Today, Twitter permanently suspended President Trump from its service “due to the risk of further incitement for violence,” effectively cutting him off from his favorite megaphone for reaching his supporters.
I say, it is about time!
And to anyone complaining that this is against the First Amendment, the Bill of Rights does not say that a private company (such as Twitter or Facebook) has to publish everything sent to it. They are free to publish whatever they want, and NOT publish whatever they want. And if you don’t like it, you can start your own company and publish whatever you want.
There are limits of course — the famous “you cannot yell fire in a crowded theater”. Or more germane to the current situation, you cannot incite people to violate the law, like Trump just did.
The main thing the First Amendment says about the freedom of speech is that the government cannot tell anyone (or any company) what they can or cannot say (within limits). And for a little less than two more weeks (unfortunately) Donald Trump basically is the government. Claiming that Twitter has to publish what he says or else they are in violation of the First Amendment is totally backwards and nonsensical.
In that spirit, I will publish this hilarious comment on Twitter’s decision:
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IK wrote: “There are limits of course — the famous “you cannot yell fire in a crowded theater”. Or more germane to the current situation, you cannot incite people to violate the law, like Trump just did.”
But those are for government control of public spaces. Every privately-owned media platform publishes its own Terms of Service, the conditions under which it grants access to its platform. Every user of those platforms has agreed to the TOS.
Twitter (and Facebook et al) failed to enforce their own TOS where user Trump was concerned. What’s noteworthy about Trump getting banned is not just the blessed silence, it is the fact that it happened 4 years too late. Trump has been steadily violating Twitter’s TOS for at least that long.
Should the producers at NewsMax, Alex Jones, Rush, Hannity and his co-conspritors at Fox “News” be charged with conspiracy to over-throw the United States government and Constitution? I vote yes
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