Media folks and those who love to censor people for Wrongthink have been apoplectic over Elon Musk buying Twitter. They do not want you to have your say if it conflicts with Modern Socialist dogma. And now
AP sources: Musk in control of Twitter, ousts top executives
Elon Musk has taken control of Twitter and ousted the CEO, chief financial officer and the company’s top lawyer, two people familiar with the deal said Thursday night.
The people wouldn’t say if all the paperwork for the deal, originally valued at $44 billion, had been signed or if the deal has closed. But they said Musk is in charge of the social media platform and has fired CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal and Chief Legal Counsel Vijaya Gadde. Neither person wanted to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the deal.
How will it all work out? That’s the big question. Will there be less advertising in tweets and more of a pay model? How about the big one, which how it censors users, suspends them, and bans them. Some people deserve it, such as those who threaten and dox. Others, it’s been for saying things Twitter mods and unhinged leftists do not like. I had my original account “permanently suspended” for that, and have been suspended twice for tweeting Wrongthink. Same with so many other Conservatives. But, see, letting you have your say is (LA Times paywalled version here)
Op-Ed: How Elon Musk’s plans for Twitter could threaten free speech
As he prepares to take over Twitter, Elon Musk has said that, in the name of upholding free speech, he will dial back safeguards on the platform that are there to protect against disinformation. This would be a mistake, and not just because disinformation has fueled a crisis of faith in democracy and impeded pandemic response at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives.
Disinformation, though largely protected by the 1st Amendment against government control, can also imperil free speech itself. If Musk is serious about fostering open discourse, he needs to account for the dangers that disinformation poses to expression as he takes over one of the world’s most influential online platforms.
So Democrats like Eric Swalwall, along with other Democrats, who said they had evidence that Trump colluded with Russia should be banned? Who decides what’s misinformation/disinformation? There are still 9/11 Truthers on Twitter.
When arenas for public discourse are flooded with disinformation, free speech begins to shed its value. If audiences lose their grip on what is true and what is false, they can become primed to distrust everything and it becomes impossible to persuade people, even with the most compelling argument or evidence. If platforms are riddled with propaganda and political falsehoods aimed to skew election results, prospects for genuine discourse on matters of public policy or local affairs evaporate. If the search for reliable information yields nothing but a morass of comingled facts and falsehoods, people eventually stop searching.
Then Democrats like Katie Hobbs should be banned for blaming Kari Lake for the break in at the Hobbs office. It’s a seriously deranged attempt to censor people, but, we shouldn’t expect anything different from the Democratic Party run media. If it was their folks being censored, they’d be all against it.
The 1st Amendment prevents the government from suppressing most forms of disinformation because the Supreme Court has recognized that if permitted to regulate such speech, authorities would not be able to resist the temptation to use that power in self-serving ways, to silence critics and repress dissent.
Uh, no. The 1st Amendment says that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” The only ones authorized at the federal level to pass laws is the Congress, and they are 100% forbidden to stop your speech.
But the 1st Amendment doesn’t apply to social media companies since it only constrains the power of government. Online platforms can, for the most part, decide whether to suppress speech. But with platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Google so widely used, the place of free speech as an underpinning of society is at stake in their choices. Moreover, in a world powered by algorithms, speech moves differently than it did in an era of printed pamphlets and town meetings. Studies have shown that, on Twitter, disinformation travels faster and farther than truth.
If it looks like BS, I’ll look it up, just like with 9/11 Trutherism and ‘climate change’.
If Musk is serious about enhancing Twitter’s potential as a vehicle for free speech, he should focus on how to make the platform a hospitable place for dialogue, truth-seeking, citizen’s engagement — things at the heart of why free speech matters. Some of the steps he reportedly contemplates, including giving users more control over what they see on the platform, could help. So could improving Twitter’s system for appealing the removal of tweets and disabling of accounts, clearer communications about which rules posts are found to violate and why, and greater transparency to allow researchers to study the platform and determine whether and how political biases may infect content moderation.
But if Musk follows through on his promise to create open season for disinformation on Twitter he will risk destroying free speech in one of our global villages in the name of trying to save it.
If Democrats are too weak minded to do their own research, that’s on them. And they’re the ones who lie the most. Anything they do not like they label disinformation/misinformation. If I say something like “it’s probably not a good idea to let people (transgenders) with a higher rate of suicidal thoughts and suicidal attempts around military grade weapons”, is that misinformation or fact? Yes, we can ban bots with bullshit, and, I bet Musk allows that to continue. Censoring and banning simply for an opinion that Leftists do not like? Not so much. It’s nothing new: this is why they wanted Fox News shut down, why they wanted Rush, Hannity, and Beck, among others, off the radio. Why they wanted Net Neutrality.
Read: Musk Buying Twitter Is A Danger To Free Speech Or Something »
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