Twitter has been playing a fun new game!
A while back, they revoked Milo's blue tick,
No, not that one! The "verified" blue tick,
because, it seems, his opinions were so disfavored that his identity had become uncertain, much as an expired or revoked driver's license no longer serves to identify the bearer.
Now, they've got this new "Ministry of Free Speech" or whatever, and its first official act was to suspend the account of Some Other McCain.
All this is maybe popular, for the moment, with the current crop of Social Justice Howler Monkeys... but how will it go over with the shareholders? (Yes, the management of a publicly-traded corporation - Twitter is one, and the Committee of User Safety is acting as corporate management - has responsibilities to the owners: the pension funds and whatnot that put up the capital for all the fun and games.)
Consider: the SJHMs aren't paying for the service. It's "free". To the extent that Twitter has a revenue model - it does have some sort of revenue model, doesn't it? - the revenue comes from advertising (I assume there's advertising there; I have good filters in place to make it go away) and data mining. Both of which depend on traffic volume and user count.
So, outrage storms are good for business. To the extent that banning the occasional high-profile user stirs up an outrage storm, that's good for business.
But, silence too many of the users who provoke outrage? Or merely make them feel unwelcome, so they take their opinions elsewhere? No more outrage storms. Less traffic. Fewer users.
Twitter needs the provocative opinions there, for the outrage machine to get outraged about. Make them go away, and all gets calm, cozy, and quiet
And that's not good business.
Afterthought: Maybe the whole thing isn't meant to be good business?
According to the rumor mill, Twitter doesn't have a revenue model, is burning through Other People's Capital at a ferocious rate, and is effectively being run as a communication channel for Progressives organizing for the upcoming election.
So... I was speculating about venture capital being a conduit whereby the contents of pension funds could be funneled to various sorts of cronies? Perhaps Twitter (the corporate entity) is just a way to use third- and fourth-parties' retirement funds for partisan political messaging?
And furthermore: For First Amendment purposes, as has been noted elsewhere, Twitter Inc. is a private company, as distinguished from a government agency.
But, from a financial perspective, it is not a private corporation. It is a publicly-traded corporation, partly owned by random members of the public, and the money it's spending is very definitely Other People's. How it chooses to run (or ruin) its business is therefore a matter of concern to securities regulators.
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