Is the 6th floor museum losing its touch?

[Martin Weidmann]

Under the Stalinist system the leader's false propaganda had to be published. If you refused to publish it or if you published the evidence of government abuses you ended up in the Gulag or dead.  It is still much like that in Russia. 

The Hunter Biden allegation was started by Trump and is being investigated at his behest by his toadies in the DOJ. Media organizations have asked to see the evidence so that they can check it out.  The government refuses. So news organizations with any integrity have refused to report on it.

Who is the Stalinist here?

Exactly right. Richard basically wants the media to play along when Trump tries to destroy or discredit somebody with false or unproven allegations.

They did it to Hillary Clinton with the fake Benghazi investigations that came to nothing and the alleged "email scandal", in which they claimed emails had been destroyed, when in fact we recently found out they were actually still stored on a server at the ministry.

[John Iacoletti]

Maybe you need to define censorship.  Twitter suspended the NY Post's account for breaking the Hunter Biden story.  That is a text book example of censorship.

Wrong again, “Richard”. Censorship is when the government suppresses speech. Twitter isn’t the government.

And it was entirely due to political bias.  Again, this has nothing to do with the merits of the underlyng story.

There were no merits to the underlying story. It was Rudy-fabricated tabloid nonsense to try to sway the election.

[Bill Chapman]

Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient." Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies.

[John Iacoletti]

Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient." Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies.

Thanks for the unsourced cut-and-paste from Wikipedia. Please explain how Twitter is a “controlling body”.

[Andrew Mason]

Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient." Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies.

That is not the definition of censorship.  That comes from somebody on Wikipedia. And you can see from the talk page discussion that there was disagreement among the contributors to that page on such a definition.  So much for Wikipedia.  By that definition, Twitter suppressing ISIS posts calling for death to America is censorship; white supremacists posting racist hate speech being denied access to Facebook etc.  would be censorship.  That is not what most people mean by censorship.

[Richard Smith]

Under the Stalinist system the leader's false propaganda had to be published. If you refused to publish it or if you published the evidence of government abuses you ended up in the Gulag or dead.  It is still much like that in Russia. 

The Hunter Biden allegation was started by Trump and is being investigated at his behest by his toadies in the DOJ. Media organizations have asked to see the evidence so that they can check it out.  The government refuses. So news organizations with any integrity have refused to report on it.

Who is the Stalinist here?

Did social media allow stories to run about Trump's taxes that were illegally obtained and never provided for inspection?  Of course they did.  They ran that story for weeks without anyone "checking it out" because the tax returns were never made available for review.  No major news outlet had their account suspended for reporting that story.  There is obvious bias and censorship for political purposes.  Everyone should be concerned that social media is censoring speech on the basis of political bias.  They are operating as a Stalinist propaganda arm of the dem party.   Why be afraid of information and want it to be covered up by Big Brother?  Liberals used to be advocates of free speech.  Very sad.

[Richard Smith]

The point is that the story was suppressed by the social media outlets due to political bias.

No it wasn't. The unproven allegations were made public, without a shred of evidence, for political reasons and to influence the election. If Guiliani had made the evidence available it might be another story, but he never did and still hasn't done so to date.

Do you want information controlled by some social media weirdoes who get to decide what is permissible for the public to consider?

What if I publish on social media, without a shred of evidence of course, the allegation that Richard Smith is a child molester and serial rapist. Would you defend my "right" to make such a story public?

How about let the public decide what has merit instead of some biased kooks who work for these companies?

What, you advocate mob justice and extrajudicial trial by public vote?

I wouldn't want any of the many fake, negative stories relating to Trump suppressed.

But what about fake stories about yourself?

You didn't have these same concerns when there were reports from the NY Times about Trump's taxes.  They never made the tax returns available to anyone for inspection of their accuracy.  If they were obtained, then it was done illegally because Trump never authorized disclosure as required by federal law.  But that story was widely reported and social media had no apparent issue with anyone reporting it there despite the lack of any verification.  They certainly did not suspend the NY Times' account as a result like they did with the NY Post.  That is clear censorship based upon political bias.

And you are wildly confused about the issue under discussion.  Of course no one wants false information reported about them on social media.  That is why individuals have recourse to libel actions.  Individuals can be sued for writing false information.  Social media platforms, however, are protected by federal law from such lawsuits because they are supposed to be platforms for the exchange of information (like a telephone company) and not publishers.  Imagine if your telephone carrier broke into your conversation to tell you that you couldn't discuss certain topics because they didn't like your opinion or that your telephone access would be suspended if you discussed the Hunter Biden story.  Social media platforms are acting like arbiters of the truth instead of platform providers.  If they decide to do so, then they should be subject to suit like anyone else.