As much as there ever really were "small government republicans" there certainly aren't any today. "Owning the libs" is the only reason the current batch of conservatives gets out of bed in the morning.
We should call what it is. They working to make the lives of other US citizens as miserable as they can. Whoever does this is working against their own country. This is unpatriotic.
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
Absolutely. To get a slice of that thinking. Here's Rush Limbaugh:
(backstory: Trump has been repeatedly peddling an absolutely baseless claim that his TV critic Joe Scarborough murdered his employee couple of decades back. Her husband is now pleading that Trump is causing irreparable damage to their family). Anyway, here's Limbaugh:
“The thing here is when you get to Trump and his conspiracy theories, he does it in a really clever way,” he proclaimed. “And this is where people don’t get the subtlety of Trump because they don’t think he has the ability to be subtle. Trump never says that he believes these conspiracy theories that he touts. He’s simply passing them on.”
Asked by his producer whether he thinks “Trump cares whether Scarborough murdered anybody or not,” Limbaugh replied that the president doesn’t care but is tweeting about it “because it’s out there.”
“So Trump is just throwing gasoline on a fire here, and he’s having fun watching the flames—and he’s having fun watching these holier-than-thou leftist journalists react like their moral sensibilities have been forever rocked and can never recover,” he concluded.
I’m not personally concerned with the rights of private businesses as much as I’m concerned about the unintended consequences of expanding government power.
And yes, that is a new position for me. These past few years have been quite the education about the downsides of federal power as a liberal.
I’ve been over this before. Unless if you’re going to eliminate the ability for Twitter to moderate any protected speech, then this is an expansion of government power. This would give someone in the government the ability to determine what protected speech is immune from Twitter moderation, and what protected speech is not. This is a massive expansion of government power, and turns a two tier speech system (protected or not) into a three tier one.
There is already protected speech. You can say whatever you want as long as its not libel, treason, direct threats, etc.
Twitter has a TOC that is not strictly based on protected speech. They ban people / censor people all the time who violate their TOC but do not violate the law.
Also, it is not going to be certain speech that is protected but certain companies. Its possible Twitter would not have protection but Facebook could.
The core premise of the arguments being raised is that Twitter is being politically biased (citation needed), and that something should be done to make Twitter politically neutral since Twitter is such an important faux public square.
The problem is enforcement. How exactly will we make Twitter be politically neutral? There are two basic ways: you either eliminate Twitter’s ability to moderate at all, or someone has to define what speech is immune from moderation in the name of political neutrality.
The former is disastrous for the quality of these platforms. All kinds of anti-social and unpleasant behavior is protected speech, as is pornography and violent material. I think we can all agree that Twitter is within its rights to say “no porn here”, so we don’t want to set the bar at protected speech.
If we decide that twitter can moderate some but not all protected speech, then someone must legally define what protected speech is immune from moderation, and what protected speech is not. This represents an expansion of government power, as you’re giving the government the power to decide what types of protected speech is more important than other types of protected speech.
I think you are making a poor argument. Somebody could take your exact argument and say that you cannot have anti-discrimination laws for hiring or renting.
We would also handle abuses / accusations of abuses in the same way as anti discrimination laws.
I think what conservatives tend to see are a few examples where there appears to be bias. Liberals say something that violates the TOC and it doesn't get censored or when it does it takes longer for it to be censored. When a conservative says the same thing it get censored much faster.
For example an Asian who is liberal saying "white people are bs" is perfectly acceptable but a black conservative person saying "Jewish people are bs" with explicit notice that it is a parody of the first is not acceptable.
There are many examples where this happens but most publicly know cases appears to be against conservative.
This is of course possibly anecdotal but its understandable to come to the conclusion when Jack Dorsey admitted that most of the moderators are liberal.
Its hard to know if there is actual bias since people who don't have a large following don't make the news when they are censored.
I think a way to solve this would be:
1. Have more people with a variety of views on the moderation team.
2. Require multiple people to accept that something should be censored. Ideally people with different views.
3. Have a moderation log that allows watch groups review if they want.
I am not sure if Twitter could ask for political views prior to hiring a moderator so that could be an issue.
> Somebody could take your exact argument and say that you cannot have anti-discrimination laws for hiring or renting.
Only if you’re willing to argue that speech and race are the same thing, or that access to Twitter and housing are the same thing.
You can try this argument, just don’t expect it to persuade many people.
> I think what conservatives tend to see are a few examples where there appears to be bias.
You can spend your whole day trying to prove that Twitter is biased, and you will have completely ignored my actual point. You don’t need to prove that Twitter is biased, you need to prove that Twitter’s supposed biases justifies the government regulating protected speech.
I genuinely couldn’t care less if Twitter is biased if you don’t meet that second, higher bar. Use a different platform, petition twitter, complain here, just don’t ask the government to regulate speech.
> I get what your saying now.
Given that you did not address my core concern, I do not believe this.
I have always championed the right to free expression, whether that is an individual hosting content or a company deciding what content it wants to host and how to display it. The government should play no part in either case.
>The draft order also requires the Attorney General to establish a working group including state attorneys general that will examine the enforcement of state laws that prohibit online platforms from engaging in unfair and deceptive acts.
>The working group will also monitor or create watch-lists of users based on their interactions with content or other users.[1]
I'm sure there are plenty of "small government" and libertarian-leaning folks who are now in favor of government watch lists based off who and what US citizens interact with on social media.
Ok. My normal account is apolitical and I don't know if I would call myself a Republican, more of a conservative maybe.
Regardless, for me this goes back to the Covington Catholic incident. Nick Sandmann sued the Washington Post, NBC, and CNN for defamation and settled. He had a pretty strong case. I think being able to sue for defamation is reasonable and not necessarily indicative of big government support.
But Twitter can't be sued but that was where the videos of him were posted and it was where a Twitter mob formed and peopled doxed him and started to call for Nick's head. I remember seeing it all happen in real time on Friday on Twitter. By Sunday the news outlets were running with it.
At that time, Twitter wasn't flagging content as misleading however, they were banning harmful rhetoric. I guess to me that sort of activity that happened in January 2019 is harmful rhetoric. The ability to let an angry mob defame someone like that and even threaten someone is something Twitter should take responsibility for. Every other publishing platform is held to those standards. If Twitter is profiting from the use which may include activities like defaming someone, then it makes sense that victims are entitled to some compensation from them in addition to any users. Although I appreciate there are fine legal arguments to be made here.
And for the record, it seems like fairly normal discourse on Twitter to expose people with personal information for specifically being racist, misogynist, etc. without any evidence required and people usually condone this. This definitely can be damaging and I think people who are victims of this justly ought to be able to recover losses. Twitter doesn't seem to have much interest in stopping it like they do other forms of harmful speech so I think victims ought to be able to get justice and that has nothing to do with Trump's tweeting habits.
I'm not a republican, but people on this site might have a hard time making the distinction, so here's my take:
1. These protections shouldn't be necessary in the first place. The first amendment should make most copyright enforcement, libel suits, etc. illegal. Of course, that's not the world we live in.
2. Freedom of association (being able to turn people away from your business) is absolutely a fundamental right, but I have zero sympathy for progressives when they get screwed on this, because they've done more than anyone in US history to eliminate freedom of association. They made this bed, now they have to lie in it. When you give the government the power to force people to work with parties they don't want to, obviously that's going to turn around and bite you in the ass at some point when you lose control of the institutions that decide how you're allowed to choose who you work with.
So, on net, this sucks and I wish it was very different, but I have no sympathy whatsoever for the people who brought this upon themselves.
Removing a law isn’t the same as reducing governmental power. In this case removing 230 would make what goes on Twitter mostly a matter for the courts, which would be a massive increase in the governments ability to police speech.
The power and scope of the third branch shouldn’t be ignored, and “conservative” in the judicial sense is usually about reducing the scope of life that’s subject to the court’s control.
This isn't about moderation, or removing tweets or banning people. Twitter changed the content of The President's tweet. When they edited his content, they became a publisher. Had simply removed it, I think they'd still be ok, but when they changed the content, they risked losing their protections under Section 230.
You are incorrect, they did not edit his tweet, they editorialized it. Completely different, and also covered under section 230, and confirmed in court decisions up to the 9th circuit court.
