Posted on 16 January 2021
On the heels of Forbes magazine editor Randall Lane threatening companies that hire Trump officials, we now have that periodical politically cleansing its own website of an article critical of their beloved social media monopolist that also engages in cracking down on free speech. Such was the case on Monday when Forbes deleted an article by frequent contributor, Jim Collins, that dared to strongly criticize Twitter which is now obviously a prohibited activity.
Collins pulled no punches in his strong criticism of Twitter as you can see just from reading the title of his article, "Twitter Is The Worst Company On Planet Earth. Here’s How To Bet Against The Stock—and Deactivate Your Account." Since Forbes apparently found this to be heretical towards its increasingly woke attitude, the article was soon deleted and all that remains on the page is this message: "This page is no longer active. We regret any inconvenience."
Fortunately, or unfortunately for Forbes, the source code for the page remains active so with a right and then a left click of the mouse, the taboo material remains available. Here are a few excerpts which the Forbes editors attempted to send down the memory hole:
It is rare a that a public company stretches so far into the realm of abhorrent behavior, but Twitter's TWTR -6.4% actions last week revulsed me more than Union Carbide’s Bhopal, Boeing's BA -1.5% repeated failures with the 787 Max, J&J’s JILL +1.9% Tylenol scandal and really any other corporate action I have seen in my lifetime.
Ouch! But Collins gets even more brutal in his Twitter critique that might have caused the Forbes editors to reach for their BP pills:
For a social media platform to censor a world leader—while still giving a voice to preachers of hate like Louis Farrakhan Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei and even O.J. Simpson—isn’t just wrong from a free speech perspective, it's actually terrible business. So, Twitter has shown little to no sequential growth in its user base of late (details below) but it is still valued like its Big Tech growth-y brethren. Twitter is not growing, it is shrinking, if measured versus the growth rate of the global economy, and that reduction will accelerate dramatically now that Twitter has offended every Conservative in America with its action to ban President Trump. Only fools in Congress and Big Tech apologists would think that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act should apply to Twitter. It is a publisher, not a platform. Full stop.
Collins then goes on to give advice on how to deactivate your Twitter account as well as how to short their stock for profit. After this he had an observation about Twitter's Jack Dorsey that might have caused whichever Forbes editor hit the delete button on the article to break his finger.
The new conscious capitalism of 2021 entails fighting Big Tech censorship and the monopolistic power that those companies wield. Not only is Jack Dorsey at Twitter a revolting human stain (as proven by this Congressional testimony and takedown by Senator Ted Cruz) his company isn't that big or growing that fast—and is about to shrink.
Exit question: Has Forbes sent contributor Jim Collins to their Room 101 for an interrogation session with Randall Lane?