Elon Musk says he would reverse Twitter's permanent Trump ban
axios.com
axios.com
Trump violated the rules a lot for years building up to finally getting banned… and he deserves the ban. Being important and famous doesn’t change the fact he deserves his ban. Anything you do to undermine this undermines the validity of ALL bans no matter how justified and appropriate each ban was.
If re-litigating the past is pointless…
> Trump violated the rules a lot for years building up to finally getting banned
…then why was his past behavior relevant when banning him for what was allegedly a single action?
Also…
> Anything you do to undermine this undermines the validity of ALL bans
That’s the point. Many were not valid.
It's useful to consider how this would have played out if large platforms were present during other parts of history. Many of the speeches given civil rights protesters incited some violence, often not the fault of the orator, but would it have triggered a ban?
It's easy to advocate for permanent corporate bans when the people on your side control the company, but will that always be the case? How will your stance change if the Murdoch family buys FB and bans anyone that posts about a BLM protest if it contains any violence whatsoever?
I feel so protected knowing I wasn't allowed to discuss that story during election season. Not that I would have voted for the ineffectual Trump anyway, but still..
I find the rationale weak, Biden objectively has incited magnitudes more violence on twitter by constantly tweeting about how Putin is destroying the global economy and criticising Putin's war, something likely to "incite violence". Far far more than violence than we saw in 2020. It's just that people including Twitters administration are broadly sympathetic with him and supportive of violent resistance.
What Trump got banned for is not inciting violence, but for being an asshole. You can ban any president you please if the standard is "inciting violence" because they'll do hundreds of things in their term that incites violence no matter what they do. It's not the case that twitter will ban everybody who incites violence, they just reserve the right to selectively ban anybody who does.
But this is not a question of politics. It is a question of integrity of which Trump has none.