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Twitter Permanently Suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Account

nytimes.com

61–70 of 218 posts

Re: Twitter Permanently Suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Account

#61
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should Twitter give up their right to freedom of expression and freedom of association? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights

Twitter is not a conscious being, and cannot experience the subjective feeling of being oppressed. I support maximal liberty for humans, and appropriate protection of those humans from corporations as well as the government. Corporations may be collections of people, but they're a lot more than that - which makes them not human - and in any case they are not loci of experience.

"The majority ruled that the Freedom of the Press clause of the First Amendment protects associations of individuals in addition to individual speakers, and further that the First Amendment does not allow prohibitions of speech based on the identity of the speaker. Corporations, as associations of individuals, therefore have free speech rights under the First Amendment. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

Re: Twitter Permanently Suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Account

#62

I don’t care what she said, it is not the job of private businesses to censor elected officials. And yes, I know they can but that does not mean they should .

Why should Twitter give up their right to freedom of expression and freedom of association? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights

Not sure they have to. Gjsman affirmed their right to freedom (they CAN), but would prefer that they exercised that freedom in a certain way (they SHOULD).

Believe it or not, government regulations don't have to be the solution to every little thing.

See saurik's comment below for more.

Re: Twitter Permanently Suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Account

#63

I don’t care what she said, it is not the job of private businesses to censor elected officials. And yes, I know they can but that does not mean they should .

Twitter has worldwide reach, so what if a citizen of another country is harmed due to misinformation posted by a US elected official? The citizens of that country didn't elect them.

She’s only elected to be a legislator in the House of Representatives. It’s not like she has a license to kill. That ought to have nothing to do with anything else, including her privileges on any random website.

Re: Twitter Permanently Suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Account

#64
post #27

Elected officials shouldn't have to rely on Twitter or other social media platforms to communicate with their constituencies. This woman seems like a loon to me, but she's a loon with a democratic mandate. If social media is going to be the default communication medium, then perhaps it needs regulation to clarify its relationship with elected officials.

> If social media is going to be the default communication medium

I don't think this is really true. Most people in the US don't use Twitter. Not to mention that many users are following entertainment based users or aren't fully consuming posts by those they follow.

Twitter is just an additional stream/supplement to town halls, email lists, websites, news coverage, etc.

Re: Twitter Permanently Suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Account

#65

No matter what their politics are, I would hope that all reasonable people can condemn cancel culture, regardless of the political alignment of the person being cancelled. I get a lot of value from Twitter because I follow a few awesomely interesting people, but I could probably get the same effect by bookmarking their blogs. People should have access to all information, and filter for themselves what is trash. I don…

Marjorie Taylor Greene is entitled to create her own Twitter. Not to use someone else’s Twitter.

Re: Twitter Permanently Suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Account

#66

I don’t care what she said, it is not the job of private businesses to censor elected officials. And yes, I know they can but that does not mean they should .

Also Twitter has now demonstrated they are completely ignorant to the Streisand Effect. This won’t change minds. This will only harden viewpoints and invite political and regulatory scrutiny.

Streisand effect only helps them in this case. They don't care about the content of the message or changing minds. They care about the message being tied to twitter and the damage to their brand.

Re: Twitter Permanently Suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Account

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has Twitter applied their rules fairly and evenly, or even tried to do so? Last I remember Maxine Waters was calling for public harassment without consequence.

Twitter isn't the government. Twitter isn't the government. Twitter isn't the government. Like it or not, they have a perfect right to terminate her account for any legal reason, including breach of contract. For the record, Twitter doesn't even need a "reason" as long as they don't terminate her for an illegal reason. This might be difficult to understand, but it's not censorship.

Just because Twitter has the right to do something doesn't make it right for them to do it. And that they have the right to do it also doesn't mean that people shouldn't be angry at them for having done it, or use their right to call them out for it. Twitter shouldn't be doing this stuff. You totally can defend their right to do it while damning their actually doing it... but that isn't what you are doing as the person you are arguing with didn't even claim they shouldn't be allowed to do it: they merely said they shouldn't do it.

Re: Twitter Permanently Suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Account

#69
I don't know who needs to hear this, but if a company suspends a member of the government who has a budget and staff for PR as a function of serving as a member of that government, then that person has not in any meaningful way been censored by the government. This is not the poster case for trying to prove tech has too much power. There's a long list of marginalized people suspended for no good reason who don't get to whine about it on C-SPAN or through their press office.

Re: Twitter Permanently Suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Account

#70
post #27

Elected officials shouldn't have to rely on Twitter or other social media platforms to communicate with their constituencies. This woman seems like a loon to me, but she's a loon with a democratic mandate. If social media is going to be the default communication medium, then perhaps it needs regulation to clarify its relationship with elected officials.

Ironically enough the last tweet I saw from her was promoting the idea that people who move from blue states to red should have to wait for 2 years before they're allowed to vote. You can't see her tweets any more since she's been kicked off* but this story adequately summarizes them - I picked a conservative news outlet to avoid the possibility of unfavorable media bias.

https://nypost.com/2021/12/29/rep-greene-suggests-a-national...

* It's really stupid that Twitter makes old tweets invisible. First they're easily accessible by other means to technically savvy people via archive.org or whatever, so this just throws barriers in the way of the least technically educated. Second, it fosters paranoia and mistrust because conversations about the tweets begin to resemble rumors rather than fact.

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