I don’t care what she said, it is not the job of private businesses to censor elected officials.
And yes, I know they can but that does not mean they should.
And yes, I know they can but that does not mean they should.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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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.
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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