Jack Dorsey says he agrees with reversing Trump's Twitter ban
axios.com
axios.com
I'm pretty sure Musk would ignore any phone calls from Thiel.
Furthermore, Thiel didn't make Musk rich. When PayPal was sold to eBay Musk was the single largest shareholder of PayPal, which should tell you who was the most responsible for PayPal's success.
https://www.benzinga.com/news/22/05/26922872/elon-musk-wants...
"A source who spoke to both men said that Musk thinks Thiel is "a sociopath," and Thiel considers Musk "a fraud.""
https://www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiel-elon-musk-relati...
""Life is too short for long-term grudges" Elon Musk on Peter Thiel's coup to be PayPal CEO": https://nitter.net/nitashatiku/status/735273960703545344
Yeah, they're perfect for one another.
Dorsey has always been part of the crop of Enlightenment-liberal tech CEOs, which includes Larry, Sergey, and Zuckerberg. It got memory-holed pretty quickly, but these guys were dragged kicking and screaming into the new illiberal consensus that it was their job to decide what users are allowed to talk about. At a certain point, they bowed to the emerging illiberal consensus, for fear of both political and employee-revolt consequences. It is business, after all.
(I was at Google for the first half of the last decade, and it was eerie to see the employee culture slowly get colonized by the culty illiberal-left perspective)
Culture is weird, and can shift dramatically between equilibria. Now that the conversation has shifted, a lot of these figures feel like they have cover to start expressing their beliefs again without those who disagree being able to gin up any financial consequences.
Just to be explicit for all the rabid fans, I'm not against Thiel, Musk, Zuckerberg or any other tech CEO. On the contrary, they have so much impact and are involved in multiple projects in so little time. I'm not proposing any conspiracy of them wanting to control us or whatever straw-man argument others are injecting on my comment. It's interesting to see this deal unfold from a business perspective with all the different stakeholders involved, and the flip-flopping of Dorsey's decisions.
I don't know if you did this intentionally, but there's some rhetorical sleight-of-hand here that prevents it from cohering logically. This isn't a case of "not contradicting" the new buyer. Dorsey _actively tweeted out_ that he supported reversing the Trump ban. If he had simply not spoken on the issue at all, how on Earth would you consider that "contradicting the person he is selling to"? Note that in the converse scenario, he never actively tweeted out that he happened to personally agree with increasing speech restrictions.
There's a pretty obvious asymmetry here: a period of silent assent with heavier speech codes vs active support for lighter speech codes (where the latter is also consistent with tangentially-expressed personal views).
- Back then Jack, active CEO, enacted this ban.
- Now Musk goes out and says he would revert.
- Even in the wild case (I personally think it is not the case) which Jack fervently would still believe that the ban should go on, why do it? why add drama to a business deal and say "no, Musk is wrong"? that would just sour the whole business deal that he would benefit from. Or why would anyone be antagonistic to someone on the other side of the table, this applies to any other business deal not just this.
- Reporters or anybody would naturally question Jack, hey the new owner is saying this do you want to go on the record about why the new owner is against something that happened on your command? Paraphrasing: "Yes, I agree with him now, lets move on". Very diplomatic and 'correct' answer from his part.
– Back then Jack, active CEO, enacted this ban.
Of course there is. Twitter's owner appoint managers who hire people to oversee censorship on the platform. These choices themselves are already biased towards the owners' interests and points of view. If you add to this ability of rich and powerful people/organizations to harass or influence Twitter, the bias is even stronger.
Having said that - the tweet Trump was suspended for:
https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio...
does not seem like an incitement of violence.
It's probably not in the public interest to broadcast every person's incitations of violence or bigotry, but the president? Yes. Certainly you're not implying you should be treated exactly the same as the president of the United States...
I'm implying that the spirit of free speech should apply equally to all. If the president can come back after inciting violence, then everyone else should as well. It's not a selective principle that you get to choose how you follow.
If you don't want violent rhetoric to spread then yes, limiting free speech and universally applying those rules is a viable path to achieve that.
Otherwise, you create a regulatory environment that only applies to you if you don't have the power, political capital, or fanbase to yell loud enough in your favor.
Anyhoo, what's that got to do with twitter? Since when did they become the police?
Twitter is responsible for moderating the users their platform, regardless of whether they are free speech purists. You cannot let your users plot crimes. That's why sites like Silk Road and AlphaBay were shut down.
You can easily find tweets calling for trump and republicans to be killed on twitter from years ago and nobody bothered to ban those people so your statement rings hollow.
There is a clear double standard, pointing that out isn't whataboutism it's simply calling bullshit on someone using the incite violence argument to say trump should stay banned.
As a non American who watched the summer of 2020 riots in absolute awe I will never understand why people even mention the 6th. It just doesn't compare.
From telling a crowd that they should beat up a heckler and he'd pay their legal bills (lol), to saying "maybe some of you second amendment types can do something about Hillary", and beyond.
There's no confusion.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_impeachment_trial_of_Do...
Yes, just like there's one for left wing vs right wing. Trump was banned for violence for saying he won't attend the inauguration. Yet tweets calling for violence against the right are allowed. Many of them are years old.
You can search for yourself. Example:
* https://twitter.com/bobmorr32749439/status/15240565867375042... : "kill putin and trump and all the Republicans"
* https://twitter.com/gnarlyymarleyy/status/131111964852019609... : "can someone just assassinate trump so we can be done w this PLEASE"
“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”
Compare this "incitement to violence" against public posts calling for assassination of trump which were neither removed or resulted in bans.
The problem I have with some free speech purists is that they give me a feeling that they are persons who are more often than not unaffected by speech that can be categorised as inciting hatred towards a people, and thus they see little to no problem with being able to spread harmful bad faith speech freely on an algorithmic social media site - or any place for that matter.
It's a tricky thing for which there are no real correct answers. What I do know is that socially and politically we have several unwritten rules about what, where and how to speak about things because not abiding by those rules results in things as minor as slight embarrassment to as severe as physical violence. That is to say, things can spiral out of hand and the usefulness of speech deteriorates if some standards are not kept.
Twitter shouldn't be the judge of what an American president can say, because the American people should have already filtered out a person of such low integrity from gaining a position in such a high public office. All this time I've felt amused by how much our American friends can talk about what should or shouldn't Twitter do, but seemingly never discuss how they can as a society make sure that the executive office doesn't get filled by someone who brought their entire democratic process to disrepute.
To conclude, I think if you aren't scared of what another Trump can do to your country or its societal fabric or your personal freedoms then I see no reason why a Dorsey doesn't think Trump should be allowed to come back. The women of his country already saw what one term of Trump did to the rights they thought they had. Not all political turmoil is scary for those who are safe from politics.
There's a mirror image problem though: people in favor of regulations on speech have little reason to fear that their speech will be limited, at least in the short term. Regulators are politically-correct, so if you are politically-correct, what's the problem? (Obviously: bad things can become politically-correct, too.)
And then want to ban the book "Maus", etc. etc.
So.... when will that guy start talking about the benefits of Free Speech in China? Particularly, the Shanghai factory that Elon Musk has been so proud of?
https://finance.yahoo.com/finance/news/elon-musk-tesla-boss-...
> Jack Dorsey
Same same. Twitter bends its "free speech" in China so that it can operate in that country. Its all about the money to them, they'd rather get that Chinese-money than to piss off their new overlords and actually make a racket about free-speech issues over there.
I consider myself somewhat of a libertarian / "classical liberal". I'm therefore something of a "free speech absolutist", have no issue with gay characters, and hate the idea of banning books. Not everyone who thinks differently than you do about free speech fits into a neat little caricature.
I'm accusing my family, friends, coworkers, of being a hypocrite. Because I know them and have seen how their values have changed on this issue. They're for "free speech" and "against cancel culture" one day, and then for "banning LGBTQ+ cartoons from Netflix" the next day.
I'd consider myself a libertarian free speech absolutist. I don't think anything should be banned from Netflix. I do think what teachers say in the classroom should be carefully controlled and parents should have a lot of control over what speech their children are exposed to more generally (e.g. filters on Netflix), because children almost by definition find it extremely difficult to separate truths from untruths and are much more impressionable than adults. Part of being a parent is deciding how to raise your kids and what beliefs to teach them. That's one reason totalitarian states always try so hard to indoctrinate children - it's easy, and they're a weak spot through which adults can be attacked in turn (see the sordid history of children being convinced to spy on their parents).
A big part of the fights in the USA at the moment and in culture more generally are about this sort of underhanded tactic - where one ideology that's losing the battle of ideas tries to short circuit it by indoctrinating children. Arguably that's where CRT came from. It's not a coincidence it emerged from academia, a place filled with impressionable teenagers.
No. Maus was removed from an 8th grade curriculum list because of graphic depictions of sexuality/violence/language, but the school board sought alternative, age-appropriate works to teach about the Holocaust with (<https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2022/01/27/why-did-ten...>). To say that Maus is "banned", and not any and every other book the board decides to not include on its curriculum, is inaccurate.
Does holding freedom of speech as an ideal mean you must never dislike anything or tell anyone else that you dislike it? Is Elon giving orders to Disney+ about what they can and can't show? Is he going to ban Disney from using Twitter now because two guys kissed in a cartoon?
> and want that stuff censored off the airs.
There is indeed censorship of broadcast media but it long predates Elon or Twitter and it's done by the FCC.
> And then want to ban the book "Maus", etc. etc.
Removing a book from the curriculum and replacing it with another book that teaches pretty much the same thing is hardly "banning" it. Did students face disciplinary action or criminal charges for possessing a copy of Maus on school grounds? Did parents who bought a copy for their kids get a visit from the sheriff? Was Amazon ordered to stop selling it?
It's ridiculous. If you think about it almost all books are similarly "banned" as there are countless possible books you could have kids read and very limited time and space on the curriculum. We had the Pearson algebra textbook in high school so I guess that means the McGraw-Hill one was "banned".
Wasn't DADT instituted by the Clinton administration?
“Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Pursue” was, as official policy when implemented, a relaxation of the pre-existing hard ban on homosexuality in the military—which was a prohibition with Ask, Tell-or-face-additional-punishment-for-concealment, and Pursue any indication from any aspect of a service members personal life that might tend to suggest homosexual orientation—to a ban on public homosexual conduct.
(In practice, it tended to be much less and much less consistent of a relaxation as suggested by the official policy.)
When people are talking about the repeal of DADT, what they really are referring to is the repeal of the longstanding prohibition of homosexuality in the military, of which DADT was the last and, at least in it's overt terms the mildest, manifestation.
Also, DADT was adopted because Clinton was trying to split the baby of fulfilling his campaign promise of lifting the ban and minimizing friction with the GOP as part of a strategy to minimize risk to higher priority legislative priorities.
I see very little connection between anything that might be deemed "unacceptable" speech by Trump and the imminent overturn of Roe. Other than the fact that he got elected.
So now we're down to to "we should restrict the speech of people I don't agree with, which might get them elected."
Say...how did I end up on this hill, and why is it so slippery?
Merrick Garland should be on the court and if you disagree then you are arguing in bad faith.
You assume people can't think for themselves in any capacity so you need to protect them. That's an authoritarian mindset that needs to be removed from this country entirely.
...'twas ever thus.
But seriously: nothing in my comment was specific to any particular politician. I am a free speech absolutist because I don't trust you to judge what I'm allowed to hear. For all values of "you".
The correct reaction to "omg, this person whom I hate just won the election!" is not to censor the person in some desperate, misguided attempt to prevent people from liking him. It's to offer a better alternative in the marketplace of ideas. Asserting that you can't do this because "society is broken", or similar excuses, is just a cop-out.
looks around nervously
So instead of letting stupid people vote, you would prefer that their vote is manipulated and therefore cast for them? You would prefer a fascist state?
I have to say that I'm very uncomfortable limiting any kind of speech on the grounds that it may get the wrong person elected.
If someone says something hateful and gets elected, that's just one of the flaws of democracy. But I haven't heard of any better system.
The U.S. has checks and balances to slow down the worst of it. I mean, given how much Trump wanted to do vs how much he actually did, it's pretty clear the system worked.
I'm pro-choice, but I also know that many people aren't, and the Constitution is certainly not clear on the point. So even though I don't want Roe overturned, it's basically the system working as designed.
Even perfect systems don't produce perfect outcomes all the time. If you have an idea for improvements to the system, I'm all ears, but limiting speech of political candidates is very likely a regression. It doesn't take much imagination to see how that could be turned against you.
Anything that's not clear in the Constitution is fair game, then?
SCOTUS is not the only mechanism for preserving rights. We also have state constitutions, elected representatives, etc., and it seems like those are also (mostly) doing their part to protect bodily autonomy.
With a strong enough mandate, there could also be federal laws.
But we are in a country where not everyone agrees and the text is ambiguous, so I don't really know what you expect to happen that would be in line with democratic principles.
* One because the elected Republicans fought to deny Obama the nomination
* One because an existing Republican judge died
* And one because a Democratic judge was selfish enough to not quit ahead despite first having cancer in 1999.
retired
Actually, this rule, the so-called "Biden Rule" was created by Joe Biden in 1992 in explaining his refusal to "confirm any election-year Bush nominees leaned explicitly on the different standards applicable to divided government" [1]
> Were there a vacancy, Biden argued, Bush should “not name a nominee until after the November election is completed,” and if he did, “the Senate Judiciary Committee should seriously consider not scheduling confirmation hearings on the nomination until after the political campaign season is over.” U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP) [2]
> “Senate consideration of a nominee under these circumstances is not fair to the president, to the nominee, or to the Senate itself,” he continued. “Where the nation should be treated to a consideration of constitutional philosophy, all it will get in such circumstances is partisan bickering and political posturing from both parties and from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.” [2]
[1] https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/history-is-on-the-sid...
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/joe-biden-in-1992-no...
That's the "very little connection" you're missing.
Charitable descriptions are, at this point, unmerrited.
[1]"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people"
I think intellectual honesty would lead most people to think that Roe had to go. The only question was: do we fix it with better reasoning (if some Constitutional basis does exist), or throw it out. Casey tried to do the former but didn't quite seem to do it. So now it's gone and left to the states.
I suspect only a few states will go extreme. And they'll have to see the consequences and try to make it work, or answer to the electorate.
Oh, right. There is.
https://www.nbcnews.com/video/trump-i-will-be-appointing-pro...
The only way one might reasonably call the imminent opinion "activism" is based on stare decisis. And that's a debatable topic.
The few times Trump went against the grain he was overruled in the House and Senate, and ultimately he peacefully transferred power to the next president despite the rioting after he lost the election. So the implicit argument that he was some kind of danger to democracy or radical force that tore up the fabric of society seems like nothing more than partisanship. At the least his actions didn't seem like a huge departure from any other politician. I remember in 2016 the exact opposite people were claiming the election was rigged and the results needed to be overturned.
One difference is Hillary Clinton officially conceded the morning after the election in 2016, meanwhile Trump to this day, a year and a half later, still insists he still won the 2020 election and that it was rigged.
Those people you're referring to in 2016 also didn't storm the Capitol trying to overturn the election results by physical force.
Despite this, I don't think it was the best decision to give Trump a permanent ban on Twitter, and it's probably time to let him back on. Politics is full of people saying really stupid things and denying reality, why single him out.
It only bled other people off the platform and made them seek other platforms, further dividing and segregating people into their echo chambers even more.
Trump did get shafted on his Twitter ban, and even people that didn't seem to be supporters looked at the justification and were left perplexed. It was not a statement of facts, but there was reading between the lines and assuming the worse without gathering information. Despite any accounting of what went down that day, it does seem like the response is extremely biased and lopsided. People held on vague charges of obstruction because their cell phone data showed them outside the building are still being indefinitely detained. Whether it's Trump or his so-called co-conspirators, if there was a crime, you would think the gears of justice would turn a little faster because there's plenty of motivation.
Nope. Hillary withdrew her acceptance of the 2016 election results (<https://news.yahoo.com/hillary-clinton-maintains-2016-electi...>).
Do I need to explain what’s wrong with your reasoning?
Mucking with the Constitution, such as extending the 1st Amendment beyond restriction of government, such as suspending habeas corpus, such as fulfilling 5th Amendment requirements with secret trials, such as adding an interpretation of self-defense to the 2nd Amendment that the Founders debated and intentionally left out, is all really very dangerous because these alterations are effectively diluting our freedoms until they become unrecognizable, and it begins to look like conservative agenda to dismantle government to allow those with money and rich corporations to exploit masses of individuals without limitations.
Considering Justice Scalia's unnecessary and unsupportable and overreaching (without 2/3rds majority of Congress or the state legislatures) reinterpretation of the 2nd to include self-defense fundamentally changes the Founders intent from a selfless right to stand against tyranny to a selfish and redundant right to protect your flatscreen TV. This was nothing less than vandalism, and we are all less safe for it. It is the same with Guantanamo and the suspension of habeas. This did us no favors and reduced the rights of every citizen. It is the same thing with killing Anwar al-Awlaki (let's be clear tho, he was evil), a US citizen, without a public indictment by a Grand Jury nor a public trial, really screws everyone and is a step towards changing our world into Kafka's nightmare, and worse, because we're teetering in the edge of widespread ecosystem collapse due to the activities of big business. Once we change so much of the framework, our government will collapse, and along with it, our individual freedoms, and the slow murder of Earth will be put into overdrive. Then we'll all be dead.
So let's work out problems like the Hollywood Blacklist without mucking with the Bill of Rights.
There is nothing more tyrannical than restricting speech, which is something the Founders recognized quite well, given their own situation with the English king as well as that of their recent ancestors fleeing their European homelands for a new, tough land half a world away - it was worth the travail/travel (same root word) for that freedom.
To imagine they would see the current scenario where the government and a handful of corporations are working in cahoots to suppress expression + drive self censorship on a scale unlike anything in our history, and go "Yip, working as intended." is just disingenuous.
I strongly disagree. And Jefferson was not talking about ochlocracy, which is itself tyrannical. You think the Founders were unaware of commerce and business during their era? Why did they then intentionally limit government with the Bill of Rights, and not also have it restrict business and private citizens? Because doing so would create less freedom and less security.
Look at the text of the Amendment:
Congress shall make no law... prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech
So if you do want to limit corporations with Free Speech, you can so so, that is what the Tenth Amendment is for.
Please stop assaulting the Bill of Rights with not very well thought out and fundamentally self-entitled and capricious whims. Only 2/3rd majority of Congress or of the state legislatures can change the Constitution. It is set as a high standard intentionally. Try to understand why. Because it's not about you and what you want, it is about the interests of everyone altogether and not everyone shares your shallow opinions. The Founders certainly didn't.
Did you seriously compared free speech to child pornography? Why not add murder and stealing in the mix as well, that will make your point stand out even more.
It is perfectly consistent to believe in free speech, support the first amendment, and also want platforms like Twitter to allow for the free speech of it's users.
I'll file his newfound respect for rights over here next to all the Trump cronies who seem to magically find respect for rights between the time they resign and their next book deal.
The outcome of that is few people being able to have real conversations. Contrived, Disneyland type discourse would then be the norm.
Frankly, that would inhibit understanding one another and further limit speech.
At some point, people must weigh incoming speech and manage what they do with it or there simply will not be all that much left to be said.
I suggest doing that is less painful than limiting speech overall will be.
The risk of another Trump, or Trump again is serious! I fear it.
But I also question why he ran with, and a future "Trump type" would potentially run against, candidates lackluster enough to make the risk real.
If anything, unborn babies may have gained the right to life.
I think instead of being scared of what allowing unethical speech can bring and trying to censor it, we should work towards ensuring that there is equal and opposing points of view, hopefully with better reasoned arguments. As far as I can tell the problem is that the people which are able to put those points of view "on paper" rarely bother to do so, because arguing against someone like Trump never encounters a good faith debate, and most of the times, it's so obvious that it's so wrong. But of course that it's not obviously wrong for a vast number of people, and explicitly stating it, might help them.
Expanding on this discussion see the exchange between Peter Boghossian and Laurie Penny in one of the classics of letter.wiki: https://letter.wiki/conversation/863
[1]: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=join%20the%2...
In my experience, Twitter is indiscriminately bad at being consistent with bans.
We shouldn’t be expecting or perhaps even allowing twitter to make these calls at this scale. Twitter is beyond just a private company offering a product. It’s now a serious utility.
I dislike the use of the words "freedom of speech" when it comes to social media/web sites because uneducated people seem to think a ban is a violation of the 1st US amendment. Which is even sillier when a website allows users globally. I doubt the conversations will suddenly change to "freedom to violate ToS" but I feel like there is a better wording than "freedom of speech".
If a camping website banned content about Bigfoot because they wanted to and you posted something about Bigfoot and got banned, its not a freedom of speech issue, its more like a "No Shirt, No, Shoes = No Service" issue.
Trump got the white glove treatment of actually evaluating his compliance with the TOS, likely with an actual lawyer involved too.
"Permanent suspension of @realDonaldTrump":
https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio...
Jack Dorsey at the time:
"Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Calls Trump Ban After Deadly Riot 'the Right Decision'":
https://people.com/politics/twitter-ceo-jack-dorsey-addresse...
I'm more on the "I Disapprove of What You Say, But I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to Say It" -boat. Actually I though most people here would be, I'm a bit disappointed tbh.
it's much more likely that one of the two views was simply him expressing what he thought was the most politically opportunistic opinion to express at the time
perhaps both
Hypocrisy has nothing to do with changing your mind over time. It had to do with taking actions which are consistent with your stated position, and holding yourself up to the same moral and ethical standards to which you hold others.
He probably wasn't in a strong enough position to be able to resist the pressure to silence Trump.
[1]: https://amp.theguardian.com/media/2012/mar/22/twitter-tony-w...
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/05/us/politics/jan-6-capitol...
The only good thing I think that will come from this deal is that Musk will be direct about his absurd position where Dorsey was two-faced. It's absolutely wild to see Dorsey essentially publicly admit that he disagreed with most of his own decisions running twitter.
Seriously, web developers, stop it!
But are there things that can get you banned on the "new" twitter?
Because then any concern about unbanning him and similar is a moot point because they will be banned again within a month or two as long as rules are enforced.
However I am dubious rules will be enforced. I think everything is going to be "nudge nudge wink wink".
World is a really messy place. It's not very easy generally to decided if in a political conflict one or other party has moral high ground. For instance we have several Nobel peace price winners now participating in plausible genocide (Aung Sang Suu Kyi and Abiy Ahmed). Who has the moral high ground? I have no frigging idea, but I don't think an unelected corporation should decide either.
If Twitter takes the side Trump is a crook and should be perma-banned, this creates a precedent for silencing the voices of opposition voices around the globe.
Edit: I mean in the context if Twitter is designed to be a fair medium for anyone to express themselves. Of course it does not have to be like that and can block anyone without infringing anyones rights as such.
What is Twitter supposed to do, ban Trump for a week every time he uses their platform to advocate for violence? Does that mean we can all advocate for violence on Twitter? I mean, have they really thought this through?
I still view Twitter (back when I was on it) as a private business. Like a pub. Chat rubbish, cause trouble, get thrown out.
At the time of the elections, do you remember all the memes about how Twitter was just a tiny portion of voters and that the vast majority were not even on Twitter?
Twitter is not a town square or a centre of free speech. It's a small dive bar in the corner of the city.
Cause trouble, get ditched in the gutter.
Good grief...
Twitter has every right to ban Putin, or Trump, or Duterte, etc.
If you believe in free speech you should have absolutely condemned Twitter when they banned the president.
They'll have serious legal problems pretty quickly for doing something so illegal.
> If you believe in free speech you should have absolutely condemned Twitter when they banned the president.
I believe in free speech and property rights. Which means if Twitter decides someone can't be on Twitter anymore due to their actions then that's their right. And if Twitter's new ownership makes some different decisions on who's allowed to be on Twitter, that's also their right.
You advocated condemning Twitter for exercising their free speech rights.
But you're right I missed the first part of your comment where you acknowledged Twitter had the right to ban anyone based on their speech.
Donald Trump violated the twitter ToS on the daily, as well as local law. I'd be permanently banned from Twitter if I did what he did.
I know there is a fine line between things like Freedom Fighters/Extremists/Terrorists depending on how it's viewed and who is viewing it. Similarly inciting violence could be muddled away with enough rhetoric or only selectively enforce, as governments often do.
Likely the best solution is to update the laws around social media use or extend the previous laws to include those instances and then apply it equally to all.
All of that said though, Trump very much repeatedly broke the ToS and rightfully deserved to banned before he became president.
https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio...
On January 8, 2021, President Donald J. Trump Tweeted:
“The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”
Shortly thereafter, the President Tweeted:
“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”
Those two tweets are perma-ban worthy? I'm glad nobody has paid attention to what I typed into region chat in MMOs for the past 20 years...
How many insurrections are you willing to let Trump coordinate on your platform? Two? More?
If that's your definition of insurrection, there can be infinity more of them on my platform.
It reminds me of forums I was on in the early 2000s; moderators would ban unsavory folks. How that actually happens is not "a rule is broken leads to a ban", but rather, rules are combed through when a ban is desired.
I had the experience of moderating one of the larger political forums on reddit and in my experience this still happens. There were some mods who clearly had ideological axes to grind despite their insistence of impartiality.
"Current Twitter" – the one that is supposingly the angel of protecting the will of the people – got Trump elected. Full stop. Trump's tweets were promoted by Twitter. So in the life time of Twitter, "Current Twitter" wants to take credit for the last 5 seconds? Good luck with that.
To the people deriding Trump, you do recognize that no actual criminals are prevented from excersing speech? Even if you believe he is a criminal, the law of this country does not agree. You dislike him, great. You don't get to remove everything that you disagree with from a public forum.
To the ideologues believing that Republicans are destroying 'democracy', recall that this country is a constutional republic and the reason is because pure democracy, or majority rule, degrades to mob rule. To not make the mistake of equating freedom with democracy.
Not all votes are equal! What blasphemy! Not all people are engaged, informed and care about preserving the sovereignty of the nation. We have a system designed to keep those people from destroying our liberty.
The system allows the people to pick representatives who are sworn by oath to act as an informed and engaged agent on their behalf.
Our duty is to try our best to pick those agents that will put aside their interests and live by their oath.
Regimes do copy these laws to put anti state opinions behind bars, though.
It's hard to find a middle ground, mostly depending on culture and acceptable offenses by both believers in a message and feelings of people hurt by offensive proposals or hateful speech.
He's also saying it was a business decision, and it shouldn't have been. Honestly I don't know what that means. Every decision Twitter makes is a business decision. He violated the rules repeatedly and got away with it, I think it was absolutely the right choice.
It means the decision was driven by which option drives higher profit, and not a moral position.
The last couple of years have been a breath of fresh air ...
The only time I notice Trump now is from his loser supporters posting Shorts on Youtube believing he'll make a come back.
Anyone who believes that taking him off twitter didn't stabilise the political temperature is in la la land.
The question they (Jack, but also Elon) ask themselves is not “what’s the principled decision to make?” but “What’s best for me in this moment?” and in the moment Trump was banned, banning Trump was the best decision for Jack. And now the best decision for Jack is not to ban trump…
A person without principles is a bad leader.
Principles are compressed representations pointing to virtue, not things in an of themselves to be reified and held.
I am arguing that Jack (and Elon) profess to be principled people (in this case, free speech) yet Jack is clearly demonstrating a radical shift in perspective without an accompanying radical shift in principles, which must only be the sign of someone who doesn’t follow principles.
How can Jack hold the same principled view today that he held 2 years ago but disavow the choices he made 2 years ago? If you compress radically different virtues you don’t get the same principles.
Frankly, permabans really need thinking through.
At a minimum, multiple bans, or feature limits should precede them, and there should be required process associated with a permanent ban, including appeals.
That may seem excessive and or burdensome. I agree.
Small venues that do not come with considerable life implications can and should be exempt.
Big venues are making plenty of money, or have the means to do that, and are interwoven with society to a degree worth the effort.
In general, the cancel moves we see rising in prominence are not answers in themselves. Trump sucks. Alex Jones sucks, and arguably more!
Banning them was not helpful. It does feel good to those who dislike their speech, but it had near zero impact on others who value and seek more of their speech. Closing the door hard luke that hardens those people, who then present notable resolve to follow a favored speaker and or act on their behalf.[0]
What is does not do is open them up to receive remedial speech of any kind.
Having the media then attack these people, often speaking for them, is not a good look particularly given the level of error (and I am being charitable) in their own speech, often labeled authoritative. Again, despite considerable error.
Finally, we have and will continue to see this abused to silence both critics and competing speech. This speech is both necessary and prior to massive media consolidation, considered normal, healthy behavior in a functioning democracy.
I should also mention there is a shared burden related to speech we do not like and that burden lies with any of us and how we choose to respond to speech we do not like.
That offense can be gamed is a problem too. People are as offended as they think they are and the basis for said offence varies widely. A claim of profound offence can be made and others have very little to validate it with.
At a minimum, responding to speech we do not like with righteous indignation generally escalates the dialog into unproductive meta. Almost any other response will fare better. Other responses include: humor, questions, rebuttals, redirects, reconsideration... any of which can take a conversation t9 a productive, far less harmful place. Emphasis on how we all manage incoming speech would do a lot of good, rather than the ongoing harm being used to cast the idea of free speech aside and or solidify some entities as authorities, sans meaningful checks on their speech, which also gets abused. The most common abuse is manufacturing consent.
[0] Source is behavior observed in a fair number of people who fall into one or more categories implied by my comment.
[1] That is not an endorsement of any kind.