Elon Musk Becomes Twitter’s Largest Shareholder…

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  • jamil

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    You have to be part of the government to violate the First Amendment, not trying to be part of the government. Same problem applies if it is the DNC doing the request.
    If the the evidence proves true, that officials in government used Twitter as an agent to be favorable to Biden, then it is a violation of the 1st Amendment at least.
     

    KLB

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    Okay. I don't think I'm too far from that idea. If it's not illegal I would not want to claim it is. But, calling it election interference is a correct term to use, even if it does not rise to the legal definition. That's my main objection. I'm not sure that everyone else means it in the legal sense either, though people may conflate it.

    Anyway. Is some of what they did illegal? For example, what's the value of having Twitter help them win a campaign? Squash stories damaging to democrats? What's the value in promoting tweets that are helpful to democrats and de-ranking tweets that are harmful? Does that run afoul to campaign finance laws? Wasn't there an in-kind contribution made by Twitter?
    Hmm...That is an angle I had not really thought through.

    I don't think you'd get far with that. There was no fee charged to use the service.

    I do wonder if there was some duty to publicly announce their support though.

    I do think that there needs to be some reform in media. The political bias of the media has gotten out of control. Maybe require them to declare as a PAC if they are going to actively participate in politics like they do. If they want to report on the news, fine. If they want to run constant hit pieces against one side and fluff pieces for the other, register.

    Some of us already know their position, but there are plenty that need to be hit in the face with it to believe it.
     

    jamil

    code ho
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    @jamil

    That's pretty funny.

    You typed:
    Okay. I guess that means doing all the things that democrats are accused of doing. You gonna get yourself in as an election official and start changing democrats’ zip codes? :dunno:

    I said nothing about breaking laws.

    Then you type:
    I mean we haven’t really started calling them out. Traditional Republicans would never do that. Hiw about we start there instead of masking desires to be as dirty as they are behind some strawman claim of Marquise of queensberry rules. No one is talking about purity. But we shouldn’t have to break reasonable laws to expose the cheating.

    1. I agree on the need to call them out. This is the first step in prosecuting them. I also agree that it largely has not been done.
    2. Never did I say to be as dirty as them. You are incorrect and putting words in my mouth.
    3. You would do well to look up the meaning of straw man as well as what an analogy is before conflating an analogy with what someone's actual position is.
    4. Again, never said anything about breaking "reasonable," or any other kind, of law. I won't go into your implication of picking and choosing what laws to follow on what you decide is "reasonable".


    From a random web page:

    I'm glad you posted the link. I mean, no one on the internet has ever even heard of that before. :rolleyes: Claiming people in this thread are purists using Marquis of Queensbury Rules (MQR) is a straw man in itself.

    I think how we got here is the MQR claimers are hiding behind a binary, that either it's either your way, or everyone else is MQR. And we don't know what J Galt's way is yet. We just see the high-fiving with the people saying lets get dirty, yeah, let's go full V for Vendetta, nothing is off the table. Given such statements in this thread and your apparent agreement, where SHOULD I think your line is, or if you even have one? It's not a strawman to think you're in agreement. It's quite unlike the strawman you're joining with all the MQR nonsense.

    I've asked, in this line of thinking, what are you willing to do? And I don't mean for you guys to post all your nefarious plans here, lol. It's a rhetorical question you should ask yourself. Where is your line? Has the circumstances really reached that point where lines don't matter anymore?

    My line is, I'm not willing to commit felonies. I'm not willing to go all V for Vendetta on people who disagree with me politically. I'm not blowing **** up. I'm not storming the capital. We're not there yet. But everything under the legal umbrella, even if grey, that's fair game. Punch back hard. Don't break laws. Expose corruption. Now if you put the line somewhere close to that, then we don't disagree, and you can stop all the MQR nonsense. That was always a straw man.

    If all you're saying is to use the legal but grey tactics Democrats use, then fine. Please make that clear and I won't associate you with the "by any means necessary" folks.
     

    KLB

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    If the the evidence proves true, that officials in government used Twitter as an agent to be favorable to Biden, then it is a violation of the 1st Amendment at least.
    My only rebuttal to that is it says, "Congress shall make no law". Asking for something that you know the party will do is far from a law.

    Let's be thankful that at least one of the bazillionaires isn't a total left wing nut. We really need more people in this country to give a :poop: about free speech and really freedom in general.
     

    jamil

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    Hmm...That is an angle I had not really thought through.

    I don't think you'd get far with that. There was no fee charged to use the service.

    I do wonder if there was some duty to publicly announce their support though.

    I do think that there needs to be some reform in media. The political bias of the media has gotten out of control. Maybe require them to declare as a PAC if they are going to actively participate in politics like they do. If they want to report on the news, fine. If they want to run constant hit pieces against one side and fluff pieces for the other, register.

    Some of us already know their position, but there are plenty that need to be hit in the face with it to believe it.
    It's not that there was no fee charged. It's that they provided services of value for free. The service IS the donation.

    If they had charged a fee legally, invoiced, added to the campaign's ledger, it's not an in-kind donation. It's just a paid expense. But if twitter did not charge a fee, it's an undeclared donation.
     

    KLB

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    It's not that there was no fee charged. It's that they provided services of value for free. The service IS the donation.

    If they had charged a fee legally, invoiced, added to the campaign's ledger, it's not an in-kind donation. It's just a paid expense. But if twitter did not charge a fee, it's an undeclared donation.
    How do you assign a value to something for which there is no fee? Not to mention for stuff like the laptop story, they had a lot of help in covering themselves.
     

    J Galt

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    I'm glad you posted the link. I mean, no one on the internet has ever even heard of that before. :rolleyes: Claiming people in this thread are purists using Marquis of Queensbury Rules (MQR) is a straw man in itself.

    I think how we got here is the MQR claimers are hiding behind a binary, that either it's either your way, or everyone else is MQR. And we don't know what J Galt's way is yet. We just see the high-fiving with the people saying lets get dirty, yeah, let's go full V for Vendetta, nothing is off the table. Given such statements in this thread and your apparent agreement, where SHOULD I think your line is, or if you even have one? It's not a strawman to think you're in agreement. It's quite unlike the strawman you're joining with all the MQR nonsense.

    I've asked, in this line of thinking, what are you willing to do? And I don't mean for you guys to post all your nefarious plans here, lol. It's a rhetorical question you should ask yourself. Where is your line? Has the circumstances really reached that point where lines don't matter anymore?

    My line is, I'm not willing to commit felonies. I'm not willing to go all V for Vendetta on people who disagree with me politically. I'm not blowing **** up. I'm not storming the capital. We're not there yet. But everything under the legal umbrella, even if grey, that's fair game. Punch back hard. Don't break laws. Expose corruption. Now if you put the line somewhere close to that, then we don't disagree, and you can stop all the MQR nonsense. That was always a straw man.

    If all you're saying is to use the legal but grey tactics Democrats use, then fine. Please make that clear and I won't associate you with the "by any means necessary" folks.


    Based on what you wrote, I really do not think you know what a straw man argument is.

    Based on what you inferred from my post, I really don't think you know what an analogy is.

    I'm not being funny when I type this.

    When did I "high five" with people saying to get V for Vendetta, etc? I did not.

    When did I say nothing is off the table? I did not.

    Anyone who is not on the left really should be taking more action if they want to see things get better. That is a far cry from saying nothing is off the table.

    What you are doing is quite literally a straw man argument. You take what I said, people need to take more action. Then you twist it into an extreme version of that, nothing is off the table. Then you make an argument against something I did not say. You make an argument against something you fabricated derived from what I said that is an extreme version of it.
     

    Bugzilla

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    My only rebuttal to that is it says, "Congress shall make no law". Asking for something that you know the party will do is far from a law.

    Let's be thankful that at least one of the bazillionaires isn't a total left wing nut. We really need more people in this country to give a :poop: about free speech and really freedom in general.
    I heard that ”they” are now debating the meaning of shall.
     

    jamil

    code ho
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    My only rebuttal to that is it says, "Congress shall make no law". Asking for something that you know the party will do is far from a law.

    Let's be thankful that at least one of the bazillionaires isn't a total left wing nut. We really need more people in this country to give a :poop: about free speech and really freedom in general.
    Well, let's look how courts have interpreted it. It's not okay for the administrative branch to limit free speech. They don't have that power. They don't have the power to delegate that to corporations either.
     

    jamil

    code ho
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    If the product is free, you are the product. No purple implied.
    That's one of my favorite sayings, but that's not really applicable to the point. The point was that Twitter provided a service of value to a political party without being paid for it by that political party. That makes it a donation. Did the DNC or any specific candidates put Twitter's contribution of speech limiting services on their disclosures?
     

    BugI02

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    You're welcome to live out your fantasies. How'd that work out for the 1/6'ers? That allowed Democrats to make the case that half of America are domestic terrorists. Obviously they're not. But the other half of America believes it.
    What conditions must exist in the normal legal channels before the people turn to vigilantism? Do those conditions exist now?
     

    BugI02

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    Hmm...That is an angle I had not really thought through.

    I don't think you'd get far with that. There was no fee charged to use the service.

    I do wonder if there was some duty to publicly announce their support though.

    I do think that there needs to be some reform in media. The political bias of the media has gotten out of control. Maybe require them to declare as a PAC if they are going to actively participate in politics like they do. If they want to report on the news, fine. If they want to run constant hit pieces against one side and fluff pieces for the other, register.

    Some of us already know their position, but there are plenty that need to be hit in the face with it to believe it.
    I think it is worse than you think. I believe you have to violate some law already on the books, some facet of USC in order to be brought up on charges for 'breaking the law'

    The only way I can see a legal cost to the government for violating the first amendment would be for someone to sue said government for violating their rights under the constitution, which action would be doubly cursed by the current loose and sloppy use of 'standing' to absolve courts at all levels from dealing with thorny issues as well as 'the wheels of justice turn slowly' problem. Then, even if plaintiff prevails, what is the remedy? The damage has already long since been done
     

    HoughMade

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    My only rebuttal to that is it says, "Congress shall make no law". Asking for something that you know the party will do is far from a law.

    Let's be thankful that at least one of the bazillionaires isn't a total left wing nut. We really need more people in this country to give a :poop: about free speech and really freedom in general.
    It's more than a little iffy and I don't know enough facts to make a conclusion.

    I will say this- the First Amendment (and by wider application, through the 14th Amendment) has been interpreted to apply to all government at every level.

    That being said, whether the whole Twitter suppression violates the 1st Amendment depends upon government officials acting in their role as government officials. If the party colluded (there's that word) with Twitter, well, the party is not "government". Were government officials involved? No clue, but that would be an important fact to know. Maybe, if government officials were involved, it would be a violation of the 1st Amendment, but the issue would be what their involvement was and whether they were using government authority (real or perceived) to get the suppression done.
     

    KLB

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    It's more than a little iffy and I don't know enough facts to make a conclusion.

    I will say this- the First Amendment (and by wider application, through the 14th Amendment) has been interpreted to apply to all government at every level.

    That being said, whether the whole Twitter suppression violates the 1st Amendment depends upon government officials acting in their role as government officials. If the party colluded (there's that word) with Twitter, well, the party is not "government". Were government officials involved? No clue, but that would be an important fact to know. Maybe, if government officials were involved, it would be a violation of the 1st Amendment, but the issue would be what their involvement was and whether they were using government authority (real or perceived) to get the suppression done.
    Thanks. You put those lawyer skills to work and put it much more elegantly than I have been.
     

    printcraft

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