[Air-L] Twitter Journalist Suspensions

[Robert Tynes]

I’ve never been interested in the twitter and free speech framing. If you want free speech, go to Gab. You can say whatever you want there. The value of twitter for me has always been reverse surveillance—the ability to crowd source expose messed up, real time racist brutality and/or political corruption and/or elite corruption. Basic watchdogging. If twitter doesn’t do that anymore then fine. A new platform will arise. Mastodon seems good for community but it hasn’t shown me how it can watchdog like twitter has.

> On Dec 16, 2022, at 2:40 PM, Paul Levinson via Air-L <air-l at listserv.aoir.org> wrote:
> 
> I was interviewed about Elon Musk and Twitter last night right before this
> news began breaking
> https://open.spotify.com/episode/0HjJCgiEQuT1TVYGXmEgIg?si=852d798e687149bf
> 
> -- PL
> 
> It's Real Life <https://vocal.media/fiction/it-s-real-life> -- free, new
> alternate history short story about The Beatles & WFUV, now being made into
> a radio play
> 
> 
> 
>> On Fri, Dec 16, 2022 at 2:13 PM Samuel DiBella via Air-L <
>> air-l at listserv.aoir.org> wrote:
>> 
>> I wanted to add that it's not just accounts of individuals/individual
>> journalists that are getting banned. The anti-capitalist news site /It's
>> Going Down/ has also had its account suspended.
>> 
>> —S
>> 
>>> On 12/16/22 9:31 AM, Joseph Reagle via Air-L wrote:
>>> The purported rationale is that a (big) Mastodon instance now hosts
>>> ElonJet.
>>> 
>>> https://ohai.social/@elonjet@mastodon.social
>>> 
>>> The issue of linking to potentially harmful or illegal content is a
>>> genuine one for moderation policy (e.g., Wikipedia linking to
>>> critical/stalker forums) and the law (e.g., search engines linking to
>>> pirate websites).
>>> But the thinness of this rationale is belied by the fact that ElonJet
>>> also exists on FB, and Musk hasn't banned all FB links. This excuse is
>>> as fragile as Musk's ego -- who threatened Cooley LLP that he'd yank
>>> Tesla's business if they didn't fire a recent hire who had *merely*
>>> worked at the SEC.
>>> 
>>> —Joseph
>>> 
>>> On 12/16/22 08:58, Vivian Gerrand via Air-L wrote:
>>>> Also interesting that he would bother. An indication of how much Musk
>>>> feels threatened by the migration of Twitter users to Mastodon? Or
>>>> (more likely) simply staking his claim as a warrior in a culture war?
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