Trump Allegedly Demanded Parler Kick Off His Critics If It Wanted Him On The Platform
from the so-free-speechy dept
There has been a lot of speculation regarding whether or not Donald Trump would set up his own social network or if he'd just join one of the struggling social networks which only seem to exist in order to cater to Trump's most fervent supporters. Parler, obviously, gets a lot of attention and earlier this year there were reports that, while Trump was still President, he had entered into negotiations to take an equity stake in Parler and then embrace the platform as his preferred social network. As we noted back then, "for whatever reasons, the agreement did not materialize."
A new book by Michael Wolff suggests one possible reason. It claims that Trump demanded that Parler had to block Trump's critics from its platform:
One curious point of consideration for the [Trump] family [the morning of January 6th] — prescient of the events that would shortly unfold — was a follow-up to a discussion initiated some months before by aides and family. Trump representatives, working with Trump-family members, had approached Parler, the social network backed by Bob Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, far-right exponents and large Trump contributors. They had floated a proposition that Trump, after he left office, become an active member of Parler, moving much of his social-media activity there from Twitter. In return, Trump would receive 40 percent of Parler’s gross revenues and the service would ban anyone who spoke negatively about him.
Parler was balking only at this last condition.
Of course, this is absolutely hilarious for so many reasons. For years, Trump has been whining about how social media shouldn't be allowed to ban him and his friends, and couched it in (false) claims of supporting "free speech." Yet, here he was apparently making it clear that he not only wanted active content moderation on Parler, but that the moderation had to be directed at anyone who criticized him.
How very free speechy of him.
Of course, if Parler decided it did want to do this, it could. The 1st Amendment would protect such a decision, and with it, Section 230 would protect it from being sued for such decisions.
I do wonder if this was some kind of reaction to the Knight Institute case that established that, while he was President, Trump couldn't block followers from accounts he used for conducting official Presidential business. You could see how he (and his associates) might think that a neat workaround to this 1st Amendment conundrum would be an agreement to have the platform do the blocking instead (of course, if Trump were still President, that would present another set of 1st Amendment issues, but thankfully we don't have to deal with those now).
I am, however, quite excited to see what the crew of Trump-loving folks who show up in our comments think about this. After all, they regularly insist that they really just want social media companies to never ban anyone.
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Filed Under: banning critics, content moderation, donald trump, ideological bias, section 230, social media
Companies: parler
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Silly Techdirt, freedom of speech only applies to my speech, not the other guy. #sarcasm
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Trump: "Stop the censorship! First Amendment! I have a right to speak!"
Also Trump: "Kick those critics off the platform if you want me around!"
Yet as usual Trump cultists will leap to the defense of Dear Leader because the image of the deific superman they envision him as in that world of their own they live in is impervious to factual reality.
P.T Barnum must be rolling in envy in his grave. Imagine a third-rate grifter and con man ending up with a 70 million strong base blindly devoted to his every whim...
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Another easy one Mike, they will insist that this is all just "fake news" and Trump never said anything like that.
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Scrolling down just a few comments and yup, that's exactly the excuse that was used, 'fake news!'
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LOL, and out of everybody who could have said it, of course it was Koby.
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Fake News! Liberal Bias! Hearsay! Slander! Oh, and Fake NEWS!
(Did I do it right?)
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Only if you raised a fist and then put it down to continue to walk on your knuckles.
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Re: Re:
Wouldn't that interfere with crawling?
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Re: Re: Re:
What about slithering. Or sleazing, which was He Who Lost former mode of travel when he was nothing but a slumlord.
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For the proper tone you may want to drop the original version of "Fake news" - Lügenpresse! in there somewhere as quite a few of the Trump cult do. What was good enough for the german national socialists in 1933 turned out to be equally good for the alt-right of today.
I wish this was just hyperbole rather than wording actually dropped by alt-righters on these boards.
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Right-wing social media has too much of an anti-liberal bias. Surely there must be some law we can enact to take care of this issue. An equality declaration of some sort, a doctrine dedicated to allowing the fair and equitable expression of opposing ideas, could handle that.
…or we could all come to our fucking senses and laugh at Trump for being such a basic bitch that he can’t handle even the mildest criticism of his bullshit.
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A fragile ego is a common trait of dictators and wannabe dictators throughout history.
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More proof that ALL speech should be heard, with individuals able to filter out (or in) what they prefer.
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Great minds think alike
"I strongly disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death my right to shut you up."
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He Wouldn't Fake It Again, Would He?
It looks like this is the same Michael Wolf who claimed in a past book that Mueller drafted a 3 count indictment against Trump that was just sitting on his desk waiting to be signed. The the story was so fake that the special council's office had to come out with a denial and that it was just Fake News. This guy will dream up anything to get suckers to buy his newest book. But I gotta give him credit tho. He's found a LOT of suckers!
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You’d believe Trump if he said he sucked off Bigfoot, wouldn’t you?
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Re: He Wouldn't Fake It Again, Would He?
Go ahead, say Fake again :p
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Re: He Wouldn't Fake It Again, Would He?
“But I gotta give him credit tho. He's found a LOT of suckers!”
You ain’t wrong bro...
oh you didn’t mean Trump...
how awkward, for you.
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Re: He Wouldn't Fake It Again, Would He?
God, you are such a predictable moron.
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Re: He Wouldn't Fake It Again, Would He?
Like... about 70 million?
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Trump is a hypocrite? Say it isn't so!
Truly shocking.
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Skin so very very thin...
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“Allegedly”….
Trump is an ass but this article is so biased to be nothing but propaganda. Allegedly he was also a Russian spy, dictator, fascist, etc. How many “Allegedly” stories is the left going to get excited about only to then ignore the retractions or corrections months/years later, while ignoring the proven Biden/Harris scandals.
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propaganda for what.... exactly?
Please point me to all these retractions you speak of.
Which are what..... exactly?
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You should’ve stopped right there…
…before you exposed an asshole.
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So, when is Hillary getting locked up?
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[Projects facts not in evidence]
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As is typical of right-wing sheep, you obviously lack any grasp of the concept of proof.
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So when Trump does something questionable he's just an ass, but when Harris or Biden also does something questionable it's a scandal? If you want, I can provide a list of every publicly known "scandal" for both Trump, Biden and Harris. One of the three have a very long list of "scandals" (and lawsuits) spanning at least 40 years, the other two not so much.
One of the most glaring things you people ignore is Trump's documented pattern of sexual misconduct where he even have bragged about it in some instances, but you have no problems condemning Biden's alleged inappropriate behavior towards a handful of women. I've never heard Biden loudly proclaim "I just start kissing them, I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it, you can do anything ... Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything."
Considering what Trump did to his critics on Twitter before the Knights First Amendment lawsuit, this story is more likely than unlikely.
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He was. Or did we all collectively imagine what happened on January 6, 2021 like the Mandela effect?
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Re: That’s dedication.
Wow you went and made an entire profile just so people could line up to kick you in the dick.
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Re: Re: That’s dedication.
Yeah, it looks like Baghdad Bob has grown tired of posting anonymously so is back to his old games of building spurious accounts in the hope people will take him seriously.
Even back on Torrentfreak we had to inform him that doesn't work too well, given that what is recognizable isn't the nickname but the particular odor of shit trickling out of it...
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"Allegedly he was also a Russian spy..."
No, proven is only that he was given a 400 million dollar loan with the Russian State Bank standing as guarantor right before he started that "self-funded" presidential campaign of his.
Man, Vlad is really generous to his friends, isn't he?
"...dictator..."
I guess to a trumpist the fact there's a bullet list of times where Trump unabashedly lauded dictators for being dictatorial isn't enough to show his aspirations. This from the people who thought Obama wearing a Tan suit was beyond the pale.
"...fascist..."
OK, there you have a point, according to experts;
The problem you alt-right asshats seem to have is that The Donald himself was all too keen to turn "allegations" into actual confessions. All the kings horses and all the king's men couldn't keep Trump from being openly green with envy on twitter while he was brown-nosing up to Vlad and Kim Jong-Un.
To the alt-right, reality is now apparently "leftist". Seriously, Baghdad Bob, at some point you ought to realize that when all you've got is nonsense of this caliber, no one reacts to it in any other way than pointing and laughing.
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“Allegedly”….
Trump is an ass but this article is so biased to be nothing but propaganda. Allegedly he was also a Russian spy, dictator, fascist, etc. How many “Allegedly” stories is the left going to get excited about only to then ignore the retractions or corrections months/years later, while ignoring the proven Biden/Harris scandals.
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Don't you bots coordinate. This exact text was already posted as a commnet about 11 hours earlier.
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You forgot to log in as another user
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Oh, it's just him trying to once again dodge the spam filter...by spamming the forums under a multitude of nicknames.
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Sourc
Do you have a source more credible than Micheal Wolff. Even the NYT wasn't buying Wolf's fantasies in "Fire and Furry"
"“I believe parts of it, and then there are other parts that are factually wrong ... “He believes in larger truths and narratives. So he creates a narrative that is notionally true, that’s conceptually true. The details are often wrong.” ~NYT Maggie Haberman
So even someone as left wing admits that Wolf tends to create narratives that are factually untrue.
Wolf is one of those 'fake but true' kind of scum.
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Bruner
Hello
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