So what?
There’s no law prohibiting these types of businesses from supporting a political candidate. They could plaster a huge “Vote For X” banner at the top of every person’s profile. Don’t like it? Don’t use it.
It’s not like Twitter is tax-exempt which would prohibit it from endorsing candidates like Churches.
It's within their rights to do take these actions, fact checks and hiding/deleting tweets, to protect their ecosystem. If it is questionably legal because it may influence the election, then I haven't seen the law it is breaking. I see a better argument for showing Twitter promoting Trump's feed to drive clicks as an in kind donation which could quickly break legal campaign donation limits.
Twitter has taken a stand here and I do think they should apply their policies evenly. Will they effectively apply this to everything or even have the capacity built out now to do so? I doubt it. They are a business who needs user engagement to drive profit from ads. If they constrain their most clicked tweets it could lower their revenue even if initially those tweets get attention for being removed.
It's not only acceptable but actually ethically correct to hold those with more power to higher standards of responsibility.
It's therefore not only acceptable but actually ethically correct to enforce these rules more proactively against the President of the United States than some Russian bot account.
Twitter is not tax-exempt but is certainly lawsuit-exempt to a large degree. The entire reason twitter has not be sued into oblivion for the actions of it's users is because of the protections Section 230[1] grants them.
But here is the pinch. Section 230 protection applies only as long as you act as platforms for 3rd party speech. But when they start plastering "Vote for X" banners on their websites of their own violations, they go from being platforms for 3rd party speech to 1st party publishers. That effectively removes the Section 230 protections twitter enjoys.
I much as I hate to say it, Trump might be right this once. Twitter has stopped being a neutral platform enforcing consistent policies for quite some time now.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...
These companies have become, for many, infrastructural. For these companies (who also sell advertising) to take these kinds of actions would essentially be them bypassing campaign finance rules to give MASSIVE contributions of free advertising to candidates. I think its fair to argue that that would be unacceptable interference.
That's not at all how section 230 works. Section 230 protections. Section 230 provides protection from liability over what their users post. Whatever content they have of their own on their site is completely out of scope as far as section 230 goes.
You'll say one thing is "ethically correct", and someone else will say the exact opposite thing is "ethically correct".
Neither of you is right, and neither of you is wrong.
If it hasn't, does this mean they are free to ban every conservative viewpoint from their platform, like T_D does for liberal ones? If not, why are we letting T_D behave in such a way?
Given limited resources, don't you think it's undeniably correct to direct those resources where they are more effective?
Personally I think they are just trying to call out a moron. But so what if you are trying to "interfere" with the election. Corporations are allowed to interject their own beliefs and politics too
Example 1 - Drumming up support for a war with Iran. No it's not correct to direct resources to where they are most effective. (According to me.)
Example 2 - Trying to get homeless people in SF back on their feet. Yes, direct resources where they are most effective. (Again, according to me.)
But in example 1 if we ask the same question to a war hawk in congress, they'll give you the exact opposite answer. In example 2 if you ask Ayn Rand, again you'll get a different answer.
No one is objectively right or wrong in any of these cases.
It's funny. I went out of my way to de-politicize the question in order to further the discussion and you promptly re-politicized it in order to muddy it. I suspect it's because you know exactly what I'm getting at. You've avoided the core question no less than 3 times already.
I'll try one more time. Please resist the temptation to play word games or make it political:
If Twitter has limited fact-checking capabilities is it not correct — regardless of politics — to direct those resources where they are more effective?
Therefore (again, regardless of politics), Twitter's actions follow perfectly reasonable logic: that Trump's Tweets would face more scrutiny than say, mine.
Thus, your claim that "the rules are being enforced selectively" can easily be accounted for by Occams Razor: It makes perfect sense that more visible accounts face more scrutiny. It would be highly illogical for Twitter to do otherwise.
That's correct. Luckily, objectivity is not necessary.
But should it be illegal? IMO -- no. If this is the hill that some company wants to die on, let them try. Why not?
Thought experiment: If there was a political candidate running on a platform to destroy the internet, I think it would be perfectly reasonable for internet companies to vouch for the competition.
It is not.
That is all.