Matt Bennett 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (2814)

• On the post: Setting 1st Amendment Myths On Fire In A Crowded Theater

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 14 Mar, 2023 @ 06:54pm

  Because it wasn’t trying to actively censor people.

  Oh? What the fuck was it then? "Passively" censoring people?

  gain: 40% success rate means Twitter denied 60% of those requests

  So you guys keep on repeating this as if it mattered (it doesn't) and why I find it so dumb and fascinating is at what % is OK, or not? If the censorship is only 99% successful is it still government censorship? No? Tell you what, I'll cut you a deal: It was only 40% a constitutional violation. So, y'know, still a constitutional violation.

  but it has no obligation to act on those suggestions.

  Yes, they did, and I don't even think you believe that. Someone had the perfect answer to this: “Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?” -- it wasn't a suggestion then, either. It is, of course, what they were hoping to pretend. So why do you want to let them get away with it? Why does Masnick? Here is an email showing that Twitter employees felt they COULD NOT say no, btw. So that's just false. https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610394294850064385

  Dude, I’ve mentioned before that I think book bans targeting public libraries that are driven by governmental pressure are a form of censorship.

  This is a horrible example and part of why I don't believe you. 1) Public libraries are part of the government 2) No, choosing not to carry a particular book is not a "ban". Byt that logic MOST books are "banned" from any particular library because any particular library only has a small selection of total books. There's also nothing wrong with a library choosing not to carry porn, gay or otherwise. It's a completely nonsensical comparison, top to bottom.

  You haven’t shown me any credible evidence that says Twitter complied with an direct and explicit order from the government (or a government proxy)

  I did! It was literally a direct link to a tweet showing that exact thing and you pretended I didn't show you a link to one specific tweet. I really wasn't sure if you were gaslighting me, hadn't clicked through, or just can't use twitter. Here's another one. Paul Sperry was banned per Schiff's request. There are many, many others, most of them less direct and explicit, or pretending they were foreign agents when they were not. But this one is explicit and direct: https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610394284867436547

• On the post: Setting 1st Amendment Myths On Fire In A Crowded Theater

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 14 Mar, 2023 @ 06:29pm

  If you say so. However, I’ve never taken those. I have taken a BA in English, French, and History, a BSc in Animal Physiology and Biochemistry, and a Masters in Internet Technology. I’ve also written scholarly articles on the history of science.

  I actually don't believe you, but the only one I found interesting was Biochem. The rest is just "I want to be a perpetual student" nonsense. But yeah, press x to doubt.

  “Biden did too, of course” Yes? How?

  So you don't keep up on current events? That's really not my concern. You can literally just google "Biden Khashoggi", it's that simple. I really wouldn't admit to being ignorant like that.

  “as did Biden and Schiff and a buncha other people” Yes? How? Links, citations, evidence, please

  Oh, sure, but literally only cuz I had it open. This is another thing you should be embarrassed not to know, btw. https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610394284867436547

  What is has to do with is Soave’s conclusion/opinion

  No, it wasn't. It had NOTHING to do with Soave. You just wanted to rant about Trump (cuz OF COARSE you did) and pretend it was important some how. Hilariously you picked 3 of the most inane and bipartisan things. Maybe you thought I'd get all offended and defend him, maybe? I don't think you thought it through, tbh.

  Soave’s article is a partisan Gish Gallop posing as serious opinion.

  Ad hominem again. But I mostly like his opinions (CNN would call it "analysis") and yours is worthless, so.

  See, I tried to engage with your comment seriously

  Incorrect. Or at least I hope so. If that was "serious" that would be really sad.

  At least I can spell ‘dumb bitch’, you blathering cockwomble.

  Dumbitch, it's a made up word, I'll spell it how I please. I even debated whether it needed one "b" or two. Now please, you've thoroughly embarrassed yourself and earned your name.

• On the post: Setting 1st Amendment Myths On Fire In A Crowded Theater

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 14 Mar, 2023 @ 06:05pm

  Given how much you bitch about Masnick being biased and a partisan hack, it’s hilarious that you’d link to a site as biased against the government as Reason

  You LOVE your ad hominems And bitch, I'm biased against the government. Government is rapacious and evil and needs to be beaten back with a stick. Which is why them finding a way to censor by proxy is so scary.

• On the post: Setting 1st Amendment Myths On Fire In A Crowded Theater

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 14 Mar, 2023 @ 06:03pm

  Whose rights are violated when Twitter kicks someone off the platform for violating the Terms of Service?

  You're strawmanning again. No one's "rights" have to be violated for it to be censorship.

  And as soon as you prove that Twitter was acting on orders from the government (or a government proxy), that might mean something.

  I did! You pretended it wasn't a direct link for some reason? It was super weird, almost like yo didn't know how twitter works.

• On the post: Setting 1st Amendment Myths On Fire In A Crowded Theater

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 14 Mar, 2023 @ 05:14pm

  ^^^This, a thousand times this. Thank you, I'm going to use that quote, too. "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?"

• On the post: Setting 1st Amendment Myths On Fire In A Crowded Theater

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 14 Mar, 2023 @ 05:12pm

  More like a “journalist’s” interpretation

  Oh you guys present that kinda shit as "evidence" all the time. Fuck, Masnick cites his own opinions as "evidence" all the time.

  cherry-picked messages supplied to him

  Oh there's that ad hominem again. You can't explain away the receipts, sorry, there's no "context" that would make them better.

• On the post: Setting 1st Amendment Myths On Fire In A Crowded Theater

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 14 Mar, 2023 @ 05:06pm

  Once you show us Twitter suing you to not say that elsewhere.

  That's not how this works, that's not how any of this works,

• On the post: Setting 1st Amendment Myths On Fire In A Crowded Theater

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 14 Mar, 2023 @ 05:05pm

  that any kind of online moderation is censorship and thus deserves to be strictly regulated, if not wholly outlawed, under U.S. federal law?

  Fucking dumbass, explained this at least 20 times now. It IS cesnorship. No, that doesn't mean it violates the 1A. But it does as soon as the government gets involved. These are 3 separate issues that you appear intent on conflating for some reason.

• On the post: Setting 1st Amendment Myths On Fire In A Crowded Theater

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 14 Mar, 2023 @ 05:02pm

  It wasn't a logical train of thinking with anything to "engage" with. But don't paraphrase me, you don't do it very well. I'll reply or "harass" who I please, k thx.

• On the post: Setting 1st Amendment Myths On Fire In A Crowded Theater

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 14 Mar, 2023 @ 05:00pm

  This is basically your whole schtick now.

  well....yeah, of course. How could it not?

• On the post: Setting 1st Amendment Myths On Fire In A Crowded Theater

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 14 Mar, 2023 @ 04:59pm

  (having multidisciplinary degrees providing actual training in the matter, as well as research experience)

  Oh of course you do honey. Women's studies isn't real, tho.

  It has been fully documented that Donald Trump wants to overturn the Sullivan ruling on press freedom

  So? I do too. The precedent was judicial activism and gave journalists free rein to lie with impunity.

  His administration literally gave cover to a regime which had a journalist murdered

  Sure. Biden did too, of course.

  Trump also tried to remove completely protected speech from Twitter that just hurt his feelings.

  Sure, as did Biden and Schiff and a buncha other people. (Schiff successfully) Arguably Trump did it as a private citizen over defamation, not as president which makes it less bad. Is this what you think passes as an argument? And wtf does this have to do with Soave? Something about "both sides"? Bitch, not only is it "both sides" democrats were way way way worse. Not that's the important bit, the important bit is the (very clear) government involvement. Listing some random shit about Trump doesn't change that. Yeah, so you're a dumbitch. Thank you for confirming.

• On the post: Setting 1st Amendment Myths On Fire In A Crowded Theater

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 14 Mar, 2023 @ 04:38pm

  it was opposition to all measures to stop Covid,

  Well THAT isn't true. Really just pointing out that school closures and lockdowns went on way too long. (and that's been proven unquestionably right) And Dr. Tedros isn't a good guy.

• On the post: Setting 1st Amendment Myths On Fire In A Crowded Theater

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 14 Mar, 2023 @ 04:29pm

  He was saying that social media companies may at some point punish someone for making a statement that is, at the time of that punishment, believed to be false. When information proves the statement is true, those companies will update their policies to account for the change.

  vs

  You’re LITERALLY saying that SM should decide what the “Truth” is and edit anything that disagrees with it.

  These are literally the same thing. I honest to god do not understand how with a straight face you could pretend these are different things.

  That’s how things should work

  If you actually think that then you are an enemy of free people.|

  and it isn’t a social media company declaring what is and isn’t the factual objective truth across all of time and space.

  Yeah, it literally is.

  Damn, I wish it worked, those anti-vax shitheads wouldn’t shut the fuck up…

  Bhattacharya is not an anti-vaxxer (I'm not either) but sidenote the covid vaccines legitimately don't work very well. You fucking totalitarian nutbag.

• On the post: Setting 1st Amendment Myths On Fire In A Crowded Theater

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 14 Mar, 2023 @ 04:24pm

  Twitter refused to act on the FBI’s suggestions more than half the time. How did the FBI apply pressure to Twitter if the FBI didn’t punish Twitter in any way for those refusals and said Twitter could take any action it wanted

  So the government spend hundreds of millions of dollars to censor people with a 40% success rate....why they would do that? Cuz it was successful 40% of the time and repressing that 40% of speech had value to them. Also super illegal.

  (which explicitly included the option of taking no action at all)

  Well there you're lying. Cuz some "requests" said that, but the explicit purpose is create plausible deniability...and many others did not.

  If I thought the government was illegally pressuring Twitter to censor U.S. citizens, I’d say so.

  No, you wouldn't. Particularly when it's "your side" and the censorship was going in the direction you agree with.

• On the post: Setting 1st Amendment Myths On Fire In A Crowded Theater

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 14 Mar, 2023 @ 04:18pm

  Ah, I see you’re trying to get me to do your work again. Not gonna happen, son. Link to the pertinent tweets or STFU about having proof.

  I did, you fucking moron. Those are both to single, specific tweets. The first one you should scroll down but it details how Twitter shadow bans works and mentions Bhattacharya directly, starting with #3. But it's all essentially one page of text. You know how twitter works, right? The second is just a single tweet showing the screenshot of the request (from a fed-funded NGO, I believe, so indirect) to censor info that is "true, but misleading". Jesus Christ, this is why I don't bother. I ACTUALLY provided what you asked. Did you even click on it?

  If you’re going to imply that those actions are censorship⁠—that they’re somehow a violation of the First Amendment

  Holy fuck....how many times do we have to make sure that "censorship" != 1A violation?!? It's still censorship when private parties do it. Censorship is illegal when the government does it.

  If you could cite specific evidence that shows Twitter doing those things on direct orders of the government (or orders handed down by a government proxy)

  I did. You either didn't bother to click on it or don't know how twitter works.

• On the post: Setting 1st Amendment Myths On Fire In A Crowded Theater

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 14 Mar, 2023 @ 04:09pm

  Unless he got “shadowbanned” after those things turned out to be true, that’s only evidence of social media companies having to continually update their policies as new information about the pandemic came out.

  What the FUCK?!? NONE of that is true. You're LITERALLY saying that SM should decide what the "Truth" is and edit anything that disagrees with it. The fact is that a lot of this stuff was very obvious at the outset (schools shouldn't be shut down or were shut down waaaaaaaaayyyyyyy too long, lockdowns were ineffective and costly, etc.) but the ENTIRE FUCKING POINT WAS TO STIFLE DISSENT?!? And your position is that that's all cool, because what Bhattacharya was saying wasn't "known" to be true? IT WAS KNOWN TO FUCKING HIM. YOU ABSOLUTE SHIT FUCK DUMBASS. Put your head in a toliet and flush it, your brain needs a wash.

• On the post: Setting 1st Amendment Myths On Fire In A Crowded Theater

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 14 Mar, 2023 @ 04:01pm

  Oh I'm some sorry, I'm gonna go with Robby Soave over some dumbitch who likes to make emasculating BDSM insults when she's losing an argument.

  Requests to review is not ‘pressure’

  Well, yes, they are, actually, especially when it's the FBI. But it wasn't the just the FBI, it was a whole swarm of paid proxies. It's almost like all this pressure has been laid out in great detail and you're just refusing to see it.....

• On the post: Setting 1st Amendment Myths On Fire In A Crowded Theater

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 14 Mar, 2023 @ 03:57pm

  When I last looked at the “Twitter Files”, I didn’t see anything that looked like overt governmental pressure to restrict the speech of U.S.-based Twitter users.

  You would if you were smarter. I did, btw, in the long post that TD ate. Just gotta wait a few hours, I guess.

• On the post: Setting 1st Amendment Myths On Fire In A Crowded Theater

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 14 Mar, 2023 @ 03:56pm

  Yes or no: Do you have evidence that this “shadowban” happened on orders of the U.S. federal government, either directly or indirectly?

  Yes, actually. https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601007575633305600?lang=en Combined with: https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1633830002742657027

  Also yes or no: Do you have any citation of law or binding legal precedent that says a social media service that voluntarily takes steps to minimize the reach of a given user is committing an illegal act?

  Now you're strawmanning. I never asserted it was illegal for twitter to do it on their own. (It is however wrong and might well remove 230 protections) It is however illegal for it to happen at government direction (on the part of government, not Twitter)

• On the post: Setting 1st Amendment Myths On Fire In A Crowded Theater

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 14 Mar, 2023 @ 03:33pm

  I was feeling generous and posted a fairly lengthy reply with citations, but because Techdirt is a cite from 2005 and my reply had links you're not going to see it for a couple hours, I'm betting. "¯_(ツ)_/¯" Good job Masnick!

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