The problem here is that you don't have an account on Twitter and yet you are certain in your knowledge of what's on Twitter. You're not an American, and yet you're certain in your knowledge of how the U.S. First Amendment is applied and what U.S. monopoly laws are and what their basis is. And you're simply wrong. Please provide, for example, an example of someone calling for genocide on Twitter that was not removed by Twitter and we can all go look at today? And let's talk about the First Amendment. You first say that all "legal" speech should be allowed on any platform that allows speech. Then, when it's pointed out to you that a lot of things you think are reprehensible and would effectively destroy the ability of the rest of us to use social media if allowed are in fact legal, you decide to come up with your own definition of "legal" based on some fuzzy past timeline. And that's the problem when you start to impose government control on speech, which make no mistake is exactly what you're proposing. Our constitution is pretty protective of letting the courts decide what currently is and isn't covered under the First Amendment, not you. And on to one more thing you seem to think you understand but clearly do not, the tech industry (yes, I run a software company in the energy business so I think I do understand it at least a bit). First you seem to think that Amazon competes with Parler? And Google and Apple? Perhaps Twitter competes with Parler, but they didn't have anything to do with Parler getting kicked off AWS and the app stores unless you want to start with some unsupported right wing conspiracy theory at which point conversation over. If Google and Apple don't compete with Parler, it isn't anti-competitive for them to remove them from their app stores for violating contractual terms they legally agreed to. Secondly you don't seem to grasp just how many web hosting companies exist or how easy it is to set up your own servers. There was absolutely nothing but laziness and lack of basic technical knowledge to stop Parler from setting up their own server, you need to either provide some evidence that isn't true or acknowledge it. Your whole anti-competitive argument falls down when you acknowledge there were plenty of alternatives for Parler or in the cases where there weren't the companies weren't competing with Parler and had nothing to gain by enforcing their terms on them. The only idea you proposed with any merit revolves around network effects. That's completely novel anti-trust territory there, so it will be interesting how the courts interpret existing law or legislators decide to impose new laws around that. At least you now realize the fundamental difference between an electric or gas utility and a web hosting provider, I hope. I think you must be willfully missing my point on the ability of a business to decide who they do business with. You really think its OK that Trump Tower in NYC should be forced to rent the entire bottom floor out to a strip club even if that destroys the value of the other 57 floors of existing and potential tenants who value an office space significantly less if the ground level is a strip club? If yes, then I have to ask at this point, how many businesses have you started and run exactly? And I find your grocery store and bank examples interesting. On the one hand, you insist that my examples of what people do in grocery stores that get them kicked out aren't valid because they're not related to the grocery store's core business. In other words, you think it's OK for the grocery store to kick out someone for engaging in "legal" speech inside the store because it's purpose is not to provide a platform for speech. So you're saying a grocery story can choose which customers they serve as long as the basis of that choice isn't around their core business of selling groceries? Except in the case of espousing conservative beliefs, then it's not OK? You're internally contradicting yourself there, don't you think? To answer your question on race, sex, age, sexual orientation... those aren't things one chooses (I don't really support the ban on discrimination on the basis of religion and in fact religious organizations are allowed to blatantly discriminate when hiring). If you choose to be an asshole who wants to overthrow democracy in the United States then I should most certainly, as someone who dedicated more than 20 years of blood sweat and tears defending that, be allowed to discriminate against you when you try to use my business to push those views.
I'm sure you know that The Bee is a satire site (actually bizarrely it's specifically a "Christian News Satire" site) like The Onion only not actually funny. But I'm sure there are plenty of others who don't so I'll point that out here in case they think that's actually real. Other recent headline Elon Musk Rescues Texans With Giant Flamethrower Mech Biden Announces Ambitious Goal Of $100 Per Gallon Gas By End Of First 100 Days In Office
Here are some blurbs from Politico's Morning Money from this morning: FTT making a comeback? — It’s long been a top wish-list item for progressives and Wall Street reformers. But Wall Street has successfully beating back a financial transactions tax for years. Don’t hold your breath — CBO says a 0.1 percent tax on stock, bond and derivative transactions could raise $777 billion over ten years. But there is still a ton of moderate Democrat opposition to the idea and Wall Street still claims it would slam individual investors in the form of higher transaction costs. So it remains a very long shot though if the White House gets deeply serious about pay-fors in further legislative efforts, like infrastructure, it could find its way back into the debate. A Democratic financial services analyst who followed the GameStop hearings closely emails: “While it wasn’t surprising that some of the more liberal members of the Committee brought up the FTT, it seems unlikely that such a proposal could survive on its own in the Senate, unless the filibuster rules were changed (which seems unlikely). “That said, of all the policy issues raised during the hearing ... I think if structured correctly, an FTT is the one thing that could have real legs."
Huh. We are discussing our politics and how things ought to be, not interpreting the existing laws. There is no wrong answer. If these laws were working and everybody was satisfied with the status quo, we wouldn't even be having a discussion here.. The classics that got media attention and were eventually removed (by the author due to backlash, not by twitter): https://archive.fo/rpWK8 (a "professor" believe it or not) https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DjlelTrUcAA14B9?format=jpg&name=900x900 (Sarah Jeong, writer for NYT, was amazingly not fired for these tweets) A few genocidal posts I could find that are still up after 3+ years. I'm sure there are dozens if not hundreds more of these but this should be good for now. collection of hate tweets, lots of these are still up years later https://archive.is/PQ6bg/9bb11657cc9a607d66172b3a3d67ea366ae532e7.jpg Well it's obvious to anyone other than your court that porn isn't free speech so the fact that your court thinks otherwise just illustrates how broken it is. I don't see the problem with looking to a past timeline when things were operating in a more sensible manner. Anyways the status-quo "solution" of outsourcing censorship to a bunch of left leaning companies clearly isn't working for 50% of the population, so unless you have a better suggestion.. ? You are getting lost in the weeds and aren't seeing the big picture here. Any alternative media company is competition to the whole establishment of which these big tech companies are part. All the big tech companies are in cahoots together as demonstrated by the way they do these coordinated purges of their political opponents. It is not just about competing for markets but also cultural and political power. The idea that Parler was kicked off app stores for violating terms is pure B.S., selective enforcement. Facebook and twitter violate these same terms constantly (not properly moderating etc) but no one gives a shit because it's their buddies. Regarding the servers there are a lot of reasons why they might not want to or be able to set up their own servers, especially on short notice. For example they might not have sufficient up front capital, employees to manage them, the parts might not be available due to the ongoing chip shortage, maybe they determined running their own server farm is not capital efficient, whatever. And anyways the whole point here is they shouldn't have to run their own! What is the problem with strip clubs? Maybe they should be illegal if they are a problem? Like I said, legislate special cases. The core business of cloud hosting providers is to provide cloud hosting. This has nothing to do with speech. The idea that people are "speaking" inside of amazon's servers and this is somehow analogous to a disruptive protest in a physical space just seems completely ridiculous. A cloud provider has no reason to care what their servers are used for unless it is illegal activity that they are obligated to track, like running DDOS attacks or something. Political views are largely inherent as well. At least they are heritable (twin studies even suggest majority genetic), and unless you are one of those people who thinks all republicans need to be put into reeducation camps, I'm not sure what you could possibly propose to do about this. The reality is that almost all of those people will still not have changed their mind in 1, 5, 10, 20 years. It is functionally an immutable characteristic. To discriminate on it is completely wrong and immoral. Wait a minute, are you saying that you run a cloud business and you're worried about people using it to spread information you don't like? Lol this would explain a lot. Guess what my dude you live in a society. I don't like my tax money going to pay for all kinds of things that go against my values, does that mean I should have a right to not pay taxes? NO that's not how it works and neither you should have any right to exclude your fellow citizens from participating in the economy just because you don't agree with them politically.
So you went with the vast left wing tech company conspiracy with no proof thing. Like I warned you, conversation over when the irrational conspiracy theories get trotted out. Can't engage in a logical conversation with someone who rejects evidence based reality. And no, a bunch of tech companies simultaneously removing the platform where terrorists planned an attack on the U.S. legislature to change the outcome of a Presidential election the day after that attack isn't evidence of conspiracy. It's evidence of companies doing the most obvious of thing possible in response to something that most Americans thought was reprehensible and a threat to our Republic, even if you don't give a damn about it. Good luck in court proving this conspiracy, maybe you'll double Trump's win rate on the big lie cases and win 2/60? Good day.
Nothing I've written is irrational whatsoever. So, I didn't write a paper proving how the tech companies collude in anticipation of you abruptly ending the conversation if I didn't. That's not how forum discussion works. If one person wants more detail on something, they ask. Well, it's clear you're looking for an excuse to end the conversation, and that's fine because I don't think we are really going anywhere here. I can already tell it would be pretty difficult to push any information through that thick bubble you're in, in which trump supporters are trying to "overthrow democracy". Lol what a joke that is. Too much fake news my my friend. I just hope you eventually find a way to grow out of your bigoted pro-discrimination views.
Yellen Favors Higher Company Tax, Signals Capital Gains Worth A Look: https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/yellen-favors-higher-company-tax-151100632.html Little blurb in the piece about a ftt from Treasury Secretary Yellen: Yellen also said that a hike in the capital-gains tax might be something “worth considering.” Asked about a financial-transactions tax, she said, “One would have to examine closely what effect it would have” on ordinary investors.