"The Twitter Rules"
"The Twitter Rules"
Twitter boots Daniel Kotzin without having to explain itself.
My friend Daniel Kotzin received a response to his Twitter suspension appeal this morning. The company claims his account had “multiple or repeat violations of the Twitter rules”. His account will not be restored and the case is closed.
You can read more about the “permanent suspension” Daniel took actions to appeal on his Substack. Being suspended myself for directly quoting and posting an editorial from The Wall Street Journal, I believe the decision is outrageous and unfounded.
Even from a “private companies can do whatever they want” standpoint, Twitter is conducting bad business. If I break a company’s rules - whether I’m in a restaurant, making an online purchase, using its fitness equipment, etc. - and the company takes action against me (e.g., bans me from future access), the company doesn’t simply say “you broke the rules.” They would explain which rule(s) I broke, specifically, and how.
It’s true that Twitter’s user agreement essentially says they can suspend or terminate your account “at any time or for any reason”. This is where the debate over what Twitter is and what laws should govern its policies comes in.
For its part, Twitter says its purpose is “to serve the public conversation,” and that “violence, harassment and other similar types of behavior discourage people from expressing themselves, and ultimately diminish the value of global public conversation. Our rules are to ensure all people can participate in the public conversation freely and safely.”
It seems Twitter believes Daniel has been “unsafe” by posting content that allegedly violates some aspect of their covid-19 misleading information policy. Apparently, it doesn’t matter Daniel’s tweet is scientifically accurate and expresses a reasonable opinion - or that Alex Berenson’s repeat of the tweet shows that Twitter’s enforcement is capricious. How are they “serving the public conversation” - or holding up their end of the terms of services - by failing to explain their reasons to Daniel, irrespective of what those reasons are and whether they make sense?
Justin Hart, himself no stranger to Twitter’s censorship, made a related point last while discussing his suit against Big Tech & the Biden Administration on FoxNews: “The Facebook and Twitter platforms, these social media platforms, they are private companies. They’re gonna do what they want. One would hope that they would adhere to the basic tenets of democracy that gave birth to them,” let alone eschew acting at behest of the CDC or Surgeon General to suppress viewpoints that challenge the government’s covid narrative.
One would also hope America’s private companies - Twitter included - would adhere to the basic tenets of good business practices, service, and human decency by fully explaining why they are cutting off service to a client, customer, or user.
Daniel Kotzin deserves that much, at least.
The censorship is systematic, pervasive, and consistent in its orientation -- and it's not confined to Twitter.
In this article I wrote almost two years ago, I draw upon the Capabilities Approach to state a moral case for why Medium.com should have reinstated Aj Kay's 'The Curve is Already Flat,' despite the fact that they are a private company.
https://medium.com/morozko-method/reinstate-the-curve-is-already-flat-fc8798a0ccac?sk=6ede62bd4afb3d4f4dfa318f0c0e0946
Medium banished her from their platform instead.
At the time, my argument was that there are limits to autonomy of private companies that have already been recognized and codified in our society. For example, we do not permit private bankers to discriminate against borrowers on the basis of race. Neither should we allow private publishers to discriminate against authors -- yet, these are what the current terms of service at Medium allow.
What we've learned since then is the digital publishers were not acting as private companies, but as agents of the Federal government, and at government direction.
As these lawsuits make their way thru the courts, discovery may reveal extraordinary abuses of government power that violate our Constitution.
In other words, the case against censorship at Twitter, Medium, Google, and Facebook is no longer moral. It is also now legal.
Twitter deleting accounts "at any time and for any or no reason" reminds you very much of arbitrary covid rules issued by governors, presidents, and other government executives.