Comment by fortran77
5 years ago
It depends on who and what. And it's the inconsistency that will fuel the critics.
They didn't suspend Spike Lee who caused direct harm to a private individual who happened to share a name with an infamous individual: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/spike-lee-settles-twi...
The article you linked to was over 8 years ago at this point - it was years closer to the founding of Twitter than it is to the present day. I don't think that can be considered relevant to their current enforcement regime.
Because suspending Spike Lee would have required someone at Twitter to make that decision, and they're not going to do that. But will leap at the chance for Trump. It's been a clear double standard for years.
Plenty of left-leaning people get banned as well.
But not for tweets of violence, and they're not getting fact-checked like Trump.
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If they were going to "leap at the chance" to suspend Trump, then why haven't they already? He's been treading in the grey area of their ToS for years.
Conflicting interests between how much they disagree with him politically and how much money they directly make off of his traffic (and less directly via traffic from everyone complaining about the controversy).
Twitter's business model is totally reliant on controversy. They want to treat/control, but not cure/extinguish.
Which is a separate reason that twitter's ethically conflicted in making almost any judgment calls on what's "allowable" speech.
Additionally, the nature of mud-slinging politics requires that ones opponents "follow" his online presence in able to attack. So if Trump leaves Twitter, not only do his followers go to whatever new platform he does, but so must his adversaries.
Twitter doesn't want that.
Yes, double standard to protect Trump. Who has for years twitted violent stuff, racist stuff, and Twitter had let it slide. I don't get this weird victim mentality of Trump folks. Trump has been treated with kid gloves by Twitter. Meanwhile, the largest broadcast network is literally Trump's state media.
You’re wrong on every point.