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Twitter never cared about users rights. Read Matt Taibbi's congresional testimony on Twitter's censorship machine.
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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.

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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.
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For something to be an ad hominem, one needs to be 1) addressing or responding to an argument 2) by attacking the character of the person making the argument rather than the substance of the argument.

Even though OP didn’t provide them, I can think of many supporting examples for their assertion that Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi are either intentionally operating in bad faith, or stupid, or both. So this does not at all meet the definition of ad hominem.

Put another way: “you’re wrong because you’re stupid” is an ad hominem. “You’re wrong, and I think you’re stupid because [reason]” is not. This holds even if the person making the argument does not explicitly give the reason.

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So it's OK now? Or it wasn't OK then or now?

You claim about fallacies later, but this is a also a fallacy.

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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

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Read, was bs, as expected from matt
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> 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.

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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?

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They’re not trying to stop anyone else being on X or saying anything there or anywhere else.
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So because EFF does not post their news in my small Australian home town newspaper they're not free-speech absolutists?
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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.
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Please explain. How does this suggest they no longer value free speech?
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That’s not what the comment you replied to said.

They said the EFF’s ideology use to be free speech absolutism.

From the EFF post linked to that we are discussing here:

Young people, people of color, queer folks, activists, and organizers use Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook every day.

<snip>

neither is pushing every user to the fediverse when there are circumstances like:

<snip>

Your abortion fund uses TikTok to spread crucial information.

You're isolated and rely on online spaces to connect with your community.

That very much makes it sound like the EFF values free speech, but only if that speech is speech they agree with.

What about if your anti-abortion find uses X to spread crucial information. What about if you’re isolated and rely on X to connect with your community?

What if you’re not a young person, a person of color, queer, an activists, nor an organizer?

The EFF used to be free speech absolutists, it’s evident they be taken over by progressive liberals who favour free speech they agree with.

Look in to the history of cases they have litigated. There’s definitely at least some where I disagreed with the content of the speech, but agreed with the right to say it and that the EFF were correct in supporting the case.

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>> Young people, people of color, queer folks, activists, and organizers use Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook every day.

> What if you’re not a young person, a person of color, queer, an activists, nor an organizer?

People who aren't young, of color, queer, activists, or organizers, use Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook every day, too. There's no good reason for an organization to have a presence on every social media platform under the sun, but there is one for limiting the overhead you have to do (and also for minimizing social media usage in general).

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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...?

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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.

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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.
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There's a certain irony in the fact that whoever you're responsing to got their message removed.
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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.

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As though HR are suddenly The Arbiters of Truth and that declining birth rates and increasing isolation are helped by people at working fearing being sent to HR if they make a mistake or say something non-approved.

I mean, yeah, those stats are being helped by HR, but not in the direction any sane person would favour.

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Flagged, not removed. Subtle difference, not saying it's huge, but you can still see their comments if you enable showdead in your settings.
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Censored by a different name is still censored.
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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.
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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.

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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."

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> twitter was actively working with federal government

That's your problem? Wait until you get around to the Snowden Files, you'll be floored.

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"working with federal government to censor speech" is a 1A violation on the government's side
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Privately owned platforms are not required to respect the First Amendment. Neither Twitter nor X can guarantee your freedoms.
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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.

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What did I say about the laptop? The WH coercion was about covid19.
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My bad, I posted below the wrong parent, now I can't delete it.
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ah np, HN probably disallows it cause I replied already
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The government compelling them is the issue.
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"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?
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspensions_on_X search for "gender", at least one was a Congressman
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You're leaving out "gonna be wild!" and a tirade about personally being let down by Mike Pence.
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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.
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None of these were ever suppressed or censored.
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claiming there was rampant "censorship of conservative opinions" is about as honest as claiming that the Romans were being persecuted by first century christians.
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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.

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Damn that Biden administration for getting the NY Post in trouble for posting crap while Trump was in office
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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

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care to share some quotes from those "conservative opinions" that were censored?
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How are those "conservative opinions"? Are you saying the whole thing was right-wing fan-fiction?
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Which ones?
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What censorship?

Conservative talking points were fucking everywhere, and still are.

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Well we can tell where you stand when you describe their views as "talking points". Which isn't surprising on HN (reddit but more wordy).
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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.

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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?
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They were also censoring Biden's ties to Ukraine. If you'd actually read any coverage on it that wasn't left wing, you would have known that instead of spinning up this strawman version of what happened.
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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

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> [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…

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I don't deny those opinions exist, but they aren't the ones being propped up by elon
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