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Twitter Permanently Suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Account

nytimes.com

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Re: Twitter Permanently Suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Account

#71

Post by ekianjo »

krapp wrote: post #12
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #2

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 .

So you're saying no elected official should be bound by any laws, contracts or the terms of service of any organization, since doing so could be interpreted as "censorship?" That if anyone else had said what Marjorie Taylor Greene had said, they would be subject to action by Twitter under its own stated policies, but the rules just shouldn't apply to her?

> they would be subject to action by Twitter under its own stated policies

When people say "hang the rich" on Twitter do you see them getting banned? Twitter specifically says they do not accept appeal to violence, but in reality they only censor the language they don't agree with.

Re: Twitter Permanently Suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Account

#72

Post by showerrain »

graememcc wrote: post #15
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #2

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.

That's the problem of the other country to defend its citizens.

Re: Twitter Permanently Suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Account

#73

Post by logicalmonster »

jdavis703 wrote: post #48
logicalmonster wrote: post #36

I don't care about the musings of idiotic politicians (and most of them are indeed idiots), but it rubs me the wrong way that Twitter is preventing the people from hearing where their tax dollars are going, and that Twitter has decided to be the arbiter of truth for society. Also, according to the article, it seems like her strikes were for subjective comments. If this is the case, that strikes me as doubly wrong. Ac…

> Are they going to ban politicians from discussing budget charts or crime statistics in public debates if they decide that it's misleading with no objective basis? I’m assuming the “government database” is VEARS, which is using raw, unverified data. It would be like if someone took NextDoor or Shotspotter reports to derive crime statistics.

Imperfect data is still useful for understanding the world, is it not? To use your example: I'm not completely sure that Shotspotter reports are 100% accurate, but I'd be hesitant to move to a neighborhood that was reported to have a steady burst of gunshots, wouldn't you?

In fact, speaking on data, couldn't we say that almost all data is imperfect to some extent? Isn't this especially true of Covid-related data?

Re: Twitter Permanently Suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Account

#74

Post by bootlooped »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #5
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #2

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.

I don't think history has proved the Streisand Effect materializes here. When Twitter and others deplatformed Trump after January 6, his direct lines to his followers were dissolved. He had a subscription email or something that was a failure. I think he's trying to launch a social network soon. He has never managed to get as big of microphone as he had before.

Re: Twitter Permanently Suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Account

#75

Post by krapp »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #54

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…

This isn't cancel culture. She violated Twitter's TOS and her account was suspended.

edit: one of two accounts. Her personal account, not her official account.

Re: Twitter Permanently Suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Account

#76

Post by aDfbrtVt »

The post that got her suspended claimed “extremely high amounts of Covid vaccine deaths.” per the NYT article. I was unable to find a screenshot of the original tweet, seems to have been deleted.

A cursory look at the raw VAERS data from the CDC[1] shows:

Reports of adverse events to VAERS following vaccination, including deaths, do not necessarily mean that a vaccine caused a health problem. (...) During this time, VAERS received 10,688 reports of death (0.0022%) among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine. CDC and FDA clinicians review reports of death to VAERS including death certificates, autopsy, and medical records.

In contrast, the CDC[2] estimates that 817k people have died of Covid-19 in the US which puts the mortality at 248 deaths per 100k individuals. Currently, an unvaccinated individual has 20x the risk of dying from Covid-19 than someone with a booster.

I am no first amendment scholar, but spreading lies that increase people rate of mortality by 20x seems pretty close to the "shouting fire in a crowded theater" exception to protected speech. That puts aside the fact that Twitter is a private platform, thus first amendment laws do not apply.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/ad... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/mortality-overview.htm

Re: Twitter Permanently Suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Account

#77

Post by gjsman-1000 »

gpu_explorer wrote: post #53
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an ideal world, because they are now the public square effectively, they should be held to a different stricter standard. As well as other big tech companies (App Store, etc.)

Twitter is not the public square. They app stores are not the public square. No one takes that argument seriously because it's not serious. Is it censorship that most existing book publishers are highly unlikely to publish a book of your or my political opinions? Should a publisher, or anyone else, be compelled to promote speech they disagree with? Would you want someone to compel you to write or publish lies? Marjor…

I’m not talking about just Twitter or just this issue. And I specified “in an ideal world” which we aren’t in.

In an ideal world, big tech would have more regulation and would have, due to their size, certain regulations on their behavior and who they choose not to do business with, not just in the political sphere.

An example (to draw an extreme example to make my point), Visa and MasterCard (due to their size) couldn’t just say screw OnlyFans. They are too large and influential especially together.

Re: Twitter Permanently Suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Account

#78

Post by socrates1998 »

We kicked out a bunch of traitors from Congress during the Civil War era, so banning a person from twitter who is actively trying to foster a Civil War by promoting lies and misinformation seems pretty mild.

Banning her or anyone like her who spreads lies is perfectly within Twitter's terms of service. The issues is doing it consistently.

I can't tell you how many times I have reported lies about elections and Covid on twitter and almost always it's "We found nothing wrong with this".

Re: Twitter Permanently Suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Account

#79

Post by sebow »

gpu_explorer wrote: post #19
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #2

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

Simple: Because they're kind of regarded (through the law, by the courts) as a "public space".

Twitter should not censor anybody off their platform when the courts consider them a public forum, let alone elected officials.

Re: Twitter Permanently Suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Account

#80

Post by darkstar999 »

psyc wrote: post #20
MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not censoring for a private company to refuse service to someone. I don't agree with government compelling speech for a private company either.

Why is Twitter the speaker when MTG tweets, but Verizon is not the speaker when I call my mom?

Because Verizon isn't broadcasting your conversation to the world.
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