Twitter, in my experience is a bastion of bigotry and exclusion. If you express a non-PC thought, you get banned. The most fanatical racism and even genocide advocacy is OK on Twitter as long as it is PC. Take a look at Sarah Jeong's Twitter history. A few of her racist tweets were
“dumbass fucking white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants”
“white men are bullshit”
"Oh man it's kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men"
#cancelwhitepeople
Of course, she produced a lot more than these horrible (very racist) tweets. Was she banned? Punished in any way? Not exactly. Indeed, the NYT hired her onto it's editorial board.
In my opinion, Twitter (and Facebook) are de-facto monopolies and should be regulated as such. Both should be forced to get out of the censorship business. In other words, they should not be allowed to censor opinion, that they don’t like (which is what they do now).
The evidence that Twitter (and Facebook) engage in left-wing censorship is rather strong. The racist Sarah Jeong provides one case in point. Over a period or years, she generated numerous vile tweets. Of course, Twitter took no action. A few of her tweets were.
“dumbass fucking white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants”
“white men are bullshit”
“fuck white women lol.”
"Oh man it's kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men"
“Are white people genetically disposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins.”
#cancelwhitepeople
Sadly, she produced a lot more than these horrible (very racist) tweets. Was she banned? Punished in any way? Not exactly. Indeed, the NYT hired her onto it's editorial board.
“Another particularly shocking case is that of Kathy Griffin, who demanded that her followers make public the names of the Covington High School students who were falsely accused of aggressively harassing a Native American activist. Despite this explicit call to harass minors, she has not been sanctioned by Twitter.”
For better or worse, Twitter has essentially 100% market-share in it’s target market (online text messaging in the US). Of course, Facebook (now Meta) also has essentially 100% market-share in it’s target market. Both engage in blatant viewpoint censorship.
One person has compared ‘misinformation’ on Twitter to ‘crying fire in a crowded theater’. That’s wrong. It’s more like ‘crying fire in Time’s Square’ which is protected speech.
Indeed, one person’s ‘misinformation’ is another person’s facts. Consider a few cases in point. The ‘lab leak’ theory of COVID-19 was a ‘conspiracy theory’ until it became a ‘plausible theory’. The consensus about masks has changed several times. Were all of the other views about masks ‘misinformation’?
We don’t let the phone company decide who gets phone service. We don’t let the phone company listen to our phone calls and cut off phone service when it detects something it doesn’t like. We don’t let the USPS decide who gets mail. We don’t let the electric company decide who gets power. Twitter (and Facebook and the rest of Social Media) should be forced out of the censorship business.
If (for example) someone violates Federal Law (for example, by uploading child pornography), then they should be prosecuted. However, political speech should be protected even if Twitter doesn’t like it.
It is certainly correct and important to note that scientific judgments continuously change as more information is obtained.
But it is also critical to understand that this type of uncertainty does not justify a free-fire zone for dissemination bizarre, damaging nonsense. Some things will never be correct, and are clearly identifiable. The earth is not flat and drinking bleach will not cure covid. Making it easy to distribute such stuff is like the classic example of falsely shouting "fire" in a movie theater.
Of course there is a continuum of considerations-- what is a potentially viable view as opposed to one that has been genuinely falsified. But just because the judgments are difficult does not mean that everything should be permitted.
My main disagreement with the essay os that it calls what Twitter does "censorship." It is more accurately and fairly a business decision.
The government is a special kind of monopoly and requires the kind of restrictions the authors mention because when the government prohibits speech it does so only as constitutionally allowed in order to avoid the inevitable political pressures a democratic government is subject to. Privacy, harm and misinformation are all very hard to define without some ambiguity, and if government is going to use its monopoly power to prohibit speech for those reasons, the constitutional safeguards for speech have to be observed. Less or no regulation of speech is strongly preferred.
Twitter does not have that kind of monopoly power, and the authors note its users are a limited (if potent) group. But what are the consequences if private speech providers cannot make decisions about what to permit on their platform?
I cannot argue with the difficulties of the decisions Twitter has made here, particularly the application of rules that have the unavoidable ambiguities the authors detail. This is a reality about rules governing speech in any context. But if even private platforms have to avoid making the effort to try and protect privacy, harm and the reliability of the information their customers post -- and sometimes be wrong, I'm afraid -- then their liberty is at odds with the free speech liberties of their customers.
As between citizens and government, our constitution sides with the wide-open free speech of citizens. But as between customers and private platform providers, I'm more inclined to let different businesses offer different levels of monitoring that they think will attract the customer base they are seeking. Unless we are willing to say that speech platform providers are a public utility -- something I would want to avoid -- I'm inclined to let them make the kinds of decisions they are willing to go to market with. Let them make a market statement that they are trying to foster responsible speech as they see it. If they are wrong about that, their customers will ultimately let them know. Maybe there isn't a market for that. But as a citizen concerned about the level of our public discourse, I'd like to find out.
Excellent piece, though while the authors seem to favor a laissez-faire approach, I think a more responsible policy would be for Twitter (and Facebook) to better define their censorship and curatorial policies. As the authors ably describe, while this would be no easy task in any of the three areas that they define, without clear boundaries, Twitter's decisions to censor or ban participants is justly open to criticism, mistrust, avoidance, and public disdain, if not lawsuits. Whether or not such policies can be tackled or applied on a broad-scale basis within the still non-existent Bluesky rubric remains to be seen, but I think it behooves Twitter itself (as well as Facebook) to be much more specific in the standards they use, and then to be as consistent as possible in their application.
Regardless of the inanity of PC opinion that seems to dominate Twitter, underlying Moskowitz' argument is the presumption that, even though it's a publicly owned (by shareholders) corporation, Twitter does not have the right to choose what it publishes. What's the justification for that Seth?
Are you saying that newspapers cannot choose what they publish?, TV news cannot decide what gets shown and what doesn't?
While you're making an argument based on free speech principles, you are advocating interference, presumably by government, to override Twitter's right to decide what it's willing to publish again presumably because of its "important role in public discourse".
That would amount to nationalisation of Twitter. Free speech also includes the freedom to choose NOT to speak.
I think those of us who have disagreed with the essay and favor some form of social media curatorial standards against disinformation and obvious hate speech, not against opinions or disagreements over what may be reasonably disputed about what may or may not be true. I haven't heard anyone defending the censorship of opinions. I certainly don't.
Twitter, in my experience is a bastion of bigotry and exclusion. If you express a non-PC thought, you get banned. The most fanatical racism and even genocide advocacy is OK on Twitter as long as it is PC. Take a look at Sarah Jeong's Twitter history. A few of her racist tweets were
“dumbass fucking white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants”
“white men are bullshit”
"Oh man it's kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men"
#cancelwhitepeople
Of course, she produced a lot more than these horrible (very racist) tweets. Was she banned? Punished in any way? Not exactly. Indeed, the NYT hired her onto it's editorial board.
In my opinion, Twitter (and Facebook) are de-facto monopolies and should be regulated as such. Both should be forced to get out of the censorship business. In other words, they should not be allowed to censor opinion, that they don’t like (which is what they do now).
The evidence that Twitter (and Facebook) engage in left-wing censorship is rather strong. The racist Sarah Jeong provides one case in point. Over a period or years, she generated numerous vile tweets. Of course, Twitter took no action. A few of her tweets were.
“dumbass fucking white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants”
“white men are bullshit”
“fuck white women lol.”
"Oh man it's kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men"
“Are white people genetically disposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins.”
#cancelwhitepeople
Sadly, she produced a lot more than these horrible (very racist) tweets. Was she banned? Punished in any way? Not exactly. Indeed, the NYT hired her onto it's editorial board.
Quote from “It Isn’t Your Imagination: Twitter Treats Conservatives More Harshly Than Liberals” (https://quillette.com/2019/02/12/it-isnt-your-imagination-twitter-treats-conservatives-more-harshly-than-liberals/)
“Another particularly shocking case is that of Kathy Griffin, who demanded that her followers make public the names of the Covington High School students who were falsely accused of aggressively harassing a Native American activist. Despite this explicit call to harass minors, she has not been sanctioned by Twitter.”
For better or worse, Twitter has essentially 100% market-share in it’s target market (online text messaging in the US). Of course, Facebook (now Meta) also has essentially 100% market-share in it’s target market. Both engage in blatant viewpoint censorship.
One person has compared ‘misinformation’ on Twitter to ‘crying fire in a crowded theater’. That’s wrong. It’s more like ‘crying fire in Time’s Square’ which is protected speech.
Indeed, one person’s ‘misinformation’ is another person’s facts. Consider a few cases in point. The ‘lab leak’ theory of COVID-19 was a ‘conspiracy theory’ until it became a ‘plausible theory’. The consensus about masks has changed several times. Were all of the other views about masks ‘misinformation’?
We don’t let the phone company decide who gets phone service. We don’t let the phone company listen to our phone calls and cut off phone service when it detects something it doesn’t like. We don’t let the USPS decide who gets mail. We don’t let the electric company decide who gets power. Twitter (and Facebook and the rest of Social Media) should be forced out of the censorship business.
If (for example) someone violates Federal Law (for example, by uploading child pornography), then they should be prosecuted. However, political speech should be protected even if Twitter doesn’t like it.
It is certainly correct and important to note that scientific judgments continuously change as more information is obtained.
But it is also critical to understand that this type of uncertainty does not justify a free-fire zone for dissemination bizarre, damaging nonsense. Some things will never be correct, and are clearly identifiable. The earth is not flat and drinking bleach will not cure covid. Making it easy to distribute such stuff is like the classic example of falsely shouting "fire" in a movie theater.
Of course there is a continuum of considerations-- what is a potentially viable view as opposed to one that has been genuinely falsified. But just because the judgments are difficult does not mean that everything should be permitted.
My main disagreement with the essay os that it calls what Twitter does "censorship." It is more accurately and fairly a business decision.
The government is a special kind of monopoly and requires the kind of restrictions the authors mention because when the government prohibits speech it does so only as constitutionally allowed in order to avoid the inevitable political pressures a democratic government is subject to. Privacy, harm and misinformation are all very hard to define without some ambiguity, and if government is going to use its monopoly power to prohibit speech for those reasons, the constitutional safeguards for speech have to be observed. Less or no regulation of speech is strongly preferred.
Twitter does not have that kind of monopoly power, and the authors note its users are a limited (if potent) group. But what are the consequences if private speech providers cannot make decisions about what to permit on their platform?
I cannot argue with the difficulties of the decisions Twitter has made here, particularly the application of rules that have the unavoidable ambiguities the authors detail. This is a reality about rules governing speech in any context. But if even private platforms have to avoid making the effort to try and protect privacy, harm and the reliability of the information their customers post -- and sometimes be wrong, I'm afraid -- then their liberty is at odds with the free speech liberties of their customers.
As between citizens and government, our constitution sides with the wide-open free speech of citizens. But as between customers and private platform providers, I'm more inclined to let different businesses offer different levels of monitoring that they think will attract the customer base they are seeking. Unless we are willing to say that speech platform providers are a public utility -- something I would want to avoid -- I'm inclined to let them make the kinds of decisions they are willing to go to market with. Let them make a market statement that they are trying to foster responsible speech as they see it. If they are wrong about that, their customers will ultimately let them know. Maybe there isn't a market for that. But as a citizen concerned about the level of our public discourse, I'd like to find out.
Excellent piece, though while the authors seem to favor a laissez-faire approach, I think a more responsible policy would be for Twitter (and Facebook) to better define their censorship and curatorial policies. As the authors ably describe, while this would be no easy task in any of the three areas that they define, without clear boundaries, Twitter's decisions to censor or ban participants is justly open to criticism, mistrust, avoidance, and public disdain, if not lawsuits. Whether or not such policies can be tackled or applied on a broad-scale basis within the still non-existent Bluesky rubric remains to be seen, but I think it behooves Twitter itself (as well as Facebook) to be much more specific in the standards they use, and then to be as consistent as possible in their application.
Regardless of the inanity of PC opinion that seems to dominate Twitter, underlying Moskowitz' argument is the presumption that, even though it's a publicly owned (by shareholders) corporation, Twitter does not have the right to choose what it publishes. What's the justification for that Seth?
Are you saying that newspapers cannot choose what they publish?, TV news cannot decide what gets shown and what doesn't?
While you're making an argument based on free speech principles, you are advocating interference, presumably by government, to override Twitter's right to decide what it's willing to publish again presumably because of its "important role in public discourse".
That would amount to nationalisation of Twitter. Free speech also includes the freedom to choose NOT to speak.
I think those of us who have disagreed with the essay and favor some form of social media curatorial standards against disinformation and obvious hate speech, not against opinions or disagreements over what may be reasonably disputed about what may or may not be true. I haven't heard anyone defending the censorship of opinions. I certainly don't.