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Liberal ideas from the enlightenment are alive and well. Now if the government had banned Trump from speaking, then you would have a point. Twitter banning Trum
by bilbo0s 6y ago
Liberal ideas from the enlightenment are alive and well. Now if the government had banned Trump from speaking, then you would have a point. Twitter banning Trump is, at root, a business making a business decision.
Here's reality, and I'm going to date myself here, but there were, long ago, enormously popular digital spaces called BBS's. You could chat, play games (MUDs mostly), etc etc. They are, by and large, no longer with us. New and admittedly better technologies came along. So will it be with Social Media. As difficult as it may be for people to believe, 40 years from now, Social Media in its current form will probably not be with us any longer.
Here's the thing though, the government will still be with us. So it's the government that we need to constrict. And, using the tool of our Constitution, we do an admirable job of constricting the government's ability to restrict our free speech. That Twitter says a man can't talk on their private property is not a societal problem. That the government says a man can't talk anywhere in the country is a societal problem. There's been far too much conflating of these two issues, they are not the same.
- johnzim 6y agoI agree in some respects but comparing the nature of the internet today compared to the internet we remembered back in the 90s, it’s abundantly clear that consolidation and centralization are significant forces. We’re not really making the same progress on decentralizing the web that we thought we would. Is it really that difficult to see further consolidation as the most likely outcome?
- loopz 6y agoMass decentralization may bring on centralization of lies and deceit though. The ideal requires great maturity.
- hype7 6y agoYeah, except for the fact that there’s no one bbs “to rule them all”. The power these platforms have mean they’re up there in terms of influence of govt. As I saw concisely said on Twitter: If you can silence a king, you are the king
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoThere are reasonable concerns about precedent here, but it's hard to see a reasonable perspective where this particular enforcement action is "silencing". If Trump has something he'd like people to hear, he can simply announce a press conference, and dozens of major news organizations will be ready within minutes to share his thoughts with the world.
- fapjacks 6y agoHow quickly we forget the past. Trump took to Twitter specifically because he believed none of the news organizations were reliable narrators of his messaging.
- jakelazaroff 6y agoHe believed that because to him, anything less than obsequious praise is fake. It doesn’t make it true.
- benlivengood 6y agoBack in 2017 Trump had 3643 domains. I can only speculate that there are more now. There's no substance to the claim that he's silenced. https://money.cnn.com/2017/02/20/technology/trump-websites/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2017/02/20/technology/trump-websites/i...
- dredmorbius 6y agoHow many eyeballs spend how many minutes per day on those domains? Exposure != delivery points. Twitter has audience.
- rconti 6y agoThere's nothing more absurd than calling the loudest carnival barker on the planet with virtually every form of media at his hands "silenced".
- lenkite 6y agoYes. Agree, but only if you also remove Section 230 that provides immunity from civil liabilities for such businesses making business decisions.
- bilbo0s 6y agoOh absolutely. I've long been in favor of getting rid of section 230. I'm not sure why we have it?
- belorn 6y agoLets put aside the events that this suspension is targeting and just focus on the statement of business making a business decision about their private property. Why is there a difference between Twitter, Inc making such decision and Verizon Communications. Neither are government. The only reasonable argument that I can think of is that Twitter holds less of an monopoly to their users than Verizon. That however seems to me as up to interpretation, and not about the question about what is or isn't private property.
- thefucnjosh 6y agoSedition, terrorism, and advocating the overthrow of the government ARE NOT PROTECTED SPEECH. If the government did tell Trump he was banned it wouldn't violate any liberal principles. It's not personal that's just the law. And it's litterally the law in every country on earth.
- throwawaysea 6y agoThere is literally nothing Trump said that advocated for either terrorism or the overthrow of the government. Also sedition is protected speech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seditious_libel#Seditious_speech_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seditious_libel#Seditious_spee...