Twitter Permanently Suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Account
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
> Ms. Greene’s official Congressional account, @RepMTG, remains active because tweets from that account did not violate the service’s rules.
It's funny when politicians with entire staff committed to disseminating information complain about censorship.
This isn't like the FCC regulating the airwaves, the internet isn't a limited spectrum, and there's no reason to act as if the capacity to disseminate information over it is actually a scarce resource.
Why does the government need to built its own social media platform? We regulate other privately-owned utilities all the time. Cell phone companies, power utilities, water services, waste management, etc. This is no different - social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are fundamental services in our modern society and it is unacceptable for users to be unfairly discriminated against or banned based on their viewpoints.
> Having the government take over a private business because it decides the free speech rights of politicians should be more important than the free speech and association rights of everyone else is a bad idea.
We already do this all the time in many different ways - it’s called regulation and it is not the same as “taking over” a business, so spare me the hyperbole. The free speech of individuals is more important that the association rights of Twitter or the cabal of other tech oligopolies that are all immune to competition due to their market capitalization and network effects.
> This isn't like the FCC regulating the airwaves, the internet isn't a limited spectrum, and there's no reason to act as if the capacity to disseminate information over it is actually a scarce resource.
Actually it does bear some similarities. The scarcity is not around a ‘spectrum’ but it does exist because these products rely on network effects (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect). These network effects mean that access to users and attention is limited and there is a barrier to entry that prevents market competition from functioning properly. So there absolutely is reason to act as if the capacity to disseminate information is a scarce resource.
Plus, are we trying to force companies to let all speech through (antisemitism OK? True racism OK?), or just to force them to carry what they deem "misinformation"?
It's hard to understand exactly what the goal of this "regulation" are and it's even harder to imagine a regulatory scheme that would accomplish those goals without major unwanted side effects.
I don't think this is really true. Most people in the US don't use Twitter. Not to mention that many users are following entertainment based users or aren't fully consuming posts by those they follow.
Twitter is just an additional stream/supplement to town halls, email lists, websites, news coverage, etc.
> Political fortunes can swing on bad press releases.
> Political fortunes can swing on bad interviews.
> Political fortunes can swing on bad comments at private dinners that become public.
As they should.
https://nypost.com/2021/12/29/rep-greene-suggests-a-national...
* It's really stupid that Twitter makes old tweets invisible. First they're easily accessible by other means to technically savvy people via archive.org or whatever, so this just throws barriers in the way of the least technically educated. Second, it fosters paranoia and mistrust because conversations about the tweets begin to resemble rumors rather than fact.
Open protocols should be the default. We have W3C recommendations that make the federated social web possible.
I agree.
> the audience will move if necessary.
If we let that be the plan, then our filter bubble problem will get even worse. Everyone left of a certain point will only be on Twitter, and everyone else will only be on the fediverse. It's a lot less likely that people will follow anyone they disagree with if they'd need another account they couldn't otherwise use.
Walled-garden social is sort of the same thing in a way.
Twitter itself is under no more of an obligation to publish material from a politician than a newspaper is. Both are corporations that operate under obligations to their shareholders. If a politician really wants to publish something on Twitter, they can pay for promoted ads just like they can with a newspaper. Expecting social media platforms to promote their message for free is hopelessly naive and does not match how democracy has worked for centuries. Sure, newspapers have published political messages for free via editorials and stories, but they are not obligated to do so. Getting the message out has always required time from volunteers and/or money towards supporting the cause.
It's simply an attempt at an end-run around the free press, that's why it is so popular with the extremists and that's why the extremists do their damnest to create their own 'safe space' for their horrifying little screeds.
However, there’s presumably nothing stopping her from issuing this nonsense via press release, or on a blog, or similar.
She’s not meaningfully censored, just like Trump wasn’t: every press release he sends gets coverage, he still sends out emails to his millions of followers just fine.
I absolutely agree that termination of her Twitter account is not meaningful censorship. I'm sure it won't be long before all the networks want to interview her about it. The invitations have probably already been sent.
- Censorship bad, the state should regulate social media to not censor
- It's a private company, they can do whatever they want
Used however it fits by either political side.
Are we better than this?
Society banned private companies denying services in law to promote a better and acceptable society.
Sadly, just to re-implement it again under the same old tired argument, it's a private company...
It's not fooling anyone who is being honest, this is just banning people you don't like.
Political group is the new religious group, banning the groups you don't like shouldn't be acceptable in modern society.
Political groups are not a protected class in the United States, and for good reason. Political affiliation is not an inherent quality of a person. People's political affiliation can, and does, change.
Marjorie Taylor Green had her Twitter account terminated for breaching a written contract between her and Twitter. Her Twitter account was not terminated because she is a Republican, or because she's a woman, or because she's white, or because she's over 40, or because she's heterosexual.
During the civil rights movement, people were denied service because of the color of their skin. This didn't happen to Marjorie Taylor Green.
Also, Lets not pretend politics isn't the reason companies are banning and denying service to people.
They clearly banned her for her right leaning politics, and used terms like "misinformation". Its clearly forcing their politics onto the public by not allowing counter views, the politics that do include race, religion, and other aspects of life.
Civil rights like openly protesting for the opposite political party is indeed being squashed.
This is the same excuse thats used to silence preachers/priests who talk politics, as if the 2 are not the same.
Civil rights is politics. California knew this when they added political association to protected classes.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jun/05/naomi-wolf-ban...
< Its clearly forcing their politics onto the public by not allowing counter views, the politics that do include race, religion, and other aspects of life.
Marjorie Taylor Green posted provably false misinformation about vaccines, in clear violation of Twitters terms of service. She entered into a binding contract when she signed up for her Twitter account, and Twitter found a suitable remedy. She breached the contract and they terminated her account.
But never mind private companies. Society does not have to accommodate toxic, antisocial "counter views" in the interest of "fair and balanced". There is nothing "fair and balanced" about lies, and there aren't two sides to every debate. It's very convenient to cry censorship, but where is your call for personal responsibility on the part of Ms. Green?
< They clearly banned her for her right leaning politics, and used terms like "misinformation".
I would be interested in proof that her account was terminated for her right leaning politics.
But to say her view is toxic, would be picking sides. Her posting CDC links is pretty far from toxic.
That seems pretty much targeted for her politics.
They banned her because she was spreading information that they deemed harmful.
Now, scientists consider it unlikely, but now you are allowed to discuss it.
Of course not. They are going to be livid and more determined in their belief. Anyone defending vaccine should be angry at Twitter for making the situation worse.
Twitter should be a place where I can argue against Greene's vaccine statements when she Tweets them. She provides an excellent central point of focus to distribute correct information, a honeypot for delivering information that is right. (insert retort: yeah but that doesn't work, you can't convince people; cool, so shut it all down then, civilization is over, give up now; throw them in the gulag, that's where you have to go with that logic if you believe people are permanently beyond reason)
Based in prior variant data, it is likely the vaccines do work to prevent severe omicron cases. Feel free to clarify what is it that the vaccines work for, and which of Marjorie Taylor Greene tweets fell afoul of that.
PS. This post is in no way an endorsement of Marjorie Taylor Greene political activities, of which I know very little other than her being a Republican Congresswoman.
https://covid19danmark.dk/#gennembrudsinfektioner
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29765351
https://world.hey.com/dhh/should-you-vaccinate-your-kids-169...
What's with this gish gallop style response?
And yes, I know they can but that does not mean they should.
This won’t change minds. This will only harden viewpoints and invite political and regulatory scrutiny.
She is a Congressional Representative.
This isn't about shutting her up. Its about Twitter coming out and saying that they agree that she's a loon. No one actually expects a member of Congress to be permanently shut up over something like this.
--------
When '@dang' comes around here and deletes posts, its about pushing the discussion in the direction they want for this website.
The _ONLY_ moderating action internet citizens have is moderation: deletion of posts, soft-banning, permanent bans, and the like. There's no other possible effect available for Twitter (or other social media) to come down on unruly users.
But Twitter doesn't. Hacker News doesn't. Reddit doesn't.
All three of these large Social Media sites require moderators to police the actions of their users. This isn't new or exotic, this is just how the web typically works. Forums, Usenet, Mailing lists, IRC, BBS, its always been like this.
If you want to try to make a new social network with different moderation systems (ex: user-based blocking), feel free to do so. But I've hung out enough on 8-chan to know that you'll have to deal with Swatters and Doxxers almost immediately, who are looking for an unmoderated coordination medium, and they'll take advantage of your features. You'll also have to deal with lesser forms of spam and advertisements: Cryptocoin spam these days, but it used to be Viagra, or Nigerian Prince scams.
-------
The question isn't "Twitter shouldn't be allowed to moderate its users". The question is if Twitter made the right move here or not.
So now lets actually discuss the crux of the issue: is spreading COVID19 misinformation a big enough reason to warrant a banning? I of course agree with the move. Our hospitals are filling up with the Omicron variant and the vast majority of these patients are not-vaccinated. Twitter leveraging their reputation to say that Marjorie Taylor Green is a net benefit to society.
There's nothing preventing you from implementing your own social network with those rules.
Hacker News is a forum for business ideas and web-based technologies after all, built around an angel fund / venture capital slant.
But I'm trying to tell you that you'll end up relying upon user-based moderation for many cases: including simple cases like spam from new users or VPNs. Maybe even IP-based blocking as certain unsavory groups of people tend to cluster around certain IP addresses.
I responded to your statement that 'The _ONLY_ moderating action internet citizens have is moderation [...]'; I'm just pointing out that while that is true for twitter users at present, Twitter could experiment with other approaches if they felt like it. I'm not saying they must or they should, just that nothing prevents them. I responded in handwavey terms because your comment about 'internet citizens' seemed pretty open-ended.
But I'm trying to tell you that you'll end up relying upon user-based moderation for many cases
OK? That's the idea I was exploring. It worked to some extent on NNTP, where people would maintain 'killfiles' and different Usenet groups were more or less protective of their cohesion. I'm not suggesting it as some sort of magic bullet, just saying that centralized moderation is not the only possible approach.
And arguably not, because a huge number of NNTP servers were in fact, moderated. Especially as spam and warez started to appear on servers owned by public institutions (universities and the like), a huge chunk of USENET split into the alt.* unmoderated groups, and the other, centrally moderated groups.
Let her go elsewhere
It's the same reason why we care about murder of an elected official more than a murder of any other person.
She'll go to fox news or parler.
That if anyone else had said what Marjorie Taylor Greene had said, they would be subject to action by Twitter under its own stated policies, but the rules just shouldn't apply to her?
Last I remember Maxine Waters was calling for public harassment without consequence.
Like it or not, they have a perfect right to terminate her account for any legal reason, including breach of contract. For the record, Twitter doesn't even need a "reason" as long as they don't terminate her for an illegal reason.
This might be difficult to understand, but it's not censorship.
When people say "hang the rich" on Twitter do you see them getting banned? Twitter specifically says they do not accept appeal to violence, but in reality they only censor the language they don't agree with.
If you believe these people constitute a direct threat to the safety of the rich, why don't you report them?
Marjorie Taylor Greene has VASTLY more ability to get her messages out, and to therefore express herself, than the average American citizen. She can go on Fox News or MSNBC or she can have her office send out press releases. Please stop saying this is censorship. This is NO WAY meets any accepted definition of censorship in the frame you are using.
In an ideal world, big tech would have more regulation and would have, due to their size, certain regulations on their behavior and who they choose not to do business with, not just in the political sphere.
An example (to draw an extreme example to make my point), Visa and MasterCard (due to their size) couldn’t just say screw OnlyFans. They are too large and influential especially together.
The argument "I know they can but that does not mean they should" doesn't imply that when they don't do something they shouldn't do they lose the ability to do it... I shouldn't be a jerk, but I do believe I have the legal right to be a jerk, so I guess by your argument I need to be a jerk and I guess no one should even call me out for it? That doesn't make any sense: Twitter currently can do this stuff; and yet, despite that, they shouldn't.
class Corporation : public Person
It's for the same reason mediocre OOP programmers use inheritance to borrow some partial implementation. It gets the job done, even if it doesn't quite fit.
Believe it or not, government regulations don't have to be the solution to every little thing.
See saurik's comment below for more.
Furthermore, because Twitter isn't the government, it's probably incorrect to use "censor" or "censorship" at all. "Discrimination" is the correct word to use if a corporation like Twitter terminated her account for an illegal reason. For example: if Twitter terminated her account because she was a woman or a person of color or a member of a protected class.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censor
That doesn't apply? The common definition of censor is not exclusive to government.
By banning people based on the content of their speech, Twitter is precisely engaging in censorship. Just because they haven't called their department head responsible for handing out bans a "Censor" does not mean their constructive behavior is something new that we don't have a word for!
Furthermore, immediately referencing the Bill of Rights to call Twitter's activities "freedom of expression" is wantonly destructive to any sort of discussion. The US Bill of Rights takes natural rights and narrowly frames them in terms of restrictions on government, because that is likely the best that can be done at its level of abstraction. The scale Twitter operates at is much closer to that of government than that of the People - it is most certainly appropriate to say that Twitter is impinging upon individuals' freedom of speech. If you do not agree that it is a concern, then go ahead and make that argument on its own merits. Narrowly construing definitions so that you can discard concerns does not make for productive understanding.
(Having said that my own feeling here is that Ms. Ignorance-as-a-Service has reaped what she has sown, is of a notoriety that is legible to Twitter, and can easily publish on other platforms - compare with all the unnoteworthy individuals who get the automated banhammers with no appeal. And this will ultimately just be a boon to her, just like any other celebrity feud. But let us not twist our own definitions to assuage our cognitive dissonance!)
It's absolutely appropriate to reference the Bill of Rights. As a collection of individuals, Twitter is legally entitled to both freedom of expression and freedom of association. That said, Twitter also has every right to ban Marjorie Taylor Green for breach of contract.
> The scale Twitter operates at is much closer to that of government than that of the People.
I'm sorry, but this argument is objectively false. You cannot compare the power of Twitter to the nearly unfathomable power of the three branches of the US government. Twitter can't levy taxes. Twitter can't declare war. Twitter can't prosecute you and/or put you in jail. Twitter simply doesn't have these powers.
Furthermore by your simplistic definition, the US Government is also just "a collection of individuals". And while that collection has (conceptually) agreed to be bound by the Bill of Rights, there are clearly greater concepts at play than what has been legally defined - the US Bill of Rights does not have a monopoly on the definition of natural rights!
But talking in this framework is ultimately unproductive - it hinders making judgements on the actual details of the relationships, "contractual" or otherwise. And so discussions of individual freedom must necessarily focus on overall qualitative behavior and not simply condoning anything conforming to some axiomatic framework.
In this case, Marjorie Taylor Green's Twitter account was terminated for breach of contract. She was an adult when she signed a written contract with Twitter and opened her account. According to Twitter, she breached the agreement and they elected to choose a remedy that some people don't like. That's just too bad. She isn't facing arrest or imprisonment as a result of her statements. She can go ahead and sue them in civil court if she disagrees!
< whereby it can do all of those internal-facing "exceptional" things you listed
I'm sorry, I hate to repeat myself, but a corporation cannot levy taxes, cannot jail people, cannot execute someone, cannot declare war, all of which a government can do through a variety of legal means. In fact, the US government has so much power that it can do these things through extra legal means and face no consequences whatsoever.
Twitter does not have this kind of power, and I am rightly suspicious of arguments that attempt to frame the situation otherwise, no matter how elegantly or abstractly presented.
This is the legal analysis of how Twitter can do this, which I understand. But you keep asserting it as if it is some universal truth, without engaging with my actual arguments about the constructive result of such framework.
> a corporation cannot levy taxes, cannot jail people
Except that it can - you can sign a contract agreeing to some schedule of charges (called "taxes") or to have to spend time in a certain place (called "jail").
> cannot execute someone
The only reason you cannot sign a contract that allows for your execution as a consequence of default is because your bare ability to contract has been restricted by the larger government.
You're right, the censorship happened even before that: Twitter's contract that says "you're not allowed to express any of these opinions" is the root of the censorship.
Twitter should not censor anybody off their platform when the courts consider them a public forum, let alone elected officials.
The monopolistic cabal of Twitter, Facebook and Google changes how this should be seen.
Imho - you either break them up into a 100 companies, or you legally ban them from censorship.
If you find yourself reacting to this news with too neat and tidy of a response, that is a good sign that you may need to spend some time trying to understand and empathize with alternative perspectives and that you may need to spend some time trying to understand why this is such a complicated (and consequential) issue for the United States government and Twitter to navigate.
I get a lot of value from Twitter because I follow a few awesomely interesting people, but I could probably get the same effect by bookmarking their blogs.
People should have access to all information, and filter for themselves what is trash. I don’t want Twitter, news media, etc. filtering.
I have started to just pay attention to a small number of people: Lex Fridman, Joe Rogan, Matt Taibbi, and Noam Chomsky. That is a small sample size, but enough diversity for me.
I am having some difficulty deciding whether I think the major Platforms should be public regulated services or the property of companies that can do anything they want to with their property. My opinion changes on this…
It's a fine orthogonal discussion. There are several things worth considering in my mind:
* Perhaps these social media platforms are defectively designed
* Section 230 may need to be amended so that billion-dollar companies have more to hold them to account when things spread on their platforms
* CEOs could be criminally prosecuted when their companies lie (e.g., Facebook's ad revenue fraud in promoting FB video)
I think there are far better reasons to consider leaving social media than them suspending the personal account of a known provocateur who breaks rules all the time (her official government account is intact).
edit: one of two accounts. Her personal account, not her official account.
> People should have access to all information, and filter for themselves what is trash. I don’t want Twitter, news media, etc. filtering.
And people still do -- Marjorie can start a blog on a vps and I'm sure most providers would be reasonably okay with it, unless she became a DDoS target (possible).
If you are upset because the people that gave her that platform said "you are doing it wrong" this happens in the physical world too. If you show up to a sports arena (a place with a large group of people that are captive) and hang a sign in the stands with an "unacceptable" message, the arena will ask you to take it down or force you to.
Platforms have a brand, and they are filtering for their own brand reputation.
I hate that our web is more "centralized" but all of these actions are going to enable more decentralization to happen because of it.
Poor analogy. A sports arena is one big room for sport, not messaging. If people stood on soapboxes and yelled their off-topic ideas at everyone in the arena, they would be asked to leave regardless of what their messages were.
Twitter's purpose is publishing messages on any topic. It is not one big room where everyone must hear everyone else. The equivalent "doing it wrong" on Twitter is not (or shouldn't be) dissenting views or objections to vaccines. Doing it wrong on Twitter should be confined to inappropriate use of the API or some other technical misuse that actually impacts other users. Or posting illegal material or hate speech.
I don't remember anyone asking Big Tech companies to act as helicopter parents, protecting readers via censorship from ideas that don't align with current public policy.
Reasonable people should not condemn cancel culture; reasonable people should support efforts to cancel racism, sexism, ageism, and the other -isms that cause profound harm to members of our societies. It's not really that difficult to not make racist, sexist, or homophobic remarks.
I was thinking of what Bill Mahr, on his HBO show, talks about as far as cancelling appearances at universities of people who were invited to talk, and then some subgroup protested that they didn’t like their opinions. I am also thinking of cancelling people whose political opinions vary, and also in this case an elected Congresswoman who has some very wrong ideas about the dangers of vaccinations.
I think that racist, etc. remarks are easier to filter and discard than political ideas. I feel comfortable using automated filters to discard racist, sexist, and homophobic remarks, but I am not comfortable discarding political speech.
I'm going to assume that you have good intent here, but usually "some subgroup" is dog whistle for a repressed group such as persons of color or gay people. I hope that marginalized subgroups continue to protest and get people canceled, and I intend to continue paying and donating my time and effort to make sure they can get the canceling done.
< didn’t like their opinions
Very often these "canceled" opinions include one or more of the "big three": ideology that is sexist, racist, or homophobic. People espousing these beliefs should face consequences for their behavior; they should be canceled. Society does not have to accept the toxic notion that a system should be "fair and balanced" to accommodate poisonous, antisocial ideas and behavior.
The old system, the system that accommodated these poisonous, antisocial ideas was responsible for ruining many lives because people thought it was okay to say that people should not be able to get divorced, or go to college, or have birth control, or earn an equal living, or have a bank account or credit card. Or live in a certain neighborhood. And when it was okay to say it, it was okay to put it into public and private policy alike. You could be fired for being gay, or pregnant, or not hired. You couldn't live in a certain neighborhood if you were African American, unless you wanted to find burning crosses outside your house at night. You could be jailed for engaging in private, consensual gay sex in some US jurisdictions until 2003.
So forgive me if I take a little liberty here. I think it's totally okay for people to assemble and protest a speaker because they don't agree with their political views. It's equally okay for a university to cancel an appearance because they or their students or faculty don't agree with the political positions of the speaker. I can't remember a single instance in my life where I ever made political speech, or any other speech, that called for the repression of any group or sub-group of society simply because I felt like it, or because I read about it in some book written in the Judean or Arabian deserts several millennia ago.
Cancel culture is just the free market at work. I found that explaining it this way to conservatives helped them understand why it was necessary (and I am not assuming you are a conservative).
We have open standards (W3C recommendations) even, and these protocols can be adopted by the content management system used by House.Gov. Congress Critters need to become part of the Fedi.
They (being the House of Representatives) absolutely should own their namespace and operate under 'house.gov'.
Facebook and Twitter could even provide this service, as a commercially managed hosted endeavor (look at how Gmail is white-labeled as "Google Workspace" and sold as a service on a portable domain name).
A cursory look at the raw VAERS data from the CDC[1] shows:
Reports of adverse events to VAERS following vaccination, including deaths, do not necessarily mean that a vaccine caused a health problem. (...) During this time, VAERS received 10,688 reports of death (0.0022%) among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine. CDC and FDA clinicians review reports of death to VAERS including death certificates, autopsy, and medical records.
In contrast, the CDC[2] estimates that 817k people have died of Covid-19 in the US which puts the mortality at 248 deaths per 100k individuals. Currently, an unvaccinated individual has 20x the risk of dying from Covid-19 than someone with a booster.
I am no first amendment scholar, but spreading lies that increase people rate of mortality by 20x seems pretty close to the "shouting fire in a crowded theater" exception to protected speech. That puts aside the fact that Twitter is a private platform, thus first amendment laws do not apply.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/ad... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/mortality-overview.htm
https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...
* Advocacy of force or criminal activity does not receive First Amendment protections if (1) the advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action, and (2) is likely to incite or produce such action. *
From that quote, I think it is pretty clear that the posts from Marjorie Greene would not pass the test and are thus eligible for first amendment protection (if Twitter was a government entity).
Caveat: Not an American, just a curious neighbour to the north.
[1] https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/970/incitement-to-i... [2] https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/189/brandenburg-v-o...
When Twitter does an action like this, or any other media platform, it is rarely done by a single person on a whim. It is a collective decision by a number - 2, 3 or maybe more - of people.
The crazy part that this decision is solely one-sided. Twitter doesn't care if this person is right or wrong, their understanding is that this person is spreading misinformation and that's it. And in a case like this, it is most certainly amplified by the stature of the person in question.
Who says the information is right or wrong? Well, I'd bet that it is also a collective of people. In this case, it is probably scientists and health professionals. Who, of course, in due course could also be found out to have been wrong.
But, Twitter is clearly omni-sentient and can see that their decision is the right one.
edit to add: That said, she can say things on C-SPAN that would get the congressional account suspended too (see: Trump hopping accounts as they got suspended after the initial ban). And those things would be reported by people who can do so under the cover of reporting, so it's not like she has any less reach for the goofballery now.
It'd be like getting banned from one station, perhaps. Radio? To my knowledge the FCC has never banned anyone from the airwaves.
This pretense that the big social networks are so big that politicians must be granted access is just poisonous beyond belief to what the internet is. No one is stopping MTG from setting up countless points of her own presence, or sharing links to MTG-related media on Twitter.
Alas, that getting banned from one of the big networks is a crude, de-facto facsimile to a truth is quite the sad sign of the state of affairs. That we have become so very centralized, that our primary way of connecting is via such heavily centralized pillars that hold up so very much of the online experience is nothing short of a travesty. I mainly try to calm myself by reminding myself how recent all this is, how new. And assuring myself of their inability to create new & visionary ways of connecting; the big networks are beholden to their experience as massified, consumerized, common experiences. Their own impermissiveness, their own slowly closing, setting ever more fast in concrete rules & expectations bring hope that the frontier & more open communications might rise again.
It's more like if one company owned a large proportion of radio stations in every town, and that company banned you.
It's more like getting banned from one radio station in the 1940s and going "Who cares? She can still go on a bunch of other radio stations, and most people are capable of tuning in, if they want to."
She's on Facebook. She's on Gab. She's on Parler. She's on Gettr. She went on a cross-country tour last year. She appears on TV and will probably get even more TV appearances out of this. Anyone who wants to hear whatever she's saying has their choice of outlets from which to do so.
And if they can easily get away with censoring people who "get to whine about it on C-SPAN", it is certain that you and I and the rest of the plebeians have absolutely no recourse. That is not OK.
More specifically, most of the examples at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_censorship seem to be ones where a company exercised its First Amendment right of free association.
One of the examples is when the Dixie Chicks were blacklisted by country radio stations. Surely stations have a First Amendment right to decide to not broadcast songs from a given group, especially when most of the the owners, staff, advertisers, and listeners don't want to hear them.
Another example is when Sinclair Broadcast Group decided to not broadcast Nightline's list of the US soldiers who had died in Iraq. Surely that too was an exercise of Sinclair's right of free association, this time based on their belief that Nightline stepped too far from news into politicizing.
I don't even see how Amazon's ban on preorders of Captain America: The Winter Soldier in disc form can be called 'censorship' - it looks like normal predatory business practices which Disney should be familiar with. (Disney's own self-censorship of Song of the South would be another example of the oddity of extending the concept of "censorship" outside of the political realm.)
To be certain, the examples where a company acted due to concerns about political consequences are censorship. But that's the "normal" government censorship, simply mediated through private organizations.
I completely agree that free association is NOT an absolute right for companies! There is a tension with the rights of others, as with US civil rights laws that prohibit companies that do business with the public from discriminating on the basis of race, religion, etc.
But, what's the tension here?
If Twitter doesn't want to be associated with Greene, well, there's a long history of publishing companies, broadcast stations, newspapers, and more, who have decided to not be associated with someone. After all, that's the essence of free association.
> absolutely no recourse
Exaggeration like that seems a bit of a trite diversion/straw man. Very few of us plebians have "absolutely no recourse". You can hold a sign and protest on the street corner, or print out fliers and pass them out, or go door-to-door.
Those aren't as effective as being Robert Murdoch, but we can't all be media moguls.
What would be OK to you, and also not be unconstitutional? (Or, what amendment would you want?)
Followup question: If I don't agree to Twitter's Terms of Service, and no other service can provide any where to the same recourse as Twitter, can those terms I disagree to be nullified?
Censorship is censorship even when it is not done by the government. I am not sure what point you’re making here. Leaving that aside, I would say this is actually also, in part, an action by the government. Glenn Greenwald has written extensively about this (https://greenwald.substack.com/p/democrats-and-media-do-not-...) but the summary is that private companies seeking favor with the current administration are incentivized to take actions that grant the sitting government power, in order to avoid undesired scrutiny or legislative action.
> This is not the poster case for trying to prove tech has too much power.
It absolutely is. There is no reason to take an action like this unless there is power in that action. There’s no negative harm to Twitter in terms of user retention or advertiser attractiveness from having Rep Greene stay on their platform. The reason Twitter’s biased employees and leaders are taking such actions is because they know it will meaningfully impact Rep Greene’s ability to be heard, which favors their politics and ideology. They have that power because Twitter, like most of big tech, is too big and is too shielded from competition due to network effects. Twitter is a telecom utility service, nothing more. It needs to be regulated just like we regulate power utilities or telecom companies.
> There's a long list of marginalized people suspended for no good reason who don't get to whine about it on C-SPAN or through their press office.
Ah yes, everyone who is unjustly censored by a private cabal of hyper-powerful tech companies is “whining”. You know full well that alternate channels don’t have the same visibility or reach, so this is a facile argument, even leaving aside your pejorative framing of those who are against censorship.
Does anyone have a link to the tweet in question? It's interesting that it was labeled the chart as "misleading" as opposed to based on doctored data. It appears being factual is not enough and you could "mislead" depending on how you present it. But "mislead" from what precisely? A policy decision? It relates to the whole shift from "disinformation" to "misinformation", which has a much broader scope.
Either way, I always feel a little weird about a private corporation censoring a democratically elected politician, especially when concerning political speech. I get that its their platform, but its not without political influence. The white house has admitted to be in close contact with all the large social media companies regarding what is 'misinformation', going so far as to flag posts [0]. There's definitely a risk of political interference
[0] https://mleverything.substack.com/p/what-would-government-ce...
I don't agree with government compelling speech for a private company either.
The technical answer is: Verizon can't hear what you're saying to your mom, so they don't know/care the content.
The social answer is: ultimately there's no real difference between the two. If you use your Verizon phone to make harassing calls to your mom and she reports those calls to Verizon, or if you do something else that violates your agreement with Verizon, they too have the right to terminate your service:
"We can, without notice, limit, suspend or end your Service or any agreement with you for any good cause, including, but not limited to: (1) if you: (a) breach this agreement or violate our prohibited usage policies..."
Now, because you pay Verizon, and Verizon likes money, they may be more inclined to tolerate certain behavior as long as you pay your bill on time. That's their choice, though.
There's obviously a conversation to be had on what should be protected.
> Q Thanks, Jen. Can you talk a little bit more about this request for tech companies to be more aggressive in policing misinformation? Has the administration been in touch with any of these companies and are there any actions that the federal government can take to ensure their cooperation, because we’ve seen, from the start, there’s not a lot of action on some of these platforms.
> MS. PSAKI: Sure. Well, first, we are in regular touch with these social media platforms, and those engagements typically happen through members of our senior staff, but also members of our COVID-19 team, given, as Dr. Murthy conveyed, this is a big issue of misinformation, specifically on the pandemic.
> In terms of actions, Alex, that we have taken — or we’re working to take, I should say — from the federal government: We’ve increased disinformation research and tracking within the Surgeon General’s office. We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation. We’re working with doctors and medical professionals to connect — to connect medical experts with popular — with popular — who are popular with their audiences with — with accurate information and boost trusted content. So we’re helping get trusted content out there.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/202...
https://twitter.com/johncardillo/status/1477663920349499400/...
the complaint seems to be her presentation is misleading. i can understand that. if you give some medical treatment to a large number of people then some of them are going to be harmed by it but the benefits to individuals could still exceed the harm. but if we apply the same kind of logic then i feel twitter's warning text is misleading. it is not the complete picture whether COVID 19 vaccine is considered 'safe' for a person. what is important for an individual when making a decision whether to take the vaccine or not is whether the benefits exceed the costs. a vaccine might be 'safe' but the costs might still exceed the benefits if the risk differential between vaccinated and unvaccinated is low enough.
Banning her or anyone like her who spreads lies is perfectly within Twitter's terms of service. The issues is doing it consistently.
I can't tell you how many times I have reported lies about elections and Covid on twitter and almost always it's "We found nothing wrong with this".
I'm assuming it's something like the numbers of vaccine complications reports have gone up in objective numbers but not relative to numbers of vaccinations and that could look scary on a graph - or something like that.
But why do I have to guess or search out the information myself? I would think a news article could and should easily incorporate this.
The big problem with this reporting style is that reality could be either Twitter unjustifiably censoring people because they don't like their politics by making harsh rule interpretations, or MTG repeatedly sharing harmful misinformation and deserving a ban. Because the NYT won't actually show information the reader is left not knowing and likely believing an interpretation based on what they thought going in to the article.
Also, according to the article, it seems like her strikes were for subjective comments. If this is the case, that strikes me as doubly wrong. According to the article:
> Twitter suspended Ms. Greene’s account after she tweeted on Saturday, falsely, about “extremely high amounts of Covid vaccine deaths.” She included a misleading chart that pulled data from a government database of unverified raw data.
The phrase "extremely high amounts of Covid vaccine deaths" seems to be a true subjective opinion if there were some non-zero number of Covid vaccine deaths. People might disagree on whether an objective number should be subjectively described as high or low, but it seems like that's an opinion.
Also, why describe a chart as misleading? Why not describe it as false information? There's a big difference. Whether you disagree with her data or not, Twitter deciding that a government chart is "misleading" is kind of horrifying as a precedent because data could still be true and marked as misleading. Are they going to ban politicians from discussing budget charts or crime statistics in public debates if they decide that it's misleading with no objective basis?
> The company had issued her a fourth strike in August after she falsely posted that the vaccines were “failing.”
Whether a government policy is failing or not seems highly subjective. Is this really vaccine misinformation?
> Ms. Greene was given a third strike less than a month before that when she had tweeted that Covid-19 was not dangerous for people unless they were obese or over age 65, and said vaccines should not be required.
Based on the survival rates for people in these categories, many people would say that this is accurate and based on a subjective risk-management analysis. It's certainly less dangerous for young and non-fat people. Did this really merit a strike even by their convoluted logic? Certainly not.
I’m assuming the “government database” is VEARS, which is using raw, unverified data. It would be like if someone took NextDoor or Shotspotter reports to derive crime statistics.
Here is the direct link: https://vaers.hhs.gov/esub/index.jsp
Even though it seemed weird he immediately suggested switching to something else.
Doctors don’t apply a robotic “this could never happen” approach when dealing with unexpected side effects, regardless of whether there’s empirical evidence for them or not.
In fact, speaking on data, couldn't we say that almost all data is imperfect to some extent? Isn't this especially true of Covid-related data?
Knowing that some data is imperfect, can it still be a useful data point for understanding the world? Is it unreasonable to use ShotSpotter as a tool in your toolbox for understanding the world just because we believe it to be imperfect?
Likewise for VAERS it makes more sense to look at the abundant amounts of analyzed information, or else provide a critique for why existing analysis was wrong. Presenting low-quality data without caveats or explanation to disprove higher-quality information seems to fall within the realm of misinformation.
They can, and should, ban all these lunatics, and they shouldn't need any kind of ridiculous TOS justification to do so.