@105: "The media of the time covered all of those movements. The speeches, the events the manifestos - all were made available to the public."

This is not what you originally said, but OK, I will assume that is what you meant. Yes, the media covered some (not all) of these stories at the time. As private orgs they had the right to cover and not cover whatever they wanted. Same as Twitter.

If I understand your point, it's that social media is not required for a group to speak or organize, which is true. Although even if it was required, they are still a private group currently protected from any threat of a 1st amendment violation. An even better argument for your case is that President Trump has an entire PR team working for him that can get out any message he wants regardless of social media.

Deplatforming does nothing to limit his speech, but it does leave his supporters feeling shut out. If your goal is simply to hurt your enemy that makes sense. If you are trying to run a democracy it raises other issues. As I said before, Apple and Google removing entire platforms from their app stores is a related, but bigger issue. I have found that when people feel unheard they react by reaching for a gun. I think if you spoke to those idiots that stormed the Capital feeling unheard would be one of their butt hurt complaints. My fear is that deplatforming Trump will lead to more violence, not less.

"Your speculation regarding how something that didn't exist would have responded is just that: speculation and fantasy. You can't "guarantee" anything."

It's speculation based on current behavior. People forget just how unpopular these groups were at the time and groups with that low level of popularity today are regularly deplatfored and shadow banned.

Ask any sex worker rights advocate on Twitter about this. They will educate you on an entire world of groups that are banned on Twitter for holding views unpopular to those in power. Twitter has banned the International Youth and Students for Social Equality, a student movement affiliated with international Socialist parties. Do you think Socialists should be banned for being socialists? Because as this story points out, they threatened no one. Here is the tweet that got them shadow banned:

"Google searches for “Leon Trotsky” yielded 5,893 impressions (appearances of the WSWS in search results) in May of this year. In July, the same search yielded exactly zero impressions for the WSWS, which is the Internet publication of the international movement founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938."

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/meet-the-censored-andre-damon

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/26/technology/google-search-bias-claims.html

Given this trend and the attitude towards civil rights in the 1960's, I think it's more than reasonable to assume they would have been banned. MLK had a 75% unapproval rating in America at the time of his death.

"If you sign an agreement to abide by the rules of a service which you are accessing free of charge and you don't like those rules too bad."

I think witter has shown you do not need to break their TOS to be banned. Twitter is not a democracy and there is not appeals process. It's a private company that can ban anyone they want for any reason they want.

Because I am not a Trump fan I don't follow what he tweets. People are claiming he violated the TOS. I have not seen the tweet in question. Do you have a copy you can post?

I appreciate you taking the time to make your point. You do it well.

Above should be @109

@107: You seem to struggle to keep up, or make any sense.

There are people on here making a much better argument for why President Trump should be deplatformed while you seem to be constantly tripping over yourself.

Perhaps it's time for you to take a seat and let the grown ups debate this. It's a little embarrassing to read your "thoughts."

@109: No material difference, but I wrongly said Students for Social Equality were shadow banned from Twitter, which may be true also, but the article states they were shadow banned from Google, which lead to less visits to their website and Twitter account.

I agree with what Mr. North, head of the Students for Social Equality said. Note, he is using the universal Webster dictionary definition of censorship here. Not the unique definition Adam Kadmon invented simply to create an semantic point of argument over his fictional definition:

"Mr. North said his site provides critical analysis for current events and it has nothing in common with sites peddling blatantly untrue stories. But he said he is opposed to any actions taken by Google under the pretext of stopping fake news.

“I’m against censorship in any form,” he said. “It’s up to people what they want to read. It’s not going to stop with the World Socialist Web Site. It’s going to expand and spread.”"

@118 Trump wasn't banned from Twitter for his philosophy - its not because he favored small government and deregulation. Or even because he didn't want immigrants from shithole countries. It was because he was encouraging violence.

Unless you're ready to go to bat for child pornography, then there is no inviolate principle against "censorship". Rather, there are only arbitrary lines - and encouraging crime and violence is beyond where Twitter draws that line. Maybe you'd judge different, but power is concentrated where its concentrated and if you don't like that, then you don't like capitalism.

from thee Best News source in America:

Is Big Tech Too Powerful? Chris Hedges & Ramesh
Srinivasan Debate Twitter & Facebook Banning Trump

Twitter, Facebook and other social media companies have removed President Trump from their platforms, after years of debate about the disinformation he shared to millions of followers from his accounts.

While many are applauding the bans, author Chris Hedges warns they could backfire. “To allow these companies to essentially function as de facto platforms for censorship and manipulation … harkens back to the way civil liberties were eviscerated in the wake of 9/11,” says Hedges. “It’s always, in the end, the left that pays for this kind of censorship.”

We also speak with UCLA professor Ramesh Srinivasan, director of the Digital Cultures Lab, who says Big Tech allowed right-wing extremism to flourish for years before acting and that lawmakers need to enact robust regulation.

“All of these technology platforms, powered by their hidden algorithms that are indeed opaque, thrive on the amplification of polarization,” says Srinivasan. “It is incredible how much power we have given to a very small number of people who are essentially mediating pretty much every aspect of our lives.”

https://www.democracynow.org/2021/1/11/big_tech_response_capitol_insurrection

@113:

While the cases you cite do support your position, it's worth noting other cases besides Brandenburg and Hess where the Court essentially stepped back from these previous rulings (e.g: Texas v. Johnson, New York Times v. United States, et al). So, it's clear that what constitutes "clear and present danger", the doctrine that lies at the heart of all of these cases, has resulted in a long, contentious debate within the Court, which has gone back-and-forth over the decades, an indication that the matter is not definitively settled and that it may - and no doubt will - be revisited.

Courts make mistakes; judges are fallible and make bad decisions. The beauty of our system is that nothing is ever completely set in-stone, not even the Constitution itself, and there are mechanisms built into the system to allow for self-correction. Whether such corrections are made depends on a number of factors, not the least of which being whether such "bad rulings" result in an inordinate number of prosecutions and/or convictions for relatively minor infractions having negligible impact. This is nothing new and has been going on since the original Sedition Act was passed back in 1798.

As for the King County law you cite, your assertion that it "made it a felony to write or talk about prostitution" is an incomplete, and I suspect deliberate, misrepresentation of the situation. It did not in fact make for a blanket proscription of even discussing the subject of prostitution, but rather established a very narrow set of criteria related to speech which actively promoted it:

Promoting prostitution in the Second Degree - RCW 9A.88.080

(1) A person is guilty of promoting prostitution in the second degree if he or she knowingly:
(a) Profits from prostitution; or
(b) Advances prostitution.
(2) Promoting prostitution in the second degree is a class C felony.

The individuals and entities targeted by the law were actively engaged in promoting, supporting, abetting, and in some instances profiting from an otherwise illegal activity. Some of those prosecuted were writing reviews of sex workers (https://projects.seattletimes.com/2017/eastside-prostitution-bust/), having illegally engaged their services, and subsequently promoted those services in a manner proscribed by the statute; a situation altogether different from what you seem to imply, namely, that it was on the same level as the protected First Amendment speech of simply discussing the subject itself.

@118 "Trump wasn't banned from Twitter for his philosophy - its not because he favored small government and deregulation. Or even because he didn't want immigrants from shithole countries. It was because he was encouraging violence."

Trump is an asshole. No one has posted the tweets that incited violence for me to see so I can't speak to that, but you seem to believe this decision was made on moral grounds.

Trump was banned because the Dems won all 3 branches and will now be dominate a system that will determine the fate of these platforms. When the Republicans were running the show these same platforms shadow banned and moderated all kinds of left wing sights conservatives did not approve of.

If you ask a religious person why they believe in god, they will give you every answer other than "well my parents were religious and I was raised that way," even though that is the most common answer.

If Trump had won the election and Republicans had swept the house it would be Biden's account that would be banned and Republicans would be pretending it was done on moral grounds.

Parties don't have or take moral positions. They simply define themselves in opposition to the other party. Businesses do what they need to do to stay on the good side of those in power.

I will check back here when the Republicans eventually win (god help us all) to watch everyone preach to me about how intolerable and immoral it is to deplatform those they support. I will agree with them.

@113: We agree that "clear and present danger" is a moving target, which made up the first part of my response to you. Congress passed SESTA/FOSTA a couple years ago and they are working on eliminating section 230 with the EARN IT act, which is a clear attack on the 1st amendment in the vein of the Sedition Act as it was used against Eugene Debbs during WW1.

Yes judges make mistakes. That problem is compounded by prosecutors and police that have built an industry on exploiting and taking advantage of those errors.

I only mentioned the TRB case because it's clear violation of the 1st amendment that occurred here in Seattle, but I just as easily could have cited a dozen other examples from around the country.

"Made it a felony to write or talk about prostitution." Those were not my words, but the title of this article by Elizabeth Nolan Brown. It raised serious questions about how the 1st amendment was assaulted by the police in King County. You should read it.

I suspect not by accident, you provide an extremely opportunistic interpretation of the"very narrow set of criteria" that were used to directly attack the 1st amendment in this case. How narrow or wide the attack on the 1st amendment was is absolutely irelevant, but it's a juicy rationalization and it sure sounds nice.

That you started this topic about the 1st amendment, which was not really the point of my post, by quoting discredited case law "shouting fire in a crowded theater" does not speak well for your understanding, or interpretation of the 1st amendment. There is nothing in the Seattle Times article you cite that addresses, or even raises the 1st amendment implication of this case so I'm not even sure why you included it, unless it was to distract from the topic.

The best way to defeat the 1st amendment is to give it a different name, then pretend it's about something else while claiming it's only a "narrow" attack on the 1st amendment. The article you cite did just that. You seem to be doing the same.

Post above should be @121

@114 -- thanks for the pat on the head (you tossled my Bald spot!) but it seems merely a distillation, an echo and barely ununique from other posts as well.

speaking of Echolalia:

“All of these technology platforms, powered by their hidden algorithms that are indeed opaque, thrive on the amplification of polarization,” says Srinivasan.

“It is incredible how much power we have given to a very small number of people who are essentially mediating pretty much every aspect of our lives.”

https://www.democracynow.org/2021/1/11/big_tech_response_capitol_insurrection

Too
Many
Billionaire$.

126 -- oops
touzled
rather
apol.

@126: I think there was a range of consequentialist tetologies given to justify banning President Trump's Twitter account with the TOS violation being the most convincing, so I figured it was worth highlighting.

I still don't find it credible since Twitter has been wildly inconsistent in enforcing its TOS.

The Chinese have been and are currently carrying out genocide against the Uyghur's in China and Twitter has not banned their account where the Chinese portray this as a big humanitarian success story. The fact that Twitter waited until after the election to ban him does not wear well on their excuses for the ban.

As I said, however, it was the best consequentialist tetology given. We knew when we got to the "Shouting Fire in a crowded theater" defense we had hit rock bottom authoritarian territory. I suspect Oliver Wendell Holmes rolls over in his grave each time some idiot minuses that quote without also mentioning that he was very clear in his dissents that expressions of honest opinion were entitled to near-absolute protection.

Always enjoy your e.e. cummings style and your dead right about the trouble with a few powerful children holding so much control over our speech.