You Never Know Which Tweets Have Legs

Snapshot of the tweets with red arrows added

On Tuesday President Trump fired his usual barrage of tweets on a variety of subjects, but two of them--on the vulnerability of mail-in ballots to fraud--still are being hotly discussed. (The Twitter link is here.)

The reason for the tweets' legs is not the importance of voter fraud. (Is it more important than the coronavirus, the stock market, or FBI wiretaps?)

No, it's that Twitter for the first time included a fact-check button on anyone's tweets, it happened to be the President, and everyone noticed.

The ensuing discussion over the difference between a platform, a publisher, whether social media is one or the other, the legal liability implications, the well-documented (Democratic vs Republican political donations, conservatives getting fired, stories that are page 1 vs. page 50, etc.) liberal bias of Silicon Valley tech companies, "shadow-banning", and government regulation will likely last a few more days.

The Chronicle's political writer Joe Garofoli says Twitter's "fact-check" button was--whether deliberate or not--a trap that enabled the President to run against "California liberals in Silicon Valley":

To Trump, railing on Silicon Valley generates the same reaction as pounding other “elites” like the media and Democratic governors who don’t want to open the their states for business quickly enough. It’s a well-worn tactic that has kept his conservative base with him through three-plus years in office.

“California is an easy target for conservatives because of the image that we’re ‘freaky San Francisco’ and Hollywood people,” said Donnie Fowler, a former Democratic operative who has worked to bridge the gap between Silicon Valley and Washington for two decades and is now the CEO at Tech4America. “It reinforces their messages.”

The Wall Street Journal, to be clear, doesn't support Twitter management, employees, and owners' liberal views (let's not get into that now, dear reader) but does support Twitter's right to run its own site however it wants to.

Facebook, YouTube and Twitter aren’t utilities or soapboxes in the park. They’re businesses that earn piles of money by selling ads against your missives. They’re within their rights to set community standards and spike posts they deem a violation. If this feels suffocating, log off. That includes you, @realDonaldTrump.

Your humble blogger does wish Silicon Valley did not engage in viewpoint discrimination--sometimes blatant, sometimes subtle--but regulation is not the answer. If you don't like it, change the channel or better yet, start your own.