{"id":1463342,"date":"2022-05-04T08:16:49","date_gmt":"2022-05-04T12:16:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1463342"},"modified":"2022-05-04T08:16:55","modified_gmt":"2022-05-04T12:16:55","slug":"twitter-lost-its-way-on-free-speech-right-when-donald-trump-entered-national-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/twitter-lost-its-way-on-free-speech-right-when-donald-trump-entered-national-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"Twitter Lost Its Way On Free Speech Right When Donald Trump Entered National Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">28<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Ftwitter-lost-its-way-on-free-speech-right-when-donald-trump-entered-national-politics%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1463342&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/tw-e1651592420540.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>In the wake of Elon Musk\u2019s purchase of Twitter, many commentators  <a href=\"https:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/free-speech-hate-speech-fears-203756766.html\">bemoaned<\/a> Musk\u2019s promises to end censorship on the platform. In so doing, these writers have spun a revisionist narrative. It alleges that, after 2016, Twitter <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/tech\/internet\/elon-musk-fear-twitters-moderation-progress-unravel-rcna25932\">nobly<\/a> attempted to engage in responsible, politically neutral \u201ccontent moderation\u201d aimed narrowly at preventing <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BriannaWu\/status\/1519051494204612609\">threats<\/a> and harassment. But now, supposedly, Musk\u2019s purchase threatens to undo the platform\u2019s \u201cprogress\u201d in enhancing \u201cuser safety\u201d and promoting civility.<\/p>\n<p>This narrative, however, is baseless. In reality, Twitter\u2019s practices and public statements on free speech changed dramatically around 2016, from a position of stringently defending the free speech rights of its users to bemoaning the entire concept. Indeed, Twitter\u2019s post-2016 efforts at \u201ccontent moderation\u201d have been shot through with political bias, both at the policy and enforcement level.<\/p>\n<p>Until about five years ago, Twitter took a nearly absolutist position in defending the free expression of its users and disavowing censorship of any sort \u2014 one similar to the position <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/elonmusk\/status\/1519036983137509376\">taken<\/a> by Musk today. At the policy level, Twitter <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20110612102052\/http:\/support.twitter.com\/entries\/18311\">promised<\/a> its users that \u201cwe do not actively monitor user\u2019s content and <em>will not censor user content<\/em>, except in limited circumstances\u201d such as impersonation, violation of trademark or copyright, or \u201cdirect, specific threats of violence against others.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Twitter\u2019s public statements were likewise unequivocal. In 2012, Twitter\u2019s then-vice president <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/media\/2012\/mar\/22\/twitter-tony-wang-free-speech\">declared<\/a>, \u201cWe are the free speech wing of the free speech party.\u201d Twitter\u2019s chief legal officer <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/09\/03\/technology\/twitter-chief-lawyer-alexander-macgillivray-defender-free-speech.html\">stated<\/a> that same year, \u201cWe should not and cannot be in the business of proactively monitoring and flagging content, no matter who the user is.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Twitter fought compliance with even criminal subpoenas seeking user posts, and The New York Times said  the company \u201chas deftly built something of a reputation for protecting free speech, even unpopular speech.\u201d The Times praised Twitter for sticking to its \u201cprinciples,\u201d noting that \u201cother companies\u201d like Yahoo and Google had \u201crepeatedly stumbled on issues of free speech and privacy,\u201d such as by compromising user anonymity, which \u201ccan endanger dissidents and others with unpopular opinions.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>The Shift Began in Late 2015<\/h2>\n<p>Twitter\u2019s rhetoric began to change, however, in late 2015. In December 2015, Twitter <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.twitter.com\/official\/en_au\/a\/2015\/fighting-abuse-to-protect-freedom-of-expression-au.html\">unveiled<\/a> its first \u201chateful conduct policy,\u201d prohibiting users from \u201cpromot[ing] violence against or directly attack[ing] or threaten[ing] other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease.\u201d Twitter <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20151230002712\/https:\/support.twitter.com\/articles\/18311\">emphasized<\/a> that it still sought to promote freedom of speech, but that abuse and harassment can prevent people from speaking out.<\/p>\n<p>It soon became clear, however, that Twitter\u2019s new censorship efforts would be slanted against conservatives. On February 9, 2016, Twitter announced it was creating the \u201cTrust and Safety Council,\u201d which it <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.twitter.com\/official\/en_us\/a\/2016\/announcing-the-twitter-trust-safety-council.html\">billed<\/a> as \u201ca new and foundational part of our strategy to ensure that people feel safe expressing themselves on Twitter.\u201d The council included left-wing groups such as the Anti-Defamation League and Feminist Frequency, but no free speech advocates or right-of-center voices.<\/p>\n<p>In 2017 and again in 2018, Twitter made major additions to its hateful content policy. Twitter\u2019s 2018 revision, for example, tripled the policy in length and explicitly built in political bias by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/twitter-vs-science-twitter-changes-rules-will-bar-ben-shapiro\">including<\/a> a controversial ban against \u201cmisgendering,\u201d which was eventually used to censor The <a href=\"https:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2022\/03\/20\/babylon-bee-locked-twitter-rachel-levine-hateful-conduct\/\">Babylon Bee<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2022\/04\/25\/tucker-carlson-returns-twitter-censored\/\">Tucker Carlson<\/a>. This new policy effectively <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2018\/11\/25\/twitter-permanently-bans-feminist-writing-men-arent-women\/\">censored<\/a> the expression of the widely held political viewpoint that an individual\u2019s gender is determined by his sex at birth.<\/p>\n<p>The promulgation of new policies came with the permanent banning of many prominent right-wing accounts but of virtually no liberals. Indeed, Twitter\u2019s account bans targeted conservatives almost exclusively. Of the 22 prominent individuals permanently banned by Twitter between 2015 and early 2019, <a href=\"https:\/\/quillette.com\/2019\/02\/12\/it-isnt-your-imagination-twitter-treats-conservatives-more-harshly-than-liberals\/\">21 were supporters of Donald Trump<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2>Disavowing Neutrality and Free Speech<\/h2>\n<p>Beginning in 2017, amid the fallout from Brexit and Trump\u2019s victory in the 2016 presidential election, Twitter began to publicly disavow its past defense of free speech. Sinead McSweeney, a Twitter vice president, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/twitter-no-longer-possible-to-stand-up-for-all-speech-2017-12\">testified<\/a> before British Parliament in December 2017, \u201cI look back over last five and a half years, and the answers I would have given to some of these questions five years ago were very different.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Back then, she explained, \u201cTwitter was in a place where it believed the most effective antidote to bad speech was good speech. It was very much a John Stuart Mill-style philosophy.\u201d But the company had \u201crealized the world we live in has changed. We\u2019ve had to go on a journey with it, and we\u2019ve realized it\u2019s no longer possible to stand up for all speech in the hopes society will become a better place because racism will be challenged, or homophobia challenged, or extremism will be challenged.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Similarly, Twitter\u2019s CEO, Jack Dorsey, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/twitter-ceo-i-dont-believe-we-can-afford-take-ashe-schow\">declared<\/a> in early 2019, \u201cI don\u2019t believe that we can afford to take a neutral stance anymore. I don\u2019t believe that we should optimize for neutrality.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Twitter\u2019s bias grew even more pronounced after 2019. It culminated in Twitter\u2019s coordinated suppression of reporting on Hunter Biden\u2019s laptop just before the 2020 election, which Dorsey later admitted was \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/twitter-ceo-admits-his-company-was-wrong-to-censor-hunter-biden-story\">wrong<\/a>,\u201d and its ban of President Trump in January 2021. The latter was ostensibly for Trump\u2019s comment that he would not attend President Biden\u2019s inauguration, which Twitter <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.twitter.com\/en_us\/topics\/company\/2020\/suspension\">characterized <\/a>\u00a0(absurdly) as a \u201cglorification of violence that could inspire others to replicate violent acts.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In short, Twitter\u2019s stepped-up efforts at \u201ccontent moderation\u201d post-2016 were not neutral attempts to purge the platform of abuse. Instead, they were nakedly political efforts to control public discourse by selectively banning viewpoints, users, and news articles. <\/p>\n<p>And the company\u2019s post-2016 censorship efforts marked an open break with the company\u2019s previous vigorous defense of free speech as its core value. Indeed, it was under the banner of \u201cfree speech\u201d that Twitter at first grew into an unprecedented public forum for global communication and attracted a critical mass of users. <\/p>\n<p>Twitter\u2019s recent <a href=\"https:\/\/timcast.com\/news\/twitters-earnings-report-shows-missed-revenue-projections-overstated-users\/\">struggles<\/a> to attract new users and revenue, and its subsequent purchase by Musk, reflect justified frustration at heavy-handed and biased censorship practices \u2014 not an unfortunate break with a noble experiment in \u201ccontent moderation.\u201d<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  Noah Peters is an attorney in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the wake of Elon Musk\u2019s purchase of Twitter, many commentators bemoaned Musk\u2019s promises to end censorship on the platform. In so doing, these writers have spun a revisionist narrative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":744,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1463342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/744"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1463342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1463342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1463342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1463342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}