There’s lots of bad takes and confusion on all sides about “free speech” and its relation to Twitter/social media. Free speech is a principle limiting government, not corporations. No social media platform would be usable if it used the 1st Amendment as a moderation guide, which Musk is quickly discovering.
▪️Some obvious examples of protected free speech that shouldn’t be allowed on a platform like Twitter include: pornography, doxxing, spam, bots/fake accounts used to artificially amplify something.
▪️Each of these would be protected speech from government interference, but if allowed unfettered on a social media platform would completely ruin the user’s experience. It would result in a cesspool, not a place where ideas are freely discussed and exchanged.
▪️What free speech advocates should want is a platform with a free speech “spirit.” A place where people can vigorously express all sorts of ideas, where the rules are clear and enforced objectively, not arbitrarily and without transparency.
▪️The problem with Twitter et al is their enforcement clearly favored some points of view over others. For example, Covid “disinformation” bans or the shutdown of the Hunter Laptop story. Even worse, the collaboration with government in enforcement (which is a free speech issue).
▪️The reason why we want places like Twitter to have vigorous, robust exchanges of ideas is that’s the best (sometimes only) way many of us have to discover the truth about what’s going on in the world.
▪️There were so many stories (Covington kid, Jussie Smollett, Russian collusion, Kyle Rittenhouse, etc) where the initial corporate media narratives were shot full of holes by internet sleuths and the sharing of evidence/battle of information on social media.
▪️If you knew where to look on Twitter, you were far ahead of the game on these issues than if you just read the NYT. There are some stories, like Rittenhouse, where you’d probably never get the truth without alternative voices on social media (like you found on this page).
▪️Of course, this can also go in the reverse direction, where people fall for false and misleading information and go down crazy rabbit holes. Finding the truth is hard, and the reality is many will fail at it. But finding the truth is impossible without a free exchange of ideas.
▪️The principle of free speech demands that no one use force to infringe upon another’s right to speech. Which primarily means curtailing government censorship attempts. The “spirit” of free speech means that a place respects and fosters the vigorous exchange of ideas.
▪️For example, a debate society has a free speech spirit, but with rules. They generally don’t allow the audience to shout at the debaters, blare music, or engage in sex acts during the debate. This would destroy the experience and harm its very purpose.
▪️Upholding free speech principles while also upholding rules on speech in one’s house are not conflicting ideas. It’s recognizing that the owner rightfully manages their own property, and allowing all 1st amendment speech in your home would turn it into a cesspool.
As with the leftist freak out over “banned books” this is not banning books, it’s still easy to get Harry Potter and bookstores should be able to limit whatever books they want for whatever reason. But not only does it show a double standard, the rationale is far less justifiable than removing certain content from school libraries. At least there the justification was the content of certain books are inappropriate for children, clearly not every book should be available in a school library. Here, there’s no argument about the content they just don’t like the author’s politics!
Because news came out about his letter to the FBI, revealing he was a nutcase. The letter was rambling and incoherent, claiming he was trained by the US military off the books, and that Walz had instructed him to kill Amy Klobuchar so he could run for Senate. None of it made any sense (Walz is not running for Senate) and none of the assassinations made any sense, even in a diabolical way.
Nearly all of his hit list was Democrats (including Walz) and abortion clinics, but he was supposedly working for Walz?! Plus, one of the guys he killed wasn’t even on his list, and others were no longer in office or deceased. None of it makes sense from any coherent angle.
Basically, it appears the guy was mentally ill and neither the left or right can use the incident to push their agendas anymore, so the story was dropped.
This is so dumb. First, this means LA began as Spanish land founded to support Spanish missions (i.e. colonialism). Which contradicts their entire premise. But the reality is that Los Angeles is a quintessential American city.
▪️When the US acquired California in the 1840s, LA was a small town of less than 2,000 people. It was basically nothing. It became large only after the gold rush and the railroads completed in the 1870-80s, which brought thousands of new settlers and a booming commercial center.
▪️But LA had a major issue limiting its growth, no water. It wasn’t until Mulholland found a water source and built an aqueduct down from Northern California that LA had the infrastructure to grow into a major city.
▪️Then, a combination of oil, real estate and the film industry caused it to boom in the early 1900s. Post WWII, industries like aerospace continued its spectacular growth. Calling this “Mexican land” is a brain dead take. Neither the Mexicans, Spanish nor ...
