Twitter banning Milo Yiannopolous is a story with interesting dimensions.
Yiannopolous is very entertaining. He’s got some points. And he often provokes some interesting reactions.
Yiannopolous also is a loudmouth and a troll. He doesn’t really give a shit. And sometimes his opinions are rather disturbing.
The banning might very well have marked a »Peak Twitter« moment.
The party is over. I think this might cause immense damage to Twitters image and trademark. Twitter just isn’t as exciting anymore.
One interesting point of view is that this is not about free speech. Twitter is a private company. We have all agreed to their terms & conditions. Twitter can do whatever they want.
But this can, and should not shield Twitter from criticism. As a Twitter user, I am very disgruntled over the banning of @nero.
And this might actually be about free speech after all. Didn’t the EU just agree with Facebook, Twitter and Youtube to remove »radicalising« and »hateful« content? And isn’t that just a way to circumvent the rule of law when it comes to freedom of speech?
It’s just like when US authorities couldn’t find any legal ways to stop Wikileaks. So they got Paypal, Master Card, and the banks to cut off the funding. Extrajudicial proceedings, indeed.
Then, again, this affair might stimulate and accelerate the development of new social media platforms that are distributed, decentralised and impossible to censor.
Or the opposite – people moving to closed forums for the like-minded.
But Twitter as a »safe space«? That sounds boring.
/ HAX
• Twitter’s Stalinist Unpersoning of Gay Provocateur Milo Yiannopolous »
• I’m With The Banned »
Since we got democracy, and the actions of twitter is used to influence the voting stock that then make laws about what to say or not according to state law, it is about freedom of speech and not about a single company doing what they want.
In fact, most of these socialist tech giants, like facebook, google etc supports and waving for more socialist hate speech laws whenever there is a SJW demonstration or happening. Thus, making laws against those corporations preventing them from doing so is not wrong from a liberty standpoint. I agree, if the state where non existing then they could do what they want, but as long as we talk about limiting freedom by law, which is what these socialists wants, the only purpose of the state is to become more rightwing. And yes, that means making laws against socialists who advance their agenda every single day by state power. Otherwise they play the football game while libertarians smoke weed and drink beer until their wiped out by the playing team.
It’s simple, with a state you make laws against such left leaning corporations who wants to limit your freedom. Without a state, in free market anarchy you go by the rule that
“These are private companies and they choose to whom they want to provide their services. This is clearly stated in these companies voluminous terms and conditions.”