Comment by kypro
4 years ago
It always starts as a one off, "this was a special circumstance" type thing. I feel like I've read this post thousand times before at this point. I remember when it "just Alex Jones" getting deplatformed from social media. And it had to be done - he was just too dangerous! But then it expanded to a few more people, and from there a few more. And within the span of just a few years Twitter had gone from Alex Jones to banning the president of the United States.
I don't care what Kiwifarms did, this kind of thing has to be left to state. If Kiwifarms is doing something illegal law enforcement will deal with it. This move means Cloudflare is now a company that will remove content they find problematic. Or put another way, if they don't remove content we can now assume it's because they don't find it "dangerous" enough. So all those racist and transphobic blogs calling for race wars and celebrating trans suicides, well I guess Cloudflare just doesn't think they're that bad. And that's why these things always progresses, because turning a blind eye is no longer justifiable position. If you cast judgement on one piece of content, you must do so for everything. Now they've made this move the pressure to remove more content will only intensify. And it will be even harder to say no next time because now they've now lost the ability to say they're neutral.
But whatever. I have no hope of a free internet anymore. At this point I think if the West is ever to truly value free speech again we'll need to learn that lesson the hard way.
Twitter has the right to ban anyone for violating their ToS, including the (thankfully, ex) president of the United States. I don’t see any problem with that. You don’t have a _right_ to a space to promote your ideas from a private company, this is not how free speech works.
And no, the right to ban someone does not translate to an obligation.
What's regrettable isn't that twitter bans an ex-president, what's regrettable is that we've allowed corporations to capture the public square on the internet to the extent that they can de-facto ban the ex-president from discussion.
Where does twitter get all of its money from? Not directly from users, but instead from ads. They are not directly beholden to the interests of their customers but instead other corporations.
Well, the New York Times belongs to a corporation too. So is CNN.
You wouldn’t want to have your media controlled by the government instead of corporations. Ask any Eastern European.
He was actually the sitting president at the time (during the "lame duck" period after he lost the election) and I think that matters for something. You might actually be saying this, but I wanted to inform anyone else reading.
Well, I prefer living in the society where a private organization can ban the president, and not vice versa.
There's always tor and other networks.