The Leftist Tyranny of Twitter

[<alt>doxygen]

I did not realize deference to the WH invalidates the rights of the rest of us. When did that happen?

Poor victim. Twitter is a private company. Now right wingers want some sort of guarantee their screeching will be let in any door? Would Malkin create a new government agency to police this?

Anyway, Twitter is mostly garbage for small minded, self-important people who have minimal attention spans - like the POTUS.

 

[<alt>doxygen]

As has been pointed out, it's not a legal free speech issue, but it's problematic for free speech culture, which Twitter itself claims to cherish:



https://about.twitter.com/en_us/values.html

Which is the actual criticism against them. Pointing to the First Amendment doesn't absolve them of not living up to what they say they're about.

Sue... You could do it pro bono.

 

[MovingPictures]

It should not be necessary to establish a new company to be treated fairly in a communications sphere based on public airwaves.

Conservatives are being treated fairly on social media.

There are simple rules everyone has to follow. These websites (just like this one) warn people several times before they close their accounts of how they violated a rule. If a person is unable to control themselves to obey those rules, that's their problem, not the websites.

What conservatives are asking for is to be able to break the rules without consequence.

 

[StillBallin75]

Considering that most of what we hear from the White House is via Twitter, your point falls completely flat.

Twitter has openly stated that if Trump were any normal user he would have been banned long ago, but keeps his account active because of its "newsworthiness."

 

[StillBallin75]

It's twitter. It's always been trash. Why people put so much faith in social "media", I'll never know.

Fox or someone can make their own conservative variant of twitter. It's be just as big a steaming pile of poo and nonsense, but it can be done.

That's pretty much were Gab came from.

 

[MovingPictures]

Poor victim. Twitter is a private company. Now right wingers want some sort of guarantee their screeching will be let in any door? Would Malkin create a new government agency to police this?

Anyway, Twitter is mostly garbage for small minded, self-important people who have minimal attention spans - like the POTUS.

This.

Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are privileges, not rights. They are not democracies that owe anybody any explanation for how they police their mediums. They are private platforms for which people are given the free privilege of using, and they have in place rules that they enforce at their own discretion.

That these supposed 'free speech constitutionalist' warriors don't understand this, really speaks volumes of their own ignorance of their rights.

 

[Harshaw]

Oh noes! Someone didn't live up to the propaganda they spew. Should we be upset that places like Fox News are not particularly fair or balanced? Take Twitter to court if you think you can make a case then. But Twitter is just a cesspool of stupidity and people believing they are more important then they actually are, so I don't know how far you'd get.

I'm just saying that the criticism is different from what you're arguing against.

(And PLENTY of people around here slobber endlessly about Fox News, so I'm not sure why you seem to imply no one does.)

 

[Harshaw]

One can be about the promotion of free expression while holding people to standards of what is acceptable discourse.

Obviously, they have other rules against racial slurs, sexual material, hate speech, and whatnot, and they free to impose those rules at their discretion. If you don't like it, you can create your own forum.

This misses the point entirely.

 

[Harshaw]

Sue... You could do it pro bono.

. . . huh?

 

[Ikari]

I'm just saying that the criticism is different from what you're arguing against.

(And PLENTY of people around here slobber endlessly about Fox News, so I'm not sure why you seem to imply no one does.)

Plenty of people do call out Fox News as propaganda, but they aren't crying that liberals get a raw deal on Fox or that it's some sort of attack on free speech, like this thread is about.

The point I was responding to was that Twitter has unbalanced the free speech playing field, to which I said this is not a free speech issue. As it is not.

 

[MovingPictures]

This misses the point entirely.

I understood your point and rendered it completely irrelevant to the issue.

 

[OlNate]

Here's a pretty clear example. If you're Jewish and right-of-center Twitter will ban you. If you're on the left and prone to hateful pronouncements you get promoted and praised.

Why Is Sarah Jeong on Twitter and Not Laura Loomer?
Michelle Malkin, Townhall
This is a tale of two young, outspoken women in media.
One is a liberal tech writer. The other is an enterprising conservative new media reporter. One has achieved meteoric success and now works at a top American newspaper. The other has been de-platformed and marginalized. Their wildly different fates tell you everything you need to know about Silicon Valley's free speech double standards.
Some smug elites will downplay Twitter's disparate treatment of these users by arguing that private tech corporations can do whatever they want and that no First Amendment issues have been raised. But this battle is about much more than free speech rights. It's about whether the high-and-mighty progressives who monopolize global social media platforms truly believe in nurturing a free speech culture.
By punishing politically incorrect speech and making punitive examples of free thinkers, tech titans are enforcing their own authoritarian version of Silicon Valley sharia -- a set of both written and unwritten codes constricting expressions of acceptable thought in the name of "safety" and "civility.". . . .

K, I'll say it.... Who cares?

As has been thoroughly discussed, there is no legal issue here, this is a private company running it's business however the **** it wants to, which is something you conservatives tend to think should be the Gospel. This is just another example of "I want it my way...except when my way backfires...then it's the Left's fault". :roll:

Clearly Twitter has worked out the numbers, and it's more profitable for them to do things this way. That should be all the justification they need. If you don't like it, ask for your money back. Didn't spend any? Vote with your feet.

I'm curious, given the relationship between the left and the right in your country, do you actually expect anyone on "the other side" to give a **** about this?

 

[<alt>doxygen]

. . . huh?

Based in this:

Harshaw Harshaw
Filmmaker Lawyer Patriot

 

[Jack Hays]

Well it's private, so there's that. Which is why it's not a free speech issue.

As I said, it's a fairness issue. And the airwaves are public.

 

[phattonez]

Here's a pretty clear example. If you're Jewish and right-of-center Twitter will ban you. If you're on the left and prone to hateful pronouncements you get promoted and praised.

Are you for real? You actually think Twitter is anti-Jewish?

 

[JasperL]

Here's a pretty clear example. If you're Jewish and right-of-center Twitter will ban you. If you're on the left and prone to hateful pronouncements you get promoted and praised.

Why Is Sarah Jeong on Twitter and Not Laura Loomer?
Michelle Malkin, Townhall
This is a tale of two young, outspoken women in media.
One is a liberal tech writer. The other is an enterprising conservative new media reporter. One has achieved meteoric success and now works at a top American newspaper. The other has been de-platformed and marginalized. Their wildly different fates tell you everything you need to know about Silicon Valley's free speech double standards.
Some smug elites will downplay Twitter's disparate treatment of these users by arguing that private tech corporations can do whatever they want and that no First Amendment issues have been raised. But this battle is about much more than free speech rights. It's about whether the high-and-mighty progressives who monopolize global social media platforms truly believe in nurturing a free speech culture.
By punishing politically incorrect speech and making punitive examples of free thinkers, tech titans are enforcing their own authoritarian version of Silicon Valley sharia -- a set of both written and unwritten codes constricting expressions of acceptable thought in the name of "safety" and "civility.". . . .

If you want to criticize Twitter, at least we should all acknowledge that Laura Loomer is a crank and a loon, who is stridently anti-Muslim, which pretty infamously got her banned from Uber and Lyft because she refused rides by Muslim drivers. She's repeatedly called for banning Muslims from coming into the country, and routinely slurs Muslims as all terrorists or terrorist supporters, including, infamously, random women walking down the street in NYC near the site of a terrorist attack. According to "right of center" Loomer, the two random women proved their support for terrorism by....being on the street in NYC in that general area dressed in traditional hijabs. She pushed a BS conspiracy about her rotted tires being 'slashed' and is in general a dishonest flame thrower and a shameless, bigoted hack.

So she's a poor martyr about the awful treatment of conservatives by Twitter, and her last tweet was typical of her - attributing evil motives or acts to a Congresswoman because she's Muslim.

So when YOU say: "If you're Jewish and right-of-center Twitter will ban you" that's just complete nonsense. When you're Jewish and a hateful anti-Muslim bigot who regularly spews trash on Twitter, you might in fact get banned when the Twitter people get tired of your bull****. It's just nonsense that her 'sin' was being "right-of-center." Millions and millions of people right of center, and the far right, post on Twitter every hour of every day and somehow don't get banned.... Weird how that works.

Doesn't necessarily mean that Twitter was correct in banning her, I'm indifferent - far worse than her out there, but the least you could do is be honest about who we're talking about and what her ACTUAL views are.

 

[phattonez]

It's twitter. It's always been trash. Why people put so much faith in social "media", I'll never know.

Fox or someone can make their own conservative variant of twitter. It's be just as big a steaming pile of poo and nonsense, but it can be done.

Ever heard of Gab? Oh that's right, it's been constantly suppressed. That argument doesn't work.

 

[<alt>doxygen]

K, I'll say it.... Who cares?

As has been thoroughly discussed, there is no legal issue here, this is a private company running it's business however the **** it wants to, which is something you conservatives tend to think should be the Gospel. This is just another example of "I want it my way...except when my way backfires...then it's the Left's fault". :roll:

Clearly Twitter has worked out the numbers, and it's more profitable for them to do things this way. That should be all the justification they need. If you don't like it, ask for your money back. Didn't spend any? Vote with your feet.

I'm curious, given the relationship between the left and the right in your country, do you actually expect anyone on "the other side" to give a **** about this?

The right in the US has its own massive media ecosystem. You can't find lefty blowhards on the radio most places in the US, but the righties have about 5 stations on all the time here. During weekdays it's more like 8.

 

[phattonez]

It's not a "rigged free speech playing field" as described because it doesn't have anything to do with the rights of free speech. There's nothing stopping anyone from making a conservative-leaning variant of twitter.

Google with domain registration denial.
Google with Play Store denial.
Paypal with monetization denial.

"Nothing stopping anyone."

 

[Jack Hays]

Here is the rule: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hateful-conduct-policy

Let me quote from it:



Loomer tweet clearly violates at least the first, and potentially the second part of what I quoted. Can you show where Jeong tweeted something that violated that rule? I hate to have to teach people how to think(rule 1: don't go to other people to do your thinking for you, especially nutbag editorial writers), but that is the minimum you have to do to show bias in this case, something your editorial source did not do(notice it did not even quote the rule violated, which you would think would be of primary importance).

I don't see that Loomer violated anything. As for Jeong:

"White men are bull----";
"#CancelWhitePeople";
"oh man it's kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men" and "f--- white women lol."
She has tweeted "f--- the police" and "cops are a--holes," derided fraternity members and athletes wrongfully accused of rape and fumed about "dumba-- f---ing white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants."

 

[<alt>doxygen]

If you want to criticize Twitter, at least we should all acknowledge that Laura Loomer is a crank and a loon, who is stridently anti-Muslim, which pretty infamously got her banned from Uber and Lyft because she refused rides by Muslim drivers. She's repeatedly called for banning Muslims from coming into the country, and routinely slurs Muslims as all terrorists or terrorist supporters, including, infamously, random women walking down the street in NYC near the site of a terrorist attack. According to "right of center" Loomer, the two random women proved their support for terrorism by....being on the street in NYC in that general area dressed in traditional hijabs. She pushed a BS conspiracy about her rotted tires being 'slashed' and is in general a dishonest flame thrower and a shameless, bigoted hack.

So she's a poor martyr about the awful treatment of conservatives by Twitter, and her last tweet was typical of her - attributing evil motives or acts to a Congresswoman because she's Muslim.

So when YOU say: "If you're Jewish and right-of-center Twitter will ban you" that's just complete nonsense. When you're Jewish and a hateful anti-Muslim bigot who regularly spews trash on Twitter, you might in fact get banned when the Twitter people get tired of your bull****. It's just nonsense that her 'sin' was being "right-of-center." Millions and millions of people right of center, and the far right, post on Twitter every hour of every day and somehow don't get banned.... Weird how that works and

Doesn't necessarily mean that Twitter was correct in banning her, I'm indifferent - far worse than her out there, but the least you could do is be honest about who we're talking about and what her ACTUAL views are.

It's odd that Jack seems to think of her as "normal".

 

[phattonez]

If it's a rigged playing field, Twitter would have shutdown Trump's account in 2015.

There are throngs of vile conservative of Twitter who are allowed to spew their bile, so just stop with the "Twitter is censoring us!" nonsense.

They've clearly ramped up their censorship since Trump's election.

 

[Jack Hays]

If it's a rigged playing field, Twitter would have shutdown Trump's account in 2015.

There are throngs of vile conservative of Twitter who are allowed to spew their bile, so just stop with the "Twitter is censoring us!" nonsense.

"Whataboutism" is not an argument.

 

[OlNate]

The right in the US has its own massive media ecosystem. You can't find lefty blowhards on the radio most places in the US, but the righties have about 5 stations on all the time here. During weekdays it's more like 8.

The Left is so oppressed. :lol:

 

[Jack Hays]

K, I'll say it.... Who cares?

As has been thoroughly discussed, there is no legal issue here, this is a private company running it's business however the **** it wants to, which is something you conservatives tend to think should be the Gospel. This is just another example of "I want it my way...except when my way backfires...then it's the Left's fault". :roll:

Clearly Twitter has worked out the numbers, and it's more profitable for them to do things this way. That should be all the justification they need. If you don't like it, ask for your money back. Didn't spend any? Vote with your feet.

I'm curious, given the relationship between the left and the right in your country, do you actually expect anyone on "the other side" to give a **** about this?

1. I'm not conservative.
2. Twitter runs on the public airwaves.
3. I don't care whether anyone gives a ****. Unfairness should be called out.