After being banned from Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube in January 2021, Trump filed a lawsuit claiming these platforms violated his free speech by acting as “government agents” under pressure from...
After being banned from Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube in January 2021, Trump filed a lawsuit claiming these platforms violated his free speech by acting as “government agents” under pressure from Congress. Courts immediately shut this down. The judge said, that private companies can ban who they want and that the First Amendment doesn’t apply to them. The case was such a legal long shot that it was laughed out of court.
But then… Trump got re-elected in 2024.
And suddenly, none of that legal logic mattered.
Twitter (X) paid him $10 million to settle a case they’d already won. Facebook (Meta) followed with $25 million. And now Google (Alphabet) has paid $24 million - not to Trump personally, but funneled through tax-exempt trusts supposedly for the National Mall, but really to fund construction of a massive 90,000-square-foot Mar-a-Lago-style ballroom on the White House.
The worst part is this sets a precedent. One payoff doesn’t buy safety. It just shows the president it works. ABC paid $16 million, and a few weeks later, Trump threatened to sue again when they didn’t fire Kimmel.
So we end up in this situation where:
Platforms can't moderate content without risking presidential retaliation
The president can force platforms to remove content he doesn't like (like Jimmy Kimmel)
Tech companies with monopolistic practices get a pass as long as they pay tribute
The legal system becomes irrelevant when the president can just threaten companies into settling cases they've won
tl;dr the legal system doesn't matter if the executive is willing to arbitrarily and illegally fuck you over, so big tech companies are resorting to bribery. IMO, this demonstrates that the US's...
tl;dr the legal system doesn't matter if the executive is willing to arbitrarily and illegally fuck you over, so big tech companies are resorting to bribery.
IMO, this demonstrates that the US's presidential republic doesn't work -at the end of the day, the executive can do anything unless someone actively stops them from doing so. Congress doesn't matter unless they have an extreme majority opposed to the president; if it's deadlocked then any opposition to the executive is deadlocked by extension. The "checks and balances" that try to check by preventing action actually backfire and prevent anyone from stopping the rogue executive.
IMO, the US presidency should be stripped out and replaced with a prime minister (i.e. the "president" is whoever holds majority in congress), because since ~2010 the US has had all the downsides of a deadlock from a presidency and congress opposing one another, but the supposed upsides of a separated congress have failed to materialize in the one time they would be useful.
And frankly, that deadlocking caused Trump in the first place - the inability for the executive to legally reform an obviously broken system were what led 2016 voters to desire a "burn down the world" candidate and therefore vote in Trump instead of Clinton. It's been a deliberate strategy of the Republicans to exploit exactly this - deliberately deadlock and then heckle the "do-nothing Democrats".
Fundamentally, "checks and balances" favor the status quo. But for the general public to support democracy in the first place, the pro-democracy candidates must be able to improve the system and address the pain points of voters, and so a democracy that's locked into the status quo is a democracy that's collapsing. So checks and balances must be carefully balanced with The Ability To Get Shit Done.
I think you make some good points and I don't disagree, but I can't help but throw out corporate lobbying and the Citizens United ruling as a huge part of the problem that causes a lot of the...
I think you make some good points and I don't disagree, but I can't help but throw out corporate lobbying and the Citizens United ruling as a huge part of the problem that causes a lot of the issues you lay out.
It doesn't change anything that you have said, but it is a very important reason that we are where we are right now in US politics.
To be clear, I have a long list of Things Wrong With The US Political System. And at the #1 spot, you'll find FPTP - people voted against Hillary as much as for Trump, and if Bernie had run...
To be clear, I have a long list of Things Wrong With The US Political System. And at the #1 spot, you'll find FPTP - people voted against Hillary as much as for Trump, and if Bernie had run against Hillary and Trump then he could have won outright (given that Trump voters probably won't #2 Hillary) but at least would have forced the Trump campaign to make their message "every other candidate is bad" (which would be weak and fail) instead of "specifically Hillary is bad, and Trump is literally your only other option".
Corporate lobbying and Citizens United both suck, but e.g. Zohran Mamdani proves they can be overcome, with effort.
#2 is probably the electoral college both preventing majority rule and making (some) state votes winner-take-all - tiny states have disproportionate power, and a bunch of states will give 100% of EC votes to whoever receives 51% of state-voter votes. This makes entire swathes of the country electorally irrelevant, i.e. is less democratic than a proper simple majority-rule system.
Corporate lobbying and Citizens United is probably somewhere in the #3-6 range, and the Presidential System is probably way past #10. I've only been thinking about it a lot due to my own country (Australia) being a parliamentary system, with one state (Queensland) not even having two houses (AKA is unicameral). I've always wondered whether the parliamentary system was better or just more risky, and Trump has answered that nicely.
Yeah, you're absolutely right about the electoral college as well. For what it's worth, you said some, but it's 48 out of 50 states that are winner-take-all.
Yeah, you're absolutely right about the electoral college as well. For what it's worth, you said some, but it's 48 out of 50 states that are winner-take-all.
The US government is extremely corrupt, in ways that most people didn’t realize until it became so blatant that a criminal president openly wields extortion and accepts bribes and manipulates...
The US government is extremely corrupt, in ways that most people didn’t realize until it became so blatant that a criminal president openly wields extortion and accepts bribes and manipulates global markets for personal gain.
I agree that congress doesn’t work. Theoretically they could remove the president but they won’t. This is because political parties disrupt checks and balances. Specifically, the Republican congress is fully responsible for every illegal and unconstitutional action done by the president.
Every day we wait for Trump to violate the constitution or violate our rights or break a law. We focus on him but he’s the showy distraction running cover for the criminal Republican senate and congress that makes it possible.
It’s especially sad that so many Americans are fine with this corruption and bad government, most because they are deluded by the massive propaganda machine, the rest because they are themselves bad, corrupt people.
Also on Nebula, a platform that hasn't bribed Trump (yet). Also also; tech CEOs, if you're reading this: Come to Europe! You don't need to regularly bribe the king to stay in business here.
Also on Nebula, a platform that hasn't bribed Trump (yet).
Also also; tech CEOs, if you're reading this: Come to Europe! You don't need to regularly bribe the king to stay in business here.
Yeah, we're acting like the companies somehow don't like any of this. That's not at all the case. This is the exact reason why rent seeking is so harmful. When it comes to illegal, but profitable...
Yeah, we're acting like the companies somehow don't like any of this.
That's not at all the case. This is the exact reason why rent seeking is so harmful. When it comes to illegal, but profitable courses of action, you can either lose out on billions in profits, be fined billions by regulatory bodies, or spend a few million to the person who's responsible for enforcing the regulations.
Pledging fealty to Trump isn't a bitter pill that huge companies are forcing themselves to swallow. They're chomping at the bit to swallow it because it means they get to do whatever the fuck they want as long as it doesn't personally harm Trump.
Companies don't like publicly paying Trump, they know it's bad PR for basically everyone - to anti-Trumpers, it's capitulation, and to pro-Trumpers, it's an admission of wrongdoing. If they want...
Companies don't like publicly paying Trump, they know it's bad PR for basically everyone - to anti-Trumpers, it's capitulation, and to pro-Trumpers, it's an admission of wrongdoing.
If they want to pay politicians, SuperPACs already give them that ability.
After being banned from Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube in January 2021, Trump filed a lawsuit claiming these platforms violated his free speech by acting as “government agents” under pressure from Congress. Courts immediately shut this down. The judge said, that private companies can ban who they want and that the First Amendment doesn’t apply to them. The case was such a legal long shot that it was laughed out of court.
But then… Trump got re-elected in 2024.
And suddenly, none of that legal logic mattered.
Twitter (X) paid him $10 million to settle a case they’d already won. Facebook (Meta) followed with $25 million. And now Google (Alphabet) has paid $24 million - not to Trump personally, but funneled through tax-exempt trusts supposedly for the National Mall, but really to fund construction of a massive 90,000-square-foot Mar-a-Lago-style ballroom on the White House.
The worst part is this sets a precedent. One payoff doesn’t buy safety. It just shows the president it works. ABC paid $16 million, and a few weeks later, Trump threatened to sue again when they didn’t fire Kimmel.
So we end up in this situation where:
Platforms can't moderate content without risking presidential retaliation
The president can force platforms to remove content he doesn't like (like Jimmy Kimmel)
Tech companies with monopolistic practices get a pass as long as they pay tribute
The legal system becomes irrelevant when the president can just threaten companies into settling cases they've won
tl;dr the legal system doesn't matter if the executive is willing to arbitrarily and illegally fuck you over, so big tech companies are resorting to bribery.
IMO, this demonstrates that the US's presidential republic doesn't work -at the end of the day, the executive can do anything unless someone actively stops them from doing so. Congress doesn't matter unless they have an extreme majority opposed to the president; if it's deadlocked then any opposition to the executive is deadlocked by extension. The "checks and balances" that try to check by preventing action actually backfire and prevent anyone from stopping the rogue executive.
IMO, the US presidency should be stripped out and replaced with a prime minister (i.e. the "president" is whoever holds majority in congress), because since ~2010 the US has had all the downsides of a deadlock from a presidency and congress opposing one another, but the supposed upsides of a separated congress have failed to materialize in the one time they would be useful.
And frankly, that deadlocking caused Trump in the first place - the inability for the executive to legally reform an obviously broken system were what led 2016 voters to desire a "burn down the world" candidate and therefore vote in Trump instead of Clinton. It's been a deliberate strategy of the Republicans to exploit exactly this - deliberately deadlock and then heckle the "do-nothing Democrats".
Fundamentally, "checks and balances" favor the status quo. But for the general public to support democracy in the first place, the pro-democracy candidates must be able to improve the system and address the pain points of voters, and so a democracy that's locked into the status quo is a democracy that's collapsing. So checks and balances must be carefully balanced with The Ability To Get Shit Done.
I think you make some good points and I don't disagree, but I can't help but throw out corporate lobbying and the Citizens United ruling as a huge part of the problem that causes a lot of the issues you lay out.
It doesn't change anything that you have said, but it is a very important reason that we are where we are right now in US politics.
To be clear, I have a long list of Things Wrong With The US Political System. And at the #1 spot, you'll find FPTP - people voted against Hillary as much as for Trump, and if Bernie had run against Hillary and Trump then he could have won outright (given that Trump voters probably won't #2 Hillary) but at least would have forced the Trump campaign to make their message "every other candidate is bad" (which would be weak and fail) instead of "specifically Hillary is bad, and Trump is literally your only other option".
Corporate lobbying and Citizens United both suck, but e.g. Zohran Mamdani proves they can be overcome, with effort.
#2 is probably the electoral college both preventing majority rule and making (some) state votes winner-take-all - tiny states have disproportionate power, and a bunch of states will give 100% of EC votes to whoever receives 51% of state-voter votes. This makes entire swathes of the country electorally irrelevant, i.e. is less democratic than a proper simple majority-rule system.
Corporate lobbying and Citizens United is probably somewhere in the #3-6 range, and the Presidential System is probably way past #10. I've only been thinking about it a lot due to my own country (Australia) being a parliamentary system, with one state (Queensland) not even having two houses (AKA is unicameral). I've always wondered whether the parliamentary system was better or just more risky, and Trump has answered that nicely.
Yeah, you're absolutely right about the electoral college as well. For what it's worth, you said some, but it's 48 out of 50 states that are winner-take-all.
The US government is extremely corrupt, in ways that most people didn’t realize until it became so blatant that a criminal president openly wields extortion and accepts bribes and manipulates global markets for personal gain.
I agree that congress doesn’t work. Theoretically they could remove the president but they won’t. This is because political parties disrupt checks and balances. Specifically, the Republican congress is fully responsible for every illegal and unconstitutional action done by the president.
Every day we wait for Trump to violate the constitution or violate our rights or break a law. We focus on him but he’s the showy distraction running cover for the criminal Republican senate and congress that makes it possible.
It’s especially sad that so many Americans are fine with this corruption and bad government, most because they are deluded by the massive propaganda machine, the rest because they are themselves bad, corrupt people.
Also on Nebula, a platform that hasn't bribed Trump (yet).
Also also; tech CEOs, if you're reading this: Come to Europe! You don't need to regularly bribe the king to stay in business here.
In Google’s case, paying $24 million for the White House ballroom probably seems cheap versus €2.95 billion in fines.
Yeah, we're acting like the companies somehow don't like any of this.
That's not at all the case. This is the exact reason why rent seeking is so harmful. When it comes to illegal, but profitable courses of action, you can either lose out on billions in profits, be fined billions by regulatory bodies, or spend a few million to the person who's responsible for enforcing the regulations.
Pledging fealty to Trump isn't a bitter pill that huge companies are forcing themselves to swallow. They're chomping at the bit to swallow it because it means they get to do whatever the fuck they want as long as it doesn't personally harm Trump.
Companies don't like publicly paying Trump, they know it's bad PR for basically everyone - to anti-Trumpers, it's capitulation, and to pro-Trumpers, it's an admission of wrongdoing.
If they want to pay politicians, SuperPACs already give them that ability.
However odious it is, settling a lawsuit is legal.
It seems like a bad loophole, though.