We have been discussing how Democratic leaders like Hillary Clinton called on foreign countries to pass censorship laws to prevent Elon Musk from restoring free speech protections on Twitter. The EU has responded aggressively to warn Musk not to allow greater free speech or face crippling fines and even potential criminal enforcement. After years of using censorship-by-surrogates in social media companies, Democratic leaders seem to have rediscovered good old-fashioned state censorship.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) declared Musk’s pledge to restore free speech values on social media as threatening Democracy itself. She has promised that “there are going to be rules” to block such changes. She is not alone. Former President Obama has declared “regulation has to be part of the answer” to disinformation.
For her part, Hillary Clinton is looking to Europe to fill the vacuum and called upon her European counterparts to pass a massive censorship law to “bolster global democracy before it’s too late.”
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern recently repeated this call for global censorship at the United Nations to the applause of diplomats and media alike.
EU censors have assured Democratic leaders that they will not allow free speech to break out on Twitter regardless of the wishes of its owner and customers.
One of the most anti-free speech figures in the West, EU’s Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton has been raising the alarm that Twitter users might be able to read uncensored material or hear unauthorized views.
Breton himself threatened that Twitter must “fly by [the European Union’s] rules” in censoring views deemed misleading or harmful by EU bureaucrats. Breton has been moving publicly to warn Musk not to try to reintroduce protections that go beyond the tolerance of the EU for free speech. Musk is planning to meet with the EU censors and has conceded that he may not be able resist such mandatory censorship rules.
The hope of leaders like Clinton is the anti-free speech measure recently passed by EU countries, the Digital Services Act. The DSA contains mandatory “disinformation” rules for censoring “harmful” thoughts or views.
Breton has made no secret that he views free speech as a danger coming from the United States that needs to be walled off from the Internet. He previously declared that, with the DSA, the EU is now able to prevent the Internet from again becoming a place for largely unregulated free speech, which he referred to as the “Wild West” period of the Internet.
It is a telling reference because the EU views free speech itself as an existential danger. They reject the notion of free speech as its own protection where good speech can overcome bad speech. That is viewed as the “Wild West.”
Many of us are far more fearful of global censors than some whack job spewing hateful thoughts from his basement. That is why I have described myself as an Internet Originalist:
The alternative is “internet originalism” — no censorship. If social media companies returned to their original roles, there would be no slippery slope of political bias or opportunism; they would assume the same status as telephone companies. We do not need companies to protect us from harmful or “misleading” thoughts. The solution to bad speech is more speech, not approved speech.
If Pelosi demanded that Verizon or Sprint interrupt calls to stop people saying false or misleading things, the public would be outraged. Twitter serves the same communicative function between consenting parties; it simply allows thousands of people to participate in such digital exchanges. Those people do not sign up to exchange thoughts only to have Dorsey or some other internet overlords monitor their conversations and “protect” them from errant or harmful thoughts.
The danger of the rising levels of censorship is far greater than the dangers of such absurd claims of the law or science — or in this case both. What we can do is to maximize the free discourse and expression on the Internet to allow free speech itself to be the ultimate disinfectant of disinformation.
Joseph Goebbels was ahead of his time.
Goebbels would get a high paying job with a DNC; he would fit in nicely with these fascist thugs!
Nothing says democracy when unelected people impose their will on millions of people.
Would you also expand free speech to the bots that imitate real people and flood platforms with lies, disinformation, and conspiracy theories?
I think charging for Blue Checks is going to stop a lot of that. Besides, the onus is on you to verify anything you read.
Breaking news!! Trump found dead at Mar a Lago! Melania Trump found the former president’s body slumped over on his toilet next to a bucket of KFC. Details to follow.
Hate to break it to you but Bill Clinton already had bypass surgery from all of the Big Macs.
But he’s not dead like Trump.
Svelaz: Please send your breaking news to Dennis McIntyre, who posted (Oct. 31 @2:22 p.m, last paragraph) that the Santa Monica Observer (in 2016) printed a story about hillary’s death and a “double” appearing on her behalf for presidential debates with Trump. -Dennis apparently does not believe the Observer’s statement that it was political satire.- maybe Dennis inspired you?
The Santa Monica observer is not a satire news site. They actually post false news stories. It doesn’t even claim to be one.
So will they ban Twitter from those countries? Maybe Musk will make it available on his Starlink System world wide and override the enemies of free speech.
Anyone that votes for these enemies of free speech doesn’t value their freedom and spits on the graves of all those that fought to defend it.
Once we allow these authoritarians to limit our speech, next they’ll limit what we can think, ala George Orwell, 1984.
“Former President Obama has declared ‘regulation has to be part of the answer’ to disinformation.”
In unvarnished censorship language: Sic the FBI and DHS on those expressing “unapproved” ideas. The Higher Authorities, the Voices of the People, the Enlightened Ones on the Left will decide which opinions and ideas are acceptable. Don’t like their judgment? To the Gulag with you.
The unwashed masses, after all, are incapable of thinking for themselves, or of guiding their own lives. So someone has to do it for them.
Tyranny always has as its foundation that Man is congentially defective. But that, somehow, the omnipotent leaders are omniscent and infallible.
Kinda ironic that American men and women crossed two oceans to free the world of what we now find in our midst.
@Margot Ballhere I spent four and a half years stationed on the Iron Curtain, it seems Marxism is a disease the we never seem to be able to eradicate.
In the Twentieth Century Marxists killed 262 million people. Democide; Death by Government.
This is the reason why the 1st and the 2nd Amendment are so critical.
100+ million gun owners with 700 million guns is why we have some level of freedom in America.
If the National Socialist Democrat WOKE Party could they would go Full Fourth Reich. These people are today’s National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NAZIS).
It is anti-American, anti-Constitution and pure political persecution for Democratic leaders, like Hillary Clinton, to call on the EU to pass censorship laws to prevent Elon Musk from restoring free speech protections on Twitter. Actively encouraging foreign entities to do the things we cannot do in the United States because of our constitution is a clear betrayal of values set forth in the United States Constitution and the culture that it created, this is a form of treason.
What definition of treason are we using…the 18 USC 2381 or the Shamurai Stevie version. Maggie’s Drawers again Stevie. We need a popcorn button for your posts.
Witherspoon, Turley is being wholly disingenuous and blatantly dishonest in this column. Turley’s own blog doesn’t do what he wants twitter to do.
The EU is entitled to it’s own rules and they are NOT advocating what Turley is claiming. Musk is not “restoring free speech protections” on twitter. Twitter or any other SM platform has always had free speech protections. As private companies they have had the absolute right to moderate the content on their platforms as they see fit just as Turley does on his blog. Right now Twitter is being flooded with racist and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and bullying. Even the left is now engaging in flooding the site with claims of Trump being in jail or dead.
It’s getting out of control and Musk has very little time to get a handle on it before it devolves into a chaotic mess.
“ Actively encouraging foreign entities to do the things we cannot do in the United States because of our constitution is a clear betrayal of values set forth in the United States Constitution and the culture that it created, this is a form of treason.”
It’s not treason at all. In fact it’s THEIR right to exercise THEIR free speech right to offer encouragement to the EU if they want to. As crazy as that may sound it’s actually a perfectly valid act. We constantly tell other governments to do things against other entities because we can’t do it here.
The 1st amendment’s prohibitions on infringement of free speech applies ONLY to government. Not private entities. Suggesting to the EU what to do about twitter is not an infringement of free speech on U.S. soil. The constitution power is limited to within our borders and twitter is NOT being censored by the U.S. government as Turley falsely alleges. It does not even meet the definition of treason.
Treason; the crime of betraying one’s country, especially by attempting to kill the sovereign or overthrow the government.
Betraying; expose (one’s country, a group, or a person) to danger by treacherously giving information to an enemy.
The EU is not our enemy. What danger are we being exposed to by encouraging the EU on how to deal with twitter. We are NOT forcing the EU to do anything. It’s still their choice on what they want to do.
Bless your heart.
Once again confirming that this is from a bot. Bots only see the statement but never the subtlety that Professor Turley manifests. The AI’s in the bots just have not yet progressed to the point where subtlety, nuance, and leaps beyond logic are the in their understanding. But those points are essential to our understanding of humanity.
So you’re a bot? Interesting.
Otherwise Turley’s column was rife with disingenuous allegations of censorship. Turley is a hypocrite. He doesn’t apply the same principles that he demands on twitter.
For the trolling fools that are too willfully ignorant to fully understand what I wrote in this context…
Treason: the action of betraying one’s country.
You can add on any examples you want to that definition but that is the core of the definition in this context. Also, treason is not always a “crime” but it is always an action.
Deflection as anticipated. It’s the written word Stevie. You have to say what you mean. Try concise bullet-point style statements. We are on a legal blog, why would we not attach legal consequence.
Witherspoon, we fully understood the context of your post. That you have no idea what treason is and how it is applied under the law.
“ Article 3, Section 3: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.”
The EU are not our enemies. Sooooo your just being emotional and petty.
@Steve
Agreed. What Hillary did is the equivalent of running to daddy. That one man (Elosk) could engender this freak out simply by restoring Twitter to *what it used to be anyway*, tells me that there is some very damning stuff in that pile in the time since. Self-preservation is the first rule of these elitist morons, and nothing else. They really, honestly, truly believe they are somehow inherently ‘better’ than the rest of humanity, and that is a delusion that only marginalization will cure. Their money and privilege don’t freaking matter, and they fail to acknowledge that lesson over, and over again. This is 2016 all over again. They will never fully get that people simply don’t like them or their policies, not even the smart ones (very clearly smarter than them). And that is why, unless they would like to instigate an *actual* coup, which would likely incite a war, possibly a global one, they are pretty much f*****.
The Clintons, Obama, EU leaders, Justin Trudeau, New Zeland Prime Mininster and others all belong and follow the Great Reset/DAVAOS/WORLD ECONOMIC FOrum Leadership and their Authoritatian dream world. The Democrats will lose the elections due to their Left Wing/anit freedom policies and etc. Hopefully they will be beaten badly come Nov 8th and new center of the road JFK Dem’s take charge and throw the nuts, authoritatian, Clintons and etc. OUT.
@234currency I was a JFK Democrat now I just Unaffiliated.
What is comes down to is you’re either a Marxist Globalist or a Nationalist. Lost or Saved as in the biblical sense. One camp or the other.
This is the end result of the equality movement? Hillary – the little girl from Wisner Avenue in Park Ridge, IL – and her ilk use their exalted positions to muzzle written and oral speech they don’t like, speech that describes their feet as being of clay? Disappointing to see that after women have attained some sort of status they abuse their new acquired positions by promoting Diversity, Inclusiveness, and Equity, appropriately known by the acronym, DIE.
Even The Intercept, a left-leaning outlet, understands this as a threat to all of us.
“We are not sure if there’s any action that can be taken, but we wanted to flag them for consideration,” wrote a state official on the email thread, forwarding on other examples of accounts that could be confused with official government entities. The Twitter representative responded: “We will escalate. Thank you.”
Each email in the chain carried a disclaimer that the agency “neither has nor seeks the ability to remove or edit what information is made available on social media platforms.”
That tagline, however, concerns free speech advocates, who note that the agency is attempting to make an end run around the First Amendment by exerting continual pressure on private sector social media firms. “When the government suggests things, it’s not too hard to pull off the velvet glove, and you get the mail fist,” said Adam Candeub, a professor of law at Michigan State University. “And I would consider such actions, especially when it’s bureaucratized, as essentially state action and government collusion with the platforms.”
“If a foreign authoritarian government sent these messages,” noted Nadine Strossen, the former president of the American Civil Liberties Union, “there is no doubt we would call it censorship.”
https://theintercept.com/2022/10/31/social-media-disinformation-dhs/
further proof that the left is not our friends
Mark your calendars: today is the day the American Democratic Party officially became indefensible. Coincidence that this happened one week before our elections? I think not. Brace yourselves for the mother of all narratives.
James,
Well said.
I am trying to imagine a narrative so outrageous, so prosperous and people will believe it.
I am trying to imagine a narrative so outrageous, so prosperous and people will believe it.
Farmer, as Mattias Desmet describes in his book, The Psychology of Totalitarianism, any narrative that succeeds in isolating individuals on a singular fear can then be used to get the them to collectively believe anything, as long as they believe it will assuage their perceived fear. This is all in the process of Mass Formation.
As much as I (and others) tried to bring this to the attention of society, it didn’t have much effect. People continued to go along with the narrative. That was the moment when I decided to focus on something else, namely on the psychological processes that were at work in society and that could explain how people can become so radically blind and continued to buy into a narrative so utterly absurd. It took me a few months to realize that what was going on in society was a worldwide process of mass formation.
https://mattiasdesmet.substack.com/p/the-psychology-of-totalitarianism
Our pompous 21st century hive minded totalitarian Democrats simply don’t understand “free speech” and likely never will.
Well, at least you are consistent.
Witherspoon,
Free speech is not just a right of individuals. It’s a right that applies to EVERYONE and that includes companies, corporations, organizations, and yes even the government itself.
The 1st amendment’s restrictions are only geared towards government limitation. Not individuals, companies, corporations, and organizations. The government DOES have free speech rights, BUT it’s the only entity that is limited by the constitution on censoring speech of others.
If Twitter, Facebook, Parler, 4chan, gab, etc. all chose to censor speech in some way or another for any reason. They have every right to do so. NONE can run afoul of the prohibitions the 1st amendment imposes on government. Turley wants these private entities to impose upon everyone the same restrictions the 1st amendment does for government. He wants them to “voluntarily” adopt the same principles, but in reality he really wants’ to force them to by way of constant criticism of censorship that is completely legal and constitutional. Turley’s own blog doesn’t adhere to his own “1st amendment model” at all. Thus rending him a total hypocrite. I think we understand what free speech really is. Much better than you do.
progressives can not formulate cogent arguments, censorship is all they have.
Progressive is the new name for Marxist. Same tyranny.
“We have been discussing how Democratic leaders like Hillary Clinton called on foreign companies to pass censorship laws to prevent Elon Musk from restoring free speech protections on Twitter.”
I had to read that four times to realize I was not reading the Babylon Bee. Wrap your head around a “liberal” against free speech.
I look forward to seeing the censorship lovers on this blog defend the EU here.
The EU is a sovereign organization not under the governance of the U.S. constitution. So what does it matter if they choose to do things differently with twitter.
Twitter doesn’t have a right to operate in the EU. Twitter still has to abide by their rules just as Google has to abide by China’s rules if they want to be able to operate in their territory.
Their are fair arguments against the spreading of disinformation on such sites because they CAN be harmful. Free speech is NOT absolute. It’s not without consequences or responsibility and accountability. Even our own government CAN impose certain limits on free speech just as they CAN impose certain limits on gun ownership. NOTHING is absolute. Even Turley’s own blog limits speech to a certain extent he DOES censor speech that is supposed to be protected under the 1st amendment such as racist speech and offensive foul speech. For Turley to claim to be a “free speech absolutist” he would not be censoring racist or foul and offensive speech on his blog at all. Yet he uses the excuse that WordPress has is what is limiting said speech on his blog. He should be demanding WordPress allow the racist and foul and offensive speech on his blog because he’s a…free speech ABSOLUTIST.
The EU is the Deep State of Europe. Same as the US and supported by the Deep State’s operatives in the socialist Democratic party.
They are the authoritarians they warn us about. They need to look in the mirror good and long.
Which is why it was amusing to watch their heads explode when Meloni won the PM spot in Italy. Who are the real fascists?
True that. I’m sure that Blofeld is behind it all. We certainly do need Agent 007 about now.