2016 U.S. Presidential Elections: The Circus Is In Full Swing

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Trump getting banned is the scariest part, though. I mean, you have removed the president of the United States himself from a communication channel that has no alternatives at the moment without as much as an order from the Nowhereville county court (which lacking regulation makes impossible to seek, one needs to add).
Let's not overstate this, the official POTUS account is not banned and it's not going to be banned (although it might get censored), just citizen Trump's.
There was a good reason to do this which was publicly argued by the tech companies - they are rightly careful to be transparent with their reasons.
Of course they could abuse their powers in the future, but this was not it and they will get serious flak for that.
Even now Twitter got a stock price hit for deplatforming Trump, so it's not in their interest to go further down this road.
 
As I understand it, POTUS twitter is a twitter of the institution, not of the politician. They're not really comparable, as much as the line might get blurred now due to the banning the latter.

Besides, I don't think it is necessarily the abuse of their powers that is dangerous, it is the use itself. They simply should not have it at all.
 
I'll unask that question and ask you what should the tech companies do with people that use their platform to promote anti-democratic falsehoods which may result in violence. Should they chill and let the courts handle this?
What if their platform is used for clandestine propaganda operations by foreign powers bent on subverting elections? Chill and leave it to the counter-intelligence agencies?
Because damage is being done if they do nothing and they are constantly called out for it.
 
@BenKenobi the thing is also that Trump has not been silenced. He has the ability to call a press conference whenever he wants. He of course hates doing that, because in a press conference journalists will challenge him and ask him questions he doesn't want to answer, which has led to him storming out more than once. On social media instead he can just state his lies unchallenged and then let them spread.

I strongly believe that it shouldn't be allowed for people to spread lies that can cause harm in real life. I have brought up this previous somewhere else, here is a concrete example that is not related to the US or Trump:


Another example is the bunch of conspiracy theories on covid that have caused people to not follow recommendations from healthcare providers, helping the spread of the virus.

Things like these simply can not be allowed. How do we prevent them? Well, that I think is the difficult question and one that needs to be answered by the law. Clearly we can not rely on tech companies to self regulate, first of all they have failed to do that so far, and second it isn't always easy to determine where the line is crossed. This I think is the real challenge that needs to be faced one way or the other.
 
I remember a distant era, eons ago, when the villagers of a country didn't know what their leader was thinking 24/7 -
because Twitter didn't exist. It was a dark time of oppression of speech;
not knowing when the next lines of newspeak from the supreme ruler would be made public on the town square.
 
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Twitter being a private company doesn't matter. Being banned from all the conventional media and social media as a politician would be a serious violation of free speech even though all of these mediums are owned by private companies. Trump's tweets are seen by millions of people, of course it matters as a platform. And note that Twitter did this when Trump was at his weakest point and the Democrats got control of the Presidency and the Congress. So this is a restriction in favour of powerful people as well.

The Supreme Court previously ruled that Trump cannot block accounts from mentioning his tweets because Twitter is a public forum. The same reasoning applies here.
 
Twitter being a private company doesn't matter. Being banned from all the conventional media and social media as a politician would be a serious violation of free speech even though all of these mediums are owned by private companies. Trump's tweets are seen by millions of people, of course it matters as a platform. And note that Twitter did this when Trump was at his weakest point and the Democrats got control of the Presidency and the Congress. So this is a restriction in favour of powerful people as well.

The Supreme Court previously ruled that Trump cannot block accounts from mentioning his tweets because Twitter is a public forum. The same reasoning applies here.

See though here you are letting him switch the narration away from him using Twitter to stage an attempted coup to him being a victim. I remember reading a piece on the Atlantic from a Turkish journalist that now sounds almost prophetic, maybe you will be able to relate to that even more than I did.


Edit: not a journalist, she is actually a professor of sociology at University of North Carolina. https://sils.unc.edu/people/faculty/profiles/Zeynep-Tufekci
 
They just need to draft legislation to avoid arbitrariness instead of scaremongering muh free speech. Big tech isn't suddenly the president. Like chill, we have an unprecedented problem (but which was completely foreseeable knowing their ToS was constantly breached by Trump). Companies are still subject to laws, and like we have venues for devising laws.
 


Not sure how much we can trust the results of these polls though, they haven't exactly done great with predicting the election outcome since Trump has been involved.
 
That's about right because Fox News polls also give it about 70% of Republicans. I don't know why so many since Fox News itself (the non-fiction, news part) was pretty decent at admitting Biden won and that Trump's claims are baseless. Murdoch is a pragmatic man.
Maybe those 70% only watch Fox talk shows or worse for news.
 
Everything Trump says is gospel to them. It is a cult, and the deeper they get in it the more difficult it is to get out. I mean most if not all the old school Republicans have been distancing themselves from Trump for a while now but it didn't seem to do anything to dissuade his supporters.
 
That's about right because Fox News polls also give it about 70% of Republicans. I don't know why so many since Fox News itself (the non-fiction, news part) was pretty decent at admitting Biden won and that Trump's claims are baseless. Murdoch is a pragmatic man.
Maybe those 70% only watch Fox talk shows or worse for news.
My favorite was Murdoch got his vaccine shot the same day Tucker Carlson said vaccine was useless.
 
Yeah, that was great. One of the good arguments to use when debating anti-covid/vaccine conspiracists is to point to them how the rich and powerful (the sinister elites wishing them harm) are scrambling to get vaccinated.
 
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I'm in favor of freedom of speech as long as it means freedom to tell the truth and not lie about a person's political affiliation. American politics range from slightly left of center to somewhat right of center, except for Trump who is a Fascist. There are no Communists, Marxists, Radicals, except possibly AOC but she may be reflecting her constituents. Biden, for his part, is slightly right of center.
 
Yeah, that was great. One of the good arguments to use when debating anti-covid/vaccine conspiracists is to point to them how the rich and powerful (the sinister elites wishing them harm) are scrambling to get vaccinated.

It is all a plot! They are trying to TRICK you into thinking that, that's how they get you.

(I am joking. One or two years ago I wouldn't have felt the need to specify it, but these days you kind of have to)

I'm in favor of freedom of speech as long as it means freedom to tell the truth and not lie about a person's political affiliation. American politics range from slightly left of center to somewhat right of center, except for Trump who is a Fascist. There are no Communists, Marxists, Radicals, except possibly AOC but she may be reflecting her constituents. Biden, for his part, is slightly right of center.

I honestly don't even care that much about that, even if it would be nice. I would be perfectly content if there was a way to stop people from spamming lies and manipulating others on social media.

I also feel that the US in particular has to figure out some things that should just be apolitical (like fixing healthcare, ties of politicians with big corporations, massive wealth inequality). I will never cease to be baffled by the fact that public healthcare is considered something that a "radical lefty" would want.
 
So, US has no radicals. Then tell Republicans, quit calling Dems, Radicals. And quit lying in general. :lol: Free speech is not freedom to lie. Also private companies are not subject to the Constitution. Twitter is within its rights to ban Trump and anyone else who lies as much as he does.
 
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