Social media censorship roundup

[Griff]

It seems like he'd be easy to trick.

[glatt]

I think he's skilled at smelling disloyalty. He's got lots of practice there.

[BigV]

Oooookaaaay..... let's /keep/ talking about this.

At 12 a.m. Thursday, President Trump retweeted a video in which a supporter says, “The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.”

At 12:53 a.m. Friday, he followed this up by referring to riots in Minneapolis and saying, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

From The Washington Post

Twitter for its part, flagged the tweet in a way that hid the tweet from at:realdonaldtrump and required the reader to click a link to reveal it. The action by Twitter also prevented anyone from liking the tweet or retweeting it without comment. Stymied by this, the same tweets were posted by the at:POTUS account, and they received the same treatment by Twitter.

Twitter appeared unfazed by the threat. This morning it flagged a tweet by Mr. Trump suggesting that protesters in Minneapolis could be shot — a message that the company said violated policies against glorifying violence. (The tweet, which is still online, is accessible only after clicking through a warning message.) That came after the social network fact-checked a tweet this week by Mr. Trump about mail-in voting — “we knew from a comms perspective that all hell would break loose,” a Twitter executive explained — and has continued labeling tweets by others as potentially misleading.

From The New York Times


Twitter Places Warning on a Trump Tweet, Saying It Glorified Violence

The president’s tweet, which implied that protesters in Minneapolis could be shot, could not be viewed without reading a brief notice, and users were blocked from liking or replying to it.
....

These actions by Trump... Are they desperation? Ignorance? True belief? wtf? I think this fits perfectly with Trump's past behavior where he's said "Don't believe what you hear and see, only believe what I tell you." (I paraphrase). He and those he's gathered around him reflexively revert to their mother tongue under stress: doublespeak.

First Amendment scholars said Friday morning that Mr. Trump and his allies had it backward and that he was the one trying to stifle speech that clashes with his own views.

“Fundamentally this dispute is about whether Twitter has the right to disagree with, criticize, and respond to the president,” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. “Obviously, it does. It is remarkable and truly chilling that the president and his advisers seem to believe otherwise.”

This fight with Twitter is definitely stressful for Trump.

[Griff]

Remember that this is the guy who was pushing for the death penalty when the Central Park Five got set up by the NYPD and the prosecutors. There will be no balance where African Americans are concerned, this is his core value.

He is a totalitarian by nature so it will continue until removal. Twitter shows confidence in the judiciary.

[Flint]

First Amendment scholars said Friday morning that Mr. Trump and his allies had it backward and that he was the one trying to stifle speech that clashes with his own views.

THIS. Conservative examples of "free speech violations" often consist of *more speech* having been *added* to their speech. They want the freedom to say anything, and nobody being allowed to respond, in other words-- free speech for ME. It's an indefensible position. If the thought leaders of "right leaning" culture had any guts, this proposition could not survive, much less take hold as a movement-defining idea.

Conservatives are able to hold power despite diminishing support, only because they are more aggressive, and more successful in their gamesmanship-- as in, overshooting their response to media bias claims, therefore skewing media treatment incrementally to their own benefit. Aggressive and successful-- as in, power-grabbing the census, the redistricting, the voter rolls.

It's no surprise they are freaking out about the proposition of increased vote-by-mail. They EVEN ACKNOWLEDGE OUT LOUD that increased voter turnout equals guaranteed Republican losses. We never again need to question their "win by cheating" strategy-- they admit it. They own it.

Free speech for ME.. power for ME.. a system that works for ME. It's disgusting. It's not what we're told America stands for.

[Luce]

Originally Posted by glatt

I think he's skilled at smelling disloyalty. He's got lots of practice there.

He said he hires "the best people," and then those people invariably turn on him.

There's only two possible explanations for that.

[BigV]

[BigV]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Searching for the truth, that is facts that confirm my gut feeling, is hard.
Easier to just go with what facebook and the guys at the bar tell me.

Trump has stumbled a couple times this year. Pointing it out is acceptable but this mocking/jeering that's going on right now will make his supporters double down rather than think.

Originally Posted by Griff

They're going hard on Bacefook right now. I'm not doing well with conversation.

From here:

Accusations of liberal bias in social media have reached a new level as President Donald Trump started another kind of Twitter war last week — one with the social media platform itself. In response to a fact-check advisory that the company posted on one of his tweets on Tuesday, Trump responded, “Social Media Platforms totally silence conservative voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down.” The White House then issued an executive order Thursday attempting to punish social media companies for political bias.

The result is the emergence of a dangerous digital activism gap, a gap that conservative movements understand and have increasingly used to their advantage.

Yet, Trump and his backers are wrong that social media shuts out those on the right. In fact, it's the opposite: Use of these platforms heavily favors conservatives.

This was the clear lesson that emerged from my research on thousands of social media posts and interviews with digital activists across the political spectrum. Social media increases power disparities due to social class and organizational resources. So, rather than favoring progressive activists, as the media spotlight on hashtag movements like #MeToo or #BlackLivesMatter can suggest, the underlying dynamics of these societal differences enable conservative messages and voices to gain a large advantage.

My outrage at his abuse of the language continues to be matched by my exhaustion from looking for and failing to find the reality of his hurts and the strain of trying to encompass his hypocrisy of accusing others of the wrongs he himself commits. It has not diminished. The doublespeak from Trump continues full force.

[BigV]

from here:
The “free speech debate” isn’t really about free speech

The “free speech debate” isn’t really about free speech
The debate over “cancel culture” is about something real. But it’s not about free speech.

Please give this article about twenty minutes of your focused attention. It's an excellent article. Here are my first thoughts about it:

1 -- reality is just a story we tell to each other.
2 -- not every thing is knowable from first hand empirical evidence.
3 -- we find people we trust, to some degree, for some reason, and give them credence.


(his thoughts)

Originally Posted by Zack Beauchamp at Vox

What’s happening now seems novel because we are currently seeing a wave of social justice activism that seeks to redefine how we understand appropriate debate over these topics, sometimes even pushing to consign to the margins views that may have seemed tolerable in the past. These advocates can and have overreached, and should be criticized when they do. But on the whole, their work is aimed not at restricting freedom but at expanding it — making historically marginalized voices feel comfortable enough in the public square to be their authentic selves, to exist honestly and speak their own truths.

then our dialog disintegrates into cancel culturing each other's sources. naw, just dismissing the argument of the other by dismissing the source. we very often can't agree on first principles. on definitions. on what story is to be told. Sad.


I like this bit:

(his thoughts again)

Originally Posted by Zack Beauchamp at Vox

It helps to think of this debate as taking place on a spectrum. Social justice advocates think the bands of acceptable opinion and arguments shouldn’t be narrowed, precisely, but rather pushed to the left — shifted to include formerly excluded voices from oppressed communities and to sideline voices that seek to continue their exclusion. Their critics think the traditional bands of debate are, broadly speaking, correct, and that we’d all be worse off if the social justice advocates succeed in moving speech norms in their direction.

Please read and respond, I'd love to know how you think and feel about this issue.

[Griff]

Interesting quotes, I'll read it after work.

[Undertoad]

Twitter and Facebook censor NY Post story

[Undertoad]

Mirriam-Webster updates dictionary definition in order to pwn the right

not strictly social media censorship but it's such a wild 1984ish item

[lumberjim]

Jesus.

I suppose they can't help being offended by everything either. Poor flakes.

[Undertoad]

Wull that's the thing, nobody is actually offended. The woke team controls power by controlling language.

My Twitter feed showed "The Advocate", historically the nation's leading gay culture news source, using "sexual preference" in articles three weeks ago.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Twitter and Facebook censor NY Post story

Same source also got emails from Saddam admitting he had WMDs.

Someone claims to have emails that say what your campaign wants them to say. Apparently Russian hackers have been successful again. Twitter and Facebook would also have to censor that 'equally credible' source.

They censored because Trump's private attorney, Rudy Giuliani made some subjective (unsubstantiated) claim. Giuliani has long been an incredulous source.