Well, let’s see if the Republicans can prove these platforms are intentionally suppressing conservative speech like they claim. There’s a big difference between censoring hate speech and legitimate conservative speech.
By these actions, the GOP seems to be (inadvertently) implying that there's little difference between the two.
I'm not sure where to find "legitimate conservative speech" after William F. Buckley was buried.
William F Buckley was a man on the island within the conservative movement even in the 1970s and 80s, and even though his show was on PBS, many conservatives hated PBS, even though PBS showed, better quality shows than the commercial stations at that time and still do frankly.
While I despised Buckley's supercilious arrogance and smug certainty, I admired his erudition and principled conservatism. I think the closest avatar Americans have currrently is George Will. And George is a baseball guru, too!
OK, I'll jump in. Everything wrong with the GOP stems from Trump.
They put themselves in this kill box. If they support him, and he wins the nomination, they lose the general election. Again. Just like 2022.
They don't support him and he loses, he starts braying about the "rigged" primary, and how he won by a larger margin than in 2020. Then he either trashes the winner or runs on a 3rd party, splitting the conservative vote, and the GOP loses the general election. Again. And Again.
Right now, he's responsible for all of it. He's poison, has been poison his entire life. He dirties or kills everything and everyone he touches. And today's GOP not only touched him, they got in bed with him. Now they have to lie in it. Face down. With him on top.
This is just BS performative nonsense designed to feed red meat to the masses who - along with too many in congress - don't seem to understand that suppression of free speech CAN ONLY BE PERFORMED BY THE GOVERNMENT.
OK, I'll jump in. Everything wrong with the GOP stems from Trump.
They put themselves in this kill box. If they support him, and he wins the nomination, they lose the general election. Again. Just like 2022.
They don't support him and he loses, he starts braying about the "rigged" primary, and how he won by a larger margin than in 2020. Then he either trashes the winner or runs on a 3rd party, splitting the conservative vote, and the GOP loses the general election. Again. And Again.
Right now, he's responsible for all of it. He's poison, has been poison his entire life. He dirties or kills everything and everyone he touches. And today's GOP not only touched him, they got in bed with him. Now they have to lie in it. Face down. With him on top.
This is just BS performative nonsense designed to feed red meat to the masses who - along with too many in congress - don't seem to understand that suppression of free speech CAN ONLY BE PERFORMED BY THE GOVERNMENT.
Boneheads - all of them.
Absolutely. 100% political theater. One of the smaller companies may get sacrificed to appease the masses, but Apple, Google and the rest will do their part and participate in this farce. I just find it hilarious how freaked out everyone is getting. All will be fine with Apple.
Why don’t they ask him why his otherwise progressive company is so nineteenth century in it’s attitude toward labor unions. His recent memo to employees could have come from the desk of one of the robber barons who called out the armed goons against strikers in the 1800s. “Think Different” Apple. Make unions your partners like in Germany, not your enemy, like every other corporate knee- jerker.
Now THAT would be something the tech CEOs (generally, and in particular Musk) should be made to answer questions about.
“ Notably, the Committee didn't request information from Twitter CEO Elon Musk”
How to say, not a serious hearing on the topic while not saying, “we’re just posing”.
They don’t need to subpoena him. He’s already released evidence of Twitter under previous ownership colluding with government officials to suppress certain views. Look up The Twitter Files from the past few months. And Twitter under his watch clearly isn’t going to collude with other Big Tech companies anymore. So why should Twitter be part of this investigation?
The classic fishing expedition. They know the premise for wanting to see the communications is fake. They're just hoping to find something embarrassing that they can leak.
So all the dissenting opinions from doctors about the Covid response and lockdowns being suppressed didn’t happen?
The classic fishing expedition. They know the premise for wanting to see the communications is fake. They're just hoping to find something embarrassing that they can leak.
So all the dissenting opinions from doctors about the Covid response and lockdowns being suppressed didn’t happen?
Jim Jordan is supposedly investigating collusion/coercion between the government and tech companies. Tech companies moderating their own platforms isn't what's being investigated although I'm sure Jordan/GOP are going to twist themselves into a pretzel to try and blur the lines in the media. Jordan doesn't currently possess any real information that would warrant this type of investigation. Musk/GOP lamely tried to create a reason with the 'Twitter Files' but the only government figure that appeared to be attempting to coerce/collude with tech companies to suppress information was Donald Trump.
maasj said: They don’t need to subpoena him. He’s already released evidence of Twitter under previous ownership colluding with government officials to suppress certain views. Look up The Twitter Files from the past few months.
The 'Twitter Files' were a big nothing burger. Twitter is a private company and can moderate/censor whatever it wants on its own platform. Notice how Musk himself believes he can make decisions on who is allowed to post on Twitter and who isn't despite the fact that he tried to insinuate there was something wrong with that when done by the previous management.
“ Notably, the Committee didn't request information from Twitter CEO Elon Musk”
How to say, not a serious hearing on the topic while not saying, “we’re just posing”.
They don’t need to subpoena him. He’s already released evidence of Twitter under previous ownership colluding with government officials to suppress certain views. Look up The Twitter Files from the past few months. And Twitter under his watch clearly isn’t going to collude with other Big Tech companies anymore. So why should Twitter be part of this investigation?
I looked up "The Twitter Files" -
Elon Musk tweeted that Twitter had acted "under orders from the government," though Taibbi reported that he found no evidence of government involvement in the laptop story, tweeting, "Although several sources recalled hearing about a 'general' warning from federal law enforcement that summer about possible foreign hacks, there's no evidence—that I've seen—of any government involvement in the laptop story."[5][31]His reporting seemed to undermine a key narrative promoted by Musk and Republicans that the FBI pressured social media companies to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop stories.[5][38]Musk further claimed that this content moderation violated theFirst Amendment. However, legal experts refuted the idea that content moderation by a private company violates the First Amendment, as it only restricts government actors.[39] David Loy, legal director for the First Amendment Coalition, said that Twitter is legally able to choose what speech is allowed on their site, noting that both the Biden campaign, which was not part of the government, and the Trump White House could request specific content moderation actions.[32]
OK, I'll jump in. Everything wrong with the GOP stems from Trump.
They put themselves in this kill box. If they support him, and he wins the nomination, they lose the general election. Again. Just like 2022.
They don't support him and he loses, he starts braying about the "rigged" primary, and how he won by a larger margin than in 2020. Then he either trashes the winner or runs on a 3rd party, splitting the conservative vote, and the GOP loses the general election. Again. And Again.
Right now, he's responsible for all of it. He's poison, has been poison his entire life. He dirties or kills everything and everyone he touches. And today's GOP not only touched him, they got in bed with him. Now they have to lie in it. Face down. With him on top.
Good enough to motivate you?
That's not really true. Mr. Trump has indeed coopted the GOP for his own purposes and sent them tumbling fully into the land of alternative facts, but he's done so by saying the GOP's quiet things out loud. The fundamentals were already there within the party. The GOP's romance with V. Putin goes back at least to 2014, when GOP talking points negatively comparing Obama to Putin's "strong leadership" (in the form of bombing Syrians and creating a wave of refugees into western Europe) came to the fore. A GOP-led House held scads of kangaroo court hearings about Benghazi for purely political purposes while Trump was still just a media side-show. Stephen Colbert coined the word truthiness in 2005 to mock the GOP's loose relationship with reality, a full decade before Trump's announcement of his candidacy was met with derision within the GOP, prior to their complete reversal and full embrace. So the soil was fertile before Mr. Trump planted his personal crop of poison ivy.
That said, he's the one who turned the use of social media as a means to spread false information into an art form. Because that practice generated churn which generated advertising revenue, those platforms were excruciatingly slow to respond and to hold Trump or any other political leaders to the platforms' own stated terms of service. Finally, a violent (and failed) insurrection served as a tipping point, Trump and Co were banned, and now the House GOP has their complaint that banning incitement is the same as banning conservative speech. One would hope that their un-ironic conflation of the two concepts will backfire in these hearings.
“ Notably, the Committee didn't request information from Twitter CEO Elon Musk”
How to say, not a serious hearing on the topic while not saying, “we’re just posing”.
They don’t need to subpoena him. He’s already released evidence of Twitter under previous ownership colluding with government officials to suppress certain views. Look up The Twitter Files from the past few months. And Twitter under his watch clearly isn’t going to collude with other Big Tech companies anymore. So why should Twitter be part of this investigation?
Because the information from Twit is cherrypicked by cherrypicked trolls, that’s why. The Twitter Farts prove nothing other than anything can be skewed when the complete context isn’t available. It's no different than individuals crying about election fraud (proven wrong). Or the individuals trying to compare Biden to the guy that stuffed toilets with government documents. Etc. It's all false equivalence and lies. I wager an independent investigation would find a fat lot of nothing.
A subpeona would also potentially reveal Musk’s own suppression and witch-hunting activities (which, given his documented behavior, is absolutely happening).
Also, for the last time... who gives two shits if they were supressing anything? These businesses are not public squares, nor public property, and are entitled to their own free speech rights given their structure as a legal “person”. Given that places like Twitter didn't sue, leak info, or publicly push back, one could surmise they didn't feel undue pressure from the government. (Which definitely has the power to censor a host of types of speech btw — so a government sponsored forum won’t help much).
PS - Musk would love to collude or get his snowflake tantrum bully way, it’s the other companies that won’t let him. Not the other way around.
OK, I'll jump in. Everything wrong with the GOP stems from Trump.
They put themselves in this kill box. If they support him, and he wins the nomination, they lose the general election. Again. Just like 2022.
They don't support him and he loses, he starts braying about the "rigged" primary, and how he won by a larger margin than in 2020. Then he either trashes the winner or runs on a 3rd party, splitting the conservative vote, and the GOP loses the general election. Again. And Again.
Right now, he's responsible for all of it. He's poison, has been poison his entire life. He dirties or kills everything and everyone he touches. And today's GOP not only touched him, they got in bed with him. Now they have to lie in it. Face down. With him on top.
Good enough to motivate you?
That's not really true. Mr. Trump has indeed coopted the GOP for his own purposes and sent them tumbling fully into the land of alternative facts, but he's done so by saying the GOP's quiet things out loud. The fundamentals were already there within the party. The GOP's romance with V. Putin goes back at least to 2014, when GOP talking points negatively comparing Obama to Putin's "strong leadership" (in the form of bombing Syrians and creating a wave of refugees into western Europe) came to the fore. A GOP-led House held scads of kangaroo court hearings about Benghazi for purely political purposes while Trump was still just a media side-show. Stephen Colbert coined the word truthiness in 2005 to mock the GOP's loose relationship with reality, a full decade before Trump's announcement of his candidacy was met with derision within the GOP, prior to their complete reversal and full embrace. So the soil was fertile before Mr. Trump planted his personal crop of poison ivy.
That said, he's the one who turned the use of social media as a means to spread false information into an art form. Because that practice generated churn which generated advertising revenue, those platforms were excruciatingly slow to respond and to hold Trump or any other political leaders to the platforms' own stated terms of service. Finally, a violent (and failed) insurrection served as a tipping point, Trump and Co were banned, and now the House GOP has their complaint that banning incitement is the same as banning conservative speech. One would hope that their un-ironic conflation of the two concepts will backfire in these hearings.
You have cogent arguments to support your belief that the GOP was already racist, homophobic, xenophobic and misogynyst before Trump made it acceptable to promote those beliefs in overt fashion. And I fully agree with that. Principled conservatism has become the red-headed stepchild of the GOP, and Trumpian extremism has become the Golden Child.
But post-Trump, elements in Congress, led by extremists like Jim Jordan, have decided that their path to victory in 2024 is best pursued by adding vengeance, mendacity and besmirchment to the standards they've embraced since they succeeded against the Blue Dog democrats in the south, by co-opting the white supremacist platform when LBJ was blamed for the Civil Rights Act, and the Blue Dogs voted for it.
OK, I'll jump in. Everything wrong with the GOP stems from Trump...
Arguably false. Much of the policies promoted by 45 were long-standing policy proposals of the GOP going back decades. The difference being the ham-fisted approach and saying the quiet parts out loud. You can go back to the administration when the original polycarbonate iBooks were out (Bush Jr), or when the PowerBook Duos were out (Gingrich), or going back to when the Mac Plus and Mac 512Ke were out (Reagan/Zappa):
You can even go back to before there was an Apple Computer, Inc. ("Democracy in Chains" - MacLean, "Twilight of Democracy" - Applebaum)
“ Notably, the Committee didn't request information from Twitter CEO Elon Musk”
How to say, not a serious hearing on the topic while not saying, “we’re just posing”.
They don’t need to subpoena him. He’s already released evidence of Twitter under previous ownership colluding with government officials to suppress certain views. Look up The Twitter Files from the past few months. And Twitter under his watch clearly isn’t going to collude with other Big Tech companies anymore. So why should Twitter be part of this investigation?
They kowtowed to Trump to block tweets he didn’t like that accurately named him. The former administration pressuring private business to censor speech that hurt its dear leaders feelings. Proving the descriptions accuracy along the way.
“
Trump's White House asked Twitter to remove Chrissy Teigen's expletive-filled tweet insulting the former president, ex-employee testifies”
OK, I'll jump in. Everything wrong with the GOP stems from Trump...
Arguably false. Much of the policies promoted by 45 were long-standing policy proposals of the GOP going back decades. The difference being the ham-fisted approach and saying the quiet parts out loud. You can go back to the administration when the original polycarbonate iBooks were out (Bush Jr), or when the PowerBook Duos were out (Gingrich), or going back to when the Mac Plus and Mac 512Ke were out (Reagan/Zappa):
You can even go back to before there was an Apple Computer, Inc. ("Democracy in Chains" - MacLean, "Twilight of Democracy" - Applebaum)
IOW - 45 was a symptom, not a cause.
I can't argue your opinion, since it basically agrees with mine. We've all known what and who the GOP represent for a long time.
But, the position the GOP finds itself in right now is ALL due to Trump and Trumpism. They're in a lose-lose trick bag, ie:
If they support Trump and he wins the nomination, the GOP loses the presidential election, and likely a lot of downstream elections in 2024.
If they don't, and he loses the nomination, he will do either of two things (or both). He will trash the nominee and claim the primary vote was rigged against him, and/or run as a third party candidate. Either will split the GOP electorate, causing widespread losses across the board in the 2024 general election.
So you see, the cynical and opportunistic embrace of Trump and Trumpism is solely to blame for what is to occur on November 7, 2024 and after. No matter who the GOP electorate ultimately chooses to nominate. Had the republican congress exercised one tiny bit of principled conservatism, they wouldn't be in danger of a generational loss of power.
Comments
They put themselves in this kill box. If they support him, and he wins the nomination, they lose the general election. Again. Just like 2022.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdhtmc67tsQ
Boneheads - all of them.
That said, he's the one who turned the use of social media as a means to spread false information into an art form. Because that practice generated churn which generated advertising revenue, those platforms were excruciatingly slow to respond and to hold Trump or any other political leaders to the platforms' own stated terms of service. Finally, a violent (and failed) insurrection served as a tipping point, Trump and Co were banned, and now the House GOP has their complaint that banning incitement is the same as banning conservative speech. One would hope that their un-ironic conflation of the two concepts will backfire in these hearings.
A subpeona would also potentially reveal Musk’s own suppression and witch-hunting activities (which, given his documented behavior, is absolutely happening).
Also, for the last time... who gives two shits if they were supressing anything? These businesses are not public squares, nor public property, and are entitled to their own free speech rights given their structure as a legal “person”. Given that places like Twitter didn't sue, leak info, or publicly push back, one could surmise they didn't feel undue pressure from the government. (Which definitely has the power to censor a host of types of speech btw — so a government sponsored forum won’t help much).
PS - Musk would love to collude or get his snowflake tantrum bully way, it’s the other companies that won’t let him. Not the other way around.
You can even go back to before there was an Apple Computer, Inc. ("Democracy in Chains" - MacLean, "Twilight of Democracy" - Applebaum)
IOW - 45 was a symptom, not a cause.
Trump's White House asked Twitter to remove Chrissy Teigen's expletive-filled tweet insulting the former president, ex-employee testifies”
If they don't, and he loses the nomination, he will do either of two things (or both). He will trash the nominee and claim the primary vote was rigged against him, and/or run as a third party candidate. Either will split the GOP electorate, causing widespread losses across the board in the 2024 general election.