as a private company, Twitter has no legal obligation to let anyone use its service, the activities at issue here—targeted harassment, as well as posting faked tweets—violated the company’s terms of service, and they weren’t speech that any business would feel obliged to protect. If customers in a coffee shop behaved as Jones’s trolls did, they would immediately be booted.
.. The company has reasonable rules in place to prevent such abuse, but it is often justifiably criticized for failing to monitor for violations and enforce its guidelines rigorously and consistently. While Twitter responded quickly to Jones’s concerns, it has not done anywhere near as well in responding to similar reports from non-celebrities. And this very selectivity has led people like Yiannopoulos and his supporters to claim that they’re being punished for their conservative ideology, rather than for their incivility.
.. But if Twitter wants to stick with this approach and grow its business, it needs to recognize that identifying and stopping abusive behavior isn’t optional. Its value depends, in large part, on what economists call network effects: the more people on the network, the more valuable it becomes to users. But trolls can create reverse network effects—the more of them there are, the less valuable the network becomes.
.. That’s why it has long been clear to other media organizations that if fostering robust and healthy discussions in comment threads is part of your business model, then moderation is a must. For a service on the scale of Twitter, the challenge is obviously much greater.
Fear and Trembling in Las Vegas
A week with the street preachers of Sin City.
He gives me lessons in salesmanship. “You only have thirty seconds to make a pitch,” he says. “Whatever the product, you have to make them think they need it. Each person, you have to learn to mimic them. If they’re abrupt, you have to be abrupt. If they’re open, you have to be open.”
.. According to Ricky, you have to make it clear they need the product—weed-killer, say—without insulting them: “You have to say, you’re doing such a great job with those cypresses, but I couldn’t help noticing a couple leaves are wilting.” Being vulnerable, he says, is often a great sales tactic. Personal stories create the illusion of connection.
.. Until 2005, casino hotels such as the Bellagio treated the Strip outside their doorstep as their de facto property and street preaching was banned, the prohibition enforced by byzantine Clark County—Vegas’s home county—restrictions on the size of a banner a person could carry. Jim was arrested under such restrictions in 2005.
.. It was then that Jim found an unlikely ally: the American Civil Liberties Union, not historically a friend to the religious right.
.. Clark County wanted to settle with him, he says, and spent the deposition asking if he’d take money in lieu of policy change.
.. Jim is partial, I come to learn, to the dumb routine, as a means of disarming those he sees as his intellectual enemies, accustomed to expecting someone who’s not “academically playing with all the cards.” Such a perception, he says, can work in his favor.
.. His only interest is in learning just enough theology to respond to the questions and concerns of would-be converts: “I have no desire to learn things that I’m not able to pass on in a practical way to other human beings. Learning for the sake of learning—I have no desire to do that.
.. “And I said, ‘Lemme ask you a question: once you’ve gone through that whole course and you graduate and you’ve got that diploma, how many people are you going to be able to talk to about this subject matter?’” The answer? Not many. “And I said, ‘Why take the time, then? Why don’t you spend your time down handing down tracts on the street trying to reach people for Christ, rather than getting another degree under your belt, so that you can feel like you’re kind of a mucky muck within Christianity?
Lewandowski loses $1.2 million book deal
Trump’s ousted campaign manager had a big offer from HarperCollins, but declined to provide a copy of his non-disclosure agreement.
Many in the media and political spheres questioned whether Lewandowski would be able to add any analysis that sheds actual light on the Trump campaign because of his nondisclosure agreement.
.. A nondisclosure agreement signed by one former Trump employee gave Trump wide latitude to decide what could be considered a breach of confidentiality, according to The Associated Press, which obtained a copy of the agreement.
The real impact of Corey Lewandowski’s nondisclosure agreement with Donald Trump
So the question remains: Can Lewandowski really criticize Trump if the nondisclosure agreement he signed — and he did acknowledge signing one — includes the same language reportedly contained in another ex-employee’s contract?
.. According to experts in employment law, the answer to whether Lewandowski can freely bash his former boss — not that he has shown any inclination to do so — is yes … ish.
“It’s very hard to think of a scenario under which [a non-disparagement clause] is enforceable,” said Alan Hyde, an attorney who has represented the National Labor Relations Board and now teaches contracts and employment law at the Rutgers University School of Law. “It’s mostly there to be cautionary.”
.. In other words, it’s something Trump uses to make someone like Lewandowski think twice before saying something bad about him.
.. Even if Lewandowski could shred Trump on the air and then beat him in court, “just the cost of defending a lawsuit would likely be a huge deterrent to testing the limits of the clause,” Verkerke said.