Twitter must have discovered they were secret Trump supporters.
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How about that?
Good to hear
Likely bot accounts. Convenient to do so after the election.
SEE??! WEāRE FAIR AND BALANCED!!!
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That makes not one bit of difference, do you think John Konrad is legally required to allow anyone to post anything on the forums at GCaptain?
If you put a āVote for Trumpā sign in your window , are you then required to put a āVote for Bidenā sign up as well?
Really?
Bottom line, Twitter is free to offer a free account to anyone they wish, and to ban any person they wish.
Thatās called a free market.
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So?
Gab and Telegram routinely refuse accounts that are left wing, whatās your point?
General Harley Davidson Chat bans accounts that disparage Harley Davidson motorcycles
Twitter can ban any person for any reason
I donāt think thereās any confusion about that. What Iām trying to question here is the effect of this state of affairs on public discourse, as the media landscape is moving from thousands of independent newspapers to a small handful of monopolistic corporations.
Exclusively no, predominantly yes. Thereās nothing mysterious about it; all you need is an education induced political bias in the ruling class.
I still donāt think itās so clear cut. For the sake of argument, what would keep Twitter from publicly announcing that they are a service predominantly for āpurple haired freaksā, but that they might tolerate others to a limited extent, and keep on trucking?
There is no public utility of websites. Websites like Facebook, Twitter, Parlour etc can control any speech they wish as they are owned by corporations which were not formed to give anyone free speech but to make a profit. They allow all kinds of speech to obtain your personal information which they sell to advertisors. That is their business model. If it looks like they may lose some information due to public pressure they will restrict āfree speechā in order to keep the the website from becoming restricted to a small group of people which would of course lower their sales to advertisers.
As someone in the business once said. If you are using something on the internet for free, you are the product thatās for sale.
That was the message in the docu-movie The Social Dilemma. If you watch that and donāt come away terrified, I donāt know what to say.
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Or buy and read a different paper. Letās go old school analog:
Say I own a neighborhood bar & grill. Maybe it even passes as a family place at lunch time. As a service to my patrons and the community, we have a bulletin board with push pins. Things for sell, services needed and offered and announcements for meetngs.
Some of the announcements might include church activities or times for the Republican Club or Democratic Club. What we donāt have are speeches of any kind. Period. I as owner have final say. Lump it or leave it. Problem? Of course not. Social media platforms differ really only in the size of the audience.
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ā¦and the fact that you canāt just start your own. Thatās the whole point.
Youāre still just ignoring the point. It goes like this:
1: Own a major bank
2: Own a global CDN with DDOS mitigation
3: Follow 8 easy steps from some article you found online.
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Start a gofundme page. It works for making walls. Maybe the Koch Brothers and POTUS45 will chip in a few of their billions.
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Iām not sure if you actually mean that, or if it was just the laziest attempt at Ad Hominem by association that Iāve seen in a while.
I suspect that itās the latter, because you strike me as much too intelligent to believe either that these kinds of sums are attainable for a lowly roustabout like myself, or that the Trumps and Kochs of this world have any interest in promoting free speech. Either way, your shot missed by about a mile, and only serves to highlight your contempt for the subject.
You may think that silencing people based on their opinions is good so long as it happens to Very Bad People (please correct me if I read you wrong), but marginalizing the marginal is not a good idea. Just look at the mess it has landed you in.
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I donāt use Facebook or Twitter. They seem as useful to me as tits on a bull. They have no worth to society. They are private companies selling a toxic mix of vanity and outrage. And they try to maximize profits by minimizing their involvement. Instead of policing their content from the get-go, like old media routinely does, they decided to have extremely little editorial control. Eventually, a lot of citizens rose up in revulsion against the vile content. So now the new media moguls decide to finally take action.
One side of the political spectrum decides itās unfair (even though the other side has been banned at times also). They donāt like being edited. Newspapers edit content. TV edits content. But somehow its wrong for social media to do so. It seems to me that the issue can be resolved by platforms being treated like newspapers and TV. Can we agree on that? Social media should fall under the same editorial laws as old media. Agreed?
But if not, there are two other possible solutions. The detractors could organize themselves and create their own platformsā¦ And if they donāt have the billions, they need to beg and borrow it from like-minded people. Thatās the way free enterprise works. If you donāt like a product, buy another one. If you donāt have the money to buy or build your own, thatās tough.
The second solution is simpler: stop using Facebook and Twitter. Works for me just fine.
???
Iām sure starting your own Twitter would be hard. Soā¦what?
I fear you are about to fall on your own sword friend.
What is the point precisely? Are you trying to say that all ideas deserve equal access to all platforms? Are you really saying that you can put any kind of crap on my bulletin board that you want to? That is just nonsensical and flies in the face of millions of years of human evolution. My house, my rules. It really is that simple.
Marketplace of ideas - Wikipedia Here you may find an introduction to the classical philosophy of free speech. In the U.S. at leastā¦
There is no shortage of investment capital for wannabes like Telegram and Gab. Parler was well funded by Rebekah Mercer and her father. Various politicians threw their weight behind these alternatives, like Devin Nunez and Ted Cruz
There are still plenty of āconservativeā viewpoints aired on Facebook. My wife lurks a very popular one that has a few school friends of hers on it, but she is banned from posting because she is not of the cloth. Anti Liberal bias and censorship in action.
Parler made some real bonehead mistakes in developing their platform, in that they contracted out all of the functionality to others, as well as technical process failures that made it difficult to pack up their tent and pitch it somewhere else. Iām sure they, and other hopefuls will learn from their errors. There were media promoters that were willing to host Parler, like the small outlet that hosts 4chan and other Neo-Nazi (self proclaimed) outlets. It was just a technical bridge-too-far.
Ultimately, market forces will prevail. Twitter will continue to succeed because advertisers will buy clicks on a platform that is popular and will likely not endanger the advertisers business profile.
Who will advertise on Parler when it returns? What attraction does an echo chamber have for growth/
Whatās really the point of some of these people is that they canāt go scream and yell, denigrate, threaten and demean people of other outlooks. No one is banned for rational behaviour or reasonable social discourse when airing opposing viewpoints. Championing free speech for people whose go-to move is assassination and lynching when encountering contradictory political outlooks is absurd.
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If you think that is representative of my views, you havenāt read this thread with even half an eye. I think the word I used to describe revocation of editorial control was āridiculousā.
The issue here is not with social media platforms editing their content, although some have problems with that. It does become a bit problematic when said editing is ideological in nature and on a monopolistic platform, but thatās not what Iām talking about here.
The issue is with service providers (the companies providing services that social media platforms are entirely dependent on) revoking their services on ideological grounds. We are talking about a very small number of entities, beholden to no laws, who control all meaningful communication on a global scale. They have already demonstrated their will to destroy platforms for being distasteful (as opposed to breaking the law), and I predict that this will accelerate.
Following the newspaper analogy, this is like someone having an unbreakable, global monopoly on pulp, showing the will to use that power to shape public opinion. Does that sound healthy to you?
For the record, neither have I, ever. Except for a corporate twitter account, but hey, nobodyās perfect :-/
I was referring to the scary clown reality TV president who just waltzed out of office, and the mess he left behind. If you honestly believe that all is well in the State of Denmark, you must be judging things by a different metric than I.
The reason why I didnāt spell it out is that right there is the point this thread went to die.
Thatās more than a little over-the-top, no?
To answer that we must define āmeaningfulā. The guy passing out xeroxes from his soap box on the street corner has the same reach as before, technically, maybe. Compared to someone who can use the internet, his reach is practically zero.