Apple Has Threatened to Pull Twitter From App Store, Musk Claims
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Sometimes I forget twitter is even an app because I only ever use it in the browser.
Same, or maybe they are just really subliminal.
For those on the left who believe the first amendment is just a legal principle, I really feel sorry for you. The first amendment is a value. The ability of anyone to Express themselves and offer value to any topic.
The 1st Amendment is an American value and gift.
The 1st Amendment is an American value and gift.
You may be the least intelligent human on the planet.
Musk is really intelligent, by all indications. 12 year olds that sell their video games usually are. We was a phd student at Stanford. Hit it big by starting/creating a software company during the dot com boom. And his string of success goes on from there. Quite a damned run.
His father was an electromechanical engineer. Those guys are more likely to have kids on the spectrum, which Elon reportedly is. (and often those kids are unusually good at systemizing... which is why you see so many of the high functioning sort doing well in silicon valley and other STEM ventures)
So he absolutely fits that mold in quite a few ways...
Anyway, while all this may be true, being a business leader takes a lot more than just being intelligent. Einstein would've looked stupid had he tried to intervene in all areas of something like SpaceX, if he tried to micromanage all processes at a company and pushed any idea that popped into his head.
Musk has his shorting comings in the interpersonal and emotion domains in a few areas. All that said, his vision and leadership did somehow did see Tesla and SpaceX through to some high end success. I think most of his other ventures are doing alright as far as I know.
We're just seeing his weaknesses take center stage with Twitter.
en.wikipedia.org
His father was an electromechanical engineer. Those guys are more likely to have kids on the spectrum, which Elon reportedly is. (and often those kids are unusually good at systemizing... which is why you see so many of the high functioning sort doing well in silicon valley and other STEM ventures)
So he absolutely fits that mold in quite a few ways...
Anyway, while all this may be true, being a business leader takes a lot more than just being intelligent. Einstein would've looked stupid had he tried to intervene in all areas of something like SpaceX, if he tried to micromanage all processes at a company and pushed any idea that popped into his head.
Musk has his shorting comings in the interpersonal and emotion domains in a few areas. All that said, his vision and leadership did somehow did see Tesla and SpaceX through to some high end success. I think most of his other ventures are doing alright as far as I know.
We're just seeing his weaknesses take center stage with Twitter.
Elon Musk - Wikipedia
Oh I like the troll part. And I've enjoyed his lack of seriousness while being in what society says are really serious positions. What other CEO has his taste in memes? He's often irreverent and doesn't mind rubbing elbows with the digital masses.
But he also can have thin-skin, doesn't know when to but out and isn't above BSing you to get what he wants. Since he's so public we get to see it all.
How laughably naive to pretend that calls from the White House to social media companies about what viewpoints and speakers to silence are just ‘politicians exercising the same right as the general public’.
Ben Wizner, Director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told me that while a constitutional analysis depends on a variety of factors including the types of threats issued and how much coercion is amassed, it is well-established that the First Amendment governs attempts by Congress to pressure private companies to censor:
In a January Wall Street Journal op-ed, tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and Yale Law School’s constitutional scholar Jed Rubenfeld warned that Congress is rapidly approaching this constitutional boundary if it has not already transgressed it. “Using a combination of statutory inducements and regulatory threats,” the duo wrote, “Congress has co-opted Silicon Valley to do through the back door what government cannot directly accomplish under the Constitution.”
That article compiled just a small sample of case law making clear that efforts to coerce private actors to censor speech implicate core First Amendment free speech guarantees. In Norwood v. Harrison (1973), for instance, the Court declared it “axiomatic” — a basic legal principle — that Congress “may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.” They noted: “For more than half a century courts have held that governmental threats can turn private conduct into state action.”
In 2018, the ACLU successfully defended the National Rifle Association (NRA) in suing Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York State on the ground that attempts of state officials to coerce private companies to cease doing business with the NRA using implicit threats — driven by Cuomo’s contempt for the NRA’s political views — amounted to a violation of the First Amendment. Because, argued the ACLU, the communications of Cuomo’s aides to banks and insurance firms “could reasonably be interpreted as a threat of retaliatory enforcement against firms that do not sever ties with gun promotion groups,” that conduct ran afoul of the well-established principle “that the government may violate the First Amendment through ‘action that falls short of a direct prohibition against speech,’ including by retaliation or threats of retaliation against speakers.” In sum, argued the civil liberties group in reasoning accepted by the court:
In explaining its rationale for defending the NRA, the ACLU described how easily these same state powers could be abused by a Republican governor against liberal activist groups — for instance, by threatening banks to cease providing services to Planned Parenthood or LGBT advocacy groups. When the judge rejected Cuomo’s motion to dismiss the NRA’s lawsuit, Reuters explained the key lesson in its headline:
Perhaps the ruling most relevant to current controversies occurred in the 1963 Supreme Court case Bantam Books v. Sullivan. In the name of combatting the “obscene, indecent and impure,” the Rhode Island legislature instituted a commission to notify bookstores when they determined a book or magazine to be “objectionable,” and requested their “cooperation” by removing it and refusing to sell it any longer. Four book publishers and distributors sued, seeking a declaration that this practice was a violation of the First Amendment even though they were never technically forced to censor. Instead, they ceased selling the flagged books “voluntarily” due to fear of the threats implicit in the “advisory” notices received from the state.
In a statement that House Democrats and their defenders would certainly invoke to justify what they are doing with Silicon Valley, Rhode Island officials insisted that they were not unconstitutionally censoring because their scheme “does not regulate or suppress obscenity, but simply exhorts booksellers and advises them of their legal rights.”
In rejecting that disingenuous claim, the Supreme Court conceded that “it is true that [plaintiffs’] books have not been seized or banned by the State, and that no one has been prosecuted for their possession or sale.” Nonetheless, the Court emphasized that Rhode Island’s legislature — just like these House Democrats summoning tech executives — had been explicitly clear that their goal was the suppression of speech they disliked: “the Commission deliberately set about to achieve the suppression of publications deemed ‘objectionable,’ and succeeded in its aim.” And the Court emphasized that the barely disguised goal of the state was to intimidate these private book publishers and distributors into censoring by issuing implicit threats of punishment for non-compliance:
In sum, concluded the Bantam Books Court: “their operation was in fact a scheme of state censorship effectuated by extra-legal sanctions; they acted as an agency not to advise but to suppress.”
Little effort is required to see that Democrats, now in control of the Congress and the White House, are engaged in a scheme of speech control virtually indistinguishable from those long held unconstitutional by decades of First Amendment jurisprudence. That Democrats are seeking to use their control of state power to coerce and intimidate private tech companies to censor — and indeed have already succeeded in doing so — is hardly subject to reasonable debate. They are saying explicitly that this is what they are doing.
Because “big tech has failed to acknowledge the role they’ve played in fomenting and elevating blatantly false information to its online audiences,” said the Committee Chairs again summoning the social media companies, “we must begin the work of changing incentives driving social media companies to allow and even promote misinformation and disinformation.”
The Washington Post, in reporting on this latest hearing, said the Committee intends to “take fresh aim at the tech giants for failing to crack down on dangerous political falsehoods and disinformation about the coronavirus.” And lurking behind these calls for more speech policing are pending processes that could result in serious punishment for these companies, including possible antitrust actions and the rescission of Section 230 immunity from liability.
This dynamic has become so common that Democrats now openly pressure Silicon Valley companies to censor content they dislike. In the immediate aftermath of the January 6 Capitol riot, when it was falsely claimed that Parler was the key online venue for the riot’s planning — Facebook, Google’s YouTube and Facebook’s Instagram were all more significant — two of the most prominent Democratic House members, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), used their large social media platforms to insist that Silicon Valley monopolies remove Parler from their app stores and hosting services:
Within twenty-four hours, all three Silicon Valley companies complied with these “requests,” and took the extraordinary step of effectively removing Parler — at the time the most-downloaded app on the Apple Store — from the internet. We will likely never know what precise role those tweets and other pressure from liberal politicians and journalists played in their decisions, but what is clear is that Democrats are more than willing to use their power and platforms to issue instructions to Silicon Valley about what they should and should not permit to be heard.
Leading liberal activists and some powerful Democratic politicians, such as then-presidential-candidate Kamala Harris, had long demanded former President Donald Trump’s removal from social media. After the Democrats won the White House — indeed, the day after Democrats secured control of both houses of Congress with two wins in the Georgia Senate run-offs — Twitter, Facebook and other online platforms banned Trump, citing the Capitol riot as the pretext.
While Democrats cheered, numerous leaders around the world, including many with no affection for Trump, warned of how dangerous this move was. Long-time close aide of the Clintons, Jennifer Palmieri, posted a viral tweet candidly acknowledging — and clearly celebrating — why this censorship occurred. With Democrats now in control of the Congressional committees and Executive Branch agencies that regulate Silicon Valley, these companies concluded it was in their best interest to censor the internet in accordance with the commands and wishes of the party that now wields power in Washington:
Jennifer Palmieri @jmpalmieri
It has not escaped my attention that the day social media companies decided there actually IS more they could do to police Trump’s destructive behavior was the same day they learned Democrats would chair all the congressional committees that oversee them.
6:17 AM ∙ Jan 7, 2021
The last time CEOs of social media platforms were summoned to testify before Congress, Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) explicitly told them that what Democrats want is more censorship — more removal of content which they believe constitutes “disinformation” and “hate speech.” He did not even bother to hide his demands: “The issue is not that the companies before us today are taking too many posts down; the issue is that they are leaving too many dangerous posts up”:
Within twenty-four hours, all three Silicon Valley companies complied with these “requests,” and took the extraordinary step of effectively removing Parler — at the time the most-downloaded app on the Apple Store — from the internet. We will likely never know what precise role those tweets and other pressure from liberal politicians and journalists played in their decisions, but what is clear is that Democrats are more than willing to use their power and platforms to issue instructions to Silicon Valley about what they should and should not permit to be heard.
Leading liberal activists and some powerful Democratic politicians, such as then-presidential-candidate Kamala Harris, had long demanded former President Donald Trump’s removal from social media. After the Democrats won the White House — indeed, the day after Democrats secured control of both houses of Congress with two wins in the Georgia Senate run-offs — Twitter, Facebook and other online platforms banned Trump, citing the Capitol riot as the pretext.
While Democrats cheered, numerous leaders around the world, including many with no affection for Trump, warned of how dangerous this move was. Long-time close aide of the Clintons, Jennifer Palmieri, posted a viral tweet candidly acknowledging — and clearly celebrating — why this censorship occurred. With Democrats now in control of the Congressional committees and Executive Branch agencies that regulate Silicon Valley, these companies concluded it was in their best interest to censor the internet in accordance with the commands and wishes of the party that now wields power in Washington:
Jennifer Palmieri @jmpalmieri
It has not escaped my attention that the day social media companies decided there actually IS more they could do to police Trump’s destructive behavior was the same day they learned Democrats would chair all the congressional committees that oversee them.
6:17 AM ∙ Jan 7, 2021
The last time CEOs of social media platforms were summoned to testify before Congress, Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) explicitly told them that what Democrats want is more censorship — more removal of content which they believe constitutes “disinformation” and “hate speech.” He did not even bother to hide his demands: “The issue is not that the companies before us today are taking too many posts down; the issue is that they are leaving too many dangerous posts up”:
How laughably naive to pretend that calls from the White House to social media companies about what viewpoints and speakers to silence are just ‘politicians exercising the same right as the general public’.
Ben Wizner, Director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told me that while a constitutional analysis depends on a variety of factors including the types of threats issued and how much coercion is amassed, it is well-established that the First Amendment governs attempts by Congress to pressure private companies to censor:
In a January Wall Street Journal op-ed, tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and Yale Law School’s constitutional scholar Jed Rubenfeld warned that Congress is rapidly approaching this constitutional boundary if it has not already transgressed it. “Using a combination of statutory inducements and regulatory threats,” the duo wrote, “Congress has co-opted Silicon Valley to do through the back door what government cannot directly accomplish under the Constitution.”
That article compiled just a small sample of case law making clear that efforts to coerce private actors to censor speech implicate core First Amendment free speech guarantees. In Norwood v. Harrison (1973), for instance, the Court declared it “axiomatic” — a basic legal principle — that Congress “may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.” They noted: “For more than half a century courts have held that governmental threats can turn private conduct into state action.”
In 2018, the ACLU successfully defended the National Rifle Association (NRA) in suing Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York State on the ground that attempts of state officials to coerce private companies to cease doing business with the NRA using implicit threats — driven by Cuomo’s contempt for the NRA’s political views — amounted to a violation of the First Amendment. Because, argued the ACLU, the communications of Cuomo’s aides to banks and insurance firms “could reasonably be interpreted as a threat of retaliatory enforcement against firms that do not sever ties with gun promotion groups,” that conduct ran afoul of the well-established principle “that the government may violate the First Amendment through ‘action that falls short of a direct prohibition against speech,’ including by retaliation or threats of retaliation against speakers.” In sum, argued the civil liberties group in reasoning accepted by the court:
In explaining its rationale for defending the NRA, the ACLU described how easily these same state powers could be abused by a Republican governor against liberal activist groups — for instance, by threatening banks to cease providing services to Planned Parenthood or LGBT advocacy groups. When the judge rejected Cuomo’s motion to dismiss the NRA’s lawsuit, Reuters explained the key lesson in its headline:
Perhaps the ruling most relevant to current controversies occurred in the 1963 Supreme Court case Bantam Books v. Sullivan. In the name of combatting the “obscene, indecent and impure,” the Rhode Island legislature instituted a commission to notify bookstores when they determined a book or magazine to be “objectionable,” and requested their “cooperation” by removing it and refusing to sell it any longer. Four book publishers and distributors sued, seeking a declaration that this practice was a violation of the First Amendment even though they were never technically forced to censor. Instead, they ceased selling the flagged books “voluntarily” due to fear of the threats implicit in the “advisory” notices received from the state.
In a statement that House Democrats and their defenders would certainly invoke to justify what they are doing with Silicon Valley, Rhode Island officials insisted that they were not unconstitutionally censoring because their scheme “does not regulate or suppress obscenity, but simply exhorts booksellers and advises them of their legal rights.”
In rejecting that disingenuous claim, the Supreme Court conceded that “it is true that [plaintiffs’] books have not been seized or banned by the State, and that no one has been prosecuted for their possession or sale.” Nonetheless, the Court emphasized that Rhode Island’s legislature — just like these House Democrats summoning tech executives — had been explicitly clear that their goal was the suppression of speech they disliked: “the Commission deliberately set about to achieve the suppression of publications deemed ‘objectionable,’ and succeeded in its aim.” And the Court emphasized that the barely disguised goal of the state was to intimidate these private book publishers and distributors into censoring by issuing implicit threats of punishment for non-compliance:
In sum, concluded the Bantam Books Court: “their operation was in fact a scheme of state censorship effectuated by extra-legal sanctions; they acted as an agency not to advise but to suppress.”
Little effort is required to see that Democrats, now in control of the Congress and the White House, are engaged in a scheme of speech control virtually indistinguishable from those long held unconstitutional by decades of First Amendment jurisprudence. That Democrats are seeking to use their control of state power to coerce and intimidate private tech companies to censor — and indeed have already succeeded in doing so — is hardly subject to reasonable debate. They are saying explicitly that this is what they are doing.
Because “big tech has failed to acknowledge the role they’ve played in fomenting and elevating blatantly false information to its online audiences,” said the Committee Chairs again summoning the social media companies, “we must begin the work of changing incentives driving social media companies to allow and even promote misinformation and disinformation.”
The Washington Post, in reporting on this latest hearing, said the Committee intends to “take fresh aim at the tech giants for failing to crack down on dangerous political falsehoods and disinformation about the coronavirus.” And lurking behind these calls for more speech policing are pending processes that could result in serious punishment for these companies, including possible antitrust actions and the rescission of Section 230 immunity from liability.
Op-ed. This is all based on an op-ed.
I volunteer for the ACLU and have read its analysis. As the WSJ op-ed says, “the constitutional analysis depends on a variety of factors including the types of threats issued and how much coercion is amassed …”
There are a number of viewpoints on this issue - it’s not a bright line that government can never lobby private business to censor. That’s the naive view.
There are dozens of cases on both sides of the coin - about government forced speech and government speech restrictions - and they all depend on the standard of review, the asserted government interest, the means by which the interest is enforced, and other factors.
You appear to want a bright line rule that does not exist.
Where we both agree is that if you think politicians cannot even lobby social media platforms, then both the Texas and Florida laws prohibiting content moderation must fail.
We will see in June.
There are a number of viewpoints on this issue - it’s not a bright line that government can never lobby private business to censor. That’s the naive view.
There are dozens of cases on both sides of the coin - about government forced speech and government speech restrictions - and they all depend on the standard of review, the asserted government interest, the means by which the interest is enforced, and other factors.
You appear to want a bright line rule that does not exist.
Where we both agree is that if you think politicians cannot even lobby social media platforms, then both the Texas and Florida laws prohibiting content moderation must fail.
We will see in June.
That and the referenced case law, which I notice you omitted, but yet still exists.
Are you interested in the government that brought you “WMD in Iraq” deciding what is ‘truth’ fit for public consumption?
Can you explain how?
LOL
We haven’t in America. Other than fighting words, incitement, defamation, fraud, and child porn, you can generally say whatever you want.
What you apparently want is the right to force others to carry and amplify your speech.
Whatever, indeed!
“Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power. We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."
-- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002
Gore lied, people died.
No, I prefer the marketplace of ideas prevail. But as part of that marketplace, I recognize that the government is a speaker too.
We're mostly just arguing about how much of it we should have in a niche private business context. (given that it's funny anybody loses their head over this going either direction on the issue)
Which, you know, is fine... but I don't think free-speech itself is collapsing, exactly.
And we can debate and vote and shape that speech, but being a ‘speaker’ doesn’t silence other voices.
My issue with the government is less the desire by those with the pulpit to wield it to their ends, I see that as unavoidable and by no means always undesirable, but their desire to silence other speakers so only their voice, or the approved voices, prevail.
This is exactly right. What PF and other right wingers want is to have authority over private entities to dictate what messages they have to display. Their stance is the equivalent of saying a Jewish deli bulletin board has to leave a Nazi symbol up - cuz "free speech".
It's an insane position.
I think there are too many ways for other voices to get their message out too, no matter what the government tries to do - from the constitutional right to petition, to Citizen’s
United, to using their preferred media channels, to the ballot box to reverse a particular party’s actions….
How and why does Apple have the power to suppress discussion around Covid, vaccines, and around the origins of covid during an active pandemic? This seems wrong.
Who pressured Apple to do this? China?
You might like Elon just a little bit too much.
You don't understand what free speech is. SMH
Why change the topic? Cat got your tongue?
I didn’t know Apple was suppressing speech they didnt like during the pandemic, did you?
Do you have any thoughts on Apple requesting the suppression of those terms?
Isn’t it just a little weird?
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