#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 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 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.
@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.
@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.
@koherecoWatchdog Then don't re-elect them if you don't like that.
@koherecoWatchdog If you don't get enough signatures, then the message wasn't important enough to get to the rep.
That's just good sense.
@LouisIngenthron Nonsense. You might not get enough signatures because you work 8 hrs a day and don’t have time to stand on enough street corners. There are countless reasons to not get enough sigs that has nothing to do with the merit of the idea.
@koherecoWatchdog The whole point of a petition is collective action. If you're the only one getting signatures, you've already failed.
@LouisIngenthron Failed, yes, but not failure in the quality of the idea. Collecting signatures requires a hell of a lot of effort compared to microblogging to a rep. It’s a different tool for a different job. You’re saying in effect “we have a hammer so we don’t need a screwdriver”. Petitions do not replace microblogging. Microblogging comes before petitions, & it distributes petitions.
@koherecoWatchdog It's really no different. Your impact is determined by the size of your audience and an audience takes effort to build, both in person and online. You can't just sign up for an account and magic up thousands of followers any more than you can magic up thousands of signatures on a petition.
@LouisIngenthron Your impact is determined by the tools at your disposal. If you do not have Twitter access, your impact will be lessened. This is why you see orgs whose purpose for existence is to oppose Twitter -- on Twitter. Lots of factors go into impact but Twitter access is certainly one of them. It’s like a mechanic without a screwdriver. They must use a butter knife, which may not work.
@LouisIngenthron (the butter knife in this case being comparable to the old fashioned open letter of 50 yrs ago)
@koherecoWatchdog And just like the open letters of yesteryear, if you want to use other people's property to amplify your message, you have to play by their rules. Whether it's a newspaper or a social media company.
Nobody has any more right to force social media to host their speech than they do to force a newspaper to run their letter.
@LouisIngenthron It’d be intellectual dishonesty to even claim there’s rules in play in the 1st place. The rules are posted, your post breaks none of them, moderator doesn’t like the msg b/c it doesn’t convey their view of the world, so they delete it. None of my suppressed Reddit msgs actually broke any Reddit rules. It’s a big part of the problem.. the deception of rules.
@koherecoWatchdog I don't know Reddit's explicit TOS language, but I know Twitter's says they can ban you for "any reason or no reason at all". I imagine Reddit's is similar.
If you don't like those rules, don't agree to them.
@LouisIngenthron Every forum has a list of rules which msgs must conform to. Every moderator invents their own secret rules & suppresses rule-abiding msgs that don’t facilitate the narrative they want conveyed. So no, it’s not a transparent set of rules as you suggest. It would fail the “meeting of the minds” test.
@LouisIngenthron W.r.t Twitter, the mere existence of policy that makes the service exclusive is a 1A infringement on the part of politicians who exclusively put their presence there. If you don’t have a mobile phone, you lose the option of microblogging to a public figure. It’s inherently a 1A breach to put the rules of a privately owned asset between a representive & the people.
@koherecoWatchdog (A) you don't have to have a phone to access Twitter. You can use a computer, even one at the library.
(B) There's an argument to be made that it's a 1A breach by the account holder (not a great one), but that's still not the service provider's problem.
@LouisIngenthron (a) I know that’s bullshit because my own Twitter account was suspended for not supplying a mobile phone number. (b) That’s what I said. I said Twitter is not violating 1A (the gov reps are). You could say Twitter undermines free speech /principles/, but not the law.. not 1A.
@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.