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On January 12 2021 09:09 NewSunshine wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2021 09:04 Dan HH wrote:On January 12 2021 08:54 NewSunshine wrote:On January 12 2021 08:50 Dan HH wrote:On January 12 2021 08:41 Gorsameth wrote:On January 12 2021 07:48 Danglars wrote:
Amazon shows in a court of law the Parler posts that threaten violence against identifiable individuals and groups and lose. They're not the example that will be important in the coming conversation about big tech censorship.
The overreach in de-platforming is the larger issue. Take Ron Paul.
Take a twitter account I used to follow before the recent ban, almost exclusively devoted to articles and research into Trump-Russia investigation, that went by handle Techno_Fog. Banned without explanation from twitter, never encouraged violence, never tweeted about the vote being stolen.
I don't really see the Parler case leading to anything major, outside of people rethinking what if arguments from "make your own platform if you're dissatisfied to theirs" into "make your own internet hosting company if you want to create an alternative platform." It's kind of important that people first see the results of big tech censorship acting as a group, even if the instigating event makes it quasi-justifiable. Then the question becomes, what if the same action were taken against individuals that simply attended a Trump rally? Or if the speech called incitement to violence was "abortion is murder" or "trans women shouldn't compete in women's sports?" Do you have recourse and do you trust big tech companies to always behave responsibly when it comes to censorship? So its a problem when tech companies do it, but applauded when a baker does it? Why does a baker get to decide who he will or will not bake a cake for, but Amazon, Google or Twitter don't get to decide who they have as a customer? For the same reason it's a problem if the NYT says Saddam has weapons of mass destruction and it isn't if a Kebab shop puts a 'Saddam has weapons of mass destruction' poster on their door. The issue with the bakery wasn't that they refused a customer, it was the reason for which they refused service. It's weird that you equate a hypothetical where lying about something that never happened with the president being banned for egging on a violent coup that most certainly did happen. I don't begin to see how this is a salient analogy. My point is that size matters when it comes to responsibility. I don't see any problem with holding a platform that hundreds of millions rely on to different standards than a small forum. As much as I disagree with Danglars' stance on the bakery, it's a different situation entirely. Sure, I don't disagree in theory. I don't personally like how huge a handful of social media companies are, and how much power they have to look after their own interests at the expense of basically everything else. But also, what's the other standard they could be holding Trump to? He got the boiler-plate response for violating their rules. It should've happened years ago. Part of it is also holding Trump responsible to his own example as a citizen.
Right, and I agree with that. But this wasn't specifically about Trump, he namedropped Ron Paul and another account that had nothing to do with inciting violence (I didn't actually check if that's the case) as collateral damage in this purge, and I'm sure there's a lot more.
I think criticizing this overreach isn't inconsistent with previously supporting the right of businesses to refuse service, because Twitter, Facebook, etc are in a unique position of influence in our society. And it's not like he's saying they don't have the right to do so, hell, people complain about TL bans all the time which aren't of consequence. I don't see anyone pulling the bakery stuff on conservatives in the Automated Ban List.
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On January 12 2021 07:24 Lmui wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2021 07:04 Mohdoo wrote:
Parler is suing Amazon. By my estimation, Amazon likely has 10x the number of lawyers as Parler has employees. There's no way Amazon doesn't have a clause saying they can cancel service for any reason whatsoever. And here we go: Show nested quote +If we reasonably believe any of Your Content violates the law, infringes or misappropriates the rights of any third party, or otherwise violates a material term of the Agreement (including the documentation, the Service Terms, or the Acceptable Use Policy) ("Prohibited Content"), we will notify you of the Prohibited Content and may request that such content be removed from the Services or access to it be disabled. If you do not remove or disable access to the Prohibited Content within 2 business days of our notice, we may remove or disable access to the Prohibited Content or suspend the Services to the extent we are not able to remove or disable access to the Prohibited Content. Notwithstanding the foregoing, we may remove or disable access to any Prohibited Content without prior notice in connection with illegal content, where the content may disrupt or threaten the Services or in accordance with applicable law or any judicial, regulatory or other governmental order or request. In the event that we remove Your Content without prior notice, we will provide prompt notice to you unless prohibited by law. We terminate the accounts of repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances. I think that "reasonably believe any of Your Content violates the law," applies so... "If you do not remove or disable access to the Prohibited Content within 2 business days of our notice, we may remove or disable access to the Prohibited Content or suspend the Services to the extent we are not able to remove or disable access to the Prohibited Content." takes effect. Parler is starting from behind against one of the richest companies in the world. Good luck. Even if they won against Amazon, they'd have to win against one of either Google or Apple in court too, and I don't see Parler having deep enough pockets to win lawsuits against 2 of the big 5 tech companies.
People should rethink why the lawsuits are happening. It's all posturing as Parler is funded by billionaires. They don't need to win or make money off this. What better news for conservatives than evil liberal tech companies denying free speech.
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Social platforms should be allowed to do what they want with their users. Not being allowed to use Twitter isn't hurting you, go outside and yell at people if you care that much about your opinion being heard.
Or label all social platforms protected by free speech and prevent them from being able to stop anyone from saying anything and just deal with the hateful stuff because people are gonna be assholes no matter what. It's one or the other imo.
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On January 12 2021 09:39 Velr wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2021 09:06 Mohdoo wrote:
When I read about Republican outrage over people being banned, it is truly bizarre. It's like they don't even remember a world before Twitter. People get banned from forums because they are shitbags. Now Twitter is banning shitbags too. To be fair. There are tons of (far) leftist personas that weren't and aren't banned and its therefore easy for the far right to victimise itself. I have absolutely no symphaty for any of the banned people, if anything these plattforms should act way quicker against all agitators. The far right is imho much worse but well, reddit doesn't care about that.
Until people demanding universal healthcare start chanting death threats while storming the capitol, I don't see a problem.
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Bill Belichick declined the Presidential Medal of Freedom being offered by Trump lol
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On January 12 2021 09:45 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2021 09:39 Velr wrote:On January 12 2021 09:06 Mohdoo wrote:
When I read about Republican outrage over people being banned, it is truly bizarre. It's like they don't even remember a world before Twitter. People get banned from forums because they are shitbags. Now Twitter is banning shitbags too. To be fair. There are tons of (far) leftist personas that weren't and aren't banned and its therefore easy for the far right to victimise itself. I have absolutely no symphaty for any of the banned people, if anything these plattforms should act way quicker against all agitators. The far right is imho much worse but well, reddit doesn't care about that. Until people demanding universal healthcare start chanting death threats while storming the capitol, I don't see a problem.
I'm personally totally on your side but... You don't need much time to find other groups than the us right wing loons shouting such stuff and they aren't banned.
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On January 12 2021 10:13 JimmiC wrote:
Classy move, it was an odd timed publicity stunt for Trump. And good on BB, that would have be tempting.
At this point ? I don't think being seen with Trump is very good short term.
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On January 12 2021 09:09 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2021 07:48 Danglars wrote:
Amazon shows in a court of law the Parler posts that threaten violence against identifiable individuals and groups and lose. They're not the example that will be important in the coming conversation about big tech censorship.
The overreach in de-platforming is the larger issue. Take Ron Paul.
Take a twitter account I used to follow before the recent ban, almost exclusively devoted to articles and research into Trump-Russia investigation, that went by handle Techno_Fog. Banned without explanation from twitter, never encouraged violence, never tweeted about the vote being stolen.
I don't really see the Parler case leading to anything major, outside of people rethinking what if arguments from "make your own platform if you're dissatisfied to theirs" into "make your own internet hosting company if you want to create an alternative platform." It's kind of important that people first see the results of big tech censorship acting as a group, even if the instigating event makes it quasi-justifiable. Then the question becomes, what if the same action were taken against individuals that simply attended a Trump rally? Or if the speech called incitement to violence was "abortion is murder" or "trans women shouldn't compete in women's sports?" Do you have recourse and do you trust big tech companies to always behave responsibly when it comes to censorship? No I do not trust anyone to do this. Not purely on a moral sense, I think it’s pragmatically borderline impossible to moderate content in any kind of consistent and non-arbitrary manner. Big tech as it currently exists is as close to a truly unbreakable monopoly as I can really think of. There has been quite some time to rein that in and it hasn’t been done, indeed it’s been enabled by an increasingly global world where a company can evade billions in tax by setting up shop across the globe and be welcomed where it lands. While I share your concerns in this domain, I’m rather pessimistic that any kind of joined-up regulation is even possible now and we’re just going to have to suck up the capriciousness of whatever x company feels like doing at any particular point in time. Frankly from browsing Parler to see what kind of stuff had migrated there, I have no particular issue with the more mainstream platforms scrubbing that stuff
Parler is kind of an imperfect example of the dangers, since it did do a poor job of banning egregious examples. But we have to work with examples that actually exist to illustrate the possible future. Maybe banks aren't comfortable facilitating political donations to candidates that made electoral protest votes (Citigroup made some overtures, but restrained themselves to PAC spending, as have others). Is the reaction to create a new bank? Restaurants aren't comfortable serving you (Olive Garden in wake of the event, for example). Create new restaurants? I talked about the possibility of an entirely legal change in the previously shared society into making two different ones existing side by side. I don't even want legislation forcing private actors to behave as I wish they would. It's getting much closer for corporations to choose activist ire over committing to intense neutrality and a stand-off attitude ... or the "taking an apolitical approach is in itself a political choice" and "platforming is complicity."
But you're right to separate the monopolistic aspects of this case from the trend we're seeing expand further. Google and Apple have near monopoly on phones, and Amazon Microsoft and one other have huge market dominance in hosting. Food for thought from Russian dissident Alexey Navalny:
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Northern Ireland27478 Posts
On January 12 2021 09:39 Velr wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2021 09:06 Mohdoo wrote:
When I read about Republican outrage over people being banned, it is truly bizarre. It's like they don't even remember a world before Twitter. People get banned from forums because they are shitbags. Now Twitter is banning shitbags too. To be fair. There are tons of (far) leftist personas that weren't and aren't banned and its therefore easy for the far right to victimise itself. I have absolutely no symphaty for any of the banned people, if anything these plattforms should act way quicker against all agitators. The far right is imho much worse but well, reddit doesn't care about that.
Anyone can play that game, that’s the problem with interconnecting millions/billions of people in such a space and why (at least here) equivocating is such a pointless exercise.
There’s so much information out there that, unless you hold a sensible position such as ‘there are shitloads of users and having a 100% consistent ban process is impossible’ there will always be some examples that any political side can point at and martyr, or alternatively say ‘how come x isn’t banned when y is’.
The acceleration of personal biases that the current media/internet framework enables is insane, and for whatever reason people don’t seem to be able to take that relatively simple step back.
I’ve had, a lot of bans from Facebook specifically over the years and really don’t have a huge issue with my bans as some ideological conspiracy against me, it genuinely confuses me how others think about this.
One was a meme I made as a response to the frequent joke of ‘the left can’t meme’ so I made one lampooning this perception with ‘how left wingers make memes’ and a bunch of stock photos of scientists with microscopes and one with ‘how right wingers make memes’ and it was just a bunch of stock photos with my crude attempts at photoshopped MAGA hats saying the N word. I once also got banned for saying ‘It’s not a free speech thing for me, I just personally don’t use the word *insert racial epithet beginning with n* as I find it a profoundly ugly word*
In a trade off between a no censorship free-for-all vs an inconsistent censorship, my view has somewhat evolved from a mild favour to extreme favouring of the latter, despite its pitfalls.
I’m not sure where we go from here frankly, things are absolutely fucked.
I went browsing the non TL US Politics Megathread internet recently and, fucking hell it does genuinely terrify me to witness. I’ve also been bingeing Star Trek lately and it really is like the various episodes where they go to some alternative timeline.
It’s not like I’m quibbling policy or ideas with people over ideological disagreements, it’s like there’s been a malfunction with the phase transducer alignment and I’m in some different place where events and reality are totally different.
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On January 12 2021 10:36 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2021 09:09 WombaT wrote:On January 12 2021 07:48 Danglars wrote:Amazon shows in a court of law the Parler posts that threaten violence against identifiable individuals and groups and lose. They're not the example that will be important in the coming conversation about big tech censorship. The overreach in de-platforming is the larger issue. Take Ron Paul. https://twitter.com/MattWelch/status/1348704337363673092Take a twitter account I used to follow before the recent ban, almost exclusively devoted to articles and research into Trump-Russia investigation, that went by handle Techno_Fog. Banned without explanation from twitter, never encouraged violence, never tweeted about the vote being stolen. I don't really see the Parler case leading to anything major, outside of people rethinking what if arguments from "make your own platform if you're dissatisfied to theirs" into "make your own internet hosting company if you want to create an alternative platform." It's kind of important that people first see the results of big tech censorship acting as a group, even if the instigating event makes it quasi-justifiable. Then the question becomes, what if the same action were taken against individuals that simply attended a Trump rally? Or if the speech called incitement to violence was "abortion is murder" or "trans women shouldn't compete in women's sports?" Do you have recourse and do you trust big tech companies to always behave responsibly when it comes to censorship? No I do not trust anyone to do this. Not purely on a moral sense, I think it’s pragmatically borderline impossible to moderate content in any kind of consistent and non-arbitrary manner. Big tech as it currently exists is as close to a truly unbreakable monopoly as I can really think of. There has been quite some time to rein that in and it hasn’t been done, indeed it’s been enabled by an increasingly global world where a company can evade billions in tax by setting up shop across the globe and be welcomed where it lands. While I share your concerns in this domain, I’m rather pessimistic that any kind of joined-up regulation is even possible now and we’re just going to have to suck up the capriciousness of whatever x company feels like doing at any particular point in time. Frankly from browsing Parler to see what kind of stuff had migrated there, I have no particular issue with the more mainstream platforms scrubbing that stuff Parler is kind of an imperfect example of the dangers, since it did do a poor job of banning egregious examples. But we have to work with examples that actually exist to illustrate the possible future. Maybe banks aren't comfortable facilitating political donations to candidates that made electoral protest votes (Citigroup made some overtures, but restrained themselves to PAC spending, as have others). Is the reaction to create a new bank? Restaurants aren't comfortable serving you (Olive Garden in wake of the event, for example). Create new restaurants? I talked about the possibility of an entirely legal change in the previously shared society into making two different ones existing side by side. I don't even want legislation forcing private actors to behave as I wish they would. It's getting much closer for corporations to choose activist ire over committing to intense neutrality and a stand-off attitude ... or the "taking an apolitical approach is in itself a political choice" and "platforming is complicity." But you're right to separate the monopolistic aspects of this case from the trend we're seeing expand further. Google and Apple have near monopoly on phones, and Amazon Microsoft and one other have huge market dominance in hosting. Food for thought from Russian dissident Alexey Navalny: https://twitter.com/navalny/status/1347970317302591490https://twitter.com/navalny/status/1347970609691701250
I think his argument is kind of poor. “This is what this means when a ruthless dictator uses this phrase, so anyone who uses this phrase is wrong” is a technically poor argument. It isn’t supported. That’s actually a known logical fallacy. Being the opposition to Putin doesn’t mean he’s always right.
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United States44450 Posts
We already have a committee that is supposed to be bipartisan to judge when the President overreaches, it's called Congress. Unfortunately it was coopted by fascists who decided to fan the flames of the stolen election conspiracy theory. No such committee is workable, it is either going to be based on common sense and facts, in which case the conservatives will claim it is rigged against them, or it will allow equal space for fascists, in which case it will be paralyzed by a dissenting group who have no grip on reality.
There can be no neutrality in the eyes of conservatives. Either you go along with whatever they want or you're a deep state pizzaphile. If Twitter had a committee of named individuals decide to ban Trump then all that would have changed is there would be a bunch of bombs now being mailed to people with the same name as the committee members.
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On January 12 2021 10:42 KwarK wrote:
We already have a committee that is supposed to be bipartisan to judge when the President overreaches, it's called Congress. Unfortunately it was coopted by fascists who decided to fan the flames of the stolen election conspiracy theory. No such committee is workable, it is either going to be based on common sense and facts, in which case the conservatives will claim it is rigged against them, or it will allow equal space for fascists, in which case it will be paralyzed by a dissenting group who have no grip on reality.
There can be no neutrality in the eyes of conservatives. Either you go along with whatever they want or you're a deep state pizzaphile. If Twitter had a committee of named individuals decide to ban Trump then all that would have changed is there would be a bunch of bombs now being mailed to people with the same name as the committee members.
It never escapes me how they consistently call for the names of people who do things that defy the collective agreement they've made. You can't report anything with anonymous sources without getting called out either. In an environment where Trump supporters have already been caught sending bombs to Democrats. Surely there's no angle there.
Republicans always call for names so they can sic their followers and harass them, and put out the implied threat so that people won't defy them. And sometimes they get more extreme. The president even asks for them to get extreme.
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Northern Ireland27478 Posts
On January 12 2021 10:36 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2021 09:09 WombaT wrote:On January 12 2021 07:48 Danglars wrote:Amazon shows in a court of law the Parler posts that threaten violence against identifiable individuals and groups and lose. They're not the example that will be important in the coming conversation about big tech censorship. The overreach in de-platforming is the larger issue. Take Ron Paul. https://twitter.com/MattWelch/status/1348704337363673092Take a twitter account I used to follow before the recent ban, almost exclusively devoted to articles and research into Trump-Russia investigation, that went by handle Techno_Fog. Banned without explanation from twitter, never encouraged violence, never tweeted about the vote being stolen. I don't really see the Parler case leading to anything major, outside of people rethinking what if arguments from "make your own platform if you're dissatisfied to theirs" into "make your own internet hosting company if you want to create an alternative platform." It's kind of important that people first see the results of big tech censorship acting as a group, even if the instigating event makes it quasi-justifiable. Then the question becomes, what if the same action were taken against individuals that simply attended a Trump rally? Or if the speech called incitement to violence was "abortion is murder" or "trans women shouldn't compete in women's sports?" Do you have recourse and do you trust big tech companies to always behave responsibly when it comes to censorship? No I do not trust anyone to do this. Not purely on a moral sense, I think it’s pragmatically borderline impossible to moderate content in any kind of consistent and non-arbitrary manner. Big tech as it currently exists is as close to a truly unbreakable monopoly as I can really think of. There has been quite some time to rein that in and it hasn’t been done, indeed it’s been enabled by an increasingly global world where a company can evade billions in tax by setting up shop across the globe and be welcomed where it lands. While I share your concerns in this domain, I’m rather pessimistic that any kind of joined-up regulation is even possible now and we’re just going to have to suck up the capriciousness of whatever x company feels like doing at any particular point in time. Frankly from browsing Parler to see what kind of stuff had migrated there, I have no particular issue with the more mainstream platforms scrubbing that stuff Parler is kind of an imperfect example of the dangers, since it did do a poor job of banning egregious examples. But we have to work with examples that actually exist to illustrate the possible future. Maybe banks aren't comfortable facilitating political donations to candidates that made electoral protest votes (Citigroup made some overtures, but restrained themselves to PAC spending, as have others). Is the reaction to create a new bank? Restaurants aren't comfortable serving you (Olive Garden in wake of the event, for example). Create new restaurants? I talked about the possibility of an entirely legal change in the previously shared society into making two different ones existing side by side. I don't even want legislation forcing private actors to behave as I wish they would. It's getting much closer for corporations to choose activist ire over committing to intense neutrality and a stand-off attitude ... or the "taking an apolitical approach is in itself a political choice" and "platforming is complicity." But you're right to separate the monopolistic aspects of this case from the trend we're seeing expand further. Google and Apple have near monopoly on phones, and Amazon Microsoft and one other have huge market dominance in hosting. Food for thought from Russian dissident Alexey Navalny: https://twitter.com/navalny/status/1347970317302591490https://twitter.com/navalny/status/1347970609691701250
I’m trying to dig up from my archive of pseudo-articles I never fleshed out but I definitely wrote a big one on this back a few years.
At the very least, and probably more so the big tech news aggregators should be brought more in line with the historic news aggregators in terms of regulation. I’m far more concerned with utterly fake nonsense galvanising hatred where none existed before than people with hateful opinions voicing them.
They’re simultaneously not a news platform but probably considerably more influential as a news platform than we’ve seen before.
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United States44450 Posts
On January 12 2021 10:55 NewSunshine wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2021 10:42 KwarK wrote:
We already have a committee that is supposed to be bipartisan to judge when the President overreaches, it's called Congress. Unfortunately it was coopted by fascists who decided to fan the flames of the stolen election conspiracy theory. No such committee is workable, it is either going to be based on common sense and facts, in which case the conservatives will claim it is rigged against them, or it will allow equal space for fascists, in which case it will be paralyzed by a dissenting group who have no grip on reality.
There can be no neutrality in the eyes of conservatives. Either you go along with whatever they want or you're a deep state pizzaphile. If Twitter had a committee of named individuals decide to ban Trump then all that would have changed is there would be a bunch of bombs now being mailed to people with the same name as the committee members. It never escapes me how they consistently call for the names of people who do things that defy the collective agreement they've made. You can't report anything with anonymous sources without getting called out either. In an environment where Trump supporters have already been caught sending bombs to Democrats. Surely there's no angle there. Republicans always call for names so they can sic their followers and harass them, and put out the implied threat so that people won't defy them. And sometimes they get more extreme. The president even asks for them to get extreme.
If we just look at how they treated respected lifelong Republican Robert Mueller when he did an impartial investigation.
They turned on him overnight. It is more plausible to them that he was a deep state secret Democrat plant than an honest conservative exposing the crimes of the dear leader. He was ostracized before the report even came out for the crime of investigating it.
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On January 12 2021 10:42 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2021 10:33 Erasme wrote:On January 12 2021 10:13 JimmiC wrote:
Classy move, it was an odd timed publicity stunt for Trump. And good on BB, that would have be tempting. At this point ? I don't think being seen with Trump is very good short term. Yeah but Bill is not losing his job, can write his own check so PR does not matter that much and when else is a football coach going to get that medal? Trump being Trump of course takes some shine but it is still a pretty cool thing to experience, and I'm pretty sure he's a republican so he might not feel about it like many of us would.
Bill really doesn't care about things outside of football and really doesn't seem to like the media or the spotlight. The man won't even allow EA to use his likeness in Madden. He probably couldn't care less about Trump's medal.
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There can be no neutrality in the eyes of conservatives. Either you go along with whatever they want or you're a deep state pizzaphile. If Twitter had a committee of named individuals decide to ban Trump then all that would have changed is there would be a bunch of bombs now being mailed to people with the same name as the committee members.
And that's precisely the issue.
If you're not for something, you're against it. There's no middle ground. The one thing where i'd disagree is the "in the eyes of conservatives".
Here's one thing to keep in mind, what's currently "conservative" would be considered far right fringe in many other countries, if not flat out insane conspiracy theorists. The only excuse "we" have is that there's more sane liberals than there's sane conservatives. Once you widen your horizon just a little and look beyond the tip of your nose, the far left is exactly the same.
I remember vividly being accused of racism etc pp because i disagreed with BLM behaved - even with a disclaimer in basically every post that i don't dispute the reason for it. If you're not okay with BLM acts, you're a racist, oppressor, white supremacist etc.
The "absolute" rhetoric needs to stop on both sides, but probably ain't going to happen in a two party system, because all you can do is either lose or win. It's inherently just two sided. And this goes across the world, this isn't a US problem. If you weren't for Corbyn, you're a brexiter, elite, against the people etc pp.
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On January 12 2021 09:39 Velr wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2021 09:06 Mohdoo wrote:
When I read about Republican outrage over people being banned, it is truly bizarre. It's like they don't even remember a world before Twitter. People get banned from forums because they are shitbags. Now Twitter is banning shitbags too. To be fair. There are tons of (far) leftist personas that weren't and aren't banned and its therefore easy for the far right to victimise itself.I have absolutely no symphaty for any of the banned people, if anything these plattforms should act way quicker against all agitators. The far right is imho much worse but well, reddit doesn't care about that.
We all need to stop caring and giving credence to anything they say. Unless the right wing can prove they are operating on good faith we should assume anything they say is in bad faith and move on.
Its one thing to disagree using the same set of facts, its another to constantly move goalposts and argue in bad faith. Those who have been banned are scumbags and deserve to be banned from all platforms.
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I think there's a lot of different simultaneous issues here. On the Trump ban alone, I have to agree with Merkel.
https://www.dw.com/en/angela-merkel-calls-trump-twitter-ban-problematic/a-56197684
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is concerned about Twitter permanently suspending President Donald Trump's account, her spokesman said on Monday.
Steffen Seibert told reporters in Berlin the chancellor considered the ban "problematic."
"The right to freedom of opinion is of fundamental importance," Merkel's spokesman said.
"Given that, the chancellor considers it problematic that the president's accounts have been permanently suspended.
The chancellor agreed with the practice of flagging Trump's inaccurate posts, Seibert said. However, any curbs on free expression should be decided by the law and not by private companies.
I am extremely uncomfortable with a private company taking it upon themselves to censor the head of a major democracy.
I've been jumping up and down about Trump's authoritarianism on here for years. I'm the last person to defend him. I also understand that this is happening in an environment where the proper mechanisms to hold him accountable have completely failed. Still, even I think this precedent is just too dangerous.
I would be more open to it if there were a serious risk of him staging a successful coup. At that point all bets are off and if the tech giants want to deploy their unspeakable power as the last line of defense against a fascist takeover, fine. The time for that was after the election, while these goons were gathering in the safe spaces Facebook had prepared for them and the would-be-dictator openly stoked the flames. Where were the giants then?
That they found their spines now, after the storm, is nothing but weathervane signalling and I have no patience for it. All it does is shift attention away from the failure of the real safeguards the US should have been able to depend on, and opens a giant can of worms in the process.
How many people are talking about this now, versus about the terrifying reality that 147 US lawmakers voted to undermine democracy in favour of the man who literally just attempted a coup against the chamber they were standing in?
The Republicans must be thanking twitter on bended knee right now for providing another deep state bogeymen just when they needed one most.
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EPT
