Strike five
Marjorie Taylor Greene joins Trump is being permanently booted off Twitter.
Twitter on Sunday permanently suspended the personal account of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican of Georgia, after the company said she had violated its Covid-19 misinformation policies.
Twitter suspended Ms. Greene’s account after she tweeted on Saturday, falsely, about “extremely high amounts of Covid vaccine deaths.” She included a misleading chart that pulled information from a government database of unverified raw data called the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, a decades-old system that relies on self-reported cases from patients and health care providers.
Twitter said that Ms. Greene had a fifth “strike,” which meant that her account will not be restored. The company had issued her a fourth strike in August after she falsely posted that the vaccines were “failing.” Ms. Greene was given a third strike less than a month before that when she had tweeted that Covid-19 was not dangerous for people unless they were obese or over age 65, and said vaccines should not be required.
It’s like telling people to drive drunk during a blizzard.
On the alternative social messaging platform Telegram, Ms. Greene said that Twitter “is an enemy to America and can’t handle the truth.”
Ug, loathsome toad though she is I really don’t want Twitter in charge of what is and isn’t misinformation.
But this isn’t Twitter being in charge of what is and isn’t misinformation in general, but what is and isn’t misinformation on its platform.
Given the reach of Twitter that’s worrying, yes, but so would Twitter doing nothing be worrying.
All too true… The alternatives are worrying.
Twitter being the arbiter of truth is indeed a scary proposition. They have already failed miserably in that regard with the suspending of people who actually understand biological reality. Given that, I’m always happy when social media censors recognize how toxic people such as MTG or DJT are. But the examples of GC feminists who have been suspended is also troubling. Ultimately, it’s either a free for all where we can decide for ourselves, or it’s regulated, blinkered, and censored territory where we can’t assume we will get the straight story. Even if they adhere to their own terms of use very strictly, it’s still not applied fairly and can easily be considered propagandist by omission.
I think people need to realize that they can’t get facts from Twitter, but opinions on facts. Statement of facts from any user, even trusted, should be checked out before passed on.
People don’t seem to get this, and apply fallacious reasoning to factual tweets. While Twitter is fairly arbitrary in how they block people from posting factual statements (whether true or false facts) they aren’t obliged to allow people to pass on false facts until they are designated a public utility. I don’t agree with the reason that I am currently not allowed to access my account, but they are providing a free service.
I just received an invitation from Graham Linehan to join Gettr and I did preview. If it’s another alternative to Twitter it’s certainly populated with a bunch of RW conspiracy garbage. I don’t need a social media site where “free speech” means posting a bunch of “har har biden’s senile” stuff.