3 ms·

Its a common theme used online in posts and memes for years, about voting dates moved, vote by sending text, vote by calling a number, voting places moved, all

Its a common theme used online in posts and memes for years, about voting dates moved, vote by sending text, vote by calling a number, voting places moved, all fake. He wasn't even the only one to do this joke online, a quick twitter search showed both sides promoting the same fake scenarios. This was also popular genre of meme on facebook. The case also proved nobody was affected by the joke, and the his joke was censored by twitter. Also twitter didnt remove others jokes using the same voting meme style. So we have a joke, nobody fell for, nobody should fall for, and somehow, only the Government didn't realize it was a historical common joke.... Saying he was trying to disenfranchise the public, is a real stretch. Jokes with this same genre have been around since the turn of the century. His account was just a meme account, just like the bee or onion. Saying his post was taken as fact semes unlikely. They had to use a KKK law about voter intimidation to persecute him, and they referenced his conservative postings and anti-Hillary viewpoint as proof he was a "bad dude".

acdha 3y ago
There are a couple of key oversights in your post which explain the difference: they showed that thousands of people did try to follow his advice to vote by text message, and he misrepresented himself as speaking on behalf of the Clinton campaign. That crosses a key legal line and if you tried to impersonate the Trump campaign you’d get the same stronger reaction. Secondly, you’re wrong that Twitter didn’t remove other instances of that joke. They removed lots of election misinformation but the difference is that Democrats, along with most mainstream Republicans, didn’t feel that was unfair and make a big stink about it. A private company has every right to say that they have rules about use of their private property and not spreading election misinformation at least used to be a pretty uncontroversial policy.

acdha 3y ago

There are a couple of key oversights in your post which explain the difference: they showed that thousands of people did try to follow his advice to vote by text message, and he misrepresented himself as speaking on behalf of the Clinton campaign. That crosses a key legal line and if you tried to impersonate the Trump campaign you’d get the same stronger reaction. Secondly, you’re wrong that Twitter didn’t remove other instances of that joke. They removed lots of election misinformation but the difference is that Democrats, along with most mainstream Republicans, didn’t feel that was unfair and make a big stink about it. A private company has every right to say that they have rules about use of their private property and not spreading election misinformation at least used to be a pretty uncontroversial policy.