Trump's Twitter Ban Prompts Outcry From Germany and France (fortune.com) 536
Donald Trump received unexpected backing from Germany and France after the U.S. president was shut off social media platforms including Twitter and Facebook, extending Europe's battle with big tech. From a report: 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. "The chancellor sees the complete closing down of the account of an elected president as problematic," Steffen Seibert, her chief spokesman, said at a regular news conference in Berlin. Rights like the freedom of speech "can be interfered with, but by law and within the framework defined by the legislature -- not according to a corporate decision." The German leader's stance was echoed by French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, who said that the state and not "the digital oligarchy" is responsible for regulations, calling big tech "one of the threats" to democracy.
He's free to search another outlet for his speech (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't a free speech issue. It's just a question of service. There are other venues he can use to try to send his message. He is not suppressed by the law or the government.
Re:He's free to search another outlet for his spee (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't a free speech issue. It's just a question of service. There are other venues he can use to try to send his message. He is not suppressed by the law or the government.
Not the case if the provider of the service(s) has significant monopoly power as defined by the European Union anti-monopoly legislation definitions.
In that case, the Eu law and precedent specifies that the provider of service(s) is also obliged to provide non-discriminatory access to its service to everyone. They cannot just say: "I do not like person X, I will not provide them a service". If they do, because they hold monopoly on the market, they are looking at up to 10% of global turnover.
So while in the USA the legality of the move by Twitter, Facebook, etc will probably hold in court, it will fail in the Eu. Such a move will be prosecutable under the anti-monopoly legislation.
Re:He's free to search another outlet for his spee (Score:5, Informative)
Twitter, at least, is not discriminating against Trump. They are removing a user for repeated violations of the terms of use.
If anything, Twitter has shown him a far larger amount of leeway than anyone else on their platform. He should have been violated and banned months ago behind his bullshit.
Re:He's free to search another outlet for his spee (Score:5, Insightful)
Note that inconsistently enforced terms of use is also a problem, just like in a legal system inconsistently enforced laws are a problem.
If hypothetically you have enough rules that most people violate it mainly so you have a way to penalize anyone at will, then it's difficult to be fair.
I don't know Twitters terms and recognize that Trump has repeatedly indulged in dangerous speech that would violate any reasonable ToS, but broadly speaking rules routinely broken with very selective enforcement is indeed something to be concerned about too.
Re:He's free to search another outlet for his spee (Score:4, Informative)
Personally, I have no use for Twitter, so I don't get caught up in who they ban or who they don't. I just chuckle at the hypocrisy of people who think their crazy people are OK, but other group's crazy people aren't ok.
Re: (Score:3)
US law is crystal clear on this: Everything Trump has posted on Twitter, or said in recent speeches, is protected from criminal punishment under the First Amendment. He can be impeached over it, because impeachment is ultimately a political rather than judicial process, but he did not commit any crimes with his speech.
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US law is crystal clear on this: Everything Trump has posted on Twitter, or said in recent speeches, is protected from criminal punishment under the First Amendment. He can be impeached over it, because impeachment is ultimately a political rather than judicial process, but he did not commit any crimes with his speech.
Well you got the first sentence right. The second sentence is completely and utterly incorrect: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/1... [cnbc.com]
You could make an argument for conspiracy to commit sedition and a few other in the federal code as well. https://www.wusa9.com/article/... [wusa9.com]
Re:He's free to search another outlet for his spee (Score:4, Informative)
Re:He's free to search another outlet for his spee (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't a free speech issue. [...] He is not suppressed by the law or the government.
Note that this is a very US centric interpretation of the phrase "free speech". In the US, free speech is understood in a first amendment sense which is about government censoring speech.
But in the rest of the world, it may not be understood in that sense. France probably use the phrasing of "liberte d'expression" from the human right declaration which makes distinctions between government and private censorship.
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Re:He's free to search another outlet for his spee (Score:4, Insightful)
Obviously censorship from huge corporations is just as much of a problem as censorship from a government. It might be even more problematic since these corporations are in a way more powerful than the U.S. government.
If you truly think free speech is an important thing to maintain, you should be just as horrified to see it denied to people with your opposite political and philosophical ideas as you would be if it was being denied to you. It doesn't matter where the censorship is coming from. If not, then you're not really for free speech. It's as simple as that.
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Except that is not true. By collaboration of big tech companies alternatives have also been hindered or destroyed. Whether you agree with him or not, or agree with whether or not the tech companies intentionally shut out someone who threatened their monopoly on information, you still have the appearance of 4 giant corporations working at the same time to extinguish a politician who called out big tech for censorship. And they proved him right. A few monolithic corporations absolutely hold the power to effec
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Problem is that you leftist bootlickers are currently trying to get Gab kicked off of Cloudflare. It's never "live and let live" with you people.
Why doesn't the right-wing setup their own cloud service, data centers, etc? Why is it only the leftist bootlickers who are this capable and wide reaching?
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Because then it would be an echo chamber with far less reach than co-opting someone else's property that already has millions of users on it, and then raising a giant bitch howl piss fit when permission to use it is revoked.
Re:He's free to search another outlet for his spee (Score:4, Insightful)
They do, actually, but the same thing keeps happening. They go after the site, if they can't they go after the server's provider. If they can't, they start going after advertisers. If they can't, they start going after whoever handles their payments. If they can't, they start going after the users' jobs. Not seen what happens after that but I think they would begin to go after the person's family.
Extremists on the left are not above using criminal harassment to go after people they don't like.
Re:He's free to search another outlet for his spee (Score:4, Insightful)
You misspelled "extremists in BOTH parties"
Re:He's free to search another outlet for his spee (Score:4, Insightful)
"extremists in BOTH parties"
Care to provide an example? As a very, very pissed off moderate, I'm quite certain that Cancel Culture is a uniquely Left wing phenomenon and it is absolutely disgusting.
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They did, and now Andrew Torba, CEO of Gab, his wife, and his parents cannot get credit cards or use any payment services. It would seem that building their own DCs and clouds isn't enough. Fortunately, Cheques, Money Orders, and BTC don't care and they are currently 62.5% funded for this month (11 days in).
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Because Apple and Google would drop them and people would pressure their bandwidth providers to do the same?
Re: He's free to search another outlet for his spe (Score:3)
That's bs and you know it. This is pretty much right out of the leftist playbook. And it is from the left - it was originally invented by them if you know history.
The fact is that if you say anything that is not completely on board leftist gender politics or pointing out leftist hypocrisy you are literally N$zi, incel, murderer and now you will ve treasonous terrorist insurr
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"live and let live" doesn't work with sedition, you muppet.
You also are acting like the President doesn't have a big god damn room full of cameras and reporters in his own god damn house mere steps away from his office. If he wants to speak to the People, he can avail himself of that convenience. He's done it many times before, so unless he's gone totally senile and demented, it's still there waiting.
Oh, but then he might have questions asked that he doesn't want to hear, much less answer, right? Too fuc
Re:He's free to search another outlet for his spee (Score:5, Interesting)
It is hard to find another place, when all the other places are getting shut out of the ecosystem.
He is on Telegram. Gained 250K subscribers in the last 24h. Still nowhere near Twitter, but now at formidable and respectable half a million.
Durov is having none of this USA politics sh*t and he is not banning him, because this will create a precedent and he will have to remove quite a few other people.
Re:He's free to search another outlet for his spee (Score:5, Insightful)
He is on Telegram. Gained 250K subscribers in the last 24h. Still nowhere near Twitter, but now at formidable and respectable half a million.
So, Hillary uses a private mail server that might have been hacked by the Russians - that's criminal.
Trump uses a platform which is controlled from Russia and confirms to Russia's monitoring needs -that's fine.
Got it.
Re:He's free to search another outlet for his spee (Score:4, Informative)
I hear your point, and I've never voted for Trump, but: IIUC, Hillary was using her email server to communicate State Department business to other State Department officials. None of it was intended for public distribution. Trump's social media posts, otoh, are expressly intended for public communication, so it doesn't much matter whether Russia gets their hands on them (so long as Russia doesn't alter them).
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Trump is going about with a system that can expose the exact location of the nuclear football to the Russians [arstechnica.com] and that doesn't matter. Right. Thanks for clearing that up.
Whilst you are at it, could you please explain how his exposing the security of half a million of his supporters is okay? I am sure there's a great explanation.
Re:He's free to search another outlet for his spee (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought "cancel culture" was to be opposed though?
By the way, better cancel any relationship you have with Google, Microsoft, Apple, Rackspace, Stripe, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tiktok, etc. too, since they've all told Trump to go fuck himself and clearly you're against their rights to do so.
Re:He's free to search another outlet for his spee (Score:5, Insightful)
Cancel culture against big powerful corporations and ordinary schmoes like university teachers and gym coaches and even high school students are very different things.
Re:He's free to search another outlet for his spee (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a lot of tough issues surrounding all of this. I am skeptical of the concerted efforts to shut down Parler without due process of law.
Perhaps the GOP should think long and hard about this when questions of Corporate America and it's excess of power over the lives of citizens comes up next in the legislature. For years they relied on their own class having exceptions made rather than addressing fairness for the rest of us, now it's in their faces.
On the other hand, while the line between free speech and incitement to violence (and/or insurrection) is blurry in places, there has been a lot of crap that is clearly over that line.
Re:He's free to search another outlet for his spee (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a lot of tough issues surrounding all of this. I am skeptical of the concerted efforts to shut down Parler without due process of law.
Parler's "due process" is having the government leave them alone. They have that already. What they are asking for is the government to step in and tell big companies that they have to let Parlor piss in their sandboxes.
It is worth noting that both Germany and France have more speech-restricting laws than the US. It is best to read these complaints as being about the power of non-governmental entities to go further than the law requires. It isn't a frivolous concern, but it is less a free-speech concern than a turf war.
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We now know, in the US, that election-denying and violent insurrection and so intrinsically linked that
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Re:it is a free speech issue from EU POV (Score:4, Insightful)
Imagine if these platforms had to fact-check their advertisers. Funny how inconsistent their concerns about accuracy are.
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Re:Side-effect (Score:5, Informative)
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of
(A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or
Re:He's free to search another outlet for his spee (Score:4, Insightful)
You about Amazon: " They are free to be as bigoted as they wish, but I won't be funding it."
Amazon about Parler: " They are free to be as bigoted as they wish, but I won't be hosting it."
Glad to hear that you support Amazon and differ only as to the target of their ire.
When Mexico, France and Germany (Score:5, Insightful)
are concerned about the lack of Free Speech in the USA you know there is something very wrong at hand...
They're not, they don't like that FB & Twitter (Score:5, Insightful)
The ruling class don't much like the Internet. Had they realized what it was they never would've let us have it.
Re:They're not, they don't like that FB & Twit (Score:4, Interesting)
Democrats threaten 230 if they don't censor harrassment, including tweets of their political opponents.
Republicans threaten it because the Democrats' threats seem to be working, silencing Republicans.
Fwiw neither side should be doing this. The biggest threat to free speech is not coming from Trump. And I never voted for him, but I won't vote for the censors, either.
We are literally sitting with a shut down opposotion. This is Venezuela level shit here.
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Fwiw neither side should be doing this. The biggest threat to free speech is not coming from Trump. And I never voted for him, but I won't vote for the censors, either.
Lately, every time one side does something awful, the other side goes out of their way to do something even worse.
Re:When Mexico, France and Germany (Score:5, Insightful)
are concerned about the lack of Free Speech in the USA you know there is something very wrong at hand...
Those who want him gone, want him gone. They don't care about any effect on their Rights, short term or long term.
There's a reason they call it Trump Derangement Syndrome, and no matter what happens after this, know that Fucking Stupid was the real winner here.
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Twitter already had the right to kick off anyone. While that isn't good and should be fixed, it was true before Donnie started his little coup. If in this instance if it happens to help preserve democracy in the US, so be it.
Re:When Mexico, France and Germany (Score:4, Insightful)
No honestly it shouldn't be fixed. What should be fixed is the degree of reach and influence these companies have. The problem Twitter is essentially a monopoly on public internet messaging, and facebook is essentially a monopoly on whatever you want to call what they do exactly.
Either they should be broken up or regulated and required to 'federate' etc. I should not have to use twitter to see tweets at this point.
The hosting CDN world also need to be carefully looked at. Right now if you can't use AWS, or Azure you absolutely NEED either CF, AT&T, or Verizon DDOS protection to do anything 'controversial' online.
We should have a market place where business owners can act on their conscience and disassociate themselves from individuals and groups they don't like for whatever their reasons but government should ensure we have a robust market place free of monopolies so you really can take your ball elsewhere. The problem is deciding how big is two big. Clearly one two giant players - where a small management leadership travel the same social circles doees not cut it; but how many is enough?
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Re:What coup? (Score:5, Insightful)
Five people died because of the insurrection.
How many Americans have died fighting in senseless pointless endless wars that Congress supports every time? How many Americans have died during city-supported BLM riots? How many Americans have died because politicians are too busy trying to "own" each other for Twitter team points instead of doing their fucking JOB and passing legislation to help the American people during a pandemic?
We will never forget January 6th, 2021 in America, and we never should. Sadly we sure do a damn good job forgetting all the other death and destruction that has been allowed to happen.
Re:When Mexico, France and Germany (Score:5, Insightful)
yeah, and people are so rabid in wanting to get rid of Trump they don't realize the danger of the moves they are taking which are much worse. we just invited the devil in (figuratively, with the new regime at large), to get rid of the nutcase.
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I see. So Bezos and Zuckerberg are secretly socialists. Sure. Whatever.
Re:When Mexico, France and Germany (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's more accurate to say that the D team is secretly corporatist.
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The problem is this crowd isn't rabid. They're calculating. They want to invite the devil in, so that he can help them implement their socialist agenda (ie, give them total control). They think they are smarter than the rest of us, after all.
So...once Biden is inaugurated will our hammer and sickle be mailed out to us automatically? Or do we have to stand in line? I'm not quite sure how this whole socialism thing works, but I keep hearing how a lot of it involves standing in lines.
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You'll probably have to stand in a line to get your picture taken for your health care card, kind of like you already do to renew your drivers licence. Actually, usually you can do both of those at the same time. Then you're pretty much good to go.
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Their concern is that we've gone pretty far down a line of privatizing 'free speech', and arbitration of that speech lies in non-government authorities.
This incident is almost certainly a reasonable reaction, at least for a few weeks, but it was unilaterally decided by corporations rather than government. US has been more and more a corpocracy and in effect have been responsible for extending the reach of that corpocracy internationally.
He has his own page! (Score:3)
Yeah, Germany can sod right off (Score:4, Insightful)
We just came a hairs breath from terrorists seizing lawmakers in the Capital and we've got 10 days to go until inauguration. I'll bet money if it was their Capital Building they'd be singing a different to tune.
Even more worrying (Score:4, Interesting)
is Facebook telling Rand Paul he's not in accordance with community standards. Whether or not someone thinks his viewpoints have merit he's not telling anyone to riot or be lawless, he decries that stuff. So is the internet in USA only for certain type of Democrat viewpiont? This is disgusting and dangerous stuff, there will be blowback.
A misunderstanding of American law (Score:4, Informative)
On Merkel's part, that is.
In the US, your rights are endowed by your creator. The government does not provide our administer them, though it can remove them in some cases.
Trump can say what he wants. And Twitter, as a private entity, can ban him for violating terms. They both have and keep their rights. It's not prior restraint by the gummint.
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I'm perfectly fine with that.
However, the German head of state doesn't get to tell other countries how to do their business that has nothing to do with Germany, the same as she would have no problem telling Trump to pound it up his ass if he tried to tell Germany how to regulate free expression within Germany.
Re:A misunderstanding of American law (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, and those foreign states rightfully tell the United States, and Trump in particular, to fuck off.
Your point?
He HAD Free Speech (Score:2)
but he abused it and then lost it.
Everyone just calm down.
Re:He HAD Free Speech (Score:5, Insightful)
He STILL has free speech. It's just that the last time Twitter loaned him their megaphone he got spittle all over it so now he needs to go get his own megaphone or borrow someone else's.
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He still has it. At any time he can call a press conference and there isn't a single news source that wouldn't attend and put whatever he has to say on their front page.
Leaders of functioning democracies (Score:2)
...Can have their opinions, but the fundamental problem is that the USA lacks any mechanism for *quickly* dealing with Trump and his ability to incite violence and undermine the electoral system even AFTER he's lost an election. The fact that there's a 2 month delay in the transfer of power is a huge problem here, and not one that France or Germany has to deal with. He's only technically the current President, and that carries with it more power than it should, all things considered.
But I think that Twitter
Re:Leaders of functioning democracies (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, to me the outcry shouldn't be "Holy shit, twitter blocked the President of the US!" It should be "Holy shit, the President of the US is saying things so bad that twitter had to block him!"
This is the US. Yes, we have our flaws, but we're supposed to be better than that. We're supposed to be better than him.
Re:Leaders of functioning democracies (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you going to also call for Stacey Abhrams to be removed? She is still going around claiming that she should be the Georgia governor due to voter suppression.
How about all the people claiming that Hillary lost because of Russian interference? How is that not undermining the electoral system?
How about Iranian leaders calling for the actual death of American leaders on Twitter? Why does that guy still have an account.
The problem isn't removing Trump. I truly wish he would resign and walk away, if for no other reason than to take the wind out of Pelosi's sail. But, the double standard is egregious.
Re:Leaders of functioning democracies (Score:5, Insightful)
Theres plenty left (Score:2)
I think he still has the @potus account, not to mention a personal press office in his house.
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I think he still has the @potus account, not to mention a personal press office in his house.
Nah, he tried posting from POTUS. That got knocked down quick (they just deleted the posts though, not the account).
As for the White House briefing room, I can only assume that whatever staffer was in charge of holding onto the key already left and lost the key and they've been locked out. Only explanation for how little it's used.
What it ammounts to... (Score:3)
is France an Germany have lost access to the political circus that the US has become and they want to get out their popcorn and keep watching.
Outcry (Score:2)
Gawrsh! (Score:3)
Now only if the President had some other way of getting a message to the public, like being able to walk to the Press Briefing Room that is literally in his god damn house with a number of reporters from major global news networks standing by to hear what he has to say. I hear they've even cracked the technology necessary to broadcast live!
Of course, if he was to do that, he'd have to face other questions that he really doesn't want asked, much less answer. Too fucking bad.
Re: (Score:3)
The problem with press briefings is that an hours long briefing gets condensed into a 30 sec clip where the press corp typically produces something completely at odds with what was actually said.
Literally the entire job of the press secretary's office is controlling the message. If your hour-long briefings keep getting cut down to a 30 second out of context sound bite you need a new press secretary. And probably a whole new press office.
Also, not lying helps. If you want to set a good tone, don't lead off your administration by insisting on something that is clearly and easily proven as a lie, and an inconsequential one at that. Like, you know, the size of your inauguration crowd. Tends to get
Angel merkel (Score:2)
Believe that the government should have the ability to force companies to provide services against their will. Next up will be individuals
Maybe Germany should just start their own twitter clone, then they can set whatever rules they want and they can let all the holocaust deniers that get kicked off twitter have a home with them... oh wait...
Trump's big mistake (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a mistake many people and companies make:
Being in a position where your success depends on a platform you don't own or control.
Using a social media platform run by a private company for official government announcements is insane, full stop. There is just too much potential for bogus messages and convenient outages - there are probably a hundred Twitter employees who could crash the US stock market with one
I'm pushing the BIG RED BUTTON!!!1
tweet.
Angela Merkel's objection (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
The U.S. government already has set the rules for governing free speech. It's in the 1st Amendment which states "Congress shall make no law... prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech..."
Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, et al are not Congress.
These are private businesses which Republicans have argued over and over again should be free to decide who they can offer their services to. That's exactly what these businesses are doing.
Re: (Score:3)
Nor are ATT comcast or MCI, wait till one of them decides to provide services to someone? Or how about just shut the electricity off to companies that say things various CEO of electric companies disagree with. The point is infrastructure decisions should not be left to private citizens they belong regulated by the courts. And like it or not certain companies have become so large they are no longer 'just' companies they provide infrastructure.
Who watches? (Score:4, Insightful)
Keep in mind you can both find the incitement of an insurrection morally repugnant while examining the complex question of how exactly free speech should interact with privately held platforms that represent the digital commons, especially when these companies are de facto monopolies.
I find it deeply problematic the decision comes from the boardroom based purely on the cynical decision of when his behavior went from toxic-yet-profitable to toxic-yet-unprofitable. This is especially true when we consider that there is no fungible alternative to Twitter or Facebook - hence in the analogy put forth by XKCD, it's not just like you are getting kicked out of a community, you are effectively being kicked out of *all* communities with no possibility of finding another.
Also Mexio and russian opposition (Score:3)
Left-Wing Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador Condemns Tech Companies For Censoring Trump [dailywire.com]
This is because all these politicians can see how horribly dangerous idea it is to have an unaccountable and unelected technocrats making decisions like that is for society.
Sidebar (Score:3)
This is the very definition of cloud computing: running your critical infrastructure on servers you don't control. If the server owners don't like you, they can stop providing service to you. And by the way, there is nothing keeping them from deleting all of your data along the way. It will likely be passed off as an unfortunate accident that affected many people. So sorry you were one of them. Now go away.
Not necessarily backing T (Score:4, Informative)
It appears they are not complaining about banning T in general, but about how it was decided. They believe it's too important a decision to be left to private companies, and thus should be controlled by the Federal gov't.
Generally in the US if private companies do a "good enough" job at such things, citizens on average don't want the gov't to get involved. We wait until private companies flub it up badly before such is regulated. Whether that's good or bad is long complicated debate, but US culture is typically to only directly regulate as a last resort. Public warnings and shaming by lawmakers may be tried first.
And if it were left to the Fed, if GOP had full control over all the branches that year, they wouldn't ban him. The private sector is a de-facto 4th branch of our system, and does provide a degree of checks and balances on some aspects of our system, including allowing consumer boycotts to have influence. Thus, there are at least some upsides to this approach, at least under our two-party system.
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That's because "the invisible hand of the free market" is awesome until it reaches out and bitch slaps them across their seditionist faces. Then it's time for government to step in and regulate - you know, that government they're always trying to shrink and "get the regulators off the backs of industry".
It's almost like hypocrisy is a core tenet of the modern conservative movement.
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Remember when everyone was allowed to broadcast on CBS just because they have some nutter theory they want to express?
yeah, neither do I.
Twitter is not the town square, the town square is the town square, go stand on a soap box.
Re:"It's a private company!" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:"It's a private company!" (Score:5, Insightful)
I also don't remember AT&T blocking phone service to someone because they thought they shouldn't be able to make phone calls because they were a violent person.
Technology has enabled different norms and patterns. Newspapers and broadcasting had very limited room and a high burden to access, as well as liability for any content they accepted and repackaged.
Social media is something in the middle. Effectively limitless media and limitless access and low liability, seeking treatment either as a common carrier or as a traditional publisher/broadcaster depending on circumstances. It is key to our international conversation now.
Go set up a robo dialer on AT&T's network (Score:3)
Re:"It's a private company!" (Score:4, Insightful)
They would not unilaterally do it. They would receive a court order telling them to suspend service. From law enforcement and courts, not from their own policing of phone calls.
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It doesn't matter if it's right or justifiable. The SCOTUS says it's the law of the land.
If trump was gay, Twitter wouldn't have to sell him a cake, either.
Re: (Score:3)
The issue isn't so simple. I personally think Twitter is big enough that only a judge should be able to ban someone for committing a crime using twitter (in which case Donald Trump would still get banned), but how should Slashdot be moderated? What will be the laws for censoring reddit? Maybe somebody has a good answer but they don't seem obvious to me.
Re:Not a monopoly. (Score:4, Interesting)
But the fact that it is very powerful and controlled by a few people is a serious concern. Democracy can't work properly if everyone is having their information filtered by a few people, regardless of how we ended up in that situation.
Sometimes it's necessary to apply certain rules only to businesses that have achieved a monopolistic level of power because they exist in market with a huge network effect. That may seem unfair, but it is necessary to prevent a de facto oligarchy.
Re:"It's a private company!" (Score:4)
I don't see this as a free speech issue at all. The constitution is still in effect. The government can not stop Donald Trump from speaking. Twitter is not the government and it can.
We can debate if we have allowed corporations to get too large. I don't see how republicans can make an argument that we should be limiting the size and reach of corporations. I stopped voting Republican because of Trump, I will never support a party that wants to put restrictions on freedom of association simply because a company is too big.
Love it or hate it, the constitution is in play here. We all still have our freedom of speech and freedom of association. We just don't like how others are using theirs.
Re:"It's a private company!" (Score:5, Insightful)
Conservatives were all about a service provider being able to deny service to a customer based on the content requested when it was gay wedding cakes.
Now all of a sudden it's a problem when it squelches their sedition and treason.
Think of Parler and Trump as the gay wedding cake for AWS and Twitter.
TL;DR: why should one entity's first amendment rights to speak (or not) what they like take a back seat to another individual? Are you upset that the New York Times won't publish at will anything coming from Trump without edit or review either?
Re: (Score:2)
Twitter is insane for wholesale banning of a former US president so late
FTFY
Re:Insanity all around (Score:5, Informative)
Silencing the President of the US, no matter how reprehensible his communication, should be something done via legal process and not the whims of Zuck or TwitHead or some other private company, as it really is in the public interest to know when their elected leader has gone full crack-pot, as seems to be the case here.
He could still put out official statements through the @POTUS account (for example, the text of executive orders or prepared statements), and of course there's the White House briefing room. All they did was unplug those hose of streaming consciousness that was plugged directly into his brain.
Re:Insanity all around (Score:4, Insightful)
As much as I think his advisors should've unplugged that hose 4 years ago, I still think it's a public disservice for a corporation to do so, and very likely unlawful (but I'm sure we will see on that point).
When the leader has gone crazy, it's best for the electoral base to know it. There's an interest in impeaching him to stop him from being elected again, but after this latest stunt, I don't think that's necessary to prevent re-election; his actions have done that on their own.
It's also a possible legal minefield for these online platforms that these actions aren't taken consistently; when seditious rioters were taking over parts of Seattle and storming federal buildings in Portland, calling for the burning and looting of businesses, etc., did these platforms shut down their accounts, or did they keep them running in the name of "free speech?"
When the governor of Washington encouraged these rioters, did people band together and call for his immediate removal from office and disqualification from holding public office? The actions of the throngs of violent people were not really all that different, except for locality and stated motive.
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Artistic expression is one of the protected classes of speech, so uhmm yah about theaters, you might want to check your assumptions.
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Germany is the largest economy in the EU. It's a massive risk factor for an IPO to say, "we can't operate in the largest economy in the European Union."
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They've got a point. Private corporations control nearly all the means of _delivery_ of free speech. That is, if somebody speaks freely in the woods and there is nobody there to hear it, is it free speech? However this is not new. It is just that it has rarely been more extreme historically than it is today. Something needs to be done. But doing something about clown hitler Trump is of far more immediate importance.
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Social media giants want eyeballs and advertising money and power.
FTFY. Dictatorship by corporation is just as bad as any other form of dictatorship.
Re:Let them make their own Piepenzwitschern (Score:4, Insightful)
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The government shall make no law governing free speech.
Maybe that's just a stupid sound bite that doesn't work well. Like the electoral college is another stupid idea from those otherwise brilliant founders.