Donald Trump has a sick mind. He spouts lies and white supremacist propaganda in speeches and online. He actively breaks laws constantly. There has been a conversation for years about whether Twitter should suspend his account, especially as Trump mentally deteriorates, as he lashes out, spreads harmful, violent conspiracies and perpetuates lies and misinformation. This week, Twitter took a mild step at putting Trump in check – they added one small line to his mail-in ballot lies with a link telling people to get the facts. Trump’s reaction has been an absolute hissy fit:
Big Tech is doing everything in their very considerable power to CENSOR in advance of the 2020 Election. If that happens, we no longer have our freedom. I will never let it happen! They tried hard in 2016, and lost. Now they are going absolutely CRAZY. Stay Tuned!!!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 28, 2020
Think about that for a moment. Trump is arguing that tech companies are “censoring” his efforts to run lies, unchecked propaganda and violent conspiracies through Twitter. And he’s the president. That’s not all – Trump is going to sign an executive order about this:
The Trump administration is preparing an executive order intended to curtail the legal protections that shield social media companies from liability for what gets posted on their platforms, two senior administration officials said early Thursday. Such an order, which officials said was still being drafted and was subject to change, would make it easier for federal regulators to argue that companies like Facebook, Google, YouTube and Twitter are suppressing free speech when they move to suspend users or delete posts, among other examples.
The move is almost certain to face a court challenge and is the latest salvo by President Trump in his repeated threats to crack down on online platforms. Twitter this week attached fact-checking notices to two of the president’s tweets after he made false claims about voter fraud, and Mr. Trump and his supporters have long accused social media companies of silencing conservative voices. White House officials said the president would sign the order later Thursday, but they declined to comment on its content. A spokesman for Twitter declined to comment.
I read the NYT piece a few times to try to understand what Trump *thinks* he’s arguing versus what it would look like in practice. Basically, it seems like if he does the EO and the courts held up the EO, social media sites would have an even bigger responsibility to censor and ban unhinged, violent lunatics like Trump and his minions because they would have increased liability. Maybe I’m wrong? Mark Zuckerberg thinks I’m wrong. Zuckerberg thinks Jack Dorsey at Twitter is wrong too:
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg criticized Twitter on Wednesday after the microblogging platform fact-checked a tweet of President Donald Trump’s that claimed mail-in voting increases voter fraud. Twitter tagged Trump’s tweets with the message reading, “Get the facts about mail-in ballots.” The message linked to a page contradicting Trump’s assertions. Studies have not shown evidence of widespread voter fraud via absentee ballots in the past. Twitter’s action marked the first time the platform has ever marked any of Trump’s tweets as misleading.
“We have a different policy, I think, than Twitter on this,” Zuckerberg told Dana Perino, host of the Fox News show The Daily Briefing, in an interview clip. The full interview is expected to air on Thursday. “I just believe strongly that Facebook shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online. In general, private companies probably shouldn’t be, especially these platform companies, shouldn’t be in the position of doing that,” Zuckerberg added.
Perino said that Zuckerberg told her that Facebook refuses to intervene in censoring public posts unless there’s a threat of imminent harm. She added that Facebook is “hands off” when it comes to political speech.
I mean… Facebook and Twitter both have a Russian-disinformation and Nazi problem. While Jack Dorsey doesn’t do enough to shut it down, I feel like Dorsey is on a much better path, and Dorsey might actually give a sh-t about all the problematic crap that’s on his platform. Zuckerberg does not. Zuckerberg is fine with MAGAs, Russian operatives and Nazis using his platform to incite, engage, misinform, plot and harm.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
Like most things, even at the most basic level, he makes zero sense. They aren’t censoring him at all if he’s still allowed to post all the bullshit. Imagine the wrath if they had ACTUALLY booted him from the platform.
Funny how they’re all about a business being their own ‘person’ or whatever bullshit they use to validate refusing birth control in insurance plans, or for to discriminate against other religions or gay people… but as soon as anything like that happens to them, the snowflakes come out sobbing.
Our country is still going through a pandemic and he chooses to throw a bigly hissy fit about this? God I hope November is when we finally can be rid of this poor excuse of a President.
Zuckerberg knelt to the fascists so fast his knees practically collapsed. He’s so disgusting. He’s a stain.
Facebook is evil from its inception. Evil.
One of the reasons I’m so, so glad I got off Facebook.
100+
and FB is not so free like he claims, they do censor/shut down people for no reason, without any offending postings. And he is very much in Bed with the Orange One….so, Zuckerberg is a hypocrite. I Hate that he owns Instagram and Whatsapp, more Datas to steal and sell without anyones consent, he is only another criminal……like most Billionaires…
I can’t even remove my illustrations and stuff from FB, because i can’t log in since one year, i refuse to give that company my ID/Passport Datas, which is a crime to force somebody to in germany, but he has his mainbase in USA…..
So contradictory. Remove the shield that protects them from liability, but force them to stop censure altogether. So they are liable for what people post, but they can no longer stop them from posting. I read it like this: Trump wants to increase the ability for these platforms to be sued. He wants them to be so buried in litigation that they have to shut down completely. This is the fascist government trying to take control of all media and propaganda.
They should be burned to the ground in litigation. Just not for the reasons that Trump has.
Trump doesn’t want twitter shut down. This is just another example of shooting himself in the foot. Like de-classifying Susan Rice’s emails. He thought making them public would be some kind of great “gotcha” moment to fan the flames of his nonsensical Obamagate. Yet, in actuality the emails were the complete opposite.
Right now, he’s waving his little baby fists because twitter is actually giving people the opportunity to educate themselves. But twitter is his very favorite toy. He’s using twitter to b!tch about twitter! What would he do with himself all day if he ended up destroying his very favorite toy??
BTW spoiler alert, fact checking links don’t even matter. The people who believe his bullsh*t won’t bother clicking on a link anyway.
yeah, whatever happened to “OBAMAGATE!”?…that got dropped pretty quick, huh?
*snickers*
dumbasses.
He’s Twitter’s MAIN NUMBER ONE CUSTOMER–he tweets more than any tweenie or teenager on Earth (plus any birds making this sound to communicate)!
Grandpa has only another tantrum without thinking beforehand…..well thinking…..brain…..oh….
‘They challenged me! Well I have paper! And pen! And when you press down on pen, writing comes out! Free speech is a beautiful thing, a very strong and tremendous value for me! The left! Obama! Killary! Emails pizza parlour! Lock her up! Don’t ask me why I mailed my ballot. That’s a, that’s a nasty thing to say do.’
Stage whisper: ‘what is the First Amendment? Uhm.’
Continuing: ‘Obama!’
Between his Twitter meltdowns over this and his very blatant attempts at building a case for voter fraud, I’m getting more and more nervous about November. I just can’t imagine the power he’ll wield if he wins again.
Think Beijing.
Think thermonuclear war.
I’m not remotely joking.
He thinks he’s a dictator that can say anything and muffle anyone that contradicts him 🙄
And since no one stops him from doing anything, he already is a de facto dictator.
He doesn’t just think it. It’s what’s happening.
He is, but it is still a democracy, a flawed, but still, so there is Hope!
I think he flat out panicked at the first hint that Twitter may not be cool with all his mad rants.
He has always ranted on Twitter for several years now and for the first time twitter shows an hint that they are not cool with the lies he spews.
He is angry and perplexed.
I bet he is shopping for an alternative app. Unfortunately where else? Instagram, facebook or Tiktok are hardly sufficient for his numerous late night rants.
If twitter shut down he would lose half of his media exposure.
Trump will then focus on other platform for attention and plus his base in so much with fox and fox and rupert is not turning their back. Also he only focus on his base and doesnt care abt what liberals think of them. So he can pretty much get his attention with fox and his base .
What other platform has as broad a reach as Twitter, though? Would he start an Instagram? (Good lord, the horror of that thought.)
He already gets attention with Fox and his base- this is the issue. His base is not large; appearing on Fox every day would do nothing for his political campaign in terms of messaging to other demographics, which he absolutely needs in order eke out any sort of win.
Part of his success in messaging is that he engages with the public on forums that are either 1) exclusively comprised of rabid supporters or 2) have no coherent voice to push back, which is the case with Twitter. Just look at his appearance at the Nationals’ game – once he exposed himself to the general public, he was immediately booed off screen.
The problem with twitter is that journalists use it as an easy way to get quotes and content. Trump got way too much media attention just by tweeting BS every day. Journalists pick it up and write huge articles about it for days, replicating his “standpoints” and getting him an even broader audience. In the beginning it was like this with almost every tweet. Even if you do not use twitter you know about his latest BS and lies. Fox News you can turn off. Twitter will follow you throughout every newspaper and TV channel.
Also, I would die if he started using TikTok…
But even then, he’s been coming out swinging AT Fox. I think you’re more likely to see one of the demon spawn start a new network.
Maybe his snuggle-buddy Zuckerberg buys Twitter too, then we can say good bye too social media, he owns FB (it dies already) Instagram (no fun anymore) whatsapp (idk i removed it), well…..with zuckerberg, twitter would be trump friendly and worse….
Fuck Zuckerberg…that’s pretty much all I have to say at this point. His crocodile tears in front of the cameras and Congress are meaningless.
There’s no right Vs wrong in his decision making process. Not from a guy who started his company in such a shady way. At least admit that it’s about money, nobody is fooled.
Also….somebody grab the CRAZY asshole and get him out of the WH!!!
It’s just…mind-blowing how removed from reality he is.
100+
Yessss This!
I am so scared about November.
From across the Pond, I’m scared for America come November.
Not that he’ll win – I foresee a landslide Democrat win along the lines of that which happened in the UK last December. I fear that in losing he’ll give the green light to the AK47 wielding Magats to raise Cain. And that hundreds of innocent people will be caught in the crossfire. Complete civil anarchy; pandemonium.
I get Zuckerbergs’s point that Facebook should not have to police lies because in a perfect world people should be smart enough to fact check for themselves and decent enough to not post hate. But the fact is that many people are dumb and hateful and need to be protected from both Russian bots and their own idiocy. Facebook does a lot of damage because of the lies and hate they allow to spread. It has definitely made the world a worse place to live.
I have to think more about his point, but the way he made it is gross.
He just doesn’t want to lose traffic. And as younger people move to other platforms (most of my new grads rarely use FB), he just wants to cowtow to his core users. I.e. his base.
Now who does that remind me of….
I should have said in my opinion Facebook shouldn’t have too because…… I don’t think that was Zuck’s point. He just doesn’t want responsibility. Sorry for a confusing post.
As an old millennial I got off FB a couple of years ago and my husband created an acct but doesn’t use it. We’ve never looked back, I feel like it’s so much more of a platform for boomers to spew their conspiracy theories, at least that’s what my parents and older relatives do. They don’t even post they just repost BS.
It’s disingenuous on Facebook’s part because it’s not just a matter of them deciding to police content or not, it’s also about how they write algorithms that magnify the reach of lies and conspiracies that would under typical circumstances (non-social-media) not get much reach; I think Zuckerberg wants us to keep focusing on content, because it distracts us from all F’book’s privacy-invading, social-engineering algorithms and shady MO.
Facebook also spreads pedophilia, human trafficking and other crimes of such nature. They don’t care. And their users they seem to care either, so… here we are.
Zuckerberg only cares for money, he invides privacy, steales datas, and unspeakable worse, lets don’t fool you, he is a criminal, right from the start, the way he “got” facebook, he is not the brilliant one, he is sketchy as hell, he the tesla guy and the amazon-freak, all not fine people.
His rants and childish behaviors are, sadly predictable and not surprising at this point.
What infuriates me is that his press secretary, multiple federal agencies under his direction, and several GOP Senators and Representatives, including Mario Rubio and Elise Stefanik, took to Twitter and any reporter who would take their calls to join in defending him on this. THAT was a deliberate waste of their time and our tax dollars during a time when we are battling, badly, a pandemic, and the uprising of brutal racism.
As for sick. He flew, at our expense, his entire clan, minus Junior’s five kids who seem to have disappeared from existence (Vanessa, what do you have on him that got him removed from their lives?) down to Cape Canaveral, formerly Cape Kennedy, for the rocket launch. Yesterday was the 53rd anniversary of the christening of the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy so there were pictures floating around the interwebs of little Caroline smashing a champagne bottle on the ship. Nagini, who named all her kids after dead Kennedys dressed her daughter in pretty much the exact same dress as Caroline’s in that picture and styled her hair the same way, while her older son was dressed in pretty much the same outfit as JohnJohn. This was not cute. The woman is sick. And I would love to know what Caroline, who probably had to contend with her back in NYC, thinks of her.
Zuckerberg probably just needs to keep his gob shut considering how much he has aided and abetted the miasma of misinformation constantly being spouted by this lunatic and his Russian handlers. He’s terrified he’s going to lose the support of the MAGAts that use FB so heavily. What an absolute coward.
Not that Jack Dorsey is a hero either considering he’s done the absolute bare minimum after years of letting 45 spew his bile unchecked while suspending other accounts for less.
But while I think that he’s genuinely angry that anyone would dare question the veracity of what he’s posting – all of this is window dressing for November and how he is going to invalidate election results, if he doesn’t just try to cancel it outright and he has all the power to do it. We should all be terrified-the constitution is not going to save us.
Dump has violated the terms and conditions of the twitter service agreement that he should have been banned by now. No one else could do what he does and still be on that private platform.
His attempt to control social media is exactly the same as what happens in communist China with their restrictions on google and other internet companies.
The only way twitter and Facebook react is if they lose money from enabling dump.
He’s trying to tank Twitter’s stock, is my thought. No EO would stand up in court, most likely. This is just bullying. And more building a case for “fraud” if he loses in Nov.
They’re gonna have to drag this mofo kicking and screaming from the WH.
In other news, 100K people in the US have died from Covid-19 as of yesterday.
Crazy man has to flood the field as it were to get the focus off of him. Firing IGs, stopping regulations, obamagate, vote by mail, twitter etc is all about him trying to distract distract distract. And his team helps him do it.
Zuckerberg can eat sh!+. Facebook removes posts everyday. I had one removed that I shared with some friends. Maybe since Zuckerberg supports Trump, Trump should use Facebook instead of Twitter
that was my thinking, and they do it absolutely crazy without reason, it was an illustration of an sunflower, nothing else, yeah very much have i hurt the rules, now i can’t log in to remove my stuff and remove FB, it is only really gone if you do it yourself. No wonder FB has no Service….And well i think they blacklist people who don’t use all those payment “offers” to get more traffic, but i also don’t gave significant info about me, and use Tor, i think FB don’t like that, it’s harder that way to steal informations, he is a criminal, an i the only one who is bothered….?
I read an article in – I think – the Atlantic which stated that a proportion of the FB board is composed of DoD officials, and others who invest in cyber security and data mining. FB is the snoop’s dream: no need to use Echelon to trawl through a million emails and phone calls to build a profile, when the individual has made all their information readily available.
Another temper tantrum from a wannabe dictator. We have a number of FB pages within our community and each administrator sets the terms for what is and isn’t acceptable. Most are non political. Mine are not political, and I do belong to a private site of progressives which keeps the Drumpf garbage out. We had a member of the board who made an attempt to tell FB posters to report all incidents to the board instead of posting on FB. Guess how that went. 🙂
Yesterday someone replied to me in a thread and said, what are they gonna do, move to tiktok? Well, a few hours later, I read an article that talked about how they did just that. :\ This bastard and his supporters always find a way.
No one ever told him no did they? He always got coddled/ego stroed his entire life huh? It is really sad he cannot handle criticism of any kind at his age.
I just got an email about him pulling vehicle emission standards? So in the midst of a respiratory pandemic, he makes breathing harder?
He destroys the environment because Obama cared about the environment. The embodiment of the dark tetrad will never be able to let that White House correspondents’ dinner go.
Didn’t zuckerberg ban anti-trump ads on Facebook? I absolutely loathe FB.
I hope Twitter’s first (re)action is to block Trump’s account.
Simmer down Cheeto, and eat your tide pods.
Of course Mark Zuckerberg would criticize Twitter for fact checking Trump. During the 2016 election, Facebook was well aware that Russian bots were using FB to spread disinfo and propaganda and they did nothing about it.