The old twitter stood up to authoritarians but also banned DMs that talked about true events in the west at the best of the US government, so it was kind of a buckshot with no coherent strategy.
The new twitter doesn't stand up to authoritarians and bans anything that Musk chooses --- so it is kind of buckshot with no coherent strategy --- despite discredited claims of being a "free speech absolutist".
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss --- only more extreme.
Musk is just a posterchild for the ideology he has embraced --- the idea that real world problems have easy, simple minded solutions.
Boldly declaring yourself a "free speech absolutist" is simple and appeals to a lot of people --- unfortunately, it is also naive and a poor fit for the complex reality of social media --- as Musk himself has just proven.
An easy heuristic for anything coming from the right-wing in the US: if they are screaming about it, it means they are doing it. Pedophilia? They're the ones diddling kids. Censorship? The supposed "censorship" literally happened during the Trump administration. We're spending too much money? The Trump administration increased the national debt by 25%.
Anything coming from the right should be taken with the biggest grain of salt the world has ever seen. There's a 99% chance that they're screaming about nothing and a 100% chance that they're not telling the entire truth.
I'm not sure how anyone could say that in good faith. The government was obviously asking for and was granted censorship on a regular basis. An act of government firmly against the first amendment.
This statement shows this guy has an axe to grind and is willing to disregard obvious first amendment violations by the US government to grind it.
You should read the relevant part of that wikipedia page or maybe just all of it because it refutes your claims here.
> David Loy, legal director for the First Amendment Coalition, said that Twitter is legally able to choose what speech is allowed on their site, noting that both the Biden campaign, which was not part of the government, and the Trump White House could request specific content moderation actions.
It's probably not good but I haven't seen any reason to think the government's relationship to twitter was other than normative for social media companies. Whether it's "nothing of the sort" of censorship is a judgement call, I can certainly see how someone could make it in good faith.
It does nothing of the sort. The government shouldn't even be requesting it. Having the FBI do it is requesting it under duress. Having the FBI do it while bringing CEOs to testify before congress doubles down on the duress.
Nice company, it would be a shame if anything were to happen to it.
>any reason to think the government's relationship to twitter was other than normative for social media companies
Yea, that's the problem, the news too. You might hate Musk and you might hate Twitter, but you shouldn't dismiss what's actually going on here.
I still haven't seen evidence the _government_ demanded censorship. Maybe it exists, but nobody seems to cite any sources for it.
What I have seen is government-adjacent entities that people confuse for the government like the Biden campaign request that Twitter apply their own Terms of Service policies to remove things that are not supposed to be allowed (like the nudes of Hunter, which is technically revenge porn)
It's right in the twitter files reporting. You probably relied on news organizations to inform you on it rather than actually read the twitter files themselves. With the state of news today, that's probably not a great idea. The screen shots are part of it.
> On Thu, Nov 10, 2022 at 10:53 PM
@fbi.gov> wrote:
Hello Twitter contacts,
FBI San Francisco is notifying you of the below accounts which may potentially constitute violations of Twitter's Terms of Service for any action or inaction deemed appropriate within Twitter policy.
Looks to me like ToS violation tips, not YOU MUST CENSOR
edit: if you think the FBI wasting their resources helping Twitter identify terms of service violations is "government censorship" we will never see eye to eye on this issue. It was unusual, but definitely not a constitutional crisis.
>if you think the FBI wasting their resources helping Twitter identify terms of service violations is "government censorship" we will never see eye to eye on this issue. It was unusual, but definitely not a constitutional crisis.
No I suppose not. Ask yourself, why would the FBI help Twitter with their terms of service for probably a few years? Why would Twitter charge them for the privilege? Why would they do it right during the run up to an election? They don't do things just because. Why wouldn't it be a more appropriate agency like the FEC or the FCC? Would you feel comfortable if they did similar to NYT, WaPo or Fox articles? Questions everyone should think about as a voting citizen. Our government is only corrupt as we allow it to be; we've allowed a lot in the last 23 years.
It doesn't matter why. All that matters is that everything they did was perfectly legal behavior.
Maybe alarming, maybe suspicious, but it's legal and it wasn't government censorship. Trying to frame it so only weakens your position when the facts and the laws are clearly laid out.
The Twitter Files were a gigantic nothing-burger, hence why it fell out of the news cycle so quickly and no one gave a crap about it.
Please explain to me how anything in the Twitter Files shows government censorship. Did the government threaten Twitter in any way? Did they force Twitter to remove these tweets? I'd also like to point out that this supposed "censorship" took place during the Trump administration.
Of course they did. You're assuming that if they don't spell out in so many words "or we're going to do something about it" they haven't made a threat.
>I'd also like to point out that this supposed "censorship" took place during the Trump administration.
There's a reason why people complain about the deep state.
Perhaps twitter was too good at promoting whatever speech there was to the forefront and rallying people in a way that would give power to them. Thus twitter needed to be stopped otherwise power would slowly creep from the hands of those that have it to the people they rule.
I'm not saying there is some vast conspiracy puppeting elon musk to buy and ruin twitter. But that there is some natural resistance in the system that would promote this behavior to begin with.
Ultimately, it is important to strike a balance between promoting a robust exchange of ideas and protecting individuals and society from harmful content. Elon Musk's choices may not align perfectly with every person's vision of free speech absolutism, but it is essential to acknowledge the complexities inherent in such decisions and the challenging position he finds himself in.
