THREAD: As the founding head of @TwitterGov, I have long been a vocal defender of @Twitter’s permissiveness of @realDonaldTrump’s otherwise-violations of Twitter Rules (1/11)

The “newsworthiness” exemption often held true. If the President was a madman or a fraud, or both, let the spotlight shine on it for the populace to see. Don’t have a private company shield the public gaze from the meltdown and pretend the emperor has clothes. (2/11)
The time for that sunlight has long passed. No one can claim ignorance to his delusion; the citizenry has already chosen whether to swill the toxic Kool Aid. A few more Tweets or less won’t affect that. (3/11)
The stronger argument was always that there was something exceptional about the presidency. That there are actions, when taken by the President, that must be held to a different standard than when taken by a private individual. (4/11)
An early example of this was a series of @realDonaldTrump Tweets threatening the North Korean regime early in his term. Violent threats such as these would normally violate the law and Twitter Rules. (5/11)
But threats by the President to another power are a statement of foreign policy. Indeed, the POTUS is the ONLY one empowered by the law to make such threats. As such, the POTUS is the ONLY one that should be exempt from the Twitter Rules here as well. That remains true. (6/11)
Similarly, the President takes a unique oath to “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” and the processes it enshrines. “Normal” Twitter users take no such oath. (7/11)
The President is also, more than ANY OTHER PERSON, directed by the Constitution to remain arms-length from the Congress. The separation of the Executive from meddling in the business of the Legislative can be considered the core focus of the founding document itself. (8/11)
So yes, the President remains an exceptional case. Just as the President was uniquely EXEMPT from policies potentially violated in cases like the N. Korea Tweets and others, his actions yesterday were uniquely flagrant violations SPECIFICALLY because he is the President. (9/11)
Accordingly, @Twitter should follow @Facebook’s lead and suspend @realDonaldTrump’s account. (10/11)
I say this knowing full well the action would likely feed his narrative and bears little to no impact, but it is the only policy consistent with the application of presidential exemptions applied to date. (11/11)

More from Politics

"3 million people are estimated not to have official photo ID, with ethnic minorities more at risk". They will "have to contact their council to confirm their ID if they want to vote"

This is shameful legislation, that does nothing to tackle the problems with UK elections.THREAD


There is no evidence in-person voter fraud is a problem, and it wd be near-impossible to organise on an effective scale. Campaign finance violations, digital disinformation & manipulation of postal voting are bigger issues, but these are crimes of the powerful, not the powerless.

In a democracy, anything that makes it harder to vote - in particular, anything that disadvantages one group of voters - should face an extremely high bar. Compulsory voter ID takes a hammer to 3 million legitimate voters (disproportionately poor & BAME) to crack an imaginary nut

If the government is concerned about the purity of elections, it should reflect on its own conduct. In 2019 it circulated doctored news footage of an opponent, disguised its twitter feed as a fake fact-checking site, and ran adverts so dishonest that even Facebook took them down.

Britain's electoral law largely predates the internet. There is little serious regulation of online campaigning or the cash that pays for it. That allows unscrupulous campaigners to ignore much of the legal framework erected since the C19th to guard against electoral misconduct.

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I just finished Eric Adler's The Battle of the Classics, and wanted to say something about Joel Christiansen's review linked below. I am not sure what motivates the review (I speculate a bit below), but it gives a very misleading impression of the book. 1/x


The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x

Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x

The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x

It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x