[spamizbad]

Former intelligence people churn out all sorts of goofy takes in an attempt to build their brand. They’re also all over the spectrum depending on what audience they’re chasing. Not that much difference than any other media influencer or substack author.

It's ultimately a free speech issue. You can't demand people to self-censor because their previous employment places unjustified credibility their nonsensical views. The way to combat this is through better civic and media literacy.

[pessimizer]

> Former intelligence people churn out all sorts of goofy takes in an attempt to build their brand.

Former intelligence people churn out all sorts of goofy takes because they're paid to, and after those goofy takes have been blasted by every corporate media outlet 24 hours a day for a month or two, they transform from goofy takes into orthodoxies that you could be fired for denying.

[incomingpain]

>Former intelligence people churn out all sorts of goofy takes in an attempt to build their brand. They’re also all over the spectrum depending on what audience they’re chasing.

You're right but is this one a goofy take? Or is there a real something here?

[spamizbad]

I don't think so, but to indulge my own cranky theories: Perhaps Elon Musk's takeover attempt was done at the behest of the US government to take control of the platform under the cover of "censorship". Musk himself indicated he wanted to make the platform more miserable for the "extremes" on both the left and right (both perceived as being anti-government) - leaving you with the establishment consensus unharmed in the middle.

[incomingpain]

That's a cool idea. Largely speaking you can see Elon's point of view.

He was on Babylon Bee's show. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvGnw1sHh9M 2.4 million views in last 3 months. In this video they in detail discuss the problem with political banning.

2 months later, Babylon Bee got banned off twitter for a joke. Clear political banning and violation of section 230.

[everforward]

> Clear political banning and violation of section 230.

This has been posted a bunch of times, and it's wrong. Section 230 doesn't prohibit political bannings. It doesn't actually prohibit any banning at all.

This is the relevant section (from https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230).

> (2) Civil liability > No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of— > (A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or > availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, > lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise > objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected;

Even banning for constitutionally protected speech is explicitly allowed.

Whether that's a good thing or not is a separate conversation, but nothing presently in section 230 would prevent Twitter/Facebook/etc from banning an entire political party.

[spamizbad]

Babylon Bee doesn't threaten the national security establishment. The "Far left" and "Far right" - yes.

The idea is you won't get banned for making jokes about trans stuff, but you'll instead get banned for saying something bad about US global hegemony. It's not a culture war issue so nobody is going to care that you got censored.

[weeblewobble]

For the record Babylon Bee is not banned, they can unlock their account any time by deleting a Tweet that jokingly gives a "man of the year award" to a real individual transwoman by name.

[jaywalk]

"They're not banned! They are free to continue tweeting as soon as they abandon their principles and bow down to Twitter's arbitrary rules!"

[weeblewobble]

It's not an arbitrary rule, it's spelled out in their Terms of Servoce

[AnimalMuppet]

So they aren't banned, just the one tweet is. Sounds good, but the reality is that unless and until they recant that one tweet, then they are banned.

[weeblewobble]

They don't really have to recant it, just delete it. It's a pretty mean tweet anyway, not sure why its worth defending

[thorRay8383]

What’s real is Greenwald poetically desires a world organized by his principles but has neither the skills or imagination to offer more than paranoid Big Brother scenario.

Technology based mesh networks are not going anywhere. Unless the public itself revolts against the state it will always stick its fingers in them.

One planet, one reality on the ground. If people don’t want big government they need to replace it.

[yonaguska]

Former Intel people are a necessary tool of the current Intel community. I forget which project veritas recording caught this- but a journalist was caught stating that they get their information from former Intel people that talk to current Intel officials to get around rules preventing current Intel officials from leaking information to journalists, we have a problem. And we've had a serious problem as this behavior is not just the activity of rogue officials that only leak true information. I would argue that it's also likely that Intel officials are doing this with the blessing of their organizations in order to shape public opinion. And they aren't always leaking the truth. Remember when 50 Intel officials signed a weasely letter stating that the laptop from hell was simply Russian Disinformation? Or in the case of the Durham investigation, we are seeing an increasingly obvious pattern that Intel agencies were involved in creating fake controversy over Russia and Trump in order to remove him from power?

You call it brand building, I call it destroying democracy.