It's not at all dishonest, the article itself highlights that Trump's administration was also concerned about misinformation, especially early on in the pandemic in regards to things like economic stability and availability of goods.
> The United States government pressured Twitter to elevate certain content and suppress other content about Covid-19 and the pandemic. Internal emails that I viewed at Twitter showed that both the Trump and Biden administrations directly pressed Twitter executives to moderate the platform’s content according to their wishes.
> At the onset of the pandemic, the Trump administration was especially concerned about panic buying, and sought “help from the tech companies to combat misinformation,” according to emails sent by Twitter employees in the wake of meetings with the White House. One area of so-called misinformation: “runs on grocery stores.”
It goes on to talk mostly about the Biden administration, but that's an editorial decision. The author in no way claims that Trump's administration wasn't sending moderation requests to social media companies. This is not a Republican vs Democrat thing; every government under every administration coordinates with social media companies.
If you're going to approach censorship through a purely partisan lens, you're not going to get very far.
I should have been more specific so asinine comments like these who can't read the story before commenting don't show up:
Imagine if the Trump Administration had people who donated predominantly to their cause making decisions at the highest level at Social Media companies and directly affecting policy of posts being taken down such as Jim Baker asking why "don't be afraid of COVID" isn't taken down.
Imagine if employees at social media companies took the view that they knew better than abortion and lgbt activists and overruled coverage of their protests, flagged their tweets, locked their accounts from gaining any distribution.
Imagine if the Trump administration established a department within the San Francisco field office of the FBI to EXCLUSIVELY check social media feeds of their political opponents to have them reported to twitter under government pressure to take them down.
I thought all of this was implied and anyone reading this comment would at least acknowledge the severity of these revelations, but here we are.
fells|3 years ago
refurb|3 years ago
danShumway|3 years ago
> The United States government pressured Twitter to elevate certain content and suppress other content about Covid-19 and the pandemic. Internal emails that I viewed at Twitter showed that both the Trump and Biden administrations directly pressed Twitter executives to moderate the platform’s content according to their wishes.
> At the onset of the pandemic, the Trump administration was especially concerned about panic buying, and sought “help from the tech companies to combat misinformation,” according to emails sent by Twitter employees in the wake of meetings with the White House. One area of so-called misinformation: “runs on grocery stores.”
It goes on to talk mostly about the Biden administration, but that's an editorial decision. The author in no way claims that Trump's administration wasn't sending moderation requests to social media companies. This is not a Republican vs Democrat thing; every government under every administration coordinates with social media companies.
If you're going to approach censorship through a purely partisan lens, you're not going to get very far.
DisjointedHunt|3 years ago
Imagine if the Trump Administration had people who donated predominantly to their cause making decisions at the highest level at Social Media companies and directly affecting policy of posts being taken down such as Jim Baker asking why "don't be afraid of COVID" isn't taken down.
Imagine if employees at social media companies took the view that they knew better than abortion and lgbt activists and overruled coverage of their protests, flagged their tweets, locked their accounts from gaining any distribution.
Imagine if the Trump administration established a department within the San Francisco field office of the FBI to EXCLUSIVELY check social media feeds of their political opponents to have them reported to twitter under government pressure to take them down.
I thought all of this was implied and anyone reading this comment would at least acknowledge the severity of these revelations, but here we are.