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Jack Dorsey says he agrees with reversing Trump's Twitter ban

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Re: Jack Dorsey says he agrees with reversing Trump's Twitter ban

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The women of his country already saw what one term of Trump did to the rights they thought they had." I see very little connection between anything that might be deemed "unacceptable" speech by Trump and the imminent overturn of Roe . Other than the fact that he got elected.

His entire platform was "say shit to piss people off." It's what got him elected, and what allowed him to pack SCOTUS. That's not even hyperbole, their campaign tried very hard to replicate this success in 2020.

> His entire platform was "say shit to piss people off." It's what got him elected, and what allowed him to pack SCOTUS.

So now we're down to to "we should restrict the speech of people I don't agree with, which might get them elected."

Say...how did I end up on this hill, and why is it so slippery?

Re: Jack Dorsey says he agrees with reversing Trump's Twitter ban

#212

It's not surprising that someone who sounds like a sort of free speech absolutist agrees that permanent bans are bad for the idea of free and accessible speech. The problem I have with some free speech purists is that they give me a feeling that they are persons who are more often than not unaffected by speech that can be categorised as inciting hatred towards a people, and thus they see little to no problem with bei…

Too many double negatives, I don't get your message.

Re: Jack Dorsey says he agrees with reversing Trump's Twitter ban

#213

Jack is showing that he’s unprincipled. He doesn’t shape his decisions around principles, he shapes his ostensible “principles” around his decisions. The question they (Jack, but also Elon) ask themselves is not “what’s the principled decision to make?” but “What’s best for me in this moment?” and in the moment Trump was banned, banning Trump was the best decision for Jack. And now the best decision for Jack is not t…

Imagining there exist platonic principles to be adhered to is fundamentalism, not virtue. Principles are compressed representations pointing to virtue, not things in an of themselves to be reified and held.

Principles are not absolutes, principles can evolve. Principles are not mandatory, people can operate without principles.

I am arguing that Jack (and Elon) profess to be principled people (in this case, free speech) yet Jack is clearly demonstrating a radical shift in perspective without an accompanying radical shift in principles, which must only be the sign of someone who doesn’t follow principles.

How can Jack hold the same principled view today that he held 2 years ago but disavow the choices he made 2 years ago? If you compress radically different virtues you don’t get the same principles.

Re: Jack Dorsey says he agrees with reversing Trump's Twitter ban

#214

It's not surprising that someone who sounds like a sort of free speech absolutist agrees that permanent bans are bad for the idea of free and accessible speech. The problem I have with some free speech purists is that they give me a feeling that they are persons who are more often than not unaffected by speech that can be categorised as inciting hatred towards a people, and thus they see little to no problem with bei…

Trump was a fairly average right-wing politician. Another Bush, or McCain, or Romney would have nominated the same Supreme Court Justices and had more or less identical policy. The few times Trump went against the grain he was overruled in the House and Senate, and ultimately he peacefully transferred power to the next president despite the rioting after he lost the election. So the implicit argument that he was some…

So you’re saying this wanna be dictator failed with his coup attempt, so ultimately he had to "peacefully" transfer power. So there was no danger and we should move along, nothing to see here, just partisanship.

Do I need to explain what’s wrong with your reasoning?

Re: Jack Dorsey says he agrees with reversing Trump's Twitter ban

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of those phrases is told to groups of people that regularly worships guns in public. The other is not. Context counts for a lot.

One of those communications is aimed at people that regularly riot. Context counts for a lot.

Which group is that? Can you name them? Who is their leader? Trump told the Proud Boys specifically to "stand back and stand by". They are an armed group.

You are equating the Proud Boys with the amorphous "LGBTQ+ friends" community, and then saying that the latter "regularly riot". That's not tenable.

I think you are deliberately engaging in bad-faith arguments. You are literally saying "gay people are the same as organized armed militias." In fact, you said it's "worse."

Re: Jack Dorsey says he agrees with reversing Trump's Twitter ban

#216

Quoted post unavailable.

Removing him only removed him from your conversation. He is not silenced. Same with banning the Trump reddit forums, what this achieved was to shift them to their own platform where they, no longer hear opposing views or being challenged. And to me it seems worse than ever in their views and speech, shockingly though sometimes. Using something like the Paradox of tolerance logic is dangerous itself. People love to fi…

> Same with banning the Trump reddit forums, what this achieved was to shift them to their own platform where they, no longer hear opposing views or being challenged. And to me it seems worse than ever in their views and speech, shockingly though sometimes.

There is another aspect to this - the benefit to the rest of the world from not being derailed by memetic diarrhea. Trumpism absolutely paralyzed the mainstream discourse by swamping it with nonsense. Even if you were against the nonsense, you ended up having to deal with it, by addressing it or distancing yourself from it. It took much more empathy to read nuance in others' points and not simply write them off as more Trumpist nonsense. Also, see all the times that Trump had a position that had some merit, but yet the opposition Party still staked out a position contrary to it.

The concern isn't whether the Trumpists' dialog grows ever more extreme, but rather whether their numbers grow or diminish. Trumpism is made attractive by real problems, to which it promises simplistic not-even-wrong answers. The fundamental way to make it less attractive is to address those problems, making for a more compelling constructive alternative. This requires being able to debate workable solutions in good faith, without being derailed by the trolling attractor.

Twitter itself may or may not be a platform for constructive debate (their format is horrible and they mostly lucked into the position), but this is the overarching societal dynamic as I see it.

Re: Jack Dorsey says he agrees with reversing Trump's Twitter ban

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The women of his country already saw what one term of Trump did to the rights they thought they had." I see very little connection between anything that might be deemed "unacceptable" speech by Trump and the imminent overturn of Roe . Other than the fact that he got elected.

His entire platform was "say shit to piss people off." It's what got him elected, and what allowed him to pack SCOTUS. That's not even hyperbole, their campaign tried very hard to replicate this success in 2020.

OK, that's more indirect than I understood the point to be: you're saying that he used unacceptable speech to get elected, and that resulted in the imminent overturn of Roe.

I have to say that I'm very uncomfortable limiting any kind of speech on the grounds that it may get the wrong person elected.

If someone says something hateful and gets elected, that's just one of the flaws of democracy. But I haven't heard of any better system.

The U.S. has checks and balances to slow down the worst of it. I mean, given how much Trump wanted to do vs how much he actually did, it's pretty clear the system worked.

I'm pro-choice, but I also know that many people aren't, and the Constitution is certainly not clear on the point. So even though I don't want Roe overturned, it's basically the system working as designed.

Even perfect systems don't produce perfect outcomes all the time. If you have an idea for improvements to the system, I'm all ears, but limiting speech of political candidates is very likely a regression. It doesn't take much imagination to see how that could be turned against you.

Re: Jack Dorsey says he agrees with reversing Trump's Twitter ban

#218
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His entire platform was "say shit to piss people off." It's what got him elected, and what allowed him to pack SCOTUS. That's not even hyperbole, their campaign tried very hard to replicate this success in 2020.

> His entire platform was "say shit to piss people off." It's what got him elected, and what allowed him to pack SCOTUS. So now we're down to to "we should restrict the speech of people I don't agree with, which might get them elected." Say...how did I end up on this hill, and why is it so slippery?

Look if you think being a serial liar with unimaginable power to a common person and never having to be accountable for free speech (“I can’t show you my taxes” - that’s a good one) then society is broken. The megaphone of lies convinces stupid people who have the right to vote. It’s clear they don’t have the intellect to vote responsibly, and that can be attributed to Facebook and Twitter letting any miscreant or moron ingest intellectual poison.

Merrick Garland should be on the court and if you disagree then you are arguing in bad faith.

Re: Jack Dorsey says he agrees with reversing Trump's Twitter ban

#219

It's not surprising that someone who sounds like a sort of free speech absolutist agrees that permanent bans are bad for the idea of free and accessible speech. The problem I have with some free speech purists is that they give me a feeling that they are persons who are more often than not unaffected by speech that can be categorised as inciting hatred towards a people, and thus they see little to no problem with bei…

[deleted]

Re: Jack Dorsey says he agrees with reversing Trump's Twitter ban

#220
post #3

Official company statement at the time: "Permanent suspension of @realDonaldTrump": https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio... Jack Dorsey at the time: "Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Calls Trump Ban After Deadly Riot 'the Right Decision'": https://people.com/politics/twitter-ceo-jack-dorsey-addresse...

People can't change mind?

They can, but the question is whether that's what happened. I think Dorsey was always on the side of free speech in principle. Twitter used to market itself as "the free speech wing of the free speech party". [1]

He probably wasn't in a strong enough position to be able to resist the pressure to silence Trump.

[1]: https://amp.theguardian.com/media/2012/mar/22/twitter-tony-w...

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