The Science is Settled: They’re Publishers, Not Platforms
The Science is Settled: They’re Publishers, Not Platforms
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The mainstream narrative (government, media, corporate) is united that the Twitter Files are a “nothing burger without the bun.” Hot take from people implicated in a massive criminal conspiracy.
Like YouTube, you cannot detach the decade plus of recruitment onto these platforms as a “new public square” – and their legislative protections in support of this recruitment – from their current behavior. Here are some initial takeaways of what we now know to be fact.
First, from the original Matt Taibbi releases, Private Company Twitter was shadow banning one presidential candidate while covering up a massive international corruption scandal that would hurt THEIR candidate -- and their candidate was engaged in that process. In doing so, they irreparably manipulated the 2020 election, and essentially scaled Watergate into, not just modern and enhanced monitoring since the failed Watergate wiretap, but digital force, interference and suppression.
Like Watergate, the coverup in this is worse than the crime, and those with knowledge would be wise to go on record. Quick history lesson: Six weeks after Nixon resigned, Ford pardoned him for any crimes he had committed while in office. But those without the titles who helped Nixon were not so lucky: They were convicted of serious crimes and sent to federal prison.
Second, from Bari Weiss’ release last night, speculation that CEO Jack Dorsey was unaware/uninvolved — like Taibbi implied in the first release — is out the window. Was he a hands off executive? Sure. But it is now a fact in evidence that he was part of the off-record escalation team (SIP-PES) that censored the Hunter Biden Laptop, truth about the elections, etc. They explicitly engaged in manipulation of civic messages in the Public Square.
Head of Safety’s Yoel Roth’s internal communications implicate Dorsey in “civic” suppression (read: HBL, election). And of course he was the Chief Executive of the social publishing company — buck stops with him. You must revisit his UNDER OATH congressional testimony in light of these new facts. Dorsey seems to understand these implications, as he is now calling on Musk to release everything, right now, ostensibly in an effort to curb his legal exposure. Do you understand these implications?
Third, Elon Musk tweeted last night that Twitter requires a software update to allow users to see their real account status and allow them to understand actions taken by the censors and appeal those actions. Think about that for a second and, again, revisit the Congressional testimony. Jack, Vijaya, Yoel, etc. knowingly misled the public about the secret conduct of Twitter. They misled users/customers. They misled advertisers. They misled investors. They misled Congress while under oath.
Do you miss the days when tech companies focused on user value, rather than politics, as much as we do? It's ok, we know the answer.
The releases do not expose the well-intended but misguided actions of people trying to protect truth--as the Narrative Ninnies would have us believe. Rather, they expose the sinister and well-coordinated actions of people trying to define truth and censor objection. Vijaya Gadde said they don’t “shadow ban,” and that’s technically correct. They call it “visibility filtering,” and Gadde made a purely semantic argument because the two terms are literal synonyms:
“'Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels. It’s a very powerful tool,' one senior Twitter employee told us."
“'We control visibility quite a bit. And we control the amplification of your content quite a bit. And normal people do not know how much we do,' one Twitter engineer told us. Two additional Twitter employees confirmed."
Without the Twitter Files disclosures, we would NOT be able to CONFIRM (ADMISSIBLY) the political and, importantly, manual censorship practices of Twitter. They kept the worst actions off record—after testifying under oath (multiple times) that they absolutely would NEVER engage in the kinds of behavior that they were, in fact, secretly engaging in as a matter of policy. We’re just scratching the surface of the potential implications of these disclosures—just based on these first two releases – but one thing is exceedingly and abundantly clear:
The neverending “platform v publisher” debate is over.
Section 230 may have intended to protect the public square and enable free speech (that’s debatable but for arguments sake let’s assume it’s true); in practice, these protections have allowed bad actors to silence half the nation, lie for corporate profits (like pharma profits), and steal elections.
There is no equally applied policy for the platform; in fact, for the really controversial actions, there’s not even a ticket. (Fun Fact: Tickets are discoverable.) Also, Twitter has been brazenly editorializing user content feeds while claiming platform protections.
DEMAND FOR REMEDY: Remove Big Tech protections immediately, and disclose what role and actions that Federal/State/Local governments are playing in Big Tech censorship.
In case you’re confused, Global Corporate Communism is a violation of your oath. If you’re not on the right side, you’re most definitely on the wrong one.
The science is settled. They’re publishers.
Remember Your Oath.