divided

> Oh, please. These issues were not about child exploitation.

Your original statement conveys the FBI should never ask Twitter to take down accounts. My response was such that there _are_ good reasons for the FBI to ask Twitter to take down accounts.

If we now agree on that, the issue is no longer requesting to ban accounts vs not requesting to ban accounts, but instead where the line on account bans exist. This is a much more gray debate, wouldn’t you agree?

> It was the heavy hand of governent coming down on citizens over jokes. Parody and satire have always been given wide interpretations in the courts.

I agree these were intended as jokes, and parody and satire are given wide interpretations in court. But they do have limits. Presumably you wouldn’t want someone to lose their right to vote because someone else intentionally misinformed them, even if its intention was satire. I do think instead of an account ban it could be resolved with a misinformation notice, but we might be presuming the FBI official has more knowledge of online platforms than they do. It did seem from the emails Twitter was ultimately the one to decide the correct handling, so I don’t blame the FBI for just alerting Twitter of potential violations.

> The fact that you point to the FBI website as proof they were acting in good faith shows a remarkable faith in the government you have.

Having worked for the federal government, I can inform you it is a huge hassle to get anything published. If they publish it, every line would be analyzed for compliance and in this case probably put in front of lawyers. They can still make mistakes, but it’s overly paranoid to believe a government website would advertise unconstitutional violations of rights for years.

> It is not the governments job to protect people's rights.

Objectively false.

> The gov't violates rights all the time.

True! But these violations are failures in the government for doing its job properly. Violations often lead to punishment or scandal. It wouldn’t be a scandal if people held the belief the government wasn’t supposed to protect your rights.

> It's the job of the third party institutions like the media to expose and for the courts to render judgment.

…the courts are part of the government…

> The FBI should not be asking Twitter to take down accounts. Period.

Have you considered the real consequences of this? If the FBI for example finds accounts linked to child exploitation, drug trafficking, or terrorism; should they not ask Twitter to take down those accounts? If they find accounts linked to Russian, Chinese, or Iranian farms who are using it to amplify certain messages in order to try to destabilize the US, should they just say hey that’s fine?

Further, from what I read of the tweets, it appears what those accounts wrote may have been illegal after all.

Here’s a quote from an FBI website:

> Report potential election crimes—such as disinformation about the manner, time, or place of voting—to the FBI.

I’m not sure exactly what laws those are referring to, but it appears deceiving people about voting may be illegal. So although you and I and other smart people might read their tweets and think “haha!”, not everyone may read it as a joke.

It is the government’s job to protect the rights of its citizens. Freedom of speech is not absolute (slander, libel, threats, yelling fire in a crowded theatre, etc.), and in this case I think it’s reasonable that one’s right to freedom of speech shouldn’t supersede another’s right to vote.

A Twitter ban is certainly less damaging than criminal charges over whatever statute it violates.

That's a good devil's advocate, but it's worth pointing out minor children consent (with parental consent, too) to surgeries all the time. Whether that's cancer treatments, surgeries to repair bone fractures, plastic surgeries, etc.

I believe bottom surgeries are all but unheard of for under 18, but there were 203 top surgeries performed on minors in 2021 (safe to assume vast majority of these were either 16 or 17). In comparison, more than 8,000 minors had breast augmentation in 2019. 4,700 girls had breast reduction surgery in 2010 (apologies, these were the newest numbers I could find, clearly after more than a decade it's reasonable to believe there are more reductions than implants). In 2015, there were 7,021 breast reductions for boys.

It seems to me like if the genuine concern was over minors making decisions about their body that aren't reversible, we would be seeing equal and proportional outrage for these other surgeries, right?

Edit for your edit :) Gender affirming care appears to be what's best for kids according to the majority of research and the major medical associations in the US. The experts certainly could be wrong, but generally speaking I prefer having doctors treating me in a hospital and pilots flying my planes.

Thanks for the notice, I will try to do better.

Well, it’s sorta helpful to better understand your mindset. Of course you don’t see any connection between the Enlightenment and trans rights.

It would suck to realize one’s ideological underpinnings are the same as those that have been on the losing side for centuries and are almost universally recognized as the “bad guys” now.

It is really cute to believe your beliefs will win out in the next decades. Again another great attempt at humor, bravo!

I commend you at your attempt at humor. It’s a solid approach when losing an argument.

A trend that has lasted decades? Try at least centuries.

Egalitarianism and tolerance is a cornerstone of Enlightenment thinking. Constitutions gave power to the people over kings. Capitalism gave individuals a chance to rival the power of vassals who were determined by a caste system.

I’d argue it’s a trend that’s gone on much longer, but progress was much slower when access to information and ideas was not the same as the last century.

It’s not to say there aren’t setbacks, but those setbacks have always been temporary or localized.

Now can something completely prevent this progress? Yeah, but it leads to very dystopian futures that everyone should hope to avoid.

Be a friend and share a few examples.

To be fair, this isn’t the sort of argument you’d want to make with any historical knowledge.

At some point in history, a lot of extremely bad opinions went from “almost everyone” to “vast majority” to an ever shrinking minority. Just to name a few:

- black people are inferior - women are inferior - gay people shouldn’t be allowed to marry - Native Americans are savages - Depression/anxiety should be stigmatized

Each of these opinions followed a predictable but long path where more exposure to better opinions eventually won out. I’m unaware of any progressive opinion on egalitarianism that has failed to become mainstream given a long enough time horizon.

I don’t see any reason why this current “debate” will turn out any differently.

The peer comment to mine by dragontamer sums it up better than I could.

I’m not saying problems didn’t exist before Elon, but Musk has been a net negative for the company who thus far has only managed to make a bad situation worse.

I respect your choice and to each their own, but to characterize Elon as a wartime CEO when he’s caused 80% of the crisis is a very generous characterization. His “leadership” thus far has been sporadic, ill thought out, and reckless.

I agree, I was misinformed. Too many articles state both acquisition or $1B fine were viable routes for Twitter, but other sources with more solid analysis look to contradict that.