Trump threatens to shut down social media platforms after Twitter tags his posts as misinformation.

[The Romulan Republic]

https://businessinsider.com/trump-threa ... ing-2020-5

President Donald Trump has threatened to close down social-media platforms that he argues censor conservative voices after Twitter on Tuesday tagged some of his messages with a fact-check warning.

"Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices," Trump tweeted Wednesday. "We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen. We saw what they attempted to do, and failed, in 2016."

—Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 27, 2020
Twitter had long been criticized for allowing the president to spread conspiracy theories and smears against opponents despite its policies against the promotion of disinformation.

It recently came under increasing calls for it to take action against Trump after he spent weeks promoting a baseless conspiracy theory alleging that the MSNBC cohost Joe Scarborough was involved in the death of a staffer, Lori Klausutis, while he was serving as a US congressman.

Twitter has declined to take action against the president for the messages about Scarborough, but on Tuesday for the first time it put a fact-check tag on some of Trump's tweets.

The president wrote two tweets claiming "There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent."

Twitter tagged each of the two messages with a blue exclamation mark and warning message, linking to articles in The Washington Post, CNN, and other outlets that debunk the president's assertion.

Trump doubled down on his voter-fraud claims in a follow-up tweet Wednesday.

"We can't let a more sophisticated version of that happen again," Trump wrote. "Just like we can't let large scale Mail-In Ballots take root in our Country. It would be a free for all on cheating, forgery and the theft of Ballots. Whoever cheated the most would win. Likewise, Social Media. Clean up your act, NOW!!!!"

Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, Virginia, said that Trump was unlikely to be able to follow through on his threat against social media companies.

"I think that it is mostly bluster. There are steps he might take, but they are likely to be slow, cumbersome and ineffective, although he does have the huge bullhorn of the presidency to persuade the voters that he is correct and deserves reelection," he expalined to Business Insider by email.

"He could issue executive orders or try to persuade federal agencies to regulate or take action against Twitter or convince Congress to legislate, but none will be fast or help him before November," he expalined. "Reelection might help him achieve some of what he wants in the longer term as agencies and Congress are investigating big tech and may consider legislation but nothing will pass soon."

Trump has long accused social-media companies of bias toward conservatives. In June 2019 he invited several far-right provocateurs and conspiracy theorists, some of whom had had hate speech removed by social-media platforms, to the White House for a social-media summit.

He has also credited being able to communicate on Twitter as a key factor in his election to the White House, remarking that it allows him to communicate with voters directly, unfiltered by media organizations he accuses of partisan bias.

First came the political purging of the DOJ and intelligence community, now comes the suppression of dissenting media. All that's left is for him to succeed in rigging the next election (he's certainly trying, with his attacks on mail voting and threatening to cut Federal aid to states that expand it), and then for dissidents to start "falling off balconies" like in Russia. But yeah, Trump's totally not a dictator.

[Highlord Laan]

Dammit, RR. I was going to post this under the title "Baby Don-Don Pitches Bitch Fit Over Being Fact Checked."

[The Romulan Republic]

Dammit, RR. I was going to post this under the title "Baby Don-Don Pitches Bitch Fit Over Being Fact Checked."

That works too.

He's such a limp-dicked insecure little narcissistic fuck. "Strong men" tend to be.

[Eulogy]

I want the little shit to try to do it, too.

Try, because surely there's no way this will turn even more people against him even if he doesn't succeed in bringing down Twitter. Call him a dictator-wannabe all you like but a wannabe is what he is.

[Broomstick]

He wasn't silenced. Twitter didn't stop him from posting his bullshit. He wasn't censored or suppressed in anyway.

What Twitter did do is identify the falsehoods he was posting.

[The Romulan Republic]

He wasn't silenced. Twitter didn't stop him from posting his bullshit. He wasn't censored or suppressed in anyway.

What Twitter did do is identify the falsehoods he was posting.

Of course not.

But its long been clear that to the Right, "freedom of speech" means "I have the right to say or do any offensive or dishonest thing I want, and no one is allowed to criticize me in any way." "Freedom" for them means the end of freedom for everyone else.

I want the little shit to try to do it, too.

Try, because surely there's no way this will turn even more people against him even if he doesn't succeed in bringing down Twitter. Call him a dictator-wannabe all you like but a wannabe is what he is.

He's crossed a lot of lines that should have had the whole country screaming for his immediate removal from office. And he's still there, and those crossed lines have become normalized, and people keep saying its not that bad and he can't really do any of this shit. And, he probably can't- today. But every time he pushes at the boundaries of what is acceptable and gets away with, and the crisis seems to pass and everything goes back to "normal", that new "normal" is just a little more fascist-shaded than the old normal, and it becomes a little more acceptable, and he can do a little bit more next time.

Maybe this would be the line that finally does it. But at this point, I'm past hoping for one scandal big enough to kill this fucker's Presidency. Even COVID, even his negligence and cruelty leading to the preventable deaths of tens of thousands of Americans, has barely affected his approval ratings thus far. The best we can hope for is death by a thousand cuts. The only question is which will succumb to its innumerable little wounds first- his Presidency, or the republic.

[bilateralrope]

Looks like Trump isn't going to let Twitter be a neutral platform. He is forcing them to side against him.

Lets see how much that costs his election campaign.

[The Romulan Republic]

Looks like Trump isn't going to let Twitter be a neutral platform. He is forcing them to side against him.

Lets see how much that costs his election campaign.

Hopefully. The alternative, of course, is that they knuckle under and side with him.

The cynical in me says that if they were even concerned with enforcing their rules even-handidly, instead of profit, they would have banned his account a long time ago.

That's part of what's so sad about this: he's actually attacking a platform that has actually substantially enabled him, because they didn't do it hard enough. Because for "leaders" like Trump, loyalty must be absolute, enthusiastic and unthinking.

[Solauren]

If he tries to shut down Twitter, they'll just relocate US Servers somewhere else, like say Mexico or Canada, or overseas altogether.

Same with any other social media platform. They'll move, and then troll the hell out of him, possibly including free advertising for his opponents
("Can't break those laws if your not in the country to break them, after all!").

Also, any celebrity that uses social media would have to immediately turn against Trump, or risk the resulting backlash of still supporting him.

I mean, imagine if he threatened/tried to shut down say, Instragram, and all the so called insta-models went 'I'm not posting anything more unless Trump loses the election in 2 days", possibly suspending their accounts first to prevent mass-downloading. You'd have every single one of their 'donators' voting for Trumps opponent. (Yes, some of them have that level of support from people. On some levels, it's scary).


That being said, Trump won't do it. It's far better for Twitter to exist for Trump to say 'Suppression of the Right!', to rally his base behind, then to actually shut it down, and need to find something else to rally them against.

[Gandalf]

A big part of this is to make his followers feel persecuted too. It's a bit like the "IRS is targeting conservatives" thing from maybe a decade ago?

[The Romulan Republic]

Yup. The whole Right runs on a manufactured persecution complex- the idea that they're being persecuted if they can't do whatever they want with zero reprecussions whatsoever. Like how they whinge about "politically correct censorship" if anyone uses their free speech to criticize or ostracize the right for being bigoted. Or how they're all for free enterprise until a private business does something they don't approve of, like fire a rapist.

This is right in line with that.

Actual freedom means: "I have the right to do as I wish with myself and my life, as long as I'm not hurting anyone or infringing on anyone's freedom, because we're all equal."

Freedom for the Right means: "I have the right to do whatever I want with zero reprecussions, and no one is allowed to criticize me. Freedom for me, not for anyone else!" Or, to put it more simply "I've got mine, fuck everyone else."

[Gandalf]

He and the rest of the wacky right wing echo chamber didn't seem so concerned about free expression when it was Kaepernick kneeling.

But that's Republicans for you.

[Aether]

Since he is writing executive orders all willy-nilly, can he write one that outlaws auto-play on websites?

[Aether]

He and the rest of the wacky right wing echo chamber didn't seem so concerned about free expression when it was Kaepernick kneeling.

But that's Republicans for you.

But...but...but...PRIVATE BUSINESS! Or STATE'S RIGHTS! depending on context.

It simply comes down to "It's ok as long as it agrees with my worldview else is a load of COMMUNISM."

[The Romulan Republic]

He and the rest of the wacky right wing echo chamber didn't seem so concerned about free expression when it was Kaepernick kneeling.

But that's Republicans for you.

But...but...but...PRIVATE BUSINESS! Or STATE'S RIGHTS! depending on context.

It simply comes down to "It's ok as long as it agrees with my worldview else is a load of COMMUNISM."

They've always been this way. Right back to the original "right" conservatives fought to defend in America- the "right" to own people. As John Oliver put it:

And on that States' Rights argument, for the record, the Southern states were ardently pro-States' Rights, but with some glaring exceptions. Notably, when Northern states passed laws to help protect runaway slaves, the South wanted the Federal government to override those states' laws. So, they loved States' Rights, as long as they were the right states' rights. The wrong states' rights would be states' wrongs, wrongs which would need to be righted by the right states' rights. Look, to put it really simply, they just wanted to own black people and they didn't much care how.

[bilateralrope]

Looks like Trump isn't going to let Twitter be a neutral platform. He is forcing them to side against him.

Lets see how much that costs his election campaign.

Hopefully. The alternative, of course, is that they knuckle under and side with him.

The cynical in me says that if they were even concerned with enforcing their rules even-handidly, instead of profit, they would have banned his account a long time ago.

That's part of what's so sad about this: he's actually attacking a platform that has actually substantially enabled him, because they didn't do it hard enough. Because for "leaders" like Trump, loyalty must be absolute, enthusiastic and unthinking.

Sure, Twitter could try to cave into Trump's demands. But that's going to get the attention of other governments around the world. I doubt Twitter wants to take that risk.

[LaCroix]

That reminds me of the fact that Facebook has a function to filter out nazi content - they need that for Germany, where this kind of hatespeech is illegal.

They could not activate this in the US, for this algorythm was unable to differentiate between nazi hatespeech and the things GOP politicians say...

[Broomstick]

That's part of what's so sad about this: he's actually attacking a platform that has actually substantially enabled him, because they didn't do it hard enough. Because for "leaders" like Trump, loyalty must be absolute, enthusiastic and unthinking.

^ This is what I'm hoping will be his downfall.

Trump has a long history of attacking loyal supporters, be they people or institutions, that don't hold 100% to unvarying loyalty to whatever bullshit he vomits. You'd think people would have caught on to this by now, but so many seem to think they can take the tiger by the tail and survive the experience. Trump requires enemies, and he'll happily turn anyone into an opponent at the least excuse.

A lot depends on what happens in November. I do know for sure that if Trump wins he'll double-down on the bullshit he's been throwing for nearly four years, and if he loses he will absolutely lose his shit. I shudder at the potential consequences either way.

[The Romulan Republic]

That's part of what's so sad about this: he's actually attacking a platform that has actually substantially enabled him, because they didn't do it hard enough. Because for "leaders" like Trump, loyalty must be absolute, enthusiastic and unthinking.

^ This is what I'm hoping will be his downfall.

Trump has a long history of attacking loyal supporters, be they people or institutions, that don't hold 100% to unvarying loyalty to whatever bullshit he vomits. You'd think people would have caught on to this by now, but so many seem to think they can take the tiger by the tail and survive the experience. Trump requires enemies, and he'll happily turn anyone into an opponent at the least excuse.

A lot depends on what happens in November. I do know for sure that if Trump wins he'll double-down on the bullshit he's been throwing for nearly four years, and if he loses he will absolutely lose his shit. I shudder at the potential consequences either way.

This is a man who's shown he's willing to sacrifice tens of thousands of his own people to coronavirus to keep the stock market up, and pretend he's got everything under control.

I really hope there are some people left who aren't mindless loyalists between him and the nuclear button if he loses.

[loomer]

I wonder what his tantrum over this flag will be.

[Broomstick]

It took me a second to realize you meant the rule violation tag. Yes, how dare Twitter hold the Cheeto-in-Chief to the same rules as everyone else. Go Twitter!

[Ziggy Stardust]

Obviously I am enjoying this as much as you all are, if for no other reason than it's nice to see someone fuck with Trump in a way that really gets under his skin.

That said, and not to go all K.A. Pital on everyone, let's not cheer TOO hard for Twitter. Remember, they are not our friends, either. Tech billionaires are more closely aligned in ideology to someone like Trump than you might expect, because they share a common class interest (hell, Facebook very actively helped Trump win, including sending advisors to his campaign, though granted that's not relevant to Twitter per se). Honestly, their relationship with Trump is a lot closer to the relationship "traditional" Republicans have with Trump, where they despise him on a personal level but are content to at least tacitly accept his policies since they benefit so much from them.

It makes me uncomfortable to set a precedent whereby it becomes socially and politically acceptable for large corporations (particularly those involved in media) to so directly exert their political will. Yeah, sure, in this particular case I like the results: Twitter in general seems to be the least abhorrent of the large corporations, and Trump absolutely deserves all this and more, and this fits into larger cultural conversations about the role of contemporary media in screening out deliberate mistruths and all that. I get it. But there's still a part of me that sees the potential darker implications, whereby we are essentially de facto ceding some portion of popular political impetus to corporations whose interests will NOT always be so clearly aligned with our own.

[madd0ct0r]

Bah. That's been a issue since the yellow press media barons in 1900s.
Platform builders and soapbox owners weild a lot of influence while their stage is in the sun.
And behind them you have the venture-comms complex, where the people rich from the previous social media wave are the investors in the new tech ventures. As long as we remain socially organised and status chimps, social media will continue.

[Broomstick]

It makes me uncomfortable to set a precedent whereby it becomes socially and politically acceptable for large corporations (particularly those involved in media) to so directly exert their political will.

I don't view fact-checking as "exerting political will".

[Ziggy Stardust]

I don't view fact-checking as "exerting political will".

Then you aren't paying attention.

I'm not trying to be glib, but I don't really know how else to respond to this, because it seems so utterly divorced from the context of not only this specific story but also the way the relationship between social media and politics has evolved over the past 4 years.