Son, i know it’s hard for you to grok since you obvi missed the Bill of Rights class, but none of the social media sites are public forums for your generation or oldsters like me. The very first one is called the First Amendment (see how easy the founders made it — civics is fun)
It says CONGRESS — that’s you now kid! — shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. Facebook can, Twitter can, they all can, because — and here’s the twist — they have First Amendment rights to not host jerks like Trump who break their rules.
You cannot make a “New Town Square” law or add Twitter to the First Amendment no matter how many times you watched the how a bill becomes a law Schoolyard Rock episode to prep for your new job and think you can.
Lastly, dude, unelected elites can tell elected officials whatever they damn well please and you have to take it. It’s not censorship — it’s called running a business and taking out the trash. What a crazy country!! Call me if you need more tech info though.
Here is a helpful cartoon I found on the Twitters:
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As usual @LindseyGrahamSC is a dumb as a box of hammers about Section 230 & how important it is to regulate tech in a smart way. If it is stripped — his word, but mine — it will mean anyone even slightly controversial will be taken off the platforms to protect from lawsuits.
If he really understood the law & the First Amendment, he’d know that these are actually private spaces and not public squares & can dump people off and 230 has zip to do with that. Sounds like a socialist, since he wants private enterprise to be told what to do by government.
The tech industry, which is not a monolith, needs regulation, for sure, but it needs to be done with smarts and needs to treat each issue differently with a different solutions. Antitrust, fines, new laws, current regs applied. These tweets are nonsense, twitchy and reductive
What @parscale is advocating for here is, well, socialism versus private enterprise. I love me some capitalism! But Twitter is not a highly regulated public utility. Nor Google. Nor Apple. Nor Facebook. Nor Snapchat, Pinterest, Reddit. Come on Sway like I asked & we can discuss!
Btw you DO get cut off from even the electric company when you break the rules. Like say, incite a mob to attack the Capitol. That’s bad, don’t you agree?
Another: say someone rants in a restaurant (a seeming public space but not), they would get zero chances to come back. But one guy gets unlimited rants. After a while as the rants get crazier, they put a sign over his head. Then when his rant incites violence, he gets tossed.
He can publish it online @SubstackInc. He can tweet the whole thing. He can read it out loud on the corner of 14th and U Streets NW. He can definitely get another publisher. This is not Orwellian — it is called consequences and lots of people’s books are dumped for much less.
You live with the consequences of fist pumping at people who then attack the Capitol as a mob. You essentially been Romneyed.
Lastly @HawleyMO send it to me and I would be happy to read it as I was looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this topic. You used to actually be surprisingly thoughtful on tech reform until your whole jam became about, well, clicks and the twitchy demands of naked ambition
This is 100 percent true. @staceyabrams is the kind of data geek they should have listened to since she thinks in numbers and networks and systems and laid out her whole plan for winning with humility. As I saw far too many walking out, I thought: Arrogance thy name is tech.
And here is one in 2017 when she was not well known yet and still in the Dem primary for a run at the governor of Georgia race. I was looking for a Democrat who was smart on tech and @hilaryr suggested @staceyabrams as someone to watch. Indeed: recode.net/2017/11/15/166…
Visited Tony Hsieh at his downtown Vegas digs many times, but this in 2014 was particularly fascinating. Admiring all the truly oddball creations, he leaned in, smiled his impish grin and whispered to me: “It’s all a simulation.” Maybe so, but his was a weirdly wonderful one.
Here’s a great interview of Tony we did in 2016 in Vegas that really will give you a good idea of what he was like: vox.com/2016/5/18/1169…
And very few CEOs ever let me wander around their offices and ask anyone anything on video, but Tony did in 2010: allthingsd.com/20100419/termi…
As someone who has a lot of relatives who supported Trump and discount justifiably tough stories about him, I got over the shock of how strong his base was a while back. Recently a relative parroted back an interview I did in a completely twisted way that reflected well on Trump.
When I pointed out it was not what was said and tried to correct it SINCE IT WAS MY INTERVIEW, she insisted her version of my work was correct and my version was my “opinion” and wrong. It was mind blowing but totally expected after years of it and there was no convincing her.
Is this a bad person? No. Is it a stupid person? No. Is this a person who cannot differentiate between true and false? No. What she is is someone with a bad information diet, someone tired of feeling like smarter people disrespect her even if she sometimes acts disrespectfully.