Twitter Drops the Big One
aelkus.github.io
aelkus.github.io
If I were the author I'd stop at this point and think that perhaps the best way to curb Twitter's power to shape narrative according to their subjective desires is to stop using Twitter to shape narrative...
“Twitter needs to have a damned good reason to censor people from even sharing links to a major news story in private messages”
I mean, its real easy to get hyper focused on a specific instance and start making claims like that.
But I think if you take a step back, they have let a lot of dirt swing from both side, and in the face of overwhelming pressure from the public have started to be more restrictive on this sort of propaganda as the election is coming up.
I believe that twitter censorship policies are far more about optics and what is more commercially viable for the company.
You can bet the reason they didn't ban the president for the numerous policy violations is because he is driving traffic and engagement on their platform.
That isn't to say that certain employees won't overstep bounds and act on personal feelings, but that doesn't mean twitter as an organization is leaning left or right.
Corporations lean in the direction of profit, far more than moral or political leanings.
> It means what you think it does. And Tsai Ing-Wen has a Twitter account. The tweet is, as of the writing of this post, still up. Why? Because Twitter has a significant problem applying rules and interaction norms initially developed for interpersonal conflicts between users to institutional actors (such as loosely state-controlled press entities like the Global Times) and/or individuals representing institutions (like President Tsai Ing-Wen). So a threat from one user (acting as a proxy of a government) against another individual user (the President of another government) is difficult for Twitter.
> Like it or not, conditional threats of physical harm are a part of international politics. During the Gulf War, for one, the United States threatened to execute a nuclear strike and “eliminate” Iraqi leadership if Baghdad deployed chemical weapons. And if Tsai had some means of physically threatening the personal safety of Chinese leader Xi Xingping to deter Chinese invasion of Taiwan, she would absolutely be remiss in not using all of the means at her disposal – Twitter included – to publicly communicate that he would be harmed if Beijing dared to put a single rifleman on Taiwanese beaches.
> Twitter is banned in China, but Chinese diplomats have accounts. And if Xi operated an account and Tsai made a vague but nonetheless firm threat to physically harm him if war should break out, should she be penalized?
The author doesn't intend to answer their own question. If you believe violent speech is acceptable between nations but unacceptable with individuals, what do you do when individuals represent nations?
And how does any nationally-based company go on to facilitate international discussion?
Wouldn't the Post's claims that the data was obtained by hacking suffice? For as long as nobody is claiming in good faith that the data was not obtained through hacking, the Post's own claim should suffice; I think it is too burdensome for the onus to be on twitter to independently verify that for every case of this like.
> The blockbuster correspondence — which flies in the face of Joe Biden’s claim that he’s “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings” — is contained in a massive trove of data recovered from a laptop computer.
Hunter Biden email
The computer was dropped off at a repair shop in Biden’s home state of Delaware in April 2019, according to the store’s owner.