Following the permanent banning of conservative commentator Milo Yiannopoulos from using its service, and the suspension of the account of Glenn Reynolds, aka @instapundit and creator of the Instapundit blog, a University of Tennessee law professor and a conservative columnist for USA TODAY; Jack Dorsey has decided that Twitter can only be a 'safe space' if veteran Turkish reporter Mahir Zeynalov with 131,000 followers – described by some as "one of the few voices speaking the truth about the situation in Turkey" – is blocked… On the word of Turkish president Erdogan…
Twitter told me that it will block my account at the request of Turkey for "instigating terrorism," putting an end to my ~7-year reporting.
— Mahir Zeynalov (@MahirZeynalov) September 26, 2016
The ban comes on the heels of his daring to report on the treatment of jailed journalists under Erdogan's tyrannical new anti-extremism laws…
My chronicle of jailed journos caused such an uproar around the world that @camanpour invited me to highlight more.https://t.co/F3rKdbWohg
— Mahir Zeynalov (@MahirZeynalov) August 3, 2016
After writing for HuffPo, LA Times, and Al Arabiya, Zeylanov signs off…
Thank you for all the support folks! Your solidarity is priceless. http://pic.twitter.com/zWWrbygcYp
— Mahir Zeynalov (@MahirZeynalov) September 26, 2016
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We return to what Milo said in an interview post-ban with CNBC's Michelle Caruso-Cabrera to sum up this farce…
"The company is entitled to do what it likes. The problem is it's lying to users. Jack Dorsey says that twitter is the place you go if you want to express yourself. That's a lie. There is a systematic campaign against conservative and liberatrian points of view on Twitter.
Twitter is perfectly happy to host ISIS, to host death threats against Donald Trump supporters and they do nothing in any of these cases. But if you make a joke about a feminist, or if you dislike the new Ghostbusters movie, or if you have the audacity to dislike the work in Hollywood of someone who happens to be black, or happens to be a woman and you get suspended, that's absurd."
Whether there is any profound significance to this latest fiasco, remains to be determined. The truth is that those who want to use twitter, are free to use it, and likewise are free to decide who to follow and block – one can argue that it is strange that a platform that prides itself in its "free speech" should decide when and in what cases it should intervene and censor or block users.
And now, Jack Dorsey has decided that the word of a clear dictator is good enough arbiter of what and who is free to speak…
“It is not only the person who pulls the trigger, but those who made that possible who should be defined as terrorists, regardless of their title,” Turkish President Tayyip Recep Erdogan said on Monday, in an attempt to convince parliament to include journalists, politicians, academics, and activists under the country’s anti-extremism laws.
via http://ift.tt/2dmrGzC Tyler Durden