Big Tech censorship | Trump Banned from Twitter

BobKowalski said:
Merkel has raised some concerns, why the hell not use that as a starting point rather than an amplifier of the voices that led to where we are today?

www.politico.eu

Merkel among EU leaders questioning Twitter’s Trump ban

European leaders said governments should regulate social media platforms, not the companies themselves.
www.politico.eu www.politico.eu
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Bob — agreed this is a better starting point. Here’s my comment for everyone else:

So you know how to solve this problem in a democracy? Vote for a representative in support of such regulation.

Oh, wait, sorry — you don’t have a choice of doing that because you read the party platform, eh? Neither wants to do it, eh? Oh dear, your choice is imperfect. My my. Welcome to Earth.

Then vote for the person more likely to be able to be amenable to and effect the change. Better than nothing, right?

Yeah . . . except the guy who started this thread said he wouldn’t even FUCKING VOTE since the choice was between Biden and Trump if he were American. How the hell does that help?

It steams the snot out of me when people like him pontificate aimlessly with no stake in the outcome nor — if he even had the chance to effect slight change — even take the opportunity to do so. It’s hypocritical chickenshit.

That aside, of course . . . we’ll be able to trust elected officials to independently staff and monitor such regulations instead of allowing the platforms to do it themselves, right? Because it’s more important that we worry about “what if” Zuckerberg runs than someone who actually is running, and winning. It would have been better, in fact, if we had left this regulation up to Trump and his appointed officials, don’t you think? Instead of Twitter . . . who is now probably permanently losing thousands upon thousands of customers for zipping Trump.

It’s hurting them financially to ban Trump. Think about that. And they did it anyway. Because they have a code. We agree to abide by the code to use the platform. We risk losing that privilege if we fail to abide by it.

Now, having said that, if America decides such platforms should not have to power to regulate content, via democratic vote for representatives supporting such a policy, I might be willing to suggest a special judicial branch become an arbiter of disputes in this regard (rights to expression on platform) as opposed to a general branch of the judiciary, the same way many other specialized industries have specific jurisdiction courts.
 
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don't know if anyone is aware but Twitter, FB, YT all platforms have had the right which they have exercised numerous times to ban people if they break the CoC. Its not a Trump thing its a platform thing - its not censorship its just the owners of the platforms deciding who they want to be associated with.
 
Dunno if this should be in this thread or widen the debate.

Watching MSNBC this morning and a former Republican senator was questioning his own beliefs stemming from the rise of Trump and how Corporate America got involved. He came to the conclusion this is 40 years of unchecked corporate power who belittled governments and their institution to the point they could be destroyed. He was calling for Biden to reinstate real government power and clip their wings as the inequalities are "almost impossible" to reconcile.

The news agencies are now spinning Twitter and Facebooks actions as an arse covering exercise to prevent prosecution in their part of facilitating a coup. I call that bullshit as that's stopped them using it as a tool in Iran,Syria...
 
Gorton_Tubster said:
I totally agree, the president shouldnt have been banned. It has set a bad precedent (I am so glad he was though). What if the owners of twitter/fb were supportive of the president? What if Zuckerburg or Dorsey/other want to run for president? Or if Trump actually owned a stake in these platforms?

The answer is for govn legislation and service providers adhering to it. No sharing hate, no sharing conspiracies, no misinformation - The governing bodies to decide what is misinformation and conspiracy. It isn't good but it is control.



This is interesting, about the printing press and its impact ...

"Whenever a new information technology comes along, and this includes the printing press, among the very first groups to be ‘loud’ in it are the people who were silenced in the earlier system, which means radical voices.

It takes effort to adopt a new information technology, whether it’s the ham radio, an internet bulletin board, or Instagram. The people most willing to take risks and make the effort to be early adopters are those who had no voice before that technology existed.

In the print revolution, that meant radical heresies, radical Christian splinter groups, radical egalitarian groups, critics of the government,” says Palmer. “The Protestant Reformation is only one of many symptoms of print enabling these voices to be heard.”

As critical and alternative opinions entered the public discourse, those in power tried to censor it. Before the printing press, censorship was easy. All it required was killing the “heretic” and burning his or her handful of notebooks.

But after the printing press, it became nearly impossible to destroy all copies of a dangerous idea. And the more dangerous a book was claimed to be, the more the people wanted to read it. Every time the Church published a list of banned books, the booksellers knew exactly what they should print next"
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Aside:
I think Zuckerberg is a republican.

I don’t have an issue with Trump being banned, because he was warned and what ignoring the warnings would bring.
He drove himself off that cliff.

should twitter have warned him earlier, hell yes.

should twitter be using some of their ad revenue to regulate and warn other high profile accounts, across the political and world spectra, hell yes.

should other high profile social media platforms self regulate against hate or incitement, yes, and if they can’t, then they’ll have to face , unfortunately, wherever they domicile, govt oversight.

a free press and a free speech population is almost mandatory for a democracy, but if that is self abused by lies...either a clampdown dictatorship or a revolutionary dictatorship occurs.
 
Gorton_Tubster said:
I totally agree, the president shouldnt have been banned. It has set a bad precedent (I am so glad he was though). What if the owners of twitter/fb were supportive of the president? What if Zuckerburg or Dorsey/other want to run for president? Or if Trump actually owned a stake in these platforms?

The answer is for govn legislation and service providers adhering to it. No sharing hate, no sharing conspiracies, no misinformation - The governing bodies to decide what is misinformation and conspiracy. It isn't good but it is control.



This is interesting, about the printing press and its impact ...

"Whenever a new information technology comes along, and this includes the printing press, among the very first groups to be ‘loud’ in it are the people who were silenced in the earlier system, which means radical voices.

It takes effort to adopt a new information technology, whether it’s the ham radio, an internet bulletin board, or Instagram. The people most willing to take risks and make the effort to be early adopters are those who had no voice before that technology existed.

In the print revolution, that meant radical heresies, radical Christian splinter groups, radical egalitarian groups, critics of the government,” says Palmer. “The Protestant Reformation is only one of many symptoms of print enabling these voices to be heard.”

As critical and alternative opinions entered the public discourse, those in power tried to censor it. Before the printing press, censorship was easy. All it required was killing the “heretic” and burning his or her handful of notebooks.

But after the printing press, it became nearly impossible to destroy all copies of a dangerous idea. And the more dangerous a book was claimed to be, the more the people wanted to read it. Every time the Church published a list of banned books, the booksellers knew exactly what they should print next"
Click to expand...
If I can get banned from Twitter for inciting a riot, why shouldn’t a president be banned for the same thing?

This is a global platform, so how can any one government legislate it?

I’m pretty certain anyone who has a Twitter account has to agree to t’s & c’s so if you break them.....you get banned.

I’ve probably missed Rascal’s initial point, but regardless, the social media genie is out of the lantern & I don’t think anyone other than the owners of said sites have the option of what’s posted. Can’t see much changing in the future
 
Let's suppose Twitter was around in the 1930's and Hitler, after becoming Chancellor, and Goebbels were on it every day spewing antisemitism and inciting hatred and violence against Jews. Or the Hutu leadership in Rwanda were doing the same to the Tutsi population. Or Serbs were tweeting hate against the Bosnian Muslims and saying what they were going to do. Etc.

Would you expect them to be banned? I'd hope they would be. The problem isn't that Twitter has banned someone it believes broke their rules. The problem is they don't ban enough people. You can't complain about a company enforcing its rules. You can however complain because you don't think they've enforced them enough or inconsistently.

Social media companies have an absolute responsibility to help avoid people preaching hatred and incitement, and seeking to foment unrest. Just like the police have the responsibility to maintain law and order.

There is no such thing as absolute 'free speech' and nor should there be.
 
bluethrunthru said:
don't know if anyone is aware but Twitter, FB, YT all platforms have had the right which they have exercised numerous times to ban people if they break the CoC. Its not a Trump thing its a platform thing - its not censorship its just the owners of the platforms deciding who they want to be associated with.
Click to expand...

The issues for me is that they don’t consistently apply those CoCs and also, as Merkel says, should they be creating them or following legislature.

I get the argument around they’re private platforms but ultimately, Facebook and Twitter are essentially the biggest forms of mainstream media there is nowadays. It’s a really tricky one.
 
meltonblue said:
The issues for me is that they don’t consistently apply those CoCs and also, as Merkel says, should they be creating them or following legislature.

I get the argument around they’re private platforms but ultimately, Facebook and Twitter are essentially the biggest forms of mainstream media there is nowadays. It’s a really tricky one.
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The only problem is they waited 5 years to ban him.
 
Rascal said:
Seeing as though my points are not welcome elsewhere in other threads, either through a lack of interest in the points I am trying to make or a because of the sheer hatred of Trump, i will have my own thread to discuss what i was saying in the hope somebody might look beyond Trump and see the point i was trying albeit clumsily to make.

Now I have found someone who gets it, somebody far more eloquent and far cleverer than i will ever be, so maybe if you listen to him you make take notice.


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Thanks for raising this rascal. Some are so blinded by hate for trump they are missing this point. One that's hard to make without people mistakenly thinking you are fighting trumps corner it seems, but nawaz does brilliantly.
 
Prestwich_Blue said:
Let's suppose Twitter was around in the 1930's and Hitler, after becoming Chancellor, and Goebbels were on it every day spewing antisemitism and inciting hatred and violence against Jews. Or the Hutu leadership in Rwanda were doing the same to the Tutsi population. Or Serbs were tweeting hate against the Bosnian Muslims and saying what they were going to do. Etc.

Would you expect them to be banned? I'd hope they would be. The problem isn't that Twitter has banned someone it believes broke their rules. The problem is they don't ban enough people. You can't complain about a company enforcing its rules. You can however complain because you don't think they've enforced them enough or inconsistently.

Social media companies have an absolute responsibility to help avoid people preaching hatred and incitement, and seeking to foment unrest. Just like the police have the responsibility to maintain law and order.

There is no such thing as absolute 'free speech' and nor should there be.
Click to expand...

Or imagine if the Beerhall Putsch was being planned on Twitter, or the Rwandan genocide was being coordinated by tweets.

That's what made twitter take a stand. They planted bombs in the Capitol building! And they are planning another attacking on the 17th (Q is the 17th letter of the alphabet) and they've taken Trump's decision to not go to the Inauguration as a green light to attack it.
 
meltonblue said:
The issues for me is that they don’t consistently apply those CoCs and also, as Merkel says, should they be creating them or following legislature.

I get the argument around they’re private platforms but ultimately, Facebook and Twitter are essentially the biggest forms of mainstream media there is nowadays. It’s a really tricky one.
Click to expand...

Their house, their rules. Anyone who doesn't like them is free to leave.
 
Trumps free speech and that of his administration have not even been removed. Trump has a press office at his disposal, he can deliver a press conference on every major TV network within minutes if he wanted to. Nothing has ever stopped him from being able to get whatever tosh out that he has to say.

The silence at the moment is not because no-one will give him the platform, it's because right now he wants to prove a silent political point to fuel the fury within his support in the lead up to Bidens inauguration.

Twitter have the right and duty to moderate their platform, especially when said platform is used to facilitate an attack on the very country that it is based within....

If you don't want to get banned, don't be a tool!
 
FogBlueInSanFran said:
Yeah . . . except the guy who started this thread said he wouldn’t even FUCKING VOTE since the choice was between Biden and Trump if he were American. How the hell does that help?

It steams the snot out of me when people like him pontificate aimlessly with no stake in the outcome nor — if he even had the chance to effect slight change — even take the opportunity to do so. It’s hypocritical chickenshit.
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Now Mr Fog he's got a naughty eye that flickers
You ought to see it wobble when he's ironing ladies blouses
Mr Fog, what shall i do,
I'm feeling kind of limehouse chinese laundry blues
 
It's amazing how Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Carter, Thatcher, Blair, Churchill, Eden, Major, Heath etc. all managed to be successful politicians when Facebook and Twitter never even let them have accounts in the first place!

How did they survive this total deplatforming?
 
mat said:
Dunno if this should be in this thread or widen the debate.

Watching MSNBC this morning and a former Republican senator was questioning his own beliefs stemming from the rise of Trump and how Corporate America got involved. He came to the conclusion this is 40 years of unchecked corporate power who belittled governments and their institution to the point they could be destroyed.
Click to expand...
It definitely should be in this thread, because it is the point I have been trying to make all along.
 
Prestwich_Blue said:
Let's suppose Twitter was around in the 1930's and Hitler, after becoming Chancellor, and Goebbels were on it every day spewing antisemitism and inciting hatred and violence against Jews. Or the Hutu leadership in Rwanda were doing the same to the Tutsi population. Or Serbs were tweeting hate against the Bosnian Muslims and saying what they were going to do. Etc.

Would you expect them to be banned? I'd hope they would be. The problem isn't that Twitter has banned someone it believes broke their rules. The problem is they don't ban enough people. You can't complain about a company enforcing its rules. You can however complain because you don't think they've enforced them enough or inconsistently.

Social media companies have an absolute responsibility to help avoid people preaching hatred and incitement, and seeking to foment unrest. Just like the police have the responsibility to maintain law and order.

There is no such thing as absolute 'free speech' and nor should there be.
Click to expand...
The very point Nawaz makes with the CCP and the Uighurs.
 
Prestwich_Blue said:
Let's suppose Twitter was around in the 1930's and Hitler, after becoming Chancellor, and Goebbels were on it every day spewing antisemitism and inciting hatred and violence against Jews. Or the Hutu leadership in Rwanda were doing the same to the Tutsi population. Or Serbs were tweeting hate against the Bosnian Muslims and saying what they were going to do. Etc.

Would you expect them to be banned? I'd hope they would be. The problem isn't that Twitter has banned someone it believes broke their rules. The problem is they don't ban enough people. You can't complain about a company enforcing its rules. You can however complain because you don't think they've enforced them enough or inconsistently.

Social media companies have an absolute responsibility to help avoid people preaching hatred and incitement, and seeking to foment unrest. Just like the police have the responsibility to maintain law and order.

There is no such thing as absolute 'free speech' and nor should there be.
Click to expand...

That’s an interesting point. I suppose today we don’t think things like Nazism can happen, we’re all too smart for getting tricked like that, but that’s probably a load of bollocks and we aren’t
 
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