Trump’s Twitter Exile Spurs Opposition from Germany, France(bloomberg.com) |
Trump’s Twitter Exile Spurs Opposition from Germany, France(bloomberg.com) |
If the problem is social media companies that are so large they suck up all the air in the room then solve THAT problem and enforce existing anti-monopoly laws.
We don't need the government to govern free speech, but defending our rights is the reason the United States government exists, according to the men who created it.
> “ Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
I've seen this assertion here several times, always without any evidence, so I don't even know how to begin arguing against it other then vaguely gesturing in the direction of the postal service and the supreme courts decision to enforce the first amendemnt in company towns.[1]
Unfortunately, I think even outside the oligopolies of tech, we have another underlying issue where even in a competitive market, market consensus can arrive that runs counter to democratic ideals.
I'd be surprised if all the tech providers actively coordinated on this. I'd be more willing to believe they all saw Trump as a threat to business and an overhanging risk for their business they tackled at an opportune time. One or two set the stage for the market (Twitter and Facebook) and then the rest followed through based on observed market feedback from Twitter/Facebook's actions, arriving at a concensus to censor Trump.
To be very clear, I don’t like Trump whatsoever and think he has clearly manipulated masses of people for years. At the same time, I don't think Trump directly violated policies. He's largely acted in the questionable grey areas of culture and society to push his will and has been quite effective at it.
This really brings into question underlying foundational principles surrounding free speech limitations and free speech protections, privatized communications' role in modern political discussions (essential to democracy), how we protect against oligopies or natural market consensus that may be harmful to underlying foundations to democracy, and so forth.
In this case I think we saw the oligopies and market concensus actually help democracy by protecting against a ridiculous yet growing insurrection attempt. What happens if that control or market consensus shifts to help businesses over consumers or general citizens of the US? There's clearly a lot of unchecked power here that needs to be corralled.
Fair point, I would rather have Merkel decide what can be said than Jack Dorsey. At least Merkel was democratically elected, while Jack is... I would rather not say it, but I do recommend to people to read the book "Hatching Twitter"..
Their feigned concern over Twitter excercising its 1st Amendment rights seems a bit hypocritical here.
This has been the case since the founding f the nation. Those businesses which controlled the printing presses, radio, and then television transmitters have always controlled the public discourse. Add datacenters to that list.
The modern state is based on the exclusive authority of the state to be violent, and the final dispenser of rights.
When a private utility takes away the right to digital expression, which is a pretty fundamental right in the 2020s, one could make a pretty solid case that Trump's free speech rights have been taken away by private individuals or corps without a court ruling on it.
Digital rights are (at the moment) not covered by any of the articles in the constitution, nor is it covered by any UN or multi-lateral conventions, so this event may lead to some changes.
The point here is not about whether it was right or wrong to muzzle Trump & his supporters, but whether a private corp has the same rights as a court to affect individual freedom.
Let's see what will come from this.
https://babylonbee.com/news/trump-circumvents-twitter-ban-wi...
He never should've been tweeting while in office in the first place.
Not an expert on freedom of online speech by any means, but how come private companies saying what the US president does is violation of their policy is a freedom of speech issue? When this happens to an ordinary user of the platform, is it freedom of speech issue as well? You accept terms and conditions when you signup, it's as simple as that. Why being the US president should give you right to be exempt from that policy?
If US president wants to talk, it has its official channels, he can organize meeting every day that they can host 100s of journalists. If US president wants he can write whatever he wants at his website. I really don't understand why political leaders continuously picture things like social media websites are the only medium the president can talk at?
I have criticism for the social media sites tho, if the president of where I'm from was doing what Trump has been doing I'm pretty sure they wouldn't give a damn and wouldn't take any actions. If social media companies want people to believe to their policies, they must apply them to everyone.
One could argue that it was unreasonable for Twitter to give him special extra leeway compared to other users, up until it finally decided it did not have to continue making special concessions for him.
Of course the tech companies which provide platforms must do some enforcement of the content being presented by its users. If that content is illegal in a given jurisdiction, then the tech company can face penalties or complete shutdown if it does not make an effort to police its users.
The difficulty comes in deciding what speech should be allowed and which should be suppressed. Even without the governmental legal jeopardy the companies face, the US is a very litigious land. Anyone with a motivated lawyer or enough money can sue the platform for enabling speech that they find personally damaging. And of course with content "owned" by an entity, that entity can sue the platform for allowing their content to be distributed illegally.
If [edit typo carification: if you] setup an account on xing.com (German LinkedIn-like service) and put as your profile description that the Holocaust never happened, you can be sure the platform will suppress your speech or kick you off completely. It is hypocritical for Merkel to point at Twitter when she surely supports similar tech powers locally.
You only have your speech protected from government infringement.
Twitter is not the government, and you waived your rights in their terms of service.
Giving society complete freedom is like asking for a body to exist without an immune system--cancerous ideas and movements will exist unchecked and feast on more of society.
Stop. Saying. You. Need. More. Freedom.
Many of these weren't places trump or republicans really were. They are just banning trump supporters.
As republicans left those platforms, big tech also removed the new place Parler in a coordinated method. With shortage on servers, they aren't going to be getting back up and running anytime soon.
At the end of the day this isn't about censorship. Trump for all it matters could post to his own website. He's not stopped from getting out his message.
The more important reality here is that big tech clearly played their cards. What used to be a political divide that was entirely democrats is now both.
If you thought the political divide in the USA was bad before the election. It's now worse than ever. This is about silencing political opposition.
Oh and in the next 2 years you can expect the NRA will be disbanding. Right to bear arms will be getting shut down.
What do you think the republicans are going to do? I don't know. Will it be civil war? I dont think so.
How about the election in 2 years? Anyone think there will be a free and fair election?
Edit: I’m not siding with or against Twitter here. Whether their decision was wise or not certainly needs to be discussed. I’m just pointing out that “silencing the lunatic in the White House” isn’t the only potential explanation for their suspension of Trump’s account.
I especially don't agree with their decision to hide all of his past posts. If they allowed it to stay up for so long, it should remain permanently as part of the political context of this time period.
I believe that the effects of this permaban (and the seemingly coordinated effort to purge the Internet of Parler) will be pretty much the opposite, reenforcing paranoia about unelected tyrants more powerful than any office holder in the U.S.
I feel like people are conflating "Freedom of Speech" with the "Freedom of Platform". This is an important difference. If I send a letter to Bloomberg or The New York Times, no one would find it surprising or wrong when they decided to not publish it (for ANY reason). If I violate their commenter section policies, they remove it and no one blinks. They decide what's on their platform without answer.
I am not against the idea of governments guaranteeing certain freedoms and access to platforms, but they currently do not exist as far as I understand. Saying some right has been newly violated is somewhat silly, especially given that the subject in question is a member of a political party who has fought tooth-and-nail to preserve this exact right for businesses -- to arbitrarily chose who they do business with. That is what we're contending with.
TL;DR: The discussion needs to be recentered.
EDIT: This is a hypothetical situation, meant to evoke thought.
But yeah, unchecked corporate power coming home to roost. Personally I believe Nazis should be gagged not given megaphones, but this can affect anyone.
Personally, I think Twitter et al. are acting on advice of counsel, not wanting to be considered an accessory to insurrection. It's telling that despite being called out on their hypocrisy (allowing trump to incite violence for years), the bans come now, after the balance of power in the US shifted to DEM.
That's wrong. They shutdown the ability to post on @potus and deleted tweets[0].
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump-twitte...
When Europe starts to worry about free speech that says something as to how far America has fallen.
This is about who gets to make the decisions, not what the decisions are.
Trump has said whatever he wanted on Twitter, true or not, for the better part of a decade. When that speech translated into violence that killed at least 6 including a police officer, what's a company supposed to do?
Also, Free speech protections don't apply to private platforms. Only a government run equivalent of Twitter would be.
And did you just call out 6 deaths which include a guy who tased himself, a cop who died of a random stroke and a woman shot in the throat for being there? Come on.
And yes, the 1st amendment restricts the govt but it’s hypocritical as hell for a company to espouse it’s commitment to free speech all the while censoring undesirable opinions.
It's the second paragraph of the article.
So they haven't updated their laws to match the current society's norms, and the result is that Facebook has to write rules for something approximating all of society. That cannot be simple for Facebook, and I think it's a bit cowardly of the two big parties that neither of them have really tried to bring the law into harmony with current perception of justice and acceptability.
> German Chancellor Angela Merkel objected to the decisions, saying on Monday that lawmakers should set the rules governing free speech and not private tech companies.
Considering that multiple politicians voiced this opinion at surprisingly similar time this seems like some coordinated PR thing. They probably just realised that the same could happen to them and that they might have their communication channels cut off when they inevitably try to break up the big US tech giants
It's not "surprisingly similar" when a lot of people start putting on jackets when it gets cold. Reactions to a common cause does not require coordinated action.
So does the US. Try "I'm going to kill the US president" (maybe with a bit more specifics) and see how long you remain free. The US may have a bit freer speech than is normal, but there's no absolute free speech
You may get added to watch lists, and federal agents may take a closer look at your life which could result in other charges or problems but it would not be that comment itself that violated US law
I'm not sure I agree
> And did you just call out 6 deaths which include a guy who tased himself, a cop who died of a random stroke and a woman shot in the throat for being there? Come on.
I also left out the 25 injured officers
> And yes, the 1st amendment restricts the govt but it’s hypocritical as hell for a company to espouse it’s commitment to free speech all the while censoring undesirable opinions.
The opinions were 100% fine until the platform was used as a way to rally supporters to violence. Twitter has gone out if it's way to carve out harassment exemptions for the President who has used the platform for everything from outright lies to falsely accusing people of murder because they spoke out against him.
This was a case of someone using Twitter in a way that would lead to any of us being banned years ago. Nobody spoke up when someone I know got banned from Twitter for retweeting a joke about Antifa planning to launch an attack on small business owners.
And even if it is common, in my opinion the very idea of free speech is that it may go beyond the commonly held notions of acceptability. It seems kind of pointless otherwise - what's widely accepted already shouldn't really need much protection.
Eg. penalization of blasphemy in theocratic societies surely passes the test of "freedom of speech" if you define it that way.
Merkel's done the right thing: She has tried to answer it, and bring the laws into line with what the Germans think currently think is just. (With which I may or may not agree, it doesn't matter, I'm not German.) Her attempt may or may not be a good attempt, but she did try. The Americans talk about the first amendment and turn Facebook into something that looks ever more like a combined lawmaker and court.
The American answers to these questions aren't the same as they are in other nations.
While I don't fully agree with some of my nation's answers to these questions, at least I theoretically have a democratic voice in what those standards and laws are. But some private company in a foreign nation with foreign beliefs is unaccountable from my perspective.
Even if I boycott it, it doesn't mean much so long as my neighbors, friends, and family are using it.
Is it a matter of free speech though?
If you walk into a bank and say "load the bag with money, or I'll blow up the place", do you risk prosecution on the grounds of (abusing) free speech? After all what you did, essentially, was utter some words. (The bomb might never have existed).
What if the government passed a law to the effect of "you can't say the banking system is vile and corrupt because it may encourage people to rob banks"?
It's a slippery slope of sorts, and a line should be drawn, preferably grounded in some logical principle. I don't have a good answer off the top of my head; just food for thought.
Merkel's government was able to propose law changes and have them be voted on by the legislature. Replacing government was not needed.
Which you can see in Germany — people use the legal machinery to regulate speech on Facebook. Publish a swastika on Facebook and people will complain about you to the police (perhaps via Facebook), and the prosecutor will apply the law of the land. That you could evade it is true, that most people trust the law is significant.
If I tell you that smoking leads to cancer, it's also a slippery slope type of argument: after all, having smoked 1, 100 or even a 1,000 cigarettes you'll still be fine, most likely.
It is not. It is a statement of fact, proven by numerous studies.
Merkel's government proved nothing. Certainly not that government-mandated censorship is any more altruistic than regular government censorship.
There's a strong fear right now that the EU countries are devolving right back into their old authoritarian ways.