourself.

https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/filing-reports/in-kind-contributions/

Take your time. Feel free to move your lips if you need to.

Then go hump someone else’s leg.

L


35 posted on 04/27/2022 8:47:21 AM PDT by Lurker (Peaceful coexistence with the Left is not possible. Stop pretending that it is.)
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To: Lurker
Not when it’s done to further one political party over another during an election.

So we've come full circle.

Your interpretation is a forum can't favor one party's speech over another's.

Your FEC link has no exemption for entities with fewer than 100K users so why doesn't it apply to FR?

And if you're going to say public vs. private do you mean all Twitter has to do is get bought by Bezos and the FEC has to leave them alone?

36 posted on 04/27/2022 9:01:28 AM PDT by semimojo
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To: semimojo

Didn’t I tell you to go hump someone else’s leg?

Why yes, I did.

L


37 posted on 04/27/2022 9:15:07 AM PDT by Lurker (Peaceful coexistence with the Left is not possible. Stop pretending that it is.)
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To: Lurker
Didn’t I tell you to go hump someone else’s leg?

You told me lots of things that didn't make any sense. I just put that one in the same category.

38 posted on 04/27/2022 9:49:50 AM PDT by semimojo
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To: Kaslin
"You could secretly ban one party's candidate or all of its candidates, all of its nominees. Or you could just secretly turn down the reach of their stuff and turn up the reach of something else, and the rest of us might not even find out about it until after the election."

No. Really? You could do all that? I actually laughed out loud reading this. Yeah, Melber, you could. What was the name of that Republican guy, Donald something or other?

39 posted on 04/27/2022 10:01:41 AM PDT by Billthedrill
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To: 9YearLurker

I’m not sure he meant what you think by that.

There’s a difference between collecting identifying information about a person, and determining that a person isn’t a ‘bot’. And as the article suggests, for most people it probably WILL boil down to something as simple as fulfilling a ‘captcha’.


40 posted on 04/27/2022 1:42:44 PM PDT by Jamestown1630 ("A Republic, if you can keep it.")
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