> the US right wing looked like it was about to build a complete alternative internet for a while there
This would seem to imply that the established internet, what we had before this relenting, was somehow left wing. Is that an accurate description of your view? When did this relenting take place?
> they just partially marginalised when the censorship backed off.
Is it your position that Truth Social (the social network started by the current president of the united states) is currently a marginalized space?
> That isn't how feudal revolts work in my understanding; typically peasants just got squished by better armed, armoured and organised soldier classes.
I think it's interesting that you posit this as a fight between the "peasants" and the "soliders". I'm assuming, to make sense of your analogy, that the "peasants" in this case is the current president of the united states and Elon Musk. the "soliders" would then be "Jeff Bezos" and "Sundar Pichai"
No, the left wing wasn't really involved. It looked from the outside like a pocket of authoritarians settled in the US intelligence services. Given the priorities of the Trump establishment on starting Term 2 when they moved very quickly to gut the US propaganda services I think Trump's people came to a similar view. And the relenting came when it was obvious that the companies involved were going to start suffering commercial consequences. Or, in cases like Twitter, got bought out by prominent right-wing figures.
> Is it your position that Truth Social (the social network started by the current president of the united states) is currently a marginalized space?
Yeah. It isn't really operating on the same scale as Twitter and it only exists because Twitter felt the obvious way to construe "To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th." was as glorification of violence [0]. It's commercial wisdom is unclear.
> I think it's interesting that you posit this as a fight between the "peasants" and the "soliders".
I'm almost positing the opposite, NOT(it is a fight between peasants and soldiers). That is why I think the feudal meme is a mistake - this isn't a situation where the powers that be in the tech world can actually bring consequences down on a class of people. The people have freedom.
[0] It was bizarre. I've kept a copy of Titter's announcement saved to disk as a reminder of how crazy groupthink can get. Anyone willing to state such a stupid theory in public has to believe it.
That's fair. You didn't mention the left wing at any point, and I made an assumption.
This is veering quite quickly into unsubstantiated claims of collusion and conspiracy. You're weaving a network of secret deep state authoritarians secretly colluding with tech CEOs, and leaving no trace. It's honestly pretty close to QAnon, which is a huge red flag for me. I can't follow you there, and therefore can't make any substantial arguments for you.
What I would like to point out is the historical revisionism of Elon Musk buying twitter to weed out the subversive forces. He tried to get out of the deal, but the establishment forced him to see it through.
> I've kept a copy of Titter's announcement saved to disk as a reminder of how crazy groupthink can get. Anyone willing to state such a stupid theory in public has to believe it.
The announcement twitter made mentions that you have to take those tweets in context of the whole Jan 6. insurrection event. When you say that it's not incitement of violence, should I take that to mean you believe that the armed insurrection was not connected to Donald Trump? or do you believe that it was but that the further tweets weren't a further escalation of that conflict?
> The people have freedom.
I understand your argument for that then. I would caution that by saying that your conclusion hinges heavily on whether you believe Donald Trump is actually a popular reformist, or if you believe he is an elitist authoritarian. Your argument is quite close to "This can't be feudalism, the lords wants what's best for us", which is a quite unconvincing argument.
I'm really not, I just read political news from time to time. The Twitter files [0] were front page material for a few weeks, there isn't really any argument about whether the big social media companies are coordinating with US intelligence. They have regular meetings and there is some cross-pollination of employees.
It's hardly traceless, and it is good stuff to keep abreast of.
> What I would like to point out is the historical revisionism of Elon Musk buying twitter to weed out the subversive forces.
Again, you seem to be reading more than I'm writing with this one. You asked when the relenting happened, I picked a rough date on the timeline. I don't think it is remotely controversial to say that he's made Twitter more accommodating for voices from the US right wing.
> When you say that it's not incitement of violence, should I take that to mean you believe that the armed insurrection was not connected to Donald Trump?
I mean, if we're talking about the ~100 people who turned up armed [1] then I think it would have been easier for Trump to maintain the element of surprise and just hire some goons rather than making whiny statements on Twitter that require a Doctorate of Crazy to detect violent intent. Maybe even arm them all with guns. He is said to be quite wealthy.
It is an interesting open question of how many of those hundred people decided to come armed because he wasn't going to attend the inauguration. Although I have always applauded Trump's ingenious follow-up of not attending said inauguration to make it look like he was serious rather than the modern Machiavellian puppetmaster he actually is.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_6_United_States_Capito...
You're again making vague gesturing towards "coordination" and "regular meetings" in service of justifying claims of "a pocket of authoritarians settled in the US intelligence services". You must know that "regular meetings" don't signal "packet of authoritarians" to anybody but the most diehard conspiracy theorists. Who were these authoritarians? what were they doing? and how were they doing it? The "Twitter Files" holds none of these answers, having been widely reported (according to the Wikipedia page you linked) as being a misrepresentation of normal communication between governmental entities and private companies.
> Again, you seem to be reading more than I'm writing with this one.
I disagree that I'm making any assumption outside of what you've written there, but I'll leave it there.
> I mean, if we're talking about the ~100 people who turned up armed
You're not answering the question. From your tone I can tell your answer is most likely that you don't consider the armed insurrection of the US capitol building connected to Donald Trump. What caused it then? Does Trump have any culpability for letting armed people take part of his march?