Twitter's double standard wrt Louis Farrakhan

[rogue06]

Source: Twitter Won’t Suspend Louis Farrakhan For His Tweet Comparing Jews To Insects

Twitter will not suspend controversial Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan for a tweet comparing Jews to insects, the company said in a statement to BuzzFeed News.

Farrakhan, who has been dogged by accusations of anti-Semitism throughout his career, yesterday tweeted a video clip of a speech in which he denied that he was anti-Semitic, with the caption, “I’m not an anti-Semite. I’m anti-Termite.”


Source

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But they sure are quick to ban conservatives for the slightest thing and often embarrassed into re-instating them. For instance conservative commentator Candace Owens was banned by Twitter for re-tweeting some of the incredibly racist comments the new New York Times editor Sarah Jeong has posted in the past while Sarah Jeong was never banned for posting them in the first place and then was forced to apologize and reinstate her 12 hours later due to the backlash for doing so.

Actually I wonder if this is part of an intimidation campaign designed to let them know they're being closely monitored and better be careful.

Oh, and Twitter was recently busted (by a liberal news outlet of all things) for secretly shadow banning a number of conservatives including prominent Republicans in Congress.

[Mountain Man]

What are the advantages and disadvantages of regulating companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. as a public utility and requiring them to operate with full disclosure and public accountability?

That might be a good question for its own thread.

[Roy]

What are the advantages and disadvantages of regulating companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. as a public utility and requiring them to operate with full disclosure and public accountability?

It would be utterly inconsistent with having "the federal government stripped back to the bare minimum and leave it up to the states and local communities to take care of themselves."

[Mountain Man]

It would be utterly inconsistent with having "the federal government stripped back to the bare minimum and leave it up to the states and local communities to take care of themselves."

"Bare minimum" would include a regulated free market, you prig, unless you want phone companies to be able to pick and choose their customers based on arbitrary criteria. If Verizon is prohibited from censoring my phone conversations and text messages then why shouldn't Twitter be prohibited from censoring and "shadow banning" its users?

Try having a real conversation for a change instead of playing another impotent game of "gotcha".

[Roy]

"Bare minimum" would include a regulated free market, you prig, unless you want phone companies to be able to pick and choose their customers based on arbitrary criteria. If Verizon is prohibited from censoring my phone conversations and text messages then why shouldn't Twitter be prohibited from censoring and "shadow banning" its users?

Try having a real conversation for a change instead of playing another impotent game of "gotcha".

It's hard to have a real conversation with some-one incapable of recognising and admitting when their views are inconsistent, such as wanting to strip the government back to a bare minimum and at the same time suggesting an increase to its regulatory powers.

[Leonhard]

What are the advantages and disadvantages of regulating companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. as a public utility and requiring them to operate with full disclosure and public accountability?

That might be a good question for its own thread.

Could we even implement that without taking away anonymity? Phone lines can be tapped, and they're often, at least in many cases, corresponding to an actual user. Facebook, Twitter, Google accounts, even though these companies intend for them to correspond to an actual person, can be sock puppets. Meaning if a person does something illegal, no prosecution is possible of any kind, as its just ... a dummy account, controlled by a some anonymous person through an untraceable VPN (or TOR which the NSA can't beat - at least according to the Snowden leaks).

If the government seeks to regulate Facebook, Google and Twitter, I worry they might eventually ask for cryptography access, backdoors, monitoring and that all accounts you create be traceable back to you somehow.

I personally don't have anything to hide, but I'd be sad to see anonymity go away from the internet. It'd be a too big price to pay in my opinion.

[Mountain Man]

It's hard to have a real conversation with some-one incapable of recognising and admitting when their views are inconsistent, such as wanting to strip the government back to a bare minimum and at the same time suggesting an increase to its regulatory powers.

Again, a "bare minimum" federal government would include the authority to regulate interstate commerce in whatever form it happens to take. You seem to confuse the term "bare minimum" with "nonexistent" (Ignorant Roy is confused? I'm shocked! Shocked, I say! ). "Bare minimum" means "as large as absolutely necessary, and no larger". Of course the debate then centers on what is "absolutely necessary" with regards to a federal government, hence my question: "What are the advantages and disadvantages of regulating companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. as a public utility and requiring them to operate with full disclosure and public accountability?"

Now, if you have something meaningful to say then I will consider your remarks and respond in kind; if all you want to do is wave your hands around and nitpick and in general act like a jackass then you can expect no further response from me in this thread.

Deal?

[Mountain Man]

Could we even implement that without taking away anonymity? Phone lines can be tapped, and they're often, at least in many cases, corresponding to an actual user. Facebook, Twitter, Google accounts, even though these companies intend for them to correspond to an actual person, can be sock puppets. Meaning if a person does something illegal, no prosecution is possible of any kind, as its just ... a dummy account, controlled by a some anonymous person through an untraceable VPN (or TOR which the NSA can't beat - at least according to the Snowden leaks).

If the government seeks to regulate Facebook, Google and Twitter, I worry they might eventually ask for cryptography access, backdoors, monitoring and that all accounts you create be traceable back to you somehow.

I personally don't have anything to hide, but I'd be sad to see anonymity go away from the internet. It'd be a too big price to pay in my opinion.

You seem to think that I am advocating punishing individual users. What I'm talking about is prohibiting a company like Facebook or Twitter from implementing unreasonable censorship. What they're doing now is essentially like a phone company rigging it so that a conservative organization is no longer able to receive phone calls.