"Eat us last," they begged the crocodile.

Jom Geraghty asks at National Review,

Would John Kasich or Jeff Flake be content to play spoiler and help a Democrat win in 2020?

My answer? Without a doubt!

Jim also raises questions about Twitter shadow banning Ted Cruz here.

The title above for this post comes from Ace of Spades, who also writes about being shadowbanned by Twitter.

“Shadowbanning” is a banning that’s hidden from the user. They don’t ban you outright, but they do block everyone except the people you most frequently interact with from seeing your tweets.

A while ago, when I was still on twitter, one of my snarky comments would get 20, 40 retweets, at minimum. Then one day many of my tweets would get zero retweets, or 3.

When Twitter suspended me, I didn’t bother getting unsuspended, because I knew they’d already blocked my tweets from 99% of all potential readers. So why bother even using their piece of shit data-exploitation antisocial media?

I would like Twitter to be quizzed heavily about this when they come before Congress to testify. Many conservatives are shadowbanned — Mollie Hemingway seems to be. Michelle Malkin seems to be.

And even Senator Ted Cruz seems to be.

If this is not actually an open forum, they ought to say so. It’s a simple matter of honest disclosure.

Ted Cruz made a point I’m not sure I agree with, but I’d like to hear Twitter quizzed on it. Twitter is immune from the libel published by people using their site because of the Communications Decency Act’s provision that an interactive service provider is not responsible for what third parties might write on their service.

That is, they’re not considered “publishers” of the libel, even though their platform could be considered a magazine in which the libel was published.

The idea is that they’re just providing a neutral space for writing without endorsing anything written on their platform. Like the builder of a wall isn’t liable for any defamatory graffiti a third party scrawls on the wall.

But if Twitter is no longer just an open forum but are in fact endorsing some views and punishing others, then they could be construed to be “publishers” of the tweets they permit to be seen, and would therefore not have the protections of the CDA’s immunity clause.

Twitter should be made to answer these questions, and made to answer if they still think they’re immune from suit from the third party libels the people they’re endorsing by not shadowbanning are committing.

Read more here.