Last night I wrote a column on the challenges faced by Elon Musk in taking over Twitter and suggested steps to “hit the ground running.” One of those obvious steps discussed in earlier columns was to fire CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal and head of legal policy, trust, and safety Vijaya Gadde, the primary figures responsible for creating one of the largest censorship systems in history. He did so within minutes of taking over and their removal constitutes as singular advances in the cause of free speech around the world. As expected, this morning media figures are in full panic at the thought that one social media platform may restore free speech protections after years of biased and aggressive censorship. The controversial Washington Post columnist Taylor Lorenz lamented, “It’s like the gates of hell opened on this site tonight.” That’s right, the prospect of others having access to Twitter to express their own views is a hellish prospect for many in the media.
I guess those unhappy people can move to Parler
The anti-free speech mob isn’t really concerned about “disinformation” getting into social media. They’re just concerned that THEIR disinformation will be countered. If they censored disinformation a decade ago, would Russiagate have been able to survive a week? Would Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden, who lie about everything and everyone, have a voice on social media? Would Biden’s WH press secretary, whose job it is to confirm all Biden’s lies, ever have a voice? Democrats are confused about their own motives — they’re not using journalism and history in the service of morality, they’re using it for power and self-interest. You can’t put morality lipstick on a pig.
Funny thing about twitter is – Jonathan Turley has never been banned from it. His posts are read by a lot of people. And he is clearly a conservative posting conservative things. Indeed, he is pretty obsessed with Hunter Biden, and posts about him all the time.
So I do not buy that twitter has been banning people because they are conservative. It must be something else about their posts and their violations of the terms of use that have been getting them banned.
Nice deflection or attempt there of.
The professor is a long time, traditional Democrat.
He has made that plainly known.
I think the reason why he has been critical of the Democrat party is, as a traditional Democrat, he is pointing out the level of crazy and corruption that has infected the party.
Although it is quite telling that Twitter has not banned the professor for his posts about the Hunter Biden laptop, and his dealings with China.
Could it be they are true?
Is it true that Hunter Biden had a laptop? Yes. Most people do. Our emails are kept private and Hunter’s should have been too. We have not had the benefit of looking through Don Jr.’s or Eric’s emails but I am sure there is a lot more stuff there.
Is it true that Hunter did business in China? Yes. A lot of Americans do.
“. . . Hunter’s should have been too.”
Drop context much?
*Abandoned* property (with an unpaid bill) becomes the property of the store’s owner. (Delaware law is very clear on that fact.)
“Is it true that Hunter did business in China?”
He did not do “business” in China. He did *not* create a product or a service. He did *not* produce wealth. He sold political influence, in cahoots with his kleptocratic family. He no more did “business” than a shakedown artist does “business.”
It’s the same if you do not pay on time for rented space in those large places where you can rent certain sizes for your extra goods. No pay, then the owner takes possession and can keep or auction all of the material in the rental unit. Probably some variation in different states.
Our emails are private.
But our privacy is lost when we share our private documents with others.
Hunter left two laptops with a computer shop for over 9 months.
The repair order – a contract makes it clear that if the items are not picked up they become property of the shop.
Hunter was contacted repeatedly and refused to pick them up.
He surrendered ownership and his right to privacy.
And he is clearly a conservative posting conservative things.
Turley is not a conservative. His posting center on the Constitution, and laws that derive, or veer away, from the Constitution.
What you have done is confuse cause and affect. A full throated, unwavering, defense of the Constitution and rule of law comes across as conservative, tells us alot about you. The question immediately comes to mind. Are those taking the opposite position liberals/Democrats?
Free speech, individual rights, the rule of law, did not used to be solely conservative principles.
It is arguable that today Turley is conservative – but only because the left has gone insane and rejected values and principles that are essential regardless of your political position and those still defending that are called conservatives.
Even Donald Trump is in truth barely a conservative.
He did many conservative things as president – but he also did many very unconservative things.
BS. I was silenced (down graded or whatever, so others couldn’t see my posts unless hitting “see more”) not because of anything I posted but simply because I followed Trump and other conservatives. Don’t believe Twitter did that? Google it! It wasn’t just me that was “downgraded”, others had the same thing happen to them. Neither my wife or I have any social media accounts, no Facebook, no Twitter, no Nextdoor, no Reddit, nothing. Why have we dropped everything, we were both censored in one form or another so chose not to participate or support those platforms. One would think that being publicly traded companies, their duty to shareholders would prohibit them from taking part in blatant leftist politics.
“Funny thing about twitter is – Jonathan Turley has never been banned from it.” “So I do not buy that twitter has been banning people because they are conservative.”
Funny thing is I’ve never been mugged while in Chicago. So I do not buy that there is crime in Chicago.
Is that really what passes for “thinking,” today?
Sam: Good one.
Turley is not a conservative.
I am not a conservative.
Those who are not left wing nuts are not all conservatives.
(As of 9:46 a.m., all good and stimulating/provocative comments on here this morning, thanks everyone!)
Journalism and history are about morality? Really? I thought they were about truth. Postmodernist relativism has done a hatchet job on western society. And there’s no going back, so we’d better figure out what can replace this insidious ideology.
“It’s like the gates of hell opened on this site tonight.” To Lorenz that likely seems true.
People can now link to a true story that reflects poorly on Hunter Biden. Others can question the now question the origins of Covid origins and effectiveness of lockdowns and masks.
It makes me think of another quote.
“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.”
― Ron Paul
It is my greatest hope that Musk is successful. There is nothing lower than the censorship cadre. To hell with all of them.
There’s an old saying that “First They Ignore You, Then They Laugh at You, Then They Attack You, Then You Win.” How true!
But……..mean tweets…..
The so-called “green revolution” carries within ityself the seed of its own destruction in the form of unnatural and artificial control of speech and behavior. There is a “natural” imperative towards freedom. It is evident in every other species but ours. To paraphrase Maya Angelou’s great work and metaphor for slavery, the caged bird is now free and sings louder and with more gusto than ever before. Even if the left manages to take down Musk, what he unleashed is powerful and will survive long after he and Twitter are gone. It’s called freedom.
There’s some irony here. The right was told that if they didn’t like the hard-left censorship of Twitter, they were free to make their own Twitter with its own rules, which is what Parler was blossoming into. Then, their web server shut Parler down.
Their web server? Amazon, owned by Jeff Bezos who also owns the Washington Post; Parler went poof when the Twitterati decided that allowing free speech to exist at all wasn’t something they could allow.
Whatever Parler could’ve been is no longer. Us free speech weirdos could’ve had our own sandbox, but the censorious Twits couldn’t control themselves, and now Twitter will (hopefully) become the thing that they hated & thought was vanquished, bigly.
Taylor Lorenz & the rest of the Professionally Worthless class have only themselves to blame.
Please note that there is a petition going around from PUBLISHERS and WRITERS that is asking Putnam to NOT publish a book by Amy Coney Barret because her speech is “violence”. It is not being signed by activists, protesters and other people with no credentials, it is being signed by writers, other publishers and serious ACLU types.
Just another day in Doublestandardstan. They call it book burning if you want to ban a primer on oral sex from a kindergarten library, but a fight for free speech to ban a book by a SITTING SUPREME COURT JUSTICE. They want to ban To Kill a Mockingbird and a studious book about the actual cost to youth trans activism by Abigail Shrier and then they scream about not allowing drag queen hour for 5 year olds or not wanting gender studies for 5-8 year olds in Florida.
hullbobby: OMG, I might not have learned of this but for your post, thank you.
The real sad thing is that some articles discussing this have noted that her book focuses on the importance of justices not allowing personal emotions or beliefs to interfere with jurisprudence–an important and honorable tenet.
Well, if publisher Penguin backs off because of this pressure, we know it will be time to turn things around. As the good professor often says, the remedy is MORE speech, not less. So thanks to you, hullbobby, I will be purchasing her book. And I may check with local libraries to ensure that they stock it. I hope more of us do the same.
Curious that a guy from South Africa did this whatever the eventual outcome.
The new diversity in big tech should be welcomed by the woke. twitter has an African American owner.
For years I heard “Twitter is a private company”.” It can make it’s own rules and hire and fire as it sees fit.”” If you don’t like the rules, don’t use the platform.”
” It is not bound by the 1st Amendment”. ALL TRUE!
Those who were for censorship, masked as the misnomer ” misinformation”. will now be outraged.
Hopefully the same crowd who guaranteed they would move to Canada , Streisand and Reiner come to mind , if a certain guy got elected President, will now exit the platform.
Looking forward to the Babylon Bee being reinstated. Got kicked off for saying a guy is a guy. When it came to Climate Change and Covid I always heard, ” believe the science” .Well, biology is a science. If you have two X chromosomes you are a girl ( female). If you have an X and Y chromosomes, you are a guy
( Male). Case closed. To put forth any other position, would be ” misinformation”.
Thank you for opening further sane discussion of of “Free Speech” means in the era of the Internet. I believe that silencing dissent is the worst outcome, but quieting hysteria and hatred is an absolute requirement.
There are those who believe being in favor of protecting unborn life is hate speech, so do you approve of “quieting” that?
When I use the word hate, I using the common sense definition of hate. Yes, a determined wordsmith can reframe an issue, assert the unquestioned right of the wronged, and declare that a comment is “hate speech”. But the basic proposition of protecting unborn life is a valid point of view, as is the proposition that there are genuine reasons for abortion. Your point is made, but banning either point of view is the equivalent of censorship. Hate and threat of violence directed at someone or a group of people (ethnic, religious) should be banned. The road to free speech will hopefully lead to civil discourse, but it is fraught with peril.
Don’t you just love it when Progressives lose their mind over anyone not on the far left exercising a Constitutional right?
On the topic of free speech, I see the DoJ has listed “misinformation” as an election crime.
It lists “misinformation” as a potential election crime, describing it as “false or misleading information spread mistakenly or unintentionally.”
Garland me take over the top spot in Russia after Putin accidentally shots himself while cleaning is drone. Garland is very comfortable as Dictator, creating and enforcing laws on demand.
Iowan2,
From some of what I have read in relation to “misinformation” and elections is it would be a crime if one were to make claims that a polling location has changed and moved to a new (not real) place.
Okay. I think that makes sense.
However, in NYC, it was reported when Republicans went to their polling places for the primaries, the workers told them their locations had changed. That would of been “misinformation.” One person presented her voter card, which listed the location as that place.
Also, it was reported that Republican ballots had gone missing or require a search to find and make them available.
I don’t think this is the big win for the right that the righties seem to think it is. 90% of Twitter’s revenue last year was from advertising sales (just like used to be the case with newspapers).
According to what will I guess be its last 10-K Twitter:
“generates its advertising revenue primarily from the sale of its Promoted Products: (i) Promoted Ads, (ii) Follower Ads and (iii) Twitter Takeover. Promoted Ads and Follower Ads are pay-for-performance advertising products or pay on impressions delivered, each priced through an auction. Twitter Takeover is featured by geography and offered on a fixed-fee-per-day basis.”
The woke advertisers, especially outside the U.S from which Twitter gets 40% of its revenue, are going to desert Twitter the way they deserted Georgia last year (not to mention that advertising spending is going to plummet in general with the coming recession).
Musk’s a very astute businessperson.He is going to do what the newspapers have done in response to less advertising revenue and try to get revenue more from people paying for content than from advertising. There’s rub: the only people who want to pay for content are lefties (big psychological thing there but let’s let that lie).
Dennis, do you know Amazon lost money for years?
His savings in income tax could cover the monthly nut at twitter.
Amazon is and almost always was a public company. So sorry but your reply makes no sense to me. Plus it really does not relate to my comment at all. I said Musk was an astute businessperson… he will do whatever it takes to make money… not worry about paper savings by paying lower taxes
There’s rub: the only people who want to pay for content are lefties
You may want to consider Substack, and PJ media, before making such declarative statements
Excellent point.
Dennis, you wrote “going to desert Twitter the way they deserted Georgia last year…” and now I have to ask, did Coke leave GA? Did Delta leave GA? Did Netflix stop making movies in GA? Did baseball gain or lose by their stunt with the All Star Game?
One more question for Dennis: Did Disney leave Florida after the state passed a very sane bill regarding teaching kids aged 5-8? Did they leave after they got smacked down by the FL Republicans? Did Disney leave FL or did they just shut the heck up?
Dennis hasn’t learned the lesson that woke corporations have learned which is, to quote a famous book title, basically “shut up and sing”.
try to read more carefully. I said woke corporations outside the U.S.
Please explain how much revenue was lost by GA due to woke foreign corps not advertising? Please try to make sense.
Dennis, A large car company just decided to build a $5 billion plant near Savannah, so I think they decided not to desert the state but actually move to the state. And the Atlanta Braves brought much of that revenue back with the World Series win in 2021 and the Georgia Bulldogs won the NCAA football championship and now recruit all over the nation, including California. Tyler Perry’s major studio in Atlanta stayed put and more major movies are made in Georgia each year to the point of rivaling Hollywood. Free speech works and that is where people wish to live. Why are people leaving California,New York, Illinois and streaming to the free states of Georgia, Texas, Tennessee, Florida, North Carolina and others. Kind of funny talking about the free states when 150 years ago the free states were in the northeast and midwest. Not anymore.
Seems to me that if multiple people and groups are trying to get publishers to not publish certain authors or restrain free speech because of point of view that might be an illegal boycott, as well as a conspiracy, restraint of trade and maybe monopolistic practices. Especially if at the behest of certain people in the Federal government. Seems a good attorney might be able to raise a lot of hell, make some money for his/her clients and the law firm.
Time to bust this cabal wide open.
I wrote about “advertisers,” not manufacturers, “outside the U.S.,” not Georgia, but apparently you have some other issue you need to get off your chest. I suggest you publish it as a comment rather than a reply to an unrelated comment.
Advertisers are advertising products manufactured. Its called marketing. Slipping into pedantry is not a good look when debating issues.
The panic over truth tells it all. The First Amendment has been restored on a social media site. Musk has done a great deed. While we all have a right to our opinion, we don’t have a right to ‘our truth’. It should stand alone. Free.
You say “Musk has done a great deed.” And I say, what that guys said!!
you do know speech is violence? you must be a sadist.
I’m here waiting to see the Left’s heads explode.
I can’t wait to tell these leftist:
“Don’t like it? Go build your own Social Media site”! Or when journalist get fired: “learn to code”! 😂🤣😂🤣😂
You say that jokingly but you hit upon something dangerous. The left is authoritarian by nature and has power in this country through NGO’s, Fortune 500 companies, colleges and the federal administrative apparatus. They are not going to sit back while Twitter and the Dems lose their grip on power. The screws will be tightened after November 8th. And you might want to include massive demonstrations and rioting a la two years ago
I think it is entirely probably that the shift to R’s happens soon. (Not that I think it is a good thing, but something akin to the “lesser of two evils” mantra, at least for a short period of time, when the R’s capitulate and basically do what the D’s are pushing anyway)
That is the ping pong effect over us.
I’m conservative and left Twitter for GETTR for awhile. I quickly gained 2000 followers but learned that being in a one-sided echo chamber is like playing solitaire or watching a comedy alone. We need opposing points of view and without it we are left empty. I returned to Twitter after a few weeks.
Twitter banned me long ago. I refuse to go back. I do not do ANY social media (just hit up the blogs) and make videos (staying in near ban limbo at YT perpetually)
That BMan is exactly why you should go back to Twitter….and everyone else that believes in free speech should do so as well.
Musk is firing those who created the censorship model…..and deserve our support.
Knowing their Left is watching the number of returning and new subscribers to Twitter is how we put a virtual Thumb into their eye…..and that is how we extract our revenge…..speaking freely on Twitter.
Just like in the movie “Field of Dreams”….. build it and they will come!
I support Musk in his efforts to turn Twitter around and make it the industry leader!
Denis…..the left isn’t refusing to accept elections unless they win. The left didn’t attack the Capital in order to over turn an election.
The left resorts to Ballot Harvesting.
Democrat blows whistle on alleged ballot harvesting scheme, Florida opens criminal probe
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/florida-opens-criminal-probe-democrat-whistleblowers-evidence-ballot
2000, 2004, & 2016. No lefty deniers in those years? Convenient memory loss
Hillary Linton and her ilk still think she won.
I have to laugh, at what you say and how you think, “the left isn’t refusing to accept elections unless they win.” and Sotomayor, according to a recent post of yours, is a man. If you said the opposite you would be correct.