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“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.

“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”

Ernest Hemingway, 'The Sun Also Rises'

So it will go with Twitter. The echo chamber gradually collapsing in on itself, then suddenly disappearing.

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Understand that Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and other social media are not about journalism, public enlightenment, speaking truth to power, fair play, enabling the next Arab Spring, or any other public good. Social media exist to make money for their founders and investors. Period.

The "censorship" they impose now protects those profits. How? Because for social media, self-censorship is better than the alternative. A truly free Twitter and FB would allow robust discussions to take place, absolutely. It would also allow the crazy left to launch jihads against MAGAs and the crazy right to publish every Democratic politician's home address and names of their children.

The first time people (i.e., voters) were murdered from that freedom--and murders would happen, there's no question--government would enact heavy regulations on content. Those regs would slow the data harvest, which would slow the profits, and social media cannot allow that. So, social media uses its current model--"censorship lite"--in order to stave off the "censorship heavy" regulations of government.

If Twitter and the rest were guaranteed zero regulations on who can post what, they'd eliminate their oversight tomorrow. Why? Because it's expensive: policing their platforms costs them hundreds of millions of dollars that could otherwise go into investors' pockets. They only spend that money now to avoid heavier sanctions by government.

So, our choice is not "no regulations and censorship," but how much and by whom. Be careful what you wish for, you may get it.

Me personally, I'm of the "let everybody post their shit, who cares?" school. But I don't have to face enraged voters every two years.

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Twitter has exposed the intolerance of the left. Prior to Twitter, the left claimed the moral high ground. They painted all conservatives as racists and against individual rights.

Now we see the TRUTH. Leftist are in favor of censorship and in racial discrimination - so long as the censorship is against anyone on the right AND the discrimination is against people who are white or asian.

Twitter is an echo chamber of the left. And as such, it has exposed an ugly side of the left and especially the more radical left.

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Interesting take. Not how I see it. The handling of the Biden corruption and deplatforming a President are unforgivable sins. Twitter is and was and is a leftist cesspool.

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I have been on Twitter since 2007. By 2013, I saw the danger of it when I was among a few people caught up in the story about the Boston bomber that tagged the wrong person. I recognized then that information distorts and intensifies as it travels from person to person. The hysteria we're seeing now in our culture is because of Twitter. JK Rowling's dehumanization, the mass firings, the constant fear and paranoia is because of Twitter. I now have what can only be called children spies who watch my tweets, screen shot them, and are planning to try to destroy me with them. A while back I was swarmed by these folks, branded a "white supremacist" and viciously attacked. When I complained to Twitter they said "this does not meet our definition of abuse." Twitter is a terrible company because they changed their algorithm in 2017 to push outrage to the top. That was like pouring gasoline on a raging wildfire. It is bad for journalism, bad for news, bad for humanity. It is, however, very difficult to quit. I hope this movie empties the platform of all of its power to destroy every good thing.

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Solana writes: "Let’s be real: I am writing this piece for a newsletter founded by a former New York Times editor who, in a pre-Twitter universe, would have been shoved out of The Times and never heard from again."

If we're being real, the former New York Times editor never would have been "shoved out of The Time" in a pre-Twitter universe. It was Twitter, essentially, that forced her out in one of many examples of the users of a purportedly free-speech platform using the platform in derogation of free-speech principles.

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founding

I was kicked off of Twitter for two jokes:

1) AOC wrote an especially panicky demagogic tweet about something asinine like bottled water for voters or whatever and I responded

“They ocean is going to attack your house and the white supremacists are coming for you!!!”

Literally zero chance the Maoist safety officer at Twitter who read that joke didn’t know I was joking. The give away was probably the part about the ocean attacking her house. No?

2) After a particularly sanctimonious, self-aggrandizing, and preening tweet from Jim Acosta I replied

“I am personally going to be very sad when you eventually die for our sins.”

I mean does anyone not get this joke? I doubt there is anyone who doesn’t get the joke. The reason I say that, is because my reply had almost as many likes as Acosta’s ding dong tweet, which is probably why he reported me and had me removed permanently from my favorite website.

Somewhat annoying because the great Michael Malice was following me and now I don’t exist. Ben Shapiro retweeted me twice. Sad!

The new Twitter CEO sounds horrifying. I don’t know if this is true but I heard he proposed banning videos with people who haven’t given consent. Obviously this is so you can’t share videos of Democrat mobs setting restaurants and cars on fire next year when the Jim Crow Election doesn’t go their way.

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Mr. Solana is a Dorsey apologist. Perhaps he's correct that Dorsey kept the organization moderate, but nonetheless in the end, many conservative voices were silenced on the platform, in lockstep with Facebook and Google/Youtube. These companies rely on an army of leftist/liberal Millennials to edit and moderate content, and they have made their preferences clear: death threats, vicious jokes, slander, even calls for violence are all acceptable as long as they are directed at the Right, or at Jews and Christians, Israel supporters, advocates of democracy, even dissidents from fascistic regimes such as Communist China and North Korea.

Twitter went public in 2013, making its founders and investors very rich, but it only became profitable in 4Q 2017, 11 years after its founding. It is the ultimate social/blogging platform, with a slick user interface and highly sophisticated mathematical routines powering its famous "feed". Thousands of Famous and Important People possess the coveted "blue check" that confers a special gravitas on their august pronouncements.

Twitter's coveted status as the world's marketplace of ideas was won over many years of hard work, and was destroyed in a single day when they booted their most famous user, President Donald J. Trump, even before his term had ended. They have lost all legitimacy.

Sooner or later, a new paradigm will emerge, a network that does not discriminate against any particular ideas. Perhaps it will be a blockchain thing, immune from any particular government or private corporation's attempts to steer and control it. Or something altogether different, bold and innovative, unlike the crusty, stale crap that current social network platforms have become.

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founding

“When pressed, Jack explained exactly what “woke” meant to him, explicitly in terms of the institutional media, which he implied had been lying to us.”

——————————————————

I don’t think Jack was great but he wasn’t that bad. This may be what “woke” meant to him but that’s immaterial.

If you wore a “Serve the People” t-shirt during the Cultural Revolution, you were helping Mao. It doesn’t matter if you personally feel like “Serve the People” should be a tennis slogan. You’re helping Mao.

I wish everyone would stop helping Mao.

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Twitter was an idealistic fantasy of democratizing speech and including everyone in on the conversation... but like every idea dreamed up in the cloistered world of the over educated it had unintended consequences... people are flawed and tribal... pour monetary incentive on top as an accelerant and you have a disaster... Dorsey was an idealistic fool and he is being replaced by an openly racist bigot... but it's ok because he is racist towards the "right" people... so kiss his ring and continue to worship at the alter of strife...

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Frankly, I never understood why Americans would put up with a platform that even hinted at censorship, yet alone gave it the full Beria. But maybe America's just changed in ways I never thought possible.

As far as the 2020 "election" being an outright fraud, one doesn't have to rely on the exposure of vote changing schemes, exhuming dead voters or the usual Dem perfidy. The Hunter Biden censorship - including blocking the NY Post and the anguished screeches of the "50 former intel scribes" who swore the story reeked of a Putin plant - tell you all you need to know about the fix by the devious and malign elites and their ultimate installation in the Oval Office of a pliable human coprolite who rubber stamps their coup.

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Twitter was one that I really never got involved with... the insanity of Twitter activists doesn't make any sense to me. I remember Mike Pence getting laughed at and mocked online about his "open door" policy with women in his office. I watched these miscreant little brats badmouth him online like they were equal to him... and I'm just reading about it in some clickbait news going, "He's still the VP of the United States, and you're not." You're a stupid little peon thinking he or she has the illusion of equality on a system that is raking in cash from your data.

I really wish people would pick up Cal Newport's books or maybe Bari could interview him. social media really isn't the great bastion of wonders people think it is. My wife and I have since deleted all social media... and it went out of our lives with a whimper, not a bang... because its a useless technology that lost any merit it had when governments realized what it could do during the Arab spring and put all their efforts in watching it.

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This article is the worst writing I have ever encountered north of the comment section.

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Specifically, Does this mean that someone such as Andy Ngo and the Antifa pics and videos that he posts are no longer acceptable?

Or for that matter, all those Kyle Rittenhouse that were exculpatory and incriminating? How about all those pics and videos of Asian ladies being attacked? Or for that matter, the videos of the looting and smashing in San Francisco?

Any thoughts?

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I'm not so sure about Dorsey's post election professions of support for free speech. It reminds me of dis-Hon. Sen. H Reid (D-NV) response when asked if he regretted blatantly lying about milquetoast Sen. M Romney (R-UT) from the well of the Senate (where you have complete immunity): "Obama got elected, didn't he?". It is easy to apologize after the damage is done when you know there will be zero accountability.

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A good childhood friend of mine was poisoned by Twitter. Turned him into an angry, raging, lunatic - showing his envy towards people who have achieved more than him while on this planet. Because my friend punched down on me too, I ditched him. I’ll stay off Twitter and hope it’s ability to cancel people is eliminated. There is no good reason why idiots who have achieved nothing in the real world should be given the power by Twitter to dismantle successful, hard working citizens.

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