Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other tech companies are too big and powerful and influential to be allowed to act on their own. They should either be split up or regulated heavily so that they are held to behaving like a public agency. It's not just not acceptable to have a company with a user base larger than most countries to operate with the power to shape societal speech - they need to just enforce the bare minimum legal requirement and nothing more.

Personally I have no trust that Twitter is doing any of this in good faith. For example take this bit from their blog post:

> We’re also in the process of consulting with a range of human rights experts, civil society organizations, and academics worldwide whose feedback will be reflected in forthcoming revisions to the policy framework.

This sounds like they will solicit opinions that agree with their planned policy updates, and will increase the amount of censorship they perform, informed by their progressive politics. This blog post just seems like a notice that this is coming, rather than an honest attempt to collect user input. They're also not clear what organizations they are consulting but I am guessing it does not include any moderate or conservative voices. The blog post does not mention "speech", "free speech", "censorship", "neutral", etc. It does however mention things like "fundamental human rights" and frustratingly vague wording like "health of the public conversation". This blog post is a fluffy PR piece that is starting the work of previewing and justifying whatever they're about to do to double down on their current heavy handed control of speech.

Another curious part of this post:

> This is to ensure a global perspective is reflected in the feedback

It's interesting that the blog post mentions seeking a "global perspective", so maybe this is PR for other nations more so than a US audience. Twitter doesn't do a good job of reflecting varying perspectives even domestically in the US., since they regularly disallow centrist or conservative posts on a variety of controversial topics. When they take this mode of operation internationally, it is even more unacceptable since Twitter (and Facebook) are essentially propagandizing other nations and engaging in a slow-moving cultural shaping mission when they censor speech from those nations according to their own political or cultural opinions. I am expecting that the "global perspective" they seek is one that agrees with their way of doing things, not an honest readiness to accept ideological/cultural diversity. If they at all cared about this, they would first start by correcting their mistakes within the US.

Other countries are aware of these issues, and the risk that Twitter and other big tech companies bring to their societies. We've seen leaders like Angela Merkel (https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/11/germanys-merkel-hits-out-at-...) and Emmanuel Macron (https://www.axios.com/macron-social-media-bans-trump-twitter...) point out the obvious issues with Twitter banning Trump, and it was a wake up call to those leaders. With leftist activists now calling for other countries' leaders to be banned (https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-trump-banned-bolsona...), I would say those nations have every right to be alarmed.

It's ironic that we place such a focus on foreign actors influencing our society in America. We often hear about Russian interference or other such scary activity, but the same scrutiny is never given to domestic actors who are waging an all out war on diversity of thought. Twitter is one of those bad actors, and cannot be trusted to uphold free speech principles. We need alternatives to them, and the other companies complicit in propagandizing our society - regular censors/deplatformers like Apple, Google, Amazon, etc.