Twitter Announces That It Will Begin Partially Deplatforming Donald Trump's Tweets

Yes, they did that to me too. They shadowbanned me. Tweets appeared for me and the people I tweeted back and forth with most frequently, and for no one else.

For Trump, the partial deplatforming will work a little differently. They won't ban him from the site -- Trump makes them money and keeps their precious "journalist" tweeters tweeting and tweeting and tweeting all day and then staying up all night tweeting -- but they are sharply limiting how users can interact with his account.

Because they've now declared that a president elected by the American people is not "mainstream" and polite enough for Twitter's otherwise rigorously-factual and scrupulously civil user base.

On to the newest leftist speech control measure which National Review will heartily endorse:

Twitter announced that any such tweets by world leaders will no longer be able to be liked, replied to, shared, or retweeted by regular users; instead, the only option available will be to "quote-tweet" the offending tweet, wherein regular users can "express their opinions" about the tweet itself.

In a statement addressing the new change, Twitter said that "When it comes to the actions of world leaders on Twitter, we recognize that this is largely new ground and unprecedented."

The rule change immediately follows Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) calling on Twitter to ban the account of President Donald Trump, during the most recent Democratic primary debate.

They cast this as affecting "world leaders" but obviously this is an attempt -- yet again! -- to placate the leftwing activists who have been demanding that Twitter suspend Trump.

Why doesn't twitter ever try to placate the right? Oh right, because the Establishment soyboys who control "conservative" media shout down any attempts to pressure social media companies in a rightward direction, if only to halt the leftward drift and keep them in the middle.

Helping leftist pressure groups pressure corporations into imposing leftwing speech controls on conservatives is the Highest Form of Conservatism, they tell us.

A "blessing of liberty," as David French calls Drag Queen Story Hour.

In related news, the CEO of Salesforce is calling for the break-up of FaceBook.

Salesforce (CRM) CEO Marc Benioff hasn't been sparing with his criticism of Facebook. But in an interview with CNN's Poppy Harlow Wednesday he went one significant step further and added his name to the list of those who support breaking up the social media giant.

"It's addictive, it's not good for you, they're after your kids, they're running political ads that aren't true ... and they're also acquiring other companies and co-mingling [data those companies have on their users] into theirs," Benioff said, referencing Facebook (FB)'s acquisitions of Instagram, WhatsApp and other tech platforms. "And I think at that point, because they're now doing that, that they probably should be broken up. Because they're having an undue influence as the largest social media platform on the planet," he said.

...

For its part, Facebook has said that breaking it and other tech companies up would only make it harder for those companies to tackle pressing issues on their platforms such as election interference. Facebook declined to comment on Benioff's remarks.

I don't want Facebook fighting "election interference," which, we've seen from past practice, means "silencing conservatives."

YouTube was pressured to censor independent voices. All other voices besides the corporate media -- Jeff Zucker's daily televised attack blog -- are presumptively "conspiracy theories" and probably Russian Bots, and therefore must be suppressed while CNN's and MSNBC's video offerings are at the top of every search entered -- even if you specifically search for, say "Stephen Crowder" and then the exact title of a video Stephen Crowder uploaded. YouTube's search will return CNN and MSNBC videos on that topic, and maybe a hit-piece they ran on Stephen Crowder.

Way, way, way down the list of search returns they'll -- maybe -- offer you the Stephen Crowder video you specifically searched for using its exact title.

Big Media demanded that James O'Keefe's sting videos be suppressed, and, well how about that. Tim Pool reports that every time a video mentions the name "James O'Keefe" or shows a Project Veritas website page, his video gets made invisible.

They call this "protecting the public from conspiracy theories and election interference."

Looks to me like it's just enabling Jake Tapper's conspiracy theories and Chuck Todd's election interference to go unopposed.

This is intentional, and this is what the Corporate Left means by "fighting election interference." All it means is pushing leftwing fake news while ruthlessly censoring independent voices, dissenting voices, and the actual truth.

Meanwhile, our super-duper TruCon class just continues leftwing corporate media and leftwing social media on.

The left has a huge institutional investment in pushing corporations to act as de facto advocacy arms of the progressive socialist machine, and the right has... well, the right has corporate-funded shills who attack anyone on the right who wishes to push back and tell corporations, "Thus far and no further." Instead, they clear the way for corporations to move further and further left, by attacking conservatives that threaten to bar that pathway.

The left is always pushing left and the corporate-funded pseudo right is always calling this a "blessing of liberty," and yet the corporate-funded pseudo right expresses complete bafflement at why more and more corporations are choosing the path of least resistance that they themselves trail-blazed -- moving forever left.

I've never thought this bunch was ever the pick of the intellectual litter, but is it actually possible they don't understand that it's their own tacit -- and explicit! -- approval of their corporate sponsors' assault on conservative speech that tells their corporate sponsors that attacking conservative speech is the path of least political resistance?

Are they really that stupid to not understand the cover they provide to speech-destroying monopolies?

Or are they merely paid to pretend not to understand?

I'm having trouble imagining the answer is anything but the latter.

By the way, Tim Pool talked about the possibility that Twitter might censor Trump a few weeks ago.

His analysis: Trump should just quit twitter and join, for example, Minds, a small would-be alternative to twitter, thereby greatly diminishing Twitter's appeal (the big Trump news will now be on Minds) while simultaneously creating an actual competitor company to the nigh-monopoly twitter.

I think that's right.

I also think it will never happen, because as much as Trump denigrates the legacy media and tarnished brand-names, he still craves the approval of the legacy media and he has, for personal reasons, an unreasonable faith in brand names.

posted by Ace of Spades at 06:35 PM

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