I am welcoming Twitter\’s initiative to suspend government and lawyers accounts. Ideally all political content should be taken down from the platform. Over the past 5 years, every politician on this planet has been imitating the US president who started this tweeting circus as the chief commander of most tweets per second.
This should\’ve happened long ago. The US president\’s phone should\’ve been confiscated the minute he was sworn in.
Every single politician, rather than working for the people, has been chasing after the user engagement leveraged by the US president who, being the most hated person in America, naturally has the most followers, beginning with mainstream media who are hooked on the president. They\’re already experiencing withdrawal symptoms. It shows.
Media outlets whose reporting has been almost entirely about the president\’s tweets now have nothing to show for 5 years of reporting!
Tweeting lawyers are another curious bunch. One thing you learn in litigation is to abstain from making predictions on evidence or outcomes, because even in the clearest of cases, stuff happens. Announcing what will happen is such a beginner\’s mistake.
Take them all down! All politicians should be banned from social media. ALL.
CBC is already embedding Parler declarations (or whatever you call them) authored by one of the president\’s lawyers who was banned from twitter. Withdrawal symptoms are kicking in… Imagine when cold turkey hits Parler too.
Lastly, have you noticed how representing certain clients never ends well for the lawyer! The idea that everyone is entitled to representation must be revisited. It is chilling how representing this president has annihilated so many lawyers. Some have landed in prison, forced to breach lawyer client confidentiality in exchange for a plea deal, others sued in defamation for billions of dollars, all systemically hit with disbarment complaints…
Is there a professional rule of conduct that warns against taking up a \”cursed client\”? We need one fast.
The idea of putting aside your own interest to fearlessly raise every legal argument, no matter how distasteful, so as to zealously represent a client appears to be the exact conduct that may send you to a disbarment hearing these days.
Update January 10, 2020. The other side of the coin
Nothing stops politicians to post on their own websites or create their individual platforms owned and controlled by government and politicians themselves. So long as they set up their own servers, they\’re good to go.
When it comes to the president, he was the actual \”talent\” on twitter. The app itself needs people like him to be profitable, it was losing money before allowing politicians in. If the president sets up his own platform, his followers (especially haters) will follow him wherever he goes. For obvious reasons, private corporations should never again be allowed to host government and state related information.
I welcome total decentralization of information
Since yesterday, I have discovered at least 50 websites I hadn\’t heard of before and counting. Nothing stops you from following the people who are permanently banned from twitter, simply by bookmarking their websites and set alerts.
Your search history belongs to you. Law enforcement authorities need a warrant to use your search history against you. Social media companies on the other hand have deals with law enforcement that are entirely out of your control. Your precious personal and engagement data on twitter and facebook is being traded and shared with countless other third parties without your knowledge or consent. The logic behind it is that you already consented simply by signing on the platforms, by accepting the terms and conditions. Nobody reads terms and conditions, therefore nobody really knows what they consent to.
To avoid unintended uses of your personal data, I strongly recommend to abstain from using social media apps on your phone. For advanced protection inspired from the country of the rising sun (Japan) is to give platforms fake information about yourself, not your real name. Create an online persona through an alternative email (not your main email) with completely different identifiers from your legal identifiers. For example set your birthdate to 1901 and choose a different gender. This is how it is done in Japan, you never mix your real persona with your online personas. It is the only way that your real persona won\’t suffer the consequences of fame caused by your online personas.
The people of China are many great examples on how to communicate through coded messages and entirely circumvent censorship. I have learned so much.
At the end of the day, there will always be dark forums operating on military browsers like Tor. I strongly recommend exploring those. I also anticipate other military communication methods to become mainstream through 2021.