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Twitter Says Trump Not Immune From Getting Kicked Off (politico.com)
Twitter legal and policy chief Vijaya Gadde told Politico in an interview that President Donald Trump isn't immune from being kicked off the platform if his tweets cross a line with abusive behavior. "The social media company's rules against vitriolic tweets offer leeway for world leaders whose statements are newsworthy, but that 'is not a blanket exception for the president or anyone else,'" reports Politico. From the report: Trump regularly uses Twitter to heap abuse on his perceived enemies and at times raise the specter of violence, such as when he tweeted last year that if North Korean leaders continued with their rhetoric at the time, "they won't be around much longer!" Critics say the tweets violate Twitter's terms of service and warrant punitive action. Dorsey, who's due to testify before two congressional committees Wednesday about his company's content practices, said he receives notifications on his phone for Trump's Twitter account. But asked if he would weigh in personally to remove Trump from the platform, he declined to get into specifics.
"We have to balance it with the context that it's in," he said. "So my role is to ask questions and make sure we're being impartial, and we're upholding consistently our terms of service, including public interest." Amid controversy over Trump's tweeting back in January, Twitter posted to its corporate blog an unsigned explanation of its thinking around "world leaders" -- without calling out Trump by name. It said blocking such leaders or removing their tweets "would hide important information people should be able to see and debate." Dorsey tweeted the policy, saying "we want to share our stance."
"We have to balance it with the context that it's in," he said. "So my role is to ask questions and make sure we're being impartial, and we're upholding consistently our terms of service, including public interest." Amid controversy over Trump's tweeting back in January, Twitter posted to its corporate blog an unsigned explanation of its thinking around "world leaders" -- without calling out Trump by name. It said blocking such leaders or removing their tweets "would hide important information people should be able to see and debate." Dorsey tweeted the policy, saying "we want to share our stance."
in 3...2...1
How does Elon Musk not get kicked off for calling a guy a pedophile and a "child rapist"? What is the standard? Why isn't it being enforced?
seems to me he ought to be kicked off for it, same as Jones was. And no, there's no way in hell Twitter will turn down those advertising dollars. The only reason they dumped Jones is they're worried one of his listeners might go of the deep end (sign... again...) and they might get sued for negligence.
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Conspiring to defraud the American people of a valid vote, now that is a crime. Obstructing justice in catching your fat ass and others is also a crime. The moral of the story is, your time is almost up, fat ass!
People read those posts, and Twitter can show ads.
uh huh... That has been said for a year now. Maybe the DNC can run someone who isn't a jerk next time?
After all, twitter was having plenty of problems, Trump being on the platform probably brings them more users and ad revenue than anyone else.
So, if you threaten to destroy an entire nation or people, and you don't have the ability to carry out your threat, you get booted off Twitter. But if you make the threat and actually have a credible possibility of making it happen, then it's newsworthy and they leave it on.
Translation: We're scared of Trump and don't want to have to take action unless it's for something that no one will criticize us for.
Cowards.
Make a policy and stick to it, or don't have one.
I'll point out that President Trump as already had a federal judge declare that he can't block people on his Twitter feeds. Citing the idea that his account is a "designated public forum" after a number of journalist were blocked from tweeting at him. If that is the case how exactly could Twitter than turn around take that designated public forum away citing their own TOS?
Ultimately I don't know what that court case would look like, but I bet it will turbo charge the argument that social media needs to be regulated like a public unity or a common carrier.
Just imagine knowing that Twitter's stock is about to be worth pennies when their biggest fan gets banned.
Technically, he is not. They could kick him if they really wanted too. Removing him would be the worse thing they could possibly do. Probably the business equivalent of corporate suicide. Some Republicans are already barking about how much the tech. giants Twitter, Google, and Facebook control they have over speech. Limiting a sitting republican presidents speech on their platform might be enough to push them over the edge and have congress start regulating speech on internet platform.
I don't think any of us, pro trump or anti-trump, want that bunch of baboons attempting to police what we can say online. As much as we find Trumps tweets annoying, our best bet is just to ride this out. It will be over in a few years.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Not that I don't think Twitter _could_ do that, it would be a big mistake for them. Does anyone have a second of doubt that Trump wouldn't switch to something like Gab, Mastedon, or whatever. And does anyone doubt he would mandate that @POTUS, and every Executive branch federal agency also move?
Sure that's not Twitter's main focus, but if every one of those went, and blacklisted Twitter... I'm not sure that would be good for Twitter's traffic numbers. But I am sure that it would be massive for whatever platform he moved to.
How can a service like Twitter be a "designated public forum" and be safe from unilateral blocking when the networks it is carried on are the private property of the telecoms on which they can carry whatever traffic that they please?
Have gnu, will travel.
Well, why hasn't Trump gotten kicked off of Twitter. IMHO, he's already crossed that line several times over. What the hell is Twitter waiting for? It won't happen because The Donald is revenue generator for Twitter.
If they say he abused the TOS, then he did. He can sue them and say it was unfair or something but the two are not related. Trump is required to keep all official statements, no matter what platform allows his punk traitor ass or not.
>"Ultimately I don't know what that court case would look like, but I bet it will turbo charge the argument that social media needs to be regulated like a public unity or a common carrier."
Indeed it would. These social media platforms seem to want to control their content and yet at the same time being insulated from liability/responsibility for that manipulation. It can't really work both ways at the same time. Having their own USERS regulate and moderate and control the content is one thing (and not the "thing" they are doing). But, otherwise, they are not acting like a common carrier by censoring, ranking, labeling, and skewing things the way they like.
How can a service like Twitter be a "designated public forum" and be safe from unilateral blocking when the networks it is carried on are the private property of the telecoms on which they can carry whatever traffic that they please?
Hell if I know. You'd probably have to ask Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald, the person that made that ruling. Right now social media is trying to have it both ways when it comes to hosting content. They want to be treated like a common carrier when they don't want to be held responsible for content on their networks, but they also want the power to pick and choose what content is on their networks when it goes against their arbitrarily chosen terms of service.
Just curious...
When the US government threatens actions against a belligerent country, that's a political policy. Agree or disagree, we all have the freedom to discuss the policy done in our name.
When a private individual threatens serious violence, that's a felony.
They would never kick him off both because he's such a cash cow for them but more importantly, he's the president. If he wants to retaliate against them, he can. Both against Twitter and its executives. Not an enemy anyone wants to make.
traitor-backer is properly shortened to traitor just for future reference
If we're going to penalize conspiracy theorists and teenagers for what they tweet, we should absolutely penalize Trumpy. If we think cyber bullying is actionable when it makes people feel bad we should do at least that much when the bully has the force of military and intelligence organizations. Then again we don't seem to care about openly lying on public broadcasts, so maybe this is the Brave New World we've earned.
Would Twitter then be guilty of disobeying a federal court?
Then probably 50% or more of Twitter users should be tossed off the platform. It's just a cesspool. Much as any form of social media is, and this going back to the heady days of usenet.
These comments are just what I expected.
If they won't boot Alex Jones for inciting an armed simpleton to enter a pizza place demanding to search the basement for Hillary's secret child sex trafficking ring, they sure as hell won't boot Trump for anything.
John
Would Twitter then be guilty of disobeying a federal court?
Perhaps in spirit, but probably not by the letter of the order. The ruling was specially aimed at the president himself. But that said Trump might be able to cite that order if he tried to take Twitter to court if he were to be banned by them.
Do it. See what happens.
I’m pretty sure traitor to the British empire George Washington is very well respected.
I recall a judge saying it is unconstitutional to prevent a person from seeing trumps tweets (which prevents him from blocking the blue checks).
Trump and anyone else who has a large number of active followers will be exempt from Twitter's rules. At least until Twitter figures out a way to be profitable that doesn't rely on people like Trump driving traffic.
Without the outrage, retweets, and ad impressions Trump generates among the social justice crowd on Twitter, Twitter would go out of business. Making people angry is Twitter's business model. And Trump is a big part of that. So, the reason why Twitter hasn't kicked off Trump yet is simple: money.
Who says they need a "policy" to do anything? They're a public, for-profit corporation. They can decide whatever they want in terms of who they're going to publish, and who they won't. They don't need to create a list of rules and follow them. They make the rules. There's no expectation that it's some kind of "public square", except for idiots. They're a data gathering and marketing company. People who are calling it a "public square" need to get their heads out of their asses and go talk to some real people in the real world.
You're not a "customer" of the company. You're voluntarily giving up all of your "content". They owe you *nothing*.
I don't respond to AC's.
trump has the 'official' POTUS twitter account to use instead of his personal one. which he's supposed to be using instead of his personal one (just like he's supposed to have given up his personal phone). THAT one, would probably not get terminated.. and that account's posts and activity ARE recorded by those who are responsible for gathering and preserving presidential records. he's not using it because its account history is tainted by black man who once hurt his feelings.
Lets face it, if they kick him off and he announces through white house channels they switch to Gab, Twitter would lose a significant chunk of market share and their stock price will go into freefall.
The judge ruled not that Twitter is a designated public forum, but that the replies section to the President's tweets are a designated public forum:
I don't know public forum law well enough to judge the decision (pdf) fully, but here's an attempt at an analogy:
A "meeting for hire" company starts running open to the public events where one person makes a statement and then anyone else can come in and discuss it with them and others. If the government starts paying them to run public events where it makes official government statements for public discussion, it can't bar specific people from entering and joining the discussion, as it is still a public forum even though they've hired someone else to set it up. At the same time, the "meeting for hire" company wouldn't be required to accept the government as a client.
Trump, as part of the government, cannot engage in suppression of freedom of speech (by blocking people) which, in context, would apply in things like a "designated public forum". Twitter, as a service provider, is not obligated to provide anyone, include Trump, a public forum and has as much right to kick him off their service as a mall could kick Trump (or any government official, presumably not in the process of executing a warrant or similar) off the property and ban them.
Is that too hard to understand? Trump seems to have the same difficulty understanding that "as part of the government" he doesn't get to behave as a civilian because he isn't one. He has the power to launch nukes and the restrictions of his ability to silence critics. If he doesn't like the terms of his assignment as President, he can always resign. Rules that apply to Trump equally do not apply to non-government entities.
While we're at it we can regulate malls and stores, so then I can protest or "loiter" there as much as I like without them being able to kick me out. That's reasonable, right?
Most people perceive the value of open expression (certainly so much as it benefits them personally). A notion has slipped in that being curtailed by the government is bad and being curtailed in any other way (as long as your group is the one wielding the bludgeon) is fair and even good. The government certainly has the capacity to do the most harm, but as corporate entities begin to approach it in power and effect, their capacity to do harm by regulating expression becomes similar. To be fair, limiting Trump is probably among the least damaging things that could happen... but after you get done celebrating his getting knocked down a peg, it is worth dwelling on the ominousness that twitter wields enough power to be able to threaten disconnecting POTUS from his primary means of communication with his base. I would not suggest regulating Twitter's affairs -- because that has every risk of being worse -- but if we truly value the idea of free speech, we should wish to see it pursued at every level and respected by every entity in our society, not just the government.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
And even Benedict Arnold got a pretty great sauce pairing named after him. I say go for it.
The Dems don't have a viable candidate. Their best hope was Al Franklin but some dirt was dug up on him and used to shut him out by Kamala Harris (who wanted him out of the picture for her own run). Thing is Harris is a right wing corporatists. She's basically Hilary 2.0. If she gets the nomination nobody's gonna bother showing up. What's the point of voting for another Republican with a "D" next to their name?
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If a social media network banned a high-level government official, it would alert people to the fact that corporations are the real government and they can't be allowed to act as censors. They can eliminate peons that sound exactly like Trump by the millions, but his account is invincible.
Twitter could also ban Mother Teresa if her "tweets cross a line with abusive behavior" (probably somebody could pick a better example who is not dead).
This whole article is just to rile and trigger the idiots of all persuasions, apparently, judging by the equal amounts of stupidity displayed by both Trump lovers and haters in these Slashdot comments.
They're not scared of Trump. They're scared of their own. Progressive mob tends to devour its own when it judges that they stepped out of line.
And progressive mob has gone utterly insane since Trump got elected. He was everything from Hitler to Putin's puppet to insane mastermind to just plain idiot. And twitter is literally what he's currently using to completely bypass the media lock down on anything positive regarding Trump. To the mob going utterly insane with hatred, this is a severe crime.
Which is why twitter is constantly balancing between not kicking out the man who is massively boosting the popularity of their platform, and not getting devoured from inside by their own political faction who hates the fact that twitter lets him bypass the media and all the spin it puts on anything he does and just air his thoughts as he wishes them to be aired.
Before Trump became a candidate , Twitter was desperately looking for a buyer. In fact, two months before the election Twitter was in such a bad financial state that there were talks about filing for bankruptcy. ... although mostly by having the ignorant and hate filled users having a party by posting rants about nothing (just just Trump),
Then Trump started posting irrational rants on Twitter... and the Trump/snowflake effect saved the company overnight. Incompetent pseudo journalists started fabricating news articles based on nothing but the irrational post of didiots and Twitter got back some of its popularity
But the moment Trump is out, all the irrational and hate filled users will just have nothing to whine about ... and Twitter will no longer be a popular.
So with more and more judges being conservative, you are really advocating for the justice system to play a more active role in what can and cannot be broadcast...
HMM.
If Republicans were really smart they'd give you want you desire - good and hard.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Kill the Satanic Monster now!
Bring your AntiFa my way pussy. Let's see how long you last when the blood starts flowing. Put up or shut up.
...but that would be a suicidal business move if they did, at least for as long as he's President.
Funny you should mention that. My old man was in ANTIFA. He was pretty hardcore about it, went all the way to Germany to kick their asses.
The media lock down?
WTF the most popular news show loves Trump. I would say they can't get enough of him though strictly speaking that's not true. That time he phoned up after rambling at the hosts for half an hour he pretty much did get kicked off.
But seriously you're delusional, since you seem to believe fox news somehow isn't part of the media.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I already deleted my Twitter account.
I'm from Finland. Every single media outlet reprints the spin from everything other than Fox when it comes to Trump. Every time I go to double check from the source and then compare to what actually was said/happened, I find that story printed is either a complete fabrication, a partial lie or a spin on facts. I'm yet to actually see a Trump related story that wouldn't be one of the three, which is frankly quite frightening as it tells about a massive bias in the media.
This is in everything from all major private networks to the state broadcaster. Latter has been a bit of a shock to me, because they used to do a lot of their own investigating before they put anything into news articles or analyses, which usually stripped a lot of bias from stories they would get from AP and such. Now it's translation slack-journalism with zero fact checking (if I'm generous, and just reprinting lies knowingly, which would be assuming systemic malice), as long as it's negative about Trump.
Take it for what you will.
It seems like every second tech giants C Suite member is Indian...
How did this happen ?
Did they all arrive in the US last decade as H1-B's and ride the wave in ??
Are they headhunted from overseas ??
Where are the Americans ??
so all you americans have to choose from is either a traitor or a crininal? Such a great america when anyone can become president.. Lets make it even greater and you can elect a druglord or something next time around
In Finland are all the Putin stories fake too?
It's amusing that people jump to the defense of dictators like Kim Jong-Un just because orange man bad.
"if his tweets cross a line with abusive behavior."
What, you mean apart from threatening another nation with a nuclear attack, or the numerous instances of boorish, abusive and just generally shitty behaviour? What do they count as "abusive behaviour", when it's clear he's not only crossed that line, but pole vaulted it while wearing a jetpack.
There's an often used word for this in Cockney rhyming slang: cobblers.
It's not you: I'm just this horrifically socially awkward with everybody.
Trump has repeatedly broken Twitter's code of conduct over the past three years and no one in the company gave a shit.
Rules are to be followed unless you're someone driving people to the platform. It is that simple.
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Of course he's immune from being kicked off Twitter, he is the best advertisement they could ever possibly buy (which they have for literally zero dollars).
He has abused people.
He has fanned hate speech.
He spreads blatantly false facts.
He has urged people to kill other people.
He has posted multiple times trying to goad other countries into literally nuclear war.
But he's still here. Gotta bring in those advertising dollars!
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try." -Homer Simpson
Do you think reprinting stuff *also* from Fox News would help make the news more accurace? ;)
Ezekiel 23:20
Well, you could go with actually using the full quote and intent of what Trump is saying, instead of willfully misinterpreting it to the most uncharitable degree.
People crossing the border illegally are not checked by anyone, are guided by coyotes, and some of them are extremely, horrifically bad people.
Media spin: Mexican's are rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
No, because Trump wouldn't be able to block anyone anymore.
Ezekiel 23:20
You think it's just stuff about Trump, but more likely you just noticed it there. I noticed a while ago that stories about technology (which I know a thing or two about) are usually also "a complete fabrication, a partial lie or a spin on facts." Somehow, I get the impression that a story about a local parade would probably fall into one of those three. Probably all of them at different points if the story is long enough. Not to long ago, I was involved as a volunteer in a STEM education event that was covered by local media. The reporter interviewed the main organizer of the event, and got his name wrong. Despite the fact that the event had a wireless microphone he could use so he referred to himself as "wireless Mike."
Normally, I'd just attribute these things to incompetence, but it seems like it happens so much, even that strains credulity. As the old saying goes, sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
"Save the whales, feed the hungry, free the mallocs" -- author unknown
Sickening, it is - a tiny handful of Lefties deciding what the whole world can and can't say.
Isn't it strange how it's always LEFT WINGERS who try to silence people who disagree with them? I wonder why that could possibly be...
Have you ever tried having an online debate with a Left winger? They either get you banned from the forum, or run away. They even have rules on forums that you can't say anything 'hateful' or 'racist', so can I say this:
"White people have the right to have their own countries. If you don't think so, do you believe that the Chinese have the right to have their own country? Are they 'racists' for having their own country still? How about the Japanese?"
And it'll keep getting bigger. I guess it's Trump's strategy. Just throw in small pieces of evidence againstt himself untill his term is over. Needless to say that he didn't think it through tot he end.
cool. They should go talk to that Google employee who was arrested in the middle of DEFCON, banned, and illegally detained for hours becUse he used the word âoeattackâ in a Tweet regarding to attacking services...at a hacking conference. They donâ(TM)t give a shot about context.
Trump would never get kicked off Twitter, because the liberal media would have no content to work with.
They did that so all their purple haired hate-filled minions could put their crappy and inaccurate memes up about Trump...
Anything to avoid doing real work or helping the country in any real way - jokers.
Butthurtin' a bit there Demy boy? Even the Dem leaders are saying that impeachment will never happen based on Mueller.
Did you forget to get the talking point updates?
And here you thought you were so sure... hmmmph.
Kicking Trump off Twitter would be the worst thing you could ever do. Please let me suggest a far more intelligent solution.
I propose that you don't silence Trump, you simply muffle him. Put him in a sound dampening box. Essentially, let him tweet all he wants...just don't publish most of them. Sure let a few go out now and then after review. And let a few other morons like Kanye West type folks see it and be able to reply so that Trump thinks he is getting replies. And show Trump metrics that he is getting thousands of views, retweets, and etc.
But it's all fake. With 90% of his tweets never reaching any ears. This is far more effective than banning. In fact, this would work great for all twitter trolls. Once identified, they are simply auto-censored. But they don't know it, cause a metrics show as the same, and few replies are let thru for reality's sake. (Think the Matrix, it can't be too perfect or they'll realize they've been silenced.)
If Trump got kicked off twitter, he would move to gab.ai, and millions, maybe tens of millions, of people would follow him there.
Twitter would not have stopped Trump. Twitter would have just shot themselves in the foot.
all yall are a bunch of hateful people. I'm praying for all your souls, but it won't be enough :(
In the Kavanaugh supreme court confirmation hearings, leftist thugs would not come to order. Shouting out of turn, ignoring the chairman, not letting others have their say.
In Berkeley, violent antifa mob constantly rioting, smashing windows, attacking innocent people, have caused Berkeley to censor conservative speakers.
Facebook, twitter, and youtube, have all censored even moderate conservatives. Shadow banning, demonetizing, etc.
Leftists are an absolute disgrace.
just...wow
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You do know that you don't have to read his tweets, right?
Just checking ... sometimes I wonder about you guys ...
(Me, I got it covered, I don't read anybody's tweets ...)
Because it will be the end of Twitter.
Corporatism != Free Market
The courts have already ruled in the past that even private property can be subject to constitutional protections, including freedom of speech. The definition of public forum does not require the space be publicly owned. Rather, it merely needs to be sufficiently publicly visible. That is where Twitter can potentially run afoul of the law. There is also the potential issues with DMCA violations, taking an active and direct hand in curating content on the site could possibly open Twitter and others who do so such as Facebook and Youtube to liability for the content that their user's post. Currently they are not liable and merely have to take down violating content under the DMCA but that's because of how hosts are defined. If they curate content they can become considered a publisher which would make them liable. Not to mention the sticky clauses in many of these sites TOA's where they claim ownership of all user generated content as well. That is another potential avenue for them to be screwed over by their own arrogance. DMCA gets a lot of flak but it does a decent job of protecting sites from gungho copyright groups like the MPAA. However if these tech companies think they can have it both ways they may find themselves sunk in costly lawsuits.
At the end of the day, oppo research is legal and all sides do it. A flimsy campaign finance violation involving an aging porn star entering into a legal NDA won't oust a president. Regardless of what a jackass the man is and has been, all of the jackasses he surrounds himself with, this won't bring him down because it just isnt anything tangible. Just wait it out and beat him in the next presidential election. Better yet, propose good legislation that he can't afford to suppress!
it can't bar specific people from entering and joining the discussion
But it still can mute the public address system when someone tries to say something it doesn't like. Now if only we had some sort of rule, like network neutrality, to protect equal access to the infrastructure supporting these public forums.
If that were true an equal number of hatists on the left would be called into question. This is transparent, straight-up bullshit. There are only 300,000,000 Twitter users on a planet of 7 billion, and most of them reside outside the U.S. Twitter execs overestimate their importance, and underestimate the intelligence level of most human beings. It's actually kind of amusing. Whatever, Jack.
Impeachment for what exactly, can someone illustrate? Campaign finanace violations which Obama also had ? Knowledge of a meeting that Don Junior had with a Russian person who was working for the DNC?
Help him prove his point that conservative voices are stifled. Make him a martyr
I'm from Finland. Every single media outlet reprints the spin from everything other than Fox when it comes to Trump. Every time I go to double check from the source and then compare to what actually was said/happened, I find that story printed is either a complete fabrication, a partial lie or a spin on facts. I'm yet to actually see a Trump related story that wouldn't be one of the three, which is frankly quite frightening as it tells about a massive bias in the media.
Why am I supposed to be believe that you are more competent than the reporters that you criticize?
There is a simpler and more likely answer than a vast global conspiracy by every media outlet in every country (except Russia) in the world to make Trump look bad, and that's explanation is that you really don't know how to fact check anything and instead your sources for "what really happened" are wrong. I've noticed that you didn't provide any examples of what the media said, and what you determined "really happened", or how you determined what was really "true"...
Fanatically anti-fanatical
I say kick Trump off of Twitter. It will be more polarizing than Nike featuring CK. PotUS doesn't need to have such a direct contact with the people. He shouldn't get news from social media either. His news should come from his intelligence agencies. This way they have hopefully been vetted for factual content. And Trump especially doesn't need social media. All he's done by using it is stick his foot in his mouth over and over.
This seems pretty simple, by taking Trump's account away, they are closing that public forum to everyone. Why can Twitter do that, it's because the first amendment can't force a private business to keep a forum open, but it can prevent the government from violating people's rights in the forum as long as it is open.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
No but he will be in prison after he gets out no matter. Many different jurisdictions are going to file charges the moment he steps out of office. For things like financial fraud and money laundering (that's why Mueller is even here this is a organized crime case). Hes a wild animal in a cage and that cage grants immunity until the predisposed term limits then hes will be charged mercilessly for all his crimes in all the jurisdictions that he may have affected.
Don't forget the abhorrent rates of rape for people illegally crossing the boarders.
I don't see a lot of calls for violence on the #antifa hashtag. Funny enough, most of the posts seem to be opposed to anti-fa (with a few leaning towards violence...
Here's a thought: Antifa is just a boogieman created by Fox News and other right wing media outlets to mask and excuse right wing violence with "Whataboutism".
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Throwing Trump off Twitter etc. would be as pointless as throwing almost anyone off. They get it wrong so often.
For instance, almost immediately in this thread. this comment, in part:
"when he tweeted last year that if North Korean leaders continued with their rhetoric at the time, "they won't be around much longer!" "
Do you not yet know how to speak Trump? You should. He's simple to understand. This comment, "they won't be around much longer!", certainly doesn't mean "I'm gonna bomb 'em ,dude!". It's reasonable to interpret it as "they risk a revolt when the world starts really, really sanctioning them". For instance.
But if his tweet was a threat of violence, then consider this scrap of a comment right here, a bit later:
"the full force of Mueller and US law on him like a ton of bricks"
A ton of bricks. Seems like a physical threat? Oh? Explain please, the language is plain and direct. Unless you choose to see nuance sometimes, and not others. Or scrap from a comment:
"Suck my nuts, moron."
Sexual abuse? Coerced? Of course not, it's just some infantile comment.
But to get further into misunderstanding Trump (and others), two quotes claiming to be from Bob Woodward's forthcoming book:
"Trump also suggested that Democrats had more power and influence within the Justice Department than Sessions.
Hopefully this is presented, in context, as a fairly direct statement, and one with a reasonable foundation. After all, he was newly elected than, and inherited a Justice Department in no way transformed from the Obama administration, so yes, lots of Democrats in positions of power and influence within Justice. Of course. Feel free to try and refute this. Facts and/or reasonable suppositions would be best, but don't let the lack of those stop you, for it hasn't before...
"Sessions responded with a rare rebuke of Trump, saying, "The actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations." "
This second quote is probably interpreted as a rebuke of Trump, as it is presented so. But Sessions could have been saying, in essence, "I won't let political considerations improperly influence the Department". Seems reasonable to me. Not even a rebuke, but both a reasonable and mandatory statement.
Oh, did you notice the turn of phrase "improperly influenced"? Think that one over. Over the past 14 years now. Do you see it yet? I doubt it, but don't give up so easily.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
How do you suggest social media platforms deal with people calling for death threats, harassing children/the elderly, spamming the service with illegal content, etc? Do you think their status as "common carrier" limits their liability if they witness but do nothing about another 9/11 attack being planned? Oh, I know! They can just call the FBI! I'm sure that'll 100% absolve them when the FBI is slow to act on 1,000 illegal/questionable things happening a day.
In most circumstances, it already does. Companies are generally granted a lot of leeway to commit acts that for a single individual would be considered criminal. Nominally, it requires proof of intentional bad action. For a person that can be mostly presumed because there's no machinery or policy to get in the way. For a company, it's precisely that machinery and policy that's designed to clearly late out de facto regulation of a service to remove bad actors because otherwise social media services would be potentially useless*.
How is that magically different? Do phone companies have a voting system so numbers can be voted off the island? Do people get to downvote numbers or tag their caller id as untrustworthy? If you want to argue that common carrier status is the thing that should be, then find me an example of something that is common carrier that is user regulated. It's antithetical to have any sort of group regulation for common carrier. The closest thing is people making up "robocall block lists" and having voice mail to screen calls. Funny, btw, that government created the "do not call list" and rules about robocalls and somehow that's not an infringement of freedom of speech. If anything, the argument should be to strength Section 230 of the CDA to make clear that banning bots should be minimally allowed.
See above. They're not a common carrier. Section 230 in theory indemnifies them from content other people post, but it has not been enough to actual be punished in court for more "extreme" examples of speech. Ergo, it has become a basic necessity that they minimally censor content that may make them liable for being a conspirator of a criminal act. Whether this takes the form of blocking the content, ranking it, or labeling it, moderation that tries to make clear who the potential bad actor is is basically the minimal we actually expect.
The one point of validity you make is their efforts to skew the narrative by selectively choosing what to present to users. That seems like direct editorial control that's outside the hands of the user. Being an "AI" doesn't really change the fact that biasing the results per user could be readily argued to be endorsement of those positions which itself could open them up to liability. Similarly, if they were shown to be altering content itself they could reasonably be held to no longer be merely publishers of others content. Just about every other aspect of what you say, though, is actually what we inherently expect from social media (including Slashdot).
If that requires codifying in law to make clear, then so be it. The notion, though, that this is against the intentions of the CDA's Section 230? You should ask Senator Ron Wyden who has made it very clear that if anything his complaint is social media not going far enough to block bad actors. The fact that I (and others) see this as political (PC) manipulation of social media?
The administration could temporarily unlist twitter.com from DNS entries in the US and most other countries in the name of "national security". Making threats to block a head of state is not cool. Would any of you have been ok with Obama being taken off twitter?
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Nothing to see here... move along.
Finlander sees bias while you don't. You don't because you hate a Great America.
At this point, Twitter benefits greatly from Trump utilizing the platform.
If Twitter does remove Trump - not only will they significantly piss off a significant percentage (20% ???) of users, whatever platform Trump utilizes next will experience a surge in popularity.
Twitter won't win in general public opinion from such a removal, either.
Of COURSE many people would love it. This country is quite polarized politically.
George Washington fought against England. Are you admitting that Trump is fighting against the U.S.?
Trump also believes that people should be required to pledge allegiance to the United States. Which is odd for a traitor.
(Or maybe... *gasp*... Trump just wants you to pledge allegiance to him, screw the country.)
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Suppose it weren't Twitter, and instead it was a privately-owned physical venue. Imagine the last place you saw live music being played. The bar (or stadium or whatever) has a rule: no pissing on the floor. If you need to take a piss, go to one of the many convenient restrooms. Strangely, though, the place is free to use. Anyone can show up, no charge.
Someone shows up and pisses on the floor. Venue bans them. Someone else shows up and looks like they might be thinking of pissing on the floor, so others say "throw this guy out, I know he's gonna piss on the floor!" and the venue shrugs and says "naw." Or sometimes they say "hey, you're right, that guy is out of here." Venue is in control.
Now imagine a childish pussy walks in and says "I'm president!" and after everyone has a good laugh, someone on their phone says "holy fuck, check wikipedia. This guy really is president!" Everyone laughs with disbelief but they check wikipedia and the edits look like they're not vandalism. The pussy really is president. He gets up on stage and says "Conservativism is the enemy. Everyone on the right, listen to me, because I'm here to teach you that you were wrong about communism and central economic control. What this country needs is central management, ala a Central Committee." Everyone stares in disbelief. "The first thing we're going to use the power of government to do, is get rid of these fucking free markets since their low overhead is saving everyone way too much money. The more waste there is, the more people like us crooks will find ways to skim a little off without anyone noticing." Ears perk up. Some people nod, some people scowl. Hmm. "So we're going to restrict the market for labor. And to fight labor in other countries where we can't restrict it, we're going to raise taxes on people buying things." At this point, the dedicated conservatives all scream "oh, hell no. We didn't fight socialism for 90 years just to have this pussy wreck it." But the more left-leaning ones are "aha, I knew the hippies were right about the government needing to control the economy," and they raise their hands and shout toward the pussy, "And say something about the darkies! Something has to be done about them!"
There's a big hoo-haw and then someone shouts "But what about laws? One of the problems with crooks skimming money at the expense of America, is that there are laws against that! You might be fine with crime, but I'm not!"
The pussy's shrill scream erupts: "Get that man out of here! Believe me, laws don't matter!"
From the back of the crowd, SCOTUS steps in, and he says: "You can't ban this guy from the venue. He isn't breaking the rules by pointing out that the pussy is a criminal. He hasn't peed on the floor. And I looked it up too, and this pussy is president. The people have a right to hang out whereever he speaks to the public."
The pussy has a tantrum and pees on the floor. Security escorts him out. And not the good kind of escort that he fucks to make Melania cry and remember that she's a prisoner, but the bad kind that firmly guides you out away from the adults.
It's a public forum while the pussy is speaking there, because he's president. The venue can still kick people out for pissing on the floor, but the pussy can't kick people out at all. But if the pussy gets kicked out because he can't follow the don't-piss-on-the-floor rule, then it's no longer a government publication. It's everyone else who has a right to the venue where the government announces its policies. It's not a right that the government has, though.
I realize the left has a big problem with that. They want the government to have all the rights and the people to have none. But their view isn't American. They can support Trump all they want, but if they want to make the government have more deeply leftists policies, they're going to need some constitutional amendments. So, Trump supporters, maybe now is a good time to ask you: What constitutional amendments would you support?
>"Ultimately I don't know what that court case would look like, but I bet it will turbo charge the argument that social media needs to be regulated like a public unity or a common carrier."
Indeed it would. These social media platforms seem to want to control their content and yet at the same time being insulated from liability/responsibility for that manipulation. It can't really work both ways at the same time. Having their own USERS regulate and moderate and control the content is one thing (and not the "thing" they are doing). But, otherwise, they are not acting like a common carrier by censoring, ranking, labeling, and skewing things the way they like.
These social media platforms are just reacting to the recent law that lets them be held legally liable for whatever their users post. It's already shutdown several sites and parts of sites. People love to place political intent on these companies actions but why now? The political drama has been going on for years and they didn't care. I'm not sure why people want to white knight social media companies but they are businesses first and foremost. They will do what benefits their bottom line.
The only sane definition of "Real Americans" is those that win the culture wars and command the resources - land, minerals, crops, etc. The indians that were here first (and so what?) completely lost their culture war, and now either integrate with the winning culture or live on their hilariously-named "reservations." The correct description of them is "the conquered", not "real Americans."
Now the question could become: do you want to see the Democrats, or the Republicans, become the conquered? Because it sure seems like someone needs to go. These cultures are not even remotely compatible, and the competition between the two is doing no one any good other than the news media.
And still no action taken
You're the person who slows down traffic to stare at accidents, aren't you? AREN'T YOU???
It's not that hard to believe in conspiracy by default through media groupthink. Take for instance the time that Trump called Mexicans animals. American news media kept playing that clip, but never played the four seconds before the clip where he was specifically asked about MS13, the Mexican gang with a long history of cutting people's heads off with machetes. So he called MS13 animals and the U.S. media morphed that into "Trump dehumanizes Mexican American Refugees before caging them." And never backed down, despite outcry from the non-media public. They have a narrative, and stories are molded to the narrative or never told.
Trump didnâ(TM)t ask anybody to swear loyalty to America, or the Constitution. Just him personally.
You are correct.
Righties are the paragon of Free Speech advocates. Taking a knee at an NFL game is a perfect example and the Righties are 4-square behind those football players!
Speaking of disgraces, only the Righties are obsessed with Antifa, MS-13, yet they somehow manage to overlook the Neo-Nazis in their midst. I guess it's those principled Free Speech values again.
Speaking of values, Righties don't have any now. They elected a man who has been married 3 times, has cheated on every single one of his wives, slobbers over dictators, shows clear signs of xenophobia, sexism and racism, drives friends and allies away, gives aid and comfort to enemies, dodged the draft yet proclaims his great love of the military, it literally is endless.
Your Free Speech argument is pathetic and so are your values. Go away and grow a soul. Grow some principles. Stand for something other than greed, ignorance and belligerent pettiness.
Twitter continues to allow racist, sexist and homophobic rants to proliferate on it's platfoem by right wing Nazis that go unchecked. They do it under the guise of free speech and oh we are just joking but that ba racism continues. I'm tired of the double standards.
Are they reporting on something someone said? Okay, then list how far away the person saying the thing is from the actual thing.
Example:
Harry Reid said, and I'm paraphrasing here, 'Someone told me that Mitt Romney has never paid taxes'.
The headlines read 'Mitt Romney has never paid taxes, says Senate Leader'.
Technically this is kind of true although they left our the 'Someone told me'. All of the news was about Mitt Romney not paying taxes. No one asked who might have said this complete false hood to Harry Reid. Was it Romney's accountant? That would be a story and the end of the accountants career. Was it an IRS agent? That would be a story and the start of the agents career as a Democratic martyr.
But trot out the canard that reality has a liberal bias.
Exactly. It isn't a restriction on twitter -- it is a restriction on govenment officials. Twitter can offer features but that doesn't mean officials can use them against the law.
Whether the ruling is correct or not, especially given the driving force of the suit likely wasn't really concern over speech but another attempt to hurt the president politically, is a separate issue.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Here's an interesting study about the press coverage of Trump's first 100 days in office.
Whenever the tone is this overwhelming negative, the press is going out of their way to make shit up. Like they did with Trump's 'animals' comment, for example, juxtaposing a notorious criminal gang for 'immigrants'.
There is a simpler and more likely answer than a vast global conspiracy by every media outlet in every country (except Russia) in the world to make Trump look bad
I know that's a bit of a strawman, when really much of media ownership is consolidated by major corporations who call the shots. However, in the study they noticed that the only time Trump receives positive coverage by all the press, is when he launched cruise missile strikes on a Syrian airbase. That alone ought to tell you something.
I'm tired of this "common carrier" concept -- oh boy! Another way to work around the First Amendment so government can control private speech!
Toss it, at least in situations like this. There is no limit to the amount of speech the Internet can carry, so any ultimately scarcity-based argument fails.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
These are restrictions on government officials using twitter, not twitter.
You want to argue government gets to slap a label on a private entity dealing with speech, and presto! No more first amendment, which includes the right not to say something, which both twitter and twitter's users have and use.
Given the motivation is not concern for speech, but to hurt a political opponent, it is even more disgusting and unconstitutional.
It's like adding "paper" to common carrier, so now all newspaper editorial pages must budget for opposing viewpoints or go to jail.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Technology stories is actually what got me started on not trusting the media about a decade ago. When you're actually educated and have worked in industries that are almost universally hated in the circles that appear to be producing overwhelming majority of journalists, you start seeing that things you read in the news outlets are sometimes diametrically opposed to reality.
No, I think it would be sufficient to go to their days of old, when you actually reported what was said, in context. And if there's an another story that you're translating as a core for your story, you also investigate and report on the known biases of the original author.
It's how journalism used to be conducted around here, at least in the state broadcaster. There's a reason why I'm in full support of paying the special tax to support it. I think it's necessary for a small neutral state like ours to maintain balanced reporting that doesn't just regurgitate the bias from any of the major empires we have to live between. Instead we need to be informed on what they're talking about, but in context of what's actually going on.
You can't even excuse this with progressivism. We don't get to vote on US legislators or executives. We're foreigners, who have distinctly different interests from those of US and its citizenry. Therefore it makes no sense to just transplant and push ideologies from across the Atlantic and it's distinctly anti-Finnish thing to do. Which is something that should not be done in a state broadcaster, financed wholly by the state and the taxpayers.
Some of the translated ones clearly are, but there are quite a few actual on point reporting. Unlike US, we maintain a working relationship with Russia to this day. It's a precarious balancing act as it has been for last half a decade, but we have quite a bit of expertise on the topic. We lack the interest to be hostile to Russia, so much of reporting is quite neutral and does go over the relevant biases in reporting.
You do realize he can just pardon himself on the way to bed on January 19th, 2025, right?
Have to call bullshit on that, as most of the shit in the media about Trump stems from his tweets or his public addresses. I've seen spin too, but frankly unless you're vox or buzzfeed there really isn't anything worth throwing on top of the ridiculous shit coming straight from Trump or his official mouthpiece.
I call bullshit on your bullshit, and notably, so did everyone else in this thread. The admission of the fact that the only ones without the negative spin on Trump in US media are fox is obvious.
Arnold was a fuckin baller. You see that carriage he was rolling in Turn?
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
That's precisely what's happening, and it really has nothing to do with "common carrier" in any fashion. Twitter wants to ban people and that's their way of having "speech" by choosing what gets published on their platform. Congress is upset because Twitter isn't doing enough of banning people they don't like (which as you say is their attempt to work around the First Amendment).
Meanwhile, Conservatives want *more* government regulation? You know, normally it's Conservatives making the argument for less government involvement and more private enterprise to deal with the situation. Normally I call bullshit because the regulation involved is preventing companies from doing absolutely horrible things--you know, like dump lead into the drink water. The one place where government, though, really shouldn't be doing *more* regulation is involving cases of speech.
Actually, the argument is more about limited liability. The idea goes that if there were no Section 230, Twitter and the like couldn't exist because they'd have to have an army of people scanning and removing illegal/defaming content. Of course, they're doing that right now because Section 230 has proven to not be a sufficient defense in some cases--both Congress and the Courts have made that clear.
So, yea, at this point, just get rid of Section 230 because clearly we're at a point where it basically already was--if you host illegal (or even questionable) content and don't do enough to remove it in their eyes, you're going to be attacked by the government regardless. I don't agree with your "scarcity-based argument fails", though. We have a scarcity of time in the day, so meaningfully all the bullshit/spam/whatever that comes from a lack of moderation is enough to drown out an ability to get anything remotely useful.
That's precisely why even though Section 230 never mentioned moderation, it implicitly allowed moderation because it basically said "we don't presume you hosting stuff makes you the speaker" would, if taken literally, allow them to explicitly keep up illegal content until required by a court to remove it (although perhaps a civil suit would still succeed). So, given that the government actually *wants* illegal content removed faster than a court would remove it, there's been the implicitly blessing to ban/remove stuff and further it could be seen as freedom of speech to ban/remove things.
Honestly, the real thing protecting companies is precisely that companies aren't presumed guilty, unlike people. So, they can just remove stuff as they go instead of worrying about being caught possessing illegal information. That's the real problem, IMHO, but we've built such a rabbit hole in the court system with obscenity and other exceptions to speech, I don't imagine we'll ever really fix things.
Whenever the tone is this overwhelming negative, the press is going out of their way to make shit up.
You know, the other possibility is that they are reporting the actual truth and the truth is bad. Even the paper you linked says:
But I will never believe that the guy who ordered toddlers ripped from their parents arms and locked in cages is actually a really a good guy and that it's the media who's making him look bad. If you can't acknowledge that stealing children from their parents, locking the children up for months on end and giving those children a life time of emotional and social problems is evil, then I pity you.
And that's just one of the terrible things that Trump has done.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
The US currently enjoys unprecedented transparency in to the Whitehouse. You may not like what your President is doing or who he is as a person but you have a clear view of him and more importantly he publishes his random thoughts uncensored. If you look at your past presidents there probably is not a single one that didn't strive to present wonderful public persona while working a hidden agenda out of sight ... until they were caught.
Observation: there is so much personal and media focus on disrespecting the current President but there doesn't seem to be any initiative on addressing the issues in the US that got him to power. Where is the media focus and the personal effort being put on fixing voter registration, the electoral college structure, the working poor, the radical right (winning hearts/minds not shouting at them), etc. Fact is, it seems it is easier to criticize and dig up dirt than it is to get on the job of fixing things. America has the President it deserves and needed. It's a wake up call, things are not all right. Fix them.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Twitter is making too much money to boot Trump. That just ain't gonna happen. In fact, they relish the drama, just as the media does.
Just another day in Paradise
But I will never believe that the guy who ordered toddlers ripped from their parents arms and locked in cages is actually a really a good guy and that it's the media who's making him look bad.
Given that you're eager to accept the premise that all of Trump's negative coverage is unvarnished truth, I'm not surprised you'd swallow this narrative hook line and sinker. Here is another baby being stolen from her mamma who will suffer long lasting emotional problems at the hands of police and Trump's America. Spoiler alert: Turns out that real life is more complicated than the media would lead you to assume.
So while you're busy pitying everyone who doesn't have their buttons pushed by knee-jerk emotional manipulation, those that care more about having an accurate understanding of the world will still have their work cut out for them. They won't have their heads lodged firmly up into the echo chamber of for-profit partisan media and the Mockingbird press.
You're just a sad pathetic excuse for a person.
Your saintly hero still ordered children locked in cages for his political benefit. He's evil and so are you.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Thank you. I was about to post this, but I got wrapped up searching for which media sources have told untruths, and turned up with only sources like Breitbart and Fox news. Everything else has ample observable evidence, and much of it comes directly from Trump's mouth (or Twitter feed).
It seems a lot of Trumpers don't realize we have tons of video evidence of him that was perfectly valid just a couple years ago. Now suddenly it's "doctored" or "fake news", all because reality hurts their feelings.
Except that every single one of those is easily verifiable. You're claiming that things that we have on video or Twitter of Trump saying are made up. Your connection to reality is tenuous at best. It appears TDS is real, and Trump supporters are simply deranged by their emotionally charged reasoning.
Don't forget Sinclair Broadcasting, that owns 75% of the local news stations in the entire country and has a decisively far far right ideology that gets parroted out to literally 75% of the country. They have publicly stated that they vociferously support Trump, and will not broadcast any negative coverage of him, which they call "fake news".
So, how many Jews are working in this purportedly "nazi" organisation? In high positions too?
This far left psychosis where anyone left of Marx is a nazi is getting tiring. National Socialism is a very clearly defined ideology in many ways.
You're just a sad pathetic excuse for a person.
Perhaps. I apologize if I violated your safe space.
Your saintly hero still ordered children locked in cages for his political benefit. He's evil and so are you.
I'm going to call fake news on this one. You may also need to work on that anti-fanatical thing a bit more if you want to sound more convincing.