I don't understand this Twitter / "free speech" nonsense in the sense that Twitter is a privately-owned platform, it is not a public square. Long ago it was made clear that "public" areas owned by private companies like shopping malls are not places where free speech can be had. So uh why would restricting speech in a virtual privately-owned public area be any different?
@mairin I agree, but I think it got complicated when Twitter became a primary way citizens receive information from and convey free speech political opinions to their government representatives, without the government first securing the kinds of public interest rules that have long existed (imperfectly, but existed) for other forms of private media carrying public messages. So now we have a weird hybrid public/private thing that is very bad.
@johns Is the newspaper / 4th estate another? Bc nor just anybody gets to "speak" in the newspaper. An editor has to allow it. There's the whole sense of journalistic integrity / practices. But Twitter is weird in that it occupies a similar purpose of informing like a newspaper but anyone can "contribute" a story and the RTs sort of show a collective editorial approval from other users (all manipulatable tho ofc) - so is journalism free speech or not?
