Now might be a good time to revisit the twitter files and really try to understand what was in them and why it was horrifying. Seems many people wanted to pretend they were nothing because it didn't suit their partisan narrative. We're seeing the same kinds of justification now just with different partisans.
If we don't call out abuses by our own tribe (whichever that is), maybe we're part of the attack.
The Twitter files that document the FBI requesting takedown of posts and accounts, Twitter internally debating the request, refusing the FBI and then suffering no consequences?
Those Twitter files?
Meanwhile Trump is suing pollsters for publications he doesn't like; extorting law firms for representation as reparation for them representing clients that sued him, who is deporting lawful permenant residents without due process for speech that is protected.
How can you possibly look at these and think they are in any way equivelant?
The Twitter files are basically the same as the Mueller report at this point. Folks completely ignorant to the topic and who have never read them hold them up as proof that they were right all along. Never mind that if they could actually read and understand the documents, they would realize they show the opposite of what they claim.
> refusing the FBI and then suffering no consequences
The whole thing was clearly just a partisan smear job in your eyes. Precisely the same reaction as the views of current maga types about the current first am disasters.
It's worth revisiting /precisely/ in relation to fighting the current assault. It's worth noting who publicly opposed /both/.
No, comparing the two at this point is an attempt to pretend this insanity is the other side of the same coin. They're simply not.
Look at the spectrum.
1. Someone commits a harm (pick any one of the harms I listed from Trump above)
2. Someone attempts a harm and either hasn't succeeded yet or fails
3. Someone threatens a harm against someone.
4. Someone makes a request that implies they could escalate to a threat of harm if they were to be refused. (This is the worst you can reasonably claim the Twitter files as evidence for)
That is how far apart these two instances are.
If you disagree please be specific because this claim that both sides are equivalent is absurd, especially when people refuse to ground out the example when confronted.
But that's not what happened in the Twitter files.
Requests were made, no threats. Some were complied with when Twitter agreed, some were denied.
There were no consequences for the refusals.
Please, cite a specific threat. A lawsuit, a link, a source, a quote, anything. And if you link the Twitter files themselves, let's make sure we actually run their sources to ground, because what they present them as and what they actually say are two different things.
From no. 20 but you should really read all of it. The cynic in me expects the goalposts to move and more smear.
20. “Were Twitter a contractor for the FSB… they could not have built a more effective disinformation platform,” Johns Hopkins Professor (and Intel Committee “expert”) Thomas Rid told Politico.
"Were Twitter a contractor for the FSB," the Russian intelligence agency involved in the 2016 campaign to meddle in the US election Rid Said, "They could not have built a more effective disinformation platform."
21. As congress threatened costly legislation, and Twitter began was subject to more bad press fueled by the committees, the company changed its tune about the smallness of its Russia problem.
Republican partisan's probably see it as treason. Democrats partisans pretend it's a "nothingburger." Everyone else who notices is getting despondent which is probably just as bad.
FIRE, Greenwald, Taibbi have stood and continue to stand on principle not partisan and will get relentlessly smeared with insane lies because of it.
edit: sidenote. For me the google search "twitter files taibbi" without quotes returned Tabbi's publication racket on page 4. From there I could get the twitter files separate publication. That seems like a very bad search fail. I wonder why it is like that.
Non of that is incompatible with what I've said though.
Looming legislation and contracting alone are not a problem.
With all this scrutiny there is no evidence of a quid pro quo.
This is what I was getting at above, that there is room in the Twitter files for a chilling effect on speech when it comes to these competing interests, but what you're comparing it to is so far beyond the pale as to be absurd.
Look at this without the vitriol. There's a lot of stuff that looks weird, but it's been heavily investigated and so far no one has found anything deeper.
When you compare that to measurable harm, I think it's right that people take issue
> The government threatening legislation unless a company censors in line with the government's wishes is wrong and a violation of the 1st am.
What is the evidence of that? There was proposed legislation, but where was the evidence of "do this or else". Are you saying that the FBI was conspiring with the legislative branch? What evidence is there of that?
I've conceded the potential for a chilling effect three times now, there is a speech issue, but no evidence of a severity even nearly on par.
Look at the lengths you have to go to to get this point, you go and find sources that allege all the same things I've already described but very angrily and then tell me I'm the one too emotionally invested to see this clearly.
> Now might be a good time to revisit the twitter files
Or we could skip the whataboutism that tries to go back to a prior administration, and instead focus on the current administration’s actions which are demonstrably far worse.
What about we stand on _principle_. What about we criticise and oppose /all/ transgressions of that principle. What about we all do it more loudly for whatever tribe we have some loose membership of and don't excuse it because it is politically expedient.
Exactly. Let's not forget the real attempts at the government's internet censorship of previous administrations. Nobody seemed to care about that then.
Like give me a break. The previous admin took steps towards censoring real information that would be politically harmful to them, and now we're supposed to feel bad about the current admin who is taking productive steps against antagonist agents within our country?
I get that the law in this country is pliable and a nuanced subject but I'd rather deal with the latter issue - where our government is challenging the boundaries of the 1st amendment against our own enemies rather than their own people lol
If we don't call out abuses by our own tribe (whichever that is), maybe we're part of the attack.