What’s your opinion on their takedown of @realDonaldTrump?
As a German one thinks different about free speech than do most Americans. We know all too well where too much free speech leads and when in doubt let the courts decide because we love public peace.
Putting a muzzle on someone is interfering with political expression, which is a constitutional right. A monopolist like Twitter has no business interpreting the constitution, the issue would have to see its day in court.
This has already been tested in court in the Prager University vs Google, LLC [1] trial and was resolved very quickly. Freedom of speech does not mean another individual has to assist you in publishing or advertising your speech. You are free to shout from a soap box but no one has to provide you that soap box.
I really think people over emphasize the power that social media sites have. They own a lot of eyeball market share but they do not have the power to prevent you from publishing your opinions. Anyone can make their own website, their own Mastadon instance (see Gab if you want proof), their own Peertube instance, a lot of work is done by the open source community to make it easy to publish content not reliant on large corporations.
Considering that Parler was curbstomped by Google/Apple/AWS last week, it's safe to say that Twitter doesn't operate in a naturally competitive market.
There are dozens of webhosts other than Google/Apple/AWS and plenty of ways to collocate directly. Even if you wanted to host something no provider could touch, you could publish a front
Picking some of the most recognizable and PR influenced companies in the world to host your publicly and deliberately controversial content is just plain stupid. They could have just seen how the pirate bay responded and copied them. Heck, since Parlor didn't host anything actually illegal, they could have potentially used the .swiss or .ch TLD since Switzerland has pretty strong anti-censorship laws.
[1] https://archive.vn/yrlwA [2] https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/14/pirate_bay_cofounder_...
I think you underestimate the power that social media has. The mass 80% doesn't give a fuck about Mastodon or even leave the domains of Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Amazon. This isn't the year 2004 - getting anyone to use a shitty knockoff of Twitter or the like is always going to be an uphill battle. It's due to a few things, namely an accumulation of wealth and confluence with the mainstream media apparatus that wants access to that wealth by proxy. Go ahead and make your own competitor to Twitter and report back to us in a year. Don't be surprised when the MSM labels it in a way that scares off the 80-90%.
You say, in the midst of a discussion amongst an international userbase on the political ramifications of a policy decision.
Let's be real about this. Social media, when you really look at it, propagates signal that makes remote events local in terms of sphere of influence. Any content can touch anyone, the globe over assuming an internet connection.
Frankly, and I apologize if this is out of turn, but I think you underestimate the power behind choosing what conversations won't take place.
Just look at the big difference that a U.S. Senate Majority leader can have in terms of the realistic chance of something being discussed.
Never, ever, underestimate the power of negation or deprioritization. In fact, it's a little funny, because being in the position to make those decisions at all is really the common definition of power/authority.
There could be more nuance involved if, for example, there were a credible claim of racial discrimination involved, but that’s obviously not the case here.
If Twitter'd been left to do anything it thought legal and wise, and only challenged via formal lawsuits or prosecutions that courts could rule on, then sure, Twitter can do whatever they want.
But now that politicians, elected officeholders, & appointed regulators have all piled-on with their opinions of what Twitter should do, "or else", might there be some government-restricting-expression issues to consider? Is it a coincidence that they only took strong action against Trump once he became a "lame duck", and the action they took will specifically please the incoming administrations' coalition?
Has the government found the perfect 1st Amendment loophole, by laundering their speech-restricting preferences through threats – "because of the implication" – while maintaining a facade of non-involvement in this "private" decision?
https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11/jack-d...
This effectively means that we are back to the old days of newspapers first, then radio, and finally TV, where a small number of media companies control what people read, hear, and see. Except, this time the power is concentrated in even fewer hands.
This raises the question of whether something should be done to turn a service like Twitter into content-agnostic platforms that can no longer decide at their own discretion what even the world's highest elected officials can and cannot say.
Just a reminder to readers that the First Amendment prevents govt (Congress, and the States) from making laws that abridge freedom of speech.
It governs the government, state actors, not Twitter or other private companies or individuals. If you are not a state actor and you want to limit speech, go bananas.
For example, think back to the Google memo, and misconception of free speech at work. This 2017 article calls the misunderstanding “tremendous”:
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2017/08...
Outlined: https://outline.com/2udPxF
Archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20200125155407/https://www.washi...
He can call a conference, but the press is not obliged to show up.
https://variety.com/2017/tv/news/cnn-white-house-press-confe...
And since that in 2017, when they figured they could skip his press conferences, it has becoming more and more normal, if I remember correctly he announced a press conference only some days ago and it was ignored by almost all major media corporations with a few exceptions (Fox for example aired him).
Why would you expect them to come the moment you want them after blasting them as fake news, and kicking them out when you dislike their questions?
Your link says that one agency (CNN) declined to broadcast one press conference. What about all the other statements and speeches? What about all the other media outlets?
https://qz.com/1503024/2018-was-the-year-the-white-house-pre...
I don't think I'm the only one who switches channels whenever that man is on.
This is a genuine question - I do not watch a lot of news. Is there a government owned platform that I don't know about? I just looked into CSPAN a bit and it is a private organization, so couldn't they also just decide to not air things?
edit: I am referring to the claim that "He can call a press conference and communicate with every American within minutes." How?
No one in America has the latter.
However we are fooling ourselves because these companies very much are bending to political pressure and acting on the behalf of that. You can pretty much try to throw up all the exceptions to that claim you want but in the end you a few issues which show it, first being they don't want to invite further regulatory control over their industry, second they don't want legal liability for actions of those who use their platforms, third they respond to the whims of their management and to a certain point their employees on who they let use their systems.
People must recognize that politicians exert undo influence over all businesses simply because they can change the law and regulatory structure they operate under. It easily explains why so many politicians move into cushy business jobs in not slot their friends and family into the same. Its the cost of doing business. Established political players simply have too much power.
In our case Twitter’s private property rights trump the President’s rights. The President is the President and the President can always get a message out if he wants; Twitter on the other hand is not obligated to serve as a medium of Government communications and if they had IP banned the White House and Capitol at any point in their history, and maybe IP banned the equivalents in other countries, who would be able to say they couldn’t?
But in an internet-enabled world, in a country that values the right to free speech, there should be wholly unbiased platform that allows anyone to promote their speech to anyone else who wants to listen, as long as it is not speech that is already considered illegal (as decided by the courts, not unnamed corporate arbiters of truth).
People keep making the argument that "free speech isn't the same as right to have a platform / be signal boosted" or whatever, and I think that was true in the past. When the most you could do to broadcast was stand on the street corner and yell out your speech, that idea applied. But in this day and age, information flow is so strong that someone who has their broadcasting ability cut off effectively has their speech cut off.
Imagine trying to exercise your free speech in a world where, whenever you tried to say something, there was someone there to just yell 1000x louder than you so that you were totally drowned out. In a world where so much of our communication is happening over internet channels, this is essentially what we're talking about when we "deplatform" someone.
If you will indulge a bit of doomsaying, three recent trends should be more worrying to you:
- The current administration's actions against net neutrality
- ISP terms of use clauses against running any kind of server on "residential" connections
- "unlimited [insert streaming service] included!" data plans
Debate over where twitter should ban any users is wasteful bike-shedding in the conversation around modern communication.
If you don't agree, then you can go to court.
Eg. Otherwise Twitter would have to go to court to remove potential bots. Which would result in millions of lawsuits across countries.
That's not realistic
I wouldn't allow Donald Trump to give a speech from my backyard -- that's not an impingement on his rights.
Maybe courts work differently in Germany, but one word I would absolutely never use to describe them is "quick".
Furthermore, courts in the US tend to be extremely skeptical of what is called "prior restrain". And describing what ought to be proscribed is especially complicated by Trumps use of innuendo and circumspection. He almost never says anything directly, even when it's pretty much apolitical - see for instance him explaining what Uranium is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCnKtzQpCSs
It seems that courts are now being used as some sort of universal arbiter in every disagreement instead of using them for what they are for: decide on legal disputes. Not ever disagreement is a legal dispute but treating it like that makes society brittle and dystopian.
There is the argument that class actions are preferable to Parliament setting laws because courts are more agile, setting precedent. So Big Money got in front of that through mandatory arbitration. Why that is constitutional I couldn't tell. Perhaps it is because Congress is corrupt.