Posted on 04/27/2022 5:19:34 AM PDT by Kaslin
New Twitter owner Elon Musk is vowing to reform the social media platform. "Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated," Musk said in a statement after his $44 billion bid to buy the company was accepted.
Many, many conservatives hope Musk succeeds. But as much as Twitter needs freer speech, it also needs to tell the world precisely what it has been doing for the last few years. That is why it should conduct a full and comprehensive audit of all the instances in which it has suspended users, banned users, reduced the visibility of tweets, and in other ways censored or suppressed information on its platform for political reasons.
How many times have you heard that this or that person you might follow on Twitter has been suspended for a day, warned, or outright thrown off the platform? And for what reason? And how do you even know when you don't see a tweet that, absent Twitter suppression, you would have seen?
We all know the most famous, most outrageous examples of Twitter suppression. For example, at this very moment, Twitter has locked out the humor site Babylon Bee for declaring transgender Biden administration official Rachel Levine "Man of the Year."
Most important, we know what Twitter did in the Hunter Biden laptop case, when, at the height of the 2020 presidential campaign, Twitter locked the account of a major newspaper, the New York Post, for publishing a story detailing suspicious business dealings of the Biden family. Twitter demanded that the Post remove the story. Twitter blocked users from sharing the story. And all on the false premise that the laptop information was hacked or inaccurate or somehow Russian disinformation. Meanwhile, Twitter did not censor the statements of those who made the false Russian disinformation claim.
After the election, when it became impossible for all but the hardest-core ideologues to deny that the laptop was real, then-Twitter chief Jack Dorsey admitted the company had made a mistake. "We recognize it as a mistake that we made, both in terms of the intention of the policy and also the enforcement action of not allowing people to share it publicly or privately," Dorsey told the Senate in late November 2020.
But Dorsey, who is no longer CEO, never explained just how Twitter came to make the decisions that it made. Who made them? Through what process? How did Twitter decide to silence some accounts while leaving others untouched? Who, specifically, did it censor, and when?
While Musk looks forward, moving to ensure free speech and "make Twitter better than ever," he needs also to look backward, to reveal to the public what Twitter has been doing for the last several years to limit speech and censor viewpoints.
Meanwhile, some on the left are freaking out about the possible end of Twitter censorship. They liked it the way it was. Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren pronounced the sale of Twitter "dangerous for our democracy." Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich is denouncing the deal. The actresses Mia Farrow and Jameela Jamil say they will leave. The director and actor Rob Reiner is angry at the prospect that Musk might restore former President Donald Trump to Twitter.
"The question for all of us is," Reiner tweeted, "will [Musk] allow a criminal who used this platform to lie and spread disinformation to try to overthrow the U.S. government to return and continue his criminal activity? And if he does, how do we combat it?" For his part, Trump says he will not return to Twitter, that he will stay with his own site, Truth Social, although there is some skepticism about that.
In a truly delicious irony, some on the left are worried that if Musk takes control of Twitter, the platform might censor some users. Imagine that! On his MSNBC program Monday, host Ari Melber painted a scary picture of what Twitter under Musk might be like.
"If you own all of Twitter or Facebook or what have you, you don't have to explain yourself," Melber said. "You don't even have to be transparent. 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."
Melber said it all with an entirely straight face, as if that is not precisely what Twitter has been doing in recent times, except that it favored the side he favors.
So now Musk begins the task of taking over Twitter. There are a lot of changes that need to be made to ensure fairness. And he will no doubt face fierce resistance from inside the company he has just purchased. But the thing that needs to be done first is to go fully public -- institute real transparency -- by revealing precisely how, and how often, Twitter suppressed legitimate political speech these last few years.
“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.
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
What law? Twitter is clearly an "information service provider" and Section 230 explicitly says they can moderate their content.
“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
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.
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.
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'.
“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
Someone now has a Constitutional right to post on Twitter?
Do tell.
“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
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?
“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
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)
“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
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?
Didn’t I tell you to go hump someone else’s leg?
Why yes, I did.
L
You told me lots of things that didn't make any sense. I just put that one in the same category.
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?
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’.
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