X/Twitter Censorship

None of this is surprising to the left-leaning crowd who rightfully anticipated that Musk’s “free speech” dog whistle was merely a clarion call to censor what he (and his backers) don’t like.

I wish I wasn’t having to tell people “I told you so” so much.

:(

That PDF contains JD Vance's home address (I clicked on the link in it) even though JD obviously tried to hide it in his submission to the County Auditor with a no-name LLC. Given that Trump has been shot at twice, and JD Vance is his VP candidate, this has security implications. Elon Musk banned someone who was documenting his private jet flights for the same reason.

Personally I don't see much difference in terms of harm whether you link to this information, or publish it on Twitter. In both cases, you're using Twitter to gain a larger audience for it, including any lunatics with guns.

Evidence of Hunter Biden's debauchery does not help anyone locate him, but does cast doubt on the parenting skills of his parents, which seems a relevant consideration when selecting a president, since doing a shit job on that which should be most precious to you does not inspire confidence in your ability... and it could lead to the president being blackmailed to avoid shame: it was pure Kompromat.

Therefore the two cases are very different. It would be nice to go back to the time of Lincoln where anyone could wander into the White House and present his grievance to the President. Times have unfortunately changed, and in this age of police swatting I can see the argument for not doxing people's addresses. However I don't see the argument in a democracy for hiding people's bad behavior to get your candidate elected, or to force narratives the plutocrats want foisted upon the plebs to be conformed to.

Ideally freedom of speech would be universally accepted. However it isn't in many countries. Forcing governments to follow their own laws and not overreach is the best a corporation, which relies on governments' framework of laws to exist, can do. I believe that was Twitter's argument in Brazil until Alexandre de Moraes' peers supported his decision.

Personally, given how corrupt the Brazilian justice system seems to be (they levied Twitter's fines against other corporations, with different shareholders, that happened to be run by the same CEO), I would have dumped the Brazilian market entirely, and let them do without Starlink. Tough shit if it hurts their military and first responders. But I'm not CEO of a number of companies, and have no fiduciary duty to any shareholders.

However, when the US government puts pressure on companies to censor content (testimony from the Twitter files, and Sir Nick Clegg), despite the fact the 1st amendment of the Constitution prohibits this behavior by the government, it is quite reasonable for Elon's Twitter to refuse. Old Twitter had employees whose entire job was performing this anti-constitutional task, and I am glad they no longer have such anti-democratic jobs.

"That PDF contains JD Vance's home address"

I don't know if it was changed in the meantime, but his home address is censored, at least in the current version of the published PDF.

"Elon Musk banned someone who was documenting his private jet flights for the same reason"

Musk's jet location is public data. Also, this shows exactly how Musk decides who to ban, because Tailor Swift's jet tracker is still on Twitter. Trump's is suspended.

And a bunch of journalists who merely covered the suspension of Musk's jet tracker also got suspended.

Nothing here is about freedom of speech.

"Evidence of Hunter Biden's debauchery does not help anyone locate him, but does cast doubt on the parenting skills of his parents"

As far as I can ascertain, nobody wanted to remove "evidence of Hunter Biden's debauchery." What Twitter wanted removed were nonconsensual nude pictures of Hunter Biden.

The idea that you need to see Hunter Biden's dick to figure out if Biden will make a good president is pretty funny, but what's less funny is attributing Hunter Biden's problems to parenting, given his family history. His mom and sister died in a car accident where he and his brother were also injured, his brother died from brain cancer. If you're looking for reasons for why he's not exactly the world's most stable person and "parenting" is the first thing that occurs to you, it's motivated reasoning.

But that's neither here nor there, because nobody wanted to censor coverage of his behavior.

"I am glad they no longer have such anti-democratic jobs."

That's funny, given the politically motivated banning spree of journalists Musk has been on.

@Plume My understanding is that they eventually settled on a policy where jet trackers are allowed with a 24-hour delay. The Swift, Musk, and Trump trackers are all active now.

@Plume:

No, I didn't need to see Hunter's "dick picks", nor have I looked at them closely enough to know that organ was visible, but it was relevant to the election and Twitter censored it, something I would classify as election interference.

I'm sorry, if my son turned out like that, I wouldn't consider myself leadership material, so I'm not applying "motivated reasoning". I'd also move heaven and earth to get him out of it. I find the notion that tragedy lead to this type of debauchery at that age really bizarre. It's also still kompromat.

As to JD Vance's address, well look a little harder. You have to click a link in the PDF. You'll figure it out if you really want to. It's on the same page as the censored address.

"politically motivated banning spree of journalists": evidence required. Note that I've provided evidence of old-Twitter's politically motivated banning of stories. That's actually worse, since multiple journalists usually report on the same story.

@Michael: that sounds reasonable.

Musk is a Hypocritical gobshite. Shocker! Hopefully Glenn Greenwald can stop lionising him now.

And I *do* get why people lionise Musk. I care about free speech too and the last thing I want is social media being used to manufacture consent once it becomes clear that the corporate media is no longer fit to. But, seriously, Musk is not the hero you think he is if you really imagine that he's motivated by an altruistic desire for freedom of information. (On the other hand, he might have just accidentally demonstrated to our snooty-nosed technocratic overlords why giving any central authority the power to decide who does and doesn't have a say might be a terrible idea, which really *will* advance the cause of freeze peach.)

Social media is already being used to manufacture consent, AND it's very much corporate.

We need to look elsewhere.

To me, the internet peaked with blogs.

Apparently John Kerry think this election is about fixing the major roadblock called the first amendment to make it easier for politicians like him to govern and save "democracy" (where "demos" no longer means the people). So I guess those who prefer the old-style Twitter censorship know who to vote for.

Amazingly it was only 2 decades ago when everyone believed the official narrative published in Pravda, sorry the NYTimes, and its lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and cheered on that disastrous waste of resources and people, Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL), which also led to a mass influx of refugees to Europe.

At the time, the president attempted to say "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me", which seems quite relevant... should we really get fooled again to make John Kerry's life easier?

I am sorry @OUG but blaming the parents for the mental health of their kids has been devastating to many kids and parents over the past few decades. We can probably mostly point to Freud for that mistake, or at least his disciples. Things have only recently started to finally change, so please stop propagating such ideas. Also, just to be clear, psychiatry considers that addiction is a disease, with strong links to anxiety and depression. Yes, bad parenting can be a contributing factor, but there are many many other factors, including genetics.

@Charles:

If it's genetic, that's also relevant since guess where your genes come from. Your parents, not the "gene fairy".

We're talking about electing a president, not appointing a library assistant or a janitor. We're talking about someone who's job requires them to be able to decide whether to respond to a nuclear attack within a couple of minutes. That is a decision which likely ends 3.7 billion years of evolution. Putting aside the fact that it is ridiculous that we have created a system that requires that kind of decision to be made, given that it is so, one needs somebody 100% sane in that position.

Given this background, I believe that a presidential candidate's child's character is relevant to the election. If you don't believe it is, fine, don't consider it. The key point is that you don't get to decide what others should not know in a democracy.

Also, the notion that parenting matters predates Freud by a very long time... Just to quote one example, it's in the Christian Bible: "Ye shall know them by their fruits."

I'd like to second Old Unix Geek's comment, except for the "I clicked on it" part, because I haven't clicked on it myself.

Quoth Kristoffer:

To me, the internet peaked with blogs.

I miss the heyday of the blogosphere (he says on a comment…on a blog). I hear pre-Eternal September Usenet was even better, but I'm not old enough to have seen any of that firsthand. Blog posts are too heavyweight for all sorts of quality additions to public discourse.

The only reason why Elon bought Twitter (with a lot of other people
s money going down the drain) is to get access to and control one of the two major social networks to push his Trumpian views - fascist, anti-institution, anti-LGBTQ, and racist.

He loves getting the benefit of large government (rebates for Tesla and Starlink, contracts for SpaceX) but hates paying taxes and following fair rules.

"No, I didn't need to see Hunter's "dick picks", nor have I looked at them closely enough to know that organ was visible"

Why are you commenting on this at all if you don't even know what was requested to be removed?

"I'm not applying motivated reasoning"

You just claimed that illegal nude images should not be removed from Twitter, but public data that was merely reposted should be censored. If the shoe was on the other foot, you would make the exact opposite argument.

You are a free-speech absolutist in the exact same way Musk is. You want to see the stuff that agrees with your ideology, and you're okay with censoring the stuff that disagrees with your ideology.

"You have to click a link in the PDF"

You will have to be a little bit more specific. That document has almost 300 pages, I'm not going to click on every single link to verify your claim. If there is a link in there, please tell me where it is, or I'm going to assume this is untrue, just like your previous claim that the PDF "contains his address."

"Apparently John Kerry think this election is about fixing the major roadblock called the first amendment"

He doesn't say that.

The full clip of what he actually says does not appear to be online, but he appears to be answering a question from the audience, which we don't hear. The question appears to be related to how to deal with misinformation, probably related to climate change, and he points out that there is not much that can be done, because the first amendment protects most misinformation. This is just a factual statement.

He follows it up with a tautological statement that they have to win enough votes to govern and to make change. He doesn't say "change the first amendment." This is the same generic statement politicians always make. Taking that and translating it to "John Kerry wants to fix the first amendment" is just dishonest. IMO the most likely explanation is that he was still talking about climate change regulation, if it was about anything specific at all.

Look, it pains me to have to defend Kerry, who clearly loves to hear himself speak. But he does point out a real thing, which is that we have a problem with people living in their own personal bubbles, where their sense of reality shifts to a point where they become untethered from it. There are plenty of Old Unhappy Guys who have nothing better to do with their lives than to live perpetually online and to fall for every manufactured controversy, like blue-haired kids, CTR, Biden's dick picks, or moral panics about Kerry wanting to fix the first amendment.

Anger and fear are strong motivators, and there are plenty of bad-faith actors who know how to exploit this. This is an attack vector that genuinely works to undermine democracies, which is why entities like Russia are more than happy to sponsor the kinds of people who put out that stuff.

@OUG I am sure you know how genetics really work, since you are an intelligent person. Your remark seems to come straight from the eugenics playbook. Somehow, you managed to make an even worse shortcut in your answer than the Freudian one. Blaming the parents for their genes is still not helping.

If we were to allow people with genetic markers related to anxiety, depression or addiction, to only be janitors or librarians, we would live in a very clean and very literate world. I don't know what makes a good president, but picking them based on their genes and their luck does not seem like a very smart approach.

To be clear, this has nothing to do with twitter, just commenting on your outdated remarks on mental health, and your criteria for deciding who is worthy of being president.

I think he bought it because he was drunk.
Then he tried to pull out and had to lie in the bed he had made.
Then he failed at making it profitable.
Only then did he decide to turn it into a political project.

"My understanding is that they eventually settled on a policy where jet trackers are allowed with a 24-hour delay"

ElonJet remains suspended, and Swift's tracker was never suspended.

I forgot to respond to that:

"politically motivated banning spree of journalists: evidence required. Note that I've provided evidence of old-Twitter's politically motivated banning of stories."

You really have not, but I'm happy to. This list is obviously not exhaustive.

Aaron Rupar: Unclear.
Alan MacLeod: Probably for covering the conflict in Israel.
Andrew Lawrence: Unclear.
Bob Lonsberry: No reason provided.
Dean Baker: Unclear.
Dell Cameron: Spended for interviewing the person who hacked Matt Walsh.
Donie O'Sullivan: Doxxing.
Drew Harwell: Doxxing.
EyeonPalestine: no reason provided.
Globe Gazette: No reason provided.
Keith Olbermann: Doxxing.
Ken Klippenstein: Shadowbanned after covering Tesla, suspended after the JD Vance report.
Linette Lopez: No reason provided.
Mandla Mandela: Not a journalist, but listed because of likely political motivation. No reason provided.
Matt Binder: Doxxing.
Micah Lee: Doxxing.
Rob Rousseau: Unclear.
Ryan Mac: Doxxing.
Sean Plunket: "Hateful conduct", but unclear what exactly.
Steven L. Herman: Doxxing.
Steven Monacelli: Unclear.
Susan Li: Suspended for reporting that flight tracking data is public.
Taylor Lorenz: Unclear.
Yulia Navalnaya: Not a journalist, but listed because of likely political motivation. No reason provided.

@Plume The main Twitter/Hunter scandal was about blocking links to the NY Post story, which was mostly about business dealings. It mentioned that there were nude photos but did not show them.

Which Swift one was never suspended? The realtime trackers, @TaylorSwiftJets and @ElonJet, are both suspended now. The “NextDay” accounts are both active.

It would be much more useful if the transparency report included official lists like this of popular/journalist accounts that were banned or shadow banned (and which ones were reinstated). The aggregate numbers are kind of useless, IMO. People care about particular accounts they were following, and once the account is gone you can no longer see the content that supposedly led to the suspension, so it’s never entirely clear what happened or why.

@Charles: I consider sanity to be the most important requirement a President must satisfy. I'll be even more extreme: the level of sanity required to deal with nukes is so extremely rare that it's outnumbered by geniuses many fold. I certainly would not rank myself as one of them. If the day comes, the President will be surrounded by Generals who will be pushing him to escalate. It will take immense character not to go along with them.

I wasn't suggesting that anyone with depression should only be allowed to be a janitor. We'd lose some of our greatest artists if we did that. But they should not be president. And probably not Airplane pilot either.

Many things described as "Mental Health" problems are euphemisms for forms of insanity. And yes, many mental problems are inherited, although to be fair, usually from grandparents. For instance alcoholism which Hunter seems to be suffering from.

I don't blame people for having mental issues nor am I embarrassed by other people's issues, as I have seen others being, since, as I hope I have made clear, I think most of us have some to some degree or another. But I do think someone who can remove all life on earth needs to be incredibly stable and wise. I find the caliber of the people we choose genuinely very frightening, given the power we bestow on them.

@Plume: You really aren't trying, are you? Preview has a tool called "Find". It's under the Edit menu item. You can try putting words from the first sentence into the search tool and unless you are mentally deficient you'll find it pretty quickly, especially if you think for longer than a goldfish's attention span. I'm not going to provide any more instruction on how to find it for the same reason that Twitter does not link to it.

Thank you for the list of journalists. They are all new to me, except Keith Olberman who I've always perceived as rather deranged and Taylor Lorenz who has demonstrated hypocrisy. Hopefully your other references are more sensible people.

Yes, Kerry does say what I said. He's saying it at an important event -- the world economic forum, so he should be being careful about his words. I would give your interpretation the benefit of the doubt, if he were alone in saying such things. But such ideas are being discussed in other venues. Hillary thinks people should be criminally charged for expressing their opinions, and thinks the press should have a narrative about Trump rather than reporting the facts. In other words, "evil Russian propaganda" is not ok, "wonderful Hillary propaganda" is fine. I recognize that pattern from totalitarian countries. But it's not just Hillary. Bill Gates wants AI to police speech. Zuckerberg was apparently made an example of for Clinton's loss. He certainly did add a lot of censorship thereafter. In the UK, criminals have been released from prison to make space for those those guilty of speech crimes. Similar things have been happening sporadically in Germany.

The hypothesis that those in power lost control over the narrative, and want it back at any cost, explains a lot more than the hypothesis that John Kerry really wants everyone to know the truth, provided by the mainstream media, given said media's record. You can refer to the NYTimes' deception about Iraq, or any of the other "truths" that suddenly got memory holed when they were no longer convenient. You can even look today at how they can't bring themselves to say Israel is currently killing people. So I'm going with that hypothesis until someone comes up with a better one.

There is a pattern to see if you make the effort to remember what the media said before, such as outrage at attacking innocent civilians, and then what they say now is inconsistent. In other words, it is helpful to apply good old falsification.

Started looking through your list of the banned:

Aaron Rupar is still on Twitter and says he was removed for linking to the Elon Musk Plane Tracker.

Alan MacLeod is also on Twitter complaining about the media not reporting correctly on Israel, something I also just did. Apparently he was banned then restored. My guess would be a mass-reporting campaign against him by the Hasbara people.

Andrew Lawrence: too many of them to figure out which one you meant.

Bob Lonsberry is also on Twitter although he said he was subject to a lifetime ban.

Dean Baker is on Twitter. He may have been removed because of a technical glitch. It also seems right-wingers mass reported his account.

I'll stop here since so far 100% of the people you claim are banned and that I could find are not actually banned but have been temporarily suspended at some time or the other.

Given that Elon Musk removed tons of "moderators", my guess is that the systems are set up to auto-remove people if enough people report them and then humans fix the mistakes if other people complain about it. It seems that other people think so too.

"The main Twitter/Hunter scandal was about blocking links to the NY Post story"

Ah, I thought it was specifically about the posts that linked to his dick pics. Having said that, the Post article also has a nude picture of Biden in a bathtub. On the plus side, it doesn't show his genitals. On the minus side, it probably does qualify as nonconsensual pornography under many State laws in the US.

These laws have had free speech challenges in court, and the courts have consistently rejected First Amendment arguments against them. So if this is a free-speech issue, then the links to this article should probably have been banned before the jet trackers have, since jet trackers merely republish public data and are clearly protected by the first amendment.

"Which Swift one was never suspended?"

My mistake, I looked at a list of banned Jet trackers and did not see Swift's tracker on there. I did not realize that there was a real-time tracker that was banned and that was not on the list.

"You can try putting words from the first sentence into the search tool"

I have no idea what "first sentence" you are talking about. You say that "It's on the same page as the censored address," but there are no links on that page.

"Yes, Kerry does say what I said"

This is just literally not true. He never said that "this election is about fixing the major roadblock called the first amendment."

"Hillary thinks people should be criminally charged for expressing their opinions"

You keep linking to these excerpts from longer discussions as if they were some smoking gun, but all you're doing is underlining what I said earlier: your motivated reasoning makes you believe in these manufactured controversies.

I have no idea what Clinton was actually saying in this clip, because it's 19 seconds long and begins in the middle of a sentence. It sounds like she might be talking about the Foreign Agents Registration act, but I really have no clue what she's saying, and based on these 19 seconds, neither have you.

In the second clip she's just offering her opinion on the press. Same as you are doing in this thread.

"Taylor Lorenz who has demonstrated hypocrisy"

So you draw the line where the first amendment ends at hypocrisy?

"are not actually banned"

Some people were reinstated after they deleted some of the things they posted, and some were apparently randomly reinstated. Unbanning doesn't mean banning didn't happen. Some remain suspended to this day.

@Plume I’m not familiar with those state laws. You may be right. I don’t recall anyone advancing that argument at the time, though. The concerns were that the material may have been obtained via hacking or might have been fake.

I’d like to see something official on the profile or timeline saying that on this day the account was suspended for this reason, was reinstated because a post was deleted, etc. It would not be fully transparent because obviously they couldn’t show the offending posts, but right now all you can see is the current binary state.

Ok, Plume. One can bring a horse to water, but one can't make it drink.

You are claiming that everything I pointed to has a high probability of actually being totally innocent, misinterpreted, taken out of context. It's commonplace for candidates to democratic office to casually mention criminally charging people for their views. Sure. Not remotely a sign of an anti-democratic tide. Ask any of your friends who fled a totalitarian regime if it rings no alarm bells whatsoever.

I wasn't disputing Taylor Lorenz's right to speech, only her legitimacy to be called a journalist. Your point was Elon was banning "journalists", a particularly egregious crime, because presumably they are worth hearing from. But whatever, the level of journalism has fallen so low that there's no point quibbling. However, she's not banned either for what it's worth. Presumably she temporarily fell foul of Twitter's anti-doxxing rules.

One has to wonder, if Twitter is so awful, why do all these poor victims return to it? Are they gluttons for punishment? Presumably it's because Elon's Twitter is still better for their careers than any alternative, and more forgiving. Even that odd-ball Alex Jones, who I remember Elon Musk said would never return, seems to be back.

Julian Assange's first public statement since his prison release is quite relevant to the pattern I see. He points out that members of Trump's administration were responsible for his arrest and members of Biden's administration were responsible for forcing him to plead guilty to journalism.

He also mentions that the US government claims that non-US persons have no right to free speech. This goes against the first amendment which states that government shall make no law abridging THE freedom of speech. The determinant "the" in front of "freedom of speech" indicates it was understood to be a natural right that pre-exists any the establishment of any government. This change does not suggest that those in power respect the first amendment. Unfortunately this is not a recent pattern -- I recall a certain Shrub being widely reported as saying that the Constitution "is just a ! piece of paper".

"The concerns were that the material may have been obtained via hacking"

This was a nonsensical rule to begin with, and Twitter immediately changed the rule anyway. I'm not sure if it's meaningful to argue it, since at this point, everybody (for most values of "everybody") seems to agree that "it's a result of hacking" is not a good reason for banning information.

Twitter was incorrect to suppress the Post article based on the argument that it used hacked information, if that is what their actual reason was — iirc they offered multiple different justifications.

Twitter was probably right to suppress links to the Post article because of its contents. If OUG is correct that the PDF initially contained Vance's home address, then Twitter was also right to suppress links to that. Twitter was not right to ban flight trackers.

"One can bring a horse to water, but one can't make it drink"

You fail to support the claim you made about the contents of the document, so the only assumption I can make is that you have realized that you were mistaken. Either way, this is childish behavior. If you can support your claim, then support it. If you can't support it, then admit that. It's not my job to support your claim.

"Not remotely a sign of an anti-democratic tide"

Again, you fail to respond to the point I made about what she actually said, so again, the only conclusion I can draw is that you realize that you're likely wrong, and instead of admitting it, you just repeat the exact same hyperbolic claims.

The Foreign Agents Registration act is a real thing, and if that was what Clinton was referring to, then she is correct that it should be enforced. You are free to describe this as "charging people for their views", but that's like describing a stabbing as "charging people for their knives."

And just to be clear: if you are correct that she was talking about jailing people for expressing their views, then fuck her. But making the claim that this is definitely what she said based on a 19-second clip that starts in the middle of a sentence is disingenuous, and the fact that you did that should make you reconsider how you evaluate the veracity of the things you believe.

"I wasn't disputing Taylor Lorenz's right to speech, only her legitimacy to be called a journalist"

Come on. That's what I mean when I say "motivated reasoning."

"if Twitter is so awful, why do all these poor victims return to it? Are they gluttons for punishment"

You know perfectly well what the answer to this question is. Twitter still has an almost monopolistic position when it comes to audience reach. Journalists have to be (or perhaps feel that they have to be) on Twitter to stay visible and relevant, and to get people to read their content.

@Plume: There is something quite ironic about someone who claims that providing short evidence is taking things "out of context", yet refuses to read long documents, or even search in them, because it's not up to him to prove a claim. Either way, it's not his fault. Not a sign of someone who wishes to discuss fairly and understand a topic. Nor are ad-hominem attacks: "childish".

You apparently don't know that FARA applies to people who work for foreign government. Oddly FARA doesn't apply to Israel, and in particular AIPAC, which literally puts out advertisements about defeating US candidates by their spending. Very public election interference, but apparently acceptable.

But FARA does not and cannot apply to individuals who are do not represent a government, because if it did it would abridge the right to free speech and it would be unconstitutional. You have the right under the first amendment to have views that are identical to those of the Russian government. The fact the Russian government thinks the sky is blue does not preclude you from thinking so too. Yet the government is investigating people who analyze current events and placing them in their historical context and selling that work for violating FARA. The most recent example is Scott Ritter.

The irony is that the types of people who end up publishing in foreign outlets would gladly work for US outlets, because their audience would be their American compatriots and they'd be paid more, but US outlets have no interest in publishing their work, because it goes against their narrative. That's why so much of the public has stopped listening to the media: what it says is utterly predictable and is often ahistorical.

It's a bit like talking with you. Disagreeing with you is apparently always the product of "motivated reasoning". I'd suggest reconsidering whether you really know quite as much as you obviously think you do, or whether you're not instead actually demonstrating which particular media bubble you inhabit.

The journalism I know is about placing historical events that occurred today into their historical context. Explaining why an event occurred, who the main actors are, what their motivations are and the incentive structure each follows, and therefore what's likely to occur. For instance, why the BRICS countries are coming together in Kazan in 3 weeks, what they will be discussing, how their setting up of a new medium of exchange will affect the US dollar, how the US dollar has lost power due to the collapse of the petrodollar agreement under Biden, and what influence the current conflicts in the Middle East, Ukraine and the looming conflict in the Taiwan Straight will have on all of this.

So no, I don't consider Taylor Lorenz to be a journalist. At best she's a reporter, at worst a PR agent, things that involve little understanding, and therefore little standing. You'll note that her Wikipedia article is mostly about her and controversies about her, not about her work. Seymour Hersh's page is about his work. Anyway, you're welcome to believe otherwise. It's not the main point.

There is something else quite ironic about your position: you claim that the people who decide what news people get to see, whose faces are plastered all over TV, radio, and newspapers, are forced to go to Twitter to get an audience, because Twitter has a "monopoly" on their audience. Putting aside the fact that the media's job is literally to obtain an audience which they often sell to advertisers, you're making my point that people are giving up on the media, which makes it harder for people like John Kerry and his ilk to govern, something he's complaining about, and yet you claim it's me who is the one suffering from "motivated reasoning".

Anyway I'm done, so I'll let you have the last word. Enjoy it!

I will respond to what you wrote, but before I do that, I want to make a larger point. A few weeks ago, it was revealed that the Russian government was funding right-wing commentators like Tim Pool, Lauren Southern, and Dave Rubin. These are the exact people who give traction to the kinds of stories you repeat in your comments on this blog.

Let me ask you this: do you think Russia is doing this because it is concerned for your right to free speech?

When you are on Twitter and you see a 19-second out-of-context video from a biased source that starts in the middle of a sentence, and your reaction to this isn't "gee, I wonder what the rest of the clip said", but is instead "hey, this supports what I already believed, so I'm going to share it to more people," do you feel that this is behavior that is helpful to a democratic system, or hurtful to it?

There is a reason why anti-democratic governments are supporting the kind of content that you're sharing here. It's because they know that the way to attack a free, democratic system is to create confusion, fear, and anger. That is when people are most likely to come to the conclusion that the system they live in does not work, and that they'd be better off in a different system. And that's when they run into government buildings and yell for the vice president to be hanged.

Take Clinton, for example. People's perception of her has become so polarized that she has become a caricature. In some people's minds, she the head of an evil anti-democratic cabal. The thing is that we don't really need to speculate what she is actually thinking. A lot of her private emails have leaked, and are available online. You can just go there and look at what she was actually saying in private. What you will not find was a secret conspiracy to undermine the first amendment. What you will find, however, are her things like her trying to get doctors to emergency Hospitals after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Truly a despicable human being.

Now, let's talk about your points. First of all, I want to apologize for calling you "childish." I did not expect you to be insulted by it, after you called me "mentally deficient" for not finding the reference in the PDF, I felt "childish" was a rather tame thing to say. Still, I am sorry I said it.

You continue to not provide the evidence for your claim, even though you claim it can be easily found. I can't find it, as I'm mentally deficient, so I guess we are at an impasse. It doesn't really matter, because my position is clear: if the document contained JD Vance's home address or directly linked to it, then Twitter was right to suppress it, and probably also to temporarily suspend the author. If it did not, then Twitter was wrong.

"But FARA does not and cannot apply to individuals who are do not represent a government"

The actual definition is: "Any person who acts as an agent, representative, employee, or servant, or any person who acts in any other capacity at the order, request, or under the direction or control, of a foreign principal or of a person any of whose activities are directly or indirectly supervised, directed, controlled, financed, or subsidized in whole or in major part by a foreign principal."

"Oddly FARA doesn't apply to Israel"

You will not see me defend Israel.

"You have the right under the first amendment to have views that are identical to those of the Russian government"

I never said otherwise, and neither does Clinton in the clip you posted.

"I don't consider Taylor Lorenz to be a journalist"

If you ask me for a list of journalists that were banned on Twitter, I will put her on that list, because "journalist that was banned on Twitter" is an exact description of her, regardless of what you personally consider her to be.

"you claim that the people who decide what news people get to see, whose faces are plastered all over TV, radio, and newspapers, are forced to go to Twitter"

This does not describe most of the journalists on Twitter.

"Anyway I'm done, so I'll let you have the last word. Enjoy it!"

Well, I'm sorry to hear that.