I'm having a hard time thinking that anyone should be called a journalist -- without mocking quotes -- at this point. After the past couple of years of "reporting" about COVID, vaccines, protests, Ukraine, China, Twitter, etc., et. al., EVERYONE has taken positions at the "fringe."
For 20 years, I've made sense of the news by looking for the pieces of the puzzle where people agree. That is now literally impossible. There is ZERO overlap on ANY issue between the two sides now.
The few actual journalists remaining are known by name, and moving from newspapers to Substack.
Sure, the truth doesn't exist and reality is an illusion.
But Andy NGO has an especially concerning history of misrepresenting facts, using misleading cuts, and closely associating with far right insurrectionary groups such as the Proud Boys.
> Sure, the truth doesn't exist and reality is an illusion.
I don't know who Andy Ngo is, and I don't care, but if we're talking about misleading cuts, let's talk about the ENTIRETY of the mass media making out like Trump said Nazis were "fine people." All it took was 2 minutes of looking at the transcript when the furor broke out to understand that's NOT what he said, but half the country still believes he somehow came out in direct support of them. And this is precisely the back and forth I was alluding to when I say that there is literally no overlap on what is considered truth any more.
First the article says Chad Loder was recently suspended because his name was provided to Musk by far right accounts. Several paragraphs later it backs off and says it might be that he was suspended because he was supposedly on a right wing list of people they were trying to mass report (suddenly this isn’t about Musk any more but the standard reporting mechanism). The evidence for this is an archive.ph snapshot of an obscure Substack by a username in Japanese characters who alleges on Nov 7 that Loder was on a list, maybe, when you actually look at the text it’s not at all clear what exactly the person is saying. The article makes no effort to explain this or confirm the information. It’s a pretty shoddy piece of journalism.
Even when Loder is quoted he openly speculated about what happened and says he doesn’t know. The piece is just a tissue of insinuations.
It is interesting you focus on just one of the banned accounts, glossing over the case of CrimethInc, for example:
In the 14 years that CrimethInc has been on Twitter, the account has never violated Twitter policies and has never been suspended. This changed last week after a Twitter exchange between Musk and Ngo.
Ngo asked Musk to suspend the CrimethInc account, calling it an “Antifa collective” and falsely claiming the group had “claimed a number of attacks.” Within hours of Ngo’s request to Musk, and without citing any specific violations of policies, Twitter suspended the @crimethinc account.
You can call this piece "a tissue of insinuations", but the evidence, taken together, is quite damning. A pattern emerges. At least for anyone who does not have tissues in their ears.
Ya I looked at their lead example and the one they talk about the most and they made serious errors. I see the CrimeInc case has slightly more evidence, like at least we know they asked for them to be banned.
So yes, in addition to clearly misreporting and making misleading and false statements about their lead example Loder they seem to have other examples where there is circumstantial (but zero actual) evidence Musk may have done something.
Personally I like much more rigorous journalism than this even when it’s about people like Musk who I dislike.
Ok but groups like the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club are not a trivial account (or frankly even a journalist). They're a radical antifa group who follow people (include government agents) officials around with guns, openly assaulting them, and has been part of deadly riots. It's like the proud boys x2
I also wouldn't call Andy Ngo, a gay asian journalist who's spoken in front of congress, far right. He basically records riots in Portland and uploads them to twitter, and he's only right wing in the sense that more republicans watch his videos than democrats
You have not presented any evidence that any John Brown Gun Club chapters have assaulted or killed anybody.
The Gun Club arms itself to defend against far-right violence and often appears as a security force at protests to protect against expected far-right violence.
To date, Gun Club members have reportedly not engaged anyone with their weapons during one of these protests.
Perhaps. Let's look at Andy Ngo's invitation in context. Republican lawmakers asked him to testify during hearings about the January 6 insurrection attempt. His testimony mainly aimed to downplay the feeble insurrection attempt, and shift focus to riots. Of course, he fails to mention that the riots were often directly caused by police action.
Well right, because Jan 6th was a peaceful protest until cops started murdering protesters. The only deaths were of protesters, and the only murderers were the cops. Nobody was arrested for bringing a gun/weapon into the capital, and the guards unlocked the doors to let protesters in. I mean the fact republicans weren't allowed to appoint anyone to the Jan 6th committee should tell you everything you need to know
So banning right wing users for having right wing opinions are OK…
But banning antifa-accounts, that is accounts held by people taking part in month long riots and looting and political real-world violence… that is bad?
Is this satire? Is this an honestly held opinion? Or am I missing something?
This is a false premise. Without understanding why each account was banned and what infraction was cited we can't make a clear comparison or judgment about either case. Otherwise it's just more outrage-porn.
I read the Intercept article, and clicked through and read some the screen captured tweets from the “antifascist” accounts that were banned that the article did not care to include.
The Intercept article is not journalism. It’s a PR piece for the accounts that were banned and quotes spokespeople for the impacted groups totally uncritically.
Calling them antifascists seems a misnomer too, they seem to me to be actually anti-capitalist rabble-rousers and professional rioters. Educating, equipping, funding and inciting violent riots seems a clear TOS violation to me.
The “no true antifa” arguments sounds like the sort of ploy that was used when these riots kicked off and democrats in Congress and MSM talking heads were trying to laugh off the idea of “antifa” as a violent domestic terrorist organization simply because they don’t have an org chart.
Ah, classic. So this is actually all just shitposting and looking for ideological battle then.
The “antifascists” literally wore the mark themselves while committing upwards of a billion dollars of property damage over the course of a year+ of riots.
But seriously, please just take it elsewhere. Your innuendo is borderline if not actual libel.
> Calling them antifascists seems a misnomer too, they seem to me to be actually anti-capitalist rabble-rousers and professional rioters. Educating, equipping, funding and inciting violent riots seems a clear TOS violation to me.
So I take it you think everyone involved in the January 6 riot including Donald Trump should be banned from Twitter then?.
> So banning right wing users for having right wing opinions are OK…
What views?
I saw some of the tweets people got banned for. Are you okay with me associating those views with right wing views?
> that is accounts held by people taking part in month long riots and looting and political real-world violence
So, you are saying that your alleged criminal activities off Twitter should feature into whether you are banned? (Note, you never claimed they violated ANY of Twitters rules in your comment)
Is this satire? Is this an honestly held opinion? Or am I missing something?
You are missing the fact that no-one was getting banned merely for having an option or for their actions outside of the Twitter platform. They were banned for continuously violating the terms of service e.g. inciting violence, racist or xenophobic content, doxxing etc.
And what happened here is that those left-wing accounts were banned without any such violation i.e. it was purely arbitrary and the very thing you claim you don't want.
> You are missing the fact that no-one was getting banned merely for having an option or for their actions outside of the Twitter platform. They were banned for continuously violating the terms of service e.g. inciting violence, racist or xenophobic content, doxxing etc.
Where's the evidence for this claim? Twitter did not publish rationales for bans and there was no clarity or consistent enforcement of what did or didn't constitute a ToS violation.
What's odd to me is if this question came up a few months ago we would see lots of "it's a private platform" and "freedom of association" comments that aren't as prevalent all the sudden.
Those left wing people that were banned, very likey supported the system that just got them banned.
No one in this thread is arguing that people who violate the rules shouldn't be banned. We are discussing the hypocrisy of what Elon is saying vs what he is clearly doing.
He is free to do this all he wants. We are free to laugh and mock as he flails around, lying and making stuff up.
You just wanted to quickly jump in and make this comment because you "got 'em" but really you just missed the mark.
I don't think people care if left wing or right wing people are banned. People want consistency, safety and the rules applied equally.
Right wing people seemed to act like shitheads more often so they are banned more often.
I'd continue arguing however, conservative law, jurisprudence and overall culture seems to always boil down to that there are in groups who the law protects BUT does not bind, and out groups who the law binds but does not protect.
You can pretty much view all of twitter's new moderation capability through that lens and then it starts to make perfect sense.
There you go. Not a problem when right-leaning accounts were banned on the same ToS violations of inciting violence and impersonation, and now somehow it is a problem when it is applied to left-leaning accounts doing the same thing.
> Those left wing people that were banned, very likey supported the system that just got them banned.
Exactly, and the rules must be applied equally, which wasn't the case before.
If both sides are now angry over Twitter's moderation system and are building their own echo-chambers, then Twitter (2.0) will remain as a site for a more balanced discussion without either extreme screaming on the platform.
At the end of the day, I'm still laughing at the entire Twitter chaos and the screeching minority who are pretending to leave Twitter whilst keeping their accounts and screaming about Elon Musk elsewhere rent free unable to ignore him in their own echo chambers.
The right-wingers that got banned presumably broke one of Twitter's rules - maybe they said "I wish someone would shoot (insert politician they don't like here)". Even if you take "pre-Musk Twitter had a left wing bias" as granted, that doesn't mean the right-wingers were wrongfully banned.
>But banning antifa-accounts, that is accounts held by people taking part in month long riots and looting and political real-world violence… that is bad?
The only way to boil this down to a politically neutral rule is if we banned every right-winger who was at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 alongside everyone who went to a BLM rally that turned violent in 2020. And as far as I can tell neither behavior alone was a violation of Twitter rules as they stood at the time. The rule was no inciting violence on-platform, not no being involved in violence whatsoever.
As far as I can tell, pre-Musk Twitter had two biases:
- Their moderation team was understaffed and overworked because Twitter was too big of a target to effectively moderate. Twitter moderation would overprosecute easy-to-detect cases (i.e. LMG staff getting banned for months because of them sarcastically saying "I'll kill you") and underprosecute difficult ones (i.e. everyone harassing Twitter's villain-of-the-day).
- As a direct consequence of this, right-wingers were more likely to be banned. This is because their rhetoric is inherently more violent[0] in ways that were easier to detect.
Musk has basically decided to cut the moderation team in half and unban all the right-wingers in the name of "balance". All this does is say "we are now letting right-wingers break all the rules, but left-wingers must be on their best behavior, if we let them stay on the platform at all".
[0] Specifically, left-wingers were saying to smash windows, right-wingers were saying to smash people.
> their rhetoric is inherently more violent[0] in ways that were easier to detect.
Do you have any evidence for this generalization? The only overt violent threats I’ve seen on Twitter are men encouraging rape and murder of JK Rowling and other supporters of women’s rights. I don’t know if they’re “right wing” or not, but their surrounding rhetoric is what’s usually associated loosely with the “left”.
But surely this depends on what one happens to see. That’s why I’m wondering if you have any kind of random sample from which you can draw your conclusions.
> Sp banning right wing users for having right wing opinions are OK…
Maybe! Being part of a group that also holds certain opinions isn't really relevant to whether expressing those opinions violates a policy. But which opinions did you have in mind?
https://theintercept.com/2022/11/29/elon-musk-twitter-andy-n...