This must be a satirical article because the author’s arguments are so misguided it’s laughable. Yes, defining the edges of what is acceptable speech will always be an issue, and yes, there will always be a master who makes the final decision.
But this fundamentally misrepresents the real issue – deep state involvement in a speech platform by the FBI, and arbitrary and opaque ideological decisions made by moderators working for Twitter.
He does mention this briefly, but treats it as a secondary issue, rather than the primary issue. This is the true battleground, this is the war where good and evil battle each other. It’s not on the fringes of what is acceptable content.
Most people can live with the tilted decisions that were made at Twitter. But they lied about it – lied about it to users, lied about it to Congress and tried to gaslight us all.
What is needed at Twitter is transparency. Make the content decisions and algorithms public. If that happens, ruling on fringe content will become much less ideological.
It is illegal and a violation of the United States Constitution for the US government to use corporations to violate rights they are forbidden from violating through their own power (like the 1st and 4th Amendments). Seems obvious, but there has been a concerted effort for years pretending this is not the case (particularly under the Obama administration). That is why there is such a smokescreen pretending these were just the actions of a “private company” with no coercion from government actors. Then again, there is a certain former CIA director who lied under oath in front of Congress about an illegal domestic surveillance program and still has a nice retirement and gets cushy media treatment, so I am not holding my breath.
I can only hope there is a reckoning for these violations.
The FBI has become an activist organization for a particular ideology and political party. This is a much, much bigger threat to democracy than a narcissistic blow hard like Trump.
I keep harping about this in many of my comments. Virtually all the institutions that bind western society together are captured by the same authoritarian, self-destructive ideology.
The bureaucracy, media, arts, culture, academia, NGOs, big tech, finance are all committed to so-called progressive ideals that are opposed by almost everyone else. It is rotting democracy from the inside out.
I think Homeland Security is more scary. They were created with a Vast budget and scarce instructions – to go out and get terrorists. But the terrorists drifted off one way or another leaving this Terrorist Hunting Behemoth with not many terrorists to hunt – and a huge budget to justify, and no real structure or purpose which makes any sense. Idle hands and the devil’s workshop and all…..
The FBI are just corrupt, as they have been since Hoover – knowing where everyone powerful had the bodies hidden meant they could run amok… and they have. They are Political hoodlums so their motivations at least have a point. Some of the other security forces – I suspect they are just loose cannons.
Virtually all the institutions that bind western society together are captured by the same authoritarian, self-destructive ideology. The bureaucracy, media, arts, culture, academia, NGOs, big tech, finance are all committed to so-called progressive ideals that are opposed by almost everyone else. It is rotting democracy from the inside out.
Agreed. I’m surprised at how many people don’t understand this. We constantly hear about how right-wing authoritarians are a threat to democracy, etc. while the left has nearly total control of every major organ of cultural power and influence.
I think Homeland Security is more scary. They were created with a Vast budget and scarce instructions – to go out and get terrorists. But the terrorists drifted off one way or another leaving this Terrorist Hunting Behemoth with not many terrorists to hunt – and a huge budget to justify, and no real structure or purpose which makes any sense. Idle hands and the devil’s workshop and all…..
The FBI are just corrupt, as they have been since Hoover – knowing where everyone powerful had the bodies hidden meant they could run amok… and they have. They are Political hoodlums so their motivations at least have a point. Some of the other security forces – I suspect they are just loose cannons.
Virtually all the institutions that bind western society together are captured by the same authoritarian, self-destructive ideology. The bureaucracy, media, arts, culture, academia, NGOs, big tech, finance are all committed to so-called progressive ideals that are opposed by almost everyone else. It is rotting democracy from the inside out.
Agreed. I’m surprised at how many people don’t understand this. We constantly hear about how right-wing authoritarians are a threat to democracy, etc. while the left has nearly total control of every major organ of cultural power and influence.
I can only hope there is a reckoning for these violations.
The FBI has become an activist organization for a particular ideology and political party. This is a much, much bigger threat to democracy than a narcissistic blow hard like Trump.
I keep harping about this in many of my comments. Virtually all the institutions that bind western society together are captured by the same authoritarian, self-destructive ideology.
The bureaucracy, media, arts, culture, academia, NGOs, big tech, finance are all committed to so-called progressive ideals that are opposed by almost everyone else. It is rotting democracy from the inside out.
I have called before for an in-depth article from Unherd on the Twitter Files.
The information coming iro the FBI is staggering e.g. that the FBI paid Twitter millions of dollars for their ‘staff time’ – read regular meetings between the FBI and Twitter and cosy and continuous chats about who should be silenced. As of 2020 there were so many former FBI employees working at Twitter that they created their own private Slack channel and crib sheet to onboard new FBI arrivals.
This is only a tiny bit of what has been dropped.
The latest I haven’t yet read… where the Pentagon gets involved.
I sign up to Unherd to get this sort of journalism please. Be sure that fake news corporate media is ignoring the whole thing.
Well said. I can‘t wait for an in-depth article on that. It seems all major publications/media are very silent on this, which in my mind was as big if not a bigger violation than Watergate.
Well said. I can‘t wait for an in-depth article on that. It seems all major publications/media are very silent on this, which in my mind was as big if not a bigger violation than Watergate.
I was going to say something similar. The claim is that it’s about child porn – but ultimately it is about total control of the narrative. If the various attempts to pass state censorship laws – like here in Canada – are successful then progressive critics will be censored forever. COVID mandates and vaccine mandates were a great example of ‘the state’ getting things terribly wrong in part because they silenced their critics and were cheered on by our now entirely worthless traditional media.
It is illegal and a violation of the United States Constitution for the US government to use corporations to violate rights they are forbidden from violating through their own power (like the 1st and 4th Amendments). Seems obvious, but there has been a concerted effort for years pretending this is not the case (particularly under the Obama administration). That is why there is such a smokescreen pretending these were just the actions of a “private company” with no coercion from government actors. Then again, there is a certain former CIA director who lied under oath in front of Congress about an illegal domestic surveillance program and still has a nice retirement and gets cushy media treatment, so I am not holding my breath.
I have called before for an in-depth article from Unherd on the Twitter Files.
The information coming iro the FBI is staggering e.g. that the FBI paid Twitter millions of dollars for their ‘staff time’ – read regular meetings between the FBI and Twitter and cosy and continuous chats about who should be silenced. As of 2020 there were so many former FBI employees working at Twitter that they created their own private Slack channel and crib sheet to onboard new FBI arrivals.
This is only a tiny bit of what has been dropped.
The latest I haven’t yet read… where the Pentagon gets involved.
I sign up to Unherd to get this sort of journalism please. Be sure that fake news corporate media is ignoring the whole thing.
I was going to say something similar. The claim is that it’s about child porn – but ultimately it is about total control of the narrative. If the various attempts to pass state censorship laws – like here in Canada – are successful then progressive critics will be censored forever. COVID mandates and vaccine mandates were a great example of ‘the state’ getting things terribly wrong in part because they silenced their critics and were cheered on by our now entirely worthless traditional media.
This must be a satirical article because the author’s arguments are so misguided it’s laughable. Yes, defining the edges of what is acceptable speech will always be an issue, and yes, there will always be a master who makes the final decision.
But this fundamentally misrepresents the real issue – deep state involvement in a speech platform by the FBI, and arbitrary and opaque ideological decisions made by moderators working for Twitter.
He does mention this briefly, but treats it as a secondary issue, rather than the primary issue. This is the true battleground, this is the war where good and evil battle each other. It’s not on the fringes of what is acceptable content.
Most people can live with the tilted decisions that were made at Twitter. But they lied about it – lied about it to users, lied about it to Congress and tried to gaslight us all.
What is needed at Twitter is transparency. Make the content decisions and algorithms public. If that happens, ruling on fringe content will become much less ideological.
Allison Barrows
1 year ago
Aris, that you think Twitter is far more important than real life at least explains why you consistently write delusional drivel.
Agreed. It’s alarming to think there are more out there like Aris. They are products of a strange kind of anti-democratic messaging that seeped into the “intellectual class”. These are fake intellectuals who have closed their ears and minds to the real world and the cleansing power of terse discourse.
I’m not exactly sure what you mean here, what has ‘terse discourse’ got to do with democracy? Plato was pretty good at the former but didn’t support the latter! Firstly, when appealing to ‘democracy’, it might perhaps be better and more consistent if some people on the Right were not quite so transactional on the one hand, and naïve on the other. For a start it is somewhat problematic not to accept the results of elections, especially with a completely cavalier attitude to the consequences of this, even if there were irregularities.
I think we should also accept that ‘democracy’ just isn’t enough, as any true conservative would; some of the comments of the Right are naïve here. The UK for example in recent years has had two manifestly useless party leaders foisted on the electorate through ‘internal party democracy’ in Jeremy Corbyn and Liz Truss, according to the views of the electorate rather than party activists.
There is no one ‘pure’ democratic system, at least in an advanced complex society, and certainly not one which would always produce the same results in a close contest. The US Constitution actually has (deliberate) non democratic elements, such as the Electoral College and the number of senators representing each State. These have in recent decades tended to give greater representation to the Republican Party. The Democratic Party can perfectly reasonably point out, for example, that Donald Trump would not have won either the 2016 or 2020 elections, by quite significant margins, on the popular vote.
Andrew, you must be British. The US Electoral College is clearly Democratic. It’s based on the fact that the United STATES is a republic comprised of independent STATES. The states elect presidents by democratically selecting their electoral college representatives. Many STATES are the size of European countries like the UK, and in many ways equally disparate. Thinking that inner-city voters in Leftist echo chambers like NYC, LA, Chicago or SFO should dictate life for mainstream Americans is exactly what got you Brexit. Our decentralized government structure may actually save us from the dystopian day of reckoning that’s unfolding in the EU. Looks like we have to bail you out from another sh** show derived from Leftist, globalist policy and economic reliance on yet another despot, Putin’s Russia. The Right wing reaction in Europe this winter will make American conservatives pale by comparison.
Andrew, you must be British. The US Electoral College is clearly Democratic. It’s based on the fact that the United STATES is a republic comprised of independent STATES. The states elect presidents by democratically selecting their electoral college representatives. Many STATES are the size of European countries like the UK, and in many ways equally disparate. Thinking that inner-city voters in Leftist echo chambers like NYC, LA, Chicago or SFO should dictate life for mainstream Americans is exactly what got you Brexit. Our decentralized government structure may actually save us from the dystopian day of reckoning that’s unfolding in the EU. Looks like we have to bail you out from another sh** show derived from Leftist, globalist policy and economic reliance on yet another despot, Putin’s Russia. The Right wing reaction in Europe this winter will make American conservatives pale by comparison.
I’m not exactly sure what you mean here, what has ‘terse discourse’ got to do with democracy? Plato was pretty good at the former but didn’t support the latter! Firstly, when appealing to ‘democracy’, it might perhaps be better and more consistent if some people on the Right were not quite so transactional on the one hand, and naïve on the other. For a start it is somewhat problematic not to accept the results of elections, especially with a completely cavalier attitude to the consequences of this, even if there were irregularities.
I think we should also accept that ‘democracy’ just isn’t enough, as any true conservative would; some of the comments of the Right are naïve here. The UK for example in recent years has had two manifestly useless party leaders foisted on the electorate through ‘internal party democracy’ in Jeremy Corbyn and Liz Truss, according to the views of the electorate rather than party activists.
There is no one ‘pure’ democratic system, at least in an advanced complex society, and certainly not one which would always produce the same results in a close contest. The US Constitution actually has (deliberate) non democratic elements, such as the Electoral College and the number of senators representing each State. These have in recent decades tended to give greater representation to the Republican Party. The Democratic Party can perfectly reasonably point out, for example, that Donald Trump would not have won either the 2016 or 2020 elections, by quite significant margins, on the popular vote.
Unfortunately, whether we like it or not, Twitter IS important and sets the stage for many political decisions in the real world, not to mention people being hounded out of their jobs, as has happened now on numerous occasions.
Agreed. It’s alarming to think there are more out there like Aris. They are products of a strange kind of anti-democratic messaging that seeped into the “intellectual class”. These are fake intellectuals who have closed their ears and minds to the real world and the cleansing power of terse discourse.
Unfortunately, whether we like it or not, Twitter IS important and sets the stage for many political decisions in the real world, not to mention people being hounded out of their jobs, as has happened now on numerous occasions.
Last edited 1 year ago by Andrew Fisher
Allison Barrows
1 year ago
Aris, that you think Twitter is far more important than real life at least explains why you consistently write delusional drivel.
Last edited 1 year ago by Allison Barrows
Christopher Barclay
1 year ago
No mention of the links between the previous Twitter administration and the US intelligence agencies? It is now clear that meetings between Twitter executives and the FBI were routine in the run-up to the 2020 Presidential election. Nor of the censorship of any criticism of the Covid lockdowns and the efficacy of the vaccines? Big Pharma has made billions from injecting healthy people with under-tested vaccines due to the propaganda drive orchestrated by amongst others Twitter.
It is also curious that support for Russia in its war with Ukraine is implied to be right-wing. In the UK at least most of the support for Russia has come from the Left.
And Twitter hasn’t even begun to release this data.
I read today that a man on the board of Reuters is also on the board of Pfizer. Now I haven’t even checked that out yet, but my bullshit meter isn’t going off – I am becoming so inured to the manipulation and corruption.
So, are you saying that Tucker Carlson, a Putin fan boy, is left wing?
The reality, which a right-winger like you cannot accept, is that both the hard right and the hard left have utterly disgraced themselves by their mealy-mouthed equivocation / de facto appeasement of the little rat in the Kremlin.
Most support for Ukraine comes from moderates.
And Twitter hasn’t even begun to release this data.
I read today that a man on the board of Reuters is also on the board of Pfizer. Now I haven’t even checked that out yet, but my bullshit meter isn’t going off – I am becoming so inured to the manipulation and corruption.
So, are you saying that Tucker Carlson, a Putin fan boy, is left wing?
The reality, which a right-winger like you cannot accept, is that both the hard right and the hard left have utterly disgraced themselves by their mealy-mouthed equivocation / de facto appeasement of the little rat in the Kremlin.
Most support for Ukraine comes from moderates.
Christopher Barclay
1 year ago
No mention of the links between the previous Twitter administration and the US intelligence agencies? It is now clear that meetings between Twitter executives and the FBI were routine in the run-up to the 2020 Presidential election. Nor of the censorship of any criticism of the Covid lockdowns and the efficacy of the vaccines? Big Pharma has made billions from injecting healthy people with under-tested vaccines due to the propaganda drive orchestrated by amongst others Twitter.
It is also curious that support for Russia in its war with Ukraine is implied to be right-wing. In the UK at least most of the support for Russia has come from the Left.
Douglas Proudfoot
1 year ago
Since Hitler used free speech to take power, we should preserve our democracy by censorship. Just because Hitler and Stalin heavily censored the news is no reason to suspect censorship is a bad thing. Besides, even though Stalin killed millions, and made a deal with Hitler to start World War II, many people still think he was a great man.
Also, it’s the FBI’s duty to protect us from possibly misleading posts on Twitter. It’s fabulous that they paid Twitter over $3 million for censorship to keep us safe. It has nothing to do with the 1st Amendment, which as we all know, allows for misleading posts to be censored at the direction of federal agencies. It’s a penumbra in the Bill of Rights. Censorship preserves our democracy.
Since Hitler used free speech to take power, we should preserve our democracy by censorship. Just because Hitler and Stalin heavily censored the news is no reason to suspect censorship is a bad thing. Besides, even though Stalin killed millions, and made a deal with Hitler to start World War II, many people still think he was a great man.
Also, it’s the FBI’s duty to protect us from possibly misleading posts on Twitter. It’s fabulous that they paid Twitter over $3 million for censorship to keep us safe. It has nothing to do with the 1st Amendment, which as we all know, allows for misleading posts to be censored at the direction of federal agencies. It’s a penumbra in the Bill of Rights. Censorship preserves our democracy.
/sarcasm
Last edited 1 year ago by Douglas Proudfoot
Michael Coleman
1 year ago
“Decisions will always finally have to be made by someone, and those decisions are always by their nature political, arbitrary, and thus always a source of dispute.”
Here’s a novel idea – let each user decide (i.e. open algorithm).
I can hear the authoritarians: But you might be exposed to ISIS propaganda or child porn! The default content algorithm would have training wheels on of course – if users chose to see the worst the web has to offer, so be it, it makes it easier to track down both purveyors and clients, with a drone missile hopefully where appropriate. Let’s not pretend that they don’t have other means to disseminate.
The fundamental premise of this piece is wrong – there doesn’t need to be a person or group controlling what I am ALLOWED to see
Last edited 1 year ago by Michael Coleman
Michael Coleman
1 year ago
“Decisions will always finally have to be made by someone, and those decisions are always by their nature political, arbitrary, and thus always a source of dispute.”
Here’s a novel idea – let each user decide (i.e. open algorithm).
I can hear the authoritarians: But you might be exposed to ISIS propaganda or child porn! The default content algorithm would have training wheels on of course – if users chose to see the worst the web has to offer, so be it, it makes it easier to track down both purveyors and clients, with a drone missile hopefully where appropriate. Let’s not pretend that they don’t have other means to disseminate.
The fundamental premise of this piece is wrong – there doesn’t need to be a person or group controlling what I am ALLOWED to see
Last edited 1 year ago by Michael Coleman
Gary Cruse
1 year ago
The next fascinating event to watch is the battle between the EU and international social media.
Does Musk muzzle Europeans?
Or does the EU back down?
Stay tuned.
Musks current activities will surely result in the EU having to be more open about their own “moderation” rules.
A big win for the inhabitants of EU colonies.
Musks current activities will surely result in the EU having to be more open about their own “moderation” rules.
A big win for the inhabitants of EU colonies.
Gary Cruse
1 year ago
The next fascinating event to watch is the battle between the EU and international social media.
Does Musk muzzle Europeans?
Or does the EU back down?
Stay tuned.
Andrew Fisher
1 year ago
Aris Roussinos is I think an interesting writer, but pretty jejune – he seems to struggle here with the difference between conservatives and liberals, which a recent speaker Yoram Hazony at UnHerd could have elucidated him on (admittedly many of today’s self-described conservatives cleave far closer to liberalism, which confuses the issue). And boy is he long-winded!
Conservatives properly described certainly don’t believe in the untrammelled arbitrary power of the Divine Right of Kings, or arbitrary power by whim whether by Elon Musk or anyone else. They believe in the historical accumulation of wisdom of institutions built up over centuries (and thereby culturally contingent and non universal), concepts of giving honour to others in the family, tribe and nation (which last concept was NOT invented by the French Revolution but understood in Biblical times, indeed in the Bible. Hierarchies are important and indeed essential in any human society. Parents and children should have a close loving relationship, but not one of equality and one where parents want to be their children’s friends and demonstrate this by giving in to their every short term demand. In fact children should honour their parents, who on its own account and because they have more wisdom.
Liberalism prioritises the idea that all human societies can be understood and perfected through the act of pure reason, a belief that has absolutely no empirical or historical justification, as ‘reason’ can lead to Marxist-Leninism, National Socialism, ideas of racial supremacy, even the idea that Sharia law is the sole answer, or that children should be able to have sex with adults, quite as readily as that of a ‘liberal’ society.
As we have seen, this eventually acts as a ‘universal acid’, first throwing into doubt, and then eroding the very foundations of society (whose origins are of course taken for granted rather than as historically contingent and vulnerable as they are). This ends up in the absurdity, not to say evil, of saying men can become women if they ‘feel’ they are. (Perhaps unfortunately, not ‘ends up’ – who knows what monstrous nonsenses will be spawned next?).
Elon Musk isn’t and shouldn’t be treated as a saviour figure, but he has provided a civic service of some importance by demonstrating beyond any doubt the deep political bias against anyone on the Right and government collusion in the suppression of free speech. Free speech isn’t absolute and should not be unconstrained, but it is real and meaningful as any comparison between the conservative Republic of the early United States, or indeed aristocratic Britain, and say Tsarist Russia or Qing China would demonstrate. If anything, it should be constrained in a conservative, not ultra liberal direction, in order to stop society destroying itself.
Last edited 1 year ago by Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
1 year ago
Aris Roussinos is I think an interesting writer, but pretty jejune – he seems to struggle here with the difference between conservatives and liberals, which a recent speaker Yoram Hazony at UnHerd could have elucidated him on (admittedly many of today’s self-described conservatives cleave far closer to liberalism, which confuses the issue). And boy is he long-winded!
Conservatives properly described certainly don’t believe in the untrammelled arbitrary power of the Divine Right of Kings, or arbitrary power by whim whether by Elon Musk or anyone else. They believe in the historical accumulation of wisdom of institutions built up over centuries (and thereby culturally contingent and non universal), concepts of giving honour to others in the family, tribe and nation (which last concept was NOT invented by the French Revolution but understood in Biblical times, indeed in the Bible. Hierarchies are important and indeed essential in any human society. Parents and children should have a close loving relationship, but not one of equality and one where parents want to be their children’s friends and demonstrate this by giving in to their every short term demand. In fact children should honour their parents, who on its own account and because they have more wisdom.
Liberalism prioritises the idea that all human societies can be understood and perfected through the act of pure reason, a belief that has absolutely no empirical or historical justification, as ‘reason’ can lead to Marxist-Leninism, National Socialism, ideas of racial supremacy, even the idea that Sharia law is the sole answer, or that children should be able to have sex with adults, quite as readily as that of a ‘liberal’ society.
As we have seen, this eventually acts as a ‘universal acid’, first throwing into doubt, and then eroding the very foundations of society (whose origins are of course taken for granted rather than as historically contingent and vulnerable as they are). This ends up in the absurdity, not to say evil, of saying men can become women if they ‘feel’ they are. (Perhaps unfortunately, not ‘ends up’ – who knows what monstrous nonsenses will be spawned next?).
Elon Musk isn’t and shouldn’t be treated as a saviour figure, but he has provided a civic service of some importance by demonstrating beyond any doubt the deep political bias against anyone on the Right and government collusion in the suppression of free speech. Free speech isn’t absolute and should not be unconstrained, but it is real and meaningful as any comparison between the conservative Republic of the early United States, or indeed aristocratic Britain, and say Tsarist Russia or Qing China would demonstrate. If anything, it should be constrained in a conservative, not ultra liberal direction, in order to stop society destroying itself.
Last edited 1 year ago by Andrew Fisher
Philip Stott
1 year ago
The best thing Elon could do for humanity is fire Twitter’s servers and code into space, and suck up the losses (he’s got form for that).
The failure of post Twitter wannabes (Parler, Truth Social, et al) shows there is no appetite for a rerun.
As for Twitter being a front as a primary CSAM vector, that doesn’t really ring true.
I occasionally frequent the dark web to procure products that I once would have needed a dealer for – pretty much everything is available there including drugs, weapons and no doubt CSAM and jihadi propaganda. All that is needed is a VPN and TOR browser.
If I can go there to buy weed, I’m sure the peados and jihadis can get their fix too.
Last edited 1 year ago by Philip Stott
Michael Argent
1 year ago
End anonymous posting – problem solved ..
Frank McCusker
1 year ago
Do the frothing Trump fans posting hereon have anything to say about the British government’s well-established form of govt censorship, the infamous D – Notice procedure? https://thedissenter.org/very-british-form-of-press-censorship/
You’re remarkably quiet about it.
Frank McCusker
1 year ago
Doubt is the hallmark of a democratic mind.
All forms of social media should be banned. They serve no useful purpose.
Most ordinary people are too excitable to be trusted with opinions.
Most ordinary people are intellectually lazy, emotional, tribal, gullible, and too excitable to be trusted with a serious debate.
Here are some typical hallmarks of an idiot:
Lack of doubt / certainty – anyone who is convinced that s/he’s right and you’re wrong; and
Contempt, and a lack of curiosity – not only are you wrong, but the idiot will also have not the slightest interest in anything you say, and will view you with contempt (or worse) for holding different views. He will have no interest in any facts or ideas outside those which he, or his thought bubble, already are happy with.
The purposes of down votes in a comments forum is to reveal just how many idiots are among us. The down-thumbs facility is a mechanism by which narrow-minded bigots can reveal themselves. https://ayenaw.com/2021/07/18/post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc/
Todd Kreigh
1 year ago
“who will rule Twitter next” .. those 5 words are insightful in what’s to come next. Is the author serious when he says Twitter is “far more important than real life”? If so, then it’s typical of his generation’s thinking.
Has the author considered, why does Twitter have to be “ruled”? It’s the point I think Musk is trying to make.
Speech is supposed to be free, not regulated by a trove of woke pissants sitting on their asses playing God. If social media has been so weaponized against the masses it stifles actual thought and dimes them out to the feds, and if it can’t be reformed, then we’d be best off to quit using it altogether.
Benjamin Greco
1 year ago
Did you just defend Twitter by using the arguments and logic of a Nazi?!
All of the arguments about Twitter make the same ridiculous mistake. Twitter is not a public square and Musk is not a sovereign power. Twitter is a corporation and Musk is a capitalist. The only obligation Twitter ever had was to be profitable, and it is still failing to fulfill that obligation. Twitter is garbage and anyone who spends time on it is a twit.
This must be a satirical article because the author’s arguments are so misguided it’s laughable. Yes, defining the edges of what is acceptable speech will always be an issue, and yes, there will always be a master who makes the final decision.
But this fundamentally misrepresents the real issue – deep state involvement in a speech platform by the FBI, and arbitrary and opaque ideological decisions made by moderators working for Twitter.
He does mention this briefly, but treats it as a secondary issue, rather than the primary issue. This is the true battleground, this is the war where good and evil battle each other. It’s not on the fringes of what is acceptable content.
Most people can live with the tilted decisions that were made at Twitter. But they lied about it – lied about it to users, lied about it to Congress and tried to gaslight us all.
What is needed at Twitter is transparency. Make the content decisions and algorithms public. If that happens, ruling on fringe content will become much less ideological.
It is illegal and a violation of the United States Constitution for the US government to use corporations to violate rights they are forbidden from violating through their own power (like the 1st and 4th Amendments). Seems obvious, but there has been a concerted effort for years pretending this is not the case (particularly under the Obama administration). That is why there is such a smokescreen pretending these were just the actions of a “private company” with no coercion from government actors. Then again, there is a certain former CIA director who lied under oath in front of Congress about an illegal domestic surveillance program and still has a nice retirement and gets cushy media treatment, so I am not holding my breath.
I can only hope there is a reckoning for these violations.
The FBI has become an activist organization for a particular ideology and political party. This is a much, much bigger threat to democracy than a narcissistic blow hard like Trump.
I keep harping about this in many of my comments. Virtually all the institutions that bind western society together are captured by the same authoritarian, self-destructive ideology.
The bureaucracy, media, arts, culture, academia, NGOs, big tech, finance are all committed to so-called progressive ideals that are opposed by almost everyone else. It is rotting democracy from the inside out.
I think Homeland Security is more scary. They were created with a Vast budget and scarce instructions – to go out and get terrorists. But the terrorists drifted off one way or another leaving this Terrorist Hunting Behemoth with not many terrorists to hunt – and a huge budget to justify, and no real structure or purpose which makes any sense. Idle hands and the devil’s workshop and all…..
The FBI are just corrupt, as they have been since Hoover – knowing where everyone powerful had the bodies hidden meant they could run amok… and they have. They are Political hoodlums so their motivations at least have a point. Some of the other security forces – I suspect they are just loose cannons.
Absolutely. But if a Presidential candidate were to run on chopping Homeland and FBI budgets down to size they would take him/her/they down one way or other. Not mentioned enough is the CIA spied on the US SENATE and John Brenan is still a free man.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/a-brief-history-of-the-cias-unpunished-spying-on-the-senate/384003/
Absolutely. But if a Presidential candidate were to run on chopping Homeland and FBI budgets down to size they would take him/her/they down one way or other. Not mentioned enough is the CIA spied on the US SENATE and John Brenan is still a free man.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/a-brief-history-of-the-cias-unpunished-spying-on-the-senate/384003/
Virtually all the institutions that bind western society together are captured by the same authoritarian, self-destructive ideology.
The bureaucracy, media, arts, culture, academia, NGOs, big tech, finance are all committed to so-called progressive ideals that are opposed by almost everyone else. It is rotting democracy from the inside out.
Agreed. I’m surprised at how many people don’t understand this. We constantly hear about how right-wing authoritarians are a threat to democracy, etc. while the left has nearly total control of every major organ of cultural power and influence.
I think Homeland Security is more scary. They were created with a Vast budget and scarce instructions – to go out and get terrorists. But the terrorists drifted off one way or another leaving this Terrorist Hunting Behemoth with not many terrorists to hunt – and a huge budget to justify, and no real structure or purpose which makes any sense. Idle hands and the devil’s workshop and all…..
The FBI are just corrupt, as they have been since Hoover – knowing where everyone powerful had the bodies hidden meant they could run amok… and they have. They are Political hoodlums so their motivations at least have a point. Some of the other security forces – I suspect they are just loose cannons.
Virtually all the institutions that bind western society together are captured by the same authoritarian, self-destructive ideology.
The bureaucracy, media, arts, culture, academia, NGOs, big tech, finance are all committed to so-called progressive ideals that are opposed by almost everyone else. It is rotting democracy from the inside out.
Agreed. I’m surprised at how many people don’t understand this. We constantly hear about how right-wing authoritarians are a threat to democracy, etc. while the left has nearly total control of every major organ of cultural power and influence.
I can only hope there is a reckoning for these violations.
The FBI has become an activist organization for a particular ideology and political party. This is a much, much bigger threat to democracy than a narcissistic blow hard like Trump.
I keep harping about this in many of my comments. Virtually all the institutions that bind western society together are captured by the same authoritarian, self-destructive ideology.
The bureaucracy, media, arts, culture, academia, NGOs, big tech, finance are all committed to so-called progressive ideals that are opposed by almost everyone else. It is rotting democracy from the inside out.
I have called before for an in-depth article from Unherd on the Twitter Files.
The information coming iro the FBI is staggering e.g. that the FBI paid Twitter millions of dollars for their ‘staff time’ – read regular meetings between the FBI and Twitter and cosy and continuous chats about who should be silenced. As of 2020 there were so many former FBI employees working at Twitter that they created their own private Slack channel and crib sheet to onboard new FBI arrivals.
This is only a tiny bit of what has been dropped.
The latest I haven’t yet read… where the Pentagon gets involved.
I sign up to Unherd to get this sort of journalism please. Be sure that fake news corporate media is ignoring the whole thing.
Well said. I can‘t wait for an in-depth article on that. It seems all major publications/media are very silent on this, which in my mind was as big if not a bigger violation than Watergate.
Well said. I can‘t wait for an in-depth article on that. It seems all major publications/media are very silent on this, which in my mind was as big if not a bigger violation than Watergate.
I was going to say something similar. The claim is that it’s about child porn – but ultimately it is about total control of the narrative. If the various attempts to pass state censorship laws – like here in Canada – are successful then progressive critics will be censored forever. COVID mandates and vaccine mandates were a great example of ‘the state’ getting things terribly wrong in part because they silenced their critics and were cheered on by our now entirely worthless traditional media.
You poor deluded fool:
https://www.techdirt.com/2022/12/20/no-the-fbi-is-not-paying-twitter-to-censor/
It is illegal and a violation of the United States Constitution for the US government to use corporations to violate rights they are forbidden from violating through their own power (like the 1st and 4th Amendments). Seems obvious, but there has been a concerted effort for years pretending this is not the case (particularly under the Obama administration). That is why there is such a smokescreen pretending these were just the actions of a “private company” with no coercion from government actors. Then again, there is a certain former CIA director who lied under oath in front of Congress about an illegal domestic surveillance program and still has a nice retirement and gets cushy media treatment, so I am not holding my breath.
I have called before for an in-depth article from Unherd on the Twitter Files.
The information coming iro the FBI is staggering e.g. that the FBI paid Twitter millions of dollars for their ‘staff time’ – read regular meetings between the FBI and Twitter and cosy and continuous chats about who should be silenced. As of 2020 there were so many former FBI employees working at Twitter that they created their own private Slack channel and crib sheet to onboard new FBI arrivals.
This is only a tiny bit of what has been dropped.
The latest I haven’t yet read… where the Pentagon gets involved.
I sign up to Unherd to get this sort of journalism please. Be sure that fake news corporate media is ignoring the whole thing.
I was going to say something similar. The claim is that it’s about child porn – but ultimately it is about total control of the narrative. If the various attempts to pass state censorship laws – like here in Canada – are successful then progressive critics will be censored forever. COVID mandates and vaccine mandates were a great example of ‘the state’ getting things terribly wrong in part because they silenced their critics and were cheered on by our now entirely worthless traditional media.
You poor deluded fool:
https://www.techdirt.com/2022/12/20/no-the-fbi-is-not-paying-twitter-to-censor/
This must be a satirical article because the author’s arguments are so misguided it’s laughable. Yes, defining the edges of what is acceptable speech will always be an issue, and yes, there will always be a master who makes the final decision.
But this fundamentally misrepresents the real issue – deep state involvement in a speech platform by the FBI, and arbitrary and opaque ideological decisions made by moderators working for Twitter.
He does mention this briefly, but treats it as a secondary issue, rather than the primary issue. This is the true battleground, this is the war where good and evil battle each other. It’s not on the fringes of what is acceptable content.
Most people can live with the tilted decisions that were made at Twitter. But they lied about it – lied about it to users, lied about it to Congress and tried to gaslight us all.
What is needed at Twitter is transparency. Make the content decisions and algorithms public. If that happens, ruling on fringe content will become much less ideological.
Aris, that you think Twitter is far more important than real life at least explains why you consistently write delusional drivel.
Agreed. It’s alarming to think there are more out there like Aris. They are products of a strange kind of anti-democratic messaging that seeped into the “intellectual class”. These are fake intellectuals who have closed their ears and minds to the real world and the cleansing power of terse discourse.
I’m not exactly sure what you mean here, what has ‘terse discourse’ got to do with democracy? Plato was pretty good at the former but didn’t support the latter! Firstly, when appealing to ‘democracy’, it might perhaps be better and more consistent if some people on the Right were not quite so transactional on the one hand, and naïve on the other. For a start it is somewhat problematic not to accept the results of elections, especially with a completely cavalier attitude to the consequences of this, even if there were irregularities.
I think we should also accept that ‘democracy’ just isn’t enough, as any true conservative would; some of the comments of the Right are naïve here. The UK for example in recent years has had two manifestly useless party leaders foisted on the electorate through ‘internal party democracy’ in Jeremy Corbyn and Liz Truss, according to the views of the electorate rather than party activists.
There is no one ‘pure’ democratic system, at least in an advanced complex society, and certainly not one which would always produce the same results in a close contest. The US Constitution actually has (deliberate) non democratic elements, such as the Electoral College and the number of senators representing each State. These have in recent decades tended to give greater representation to the Republican Party. The Democratic Party can perfectly reasonably point out, for example, that Donald Trump would not have won either the 2016 or 2020 elections, by quite significant margins, on the popular vote.
Andrew, you must be British. The US Electoral College is clearly Democratic. It’s based on the fact that the United STATES is a republic comprised of independent STATES. The states elect presidents by democratically selecting their electoral college representatives. Many STATES are the size of European countries like the UK, and in many ways equally disparate. Thinking that inner-city voters in Leftist echo chambers like NYC, LA, Chicago or SFO should dictate life for mainstream Americans is exactly what got you Brexit. Our decentralized government structure may actually save us from the dystopian day of reckoning that’s unfolding in the EU. Looks like we have to bail you out from another sh** show derived from Leftist, globalist policy and economic reliance on yet another despot, Putin’s Russia. The Right wing reaction in Europe this winter will make American conservatives pale by comparison.
Andrew, you must be British. The US Electoral College is clearly Democratic. It’s based on the fact that the United STATES is a republic comprised of independent STATES. The states elect presidents by democratically selecting their electoral college representatives. Many STATES are the size of European countries like the UK, and in many ways equally disparate. Thinking that inner-city voters in Leftist echo chambers like NYC, LA, Chicago or SFO should dictate life for mainstream Americans is exactly what got you Brexit. Our decentralized government structure may actually save us from the dystopian day of reckoning that’s unfolding in the EU. Looks like we have to bail you out from another sh** show derived from Leftist, globalist policy and economic reliance on yet another despot, Putin’s Russia. The Right wing reaction in Europe this winter will make American conservatives pale by comparison.
I’m not exactly sure what you mean here, what has ‘terse discourse’ got to do with democracy? Plato was pretty good at the former but didn’t support the latter! Firstly, when appealing to ‘democracy’, it might perhaps be better and more consistent if some people on the Right were not quite so transactional on the one hand, and naïve on the other. For a start it is somewhat problematic not to accept the results of elections, especially with a completely cavalier attitude to the consequences of this, even if there were irregularities.
I think we should also accept that ‘democracy’ just isn’t enough, as any true conservative would; some of the comments of the Right are naïve here. The UK for example in recent years has had two manifestly useless party leaders foisted on the electorate through ‘internal party democracy’ in Jeremy Corbyn and Liz Truss, according to the views of the electorate rather than party activists.
There is no one ‘pure’ democratic system, at least in an advanced complex society, and certainly not one which would always produce the same results in a close contest. The US Constitution actually has (deliberate) non democratic elements, such as the Electoral College and the number of senators representing each State. These have in recent decades tended to give greater representation to the Republican Party. The Democratic Party can perfectly reasonably point out, for example, that Donald Trump would not have won either the 2016 or 2020 elections, by quite significant margins, on the popular vote.
It’s really strange that this is the same Aris who wrote this:
On the frontline with the Right Sector militia – UnHerd
He may failed the RCB* and never got over it?
(*Regular Commissions Board.)
He may failed the RCB* and never got over it?
(*Regular Commissions Board.)
Unfortunately, whether we like it or not, Twitter IS important and sets the stage for many political decisions in the real world, not to mention people being hounded out of their jobs, as has happened now on numerous occasions.
Agreed. It’s alarming to think there are more out there like Aris. They are products of a strange kind of anti-democratic messaging that seeped into the “intellectual class”. These are fake intellectuals who have closed their ears and minds to the real world and the cleansing power of terse discourse.
It’s really strange that this is the same Aris who wrote this:
On the frontline with the Right Sector militia – UnHerd
Unfortunately, whether we like it or not, Twitter IS important and sets the stage for many political decisions in the real world, not to mention people being hounded out of their jobs, as has happened now on numerous occasions.
Aris, that you think Twitter is far more important than real life at least explains why you consistently write delusional drivel.
No mention of the links between the previous Twitter administration and the US intelligence agencies? It is now clear that meetings between Twitter executives and the FBI were routine in the run-up to the 2020 Presidential election. Nor of the censorship of any criticism of the Covid lockdowns and the efficacy of the vaccines? Big Pharma has made billions from injecting healthy people with under-tested vaccines due to the propaganda drive orchestrated by amongst others Twitter.
It is also curious that support for Russia in its war with Ukraine is implied to be right-wing. In the UK at least most of the support for Russia has come from the Left.
And Twitter hasn’t even begun to release this data.
I read today that a man on the board of Reuters is also on the board of Pfizer. Now I haven’t even checked that out yet, but my bullshit meter isn’t going off – I am becoming so inured to the manipulation and corruption.
So, are you saying that Tucker Carlson, a Putin fan boy, is left wing?
The reality, which a right-winger like you cannot accept, is that both the hard right and the hard left have utterly disgraced themselves by their mealy-mouthed equivocation / de facto appeasement of the little rat in the Kremlin.
Most support for Ukraine comes from moderates.
And Twitter hasn’t even begun to release this data.
I read today that a man on the board of Reuters is also on the board of Pfizer. Now I haven’t even checked that out yet, but my bullshit meter isn’t going off – I am becoming so inured to the manipulation and corruption.
So, are you saying that Tucker Carlson, a Putin fan boy, is left wing?
The reality, which a right-winger like you cannot accept, is that both the hard right and the hard left have utterly disgraced themselves by their mealy-mouthed equivocation / de facto appeasement of the little rat in the Kremlin.
Most support for Ukraine comes from moderates.
No mention of the links between the previous Twitter administration and the US intelligence agencies? It is now clear that meetings between Twitter executives and the FBI were routine in the run-up to the 2020 Presidential election. Nor of the censorship of any criticism of the Covid lockdowns and the efficacy of the vaccines? Big Pharma has made billions from injecting healthy people with under-tested vaccines due to the propaganda drive orchestrated by amongst others Twitter.
It is also curious that support for Russia in its war with Ukraine is implied to be right-wing. In the UK at least most of the support for Russia has come from the Left.
Since Hitler used free speech to take power, we should preserve our democracy by censorship. Just because Hitler and Stalin heavily censored the news is no reason to suspect censorship is a bad thing. Besides, even though Stalin killed millions, and made a deal with Hitler to start World War II, many people still think he was a great man.
Also, it’s the FBI’s duty to protect us from possibly misleading posts on Twitter. It’s fabulous that they paid Twitter over $3 million for censorship to keep us safe. It has nothing to do with the 1st Amendment, which as we all know, allows for misleading posts to be censored at the direction of federal agencies. It’s a penumbra in the Bill of Rights. Censorship preserves our democracy.
/sarcasm
You are a fascist.
Change my mind.
You are a fascist.
Change my mind.
Since Hitler used free speech to take power, we should preserve our democracy by censorship. Just because Hitler and Stalin heavily censored the news is no reason to suspect censorship is a bad thing. Besides, even though Stalin killed millions, and made a deal with Hitler to start World War II, many people still think he was a great man.
Also, it’s the FBI’s duty to protect us from possibly misleading posts on Twitter. It’s fabulous that they paid Twitter over $3 million for censorship to keep us safe. It has nothing to do with the 1st Amendment, which as we all know, allows for misleading posts to be censored at the direction of federal agencies. It’s a penumbra in the Bill of Rights. Censorship preserves our democracy.
/sarcasm
“Decisions will always finally have to be made by someone, and those decisions are always by their nature political, arbitrary, and thus always a source of dispute.”
Here’s a novel idea – let each user decide (i.e. open algorithm).
I can hear the authoritarians: But you might be exposed to ISIS propaganda or child porn! The default content algorithm would have training wheels on of course – if users chose to see the worst the web has to offer, so be it, it makes it easier to track down both purveyors and clients, with a drone missile hopefully where appropriate. Let’s not pretend that they don’t have other means to disseminate.
The fundamental premise of this piece is wrong – there doesn’t need to be a person or group controlling what I am ALLOWED to see
“Decisions will always finally have to be made by someone, and those decisions are always by their nature political, arbitrary, and thus always a source of dispute.”
Here’s a novel idea – let each user decide (i.e. open algorithm).
I can hear the authoritarians: But you might be exposed to ISIS propaganda or child porn! The default content algorithm would have training wheels on of course – if users chose to see the worst the web has to offer, so be it, it makes it easier to track down both purveyors and clients, with a drone missile hopefully where appropriate. Let’s not pretend that they don’t have other means to disseminate.
The fundamental premise of this piece is wrong – there doesn’t need to be a person or group controlling what I am ALLOWED to see
The next fascinating event to watch is the battle between the EU and international social media.
Does Musk muzzle Europeans?
Or does the EU back down?
Stay tuned.
The EU can’t even sanction its own members let alone go toe to toe with an American billion.
Musks current activities will surely result in the EU having to be more open about their own “moderation” rules.
A big win for the inhabitants of EU colonies.
The EU can’t even sanction its own members let alone go toe to toe with an American billion.
Musks current activities will surely result in the EU having to be more open about their own “moderation” rules.
A big win for the inhabitants of EU colonies.
The next fascinating event to watch is the battle between the EU and international social media.
Does Musk muzzle Europeans?
Or does the EU back down?
Stay tuned.
Aris Roussinos is I think an interesting writer, but pretty jejune – he seems to struggle here with the difference between conservatives and liberals, which a recent speaker Yoram Hazony at UnHerd could have elucidated him on (admittedly many of today’s self-described conservatives cleave far closer to liberalism, which confuses the issue). And boy is he long-winded!
Conservatives properly described certainly don’t believe in the untrammelled arbitrary power of the Divine Right of Kings, or arbitrary power by whim whether by Elon Musk or anyone else. They believe in the historical accumulation of wisdom of institutions built up over centuries (and thereby culturally contingent and non universal), concepts of giving honour to others in the family, tribe and nation (which last concept was NOT invented by the French Revolution but understood in Biblical times, indeed in the Bible. Hierarchies are important and indeed essential in any human society. Parents and children should have a close loving relationship, but not one of equality and one where parents want to be their children’s friends and demonstrate this by giving in to their every short term demand. In fact children should honour their parents, who on its own account and because they have more wisdom.
Liberalism prioritises the idea that all human societies can be understood and perfected through the act of pure reason, a belief that has absolutely no empirical or historical justification, as ‘reason’ can lead to Marxist-Leninism, National Socialism, ideas of racial supremacy, even the idea that Sharia law is the sole answer, or that children should be able to have sex with adults, quite as readily as that of a ‘liberal’ society.
As we have seen, this eventually acts as a ‘universal acid’, first throwing into doubt, and then eroding the very foundations of society (whose origins are of course taken for granted rather than as historically contingent and vulnerable as they are). This ends up in the absurdity, not to say evil, of saying men can become women if they ‘feel’ they are. (Perhaps unfortunately, not ‘ends up’ – who knows what monstrous nonsenses will be spawned next?).
Elon Musk isn’t and shouldn’t be treated as a saviour figure, but he has provided a civic service of some importance by demonstrating beyond any doubt the deep political bias against anyone on the Right and government collusion in the suppression of free speech. Free speech isn’t absolute and should not be unconstrained, but it is real and meaningful as any comparison between the conservative Republic of the early United States, or indeed aristocratic Britain, and say Tsarist Russia or Qing China would demonstrate. If anything, it should be constrained in a conservative, not ultra liberal direction, in order to stop society destroying itself.
Aris Roussinos is I think an interesting writer, but pretty jejune – he seems to struggle here with the difference between conservatives and liberals, which a recent speaker Yoram Hazony at UnHerd could have elucidated him on (admittedly many of today’s self-described conservatives cleave far closer to liberalism, which confuses the issue). And boy is he long-winded!
Conservatives properly described certainly don’t believe in the untrammelled arbitrary power of the Divine Right of Kings, or arbitrary power by whim whether by Elon Musk or anyone else. They believe in the historical accumulation of wisdom of institutions built up over centuries (and thereby culturally contingent and non universal), concepts of giving honour to others in the family, tribe and nation (which last concept was NOT invented by the French Revolution but understood in Biblical times, indeed in the Bible. Hierarchies are important and indeed essential in any human society. Parents and children should have a close loving relationship, but not one of equality and one where parents want to be their children’s friends and demonstrate this by giving in to their every short term demand. In fact children should honour their parents, who on its own account and because they have more wisdom.
Liberalism prioritises the idea that all human societies can be understood and perfected through the act of pure reason, a belief that has absolutely no empirical or historical justification, as ‘reason’ can lead to Marxist-Leninism, National Socialism, ideas of racial supremacy, even the idea that Sharia law is the sole answer, or that children should be able to have sex with adults, quite as readily as that of a ‘liberal’ society.
As we have seen, this eventually acts as a ‘universal acid’, first throwing into doubt, and then eroding the very foundations of society (whose origins are of course taken for granted rather than as historically contingent and vulnerable as they are). This ends up in the absurdity, not to say evil, of saying men can become women if they ‘feel’ they are. (Perhaps unfortunately, not ‘ends up’ – who knows what monstrous nonsenses will be spawned next?).
Elon Musk isn’t and shouldn’t be treated as a saviour figure, but he has provided a civic service of some importance by demonstrating beyond any doubt the deep political bias against anyone on the Right and government collusion in the suppression of free speech. Free speech isn’t absolute and should not be unconstrained, but it is real and meaningful as any comparison between the conservative Republic of the early United States, or indeed aristocratic Britain, and say Tsarist Russia or Qing China would demonstrate. If anything, it should be constrained in a conservative, not ultra liberal direction, in order to stop society destroying itself.
The best thing Elon could do for humanity is fire Twitter’s servers and code into space, and suck up the losses (he’s got form for that).
The failure of post Twitter wannabes (Parler, Truth Social, et al) shows there is no appetite for a rerun.
As for Twitter being a front as a primary CSAM vector, that doesn’t really ring true.
I occasionally frequent the dark web to procure products that I once would have needed a dealer for – pretty much everything is available there including drugs, weapons and no doubt CSAM and jihadi propaganda. All that is needed is a VPN and TOR browser.
If I can go there to buy weed, I’m sure the peados and jihadis can get their fix too.
End anonymous posting – problem solved ..
Do the frothing Trump fans posting hereon have anything to say about the British government’s well-established form of govt censorship, the infamous D – Notice procedure?
https://thedissenter.org/very-british-form-of-press-censorship/
You’re remarkably quiet about it.
Doubt is the hallmark of a democratic mind.
All forms of social media should be banned. They serve no useful purpose.
Most ordinary people are too excitable to be trusted with opinions.
Most ordinary people are intellectually lazy, emotional, tribal, gullible, and too excitable to be trusted with a serious debate.
Here are some typical hallmarks of an idiot:
Lack of doubt / certainty – anyone who is convinced that s/he’s right and you’re wrong; and
Contempt, and a lack of curiosity – not only are you wrong, but the idiot will also have not the slightest interest in anything you say, and will view you with contempt (or worse) for holding different views. He will have no interest in any facts or ideas outside those which he, or his thought bubble, already are happy with.
The purposes of down votes in a comments forum is to reveal just how many idiots are among us. The down-thumbs facility is a mechanism by which narrow-minded bigots can reveal themselves.
https://ayenaw.com/2021/07/18/post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc/
“who will rule Twitter next” .. those 5 words are insightful in what’s to come next. Is the author serious when he says Twitter is “far more important than real life”? If so, then it’s typical of his generation’s thinking.
Has the author considered, why does Twitter have to be “ruled”? It’s the point I think Musk is trying to make.
Speech is supposed to be free, not regulated by a trove of woke pissants sitting on their asses playing God. If social media has been so weaponized against the masses it stifles actual thought and dimes them out to the feds, and if it can’t be reformed, then we’d be best off to quit using it altogether.
Did you just defend Twitter by using the arguments and logic of a Nazi?!
All of the arguments about Twitter make the same ridiculous mistake. Twitter is not a public square and Musk is not a sovereign power. Twitter is a corporation and Musk is a capitalist. The only obligation Twitter ever had was to be profitable, and it is still failing to fulfill that obligation. Twitter is garbage and anyone who spends time on it is a twit.