#Twitter cancelled me yrs ago when I refused to give a mobile ph#. Now I heard twitter has started pushing a #Cloudflare-dependent #CAPTCHA on their users who connect over Tor. #cancelTwitter
So even if you provide #Twitter your mobile ph# you’re still fucked. Not just b/c twitter exploited your ph# for advertising, and not just b/c users phone numbers were leaked to black hats, but also because you’re still forced to solve a CF hosted CAPTCHA, assuming CF even gives you priviledge of accessing the puzzle. So then you have to consider that politicians use Twitter.
It’s an attack on #democracy because it means that even fewer citizens have access to their representatives. #freeSpeech #1A
@koherecoWatchdog Nobody needs a Twitter account to "have access to their representatives". They all have press secretaries, and phone lines if you want to get in touch. And if you absolutely must get your comms from the bird site, you don't need to have an account to read.
@LouisIngenthron You’ve misunderstood the role of Twitter & how open microblogging works. The biggest part of getting a msg to a representative is to be publicly seen delivering that msg. A letter sent by fax or post is /easily/ ignored by a politician (in effect, no access). A msg that 10s of thousands of people see you give a politician is how you get access to your representative.
@koherecoWatchdog Open letters were a thing long before the internet.
@LouisIngenthron Yes but times have changed. The internet is here and getting a letter published in your local newspaper no longer has the impact that it once had.
@koherecoWatchdog "Free speech" doesn't mean you're owed an audience by anyone. Social media is but one avenue of thousands for building an audience.
Anyone, including private property owners, are free to decide that they don't want to listen to or amplify your speech at any time they want. That's their right.
@LouisIngenthron Indeed it’s not about “owing” anything. Yet if you block speech forcefully rather than let it go to the test and get ignored, you are not standing behind the principles of free speech.
@koherecoWatchdog Which is exactly why no company can truly block speech.
All they can do is choose not to host it on their property. As is their right.
Their control only extends as far as their property line. Leave their property, and they have zero control over your speech. Choose to enter their property, and agree to play by their rules.
It's really an elegant system.
@LouisIngenthron You can say property rights trump free speech all you want.. so long as you don’t claim at the same time that free speech principles are in play on a platform where they are not.
@koherecoWatchdog They don't "trump" free speech.
Your rights can be voluntarily waived. When you sign the TOS and visit a social media site, you voluntarily agree to some limits on your speech while you remain on that platform's property.
That's a choice the user makes, in order to access the benefits of the service.
As long as everyone is free to make that choice for themselves, I have zero problems with it.
@koherecoWatchdog See there? I said nothing about law.
I agree with that system on a philosophical sense, because it's all based on free choice.
@LouisIngenthron You would not have had to mention private property rights had there not been a conflict w/free speech principles. There is a conflict with free speech /principles/ (just not with US 1A which is a reduced implementation of that whole philosophical embodiment of ideas).
@koherecoWatchdog Of course. Rights have to be balanced. Free speech principles, taken absolutely, also conflict with civil rights.
I have to have a right to be able to shut you up on my property and get some peace if I want to. That's freedom of association, which is a free speech principle.
You have a right to speak. You don't have a right to force anyone to listen.
@LouisIngenthron Sure there’s a balance, but your claim that property rights does not trump free speech is off. Property rights trumps free speech rights. i cannot enter your home and stick a flyer on your fridge.
@LouisIngenthron Sure, they have their legal ducks in a line. No one is saying a free-speech hostile platform is breaking any laws or contracts. Just that a free-speech hostile platform is not conducive to free speech principles.