Elon Musk has abandoned Twitter’s COVID-19 misinformation policy after vowing to make the site a free speech champion. The Telegraph has the story.
“Effective November 23rd 2022, Twitter is no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misleading information policy,” a notice on its website reads.
A page on Twitter’s website titled “COVID-19 misleading information policy” now redirects users to Twitter’s user help homepage.
That page previously said: “Content that is demonstrably false or misleading and may lead to significant risk of harm (such as increased exposure to the virus, or adverse effects on public health systems) may not be shared on Twitter.”
Other, more generalised policies on posting deliberately false or misleading information on Twitter are still listed on the company’s website and appear to be being enforced.
Meanwhile, the maker of the Fortnite series of games has come to Musk’s defence after the Twitter owner accused Apple of threatening to pull the social network from its App Store.
Mr. Musk attacked the iPhone maker with a flurry of tweets on Monday, saying the company had cut its Twitter advertising and threatened to bump the social network from Apple’s App Store.
The SpaceX chief executive asked whether Apple hated free speech, criticised its app fees and even pondered whether the tech giant might go after another of his companies, Tesla.
Mr Musk, 51, also posted a meme suggesting he planned to “go to war” rather than pay the 30% fee.
Tim Sweeney, the chief executive of Epic Games, which makes the hugely successful Fortnite series, gave his support, calling Apple “a menace to freedom worldwide”.
In 2019, Epic sued Apple for anticompetitive behaviour with its App Store, but a judge ruled largely in favour of the world’s most valuable company last year.
Both Epic and Apple are appealing the case after the judge also said Apple should allow developers to link customers to their own payment systems.
Mr. Sweeney said: “Epic attempted to open discussions for five years, from 2015 to 2020. Apple would never talk. This is chronicled in the public record of the Epic v Apple antitrust trial. Apple is a menace to freedom worldwide. They maintain an illegal monopoly on app distribution, they use it to control American discourse, and they’re endangering protesters in China by storing sensitive customer data in a state-owned data center.”
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Ron DeSantis has waded in to the row, saying: “If Apple responds to that by nuking them from the App Store, I think that would be a huge, huge mistake and it would be a really raw exercise of monopolistic power that would merit a response from the United States Congress.”
This article has been updated.
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Indeed one should be under no illusions.
However it’s arguable that the USA treats its own citizens better than Russia does its own citizens – rule of law is stronger, and basic freedoms are better protected. The same could be said for other liberal democracies (though any advantage we have is fading fast, accelerated by the covid folly and evil). I’m not arguing however that this justifies actions this alliance takes around the world to protect its interests, just that it could be argued it’s perhaps less immoral to do business with the USA than it is with Russia – but then is it less immoral to do business with China, or Saudi Arabia?
…just that it could be argued it’s perhaps less immoral to do business with the USA than it is with Russia – but then is it less immoral to do business with China, or Saudi Arabia?
Try telling the US not to do business with those three countries and it would laugh in your face. Lots of thing could be argued, but sometimes it’s best not to bother.
Conquest and plunder. Twas ever thus.
Also note that the USA spent about $2T on the war — at least a fair proportion of this money went to all sorts of dubious entities in the USA. The population of the USA will be paying for this for decades (probably via inflation).
The UK is similar (except that the money spent also goes to all sorts of dubious entities in the USA).
Correct. After 20 years of occupation, Afghans are no better off, and Western tax-payers are worse off. The main parties who benefited are Western defence contractors and Afghan warlords.
Do you have any evidence for your assertion that Western defence contractors benefited.
There would have been business in certain consumables but those would have had, in any case, a limited shelf life.
The increase in defence spending by the U.S. over the last twenty years has resulted, predominantly, from renewed tensions with Russia and China. Defence Companies were required to produce enhanced capability systems, the effectiveness of which are now being seen in the drubbing dished out every day to Russian forces in Ukraine
The war in Iraq also played a role, much more so than the war in Afghanistan, but the big five contractors didn’t make a lot of money from the fighting—most of which was conducted with drones, helicopters, armoured vehicles, and rifles.
Most of the money spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were for personnel, training, and health care.
Also note that the U.S. voters were right behind their government in making the intervention in Afghanistan.
And British voters were right behind their government in assisting the U.S.
Pretty much everything which is said about Russia can be said about Ukraine. It was corrupt and authoritarian, firing missiles and artillery shells into civilian areas in the East of the country prior to Feb 2022. The scale and destruction is bigger now, but Ukraine is far from being innocent if you take into account their tactics confirmed by Amnesty Int. There is also plenty of evidence of civilians saying that Ukrainian troops apart from positioning their military equipment in the residential areas also prevented evacuation and even firing directly at and killing people. So this quoted report by UN shouldn’t be taken uncritically. Especially that opinions of the majority of international organizations are far from unbiased and skewed heavily to the US/West point of view bar some rare exceptions, like said AI report. If Russia are not the good guys, end of story, then you can’t explain why people cross the border to the Russian controlled territory as recent CNN video unwillingly revealed.
This is not to dispute that civilians are dying from Russian shelling which is of course a tragedy. It just gives a bit more colors to the black and white picture which is being painted by every MSM outlet and even DS, apart from odd articles of Noah Carl (kudos for that).
‘US standing up to Russia’ idea is seriously flawed. US is not fighting Russia risking destruction and deaths of its own citizens. What it does rather is selling weapons to Ukraine and NATO members on an unimaginable scale. It also got European LPG market all for itself now.
But it’s a lot harder to control the masses if you don’t prevent them from seeing things in anything other than black and white…
The problem I see is in the use of typical phrases like “the US is good”, “Russia are rhe bad guys” and “the US is the richest country in the world”.
The actions of the US government or the US military are actions decided by a small group.of people. Same goes for Russia.
These wars and conflicts are fights between the ruling elites of countries into which the populations are dragged in to be played like chips on a casino table.
Leaders rile us up and drag us in. Biut in the end all the spoils go to the elites and the cost paid by the suckered population.
That is how it has always been.
Regarding the US being the richest nation in the world, I don’t even know what that means. Iit’s governemnt certainly has the biggest debt in the world. Are the people the richest? I don’t know.
This bundling of millions of people into simple catch all phrases for the purpose of making things more readable and understandable perpetuate a sense that nations are.monolothic in their actions and responsibilities. And they just aren’t.
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220810-economists-urge-us-to-return-afghanistan-s-frozen-assets
“We are deeply concerned by the compounding economic and humanitarian catastrophes unfolding in Afghanistan, and, in particular, by the role of US policy in driving them,” 71 economists and development experts said in a letter to US President Joe Biden and US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
“Without access to its foreign reserves, the central bank of Afghanistan cannot carry out its normal, essential functions,” they wrote.
we should not forget Syria where US occupies oil rich parts of the country.
https://mronline.org/2022/08/16/u-s-troops-loot-84-oil-tankers-from-syria-smuggle-them-into-iraq/
Yes there is a lot of evidence from various sources. The USA invade, occupy and plunder…..but apparently they are the good guys?. I think less and less people are buying it…..
I’d hope that people did their own research, but you can’t underestimate propaganda
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trpiChRRnZE
Irish MEP Clare Daly: Multilateralism Means Like-Minded Partners Forming A Club…
Let us not forget that the United States Armed Forces, in alliance with this country, participated in the defeat of Germany in both World Wars and that of Japan in the second of those wars.
The people of Kuwait have also not forgotten their liberation by a coalition led by the USA in 1991.
Kosovo would not exist without the USAF.
Nation States, national governments, have no principles as we have seen over the last two years.
Democracy: the least worst form of government.
As cynical as it may sound, there really are NO good guys, just varying shades of evil it seems.
Did the Taleban really expect to get all that top-class, 21st century weapony for nothing?
‘there can be no justification for firing missiles and artillery shells into civilian areas, racking up thousands of casualties’
Noah, you should watch UK Column news. There you would hear, from the many independent sources they access, that Ukraine has purposely been using civilian buildings (eg schools, hospitals) and areas so that Russia has been forced to aim at them. And the figures about civilians being killed are not what they seem. I am sure you can’t be believing the MSM figures and reporting. You need to watch UK Column’s news on a regular basis to get an objective and true picture. I am by no means saying that Putin is an angel of light, but things aren’t what they seem. And Ukraine has committed just the atrocities you mention against the Donbas region for many years (since 2014 at least). As well as other stuff.