Comment by n4r9
5 months ago
> We can all see how well the deplatforming worked - Trump is president again
Not a compelling argument...
Jan 2021 - Twitter bans Trump (for clear policy violations)
Apr 2022 - Musk buys Twitter
Aug 2023 - Twitter reinstates Trump's account
Nov 2024 - Trump re-elected, gives Musk cabinet position
So deplatforming works, unless people become so unhinged at the efforts to shape them that they do crazy stuff like buy major media platforms? Guess what, they do!
But at least the Covid dissenter deplatforming worked, right? Or was the problem Musk there again?
One of my mantras is that powerful people believe all the crazy things regular people believe in, they just act differently on them. I think both Musk and Kennedy are great examples that you'd appreciate, as are Xi and Putin with their open mic life extension fantasies.
It's not long ago that Musk and even Trump himself, was aligned with your competent technocrats wielding the "suppression of irresponsible speech" powers.
I'm saying that Trump's re-election is not a compelling counter-example to the general argument for banning disinformation, because he was "re-"platformed for over a year by the time of the election.
You underestimate how much seeing a sitting president be deplatformed affected the voting public. It wasn’t just Musk, all this talk of “deplatforming” people on the right was an obviously clear erosion of free speech that pushed many moderates like myself rightward.
It wasn’t just banning Trump either, tbh one of the biggest ones was the banning of the Babylon Bee for a pretty tame joke. There’s a long list of other right-leaning accounts which were banned during that time as well.
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