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The actions of Twitter regarding the last election have almost certainly guaranteed the rise of foreign social media sites. If they have no qualms restricting t

The actions of Twitter regarding the last election have almost certainly guaranteed the rise of foreign social media sites. If they have no qualms restricting the speech of the president of America, clearly they’ll have no issue manipulating other governments. American social media sites really have no one to blame but themselves. I say this from a realpolitik perspective. This was clearly the obvious outcome.

senthil_rajasek 6y ago
Hate speech inciting violence is what was banned not any speech.
- ceilingcorner 6y ago
  They’ve clearly shown themselves to have huge biases. The policy on “hacked” materials is a good example that was selectively applied only against one side. I’m really not a Trump fan and find most of the “conservative” media hilariously amateurish, but if you don’t see the obvious bias Silicon Valley has, I’m afraid you’re not paying close enough attention. From the perspective of a foreign government, why let them control information in your country? As I said, it makes no sense for them to do so.
  - senthil_rajasek 6y ago
    My response was directly to your quote, "restricting the speech of the president of America, clearly they’ll have no issue manipulating other governments."
    - ceilingcorner 6y ago
      As the other commenter said, Trump’s comments were confused at best, and Twitter didn’t actually cite them in their ban. They had a convoluted explanation of how his tweets were actually coded messages. Even if they did cite his speech as a reason, looking at it as a single event is sort of missing the point. They engaged in similar behavior for years beforehand.
    - golemiprague 6y ago
      A bit useless considering that's exactly is his point, that there is no agreement about that, you think it was inciting hate speech and he does not, so why Twitter should be in control of who is right? Obviously other powerful entities will want to be the deciders.
  - markdown 6y ago
    The bias is against electoral manipulation and fake news. Hence the "hacked" materials removal. > The policy on “hacked” materials is a good example that was selectively applied only against one side. On the side that pushes fake news, yes. That's a good bias to have.
    - ceilingcorner 6y ago
      There were plenty of situations in which the information was clearly gained illegally (or totally made up), but since it made Trump look bad, it was allowed. His tax returns, for example. As I said, if you think one side is somehow unbiased and just, you aren’t paying attention.
      - throwawaysea 6y ago
        Here are 11 examples of when this very thing happened, one of which is of course Trump's tax returns: https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/15/11-hacks-leaks-and-hoaxes-that-twitter-and-facebook-didnt-throttle-because-they-hurt-trump/ https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/15/11-hacks-leaks-and-hoax...
- throwawaysea 6y ago
  Can you prove incitement? Because Twitter certainly did not list out any convincing evidence in their blog post about the ban (https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension.html https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio...), instead sheepishly offering up Trump's absence at the inauguration as evidence. It's hard to blame Trump for the Jan 6th riots when 10000 people showed up at his rally that day and only a couple hundred at most went past the capitol barricades. But simply breaching the barriers is not really a big deal - leftist activists have raided the capitol several times in the last decade as part of their own political activism. So let's focus on those who didn't just trespass but committed other crimes like theft, vandalism, and assault. I bet that number is less than 50. So to summarize, Trump delivers a speech, he explicitly calls for a peaceful protest (visible in transcripts), and a very very small number of people break the law. That doesn't sound like incitement - it sounds to me like a few individuals made bad decisions and hold personal responsibility for their own actions and should be held accountable. But no court has found Trump guilty of incitement, and I bet none ever will - the evidence is simply not there. As for Twitter - their power and influence is larger than most governments, and they should not be making unilateral decisions judging incitement and instituting bans of public figures. They operate the new public town square - and they need to be regulated like a public entity. or just nationalized like a utility and required to uphold the first amendment. And other leaders like Macron (https://www.axios.com/macron-social-media-bans-trump-twitter-facebook-bf8640d0-57d0-4747-affb-e91835f9fb84.html https://www.axios.com/macron-social-media-bans-trump-twitter...) and Merkel (https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/11/germanys-merkel-hits-out-at-twitter-over-problematic-trump-ban.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/11/germanys-merkel-hits-out-at-...) are absolutely correct to be alarmed at the reckless actions and immense power of American tech giants, who are ideologically very biased.
  - ceilingcorner 6y ago
    Whew, that has to be the most snarky, insecure corporate press release I’ve ever seen. Bizarre.
  - mrzimmerman 6y ago
    He also explicitly told everyone to "fight like hell". I mean, if he's using double speak I can't help that but one part of what he said triggered a percentage of the people to try to find and kill US Congress people, steal computer equipment and other office supplies, and kill police officers. You're asking everyone who watched the capitol riots to ignore what they saw with their own eyes.
- BitwiseFool 6y ago
  The classic problem is, how do you define hate speech and what counts as inciting violence? Who are the people deciding such things? If you're a foreign government you do not want some committee of Bay Area Twitter employees deciding that for your national affairs.
  - cobraetor 6y ago
    These are great questions, and here's my attempt at answering or elaborating on them. > how do you define hate speech Ira Glasser explains it precisely: "When people say they want to ban hate speech, what they mean is they want to ban speech that they hate ... But if you allowed something called ‘hate speech’ to be banned, then the only important question would be ‘who decides? ... If the government is going to be the one to decide what hate speech to ban, it’s not going to be the same speech as the speech you hate, it’s going to be the speech they hate, ... It all ends up coming down to who decides and most often, it ain’t you' https://reclaimthenet.org/former-aclu-head-ira-glasser-explains-why-you-cant-ban-hate-speech/ https://reclaimthenet.org/former-aclu-head-ira-glasser-expla... > and what counts as inciting violence? This is better explained by the legal scholar Jonathan Turley, "The reason is that while the crime is not clear, the case law is. In Brandenburg v. Ohio, the Supreme Court ruled in 1969 that even calling for violence is protected under the First Amendment unless there is a threat of “imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.” Trump never called for violence and instead told his followers to go to the Capitol peacefully to “cheer” on those challenging the electoral votes. Such protests at capitals are common and, while reckless, Trump’s speech could as easily be interpreted as a call for protest rather than violence." https://jonathanturley.org/2021/02/19/want-to-prosecute-trump-it-will-require-proof-not-politics-for-a-viable-case/ https://jonathanturley.org/2021/02/19/want-to-prosecute-trum...
    - strictnein 6y ago
      Splitting hairs a little bit. The only recourse to an election that was actually stolen is violence. By stating again and again that the election was stolen what, exactly, was Trump wanting his followers to do about it? What, exactly, did he want for the people marching on the Capitol to do to stop the election from being stolen? Stand outside? Come on...
- cobraetor 6y ago
  > Hate speech inciting violence Interesting, but what I don't understand is ... if Trump clearly incited violence, why was he not convicted? Would you say that the American justice system is not fair? *edit: responding to comment from zimmerman below, I watched the full trial, but have not seen any clear arguments made in favor of proving incitement. The legal scholar Jonathan Turley explains it better: "The reason is that while the crime is not clear, the case law is. In Brandenburg v. Ohio, the Supreme Court ruled in 1969 that even calling for violence is protected under the First Amendment unless there is a threat of “imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.” Trump never called for violence and instead told his followers to go to the Capitol peacefully to “cheer” on those challenging the electoral votes. Such protests at capitals are common and, while reckless, Trump’s speech could as easily be interpreted as a call for protest rather than violence." https://jonathanturley.org/2021/02/19/want-to-prosecute-trump-it-will-require-proof-not-politics-for-a-viable-case/ https://jonathanturley.org/2021/02/19/want-to-prosecute-trum... *edit: Here's an informative video on House managers presenting fake evidence (as foolinaround explains below) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW3I3wXrBoo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW3I3wXrBoo
  - mrzimmerman 6y ago
    Because the Republican party decided that because Trump was no longer president at the time of his 2nd impeachment trial he couldn't TECHNICALLY be convicted: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/fact-check-yes-mcconnell-said-trump-was-practically-and-morally-responsible-for-capitol-riot/ar-BB1dKhdt https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/fact-check-yes-mccon... Which, if you paid attention to the trial was extremely well reported, so either you genuinely didn't pay attention at all or you're trying to imply anyone in Congress seriously believed he wasn't culpable. So to answer your question simply, he wasn't convicted because it wasn't politically expedient to the rest of his political party.
    - foolinaround 6y ago
      you have to check either your biases or where you get your stories from. If the impeachment managers did this stuff (fake the evidence such as videos, tweets, etc) in a real court, they would face serious consequences. The Chief Justice recognized it as a sham and did not participate, and one does not need to like Trump to know what this second round was. The first one was atleast done by the book...
- cccc4alll 6y ago
  Your speech is hate speech. You should be banned and censored and deplatformed.
- foolinaround 6y ago
  this is a subjective opinion, at best. If it is not clear enough to stand prosecution, then it is not 'hate speech' really. There needs to be clear-cut definitions and enforced uniformly. Twitter has lost that trust, and now raises alarmms across the world.
- mc32 6y ago
  Hate speech should be defined by laws rather than ToSes. With a ToS you can make it up as you like. Speaking against having pets could be hate speech against pet owners. I mean it could mean whatever the mods want it to mean. You can circumscribe it to only affect people you want affected for whatever reason.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    > With a ToS you can make it up as you like. Speaking against having pets could be hate speech against pet owners. I mean it could mean whatever the mods want it to mean. You can circumscribe it to only affect people you want affected for whatever reason. To be fair, Congress could, on a whim, change the definitions of hate speech whenever they felt like it. If you're arguing about selective enforcement with TOS, the police already selectively enforce laws. Hate speech would just be another one they could use against people they don't like, while ignoring those they do. There's no good solution.
    - mc32 6y ago
      Yes agreed. There is no good solution. True hate speech is one of the reasons we can’t have good things. But “hate speech” is a cudgel used to control people and get them used to being controlled. That said, things like speed limits for example. We all on principle agree to this type of enforcement. One via the licensing and second via legislation. We could make changes if we thought it important enough. Look at prop 47. People erroneously thought we were prosecuting too many minor thefts. So the law was changed. Now many people are looking to reverse it given the unintended consequences. Point is, at least we can affect legislation directly. Not so with ToSes unless Congress takes up the issue -which so far they are loath to do.
    - gnicholas 6y ago
      > To be fair, Congress could, on a whim, change the definitions of hate speech whenever they felt like it. In the US, the legislature cannot unilaterally create rules that outlaw certain speech (unless that speech falls outside of the guarantees of the US Constitution). Also, there's no current definition of 'hate speech' in federal law.
- notsureaboutpg 6y ago
  It doesn't matter though. Other governments are going to see the facts on the ground (Twitter can and will restrict the speech of a head of state to his people), and rush to sanction local alternatives which will allow them to reach their people and ban American versions.
- BannedQuick 6y ago
  The definition of hate speech is not universal. It is purely subjective based on whoever controls the Wikipedia-to-journalist-circular-citation pipeline.
twobitshifter 6y ago
These platforms are too big. A company should be able to ban its users or disable accounts, but that should be an inconvenience and not censorship. Trump lied and promoted insurrection but we can imagine futures where the good guys are the ones being shut off. I don’t know the solution. Trump could post his 280 characters on whitehouse.gov to his heart’s content. But in comparison to Twitter with millions of followers it’s like talking to an empty room. You’d expect that those millions of followers would still be interested in his 280 characters if they’re not on Twitter, but there’s no frictionless broadcasting. Unlike RSS, every voice is plugged into a monolithic service that can rank and silence stories as it sees fit.
phailhaus 6y ago
> If they have no qualms restricting the speech of the president of America, clearly they’ll have no issue manipulating other governments. This never did make sense to me. Trump's speech was not curtailed. At any point in time he could issue a press conference and speak freely to the US, and it would be heavily attended by the press. Are we supposed to feel sorry for Trump that he decided to make twitter.com the _only_ way he communicated with the country? There was literally nothing stopping him from speaking to the country after his account was banned; he _chose_ to stop talking.

senthil_rajasek 6y ago

Hate speech inciting violence is what was banned not any speech.

ceilingcorner 6y ago
They’ve clearly shown themselves to have huge biases. The policy on “hacked” materials is a good example that was selectively applied only against one side. I’m really not a Trump fan and find most of the “conservative” media hilariously amateurish, but if you don’t see the obvious bias Silicon Valley has, I’m afraid you’re not paying close enough attention. From the perspective of a foreign government, why let them control information in your country? As I said, it makes no sense for them to do so.
- senthil_rajasek 6y ago
  My response was directly to your quote, "restricting the speech of the president of America, clearly they’ll have no issue manipulating other governments."
  - ceilingcorner 6y ago
    As the other commenter said, Trump’s comments were confused at best, and Twitter didn’t actually cite them in their ban. They had a convoluted explanation of how his tweets were actually coded messages. Even if they did cite his speech as a reason, looking at it as a single event is sort of missing the point. They engaged in similar behavior for years beforehand.
  - golemiprague 6y ago
    A bit useless considering that's exactly is his point, that there is no agreement about that, you think it was inciting hate speech and he does not, so why Twitter should be in control of who is right? Obviously other powerful entities will want to be the deciders.
- markdown 6y ago
  The bias is against electoral manipulation and fake news. Hence the "hacked" materials removal. > The policy on “hacked” materials is a good example that was selectively applied only against one side. On the side that pushes fake news, yes. That's a good bias to have.
  - ceilingcorner 6y ago
    There were plenty of situations in which the information was clearly gained illegally (or totally made up), but since it made Trump look bad, it was allowed. His tax returns, for example. As I said, if you think one side is somehow unbiased and just, you aren’t paying attention.
    - throwawaysea 6y ago
      Here are 11 examples of when this very thing happened, one of which is of course Trump's tax returns: https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/15/11-hacks-leaks-and-hoaxes-that-twitter-and-facebook-didnt-throttle-because-they-hurt-trump/ https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/15/11-hacks-leaks-and-hoax...
throwawaysea 6y ago
Can you prove incitement? Because Twitter certainly did not list out any convincing evidence in their blog post about the ban (https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension.html https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio...), instead sheepishly offering up Trump's absence at the inauguration as evidence. It's hard to blame Trump for the Jan 6th riots when 10000 people showed up at his rally that day and only a couple hundred at most went past the capitol barricades. But simply breaching the barriers is not really a big deal - leftist activists have raided the capitol several times in the last decade as part of their own political activism. So let's focus on those who didn't just trespass but committed other crimes like theft, vandalism, and assault. I bet that number is less than 50. So to summarize, Trump delivers a speech, he explicitly calls for a peaceful protest (visible in transcripts), and a very very small number of people break the law. That doesn't sound like incitement - it sounds to me like a few individuals made bad decisions and hold personal responsibility for their own actions and should be held accountable. But no court has found Trump guilty of incitement, and I bet none ever will - the evidence is simply not there. As for Twitter - their power and influence is larger than most governments, and they should not be making unilateral decisions judging incitement and instituting bans of public figures. They operate the new public town square - and they need to be regulated like a public entity. or just nationalized like a utility and required to uphold the first amendment. And other leaders like Macron (https://www.axios.com/macron-social-media-bans-trump-twitter-facebook-bf8640d0-57d0-4747-affb-e91835f9fb84.html https://www.axios.com/macron-social-media-bans-trump-twitter...) and Merkel (https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/11/germanys-merkel-hits-out-at-twitter-over-problematic-trump-ban.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/11/germanys-merkel-hits-out-at-...) are absolutely correct to be alarmed at the reckless actions and immense power of American tech giants, who are ideologically very biased.
- ceilingcorner 6y ago
  Whew, that has to be the most snarky, insecure corporate press release I’ve ever seen. Bizarre.
- mrzimmerman 6y ago
  He also explicitly told everyone to "fight like hell". I mean, if he's using double speak I can't help that but one part of what he said triggered a percentage of the people to try to find and kill US Congress people, steal computer equipment and other office supplies, and kill police officers. You're asking everyone who watched the capitol riots to ignore what they saw with their own eyes.
BitwiseFool 6y ago
The classic problem is, how do you define hate speech and what counts as inciting violence? Who are the people deciding such things? If you're a foreign government you do not want some committee of Bay Area Twitter employees deciding that for your national affairs.
- cobraetor 6y ago
  These are great questions, and here's my attempt at answering or elaborating on them. > how do you define hate speech Ira Glasser explains it precisely: "When people say they want to ban hate speech, what they mean is they want to ban speech that they hate ... But if you allowed something called ‘hate speech’ to be banned, then the only important question would be ‘who decides? ... If the government is going to be the one to decide what hate speech to ban, it’s not going to be the same speech as the speech you hate, it’s going to be the speech they hate, ... It all ends up coming down to who decides and most often, it ain’t you' https://reclaimthenet.org/former-aclu-head-ira-glasser-explains-why-you-cant-ban-hate-speech/ https://reclaimthenet.org/former-aclu-head-ira-glasser-expla... > and what counts as inciting violence? This is better explained by the legal scholar Jonathan Turley, "The reason is that while the crime is not clear, the case law is. In Brandenburg v. Ohio, the Supreme Court ruled in 1969 that even calling for violence is protected under the First Amendment unless there is a threat of “imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.” Trump never called for violence and instead told his followers to go to the Capitol peacefully to “cheer” on those challenging the electoral votes. Such protests at capitals are common and, while reckless, Trump’s speech could as easily be interpreted as a call for protest rather than violence." https://jonathanturley.org/2021/02/19/want-to-prosecute-trump-it-will-require-proof-not-politics-for-a-viable-case/ https://jonathanturley.org/2021/02/19/want-to-prosecute-trum...
  - strictnein 6y ago
    Splitting hairs a little bit. The only recourse to an election that was actually stolen is violence. By stating again and again that the election was stolen what, exactly, was Trump wanting his followers to do about it? What, exactly, did he want for the people marching on the Capitol to do to stop the election from being stolen? Stand outside? Come on...
cobraetor 6y ago
> Hate speech inciting violence Interesting, but what I don't understand is ... if Trump clearly incited violence, why was he not convicted? Would you say that the American justice system is not fair? *edit: responding to comment from zimmerman below, I watched the full trial, but have not seen any clear arguments made in favor of proving incitement. The legal scholar Jonathan Turley explains it better: "The reason is that while the crime is not clear, the case law is. In Brandenburg v. Ohio, the Supreme Court ruled in 1969 that even calling for violence is protected under the First Amendment unless there is a threat of “imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.” Trump never called for violence and instead told his followers to go to the Capitol peacefully to “cheer” on those challenging the electoral votes. Such protests at capitals are common and, while reckless, Trump’s speech could as easily be interpreted as a call for protest rather than violence." https://jonathanturley.org/2021/02/19/want-to-prosecute-trump-it-will-require-proof-not-politics-for-a-viable-case/ https://jonathanturley.org/2021/02/19/want-to-prosecute-trum... *edit: Here's an informative video on House managers presenting fake evidence (as foolinaround explains below) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW3I3wXrBoo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW3I3wXrBoo
- mrzimmerman 6y ago
  Because the Republican party decided that because Trump was no longer president at the time of his 2nd impeachment trial he couldn't TECHNICALLY be convicted: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/fact-check-yes-mcconnell-said-trump-was-practically-and-morally-responsible-for-capitol-riot/ar-BB1dKhdt https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/fact-check-yes-mccon... Which, if you paid attention to the trial was extremely well reported, so either you genuinely didn't pay attention at all or you're trying to imply anyone in Congress seriously believed he wasn't culpable. So to answer your question simply, he wasn't convicted because it wasn't politically expedient to the rest of his political party.
  - foolinaround 6y ago
    you have to check either your biases or where you get your stories from. If the impeachment managers did this stuff (fake the evidence such as videos, tweets, etc) in a real court, they would face serious consequences. The Chief Justice recognized it as a sham and did not participate, and one does not need to like Trump to know what this second round was. The first one was atleast done by the book...
cccc4alll 6y ago
Your speech is hate speech. You should be banned and censored and deplatformed.
foolinaround 6y ago
this is a subjective opinion, at best. If it is not clear enough to stand prosecution, then it is not 'hate speech' really. There needs to be clear-cut definitions and enforced uniformly. Twitter has lost that trust, and now raises alarmms across the world.
mc32 6y ago
Hate speech should be defined by laws rather than ToSes. With a ToS you can make it up as you like. Speaking against having pets could be hate speech against pet owners. I mean it could mean whatever the mods want it to mean. You can circumscribe it to only affect people you want affected for whatever reason.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  > With a ToS you can make it up as you like. Speaking against having pets could be hate speech against pet owners. I mean it could mean whatever the mods want it to mean. You can circumscribe it to only affect people you want affected for whatever reason. To be fair, Congress could, on a whim, change the definitions of hate speech whenever they felt like it. If you're arguing about selective enforcement with TOS, the police already selectively enforce laws. Hate speech would just be another one they could use against people they don't like, while ignoring those they do. There's no good solution.
  - mc32 6y ago
    Yes agreed. There is no good solution. True hate speech is one of the reasons we can’t have good things. But “hate speech” is a cudgel used to control people and get them used to being controlled. That said, things like speed limits for example. We all on principle agree to this type of enforcement. One via the licensing and second via legislation. We could make changes if we thought it important enough. Look at prop 47. People erroneously thought we were prosecuting too many minor thefts. So the law was changed. Now many people are looking to reverse it given the unintended consequences. Point is, at least we can affect legislation directly. Not so with ToSes unless Congress takes up the issue -which so far they are loath to do.
  - gnicholas 6y ago
    > To be fair, Congress could, on a whim, change the definitions of hate speech whenever they felt like it. In the US, the legislature cannot unilaterally create rules that outlaw certain speech (unless that speech falls outside of the guarantees of the US Constitution). Also, there's no current definition of 'hate speech' in federal law.
notsureaboutpg 6y ago
It doesn't matter though. Other governments are going to see the facts on the ground (Twitter can and will restrict the speech of a head of state to his people), and rush to sanction local alternatives which will allow them to reach their people and ban American versions.
BannedQuick 6y ago
The definition of hate speech is not universal. It is purely subjective based on whoever controls the Wikipedia-to-journalist-circular-citation pipeline.

twobitshifter 6y ago

These platforms are too big. A company should be able to ban its users or disable accounts, but that should be an inconvenience and not censorship. Trump lied and promoted insurrection but we can imagine futures where the good guys are the ones being shut off. I don’t know the solution. Trump could post his 280 characters on whitehouse.gov to his heart’s content. But in comparison to Twitter with millions of followers it’s like talking to an empty room. You’d expect that those millions of followers would still be interested in his 280 characters if they’re not on Twitter, but there’s no frictionless broadcasting. Unlike RSS, every voice is plugged into a monolithic service that can rank and silence stories as it sees fit.

phailhaus 6y ago

> If they have no qualms restricting the speech of the president of America, clearly they’ll have no issue manipulating other governments. This never did make sense to me. Trump's speech was not curtailed. At any point in time he could issue a press conference and speak freely to the US, and it would be heavily attended by the press. Are we supposed to feel sorry for Trump that he decided to make twitter.com the _only_ way he communicated with the country? There was literally nothing stopping him from speaking to the country after his account was banned; he _chose_ to stop talking.