4 ms·

Man, you'd think the big story would be the infiltration and associated censorship of Twitter via the three letter agencies of the government. That seems inter

Man, you'd think the big story would be the infiltration and associated censorship of Twitter via the three letter agencies of the government. That seems interesting, doesn't it? When the FBI is guiding Twitter's content policy at some point the defense that this "isn't a first Amendment issue because it's a private corporation blah blah" starts to fall apart. Instead the narrative is about how all of Musk's businesses will fail because of his changes at Twitter and how angry liberals are about it. Are liberals really that upset because the new CEO made the world's tiniest baby step toward free speech? I suspect that the FBI has its paws in all the major media organizations as well--and that this isn't really troubling to them, because they are all pretty much on the same page, in propaganda terms. But Twitter is one big comment section and it's a tougher nut.

tosc 4y ago
> world's tiniest baby step toward free speech? Do you honestly believe that we can’t speak freely in the US?
- findalex 4y ago
  When the FBI (i.e. the federal government) is asking a public company to censor you... I'd say it's getting dicey. If we don't have a free speech problem, then we have an abuse of executive powers problem - but we already knew that. One might argue Twitter didn't have to take the censorship advice from the feds but IMO they shouldn't be doing this type of lobbying adversarial to US citizens.
  - tosc 4y ago
    The federal government is free to ask for whatever it likes. It’s pretty absurd to imagine otherwise. What it can’t do is punish people for what they say. Twitter as you point out, is a business that is free to do whatever it likes, and publish whatever it likes on its website. At no point did Twitter enter into an agreement with people posting tweets about who they will be shown to. That’s not part of its business. Elon doesn’t seem to be doing anything differently. He’s using Twitter to advocate for his political views, and ban people he doesn’t like. Associating Elon with freedom of speech is a red herring. There is no connection. That said, everything that people keep claiming to be ‘censored’ is somehow public knowledge, and nobody is afraid the government is going to punish them for talking about it. The idea that freedom of speech is under threat because of anything to do with Twitter just isn’t in contact with reality.

tosc 4y ago

> world's tiniest baby step toward free speech? Do you honestly believe that we can’t speak freely in the US?

findalex 4y ago
When the FBI (i.e. the federal government) is asking a public company to censor you... I'd say it's getting dicey. If we don't have a free speech problem, then we have an abuse of executive powers problem - but we already knew that. One might argue Twitter didn't have to take the censorship advice from the feds but IMO they shouldn't be doing this type of lobbying adversarial to US citizens.
- tosc 4y ago
  The federal government is free to ask for whatever it likes. It’s pretty absurd to imagine otherwise. What it can’t do is punish people for what they say. Twitter as you point out, is a business that is free to do whatever it likes, and publish whatever it likes on its website. At no point did Twitter enter into an agreement with people posting tweets about who they will be shown to. That’s not part of its business. Elon doesn’t seem to be doing anything differently. He’s using Twitter to advocate for his political views, and ban people he doesn’t like. Associating Elon with freedom of speech is a red herring. There is no connection. That said, everything that people keep claiming to be ‘censored’ is somehow public knowledge, and nobody is afraid the government is going to punish them for talking about it. The idea that freedom of speech is under threat because of anything to do with Twitter just isn’t in contact with reality.