On Tuesday, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told a Senate panel that his network’s content policies that find many with their tweets flagged or downright suppressed or removed entirely are aimed at “encouraging” free speech.
Only certain kinds of free speech, apparently. So this is a little like sticking a sock one’s mouth and told to go ahead and speak.
“All of our policies are focused on encouraging more speech,” Dorsey told the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee in testimony that he, along with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, was summoned as the lawmakers consider evaluating Section 230 immunity against liability for third-party content.
“I don’t want the government to take over the job of telling America what tweets are legitimate and what are not. I don’t want the government deciding what content to take up and put down. I think we’re all in that category,” Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said. “But when you have companies that have the power of governments and have far more power than traditional media outlets, something has to give.”
Dorsey doubled-down on his insistence that Twitter in fact promotes, rather than suppresses, free speech when it flags or removes misleading or abusive content.
As Texas Senator Ted Cruz so eloquently asked these tech tyrants in a previous hearing of their having freely taken upon themselves the role of information overlords, “who the hell elected you?”
“What we saw and what the market told us was that people would not put up with abuse, harassment, and misleading information that would cause off-line harm and they would leave our service because of it,” Dorsey continued on Tuesday.
“So, our intention is to create clear policy, clear enforcement that enables people to feel that they can express themselves on our service and ultimately trust it.”
Trust it? No even halfway intelligent person should trust anything they read without do so, critically. That is the reader’s responsibility, not nanny Jack Dorsey’s.
The Federalist’s Jordan Davidson notes that despite Dorsey’s claims that their close moderation of content is simply “a business decision,” how their policies play out indicates this is about more than just pleasing customers.
The double-standards as to how targeted censorship and suppression is applied is undeniable. Just consider the difference in how tweets expressing concerns about the security of mail-in voting or allegations of voter fraud are treated from the partisan hackery of the mainstream media, which is treated as Gospel truth.
That is, of course, until a mainstream media outlet publishes a piece that is damaging to the image of a Democratic presidential candidate just weeks before the general election—then, and only then, apparently, will Twitter scrutinizes claims made by legacy media and just ban them from the network for good measure.
As Davidson explains:
In October, Twitter locked the New York Post’s account following its publication of a bombshell story indicating Hunter Biden monetized foreign companies’ access to his father, Joe Biden, while the latter was vice president. Facebook also joined Twitter in censoring the New York Post’s bombshell story, informing users they would actively limit the story’s distribution.
Dorsey has since stated this was a rash decision made by the network based on its hacked materials policy, but it took the Post weeks before his network finally caved and granted the outlet access to its own Twitter account yet again.
Twitter also put it’s first fact-check in history on a tweet from President Donald Trump ahead of the election when he expressed his opinion that mail-in voting could pose problems, and has since been absolutely ruthless in their continued censorship of his tweets if he even so much as hints at alleged voter fraud.
I’m sorry, Jack, what was that about free speech again?
No one buys your lies.
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