Elon Musk. Twitter. Babylon Bee.

[Josh]

I think when it comes to utilities, public co-ops seems to be better. Same with insurance, incidentally. Oregon has a State run Workers Compensation Insurance plan that businesses can buy. And it is so much better and cheaper than the commercial policies, that almost all the businesses in Oregon use it.
Oregon has quite a few public co-ops utilities too, and they are pretty good. Pacific Power isn’t one of them. Although generally they’ve been quite competitive in the past.

I strongly agree. If it’s not a public coop it needs to be regulated. For an example of an unregulated, laissez-faire energy market… look at the debacles in Texas.

Power in Ohio was cheaper when it was more regulated.

[Ken]

I think when it comes to utilities, public co-ops seems to be better. Same with insurance, incidentally. Oregon has a State run Workers Compensation Insurance plan that businesses can buy. And it is so much better and cheaper than the commercial policies, that almost all the businesses in Oregon use it.
Oregon has quite a few public co-ops utilities too, and they are pretty good. Pacific Power isn’t one of them. Although generally they’ve been quite competitive in the past.

I strongly agree. If it’s not a public coop it needs to be regulated. For an example of an unregulated, laissez-faire energy market… look at the debacles in Texas.

Power in Ohio was cheaper when it was more regulated.

It is the same issue with health insurance.

It is mathematically impossible to skim off large corporate profits and still provide the same service at the same price. Especially when all you are mostly doing is just moving money around which is all most power companies and insurance companies actually do. I lived in TX and the power company you sign up with doesn't actually generate a single watt of power. They just buy and sell power and skim off their cut.

[Robert]

There will be no accountability on any of this. The US government, FBI, DOJ, DHS, and members of Congress were all telling social media who could and could not speak. They gave them lists of people and organizations to ban. They paid them to do it.

Still think you live in a fee country? This is how communism works, comrades.

[Sliceitup]

There will be no accountability on any of this. The US government, FBI, DOJ, DHS, and members of Congress were all telling social media who could and could not speak. They gave them lists of people and organizations to ban. They paid them to do it.

Still think you live in a fee country? This is how communism works, comrades.

I’m curious if you think that they should try to counter foreign propaganda? Is it ok for gov agencies to communicate with Twitter on that issue? And if they’re asking them to do all that work, should Twitter do it free of charge?

I’ll agree that Schiff’s requests didn’t send legit, but it also looks like that’s what Twitter told him. Was their response to him correct?

[Ken]

There will be no accountability on any of this. The US government, FBI, DOJ, DHS, and members of Congress were all telling social media who could and could not speak. They gave them lists of people and organizations to ban. They paid them to do it.

Still think you live in a fee country? This is how communism works, comrades.

So according to the actual documents that you posted, the following happened:

1. Government officials notified Twitter of various examples of foreign misinformation, Q-Anon nonsense and lies, and so forth.
2. Twitter reviewed the information, agreed that some of it violated its terms of service and took the information down but also fond that some of the information and posters had not violated their terms of service and left the information up and the accounts free to continue.
3. The government apparently paid Twitter for conducting the work of all this filtering and reviewing.

The only thing I see problematic is #3. Twitter should be paying for this sort of thing itself. Or what I would actually propose is that the government impose a tax on big social media companies (Twitter, Google, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, etc.) and use those proceeds to track things like foreign propaganda on social media, violations of privacy and tracking by online advertising, censorship, fraud, etc. Essentially A Consumer Protection Agency for the internet.

[Robert]

1. Government officials notified Twitter of various examples of foreign misinformation, Q-Anon nonsense and lies, and so forth.

Who decides what is a lie? I disagree with a lot they were saying was lies.

The government is free to post what they see as the truth but should not be shutting down other voices on social media or anywhere. What is going to keep Donald Trump from doing the same thing if he gets reelected? Do you really want the Trump Admin deciding what is the truth and what is a lie?

The accounts they let go were later shut down from pressure from the government.

[RZehr]

I wonder why social media has not been found by that state of California to cause cancer.

[Ken]

1. Government officials notified Twitter of various examples of foreign misinformation, Q-Anon nonsense and lies, and so forth.

Who decides what is a lie? I disagree with a lot they were saying was lies.

The government is free to post what they see as the truth but should not be shutting down other voices on social media or anywhere. What is going to keep Donald Trump from doing the same thing if he gets reelected? Do you really want the Trump Admin deciding what is the truth and what is a lie?

This is your line of argument. Why don't you find some of these posts that you say were censored by Twitter and we can look at them and decide if they were lies or not. Or, more accurately, whether they violated Twitter's terms of service or not.

According to the information that you posted, Twitter agreed with some of the requests to take down information, and disagreed with others. The government wasn't shutting down anything.

As for Donald Trump? He and his administration did exactly the same thing throughout his entire presidency. In fact, all of these events happened when Trump was president, not Biden or Obama. Trump during his presidency made far more attacks on free press and the media than either Obama or Biden

For example:
Trump wants to censor negative media: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... ss/542142/

Trump signs order that could punish social media companies for how they police content, drawing criticism and doubts of legality:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technolo ... ive-order/

A history of the Trump War on Media — the obsession not even coronavirus could stop https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyl ... story.html

Trump, in crisis mode, tweets his 2,000th attack on the press https://pressfreedomtracker.us/blog/tru ... ack-press/

[GaryK]

1. Government officials notified Twitter of various examples of foreign misinformation, Q-Anon nonsense and lies, and so forth.

Who decides what is a lie? I disagree with a lot they were saying was lies.

The government is free to post what they see as the truth but should not be shutting down other voices on social media or anywhere. What is going to keep Donald Trump from doing the same thing if he gets reelected? Do you really want the Trump Admin deciding what is the truth and what is a lie?

This is your line of argument. Why don't you find some of these posts that you say were censored by Twitter and we can look at them and decide if they were lies or not. Or, more accurately, whether they violated Twitter's terms of service or not.

According to the information that you posted, Twitter agreed with some of the requests to take down information, and disagreed with others. The government wasn't shutting down anything.

3. The government apparently paid Twitter for conducting the work of all this filtering and reviewing.

The only thing I see problematic is #3. Twitter should be paying for this sort of thing itself.

I agree this seems problematic. It would seem to me that this should be a major red flag to everyone. We all know that money has power and often times that power is corrupt.

[Robert]

As for Donald Trump? He and his administration did exactly the same thing throughout his entire presidency.

And I disagree when this was done also. The US government should not be telling any private company what is and is not accepted speech. I see a problem with that when any government does that. They can reply, comment and post any truths then see fit. The Twitter files being released is showing how much the Biden Administration did this and used it weight to make it happen. I choose not to white wash it and make it sound acceptable. It is not and it is contrary to the US Constitution Bill of Rights.

SCOTUS has even ruled that hate speech has to be allowed. Now we see the US administration deciding it is not. They are wrong and it is wrong for them to push to shut down speech. It was clearly wrong for Schiff to shut down the voice of a reporter reporting on him. At first Twitter said no, but soon after that reporter was banned. No reason, just banned.