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I'm no fan of Mitch McConnell @senatemajldr (and he's condemned my writings about campaign finance on the Senate floor).
But it seems wrong and odd that @Twitter put a lock on his campaign's @Team_Mitch account for RTing a video of a newsworthy protest against the Senator. /1
But it seems wrong and odd that @Twitter put a lock on his campaign's @Team_Mitch account for RTing a video of a newsworthy protest against the Senator. /1
I haven't seen the video itself but from the reports it sounds like a political protest where people said nasty things about McConnell. I'm far less certain (without seeing it) that the video contained actual threats to McConnell /2
But the fact that the McConnell campaign would choose to distribute the video means they did not think the "threats" were serious. Instead they wanted to distribute the video for political reasons---to make the left-leaning protesters look bad. /3
The protesters might look bad to some and good to others (people might like the anger at McConnell given all he's done to block bills on gun safety, election security, etc.). But this was primarily a political video. /4
Assuming the video did not contain a serious threat against McConnell or anyone else, why did Twitter remove it? I don't believe that this is the result of anti-conservative bias, as @Team_Mitch has said. I think the answer is that @Twitter does not know what it's doing. /5
As my colleague @davidakaye has shown, this is a problem all around the world. Social media companies do not know how to regulate political content, and we can't trust government to do it because they can use that power to shut down the political opposition /6
And so we are left in this world where the social media companies make potentially arbitrary decisions without good standards leaving many people believing they are playing favorites when instead they are simply lacking good procedures and good judgment. /7
Especially when it comes to prominent political actors and public figures, I think social media companies should have a thumb on the scale in favor of publication. What these actors publish is newsworthy in its own right and gives insight into these people. /8
So if President tweets something that would get a regular user suspended, there's a good argument for not blocking President---because it is particularly newsworthy, gives particular insight into leader. The same is true for other politicans and especially opposition leaders. /9
There must be a limit to that principle too, such as a political leader making threats of violence. But short of that, it seems that we are better off with social media companies allowing for robust debate. /10
So Twitter has now allowed @Team_Mitch to post the video and you can see it here. I'm pretty unimpressed with both McConnell campaign's claim this is threatening and @Twitter having any reason to lock the account for displaying it.
I see @Team_Mitch's @Twitter profile page says "Kentucky Tough." Seems more like "Kentucky Snowflake" to me.
