January 19, 2021 at 11:45 AM
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Like many other Americans, when Twitter made the decision to permanently ban the account of the current president (this article will be the last time I’ll have to say that!) my reaction was immediate relief. Although I agree with the analysis that charging the president with criminal incitement is doubtful given the standard in
, morally, banning this president from the private platform of Twitter seemed altogether appropriate. Of course, many of the president’s cult supporters responded to the Twitter ban by claiming that free speech was under some kind of threat, which is obvious nonsense since Twitter is a private actor. More alarming to me, however, was not the inevitable cult response by MAGAites but the fact that otherwise reasonable people were also expressing serious alarm at Twitter’s reasonable decision.
ACLU Speaks Up on ‘Unchecked Power’ of Big Tech After Banning Trump, Killing Parler
Fears of the monopolistic power of Big Tech became realized this week when Democrat-oriented giants Amazon, Google, and Apple to crush emerging competitor Parler, and after the political purge of Twitter and Facebook who deplatformed the President of the United States, along with hundreds of thousands of his supports by deleting their social media accounts.
Surprisingly, even the traditionally partisan leftwing nonprofit,
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), has found the courage to speak up against the Silicon Valley cartel’s crackdown on free speech, as well as their organized racketeering to put
The future of Section 230 and internet speech after Trump
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) co-wrote the internet speech law known as Section 230. He believes attempts to change it could have unintended consequences.
(J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press )
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Debates about content moderation, especially on social media, have been a background hum throughout Donald Trump’s presidency. Early criticisms of his
tone and comportment on the campaign trail morphed into more tangible worries about what a smartphone-happy commander in chief meant for America (
Did he just
threaten nuclear war in a tweet?) and reached a fever pitch in 2020 as he used social media to spread misinformation, first