Elon Musk takes over Twitter

A lot of this has been litigated over the past couple of years, all the way up the Supreme Court which delivered the appalling Murthy v. Missouri decision. Zuckerberg's letter is just the latest confirmation of what came out in discovery during that case.
The reporting done on the Twitter Files, which was a road map for the Murthy v. Missouri case, also confirms a lot of this.

The Supreme Court's decision dealt with the law, not the facts of the case. The facts of the case were not in dispute. The facts were that the federal government had its heavy thumb on social media, willingly in some cases and perhaps less willingly in others, to censor speech. They were also using a lot of shady practices to do it so as to avoid being directly accused of censorship despite actually working to censor speech. One example was a government agency using a non-profit to flag and report posts about the 2020 election, which were then shadow-banned by Twitter.

https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/murthy-v-missouri-3/

You'd have to pick through a lot of the amicus briefs from the case to get them all, because there are a lot on everything from COVID to the 2020 election. A lot of stuff that was labeled "misinformation" and "disinformation" has since been proven true. Which brings us back to the crux of all of this — who gets to be the ultimate arbiter of truth? Is it the actual truth or a government with an agenda who tells you what the truth is?

 

Do your homework, look at things with a skeptical eye, and decide for yourself?

 

So, unfettered and unregulated. Like "Did You Know You Can Fertilize Your Lawn With Old Motor Oil?"

Congratulations, you've authorized Project Mayhem.

 

Two things can be true:

• Elon Musk has free speech rights and can do what he wants with the company he owns within the bounds of criminal law.
  
• Elon Musk is Nutsy Fagan and an obvious security risk and the government needs to figure out how to get unshackled from needing SpaceX posthaste.

 

I hear Boeing makes a damn fine spacecraft.

 

oy

 

Be specific.

What stuff, which was labeled "misinformation" and "disinformation", has since been proven true? This should be easy, since it was, "a lot of stuff."

 

Start with the Hunter Biden laptop as the best example. That alone might have swayed the 2020 election. Since then, it has been shown to not only exist, not only that its reported contents are true, but that the FBI had it for months before it became public knowledge, yet it was hit with those labels. Reporters and outlets who even retweeted stories about it had their accounts suspended or banned.

There were plenty of other examples from an amicus brief filed by Matt Taibbi in the Murthy case.

 

Doesn’t dispute what I said. And your “They were also using a lot of shady practices to do it so as to avoid being directly accused of censorship” can be viewed as “They wanted to stop the spread of dangerous lies during a once-in-a-hundred years global health crisis. And didn’t do anything illegal or force censorship.”

I’m sure administration officials have a different characterization of the whole thing. And ultimately, Zuckerberg said it was their decision.

I’m not going to weigh in on “the Twitter files” because I don’t consider anyone involved trustworthy and what little I saw was partisan hot garbage.

There’s reason to be wary of government censorship. But it doesn’t appear to be the case here. Lobbying for sanity in a health crisis? Sure. Censorship? Nah. Not based on what’s presented.

 

I knew that's the one you'd go for. .... let's talk about it, and hopefully you'll engage and not just run away.

1. That the Hunter Biden laptop might have "swayed the election" when it was kept off twitter for about 24 hours is ridiculous, and an unprovable thing.

2. There are two "copies" of the Hunter Biden laptop. One was handed over to the FBI. The FBI has it, and the FBI has not - as far as I know - confirmed the contents. The second copy was a digital copy made, and then laundered to a bunch of "honest brokers" like Rudy and Steve Bannon and so on. This copy has almost certainly been modified. Its contents can't be verified.

Even in the Hunter Biden tax case - where we got the, "see the FBI said it was real!!!!" - there was not testimony over the contents of the laptop.

This is the best you've got? "Lots of examples" of the government censoring things that later turned out to be true?

 

Who was president during the 2020 election when this supposed order to Facebook came through?

 

I have actual work to do today. If I'm not engaging regularly it's because I'm doing stuff that's paying me. Or I just got bored and moved on. Or I don't feel like doing homework assignments for you. Maybe some combination of all four. I linked to the Supreme Court case that has all sorts of good stuff there. You can pick through it at your leisure.

1. I did say "might have." We obviously can't know if it would or wouldn't have. Maybe it's like now, where people just don't care. But given the dynamics of that election, it's not unreasonable to think it might have swayed enough votes in the right places to flip things.

2. The damage to media that reported it goes way beyond pulling a tweet down. Accounts that are financially important to companies and reporters were throttled or shut down through a concerted effort from the federal government.

3. Several court cases in different jurisdictions, including a Supreme Court case, have provided some sort of confirmation from both sides that the contents of the laptop are real. Hunter Biden sued Rudy Giuliani — not for libel or slander, but because he was arguing it was stolen property, and then dropped the lawsuit. Further Congressional investigations, sworn testimony and reporting have, if not directly confirmed every bit of what it is alleged to contain, then certainly provided enough details to infer most of it. Yet it's not real at all? Seems like a bunch of people need to be fired and disbarred if that's the case.

4. We're losing the plot by taking this side track. This is now the two biggest social media companies in the world confirming (alleging, if you prefer) that they were pressured or influenced by the United States government to censor speech. If that's acceptable to anyone ... man, are we in a lot of trouble as a country.