Quote (bogie160 @ Dec 3 2022 05:34pm)
I don't subscribe to the WSJ, but it is a good outlet. I'll base my replies off the Atlantic article:
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Berenson's victory was not based on his argument that his ban was a violation of the First Amendment; the judge rejected this claim.
Well, there you go.
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Berenson's victory was not based on his argument that his ban was a violation of the First Amendment; the judge rejected this claim. Instead, his success seems to have hinged on promises made to him by a high-level Twitter employee. “The points you’re raising should not be an issue at all,” the company’s then–vice president of global communications assured Berenson at one point, according to the complaint. The lawsuit says the same executive later told Berenson that his name had “never come up in the discussions” about Twitter’s COVID-19 misinformation policies. Goldman believes that the court’s decision to allow a claim based on that correspondence prompted Twitter to settle. Internet-service executives have always been instructed by lawyers not to talk with people about their individual accounts and not to make any promises about what might happen, Goldman said, “for reasons that should now be obvious.”
So the thing right-wingers complain about, lefties being in contact with employees of Twitter and receiving special treatment because of that, is essentially what happened with Alex Berenson? His misinformation is free game now because of some Twitter employee making him a promise? Doesn't sound like left-wing tyranny run-amuck to me.
It goes on:
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This was not the end of the drama, though. Last week, Berenson published a Substack post that included screenshots of a conversation on Twitter’s internal Slack messaging system from April 2021, obtained during the course of the lawsuit. The images show employees discussing a recent White House meeting at which members of the Biden administration were said to have posed a “really tough question about why Alex Berenson hasn’t been kicked off from the platform,” as one Slack message put it. Another alleges that Andy Slavitt, who was at the time a senior adviser to Joe Biden on the administration’s COVID-19 response, specifically mentioned a “data viz that had showed [Berenson] was the epicenter of disinfo.” Berenson has since declared that he will sue the Biden administration for infringing upon his free speech by compelling Twitter to take action against his account.
I don't think members of the Biden administration inquiring over why a notorious spreader of COVID misinformation has not violated Twitter policies to the point of being banned is a violation of free speech, but feel free to correct me Bogie.
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What's more interesting to me is why an apparently mainstream Republican like Bogie is throwing in with a notorious bullshitter like Alex Berenson.
Actually, it's not interesting. This is what the Republican party has become. The mainstream right is now equivalent to people like Alex Berenson. The fringe of the right-wing has become enmeshed with the mainstream.
This post was edited by IceMage on Dec 3 2022 04:46pm