I think you are, deliberately or not, leaving out important context (e.g. Twitter did remove the tweet from the Malaysian ex-prime minister), but regardless, even if I fully accept your point that Twitter and FB don't apply their rules fairly, you're still left with the fact that the only people who really need a "free speech" social media platform are folks that are mad that they can't demand the killings of millions or that they can't display fake severed heads. And literally every one of these "free speech" platforms (Parler, Gab, Voat) was immediately turned into a cesspool of conspiratorial rantings, hatred and racism.
Voat was probably my "favorite" of all. Literally the only reason it got any traffic were people were mad they could no longer post to r/fatpeoplehate.
twitter didn't remove it initially and must have done so only after backlash pointing out their hypocrisy. Opponents of Trump have had free reign the last four years to incite violence against him and his supporters. Once you label your opponents nazis you can say what you like as far as the tech giants are concerned.
This is the specific sort of muddying via association that's often used. Suddenly, trump is a literal swastika flashing nazi, and that's why twitter banned him.
Associating people with the worst of whatever group you can lump them in, then following up with "they're that guy"
No, Trump is not a literal swastika-flashing Nazi.
BUT, there are literal groups of swastika-flashing Nazis that do support Trump. Targeting these people with harassment should be encouraged, NOT because they support Trump, but because they are Nazis.
Trump and non-nazi Trump supporters MUST NOT be harassed by simple association, EXCEPT to the extent that they are themselves protecting the nazis, or trying to muddy the waters.
Because a lot of people ARE muddying the waters from the "Trump" side as well: instead of recognizing that many attacks are against literal nazis who happen to support Trump, they act as if the attacks are against Trump supporters in general, or that people are calling a crowd nazis because they support Trump, not because they were chanting "jews will not replace us". Or claiming that Trump, who said about the crowd chanting "jews will not replace us" and the antifa counter-protest "there are fine people on both sides", was not literally defending nazis in this case.
He's not a Nazi although he's willing to ally with them, but I believe he is a Fascist, on the basis that he has nothing but contempt for democracy and the rule of law (among other things).
He pulled exactly the same 'stop the steal' crap in 2016, claiming massive voter fraud then as well, as a pre-emptive strike in case he lost. But hang on, if he actually believed there was massive voter fraud, how come he did nothing about it for four years eve when he controlled both houses? Where were his reforms of the voting system, increased supervision of voting and vote counting? why no improvements to ballot security and statistical analysis to identify the fraud (the current analyses show it's negligible). If he actually believed what he is saying about vote fraud, why didn't he act on it?
He did nothing about this for two reasons. First he knows there isn't any significant vote fraud, this is well established and was not a partisan issue before he started talking about it. Second, if he reformed voting security, he would become responsible for preventing any potential fraud and would be unable to blame failings in the system on anyone else, taking away his excuse.
> Trump and non-nazi Trump supporters MUST NOT be harassed by simple association, EXCEPT to the extent that they are themselves protecting the nazis, or trying to muddy the waters.
That's the thin end of the wedge though.
- Muslims must not be harassed by simple association, except where they muddy the waters to protect Islamists.
- Feminists must not be harassed by simple association, except where they muddy the waters to protect transphobes.
- Conservatives must not be harassed by simple association, except where they muddy the waters to protect an anti-gay rights agenda.
"Muddying the water" is dangerously vague. Who adjudicates between good-faith arguments and those intended to give cover for extremists?
Knew this was going to get downvotes. How very dare I apply the standards of the left to BLM. I've yet to see a good argument that this isn't s double standard though - your actions either aid bad actors, or they don't, whether through explicit support or indifference.
Ron Paul's page was never banned, blocked or censored in any way for people viewing his content. Admin rights on his page were mistakenly blocked, and reopened a few hours later. I in know way see that targeting the right, especially since I hear plenty of bitching from people on the left who also think it's some sort of conspiracy whenever they get blocked (e.g. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2019/04/24/facebook-whil... )
It's kind of a truism these days that whenever people are blocked or banned on social media, they blame it on some underlying conspiracy to ban their version of political thought. Another commenter put it best: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25818108
"It only seems that way to you because you’re seeing only one side getting arbitrarily suspended."
Good catch I should have looked into that a little deeper. It might be a case of confirmation bias.
There is one point that Tim Pool made that I think still stands. you have to moderate such that all content is within the Overton window. Only the left and right have different views on what does and does not fit inside this window. For example right wingers want to argue about the role of trans rights in womens sports. Much of the left and Twitter consider this to be outside of the Overton window.
I literally posted just a few comments up a story about people on the left complaining they were banned on Facebook from discussing racism. But anecdotes are relatively useless, another commenter posted an actual study showing there is no anti-conservative bias.
But even the conspiratorial mindset that "Oh look, this accident must be deliberate!!" is really annoying because it completely ignores the consequences of the mistake. Ron Paul (or anyone) not being able to post for a few hours is some big abuse of power, when none of his existing posts were unreadable? I've had power outages in urban settings that lasted longer.
For organizations that donate 95% towards one political party, some how they have managed to be extra-ordinarily neutral. If that is your thesis - I disagree.
Voat was probably my "favorite" of all. Literally the only reason it got any traffic were people were mad they could no longer post to r/fatpeoplehate.