Private corporations have a single motivation - profit!
Please don't feel good about Trump ban on privately held social media. I hope we've not entered the times when Twitter or Zucker are the custodians of free speech or human rights.
@h_tejas @prasoon The ban is a good thing precisely for the reason you give: private companies should not control who gets to interact with a public servant. Twitter *should* be out of the loop. https://social.privacytools.io/@resist1984/105526982055281931
@resist1984 @h_tejas
1. Any and all social media, even federated, community owned ones are at best recommendation engines and often just propaganda machine.
2. The Internet is a pubic utility, not social media.
3. The State should use open protocols to communicate with the citizens (even state owned products would easily fail to address diverse accessibility issues and they often do)...
@resist1984 @h_tejas
4. Twitter didn't ban hate from their platform, just a person who has now lost power to another person.
5. The ban is not good or bad, it should be irrelevant. It's a private entity that's been awarded the privilege to exist and profit its shareholders and a few employees.
@resist1984 @h_tejas
6. The people, through the elected representatives, give it that privilege. It's not good to celebrate (or even acknowledge) these private entities' assumed privilege to grant or deny any citizen's right to exist on their platform.
7. Since emotions make for bad governance, let's keep religion and social media cults out of the State's business.
@resist1984 @h_tejas
I would want to live in a world where people can take Twitter/Facebook (their owners, decision makers, employees) to court for spreading hate, misinformation or sabotaging public discourse (and win!). Not a world where "Twitter bans Trump" is celebrated. I trust the idea of justice prescribed by the Constitution/Judiciary not necessarily the weird ideas that may exist in the head of some executive in a private company. No redemption there for me.
@prasoon @h_tejas 6. Having politicians on #Twitter acting in the capacity of their public office is inherently an offense on free speech, as the government is then the agent of censorship. They outsource to twtr who then blocks speech from the public. So of course getting a politician off twtr is cause for celebration
@h_tejas @prasoon point 7 contradicts 6, and point 7 is the sensible one. The state should not be using a private walled garden that it does not control. When twtr banned me, I could theoretically sue the /gov/ (not twtr) for violating 1st amend. b/c the politicians us it for public business. My case would be as weak as the extent of control the gov has over twtr.
@resist1984 @h_tejas
Yes. Sadly, we are celebrating Twitter action not an instance of an elected official adopting a more democratic means of engagement. A private company banned a lying politician about to be impeached, I'm failing to see joy there.
I would celebrate if say Biden quit Twitter and created a profile on a Masto instance hosted by the government.
@prasoon @h_tejas 4. twtr didn't ban /all/ hate, but it banned /some/ hate by blocking Trump. 5. The ban is a win for free speech. TWTR banned me & others, who could not microblog to our representitive. The ban pushes Trump onto another platform which could potentially be publicly accessible (unlike the private walled garden of twtr)
@h_tejas @prasoon "#Twitter is not a public utility" https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2018/03/twitter-is-not-a-public-utility