During my time in Iraq working for the State Department, a time that I initially was a red, white and blue government official, I frequently lied to the media. I lied to them about how things were going, I lied to them about how successful we were. My colleagues and I were contemptuous of them, most of the people we talked to in the media didn’t know enough to ask important questions, most of them didn’t care enough to ask questions and simply jotted down whatever we told them, and it was just remarkably easy to fool them. It’s almost as if they wanted to play along with us.
At one point I described it as they weren’t looking for “the story,” just “a story.” I made some remarks about how many of them were more concerned about looking good in their stand-ups, getting their makeup on straight than looking for details or questioning the lies that the government put forward.
– Peter Van Buren, Iraq War Whistleblower, banned from Twitter a few days ago
The above quote is from an extraordinary discussion between Daniel McAdams, Scott Horton and Peter Van Buren that occurred yesterday.
Stop whatever you’re doing right now and watch this, it’s that important.
Let’s now get right into why this is so incredibly problematic. Mr. Van Buren claims that he was deleted from Twitter after making a mainstream journalist named Jonathan Katz uncomfortable with what was an obvious joke that no honest person would ever take as a real threat of violence.
Van Buren wrote “I hope a MAGA guy eats your face,” which apparently led Katz to complain to the Twitter authorities. Shortly afterwards, Van Buren was disappeared from Twitter.
Here’s where what Twitter did becomes extremely problematic. When the company, or its secret algorithms, banned Van Buren it sent all his tweets down the memory hole. Thus, we can’t go back and look at the history of everything that happened in this specific incident, nor can we review his history of tweets. He just gets vanished with no recourse for writing something pretty innocuous in the grand scheme of things.
If Twitter’s going to disappear someone from the platform it should do two things. First, offer that person a detailed account of why they were banned and let them appeal the decision. Second, simply because a person can’t tweet going forward, that person’s history of tweets should be left up for posterity and history’s sake, provided the person who composed the tweets wants to keep them up. This Orwellian vanishing of years and years of compliant tweets and valuable information is unethical and indefensible.
I’ve been an active user and major proponent of Twitter since 2012, but Jack Dorsey and company are flirting with disaster if they keep this up. If what Daniel McAdams says is true and he was temporarily suspended for a retweet, something is seriously broken at the platform.
Although I ultimately hope Twitter can get back on track, the problems faced by using centralized platforms in which humans are relied upon to make arbitrary decisions on who gets to speak and who doesn’t based on their whims, biases and emotions needs to be addressed. A platform needs to be just that, a platform.
This gets to one of the main reasons I’ve been and remain such a ardent supporter of Bitcoin. The principles of decentralization, open source code and censorship resistant peer-to-peer interaction is applicable to human society on multiple levels. Not just when it comes to money, but it’s also instrumental when it comes to protecting free speech and creating a genuine digital “public square.”
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All three people articulated the situation very well. I disagree with Van Buren when he states that these companies are private business as clearly, they are entwined at the deepest level with the govt.
This does bring up one of the most needed examinations of libertarianism, namely that people are only at risk from having their rights taken by the govt. Clearly, this is not the case. Corporations, often on behalf of or in conjunction with govt.s routinely take away people’s human rights. I hope this situation will get libertarians to see the abuses of private corporations as just as dangerous as the abuses of govt.
It is strange that twitter has a mute button, enabling the viewer to stop seeing anyone they don’t like on the site. This clearly shows an active desire to censor by twitter itself, as it is entirely possible for each person to choose at will whom they would like to interact with. Hmmmm…. What’s up with that? Van Buren is correct to point out that elites’ “narrative” for their power is getting so thin that they simply cannot tolerate any questions, facts or difference of opinion. If elites can’t stamp out their critics, their power will fold. They are scared and I believe, that is why they are going for broke.
As to the elimination of one’s entire record. I have experienced this very thing, along with many others on a “liberal” site, Common Dreams. During the run up to the 2012 election, any person who criticized Obama from a left wing perspective was in danger of being written out of that site’s history. The group of people I met did not violate Common Dreams terms of service, yet we had our entire history on that site simply removed. It is the creepiest feeling.
I would very much have liked to see Van Buren’s “offending” thread. I also see no reason to remove him from the site entirely, as if he never existed there. Like asking the one man to delete his own post, this is straight out of Orwell.
As far as I can tell the common thread to being banned, shadow banned, deleted from history etc. is deep questioning of the powerful. This deep questioning is vital, as Scott? said.
There will be/already are alternatives (GAB) and the powerful will try very hard to subvert these as well. From what I can tell, the elites have decided to make their stand. We ought to make our stand as well. A people united for the common good, for the human rights of everyone, everywhere.
You are exactly right, Jill. These giant monopolistic corporations, like Google, Apple, Twitter, FaceBook, etc. are not your typical private company that sells hamburgers or washing machines. What they provide are platforms that allow 100’s of millions of users to share personal data with each other.
And thanks to Edward Snowden, we know that our intelligence community is armpit deep in that honey pot of free info. Well, not free really, because I’m sure that these tech giants get special treatment, such as tax breaks allowing them to repatriate offshore profits in order to fund their lucrative stock buyback schemes, and state department pressure directed at any foreign state that might try to shake them down for antitrust penalties and fines.
And now that Tony Soprano and his gang (the intelligence community) have their offices in the suites next to the top exec’s, they’re going to start asking for more favors – “We need you to rub out a few undesirable online journalists and bloggers for us… and make it look like an accident.”
The lies of the powerful descend into utter buffoonery!
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-08/trump-hits-putin-new-sanctions-over-uk-never-gas-attack
Yes, the powerful are over reaching. Actions w/o evidence. They really do need to tighten the screws on anyone who asks pertinent questions. Perhaps Craig Murry will get banned now?
The comments will not likely give you anymore insight than you already have. Only true democracy will enable us to rule ourselves.
So the following will not be helpful. MUSOLINI wrote the book on FACISM. It is a Totalitarian system of government in which a country has one ruler AND SECRET POLICE ORGANIZATIONS, who dictate to corporations ( INCLUDING MOST NEWS CORPORATIONS) what they must do so that such a government can control its people according to the ideas of only the government. The corporations can beg for liberty to do what they need in order to profit and help the government. Ultimately, the decisions of the government are final, and they are implemented throughout the nation. IS THAT WHAT WE ALREADY HAVE IN REGARD TO THE SECRET POLICE, THE “BIG CORPORATIONS, ESPECIALLY THOSE OF THE MILITARY, INDUSTRIAL, CONGRESSIONAL COMPLEX AND THE NEWSPAPERS. THE POLICE ARE USED TO KEEP THE “CIVILIANS’ IN LINE AND HAVE IMMUNITIY FROM PROSECUTION BECAUSE THEY ARE “AN ARM OF THE CORPORATION (BODY). We the people need to know and must know exactly what congressman(men) proposed what law (bill) and what congressmen voted on it ( failed to vote ) and how they voted. Such information must be “immediately known and published in a manner that we the people become knowledgeable about it. Publications like major newspaper(s) would enable access by the common man. Then and only then will we the people be in a position to control those who control us. Until then, all talk, which is not directed, concerned or completed with those ideas, is meaningless. If you agree then tell me. If not then tell me where my understanding is lacking. Charles L. LaBianco, [email protected]
Unfortunately, a physical threat of most any kind is illegal under cri8mminal law and a complaint was filed. Twitter could just delete the comment, but there are many ‘depositories’ that track and hold Twitter comments, thus the rebroadcast is possible and Twitter still ‘hosting’ the offender retains some liability for the dissemination.. so Twitter bans people and under this guise, probably not all, but the moderator that does not ban someone in reviewing the complaint, then shoulders liability.. Twitter moderators, beware.
Will be interesting to see what the public fallout is from all this censorship. These last few weeks reek of desperation from the status quo.
BTW, saw you on Keiser today, Michael. Good stuff!
This is a situation that has to be nipped in the bud. The same thing happened to me when Verizon and Yahoo merged. I was locked out of my email, which I have yet to get back into. In order to get back into it, I was asked to answer security questions that had nothing to do with me AND play number games and answer questions of what I saw in various screens presented to me, Ex: “How many squares, triangles, etc. do you see in this picture” or something of the like. I believe this was done to me because if I read an article that was false, I would comment and give facts to back up what I said. During that time, I kept hearing how “Russia” has successfully done a propaganda infiltration of the internet (Crimea/pre-election period). That may have been true, I don’t know, but what I do know is that what was going on in Crimea was not all black and white (I had read a lot of international newspapers and listen to Stephen Cohen) and I was sharing this information … AND, I was not Russian. And, I was writing about the bail-ins written into Dodd-Frank (congress let Citibank author it) before it was being frequently spoken about for I had learned this from Ellen Brown. There is a definite move to control what information gets to the American people. I once listened to a Council on Foreign Relations meeting when Hillary Clinton was speaking. She said, “This is where we come to learn what we should be doing” (may not be an exact quote, but pretty exact) … but the comment that really chilled me was AFTER the meeting when she was picked up by a mike while walking with a man I did not recognize and she said that they had to do something about the alternative news on the internet. Well, there are certainly forces at work moving rapidly in that direction. I think we’re all going to have to become computer savvy.
I haven’t edited this comment, so I hope it is clear enough.
We need our own twiter.
Mastodon is a great Twitter alternative.