Tuesday, January 19, 2021

You Can’t ‘Just Build Your Own Twitter’ — Robert Mariani

We’re seeing the beginnings of what unambiguous power looks like. Corporate donors are dropping the GOP, throwing away an intimate, decades-long DD/lg relationship. But perhaps more important is the wave of unprecedented internet censorship that included the digital death penalty for Trump and his allies, and also for any users who continue to make claims of election fraud. This was seemingly coordinated among the entire now-private public square, and private companies are of course allowed to do whatever they want.

Average Joe might feel like he’s living on the edge of a knife. Don’t like it? Why not just create your own social media website that competes with Twitter in moderation policies? This is America, right?

But to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. Here are the interconnecting layers of the internet that you’ll need to recreate yourself....
The American Conservative
You Can’t ‘Just Build Your Own Twitter’
Robert Mariani

2 comments:

Ralph Musgrave said...

I’m not sure about the “digital death penalty for Trump and his allies” which has allegedly suddenly occurred. Trump supporters have been a rarity on Twitter for YEARS in my experience. I assume that’s because most of them have been banned.

Also censorship on social media ebbs and flows. I’ve found Facebook much more pro free speech since Zuckerberg announced a year or so ago that he backed free speech. As for Twitter, two or three years ago I was regularly given one week bans for making incontrovertably true statements: e.g. I got a one week ban for saying Muslims were responsible for 9/11. I wouldn’t expect that to happen nowadays.

Ahmed Fares said...

Ralph,

"I was regularly given one week bans for making incontrovertably true statements: e.g. I got a one week ban for saying Muslims were responsible for 9/11."

They probably saw you as an agitator.