You imply there was some kind of due process, which there wasn't.
Perhaps it is fully within Twitter's legal rights as a private entity. That's not the issue. It's the practical implications that are terrifying. The power of censorship and influence Big Tech yields without any legal oversight is absolutely horrifying.
The practical implications of someone running their own blog are terrifying!
I mean, it's always good to have these thought exercises, but I think you're panicking a bit about the sky falling if the thought of a billionaire former president being banned from a microblog is what your mind is worried about in the current moment.
No, Twitter suspends millions of accounts, of varying notability. Obviously, they just don't get the attention that the President does.
You're clearly carefully picking words that frame the event as inconsequential. That nameless "microblog" is how millions of Americans get their news, lol.
> You imply there was some kind of due process, which there wasn't.
I'm glad you're so passionate about accountability, and you'll no doubt be shocked to hear how difficult it is to bring a legal case against a sitting president.
Clearly the way forward is to entrust silicon valley to regulate speech. Thanks for your insight.
By the way, "Two out of three Democrats also claim Russia tampered with vote tallies on Election Day to help the President – something for which there has been no credible evidence" [0], are you interested in holding anybody to account for that?
> Clearly the way forward is to entrust silicon valley to regulate speech. Thanks for your insight.
That's an unhelpful strawman, but I'm sorry if the tone of my response to you was not constructive and disincentivized you engaging with it more seriously.
For what it's worth, I would prefer if silicon valley companies relied on the court system to decide what content to censor (or rather, kept up any content they thought was legal until required not to by a court order). Of course, spam and data which exploits software vulnerabilities should be filtered without a court order, on the basis that no reasonable person wants to receive that.
My actual intended point was quite narrow, namely that it would be practically impossible, specifically in the case of Trump's tweets, for an aggrieved party to challenge his tweets in court. However, I suppose it may be possible to bring the case against Twitter itself, and have the DOJ fight on Trump's behalf.
> Two out of three Democrats also claim Russia tampered with vote tallies ... are you interested in holding anybody to account for that?
Do you mean holding Russians to account for tampering, or holding Democrats to account for believing a narrative, or unspecified other actors for "tricking" Democrats into believing this narrative (which we'll say, for the sake of argument, is a false narrative)?
I assume you mean the latter of those three interpretations, but I can't imagine who you would want to hold accountable, or by whom, or what the process or punishment should be. Surely we agree that neither social media companies nor the government should be punishing people for spreading "false" narratives (at least if those narratives don't come with implicit encouragement to commit crimes)?
>By the way, "Two out of three Democrats also claim Russia tampered
Where does the linked page say that? The best I can find is "Half of Clinton’s voters think Russia even hacked the Election Day votes..." and the graph also shows 50/50. That's some inaccurate paraphrasing you have.
The US has very strong protections for speech and you need to pass a number of significant hurdles before you can be convicted of incitement. There is no way Trump would ever be convicted in a court of law for what he did.
Not sure why this is being downvoted, "incitement" has a very narrow definition legally, see the Brandenburg test. Of course there are many other ways to incite a mob to violence that would avoid legal consequences, which i'm sure his advisors are aware of.
If what Trump said that morning was intended to cause that violence, then it absolutely passes the “imminent lawless action” test. It specifically said to start the action immediately and was clearly likely to cause the action. The question is what his intent was.
Where did he clearly incite an illegal action? As far as I can tell his speech just told his supporters to walk to the Capitol. He didn't say anything about committing illegal acts. In fact, he explicitly said people should be peaceful. Courts are not going to try and parse secret messages from a speech when there is an explicit disavowal of any criminal act.
The rule people seem to be advocating for here is that if a politician directs their supporters to protest at a particular location then they are responsible for all illegal acts their supporters carry out at that location. That seems to be unreasonable standard and it is also a standard that legally has not been applied before. In terms of politics/media I'm sure people have tried to apply this standard but it is very wrong. It seems every time some whacko commits a crime one side will accuse the other side of inciting the crime with their rhetoric. I don't think this is at all fair and I also believe it could lead to an equilibrium where people are incentivised to commit crimes. It is often quite hard to murder a politician (ask the baseball shooter) but if you can take a piece of the board by committing a crime and getting caught then that might be better option for a whacko. Obviously, this has not happened in this case but if this standard is enforced then this is something to worry about in the future.
> There is no way Trump would ever be convicted in a court of law for what he did.
It doesn’t matter. The standards of the courtroom are not being applied here. The facts are plain: there were a hundred off ramps for Trump over the 2 months since the election and he chose to take none of them. He failed in his duty to the Presidency as an institution and the idea of separation of powers and coequal branches of government. He tried to intimidate the Congress into doing his bidding.
You get that it’s a much more essential question than whether he is technically allowed to do what he did, right? Impeachment and the 25th amendment are political remedies that must be used both to punish what this president has done and to warn other presidents that they cannot cross the bright lines that define democracy.
He is the nations principal law enforcement officer and he aided and abetted lawlessness of the most dire kind.
“I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard!” - Donald J. Trump (January 6, 2021)
Anti-Kavanaugh protestors did the exact same thing 2 years ago. Maxine Watters, AOC, Ayyana Presley all did the same. Madonna literally said she would blow up the White House.
