I do not see how Twitter can claim to support free speech when it has banned at least two people that I know of who have not been accused of saying anything illegal. I have mentioned those people in a previous post.
In the past few years I had three interesting experiences with social media:
-Shared a link to an official Oxford University Web Page. I added no commentary…just the link. My post was deleted.
-Shared a link to a research study published in the prestigious Lancet Medical Journal. It was deleted.
-Asked a simple question, referencing a Nobel Prize Winning Scientist. It was deleted.
That doesn’t happen on today’s Twitter
Are you saying that Twitter supports free speech because it doesn’t delete your posts, even though it bans accounts of other people?
Musk has recently taken to saying that he “supports free speech, not free reach,” which, to me, sounds like he might not be above shadowbanning people.
“…so no one else can see my posts anymore?”
“Nope! But you can still say whatever you want to say!”
I’ll tell you exactly how all this will end once the dust has settled, and the controversy has become yesterday’s news: Twitter will eventually return to it’s previous status quo, because the previous status quo brought in the advertising dollars.
Musk isn’t so altruistic that he’s willing to burn $44 billion plus ongoing overhead on a site that’ll end up paying host primarily to a bunch of Meal Team 6 weirdos sharing their Civil War II fantasies while swapping pictures of their tacticooled up AR-15s with the 10 laser sights on the grip. At some point, he’s going to realize that he prefers money far more than constant media attention.
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In the future there will be no manners!
I was referring to the nasty, vitriolic, bipartisan exchanges that characterise any discussion on the internets now, dominated by unintelligible, uninformed, disrespectful, cognitively dissonant trolls tossing shit at each other like bored apes in a cage. Blenderartists is my last refuge, mostly free of these bigots, whether religious, political, racial or plain stupid.
The strip is by Phil Hale, published in Epic Magazine which I loved, despite mostly despising US comic art, preferring European/British graphic works, especially some of the artists in 2000AD (Bradley, D.R. & Quinch, so many), Revolver (Rogan Gosh), Crisis (New Statesmen) and Deadline (Tank Girl). Epic Magazine did, however, introduce me to Vaughn Bodē with his Cobalt 60 set of strips.
No point really, nothing achieved, nothing resolved, nothing gained except a brief gratuitously violent encounter with the loser lying on the ground bleeding and the victor sauntering off, looking for the next senseless encounter, to prove his dominion over the world…
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An issue I don’t often see discussed in the free speech debate is the actual meaning of language. Apparently Ye was banned from Twitter for showing a symbol, but he was banned for ‘inciting violence’. But language can mean anything you want it to mean. To many people the phrase ‘Lets go Brandon’ is not inviting a friend to accompany one somewhere. Who gets to decide what any word or phrase actually means in certain contexts?
I do not think Musk ever said that there would be no moderation whatsoever, it is just that the TOS has been loosened up a bit to allow for honest and civil discussions on previously banned subjects, and that the banhammer is not getting swung around near as much.
It is perfectly sensible that the new Twitter would still ban people who just want to cause chaos, spam, and otherwise be provocative. The reason for starters is that there actually are people who will purposely trawl the internet with the intent of finding an unmoderated site and/or comment section to wreck, so you want to send a message that this type of person at least is not welcome.
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I don’t think Garland Nixon, Scott Ritter or even Ye have ever been accused of wanting to cause chaos, and yet they were banned from Twitter.
Are you sure you want to hitch your wagon to someone who publicly said he liked Hitler and that Hitler got a lot of things right? There’s for sure a lot of interesting examples of poor moderation policies on social media, but I’m not sure Kanye West is worth defending 
(I’m saying that as myself, not a staff member, as this thread is technically about free speech and you raise an interesting point in a rational way, that I’d like to respond to in the same way)
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Many despots have been good administrators. Pablo Escobar was loved in Colombia because he funded public works. It is possible to admire some things a person does while despising others. I believe even Vlad Tepes was much admired in Wallachia because he was a good leader in the war against the Turks.
Kanye seems to be having problems mentally at the moment, as his behavior seems to be a bit schizophrenic in terms of where he wants to take his life. This is backed up by the fact he changed his name to Ye, what is Ye, it sounds like something out of a random name generator. He needs friends who can help him more than a social media account.
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It’s entirely possible (but I don’t know if it’s fact) that his friends all shorten his name Kan -ye to Ye anyway.
I don’t really follow the guy too closely, but I do vaguely recall him being diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Though his actions are extreme even for BPD. It’s like the guy’s purposefully going out of his way to ruin his brand and image as much as he can.
I don’t think it’s appropriate to speculate on someone’s mental health on a public forum.
Yeah, you’re right.
Whether or not it’s appropriate to discuss the mental health of a public figure who’s on record about their diagnosis, I just feel this needs saying:
Bipolar disorder causes swings between periods of depression and unusually elevated mood that last from days to weeks each. Those periods and the swings can be more or less severe.
Bipolar disorder does not cause an inability to acquire basic facts. Bipolar disorder does not cause one to advocate idiotic conspiracy theories. Bipolar disorder does not result in flinging critical thought aside overall.
People without any mental illness whatsoever can refuse to acquire basic facts, can advocate idiotic conspiracy theories, and can fling critical thought aside overall.
It’s doing all sufferers a disservice to conflate their mental illness with personal shortcomings of that type.
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In the end I’m not going to meet these people in the middle hence why I’m gone from twitter. Having a civil discussion with the far right is just enabling them as a viable part of society.
Kanye has been influenced/brain washed by their lies and look at him now. If you see him as a hero then you need to soul search yourself. You’re a vile person and no argumentation will fix that.
There you go again, branding the entirety as ‘far right’. With you, it sounds like there is no middle. You’re using an extreme example - Kanye West - and rather than choosing to just ignore people like this, which is an option available for everyone to freely adopt, you think it’s more reasonable to just blanket accuse every single person who you don’t agree with as ‘far right’.
Surely you can see that your attitude is a big part of the problem, and actually exhibits extremist traits(by definition), because you said it yourself: there is no middle ground for you.
Why would you even care what a person like Kanye West says? Why would it bother you so much? I just completely ignore these people. They are irrelevant to me, and I have no interest in hearing what someone like that has to say. If I want to understand the current political environment I’ll go to reputable, unbiased historians and read their books and listen to what they have to say.
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I don’t care about what Kanye says but the political leaders are getting votes that are saying the same things as him. People need to stand up against that kind of opinions as it’s fundamentally based on lies that hurt people in real life.
I can understand that people don’t like the lgbt+ actors in big hollywood movies but you have choice not watching that movie. A political party can directly control your life if you happen to be anything except the things they want you to be. It’s not hard to understand.
If we go middle then all is lost to the far right. They have gone beyond the line that it is insane. Because it impacts real life.
Denying the holocaust, earth is flat or saying homosexuality is an illness, for example, is that free speech or just lies that might get people “cancelled” (or voted in politics)?
What is this ‘far right’ you keep talking about? Maybe you have a different definition than we do in Europe, but far right is a totalitarian dictatorship. What evidence do you have for this?
Your statement above makes no sense and is hysterical. If more people sought the middle ground then it would make for much more conducive political environment, and would also squeeze the extremists to the fringes, thus ensuring their irrelevance.
Can you name any politicians in the U.S who have either retained a seat or been voted in having publicly stated any of the above?
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