They're the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Of course they're ideological. That's the whole point of their existence.
Anyway,
> Twitter was never a utopia. We've criticized the platform for about as long as it’s been around. Still, Twitter did deserve recognition from time to time for vociferously fighting for its users’ rights. That changed. Musk fired the entire human rights team and laid off staffers in countries where the company previously fought off censorship demands from repressive regimes. Many users left. Today we're joining them.
Twitter never cared about users rights. Read Matt Taibbi's congresional testimony on Twitter's censorship machine.
If you’re citing Matt Taibbi as a trustworthy source, man, I don’t know. He’s up there with Bari Weiss for “they’re either intentionally bad faith, stupid, or both” levels of nuance.
These are not serious people.
I not only read what he wrote, I read the screenshots of OG twitter. And what he said mirrored what they said. They were incredibly one sided an censorious as hell. Your post is basically just an ad hominem. A fallacy.
Read, was bs, as expected from matt
It was very interesting because it came to light the administration in power at the time, trump, leaned heavily on Twitter to promote what they wanted and hide they wanted hid. Meanwhile Biden's campaign requested revenge porn be removed and Matt and friends got extremely upset about that and called it government overreach (Biden wasn't in office at the time, of course).
Very funny when you think about it, but sad too
> Of course they're ideological. That's the whole point
Yes, but their ideology _was_ free-speech absolutism. This move, and this statement, suggests that they're moving away from that ideology to one of selectively free speech.
Being a free speech absolutionist DOES NOT mean plastering your speech everywhere, including Twitter. Those are clearly two different concepts.
Also, literally nothing about this says anything about other people's speech. Them deciding not to use twitter doesn't mean you can't, obviously.
I feel like everyone is losing the plot a bit. Are we understanding the words we're saying before we choose to say them?
what are you even talking about? they arent suppressing free speech, they are leaving a platform. this might be the most bot-like response ive ever seen, if youre not a bot then go outside, read a book, just log off my goodness.
So because EFF does not post their news in my small Australian home town newspaper they're not free-speech absolutists?
Please explain. How does this suggest they no longer value free speech?
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You can tell conservative opinions are censored and suppressed by the way they're constantly shoved down our throats every hour of every day.
There's a certain irony in the fact that whoever you're responsing to got their message removed.
It's not that conservative opinions are censored. It's that bad opinion with zero merit to any reasonable person, such as insults, racism, sexual harassment, etc, are censored.
Unfortunately that means that most conservative opinions are censored.
Or, at least, the ones that matter said by our most popular politicians.
Rephrased, think of it this way: if I talk like Barack Obama at work, I'm fine. If I talk like President Donald Trump, I'm getting sent to HR on my first day. And that has nothing to do with their political leanings.
Flagged, not removed. Subtle difference, not saying it's huge, but you can still see their comments if you enable showdead in your settings.
Censored by a different name is still censored.
Since the person you responded to got flagged/dead, I want to make sure they and everyone else who might think like them listens to this (an hour long, so yay attention span)
https://www.podbean.com/ew/dir-35im6-2c0a994a
"As the Senate debates the SAVE America Act amid unfounded claims of voter fraud, Jon is joined by Georgetown Research Professor Renée DiResta and Platformer editor Casey Newton to examine what actually threatens our elections. Together, they investigate how algorithms are engineered to push users toward platform owners' preferred ideologies, explore the incentives driving Silicon Valley's rightward shift, and discuss how Republicans have weaponized disinformation to undermine electoral trust and rewrite voting rules in their favor."
One topic they cover is the manner in which the Biden admin was communicating with big tech about mis/dis-information, and the multiple ways the Right has either blown it way out of proportion by not getting the facts right, and the way the Trump admin has been doing as much or worse than Biden admin ever did.
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On X? Citation needed. Elsewhere too.
Yeah they're not anymore. Woke opinions were getting shoved until that abruptly stopped a bit before Trump's second term. Which is weird because this didn't happen in his first term. Now we've got Amazon promoting the Melania movie.
On Twitter in particular, the woke shoving stopped the moment Musk took over, replaced with it shoving whatever Musk is saying. They're doing less censorship now but are also heavily promoting him.
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Those "conservative opinions" were usually violent hate speech. There was no shortage of "conservative opinions" pre-buyout.
I think people were just upset certain figures were held to the TOS.
Yeah, the followup to that "censorship of conservative opinions" complaint is always "which opinions are those"
It's a perfect analogue for asking confederate fans, "state's rights to do what?"
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Hunter Biden laptop and covid lab leak were systematically censored on twitter and elsewhere, and twitter was actively working with federal government to censor speech that was neither illegal or against any TOS.
You should take a look at the twitter files. This has nothing to do with "violent hate speech."
> twitter was actively working with federal government
That's your problem? Wait until you get around to the Snowden Files, you'll be floored.
"working with federal government to censor speech" is a 1A violation on the government's side
Privately owned platforms are not required to respect the First Amendment. Neither Twitter nor X can guarantee your freedoms.
Of course not. Those platforms have 1A rights. In some cases, the US govt violated those rights by pressuring them to take down viewpoints, hence what I said about "1A violation on the government's side."
In other cases, the platform did it all on their own. That's perfectly legal but is also rightfully seen by users as political censorship, something the EFF claims to fight even when it's not from the govt.
https://www.techdirt.com/2022/12/07/hello-youve-been-referre...
What did I say about the laptop? The WH coercion was about covid19.
My bad, I posted below the wrong parent, now I can't delete it.
The government compelling them is the issue.
"were usually violent hate speech"
Did we forget "Vote blue no matter who"???
It was often as mundane as disagreeing with ANY democrat politician/their policies.
Sometimes it wasn't even a right-wing voice, but from more Left leaning voices that got banned/ostracized.
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Which of those did Twitter suppress?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspensions_on_X search for "gender", at least one was a Congressman
You're leaving out "gonna be wild!" and a tirade about personally being let down by Mike Pence.
It IS if you want to FORCE others to believe them / abide by your rules and work to pass laws, even retroactively, to limit what can legally be said / done that used to be legal.
None of these were ever suppressed or censored.
Yes they were: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47707893
claiming there was rampant "censorship of conservative opinions" is about as honest as claiming that the Romans were being persecuted by first century christians.
A few of these were actual calls to violence, but most were about political opinion https://ballotpedia.org/Elected_officials_suspended_or_banne...
They also banned NY Post for publishing that Hunter Biden laptop story. Which as much of a nothingburger as that story was, it's insane to get banned for that.
Damn that Biden administration for getting the NY Post in trouble for posting crap while Trump was in office
They … did, though?
You're presumably referencing Missouri v. Biden, to which the EFF did file an amicus[1]. In it, they note,
> Many platforms have potentially problematic “trusted flagger” programs in which certain groups and individuals enjoy “some degree of priority in the processing of notices
> Of course, governmental participation in content moderation processes raises First Amendment issues not present with non-governmental inputs
With their overall opinion being something like "content moderation is normal, the government flagging content is also normal, and there are instances where the government's flagging of content moderation can be fine & not run afoul of 1A, but there are instances where it can, and we urge the court to think"
Note in this case, the platform was removing the content. The government was, in one respect, merely asking. (There were assertions that in other instances, such as public statements, the case was less so.) The court eventually ruled, and the ruling I saw from the 5th circuit seemed reasonable. (I think that was a preliminary injunction. AIUI, the case as a whole was never ruled on, because the Trump administration took over.)
[1]: https://www.eff.org/document/missouri-v-biden-amicus-brief
What censorship?
Conservative talking points were fucking everywhere, and still are.
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This Hunter Biden shit is a good example. It was all over the place all the time. I don't even live in the US and kept stumbling on people talking about it in social media.
Conservative talking points are everywhere, even when I try to avoid them myself (for example, on fucking YouTube I am often recommended right wing bullshit when I view anything more political).
Right wingers are always very soy. For people that for years complained about oppression olympics they can't seem to stop crying about being oppressed even when in power.
care to share some quotes from those "conservative opinions" that were censored?
https://variety.com/2020/digital/news/twitter-unblocks-new-y...
How are those "conservative opinions"? Are you saying the whole thing was right-wing fan-fiction?
Which ones?
Yeah, I remember when the "Twitter Files" were being released and it turned out that Twitter was illegitimately censoring leaked nudes of Hunter Biden. Whyever would non-consensually posted nudes be taken down other than the suppression of conservatism?
Conservative opinions like "[group of people] are evil and don't deserve to be happy" and "we need a white homeland"
If you aren't kicking nazis out of your bar, it'll become a nazi bar. Twitter stopped kicking out the nazis
> [group of people] are evil and don't deserve to be happy"
Most of the times I’ve seen such statements on Twitter, the [group of people was one of: men, white people, straight people, cisgender people. Something tells me those statements were not made by conservatives…
I don't deny those opinions exist, but they aren't the ones being propped up by elon
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What is the agenda? You're hinting at some conspiracy but I have no idea what it could even be
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> lines like this that make the agenda far more clear: "Young people, people of color, queer folks, activists, and organizers use Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook every day."
What does that make clear?? Stop hinting and just say what you mean...?
It's not some big secret. You're trying to invent a conspiracy when there is none.
There's one particular website that they don't like, and they see declining engagement from, so they leave. There's other websites that might have less engagement, but they do like it, so they stay there. Then there's other websites that might have similar ideological disdain for, but they get very broad reach from, so they reluctantly stay.
I really don't see what the big deal is with trying to reach a broad audience.