If you’ve been on Twitter lately, you may have seen promoted tweets from online stores advertising “decorative items, household items for everyday household needs.” This exact text appears on hundreds and hundreds of accounts—and they are all run by the same company, which seems to be using Twitter’s pay-to-play verification scheme to boost price-gouged, low-quality products.
Special counsel Jack Smith obtained a search warrant for former President Donald Trump's Twitter account back in January and requested Twitter not disclose this information to Trump, newly unsealed court documents show.
On Jan. 17, 2023, prosecutors applied for, and received, a search warrant directing Twitter, a company now known as X, to produce data and records related to the @realDonaldTrump account, documents from the U.S. Court of Appeals for District of Columbia Circuit show.
The social media company subsequently fought the Justice Department on this warrant request as well as its demand not to disclose this information to Trump or others, the court filings show.
In a since-rejected appeal, Twitter had argued that the nondisclosure order violated the First Amendment and the Stored Communications Act.
Twitter did eventually comply with the warrant, but failed to produce all of the requested information until three days after a court-ordered deadline, placing the company in contempt and was ordered to pay a $350,000 fine for the delay.
With Twitter Blue take-up failing to reach expectations, Elon Musk is taking drastic action to drive more adoption, announcing today that, as of April 15th, the only tweets that will be displayed in the ‘For You’ tab – i.e. the main tab of the app – will be from paying, Twitter Blue verified accounts.
I haven’t tweeted in a year and a half because I’m much too vulgar and hang out with the wrong kind of folk on the Twitter. Plus I suffer from a bad case of foot in mouth disease and I have a big shots job so I stay away. Gotta make that money to spend it on gasoline and all the toys.
I still do Facebook but I’ve blocked all of the politicians and news reporters so all I see is posts about wildlife, farming, big jacked up trucks, off grid shit, hunting and fishing and non controversial shit like that. I kind of like the taste of diesel smoke, silage and hay. I did get blocked from stupid off grid group for criticizing one of those luxury cabins, pointing out that nobody lives that way – most of life is lived in the mud and muck – things are rusty and broken. After all, my heroes all smell a little like cow shit and burn their own trash.
Former President Donald Trump is suing Facebook, Twitter and Google's YouTube over their suspensions of his accounts after a mob of his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol in January.
Trump filed class action complaints in federal court in Florida, alleging the tech giants are censoring him and other conservatives — a long-running complaint on the right for which there is little evidence and that the companies deny.
While I am no fan of President Trump, I think this could be an important First Admendment case that could protect free speech if any online community is required to protect speech.
One flip side to all of this: While deplatforming can reduce Trump’s overall reach, it could certainly make his remaining followers more ardent. Watching the most powerful technology companies in the world act at the same time, if not in unison, against onald Trump has, for his followers, likely bolstered his claim that tech companies were working against him — and his followers.
In this case, Holt says, “A base of voters that’s been told that there’s a global tech industry conspiracy against them will likely be more hardened in their beliefs - when they see what’s happened to Trump. “And if Trump was right about that, was he right about the election stuff?"
Which gets at what we really ought to care about when we make predictions about what happens to Trump’s reach in his post-Twitter era: What happens to the people he used to reach? Regardless of whether they follow him to a different platform, they’re still going to hear from … somebody on mainstream social media. And if it’s not Trump, who’s going to fill that void?
The bans were strongly criticized by senior lawmakers in Germany and rance. Chancellor Angela Merkel argued lawmakers should set the rules governing free speech, not technology companies, while rench inance Minister Bruno Le Maire said that the state should be responsible for regulations, rather than “the digital oligarchy,ȁ and called big tech “one of the threatsȁ to democracy.
The big tech companies justified their actions by citing posts stoking riots in the U.S. capital last week and sought to avoid further incitements to violence. The bans underscore the power these companies hold over how information is disseminated and the impact their decisions have. Before, it was their stance to allow incendiary speech from Trump and his allies that drew heavy criticism from the left.
Regulatory risks for social media companies will persist even though emocrats will control the Congress and White House, Bank of America analyst Justin Post wrote in a note to clients. Twitter is also likely to see some usage decline as a result of dismissing the president, he wrote.
