Twitter Takedown Targets QAnon Accounts
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The conspiracy theorist's right to free speech doesn't mean Twitter is obligated to carry their speech, either.
If you dislike this your best available remedies are 1) find a service who wants your business, or if none such exists, 2) start your own social media service, or to "solve" the problem for good, 3) engineer the existence of government-operated social media services such that law mandates all citizens have unfettered free speech on the service
As far as President Trump goes, Twitter has had to make policy exceptions in order to ensure his continued access to the service, AND legal proceedings have also resulted in rulings that govern his specific use of the service (for example, he's technically not allowed to block citizens.) As such it's not especially useful to look at Trump's experience on Twitter and try to generalize it to anyone else.
Maybe it's not just freedom lovers making use of their God-given right to free expression, or whatever.
They are going further than this on also removing many accounts from search, but given the many bad apples, I am unsurprised they're hiding the bunch.
Pushing an agenda of literal chaos and death through theories like "it's only the flu" or "mask = oppression" is getting actual people killed, right now, by the thousands. Of course the devil is always in the details and the fuzzy lines.
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...
Encouraging people to violate mask orders would fit this definition.
Simply advocating that people violate mask orders doesn't pass the imminence test.
Well, look at what happened with Alex Jones and his Sandy Hook theories.
If they cause measurable harm to others, then yes media companies have a responsibility censure people on their platforms who spread conspiracy theories.
...and that just makes it seem cooler and more rebellious.
It's not 1:1, but if you lose your drivers license in a city like LA or non-coastal state, your ability to participate in society (find work, etc) and your social franchise in society is diminished because the automobile has a radical monopoly in American cities.
Twitter and social platforms like Facebook have definitely become radical monopolies for reputation, where if you have no social media presence, you are excluded socially. (Regarding Facebook, try find a date without an instagram page.) Facebook execs even commented publicly early on that people without Facebook accounts should be treated as suspicious.
That QAnon types are so ridiculous and indefensible is what makes them a great example for discussing how and whether to protect minority views. Twitter does have the right to do what they want, and I'm optimistic that these purges will create demand for the divergent platforms that will replace this first generation of them, but to say this right is simple and natural ignores precedents of radical monopolies that were enabled and sustained by political protection, which seems naive. The non-libertarian case for limiting social platforms ability to purge can be summed up in president Obama's thoughts,when he said, "you didn't build that."
Arguably, social platforms that rely on network effects to become radical monopolies didn't "build that," either.
Qanon, of course, pushes ideas that are batshit crazy. My point is more moderate people dress them up a bit and push the same concepts.
Anyway comparing this to "some guy on 4chan is pretending to be a high ranking official with highly classified insider knowledge without offering a single proof" is just a stupid way of deflecting. It's not remotely on the same level.
QAnon is at the tier of flat-earth conspiracy theories, not Watergate. It's been debunked countless time, none of the predictions have come true and the official account has been caught multiple photoshoping pictures to make people believe he had access to the president himself. It all started with a LARPer on 4chan, the most trustworthy of online forums.
People believing that crap are either roleplaying or prefer to live in a made up world than face the truth, it's as simple as that. The problem as always is that a tiny minority of these people eventually become radicalized enough to actually try to act on this fantasy.
If you look up the author of that op-ed piece, she's a lawyer and devoted anti-sex-trafficking advocate, so it is most logical to just view it as an op-ed representing her personal interests and point of view, not representative of The Times, or The Democrats, or The Mainstream.
Absolutely no idea what you're even talking about.