3 ms·
Ok. My normal account is apolitical and I don't know if I would call myself a Republican, more of a conservative maybe. Regardless, for me this goes back to th
by mwBlVuHDNE 6y ago
Ok. My normal account is apolitical and I don't know if I would call myself a Republican, more of a conservative maybe.
Regardless, for me this goes back to the Covington Catholic incident. Nick Sandmann sued the Washington Post, NBC, and CNN for defamation and settled. He had a pretty strong case. I think being able to sue for defamation is reasonable and not necessarily indicative of big government support.
But Twitter can't be sued but that was where the videos of him were posted and it was where a Twitter mob formed and peopled doxed him and started to call for Nick's head. I remember seeing it all happen in real time on Friday on Twitter. By Sunday the news outlets were running with it.
At that time, Twitter wasn't flagging content as misleading however, they were banning harmful rhetoric. I guess to me that sort of activity that happened in January 2019 is harmful rhetoric. The ability to let an angry mob defame someone like that and even threaten someone is something Twitter should take responsibility for. Every other publishing platform is held to those standards. If Twitter is profiting from the use which may include activities like defaming someone, then it makes sense that victims are entitled to some compensation from them in addition to any users. Although I appreciate there are fine legal arguments to be made here.
And for the record, it seems like fairly normal discourse on Twitter to expose people with personal information for specifically being racist, misogynist, etc. without any evidence required and people usually condone this. This definitely can be damaging and I think people who are victims of this justly ought to be able to recover losses. Twitter doesn't seem to have much interest in stopping it like they do other forms of harmful speech so I think victims ought to be able to get justice and that has nothing to do with Trump's tweeting habits.