A lot of sound and fury. Twitter can enforce whatever arbitrary rules it likes on content posted within its system, it owes no explanation to anyone. You sign up to those rules when you join.

If I were the author I'd stop at this point and think that perhaps the best way to curb Twitter's power to shape narrative according to their subjective desires is to stop using Twitter to shape narrative...

The author makes a bunch of statements like:

     “Twitter needs to have a damned good reason to censor people from even sharing links to a major news story in private messages”

but doesn’t really explain why it needs a reason, damn good or otherwise, besides that it felt like it.

I feel like shutting up the people who harassed and blackmailed me on social media a few months ago. I think if I were to start doing so though I would be met with quite a bit of objections from people.

If someone said something you didn't like in the comments on a site you owned, and you wanted to erase them, do you feel that you don't have that right. (even if you expressly state that you do reserve such a right when people signed up to your site?)

Legally I do think site owners should have that right, but it would be highly tacky to exercise it

Morality and honesty perhaps? If Twitter wants to be a left wing outlet a la Daily Kos, that's fine, but they should at least be honest about it. Preaching openness, transparency, and honesty while doing the opposite is orwellian.

Do you mean the same left wing outlet that let the president violate their content policies for years, and said they did so because of the significant of the figure doing it?

I mean, its real easy to get hyper focused on a specific instance and start making claims like that.

But I think if you take a step back, they have let a lot of dirt swing from both side, and in the face of overwhelming pressure from the public have started to be more restrictive on this sort of propaganda as the election is coming up.

False equivalency. Even Dorsey admitted in a Vox article a couple years ago that his company leans so far left that right leaning employees fear to express their opinions. Twitter has been uneven in its application of rules for quite a while now, and I admit this as a left leaning person! I don't believe in censoring opinions I disagree with just because it benefits those with whom I agree.

A company policy is not dictated by the personal opinions of its employees, many companies have a series of audits and separation of control to prevent corruption and biased. I don't know that twitter does, but I don't think it is fair to say that because the employees of a company are left leaning the organization is.

I believe that twitter censorship policies are far more about optics and what is more commercially viable for the company.

You can bet the reason they didn't ban the president for the numerous policy violations is because he is driving traffic and engagement on their platform.

That isn't to say that certain employees won't overstep bounds and act on personal feelings, but that doesn't mean twitter as an organization is leaning left or right.

Corporations lean in the direction of profit, far more than moral or political leanings.

Everyone polices their 'platform'... Heck even mods for /r/TheDonald would ban anything anti-Trump, so are they not just as guilty as Twitter?

They are not equivalent. Thedonald (didn't they get banned?) markets itself as an online Trump rally and is upfront about the rules as far as I'm aware. Twitter has a set of rules that they enforce in an uneven and selective fashion. Not at all the same thing.

> The tweet, in case readers thought it too subtle, contained a photograph of Tsai alongside the bellicose text. Given that any war involving Taiwan and mainland China will likely begin with an attempt to kill Tsai Ing-Wen and other senior leadership, “wipe out” should not be taken to be a mistranslation or a literary term of art.

> It means what you think it does. And Tsai Ing-Wen has a Twitter account. The tweet is, as of the writing of this post, still up. Why? Because Twitter has a significant problem applying rules and interaction norms initially developed for interpersonal conflicts between users to institutional actors (such as loosely state-controlled press entities like the Global Times) and/or individuals representing institutions (like President Tsai Ing-Wen). So a threat from one user (acting as a proxy of a government) against another individual user (the President of another government) is difficult for Twitter.

> Like it or not, conditional threats of physical harm are a part of international politics. During the Gulf War, for one, the United States threatened to execute a nuclear strike and “eliminate” Iraqi leadership if Baghdad deployed chemical weapons. And if Tsai had some means of physically threatening the personal safety of Chinese leader Xi Xingping to deter Chinese invasion of Taiwan, she would absolutely be remiss in not using all of the means at her disposal – Twitter included – to publicly communicate that he would be harmed if Beijing dared to put a single rifleman on Taiwanese beaches.

> Twitter is banned in China, but Chinese diplomats have accounts. And if Xi operated an account and Tsai made a vague but nonetheless firm threat to physically harm him if war should break out, should she be penalized?

The author doesn't intend to answer their own question. If you believe violent speech is acceptable between nations but unacceptable with individuals, what do you do when individuals represent nations?

And how does any nationally-based company go on to facilitate international discussion?

That’s precisely the author’s point.

> What does Twitter know about how the materials in the laptop were obtained and their validity? Is it invoking a precaution ahead of time in blocking material that could be hacked? If so, Twitter has not bothered to say anything about it. For all we know, it could have been illegally obtained somehow.

Wouldn't the Post's claims that the data was obtained by hacking suffice? For as long as nobody is claiming in good faith that the data was not obtained through hacking, the Post's own claim should suffice; I think it is too burdensome for the onus to be on twitter to independently verify that for every case of this like.

The Post made no such claims.

It did.

> The blockbuster correspondence — which flies in the face of Joe Biden’s claim that he’s “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings” — is contained in a massive trove of data recovered from a laptop computer.

Hunter Biden email

The computer was dropped off at a repair shop in Biden’s home state of Delaware in April 2019, according to the store’s owner.

moronic right wing analysis. The article had personally identifying info so it got blocked. the end.

Twitter doth protest too much, methinks.

Go build your/our own then.

My post was intended to imply that Twitter's reaction seemed out of proportion, which can sometimes imply they reacted that way because they feared it may be accurate information. Game theoretically, regardless of their intention it was a bad play because of the Streisand effect.