Kyle Kashuv on Twitter - "There's an important debate to have about the wisdom of kicking Trump off @twitter . I still believe that it should have happened years ago and that we've paid a terrible price for the delay. But for the moment, all I want to say is: Thanks, @jack ."
"Don’t worry Sam, I’ll still stand up for you when they take you out. Just kidding, I’ll be taken out first, but I’m sure someone will be around."
"Genuinely, Sam. What happened to you?"
Trump video removed from Twitter, Facebook - ""you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law and order. We don’t want anybody hurt.”
This was brilliant. Removing the video means people won't know they're being lied to when told he incited violence
Permanent suspension of @realDonaldTrump - "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.”"
Twitter making it clear they have contempt for 75 million people, and exposing their bad faith censorship. It's telling that the actual large scale violence of the BLM riots didn't attract such a response. Too bad Biden (or rather Harris) won't take any action despite the blatant contravention of Section 230's good faith exemption
Dave Rubin on Twitter - "Progressives think they’re the #Resistance as giant multi billion dollar tech companies censor people who don’t bow to their ideology"
John Smith Chicago on Twitter - "To anyone complaining about a private media company kicking Trump off their platform: Think of Twitter as a Christian bakery and Trump as a gay wedding cake. #BanTrumpFromTwitter"
So many people don't understand that there is no bakery with monopoly power and that bakeries aren't modern public squares, and that a platform hosting content is very different from the compelled speech through an active creative act that the gay cake case would be
The US Supreme Court just decided access to Facebook, Twitter or Snapchat is fundamental to free speech - "Public space in the digital age has no shape and no physical place. But the US Supreme Court is now sorting out what that means for free-speech rights. Today (June 19), the justices unanimously held that states can’t broadly limit access to social media because cyberspace “is one of the most important places to exchange views.”"
Basically social media is a utility
Twitter Lets 'Hang Mike Pence' Trend After Banning Trump - "Twitter eventually noticed the term trending and blocked it and variations from trending. “We blocked the phrase and other variations of it from trending,” a Twitter spokesperson told Fox News. “We want trends to promote healthy discussions on Twitter.”Healthy discussions, like this tweet from Kathy Griffin, featuring her infamous photoshoot with a severed Trump head effigy."
Remember when BLM rioters were burning down cities and Colin Kaepernick literally called for more violence? And then, instead of banning him, @Jack gave him $3M? - "As BLM, Antifa, and other leftist rioters burned cities to the ground with impunity last year, gang-stomped people for fun, mowed down police with their cars, and shot and killed innocent bystanders, Colin Kaepernick ordered "MORE!" And oh then he set up a fund to bail out the rioters"
BREAKING: Twitter, Facebook delete President Trump's posts, including his call to end violence
Peace is violence
Freedom is slavery
As predicted, CNN clown reinterprets Trump's explicit call for peace as "a call to violence" 🤡 - "onald Trump released a video in which he explicitly and forcefully denounced political violence, including the actions of his supporters at the Capitol last week, saying they will "be brought to justice."Of course, CNN brought on Former FBI Official and swamp creature Andy McCabe to ask the very important question, not "what do you think of what Donald Trump said?", no they asked, "what do you think potential bad actors heard from that statement last night?"... regardless of what Trump actually said, Andy McCabe assures us that there were certain "dog whistles" to Trump's most rabid and violent supporters.That's right. Andy McCabe can read minds. He can tell both what Trump really meant, but he can also interpret what "crazy MAGA types" heard.This is just a way for CNN and those on the left to pin the blame of anything that happens on inauguration day directly on Donald Trump, just because he didn't say exactly what they wanted him to say."
Aaaand here come the Twitter bans. General Michael Flynn and Sidney Powell both just got the hammer.
Adrian Norman on Twitter - "If you truly had the moral high ground, would you need to prevent your opponents from speaking?"
BREAKING: Ron Paul banned from Facebook for violating 'community standards' - "Former Texas Senator and prominent Republican political commentator Ron Paul has been banned from Facebook for violating "community standards." Paul stated that he does not have any idea what the violation was, and no further reason was given."
China promotes genocidal policies on Twitter as conservatives continue to be banned - "The official Twitter account of the Chinese embassy in the United States shared a tweet on Thursday whitewashing the forced sterilization committed by the Chinese government against their minority Uyghur population as part of their ongoing program of genocide against the Muslim minority group."
Why is Twitter censoring Trump, but not the CCP? - "The problem with Big Tech censorship is not its inconsistency, although that itself is certainly a concern. It is the censorship itself. The simple fact that social-media firms have the power and inclination to silence people at will – including people as powerful as the US president – is a dangerous threat to free expression. And the idea that this is the most effective response to authoritarianism is absurd."
Twitter defends blocking Trump tweets but not Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei - "A Twitter spokeswoman has defended the company’s decision to block and restrict tweets from President Trump but not those of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei which call for genocide of the Israeli people.The reason? Because the Iranian dictator’s tweets pass as “commentary on political issues of the day” while Trump’s could “inspire harm,” Twitter claims... “Why have you not flagged the tweets of Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who has literally called for the genocide of Israel and the Jewish people?” he asked.In an astonishing response, the Twitter spokeswoman claimed that tweets from the Iranian leader — where he has publicly called for the “elimination” of Israel — amounted to little more than “foreign policy saber-rattling.”“We have an approach to world leaders that presently say that direct interactions with fellow public figures, comments on political issues of the day, or foreign policy saber-rattling on military and economic issues are generally not in violation of our Twitter rules,” the spokeswoman responded.Stunned lawmaker Michal Cotler-Wunsh interrupted: “So calling for genocide is OK?”“Calling for genocide on Twitter is OK, but commenting on political situations in certain countries is not OK?” she continued. A clip of the exchange was shared on Twitter on Wednesday by former acting director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell who wrote: “This should be something the US media reports. Wow.”Iran’s leader has repeatedly shared tweets calling Israel a “deadly, cancerous growth” to be “uprooted and destroyed” — all going unchecked by Twitter... The Post revealed in a front-page expose how Twitter’s site integrity chief had a history of making politically-charged anti-Trump comments on the platform, writing that there were “actual Nazis in the White House.”"
Liberals only pretend to care about Jews when they can use that to shit on white people
Hey @Jack is this considered inciting violence or nah - ""If Biden really wanted unity, he'd lynch Mike Pence."... Also he's an opinion writer for the New York Times.I am sure if Mr. Wilkinson were a conservative he would be given the exact same benefit of the doubt."
Filipe Rafaeli on Twitter - "I am Brazilian. I'm left-wing. I'm a Che Guevara fan. I am a fan of Fildel, Jango, Getúlio, Evo, Correa, Chavez, Kirchner, Lula, Brizola, Allende, Mujica and Peron. The Trump censorship is nonsense. Children playing with fire."
Raheem Kassam on Twitter - "One day they’ll turn off your electricity because you refused their false narrative."
Twitter's Ban on Trump Shows Where Power Now Lies - The New York Times - "while many liberals cheered Twitter’s decision as an overdue and appropriate step to prevent more violence, some also cringed at the thought of so much control resting in so few hands.“We understand the desire to permanently suspend him now,” Kate Ruane, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, wrote in a statement on Friday. “But it should concern everyone when companies like Facebook and Twitter wield the unchecked power to remove people from platforms that have become indispensable for the speech of billions — especially when political realities make those decisions easier.” Above all, Mr. Trump’s muzzling provides a clarifying lesson in where power resides in our digital society — not just in the precedent of law or the checks and balances of government, but in the ability to deny access to the platforms that shape our public discourse. Mr. Dorsey and Mr. Zuckerberg’s names have never appeared on a ballot. But they have a kind of authority that no elected official on earth can claim. This power appears mostly in subtle and unspoken ways — like the eerily calm, hostage-like video Mr. Trump filmed on Thursday, hours after Twitter and Facebook threatened to delete his accounts. In the video, Mr. Trump conceded that he had lost the election and condemned the Capitol attack"
Even the NYT reports that Twitter and Facebook banned Trump after he conceded and condemned the violence
Twitter loses $5 billion in market value after Trump is permanently barred from the platform
Amazon Is Booting Parler Off Of Its Web Hosting Service - "Amazon's move comes after Apple banned Parler from its App Store on Saturday afternon, after the platform failed to introduce a moderation plan to protect public safety. On Friday, Apple gave Parler 24 hours to mitigate the "planning of illegal and dangerous activities" occurring on its service or face expulsion, BuzzFeed News first reported. Google has also suspended Parler from its Google Play app store."
"Start your own social media platform"
"Start your own hosting company"
"Start your own app ecosystem"
"Start your own payment service"
"Start your own internet"
Keywords: create your own, build your own, start your own
Stripe Stops Processing Payments for Trump Campaign Website - WSJ
Democrats Pledge To Fight Rule Ensuring Banks Serve Conservatives
Thread by @benshapiro on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - " Imagine if, in the midst of the massive BLM riots this summer, the entire tech infrastructure had deplatformed Facebook because some had used that app to plan events devolving into violence. People would rightly have called that an insane act of ideological fascism. Yet today, media will celebrate Amazon doing exactly that to Parler. The tech bros are making a horrible and dangerous moment significantly more horrible and dangerous. There are no consistent standards being applied. There is reactionary deplatforming in the name of one side. Private companies are by law free to do what they like. That’s why I have always said that the solution to the censorship of Twitter is alternatives -- which is what Parler was attempting to be, whatever its flaws. But when the technological instruments necessary for speech are located in essentially three companies, all of which are moving toward like-minded censorship (Amazon controls about half of all public-cloud infrastructure, Microsoft 16%, and Google 4%), that avenue closes. I am by nature anti-regulation. But even the consumer-based theory of anti-monopoly championed by free market advocates cuts in favor of anti-monopolistic regulation if these companies are acting in de facto collusion to shut all avenues of dissent. Everyone on the right is correctly concerned that these same companies are five minutes away from simply removing the ability of conservatives to host content anywhere. If culture is upstream of politics, a culture of freedom is upstream of law protecting freedom. The Left is attempting to weaponize the evil Capitol attack into an instrument to implement non-governmental one-party control of informational distribution. It won’t be a surprise when this becomes a governmental push, either. This action to punish all Trump supporters -- and any outlet that hosts them -- for the actions of fringe criminals won’t calm the waters. It will unleash all the worst forces in American life on all sides. And to conservatives: subscribe to the outlets you love NOW. Because the next move will be to disappear all your access to those outlets via the social media companies. It will be direct access or nothing. And now even direct access is in question thanks to AWS’ move."
Will Chamberlain on Twitter - "Combined, Google and Apple control 99.9% of the American mobile OS market If they kick you off their app stores you are done But don’t worry the free market can totally solve for that 🙄"
Lesley McL on Twitter - "After someone in twitterverse asked #Gab who runs their servers, the Company's account replied: "We do. Tough luck, communist." The post asking the question is now. inaccessible. #ParlerAPP #GabAPP #technology #communication #politics #usa"
We ignore Big Tech censorship at our peril - "The greatest trick of authoritarians is to convince their subjects to rejoice in their own subjugation. Over the past week we have seen self-proclaimed ‘leftists’ cheering on multi-billion dollar corporations as they ratchet up their policies on censorship and their determination to control the parameters of acceptable thought and speech... As a vocal critic of Trump, it would be very easy for me to join the chorus of approval and extend my congratulations to Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg for taking a stand against a president whose behaviour has been anything but presidential. Yet to do so would be self-defeating. Big Tech censorship is set to be one of the most important issues of our time, and those of us who still care about our liberties are right to be vigilant.Let us consider the misconceptions one by one. The tech giants of Silicon Valley operate a collective oligopoly over the equivalent of the modern-day public square. Social media is not only the predominant forum for political and cultural discourse, it is often the testing ground for ideas that later become governmental policy. Through these platforms, politicians are able to gauge the public mood and respond accordingly. To take one example out of thousands, the way in which Critical Race Theory has successfully transformed from being a niche and widely contested academic pursuit to forming the basis of mainstream educational and managerial practice has been largely due to the influence of social media.These kinds of corporate oligopolies are precisely the reason why antitrust legislation exists in an open-market economy. There is broad recognition that private companies are likely to exploit consumers when there are no competitive alternatives. The way in which the tech giants have coordinated to prevent users from accessing Parler, a rival platform established in 2018, demonstrates that they are willing to go to any lengths to ensure that their dominance of the market is absolute. This has been justified by the fact that certain accounts on Parler have openly called for violence, and that the company has failed to remove such content, although the same could be said for Twitter itself. For instance, in spite of numerous complaints by human-rights campaigners, Twitter has not removed a post by Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, calling for the wholesale eradication of Israel. The site’s ‘terms of service’ are so inconsistently administered as to be virtually meaningless. It is simply not sustainable to argue that users who are unhappy with such arbitrary censorship policies can go elsewhere, particularly when Big Tech is able to shut down any nascent competition. A dissatisfied customer at a restaurant, furious at discovering a live weevil in his risotto, might seek out an alternative place to dine. The same cannot be said for social media, where the concentration of power is such that the laws of the free market do not apply. The reality of the digital age is that the principal channels of public discourse are superintended by unaccountable and unelected billionaires who enjoy greater political clout and influence than any major nation state. One may as well suggest that we resort to the use of carrier pigeons (although the plutocrats of Silicon Valley would doubtless unleash an army of drones to shoot them down for propagating ‘hate speech’). The possibility of an internet Bill of Rights is unlikely to be explored by the Democrats because Big Tech is aligned with their values. This is a mistake, because online censorship will ultimately impact on everybody, irrespective of political affiliation. The complacency of the Trump administration has meant that he leaves office with Big Tech still enjoying the protections afforded by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which was introduced in 1996 so that companies could moderate user posts without being legally defined as publishers. This was especially important when it came to online comment sections, where it would be unjust to hold news outlets culpable for illegal or libellous content uploaded by users.While this provision is therefore necessary, the act could easily be amended so that its protections only pertain to illegal content. This would mean that platforms such as Twitter and Facebook could not simply remove posts because they disagree with the opinions expressed or because they find them offensive. The common practice of banning gender-critical feminists, for instance, shows how Big Tech is happy to engage in partisan editorialising even where no law has been broken. If this is how these companies wish to behave, then they should be legally defined as publishers and held accountable for all content on their site just like any other media outlet. Debates over whether or not Donald Trump incited violence are worth having, but they are a distraction from the more pressing question of how social-media companies are narrowing the Overton Window in accordance with their own particular worldview. At a time when public discourse is largely conducted online, it is no longer coherent to argue that censorship can only be enacted by the state. We need more prominent voices on both the left and the right to stand up for freedom of speech, and find ways to curb the power of Big Tech. These are not guardian angels looking out for our best interests, but avaricious corporations with an ideological agenda. If we applaud as they censor our opponents, we will have no right to complain when they silence us"
Facebook, not Parler, played the largest role in the Capitol Hill riot, new documents show - "according to research from the George Washington University's Program on Extremism, of the 223 government documents discussing charges against individuals who were involved in the Capitol riot, 73 mentioned Facebook. Parler, meanwhile, was only mentioned eight times, outstripped by both Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, and YouTube, which is owned by Google. The data includes both public posts and private messages sent over the platforms."
Time to ban Facebook
Why everyone should be worried about Parler being booted from the internet. - "The real coordinated inauthentic behavior on social media made itself abundantly clear in the aftermath of the assault on Congress. The culprit isn’t a troll farm or Russian influence. This time, the coordinated inauthentic behavior is coming from California.Late last week, Google and Apple both suspended Parler—the social media platform of choice for the alt-right—and demanded a “moderation improvement plan” from Parler. Amazon, as of midnight, also suspended Parler from its web hosting services, citing “inadequate content-moderation practices.” Okta, an identity management software company in San Francisco, was notified that Parler had a free trial of its product and subsequently rushed to terminate access.Parler’s suspension should concern us all. I despise white supremacist content and its proliferation online, and the tweeted examples of comments posted on Parler are alarming and deeply unsettling to read. But as Kate Ruane, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement, it “should concern everyone when companies like Facebook and Twitter wield the unchecked power to remove people from platforms that have become indispensable for the speech of billions—especially when political realities make those decisions easier.”* There should be ways to bring accountability to platforms that host inciteful hate speech. Justice, however, is not achieved by endorsing other companies’ self-interests. This moment constitutes a paradigm shift in how the internet is governed. Yes, we’ve seen web hosting services in the past pull their services: Cloudflare, for example, decided to deny service for 8chan, the social media site with ties to the horrific Christchurch, New Zealand, attacks and El Paso, Texas, shooting.* This latest move, however, shows how the largest platforms that provide online “public squares” and infrastructure are taking simultaneous actions to centralize their power on the internet, not only by setting bright lines for speech but also, as ACLU lawyer Ben Wizner said, taking away “the keys to the Internet.”With the profoundly disturbing power imbalances that exist in who controls our online speech, who gets to demand a moderation improvement plan from Silicon Valley? Who demanded from Facebook a road map to moderation improvements after the company itself admitted that its own app was used to incite violence, and a genocide, in Myanmar? Last I checked, Google and Apple never chucked Facebook app downloads from their stores even though violence has most certainly been incited on Facebook time and time again. Tech platforms never rushed to block access to YouTube even after it was found that it helped radicalize the Christchurch shooter. Come to think of it—why wasn’t Twitter blocked from the Google Play Store or the App Store for allowing Trump to monopolize these radical sentiments for years until we reached this breaking point?... What’s most frightening about the demands from Google and Apple is that we simply don’t know what’s next. They have said that Parler must have content moderation plans in place. Next time, what if Google and Apple respond to a platform that has content policies and a content moderation scheme in place—just not ones that they like? Can they push for more changes to be made, or even go so far as to require that other platforms’ policies mimic Google’s, Facebook’s, and Twitter’s rules? It’s only a matter of time before Big Tech is simply drawing the limits of permissible speech for other platforms, and if someone resists, then all Big Tech needs to do is pull them from the app store or deny them the requisite infrastructure to exist online. Those on the left should also be deeply concerned about the absolutely alarming decision that just took place. Lest we forget, in the public outcry and debate over the WikiLeaks scandal, Apple made a decision to pull a WikiLeaks app from its App Store, and Amazon cut off its Amazon Web Services for the WikiLeaks website. In other words, a topic that also divided so many on ideological fault lines spurred companies to act quickly to protect their own self-interests based on the dominant public sentiment. In fact, the removal of WikiLeaks from these platforms followed a sequence of political pressure and delegitimization of WikiLeaks. At the height of the controversy, then–Vice President Joseph Biden himself referred to Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, as a “high-tech terrorist.” As Harvard Law professor Yochai Benkler wrote, “commercial owners of the critical infrastructures of the networked environment can deny service to controversial speakers, and some appear to be willing to do so at a mere whiff of public controversy.”"
Apple Removes All Apps Since Any Of Them Could Be Used To Incite Violence | The Babylon Bee - "Clock: Can schedule violence
Notes: Can write down ideas which lead to violence
Settings: Can get really frustrated trying to navigate iOS and be incited to violence
Safari: Can google "Jordan Peterson" and become a right-wing radical
Podcasts: can listen to Joe Rogan backlog
Stocks: can get mad at billionaires and riot
Game Center: can play Call of Duty and incite violence against other people's mothers
Health: Can get in shape to commit violence
"The future is appless!" The new appless iPhone will cost $2000 and was instantly sold out as rabid Apple fans lined up at Apple Stores and preordered them online."
Attack on Capitol Partially Coordinated on Twitter - "Activity on Twitter? Wasn’t “activity” on Parler the excuse for dropping the app from the Google Play and Apple app stores, and for Amazon to stop hosting them?"
Jack is straight up gloating about Parler being destroyed
25 MILLION users join social media alternative Telegram as people walk away from Big Tech - ""In the first week of January, Telegram surpassed 500 million monthly active users. After that it kept growing: 25 million new users joined Telegram in the last 72 hours alone," Telegram founder Pavel Durov said... Some have questioned whether Telegram will be able to manage to remain usable after big tech giants Apple, Google, and Amazon worked together to strongarm the social media site Parler off the internet. The site's app was removed from Apple's app store and Google's play store in the wake of the riot, and was later removed from the internet entirely after Amazon banned them from their web hosting service. In response to such questions, Durov has encouraged his users to avoid Apple products and to use self-hosted AKPs to download the app to Android phones. He also says a version of Telegram is being constructed to run on Safari, rather than solely on the "native app.""
YouTube removes raw footage of Capitol riot by independent journalist, demonetizes channel - "UPDATE: The YouTube channels in question have since been re-monetized by the platform.YouTube has removed raw Jan. 6 footage from an independent journalist, one of the country's leading chroniclers of political demonstrations, who documented the Capitol Hill riot. Then the platform demonetized his entire channel because of his alleged "harmful content." News2Share co-founder Ford Fischer uploaded video from former President Donald Trump's speech and the crowd's reaction before rioters stormed the Capitol building"
Parler CEO Says Service Dropped By “Every Vendor” Could End Business - "“Every vendor from text message services to email providers to our lawyers all ditched us too on the same day,” Matze said today on Fox News.Matze conceded that the bans could put the company out of business while raising free speech issues, calling it “an assault on everybody.”“They all work together to make sure at the same time we would lose access to not only our apps, but they’re actually shutting all of our servers off tonight, off the internet,” Matze said. “They made an attempt to not only kill the app, but to actually destroy the entire company. And it’s not just these three companies. Every vendor from text message services to email providers to our lawyers all ditched us too on the same day.”"
Group Boycotts | Federal Trade Commission - "Any company may, on its own, refuse to do business with another firm, but an agreement among competitors not to do business with targeted individuals or businesses may be an illegal boycott, especially if the group of competitors working together has market power."
John Rich on Twitter - "You'd think if big tech could all get together and erase Parler in one night, they should certainly be able to rid the internet of rampant human trafficking. #Priorities"
Parler CEO and family in hiding after receiving death threats - "Parler's chief executive John Matze and his family have gone into hiding after receiving multiple death and harassment threats"
Avi Mayer on Twitter - "Hezbollah, a designated terrorist group that has murdered hundreds of Americans, is using @Twitter to openly offer training for terrorists inside the United States. What the actual hell, @Jack?"
Thread by @navalny on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "I think that the ban of Donald Trump on Twitter is an unacceptable act of censorship... The election is a straightforward and competitive process. You can participate in it, you can appeal against the results, they're being monitored by millions of people. The ban on Twitter is a decision of people we don't know in accordance with a procedure we don't know... Don't tell me he was banned for violating Twitter rules. I get death threats here every day for many years, and Twitter doesn't ban anyone (not that I ask for it). Among the people who have Twitter accounts are cold-blooded murderers (Putin or Maduro) and liars and thieves (Medvedev). For many years, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have been used as a base for Putin's "troll factory" and similar groups from other authoritarian countries. Those who denied COVID-19 exist freely and communicate on Twitter. Their words have cost thousands of lives. And yet, it was Trump who got banned publicly and ostentatiously. Such selectivity indicates that this was an act of censorship... If you replace "Trump" with "Navalny" in today's discussion, you will get an 80% accurate Kremlin's answer as to why my name can't be mentioned on Russian TV and I shouldn't be allowed to participate in any elections. This precedent will be exploited by the enemies of freedom of speech around the world. In Russia as well. Every time when they need to silence someone, they will say: 'this is just common practice, even Trump got blocked on Twitter'. If @Twitter and @jack want to do things right, they need to create some sort of a committee that can make such decisions. We need to know the names of the members of this committee, understand how it works, how its members vote and how we can appeal against their decisions."
Even Angela Merkel is worried about Trump’s Twitter ban - "The social-media silencing of Donald Trump has set a terrifying new precedent – so terrifying that even Angela Merkel, hardly known for her commitment to free speech, is uncomfortable with it. Commenting on Twitter’s Trump ban, Merkel’s chief spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said, ‘the chancellor considers it problematic that the accounts of the US president have now been permanently blocked’. He explained that Merkel thinks parliaments should decide the rules for social-media platforms, rather than the tech firms themselves. He said that freedom of opinion is a right of ‘elementary importance’, adding that it ‘can be intervened in, but according to the law and within the framework defined by legislators – not according to a decision by the management of social-media platforms’."
Clear evidence Merkel is a Nazi, and we know Germans are the experts at Nazism
Alexei Navalny: Big Tech has emboldened the autocrats - "Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has warned that Twitter’s suppression of the US president puts dissidents like himself in danger. Navalny is the leader of Russia of the Future, an opposition party. He has been a thorn in the side of Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian government. Over the past decade, he has been put on trial on politically motivated charges, blocked from standing for election, and was even poisoned with Novichok. Navalny calls the decision to ban Trump’s Twitter account ‘an unacceptable act of censorship’. He also points to Twitter’s inconsistency, highlighting that people like Putin are able to use the site, but not Trump. Alexei Navalny: Big Tech has emboldened the autocrats Share Topics Free Speech Politics Science & Tech USA World Donald Trump has been kicked off all of the major social-media platforms following the storming of the Capitol last week. Twitter has banned him permanently. And you don’t have to be a fan of Trump to see the danger in this. Indeed, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has warned that Twitter’s suppression of the US president puts dissidents like himself in danger. Navalny is the leader of Russia of the Future, an opposition party. He has been a thorn in the side of Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian government. Over the past decade, he has been put on trial on politically motivated charges, blocked from standing for election, and was even poisoned with Novichok. Navalny calls the decision to ban Trump’s Twitter account ‘an unacceptable act of censorship’. He also points to Twitter’s inconsistency, highlighting that people like Putin are able to use the site, but not Trump. In his thread, Navalny also draws parallels between Twitter’s censorious treatment of Trump and the Russian government’s treatment of its opponents. He warns that autocrats around the world will use Trump’s ban as a justification for silencing dissident voices. If the president of the US can be censored, then censorship is no big deal, they will say."
Since Trump is Putin's puppet, this is proof that Navalny is Putin's crony too
After banning Trump and suppressing American news, Twitter condemns internet censorship in Uganda - "Twitter was part of a cadre of big tech companies that worked in concert to silence conservative voices, most notably the press. Twitter has not appeared to believe in an "open internet" in the US, although they now are advocating for that in foreign nations... The Ugandan government, disinterested in Twitter's take on their election, took the step of banning Twitter."
Cernovich on Twitter - "Earlier this week, in close coordination with our peers, we suspended a number of accounts targeting the election in Uganda."
"Remember how glibertarians claiming these companies weren’t monopolies because they all compete with each other?"
Here are six videos of Democrats calling for violence or physical confrontations that are still active on Twitter - " Rep. Maxine Waters, Rep. Ted Lieu, Sen. Cory Booker, Rep. Joaquin Castro, Sen. Jon Tester, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have all made comments suggesting violence or confrontations against Republicans. All of their Twitter accounts remain active, while the videos themselves are also circulating on the massive social media site... in 2019, Tester said on MSNBC that the way to beat Trump in the election was to “punch him in the face.”... in 2020, House Speaker Pelosi said during a National Governors Association meeting that when a person is involved with politics, “you have to be ready to take a punch, and you have to be ready to throw a punch.”"
Rex Murphy: Don't even try to pretend there's such a thing as free speech anymore - "All of these venues have a global reach. They began life with high promises of “Do no wrong,” and in the case of Twitter (and this is a cruel joke) its purpose was (oh Lord) “speaking truth to power.” Actually, I think quoting Dorsey’s 2015 description is worth a small halt: “Twitter stands for freedom of expression. We stand for speaking truth to power. And we stand for empowering dialogue.”... So when Twitter bans a site in Red Deer, or takes down some vendor selling cakes, or some retired hobbyist with a taste for tweeting supportive Trump mini-missives, it’s speaking truth to power. Good one, Jack. This is the pyramid moaning over the power of the grain of sand. Google, Facebook, Apple and Twitter — name a quartet of equal presence and power over communications anywhere in the world today. In this world, where to a degree not known in any other time in history, communication, the distribution of opinion and information is — outside of active armies — the greatest source of power that exists. And now all that power rests with a clutch of super-rich billionaires, with little restraint on how they exercise it."
Trump 'happier' now that he's off social media: former aide - "“He’s said that not being on social media, and not being subject to the hateful echo chamber that social media too frequently becomes, has actually been good,” Miller told the outlet. “That’s something the First Lady [Melania] has backed up as well. She has said she loves it, that he’s much happier and is enjoying himself much more,” the ex-aide said. Trump has also benefitted from no longer being under the pressures of the highest office, Miller said. Since Trump left the White House, it’s been “the first time in years that I saw the president truly relaxed""
The Great Free-Speech Reversal - The Atlantic - "the idea that private actors, not just government officials, might threaten the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment, as well as the other rights protected by the Constitution, was first suggested by big-government liberals, whom contemporary conservatives love to hate... although the Court struggled to define exactly when and under what circumstances the First Amendment applied to private actors, it continued to insist that it did sometimes apply. In 1968, for example, the great liberal lion, Justice Thurgood Marshall, wrote an opinion that held that a shopping mall’s private owner could not exclude protesters from the mall’s passageways without violating their First Amendment rights... For decades now, nearly all of the important forums of mass communication in the United States (radio and television stations, newspapers and magazines, movies and, yes, social-media platforms) have been privately owned. Given this state of affairs, private companies’ decisions about what speech to allow or exclude from their property obviously have the capacity to limit the free and open debate that sustains American democracy. The difficult thing is figuring out what to do about it... to protect expressive freedom from private power: laws requiring that the private media companies governing the mass public sphere abide by basic nondiscrimination and, often, due-process obligations. Even when the First Amendment intruded further into the private sphere than it does today, statutory nondiscrimination and due-process requirements were lawmakers’ primary tools to ensure that the private companies that controlled the telegraph and telephone wires, the radio and television airwaves, and the cable networks did not use their power to discriminate in favor of certain political viewpoints, or otherwise undermine the vitality of public debate. The most famous, and controversial, example of these laws was the Fairness Doctrine, which imposed extensive, if vague, nondiscrimination duties on radio and television broadcasters, and to an extent, cable-television companies, from the 1930s until the late ’80s, when Ronald Reagan’s FCC repealed it. But the Fairness Doctrine is only one example of a much wider array of media nondiscrimination laws, many of which continue to ensure, to this day, that, as one senator put it in 1926, the “few men” who control the “great publicity vehicles” of radio and television do not limit the range of ideas and viewpoints that the public can hear... However the political alignments work out, Trump’s deplatforming illuminated a basic insight worth keeping in mind: Private companies not only participate in the marketplace of ideas but also determine to a significant extent who else can participate in it. We should not take comfort in the fact that the speech-regulating decisions by Big Tech companies do not and cannot violate the First Amendment as it is currently understood. Conservatives are correct to be worried about the threat that the private platforms pose to freedom of speech, even if this makes them more like big-government liberals than they might be willing to acknowledge. Those big-government liberals should realize as much, and act accordingly."
