Twitter marks Trump tweet in violation of “policy against abusive behavior, specifically, the presence of a threat of harm”
“Twitter is literally censoring the President of the United States for saying that violent anarchists will not be allowed to take over our nation’s capital & that law enforcement will act to protect public safety. In Big Tech’s Orwellian world, that’s “abusive.”” – Sen. Ted Cruz
Big tech and social media companies keep claiming they show no ideological partiality but their actions are far from congruent.
Tuesday, Twitter marked a fairly innocuous tweet sent by President Trump from his personal account as a violation of Twitters “policy against abusive behavior, specifically, the presence of a threat of harm.”
We’ve placed a public interest notice on this Tweet for violating our policy against abusive behavior, specifically, the presence of a threat of harm against an identifiable group.https://t.co/AcmW6O6d4t
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) June 23, 2020
There is literally nothing abusive about the tweet whatsoever. But Twitter kept on.
Per our policies, this Tweet will remain on the service given its relevance to ongoing public conversation.
Engagements with the Tweet will be limited. People will be able to Retweet with Comment, but not Like, Reply, or Retweet it.
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) June 23, 2020
This is not the first time we’ve used the public interest notice. More on our approach and policy guidance:https://t.co/ZcbhDEAYjH
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) June 23, 2020
Nailed it:
Beyond satire.
Twitter is literally censoring the President of the United States for saying that violent anarchists will not be allowed to take over our nation’s capital & that law enforcement will act to protect public safety.
In Big Tech’s Orwellian world, that’s “abusive.” https://t.co/x5FPzcUPWb
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) June 23, 2020
The President tweets that people should stop breaking the law and Twitter moves to censor him.
The left is uncomfortable that in a vibrant democracy, citizens have a right to hear directly from their President and decide for themselves what to think about it.#StopTheBias!
— Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) June 23, 2020
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Comments
Gotta wonder why anyone bothers with Twits.
Methinks Twitter just broke multiple laws.
Such as? What law could it possibly have broken? How could this be against any law? It is absolutely protected by the first amendment, so not only hasn’t Congress made any law that could stop it, it can’t. And if you want it to, then you are advocating the overthrow of the US constitution and all our liberties, which makes you exactly the same as antifa.
It makes twitter a publisher by controlling content rather than serving as a mere platform.
How.
Many.
F*cking.
Times.
…do I have to post S.230 of the CDA before people stop peddling Prager’s BS propaganda:
“(1) Treatment of publisher or speaker
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”
No, it does not. § 230 explicitly says it does not, and that is the only reason Prof J is able to provide us with this forum we’re using right now.
Further, even if Congress were to repeal § 230, the courts would probably eventually overrule the horrible NY state court decision against Prodigy, and decide that forum providers are not like publishers but like bookstores, which are entitled to refuse to carry books they don’t like, or to label them any way they like, without thereby becoming responsible for the contents of other books they carry but have not read. The catch is in those two words, “probably” and “eventually”. Providers couldn’t rely on those words, and gample everything they had on them. That’s why they lobbied Congress to pass § 230 in the first place.
Facebook Content Moderator: ‘If Someone’s Wearing MAGA Hat, I’m Going to Delete Them for Terrorism’
Weazil Zippers
That may get him in trouble with his supervisor, but if the company is OK with it then it’s perfectly legal and does not affect the company’s § 230 protection for whatever user-supplied content is not deleted. People with rational opinions should just not use Facebook.
Only if twitter wants to deny it should get about half the special protections it enjoys.
You want Congress to change § 230? In what way, exactly, and how could it do so without destroying the entire sector of interactive computer services, including this forum?
I think Con Edison has the right to disconnect your electric power due to your odd political beliefs.
Con Edison is a regulated utility. Krogers is free to ban anyone from its stores because of their political beliefs.
Fine, then will just ban you from all supermarkets and food stores in NYC because of your political beliefs. Same effect.
#BAN MILHOUSE!!!!
It’s Milhouse endorsed.
Just ban Milhouse from any Pharmacy Chain that accepts his Medical Plan. He’d be free to go to other Pharmacies.
Are you seriously suggesting I would have some legal recourse if that were to happen? What recourse do you suggest? What laws do you claim would protect me?
You would not have any legal recourse. If you had skilled legal counsel, you might. But with you as lawyer you certainly have no legal recourse.
Furthermore, in my opinion, such a ban would also make for good corporate governance. Pharmacies should ban you.
What recourse do you imagine even the best counsel could give me? It doesn’t exist. There is no law that compels a business to deal with someone they don’t want to.
Recourse for you. There is no recourse. It is truly hopeless. But if you were a woke protester with skilled legal counsel there would be much recourse.
No, there would not. There is simply no law against it.
For good or ill, Trump’s twitter account is considered an official government record.
Twitter has no right to tamper with that.
Sure it does. Why on earth wouldn’t it?
I’m sure AG Barr is all over it. Get ready for another “tsk tsk” statement and that they are looking into it.
Mostly because Twitter is one of the few ways we can see what the president’s actually saying vs. what the leftstream media “reports.” His Twitter is vital.
I believe that alternatives are in order:
https://fossbytes.com/best-twitter-alternatives/
Think of the ruckus if Trump started using a different service, forcing people to go to something other than Twitter. That would really damage Twitter. Twitter has to be crazy to muck around with Trump like this.
So, please President Trump, #CancelTwitter 🙂
The media would probably refuse to report it.
Does he tweet so the MSM will report it, or so that his supporters will see it directly and not rely on the MSM to tell them what he’s saying? If the latter then the same result would be achieved on any other service.
Relax, Milhouse, one day you will be famous. You will be the token useful idiot that the left flocks to with your tone deaf approach to the world.
FSU, Disease Guy. You’ve still got the FSU disease of totalitarianism.
There are plenty of alternatives.
The President should stop using twitter.
On 11/4.
So it’s 2020 and the White house still hasn’t figured out how to host a web site? Or an RSS feed? Or send email?
Time to trim Twitter’s wings. Also, Facebook and Google. Initiate antitrust action, break them up.
Antitrust laws are inherently illegitimate, and anyone who advocates using them has no business calling himself conservative.
I d9 believe there is a possibility to mak a case for election law violations. Corporations using employees to censor content has a monetary value.
Sorry for the spelling, I was on my phone and without my glasses.
No, there is no such possibility. Twitter is entitled to spend as much of its own money as it likes on influencing people’s votes. It can turn the entire site into an explicit campaign against Trump. It can automatically append “#DumpTrump” to all tweets. And it still wouldn’t be liable for whatever content it didn’t provide and hasn’t read.
That’s the core freedom the first amendment protects, so Congress has no power to make any law to prevent it. But if it were that blatant people would finally come to their senses and stop using it.
Milhouse, buddy, you’re trolling and you’re not even trolling well.
Anti-trust laws have been around over a hundred years. They are there to prevent large concentrations of economic power from being used against the welfare of the country or against the people. That’s a a decidedly CONSERVATIVE principle. To say that large corporations should be allowed to wield excessive power in unprincipled ways and to be protected in doing so by the state is, in fact, fascist.
Try again.
Antitrust laws are indeed over 100 years old. And conservatives have opposed them that entire time. They are a legacy of the “Progressive” movement, They were created in the first place out of pure black evil vicious envy of Rockefeller’s wealth; their express purpose was to bring down Standard Oil, which he had built and created by his own efforts without anyone’s help. Principled conservatives opposed them then, and when they were used against Alcoa, and every other time. Because envy of those who have succeeded is an evil sentiment and not a legitimate reason for legislation. “You didn’t build that” represents everything we stand against.
Unlike the rest of the peanut gallery, I actually value your commentary on the relevant laws (hey, peanut gallery: it’s a law blog. Maybe a little more emphasis on what the law actually says and little less on performatory outrage wouldn’t go amiss).
Can you expand on your opinion on antitrust law? Beyond the infamous Microsoft case, which was just a staggering clusterf*ck by everybody involved, I’m not very familiar with the history of that legislation.
My opinion is the standard conservative (i.e. libertarian) view that government has no moral right to forcibly interfere in an economic relationship which all parties enter into without coercion, for their mutual benefit. Mere size doesn’t give government such a right. And the application of antitrust laws is fascism, because it penalizes people for breaking “rules” they could not possibly know in advance. Under antitrust law a company can be penalized for setting its prices too high, or too law, or just right.
The classic case, which was the original motive for these laws in the first place, is Standard Oil, a business that created an industry and did well entirely on its own efforts, without bribing politicians. So the politicians hated it, the “Progressive” left hated it, with a vicious slander campaign they whipped up populist hatred of the rich, and passed a law to take John D down a few notches and show all other rich men what can happen to them if they don’t pay the right bribes. Which is what happened to Microsoft.
Right. Running a thriving economy requires that there be no rules so someone finally wins the monopoly game. Just think how much better it would be to have “no rules” football or baseball or anything else. Civilization is about rules. LAW AND ORDER!
Your libertarian nonsense takes us to the same place as the other anarchists currently running riot in our streets and government: chaos.
In a free market there is almost no such thing as a monopoly. Someone who, through a combination of superior service, popularity, and good luck, finds himself with a large market share can’t take advantage of it because the moment he does some competitor will start eating his lunch. Freedom makes monopoly nearly impossible; government regularly creates monopolies. Other than De Beers there has never been a monopoly in a free economy, and after an unexpectedly long time even it eventually had to resort to government regulation (“blood diamond” laws) to protect itself.
Standard Oil was not a monopoly, and did not behave like one. It couldn’t afford to.
One of the best ways to help the little man is removing onerous government regulations, not adding them. Big business, up to a point, secretly doesn’t mind the regs. It can float the cost of compliance. Meanwhile, those same regs raise the barrier to market entry for potential competitors. The “greedy fat cats” on Wall Street don’t have to keep the little man down when the government is doing a great job of it for them.
It’s a classic leftilibral con job. Laws they claim will protect us from abusive monopolies are in actuality, promoting market dominance by their preferred corporate leviathans. Feel-good non-solutions to a non-problem.
drednicolson, it’s not a secret. Big Business has always openly supported regulation, for the exact reasons you state.
See, for instance, the way the big Chicago meatpackers took advantage of the uproar following the publication of The Jungle and its mass of dubious and false allegations. Rather than debunk them, which they could have done easily, they played the public hysteria up, and used it to demand regulation, which they promptly used to drive their smaller competitors out of business.
It’s as of they desperately want to be broken up as a monopoly, or forced (by legislation and the threat of stupendous fines) out of the censorship business.
But no. Liberals never think of consequences. When the inevitable hits the fan, they’ll be surprised and terribly outraged.
Even worse, twitter banned Carpe Donktum also.
NEWS: Twitter has “permanently suspended” @CarpeDonktum, pro-Trump meme account behind the “manipulated media” CNN “racist baby” video that Trump shared
Twitter says the account was axed due too “repeated” “valid copyright complaints,” per spox to @ABC News pic.twitter.com/rJWlIBPijy
— Will Steakin (@wsteaks) June 23, 2020
Here he is on instagram.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CBUG1wiAN1u/
We might get our collective legs over the problem if Ted Cruz and Kevin McCarthy knew powerful people currently serving in congress. If only.
I guess we’ll just have to settle for strongly worded tweets and forcefully written memoranda.
Cruz, another all talk no action GOP senator.
We need an internet bill of rights. That’s the only thing that will stop the madness.
“You have the right to hear the approved leftist position. You have the right to enthusiastically espose the approved leftist position. You have the right to join a hate mob against the unperson of the minute.”
Content provider or editorialist….your choice
Chose wisely, as there are consequences….
Twitter is 100% responsible for the content it provides. It’s not responsible for the content it doesn’t provide, and which it hasn’t even read and has no idea what’s there unless someone reports it.
Until, of course, they actually take responsibility for it – by censoring it. Especially when that censorship only consistently goes a single direction.
They’re obviously not responsible for the content they censor — even a newspaper is not responsible for what it leaves out. On the contrary, that’s what they’re expected to do. The whole point of this argument is your insane call for them (and Prof J) to be held responsible for what they doen’t censor, even if they have no idea that content even exists. That’s what the Prodigy decision said, and what Congress enacted § 230 to prevent.
And a newspaper doesn’t have 230 protections.
*smh*
Precisely. Newspapers are publishers, and yet they are not liable for what they delete. § 230 says interactive computer services are not like newspapers, and are not liable even for what they don’t delete, so long as they didn’t write it.
Don’t be a twit. Cancel Twitter.
this young lady gets it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=57&v=CBqUO8DzMvY&feature=emb_title
If Jack Dorsey secretly had a death wish for Twitter…what would he being doing differently than what he’s doing now?
Twitter’s users are virtually all libtards.
Particularly, journalists.
Since they invent their “stories” rather than actually committing acts of journalism, they have lots of free time, and they all spend it on Twitter. All day every day.
“You have the right to use someone else’s computer for free any time you want” seems like it might have some unintended consequences.
I double dog dare Twitter to ban the President, you know they want to. So just do it already.
Twitter would have banned FDR, Churchill, Eisenhower, and just about every one of the Allies leaders in WWII. You can’t say bad things about people even when at war and under violent siege.
You finally hit on something true.
“Chamberlain warns Hitler: If you invade Poland we will be met with serious force!”
Twitter: This is against the public interest because it threatens harm against an identifiable group, the German army and nation.
If Trump really wants put a stop to these uncontested BLM etal attacks, crush the one in DC. The POTUS controls DC so stop tweeting about it. Just do it. Then DO another one somewhere else. The tweeting can wait once the hard cold message of reality is out. Do it!!!
The POTUS doesn’t control DC. The Mayor does, subject to oversight by congress, not by the president.
This is in direct contradiction to the court case insisting Trump couldn’t block people from his feed.
So, I think Trump should now block all those “nasty people” on his Twitter feed. Then challenge Twitter (or anyone else) to go back to court over it. Let’s fill the pool with mud and start the ‘rasslin’!
No, it is not in any way a contradiction. You continue to misrepresent that decision. The court correctly found (because there was no other choice) that Trump’s twitter account is a government account used in his official capacity for government business, and therefore that the “comment section” (so to speak) of that account is a limited public forum, subject to the first amendment. It can be regulated, and such regulations don’t have to be content-neutral, but they do have to be value-neutral.
Had Trump not converted his account into a government account, had he kept it his private account as it had been before he became president, then it would not be subject to the first amendment.
Since Twitter itself is not a government entity, it is not subject to the first amendment and can impose whatever rules it likes; the fact that this account is operated by the US government doesn’t exempt it from Twitter’s own rules.
Don’t know if Twitter broke any laws here. But they, once again, did reveal themselves to be a giant sucking cesspool of lefty garbage.
So what else is new? They revealed that years ago.
I hope I can throw a bit of hope into trumps presidancy re-election I live in UK (and am horrified to see your country the way it is)but in December the UK voted in a conservative gov( you republicans thank F*&K)in the lead up Labour(your loonyocrates)thought the could not fail the far left was pulling the strings convinced they were on their way to victory and then election day ooooooooohhhhhhhhhhh their worst election since 1935 the were decimated everywhere even in the (wonderful north usally labour strong hold)people woke up to the far left inside labour I pray your country does the same in November GL from the UK
Thanks.
…..and the leftists thought they could pull that crime in large part because of their Traitor Media