Good for Twitter.
Exactly!
I would suggest that if one wants to talk about censorship on a general, non-governmental level, and leave it there, one shouldn’t compare Twitter to the Weimar Republic.
My bad-should have put a 
at the end of my post.
The ramifications of this are interesting. Now, self-evident rights and constitutional freedoms are left to the discretion not of elected government bodies, but corporations that own and control the venues for expression and even behavior.
The first chink in this armor came with the development of shopping malls, where “Main Street” became private property. It was a natural evolution to this, and it is easy to predict its future course.
“So this is how liberty dies… with thunderous applause.”
– Padme Amidala, Revenge Of The Sith
The “ramifications” of this is that the so-called “alt-right” has been denied one of their many fortresses, paid for and maintained by others, that they used to cravenly attack people they disagree with. They were not denied access for their message, but for their methods.
I thought the same thing as Thelma Lou. It seemed kind of weird that a probably obsolete Usenet term was in use again, but I keep finding that past notions and terminology mean entirely different things nowadays.
It means those damn Millenials are the new right-wing whackos.
The Pedant’s Revolt, lead by Which Tyler…
A fundamentally ignorant perspective. Constitutional protections were ever only applicable to State force. I can eject you from my store or my front yard for any reason I damn well please, except for a fairly narrow list of protected classes, of which ideological alignment isn’t one.
But the persecution narrative is strong in this one. It must be nice to reject objective reality and substitute your own ideologically compatible one.
Since this is outside the sphere of Constitutional protections, the market solution holds: find a platform that welcomes you. Vote with the feet, and with the dollar. If it becomes an echo chamber, well, that’s too bad. That’s the marketplace of ideas for you.
Seems a bit hypocritical to ban these people while happily providing a platform for your president to peddle his scumbag agendas.
I don’t hypocrisy is a business liability, unless it interferes with your marketing.
This is Twitter. They try to make money. If they have to balance the majority of their customers who aren’t alt-righters with the minority who are, the dollars make the decision practically for them. Hence, no hypocrisy in any sense that matters: making more money rather than less.
This is not the League of Women Voters. This is not a public foundation. This is not a civic organization. This is a business. If it’s legal, and it makes more money than the alternative, it’s inevitable.
(It’s not madness, either. It’s Sparta.)
It’s not ignorant at all. In fact, you seem to have misunderstood the comment you replied to. The differences is that there used to be more of a public space in which the only restriction was state force. And that space is increasingly vanishing (or in the case of online, never really existed).
Yes, you can kick people out of your store, because it’s not public, but then they can stand on the sidewalk and say whatever they want.
But the internet is entirely composed of people’s stores. There’s no place to speak that is subject only to the state’s control where the first amendment protects you. You can start your own website, but that’s not a public space either. It requires, at a minimum, the cooperation of telecommunications companies to carry your traffic.
I’m not saying that Twitter should be forced to keep people on their service that they don’t want. But the problem is that there’s no place on the internet (and increasingly vanishing places in the real world) in which you are free to speak.
Interestingly, it was in a conservative publication (can’t recall the name) where I read the following (paraphrased):
You have the right to say whatever you want, and I have the right to decline to provide you with a platform from which to say it.
I agree, and have no issue with it working both ways.
Very nicely put! It has long been a desire of mine to see the issues of public vs. private space on the internet debated and, hopefully, settled in court rulings. There are too many open questions currently.
They can call it ‘Bitter’.
No, it’s Twitter.
They call me Twitter Salad.
“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”
– Sinclair Lewis
My point was not about this specific issue, but the general fact that America has been so privatized, that it is increasingly rare for a person to be engaging in any activity in a public venue where the constitutional rights hold sway. You can’t be heard shouting on a soapbox anymore, because there is no public place to put the soapbox where people can hear you. Any person who is in a public place has his windows rolled up an the AC on and his music blaring. And even public spaces often have “protest zones” well removed from the people you wish to address.
This is such total nonsense.
If the alt right had something truthful and non-hateful to say, they have a million places from which to shout it out. As it stands, they’re stuck with a well-known website, some radio talk shows and an office in the White House, which permits them to say anything they want, regardless of how false and hateful it is.
From Rationalwiki: