Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/05/27/trump-threatens-gop-control-of.html
“Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen.”
8 Likes
How dare they interfere with his lying! His bullshit and Russian trolls are the only thing keeping the lights on! Oh, and don’t even dream of making Donnie pay!
There, am I qualified to be a paid Republican shill?
44 Likes
Free speech does not protect you from people taking legal action against you for lying/slandering, yelling “fire” in a crowded movie theater or getting banned/rebuked from a non-government owned social media company.
Consitionalists love to talk about free speech up until the point they want to throw a fit about a coffee cup that says “Happy Holidays”. Another landmark “some animals are more equal than others” moment for them.
63 Likes
Whoever cheated the most did win, you orange assclown. And they’re trying it again.
53 Likes
I want to get off this ride.
53 Likes
Trumps free speech is not impinged by Twitter fact checking Trump. Trump is trying to regulate free speech rights of Twitter. So to be clear, Trump is trying to regulate or make illegal free speech.
61 Likes
I am interested, do platforms like Twitter and Facebook actually owe anyone a voice? Is there a legal precedent out there that says they do?
I think the issue is that they started out promising not to regulate anyone - when that proved bad for business, they realised doing the least they could possibly do (while making it seem like they were bending over backward) would be a necessary, erm, evil.
The hierarchy goes something like this:
Money
Right Wing hack speech
Vaccine and health care disinformation
Serial harassers and abusers
F*** everyone else
They think that’s bad, try being a PoC or gender minority on Social Media Platforms!
24 Likes
So your constitution begins and ends with the second amendment right? I mean, there wasn’t a first obviously.
27 Likes
IANAL. That said,
Sounds like a credible threat to me. Twitter and Facebook might be wise to file suit for declaratory judgment when someone who has the entire Department of “Justice” acting as his private law firm threatens to shut down a news medium for expressing a (very) modest bit of editorial judgment.
27 Likes
Freedom of the Press belongs to those who own one.
18 Likes
A great illustration of what a greedpig he is. Without the cesspits of Twitter and Facebook, the right-wing populist movement he surfs would be nowhere. But having companies run by feckless and somewhat sympathetic founders who allow him to fart out his lies and BS without consequence just isn’t good enough, and he’s willing to toss the First Amendment out the window to consolidate power.
Don’t get complacent, though. Remember Gessen’s first rule: Believe the autocrat – he means what he says. He (with the help of his more clever cronies) is going to try to follow through on this threat.
59 Likes
My question is, since he’s talking about “mail-in ballot fraud” again, will they put another warning on his fucking tweet, or will they be cowed by his tantrum?
Based on the people they have silenced when they’ve had the “courage” to, I’d say there isn’t. They are either too afraid to silence him, or they don’t really want to because his “antics” fill their bank accounts.
18 Likes
Think he can’t do it? Can he destroy asylum law? Can he enrich himself and his cronies at our expense? Can he destroy US diplomacy and trade? Sure he can.
13 Likes
Turn off Trump’s account. Twitter has the right to do that. It’s there platform.
16 Likes
More and more like Russia every day.
Can’t say I feel sorry for Twitter though.
8 Likes
No.
They are governed by their own TOS (which you can bet don’t give anyone an opening to sue them). They might be subject to discrimination laws, although bakeries apparently aren’t, and the banned user would have to belong to a protected category. They aren’t subject to “common carrier” regulation like phone companies. In general, businesses have very wide latitude to refuse to do business with individuals, except where a specific law is created.
19 Likes
Well, they are only governed by it if they want to enforce. Trump could have been kicked off twitter multiple times for factually incorrect statements. But they keep/gain audience every time he says something stupid.
25 Likes
Trump is circling the drain. He lost the Drudge Report, Howard Stern, that long blond haired mean lady whose name I can’t remember, and now Twitter is finally trying to put a separator on his combined sewer outfall of a twitter feed.
5 Likes
where do I pick up my prize, predicted this 14 hours ago, oh yeah the prize is country on fire, nevermind
21 Likes
Facebook is already the sad little corner of my internet space where my friends and relatives get further and further “red pilled” by alt-right idiocy. Might as well make it official, like AM radio was when I was younger. Let them go back to arguing with bizarre caricatures of progressives instead of real ones.
8 Likes
