#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.
@LouisIngenthron If you are good at getting access to your representative, the rep is largely just a prop. It’s all about getting thousands of other users boosting and holding up your msg to the rep. THAT is what compels a rep to read what you write.
@koherecoWatchdog So... a petition?
Why do you think these concepts are unique to social media?
@LouisIngenthron A petition has a threshold requirement that open letters do not. If you don’t collect enough sigs (a labor-intensive effort), the msg never gets to the rep.
@LouisIngenthron Petitions are also off-limits to non-citizens. You are limited to those who qualify to sign the petition.
@koherecoWatchdog And fixing that would be a reasonable reform that many people could get behind.
@LouisIngenthron Yes it would but it still would not reach a point where a petition could be the drop-in replacement for an open letter.
@koherecoWatchdog ...which is why we have open letters.
@LouisIngenthron You claimed just a moment ago that petitions replace open letters, so we don’t need open letters. You claimed if you can’t get enough sigs, the idea has no merit worthy of the reps attention. Now you’re saying open letters have a place. Yet these are the same open letters that have weakened in the face of the internet.
@LouisIngenthron Hence microblogging as a tool to effectively get a msg to a rep with the degree of impact open letters had 50+ years ago.
@koherecoWatchdog Great! If you want to do that and access that microblog platform's audience, then all you have to do is agree to play by their rules. Free marketplace of ideas in action.
@LouisIngenthron IOW, a private corporation is being put in control over who has access to their reps by way of microblogging.
@LouisIngenthron If a citizen does not demonstrate to twitter that they can be used by twitter in a way that benefits that corporation’s bottom line need for ad revenue, the citizen loses microblogging access to their *public* rep.
@LouisIngenthron In terms of the law, I do not believe Twitter is violating the 1st amendment. The public officials who /exclusively/ choose a private platform (which is in itself exclusive) are the ones who violate #1A. #AndrewYang is the only US politician to my knowledge who does not violate the First Amendment in this way (b/c he is [or was] in the #Fedi)
@LouisIngenthron #Trump blocked some #Twitter users & legal actions were taken against him for violating #1A. Rightfully so. My problem is that the choice of a politician to have a presence exclusively on Twitter is already a #1A violation, as it automatically blocks those without mobile phones (and those without the will to share their phone number w/Twitter despite twtr abusing those numbers).
@koherecoWatchdog Sure. But, as far as I know, no politician has ever made a social media site their exclusive avenue for communication.
Even Trump had a Press Secretary, even if their job was mostly republishing and walking back things he tweeted.
(Also, again, you don't need to sign up for a Twitter account to read Twitter)
@LouisIngenthron Twitter is the exclusive avenue for microblogging by all US politicans (minus Andrew Yang). It’s *write* access that facilitates 1A speech to your rep, not read access. No 1A purpose is higher than /the people/ addressing their reps.
@koherecoWatchdog Pretty sure every rep has an official address you can send letters to. Feel free to write them.
@LouisIngenthron Update: two #USCongress reps now respect the First Amendment (#1A) in the microblogging domain:
Chellie Pingree→
@chelliepingree
Don Beyer→ @RepDonBeyer
@koherecoWatchdog @chelliepingree @RepDonBeyer I think it's probably less "respect" and more "pandering to the base". Just like Republicans on Truth Social.
@LouisIngenthron Truth Social is a corporate centralized partisan platform & indeed inherently would not be #1A respecting.
Not at all the same as the fedi in this regard. The fedi is 1A respecting as anyone can create an account without being excluded by the ToS of a centralized private corporation, and they can use that account to address their rep.
@koherecoWatchdog Neither system has anything to do with #1A.
@LouisIngenthron Politicans are in the fedi, so of course #1A is a factor for the same reason it’s a factor on #Twitter:
@koherecoWatchdog In the sense that they can't prevent people from interacting with them if they use it for official gov business, sure.
But which platforms they choose to be on has nothing to do with "respect for 1A".
@koherecoWatchdog Also, the fediverse isn't necessarily as 'free' about speech as you think. Instance blocks, in particular, are heavy handed and delivered with reckless abandon.
Just look at what happened to the server I'm on.
@LouisIngenthron Anyone can participate on the fedi without any ToS to stop them. You can run your own server and use it to send microblogs to your rep.
Your rep can block you (technically, not legally), but that’s under their control. If the *rep* chooses a server they don’t control, then there’s still some small amount of risk of violating 1A, but citizens still have the option of choosing an unblocked server which ensures there is no accidental 1A violation.
@koherecoWatchdog Twitter removing people for TOS violations wasn't a 1A violation either.
@LouisIngenthron Of course it is, but not on Twitter’s part. It’s a violation on the part of the public representative, just as Trump selectively blocking those he wanted to block.
BTW, you need to violate Twitter ToS to be banned. You can simply fail to provide a mobile phone number when Twitter decides to demand it from you.
@koherecoWatchdog You don't even need to do that. Their TOS says they can ban you for no reason at all.
And, no, an action by Twitter is not a 1A violation for politicians on Twitter. They're not responsible for the actions of a third party.
@LouisIngenthron Of course they are responsible. They are responsible for their own action, including the action to empower Twitter to decide who gets to exercise 1A rights.
If you wanted a Twitter-using politician to be 1A compliant, it would require amending 1A to exclude those Twitter excludes.
@LouisIngenthron Suppose Trump were to hire some security personnel to suppress a peaceful protest during his presidency. Would you say Trump is not responsible for the actions of the security forces, who are merely working for him? Of course not.
@koherecoWatchdog Of course not. But setting up a Twitter account is not remotely comparable to paying people to beat up protesters.
@LouisIngenthron Of course it’s comparable. In both cases a politician delegates to others. The politician is not immune from the outcomes when they are in control of the delegation.
@koherecoWatchdog Lol, no, Twitter can't violate 1A on behalf of a politician.
@LouisIngenthron You’re still confused about who is in violation. It is the politician, not Twitter, who violates 1A.
Twitter is a private corporation. It cannot violate 1A. The politician violates 1A when it delegates power to censor.
@koherecoWatchdog No, they don't. They only violate 1A when they do the censoring themselves.
@koherecoWatchdog Then don't re-elect them if you don't like that.
@LouisIngenthron I’m not sure if you’re grasping my original thesis yet. When politician X exclusively selects Twitter for microblogging activity, that public official automatically silences citizens who cannot or will not agree to Twitter’s ToS. Not having a mobile phone number is sufficient to be excluded from microblogging to your rep if the rep has opted to establish their presence on twtr.