Most of the discussion seems to be centered around freedom of speech and enabling dissenting voices, no matter how violent, but I think we're missing the bigger picture here.
This represents a vast check on presidential power that exists purely in the hands of these incredibly wealthy and powerful social media executives. I don't necessarily disagree with Twitter's decision given the events of the last few days, but this undeniably strips Trump of a major source of power for him, and that merits a discussion of the role that private social media companies play in our discourse and presidential function as well.
edit: imagine trying to run for re-election without a social media presence. It's hard to imagine that anyone could mount a serious campaign without it, let alone win.
I actually think that Trump, of all people, is the worst to try to make that case with.
At the click of his fingers he’ll have cameras from every major news network and reporters from every newspaper in a room to listen to what he says. Inevitably whatever he does say will be on Twitter instantly. Not that it matters that much because the majority of the country aren’t even on Twitter. They read about his tweets in news reports.
I don’t buy that Twitter is a source of power for Trump. It is his communication medium of choice, certainly. But his power has always been in making controversial statements that generate headlines. He doesn’t need Twitter for that.
I dunno. I think this is precisely an example of why hard cases can make good laws - not that were making laws here yet, but the OP definitely brings up a good point about the general matter.
Something really weird happened with Donald Trump.
He had a tendency to say things like "I got twice as many votes as Obama did when he was reelected." (I don't think he actually said that one, but it's hard to find a real example when... they deleted his twitter account.)
And then that isn't true. Trump got ~74M, in 2012 Obama got ~66M, that's not twice as much. But it's more. So if they run the story correcting it, they're running a story that tells people that Trump in 2020 got more votes than Obama did when he won in 2012.
At some point the media got tired of this, but what are they supposed to do about it? If they don't correct it, the claim stands unopposed. If they do, they're still running the story Trump really wanted, telling people he got more votes than Obama.
They eventually started omitting the context. So then the headline becomes "Trump lies that he got twice as many votes as Obama" and then that's the entire story. No mention of how many there actually were. But that didn't work, because then the first comment on the story is from some Trump supporter providing the actual numbers and you're back to having a story about Trump lying that still benefits Trump.
So then they want to do something about the Trump supporters because they keep providing the inconvenient context that Trump's controversy generator left there on purpose. So they censor them in some way. But then the supporters feel wronged -- being punished for saying something true -- so they support Trump even harder and it backfires.
The whole thing made them so angry that they're now willing to cross every line in order to destroy him. But the current strategy seems to be to censor him as much as possible so that nobody sees the rebuttal to the rebuttal because nobody sees the rebuttal because nobody sees the original claim.
Which might actually work to destroy Trump, but only by destroying a structural pillar of the democratic process at the same time. And anybody who thinks that such a weapon, once used, will only be used once, is delusional.
Disagree that presidential power should bleed into private companies. He entered into a contract with Twitter, broke it, and Twitter ended things on their side.
> He entered into a contract with Twitter, broke it, and Twitter ended things on their side.
I agree, and I'm not saying that Twitter acted in the wrong here. Imagine a hypothetical scenario where Dorsey threatens a president to say or not say something under penalty of deplatforming. That's a pretty significant lever to have over POTUS. That's the point I'm trying to make here.
In that case, the President will hold a press conference and ger coverage from every TV and YouTubel Channel and Facebook page, not to mention tens of thousands of Twitter users.
how did he break the contract with Twitter? the tweets twitter references hardly seem to encourage mob violence.
twitter subjectively interprets their own set of rules and it's clear there's a double standard.
when politicians on the left encourage protests and riots that result in the destruction and burning of private property, there are no repercussions.
and i'm not attempting to say that two wrongs make a right; encouraging violence or mobs is wrong, but Twitter's enforcement of their own rules is clearly influenced by political ideology.
I think you are trying to make a reasoned argument and engage in meaningful debate, but can we really make the argument that the person with the nuclear codes, in control of a budget of trillions of dollars, receives any power from a free online publishing tool?
As I noted, you realize the federal government has a nearly inexhaustible source of funding, right? I bet they could build a twitter clone if they were really worried about it.
To some extent, it’s a problem Trump brought upon himself by relying so much on social media. If Twitter had banned Obama, well, people would barely have noticed, really. Most politicians just aren’t dependent on social media in the same way Trump is, and are generally much better behaved on it.
And what’s the alternative? Force them to provide service to every crazy person?
I sincerely doubt that Twitter actually significantly enhances presidential power. Unlike normal people presidents can get on national TV to directly communicate with the general public. He’s got plenty of ways to message millions of people like mass email, or even just sending a letter to news agencies etc. Twitter was useful politically, but it probably hurt as much as it helped.
Further the president can literally call in air strikes or offer blanket pardons etc. They are often called the most powerful men in the world for good reason.
> This represents a vast check on presidential power that exists purely in the hands of these incredibly wealthy and powerful social media executives. I don't necessarily disagree with Twitter's decision given the events of the last few days, but this undeniably strips Trump of a major source of power for him, and that merits a discussion of the role that private social media companies play in our discourse and presidential function as well.
This is the fourth estate in everything but name. It doesn't have the same protections as the press, but it's no different than it was decades or even centuries ago, when media moguls could focus the heat.
It's not just social media but Big Tech in general - Google is pretty much the only way the majority people look for information on the Internet, so I'd say it has an even larger amount of power in influencing what people see.
Jack Dorsey knows the future lies within uncensorable social networks. Guess what he has in mind with blockchain and al.
If we would have kept all the tweets as 144 chars as text only, a full copy of all tweets would have been possible through a compressed distributed blockchain.
The ability to use Twitter (or the newspaper) is not a presidential power.
Certainly it is true that it is hard to run a campaign without a media presence. That has been true for hundreds of years. Competent candidates have entire teams, if not the vast majority of their campaign, figuring out how to effectively contract with private media entities (whose freedom is protected by the First Amendment) to get their message out. That incompetent candidates exist is not a reason to change this system.
He has been using the platform for a long time and spreading all kinds of misinformation but Twitter did not take any action against him in the past. The platforms are available for anyone to behave in a civil manner and not cause unrest in the country.
There are lot of comments like: 'I do not support him but...'.
I'm not from the US so will use example from my country.
I do not mind if my prime minister was banned from Facebook even though I'm ok with him (didn't vote for him, but we have more than two parties).Facebook is just some private company for me. It is monopoly in a way and pain that most of my social circle is locked there. But for any public figure? There is public broadcaster. It already is not good that he is not using his PR team that much.
You have put too much power in to the hands of private companies. Public broadcaster can be (and often is) misused for propaganda of ruling government. But so can be private one (and often is). But at least there is stil this balance of public/private spaces.
But I know this is irrelevant in the USA which tries to implement some utopias (like free speech) but others are considered as immanentization of the eschaton.
Important to remember, these companies did this not from an outpouring of ethical or moral considerations, but because the next president will not tolerate them.
Edit: To be clear, I support the bans and would have loved to see them earlier. I am not lamenting them.
The most ominous thing is how well-coordinated the megacorps are. I would say that it's time to put some checks on those incredible powers, but realistically, that's like complaining about Christian theological dominance during the middle ages in Europe. It's a shame that action was not taken much, much earlier (that is, a decade ago or so).
This sort of coordination is exactly what free markets do. There's no conspiracy or coordination other than that. You may as well imply that there was some sort of coordination between every marketing department releasing an ad saying "In these uncertain times..." last March.
The coup failed, the dust settled, Biden will be inaugurated, and most importantly, the Democrats took control of the Senate for the next two years. Ajit Pai announced that he's dropping his plan to creatively reinterpret Section 230 because he won't get the rulemaking done in time. The consensus of the country and the world is that the far right has crossed a line, and there is significant public sentiment against the platforms that enabled them. It is suddenly no longer net profitable to keep them around. Every platform independently came to the same conclusion at the same time because they saw the same facts.
Wrong. They came to the same conclusion at the same time because their side of the battle finally won and now they can punish their enemies safely. That's all there is to it. Anything else is a rationalization. In the future if the other side ever wins again it should act the same way and punish their enemies too, in a stronger and more vindictive manner. And this should escalate until one side seizes total control or a split happens in the country. This is the logical conclusion of this and thus it is what should happen and likely will happen.
Facts don't exist when we're talking about politics and power. If you believe they do you have a hopelessly naive view of the world. But I'm similarly not going to spend time lecturing you about it.
Seems like Wednesday was a very important day in plain old American History, so...
I just can't understand this site, I really can't. Our legislative branch was attacked at the direction of our executive branch on Wednesday. But what people are really upset about is the president's ability to tweet?
I mean... I get that it would be nice to have platforms that were politically neutral. But if that's not working out? Meh. There are plenty of places where conservatives can scream on the internet (including right here! I await my downvotes with resignation). You Just Can't Align Yourself With a Coup. Is that so terribly hard?
> This will go down as a very important day in American Internet history. A very important week in American history.
The day Censorship was made valid with hordes cheering them on. A very bad and sad precedent. This is going to backfire very, very badly. The Big Tech tested waters and realized they can behave like Supranational Powers and have support from the people. All it takes for Big Tech is for them to convince the popular masses on how to think. That is the last step to complete control. Elected Governments will be powerless against this kind of power. If they can do this to a sitting US President they can do it to anyone else and can influence elections and electorates in ways we have never imagined before.
I was thinking more like Usenet, which was fully distributed and difficult to censor. Individuals could establish "killfiles" to filter out people or threads they didn't want to see, etc.
Not sure why this is being downvoted. It's a very valid point whether or not you agree with the messages going out on these platforms, the significance these platforms play in public and political discussion is quite apparent. These are serious issues people need to discuss and try to figure out. There is no longer a public square people gather and talk, even more so during this pandemic.
Right now I support the effort given the context, but what happens if I'm on the other side of the table and in the right?
But the only thing I'm really worried about, is that his most extreme followers will feel even more marginalized - which could make the echo chambers even more dangerous.
I don't think these actions are as much coordinated, as they simply are a cascade of reactions. But from the outside, especially to those living in a bubble, it certainly would look like a surgical strike on Trump and his followers.
That alone, could absolutely elevate the "deep state conspiracy" psychosis to even more dangerous heights.
How long until some of the nutjobs actually start using their pipebombs and IED's?
Let's be honest. His followers, especially the ones that stormed the Capitol, aren't living in reality. They believe the lies that this election was stolen. It wasn't. It was fair, free, secure, and accurate.
But reality doesn't matter to them. We gain nothing but lose so much by pandering to these people for whom facts mean nothing. They will do what they will do, including an insurrection in the national's capital while a joint session of Congress is in order to enact the peaceful transition of power, one of the most sacred tenants of democracy, and nothing we can do will convince them otherwise.
Makes sense. They just set a policy and he immediately attempted a workaround.
Let's have the free speech discussions debated through representatives. I can agree that violence should be removed by platforms immediately, and that "Stop the Steal" did promote just that.
That is only done for Presidents that are removed via the impeachment process. As a result, it has never actually happened. (While several presidents have been impeached in the House, the latter half of the process has never been successfully sustained in the Senate.)
Denying where you've been ensures you repeat it. The alcoholic who cannot control himself when surrounded by alcohol is not truly cured of their alcoholism. The drink still controls them, because it directs them away from any cohabitance with alcohol.
Hard disagree. Permanent reminders of these failure need to be installed in very public places. The ideas and things that have resulted in the 37th of December (because 2020 didn't really stop) must be addressed. They are as a part of the US as the 3/5ths compromise on human life. Trying to power wash these stains away is not going to help the US. Meandering, uncomfortable, long, and difficult conversations are the best cure. There are no cheats to this, and there are no deferrals. Each US citizen is in this birthright.
That is what was happen with an official website of the President of Ukraine[0] when Zelenskyy came into the office after Poroshenko on May 2019: all data & photo archive, stored until May 2019, was fully removed from website by new admins.
But that is another story...
P.S. In 2018 I uploaded photo of the highest flagpole with the State Flag of Ukraine from presidential website to Wikimedia Commons archive[3] (as photo archive was under CreativeCommons). Since 2019 this photo was removed[4] from presidential website... Probably that is the only survived direct copy of this photo (except those which are available in Internet Archive's WaybackMachine snapshots of this site).
Can someone explain how mastodon is able to remove an account? I thought the whole point of mastodon was that there wasn’t any one single group who controlled the platform?
For some reason, I thought that Mastadon was supposed to be free from censorship (for the sake of discussion, let's just call it that) because you could run your own servers.
Did Trump get removed from a specific server or from Mastadon in general?
Or did everyone else choose not to link (not sure of the terminology) with him?
And if it's possible to get removed from Mastadon, what makes it different than an ad-free clone of Twitter?
This looks like a specific account on an individual server. (which could have been registered by anyone)
Each Mastodon instance chooses which other instances they can federate with (whitelist or blacklist). Given that Mastodon's early adopters included a large amount of people who switched because they thought Twitter should have banned more people (often because of perceived harassment), they tend to quickly ban or blacklist anyone they see as bad actors.
It's free from censorship in the sense that someone could run their own server, but doesn't guarantee an audience.
Something that isn't being talked about anymore: Trump chose twitter. He chose to stay on it, to use his personal account, to use it as his primary method of communication.
US presidents have the biggest, loudest loudspeakers available at their fingertips. Obama's administration had a whole protocol about how to use Twitter as one of their official comms medium and not have it be a de facto one. Biden is so far following it.
Trump brought this on himself. (And btw, you can believe this, AND believe the ban is a good thing, AND believe twitter and media companies have too much power. These things are consistent)
Yup. I blame Twitter too. They are too greedy. Just when their platform was receiving flak for not being profitable, trump comes on and they let him on because it was good business.
Now that he is out of power, revenue from his enabling dwindles fast and criticism increases, so the business decision is to ban him.
I don't think that's fair. Twitter was not in an enviable position from the get go. Trump had been on there for years before he ran for president, and banning the president IS a big deal no matter how you spin it.
There is some grey area that was definitely crossed the last few years where banning him from twitter would have been the right thing to do. It was long before Jan 6th but i don't think it was so early in his term either.
What's done is done, I'm just glad it's over now tbh.
The paradox of tolerance is one of the weirdest concepts I see being quoted everywhere that absolutely makes no sense to me. It seems so obviously inherently flawed.
________________________________
Who defines intolerance? Historically that's the people in power.
In the 50's that was the US government and powerful people like CIA Director J Edgar Hoover and Senator Joseph McCarthy who used their power to root out leftists, branding them as communists. They said free america could not tolerate the intolerant leftists because socialism and communists were inherently intolerant.
The USSR did this by sending people who questioned party agenda straight to the gulags. "By going against party thinking, these people are pushing for an intolerant society that is stratified with the class structures of old. We need to get rid of them before they ruin our perfect tolerant society."
The same logic is used to try to stamp out Muslims in countries like India right now and other places in the world historically. "If we leave the intolerant Muslims around, they'll bring forth Jihad and enforce Sharia law on everyone. The Koran is very intolerant about how non-muslims should be treated, we need to force them out because their intolerance is a threat to tolerance everywhere."
Literally every Christian country post-Martin Luther in the middle ages used that logic to wage wars on other Christian countries. Not just Christian vs. Christian of course. It's why countries in the past fought against each other over religion so much. When intolerance is defined as views that I don't agree with, it becomes kill or be killed world.
One of the best features of the enlightenment thinking is the concept of tolerance. One of the fundamental principles of Western thought. It's literally the reason why non-Christians can live in formerly Christian countries without being persecuted. It's why we accept people thinking about other government types other than an absolute monarchy.
We had a coup attempt on Wednesday! We're already there. This is the attempt to recover. Maybe it won't work. I'm not super hopeful. But in a country where the president can aim a riot at congress, his ability to tweet doesn't really seem like the freedom we should be most concerned about.
This is a massive step forward to authoritarianism. Internet monopolies colluding to censor the internet, politicians calling for protestors to be put on the no fly list without due process, growing calls for the government to censor the internet, and more to come.
You'd never say that if it wasn't "your people" in there. Never. Don't claim to be a patriot ever again if you think dismissing the first successful attack on a congressional session (hell, the VP was in there too) in the history of the republic is a good argument to make. Hell, five people died. That's more than at the Reichstag fire (I checked with Godwin, by the way, he approves).
This was a moment of deep shame. And comments like yours make it worse.
> The truth is that the events at the capitol were not a coup. This is deliberate propagandist language.
You say so only because it failed. If the tunnels didn't exist? If the mob had been faster or better armed? How would it have ended? Would Pence and Pelosi still be hostages?
(Edit: not worth continuing. But I bet anything if I kept going you'd eventually pull out a thesaurus and zing me with BUT it's REALLY an "autogolpe!")
Now you’re just helplessly denying. I just want to remind you that you’re free to change your opinion, no one will think less of you if you do. I’ve done it before, it can be pretty exciting to turn your world around and re-evaluate things every now and then.
I'm willing to change my opinion as soon as someone provides me some evidence that this was actually a coup, and not a riot that's being inflated to order to justify sweeping authoritarianism.
It’s possible you’re underestimating the sheer practical and symbolic significance of the building they broke into (and the people who work there). Which, actually, is kind of the whole problem. Can you provide an example of an evidence that would make this a coup for you?
In short, a coup is an organised action to seize power. For that, it's essential to have secured the support of at least part of the armed forces, and a plan to replace the top of the power hierarchy. Nothing like that was seen in the Capitol riots, which seemed disorganised and essentially demonstrative in nature. Once entering the building, the rioters proceeded taking selfies.
That actually is a pretty good argument. I have indeed been playing fast and loose with the terminology; yes, it wasn’t a military coup, but it is still an unprecedented attack on the federal government, a riot.
Some took selfies. Some proclaimed themselves in control of Congress. Some entered the Senate chamber with weapons and handcuffs.
The authors said a coup has 3 criteria.
> 3) Do the plotters use illegal and unconstitutional methods to seize executive power?
The authors said yes.
> 2) Is the target of the insurrection the chief executive of the government?
The authors said yes.
> 1) Are the perpetrators agents of the state, such as military officials or rogue governmental officials?
The authors said no because Trump can deny meaning to incite it. They're extremely charitable. And this isn't part of the common definition of a coup anyway.
> Do the plotters use illegal and unconstitutional methods to seize executive power?
I have no clue why the author checks this. The rioters entered a building (which is by the way the seat of the legislative power) and that's it. Even if they had killed everyone inside, that wouldn't have put them an inch closer to seizing the power, as the power is simply not there. Power is alliances and a chain of command, not being in a room with shiny big buttons.
I do agree that Trump's position is ambiguous: one cannot deny that he was probably hoping for more. In that case he would be the only one to have imagined a coup, as the rioters were just a few... impressionables.
"Stop the steal" groups have imagined a coup for weeks. More than a few people stormed the Capitol. All coups need impressionables.
The insurrectionists thought most voters and at least 150 members of Congress supported them. The commander in chief egged them on. Coups have succeeded with weaker allies.
Some insurrectionists thought they could pressure enough members of Congress to block certification and send the election to the House. Some wanted Trump to declare martial law. Some openly welcome civil war.
Congress has executive functions too. Like counting electoral votes.
>"Stop the steal" groups have imagined a coup for weeks.
Those groups have imagined a coup for years. These are the same people who were rumbling about a cold civil war turning hot any moment now during the Obama years, quoting the revolutionary language of the Founding Fathers and strongly implying that something must be done about the leftist menace when they thought the Tea Party would actually follow through.
> I have no clue why the author checks this. The rioters entered a building (which is by the way the seat of the legislative power) and that's it. Even if they had killed everyone inside, that wouldn't have put them an inch closer to seizing the power.
The fairly overt goal, articulated in only slightly elliptical language by the President in inciting the mob, was to cause, by intimidation, members of Congress to alter their behavior re: the count of electoral votes so that Trump would be declared the victor and thus retain executive power.
Oh well, for that he would have needed a mob of at least several millions. If that's what he really hoped for, he was off by at least four orders of magnitude.
Please do not take HN threads further into flamewar hell like this. HN's rules apply regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are, and the fact that the site is burning uncontrolledly in 17 places right now is reason for established users like you to stick more to the intended spirit, not less.
Your account is using HN primarily for political battle. We ban accounts that do that. I'm not going to ban you right now, because it wasn't that long ago that you were posting comments more in line with the intended use of this site. But if you keep this up, we'll have to. Flamewars and political battles are not what this site is for, and they destroy what it is for.
> A tolerant society that doesn't "tolerate intolerance" (your words) is an intolerant society.
Absolutely wrong [0].
> We are heading toward authoritarianism.
With the failure of this insurrection and the (unfortunately very weak) backlash against Trump, the primary leader of this failed coup, we've actually moved away from authoritarianism. If anything, we need stronger action by the government to prevent this from happening again.
I’m afraid absolute freedom is slightly overrated. You have to draw the line somewhere. I’m okay with where it’s been drawn today. It’s a “you’ll know it when you see it” thing.
This isn’t authoritarianism, and we can still rightfully claim to be a tolerant society with sound rejection and banishment of hate speech. Hypothetical example, my religion does not believe in gay marriage, yet I don’t prohibit others from pursuing a happier life. But (the royal) you must absolutely draw the line at enabling hate.
I don't think you've understood what an insane idea that is.
Who defines intolerance? Historically that's the people in power.
In the 50's that was the US government and powerful people like CIA Director J Edgar Hoover and Senator Joseph McCarthy who used their power to root out leftists, branding them as communists. They said free america could not tolerate the intolerant leftists because socialism and communists were inherently intolerant.
The USSR did this by sending people who questioned party agenda straight to the gulags. "By going against party thinking, these people are pushing for an intolerant society that is stratified with the class structures of old. We need to get rid of them before they ruin our perfect tolerant society."
The same logic is used to try to stamp out Muslims in countries like India right now and other places in the world historically. "If we leave the intolerant Muslims around, they'll bring forth Jihad and enforce Sharia law on everyone. The Koran is very intolerant about how non-muslims should be treated, we need to force them out because their intolerance is a threat to tolerance everywhere."
Literally every Christian country post-Martin Luther in the middle ages used that logic to wage wars on other Christian countries. Not just Christian vs. Christian of course. It's why countries in the past fought against each other over religion so much. When intolerance is defined as views that I don't agree with, it becomes kill or be killed world.
One of the best features of the enlightenment thinking is the concept of tolerance. One of the fundamental principles of Western thought. It's literally the reason why non-Christians can live in formerly Christian countries without being persecuted. It's why we accept people thinking about other government types other than an absolute monarchy.
The fact that you can say that statement without irony is honestly so scary to me.
Yes, the definition of tolerance in a society is often a function of its existing social consensus. So if your social consensus is flawed, tolerance of it is also flawed. But when the consensus in question is something like “you shouldn’t mob up and storm the legislature because you lost an election,” yes, the paradox of tolerance applies, unironically.
Apologies, that wasn’t the intention but I take your point. It’s a difficult time in the US right now and it requires difficult decisions on the type of discussions that are useful.
In theory it’s “the free market” in action. If your ideas are good and people want to hear them then you’d be able to find a platform to disseminate those ideas to an eager audience.
> If Trump hosts a website on GoDaddy or any other hosting service, it will be removed immediately.
He has websites. They have not been removed. There are decentralized streaming tools that do not depend on any monolithic platforms. You are describing a non-reality.
Given that people are already calling for Godaddy to suspend donaldjtrump.com, I will look forward to the day that it is kicked off of Godaddy just like when they kicked Daily Stormer off for 'inciting violence' [0] and Gab [1] for promoting and encouraging violence against people.
> That’s all.
You honestly think it will stop there? That is just the start of it all.
Instead of a small amount of broadcast companies? As long as mass communication is mediated by corporations, we give them this control - and the alternative is systems without any control whatsoever (for better and very much also for worse).
Ultimately, Twitter gave dt a platform, and so it’s theirs to take away.
Time for Trump to ratify the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace:
"Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather."
You're entitled to free speech, you're not entitled to someone else's platform.
Stormfront has been an openly racist community forum, spouting hate speech unimpeded for 24 years. Their one weird trick: they're not relying on someone else's platform to do it.
Yup, and they had their own little shitty corner of the Internet until social media showed up and let them out. Time to send the trolls back to the caves.
No shit. That doesn’t alter the discussion around how dangerous it is to have a censorship on a nationwide platform with more reach than any government forum.
Stormfront has just as much reach as Facebook. They're on the internet, after all, so the whole world can see their forum. The only problem is you won't get as much of an audience if you post on Stormfront.
Except that's not a problem at all, let alone "dangerous." You're entitled to free speech, you're not entitled to 'reach' or any audience for that matter.
I would like to see people who are advocating for free speech on private platforms to expand what they are saying to also cover their position on property rights.
Fine, fine, I get that a lot of people here are chilled by threats to open discussion. But please go further, how do you balance that with a private company's right to do what they want with their own product?
I personally find it very threatening as a product developer that there might be laws requiring me to allow people to use my products in ways that are abhorrent to me. Yes, the government has defined protected classes and I will respect those (not hard for me). But if a bunch of Trumpers wanted to use my software to organize a coup, do people really think I have to support that?
It's easy to draw an arbitrary line based on market dominance. Compare to abortion laws — at some point, a fetus is considered a person. The exact point is contentious and arbitrary, but the line has to be drawn somewhere.
Imagine if HN was not allowed to moderate its posts. They give a wider berth to comments than they need to, including some I have made (apologies and thank you hn). But I can't imagine I would want to be here if Trump's post were an unfiltered part of the experience.
edit: and to be clear the thing I am most disappointed in my comments is the brevity. I am disappointed in myself the most for making terse comments.
Exactly. There are many, many curated experiences that we all appreciate. Curation is good. I'm so sick of open commons. Not all voices are equal and, IMO, fringe opinions should have to work extra hard to earn their way into the mainstream. Speaking strictly as a consumer, I appreciate and pay for curators as a way to save time.
> how do you balance that with a private company's right to do what they want with their own product?
You're asking for logic from people who learned from a young age that doing bad things gets them attention.
Trump is their icon. He was quick and happy after the "capitol storm" riot to finally say there will be a peaceful transition on the 20th. Why? Because he was asked to do it and he feels he is being helpful by complying.
Nevermind that he created the problem in the first place. He's always felt, since a young age, that he didn't get enough attention, and only received it when he acted out. Like, when you use your fork to eat food for the first time and dad doesn't even look at you. Then you throw it on the floor and Dad is suddenly alert. Boom, that's a life lesson. Repeat that scenario 1,000 times, give the child a billion dollars and you get someone like Trump.
You think Trump is an icon for the people these threads here on HN? I don't think so. I think there's a free speech vein in this community that is independent of support for Trump. It might even be the majority.
I meant he's an icon for people clamoring for free speech on private platforms.
In my view the query posed by this conflict is, what is the solution when private platforms hold apparent monopolies over public discourse?
And IMO the answer to this is to encourage competition by lowering barriers to entry for new content providers. Bring back net neutrality with the FCC and FTC's Antitrust should crack down on regional broadband monopolies, content conglomerates, zero rating, etc.
Breaking up Google/Facebook isn't going to provide sufficient competition. We need to ensure there is space for new pastures.
> Now that Twitter has booted Trump, the next 24 hours will be devoted exclusively to people who don't understand the First Amendment explaining the First Amendment to people who do.
With a corollary I want to add that "everyone will believe themselves to be in the latter category."
Let's just avoid social media for a while and enjoy peace of mind.
The First Amendment applies ONLY to the government:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
There's no legal reason a private company cannot manage its content?
That doesn't sound like a good-faith argument to me. Is Boeing the government also? AT&T? Did Chrysler become the government during the WW2 supply push?
If the government uses their monetary ties, or forces a company with threats of legal (or executive) action to suppress free speech, I believe that is a violation of the 1st amendment.
If Twitter made the decision based on government pressure, it would be because of influence by the upcoming administration. I have not seen evidence to this effect.
Is anyone concerned by the coordinated efforts of Facebook Google, Twitter, Discord, Reddit, and Apple today?
If these groups and individuals that were banned were violating the TOS before, why did they leave them in place for so long? How do these companies decide when to enforce their rules, since obviously it's not immediately? And do they make deals with one another (I'll ban someone you don't like if you ban someone I don't like)?
I recognized it as sarcasm. But I've had people quote movies I love and I completely missed the sarcasm/citation because things are really just so crazy.
Yes and when AWS shuts them down and ISPs block them, they are free to make their own servers and ISPs. And when the financial system shuts down their banking and all of their family members' and public supporters' banking, they are free to create a new banking system as well (assuming they can pay the regulatory fees and have people lobbying for them of course)
Yes and I'm sure when all the standards for allowing people on the wrong side of public opinion are removed, that will never end up flipping around on the people who pushed for their removal.
Point to a time in history where a truly egalitarian society existed
Point to a time in history where you gave up all the creature comforts afforded to you by this nation’s imperialism.
You’re a political agent raised on propaganda; everyone is. I don’t see you rocking the boat and picking a fight with the establishment? Why would Tim Apple or Dorsey, typical humans biologically, be held to a different standard?
All the armchair soldiers in this thread are entitled first worlders.
Literally no one here has achieved such a unique accomplishment to be above reproach.
Sit down, America. Nobody really cares. They go along because bigger military.
I’m not even going to pretend you’re attempting to make an argument in good faith.
One could argue tech companies have a monopoly problem but you’re just saying a private company should allow anyone to say anything on their platform and throwing a ridiculous slippery slope out in front of it.
I'm not throwing a slippery slope anything out. You are failing to see the interconnected nature of all of the things I mentioned. Twitter and all the big tech companies should be nationalized, but they won't be because like financial institutions they are more powerful than any government at this point. If you think this power trip all these companies are currently on is going to end with the bad orange man then you are not very well versed in history.
It's not a ridiculous argument at all, Cloudflare already did it because the CEO "woke up this morning in a bad mood and decided to kick them off the Internet" [1].
AWS is reportedly considering banning Parler. If this trend continues we'll soon have a completely balkanized internet where everyone lives in their own bubble and is banned from posting their viewpoints in the opposite bubble.
These comments are hilarious, because people on the right vastly overestimate the size of their presence on the web. The traffic parler generates for AWS is a rounding error.
It's like complaining about shutting down the old chuck e cheese on the interstate.
> people on the right vastly overestimate the size of their presence on the web.
Slightly off topic:
This presents an interesting thought exercise- how would that stat be calculated? Does a dev with a github repo, Twitter account, and active account on a discord server have more or less of a presence on the web than a retiree with a Facebook account, two yahoos, and a google profile that frequently comments on the youtube videos they binge watch daily?
> One could argue tech companies have a monopoly problem but you’re just saying a private company should allow anyone to say anything on their platform and throwing a ridiculous slippery slope out in front of it.
It is not as simple as you make it out to be. The real slipperly slope is unlimited powers that Big Tech currently enjoys. But yeah you and everyone else will realise in days to come as to why this argument of yours was wrong to begin with. You haven't thought it through. You just want a short-term problem resolved immediately: throw Trump out of office asap, shutdown conspiracy theory sites and stifle any expression for the right wing. You haven't thought of the long term consequences a.k.a Second Order Effects.
This slippery slope is real though. This is what happened to gab. They were kicked out from their domain registrar and payment processors, and Visa blacklisted the owner's family. Just saying.
You think they'll stop there?! The homeless shelters will start asking who you voted for. They'll start testing fetuses in the womb for Trumpist DNA. St Peter will meet you at the pearly gates with a scroll containing all your tweets, and it still won't be enough! The aliens running the simulation have already started checking each other's privilege!!
The funny thing is despite your mockery of my reply, literally all the things I've mentioned have already happened to people in real life. It's just a matter of time until it's well known and happening to very milquetoast people. Eventually it will be happening to people you agree with, and when it does, remember this comment.
Some of the people I agree with are dead, murdered by people you agree with. Cry my a river a tears about your fascist leader being kicked off Twitter. I'd fill a snow globe and keep it in my desk.
I don't care about Trump being kicked off twitter. He is just a name that is meaningless in the grand scheme of things. I also don't care about the people you agree with or how they ended up, although I do think it's funny that you seem to care about them and yet you are pushing for a similar environment that will end up with similar results.
Are you implying it's "not a coincidence"? Because of course it's not. The bigger companies (twitter, facebook) minimized risk of fallout by waiting until DT's time in power was up and there was a good opportunity to do what they wanted (Jan 6th events), and the other companies are just following in their footsteps while it makes good PR.
It's kinda like when BLM was hot in the news and companies decided to paint their logo black. They didn't suddenly care about racism, they just chose an opportune time and had the excuse that other players were already doing it.
It's pretty pathetic yeah. In this case, better late than never, but still really fucking late..
It's pathetic, imo, that companies like twitter and facebook pretend to take a principled stand, when they chose not to take that same stand EARLIER when it was riskier to do so (but made a lot more sense).
What happened here is opportunistic, not principled. There were plenty of other cases i can think of where companies did take riskier stands after evaluating pros and cons (cloudflare springs to mind). Those you can call principled.
By waiting for the time when it was a "good PR move" to show support for BLM, they are signaling that they don't actually support BLM (if they did, they would've shown their support before), they actually just support having a good public image.
Basically, they are just full of shit and are willing to hop on whatever bandwagon makes them look the best.
Isn't his time up on Jan 20? It really looks like collusion to this Aussie (me), who has no stake in the game.
> while it makes good PR.
I'm sure there's quite a few million Trump voters who would disagree it's good PR.
As mercurial as he's been, he is still the sitting president of the country which lauds itself as the greatest (personally I disagree with the latter assessment).
So, what does it mean when the tech companies have put a gag on their own sitting leader?
From the outside it looks very humorous (probably more humorous than what Mr Trump has been in the past 4 years!)
His time is up on Jan 20th but since early November and with each passing day, his influence has grown weaker and his power has been waning. It's not a 100-to-0 thing.
Two weeks before the end of the term is just about as late as you can take such an action, short of taking it after the 21st (which twitter was rumored to be waiting for).
> what does it mean when the tech companies have put a gag on their own sitting leader?
I can ban my country's president from my own software platform if the mood strikes me. The reason twitter is different is because of the massive audience. What does it mean, indeed. I'm kinda looking forward to the republican reaction to this, maybe suddenly they'll care about the fact that media companies have insane amounts of power in the US.
> Isn't his time up on Jan 20? It really looks like collusion to this Aussie (me), who has no stake in the game.
Jumping on a bandwagon isn’t collusion. Twitter started by fact checking him back in November. Other sites followed. Over time, Twitter got more aggressive about it before banning him. Now everyone else isn’t the first to ban, so it’s not as “scary” to do so.
It took as long as it did because no one wanted to take that “first step”.
Twitter banned some stuff temporarily the other day, now they upgrade those bans and add some more. Google removes parler from the Play Store today, a different action (not banning trump). Apple didn't ban anything, but is considering it.
These seem like different actions by different companies, responding to the same news.
Also, pedantic as it may be, it's not political action. These companies are not political entities. Just because groups of people communicate about politics on the platform doesn't make them political.
What we are seeing is major internet companies responding to and banning perpetrators of treason and sedition, of domestic terrorism.
"These companies are not political entities"
Every time I get on Twitter or Facebook, or my friends or family get on Twitter or Facebook, the sites are filled to overflowing with HEAVY liberal bias. They may not 'be' political entities, but they certainly swing hard in one direction.
> ... the sites are filled to overflowing with HEAVY liberal bias ...
This very subjective and probably different person to person especially given AI driven filters and the ability to choose who to follow or friend on these sites.
When I check one of the sites you mentioned, I see almost exclusively voices from the American right-wing. On the other one, it's significantly more moderate but with some opposing viewpoints from either extreme thrown in. It all depends on who someone friends or follows and what the filter chooses to show.
Of course, this ignores what "liberal bias" is, which is a subjective determination that varies according to the bias of whomever makes such a determination.
Although, this is a distraction from the question raised early in this thread. of whether some coordination happened behind the scenes or if these bans are a result of distinct actions in response to the same circumstances.
Well, probably because the rhetoric was presumed entirely rhetorical, and then Trump supporters including white supremacists invaded the Capital building talking about hunting down members of congress to ensure Trump's victory and 5 people died.
And I don't think they had deals, it's more like nobody wants to be the last place where Trump is posting.
There's a bizarre paradox where progressives, who normally favor decrminalization and rehabilitation over punishment, to the point that some of them endorse not just police abolition, but prison abolition as well, instead demand only the harshest punishments available when the criminals happen to be white rightwingers--and especially when their victims, if any, are black.
A historic event for whom? The United States right? Social Media operates in 100+ countries. What happened in USA is historic for you maybe. Not for us. USA is not the World.
Regimes fall every now and then. Coup attempts happen all the time. I have never seen media or social media ban any Government account over it.
I guess Social Media has a different conscience for when regime change/coup-d'etat happens in say Iraq vs when it happens in USA.
What this has done is set a very bad precedent. The Big Tech is acting like Supranational Powers overriding what Elected Governments can and cannot do. Remember that the transfer of power hasn't completed yet. Trump is still the elected President of USA until 20th of January.
If Big Tech can do this to a sitting elected President, it can do it to anyone else. No Government in the World is safe from Big Tech censorship.
stop. so naive. trump has all kinds of media to use. in this case he was an irresponsible user and he was cut off, as happens all day long. just stop with the bloviation.
> stop. so naive. trump has all kinds of media to use. in this case he was an irresponsible user and he was cut off, as happens all day long. just stop with the bloviation.
I can't argue with dumbness. Big Tech literally has unlimited powers. What kind of media does Trump have? Nothing. You haven't thought it through. Every platform will keep banning Trump because of popular opinion. This is a very fucked up precedent. Today it is Trump, tomorrow it can be Biden. It can be Clinton. It can be any President/Prime Minister in the World. It can be any Government. It can be any Dictator. Unlimited power doesn't discriminate. It is not bloviation but just your inability to think it through as you want your short term issue to be resolved. This is how we enabled surveillance and become accustomed to it. We will become accustomed to censorship as well. Like a frog in slow boiling water.
well according to 4chan it was all coordinated by the Jews.. or ANTIFA.. or the Vatican.. Illuminati.. that one guy that stole their lunch money that one time..
(per 4chan/qanon) it's all false flags. that lady wasn't shot. she threw herself back on to her padded backpack... because "they" knew that if someone "died" then they could quell the uprising. (which is actually pretty insulting to the "revolution" isn't it?)
i spent the day poking around a lot of conspiracy theories and videos and man.. that's one big rabbit hole of mental illness.
I think we're all learning new facts about the events this week. It's not entirely surprising to me other than one company doing it gives the rest "permission" to follow suit.
Sure, but if you want these companies to not just do whatever the hell they want, then make a law about it.
Ultimately, if a company is answerable to no one except themselves, then what do you expect is going to happen? They're just protecting their own interests.
You use the platform; you accept the TOS. You accept the arbitrary enforcement of the TOS.
That's how it works on every platform right now.
Right? Wrong? I don't know... but I'll tell you what I do know: a) I'm not surprised, and b) there is zero chance this will change without legal compulsion.
So right now, concerned or not, it is what it is. Suck it up, or accept legislative change; you can't have it both ways.
Please stop posting flamewar comments to HN and taking threads further into hell. You've been doing it a lot lately, and it's exactly the opposite of what this site is supposed to be for. We ban accounts that do this, regardless of which politics they approve of or oppose.
I'm not going to ban you because you've also been posting some good comments. But if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN in the intended spirit, we'd be grateful. The rules apply regardless of how wrong other people are or how badly they behave. The commons is fragile, especially right now, and we need community members to contribute to protecting it, not destroying it.
Okay, you win, that's a good point. Tbh "don't take conversations further into hell" sounds like an excellent additional guideline, even if it can be read between the lines.
Thanks for the suggestion. I'm using the hell metaphor increasingly—not for the happiest of reasons of course. What people need to remember is that hell has circles, and as bad as the current situation is, the inner circles are considerably worse.
The slope doesn't get slipperier just because you find out you are standing on it.
There probably is a reckoning to be had about how access to social media is mediated, that social media companies have demonstrated the technical ability and willingness to do it doesn't limit future options to regulate how they do it.
If you ever wanted the spirit of the old internet to come back, then you can't get much closer than an a troll frantically using alt accounts to evade a ban.
The storming of the Capitol was another 9/11 type of event, we are now in the same climate that lead to the Patriot Act, war, torture and countless other abuses.
People are cheering on the bans without thinking further of the massive negative consequences this slippery slope will likely lead to.
Glenn Greenwald did an excellent interview yesterday where he explained exactly why acting hastily after traumatic events and rage is so damn short sighted:
The 9/11 event was Trump being president during the Corona virus pandemic. His incompetence has been killing more people every day than the number of people killed on 9/11, for quite some time now.
That's not an argument, I agree that Trump and terrorism is bad. That is not an argument for enacting policies in a collective fit of rage without thinking at all about long-term consequences.
Trump being deplatformed from Twitter is long, long overdue.
They had to rewrite their content policies to give him a loophole a long time ago, since any normal person would be banned for what he said. They recently started having to add disclaimers, because even the loophole wasn't enough to counter his wrongness and influence.
The 9/11 takeaway is that we should be especially skeptic of making large policy decisions and/or restricting civil liberties after an emotional event, because it's usually an overcorrection that goes unredressed for the next two decades.
> no free healthcare means you initially had to pay to get tested
Varied from state to state, no?
> underdeveloped healthcare system (initial wave saw NYC overwhelmed)
New York City was not overwhelmed in the first wave, and had both Javits and the Mercy as unused spare capacity.
> lack of labor laws means that you have few rights: no sick days and can easily be fired with no grace period
Varied from employer to employer. For example, my employer at the time added Covid-quarantine-specific PTO, full PTO for high risk groups that felt uncomfortable, and bonuses for those who chose to work during the pandemic.
> polarized political environment means that government help takes a lot of time and has to be executed in mammoth size packages
This has always been true of the federal response. States can't typically defecit budget, by law, so the federal government typically allocates money for them in chunks.
> New York City was not overwhelmed in the first wave, and had both Javits and the Mercy as unused spare capacity.
This is not in line with the facts as I understand them. Multiple health care workers I know told me in March-April that their ability to treat Covid patients were capped by constrained resources (not enough ventilators, not enough staff, not enough beds) during the first wave. Here [1] is an article that supports these anecdotes.
Also, the Navy hospital ships refused to accept patient transfers, even as the hospitals were completely full [2]. "On top of its strict rules preventing people infected with the virus from coming on board, the Navy is also refusing to treat a host of other conditions. " and "Mr. Dowling said he has had to tear his hospitals apart, retrofitting any unused space, including lobbies and conference rooms, into hospital wards.".
So no, you are incorrect. NY hospitals were absolutely overrun during the first wave. Please do not perpetuate a narrative that isn't supported by facts.
I don't think [1] suppports that. That's a report from a single hospital.
> [...] the ICU is at capacity, patient beds line the hallways of the emergency department, and the morgue is overflowing. [...] has a capacity of about 300 people at any given time
They then talk about converting elective space and hallways into bed space. Which was pretty normal everywhere.
And critically, NYC, as with all major metros, operates as a system of hospitals. So the data to support your assertion would be total NYC bed & ICU bed capacity & utilization.
"Overwhelmed" means unable to provide care. Not busy. Not lacking in specific equipment. Not being diverted to another hospital. It means ambulances showing up with patients and being told "No, we can provide no treatment."
The situation on the Comfort in NYC (swapped my coasts, oops!) was... complicated. The Navy was essentially commanded to "Send a big ship to NYC so it can be seen." Everyone I've talked to in Navy medicine thought it was idiotic, for reasons too numerous to list.
However, given the order from on high, the least &@$_ed way of fulfilling it was to use the Comfort to offload non-Covid patients from local hospitals, thereby freeing capacity, thereby creating more Covid bed space. (Just to be clear, swamping an enclosed ship with large numbers of patients infected with a highly communicable virus is a terrible idea. Land-based facilities, if existent, are infinitely superior for isolation in this scenario)
Only... nobody had thought about how that transfer was supposed to work. Or the legal ramifications of transferring patients from hospitals to US military care. Or any of the other minutiae.
Consequently, the Comfort essentially sat there waiting for hospitals to transfer patients and... they didn't.
Essentially the same story with Javits (staffed by military medical). What Javits did get tended to be folks the hospitals thought would be unable to pay, and/or Medicaid (ie capped reimbursement rates).
The general feeling on the military medical side is that hospitals didn't want to lose the revenue patients represented, and so were retaining as many as possible, even as their doctors, nurses, and staff (rightly so) told the media they'd been working non-stop for weeks.
Source: doctors in NYC, people who served at Javits and had colleagues on the Comfort
Please see guidelines for HN commenting. Specifically, "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> I don't think [1] suppports that. That's a report from a single hospital.
> And critically, NYC, as with all major metros, operates as a system of hospitals. So the data to support your assertion would be total NYC bed & ICU bed capacity & utilization.
> "Overwhelmed" means unable to provide care.
Yes, and about half of [2] comes from Michael Dowling, the head of the largest hospital system in New York, where he goes on at length about patients dying in hallways having never been treated because they didn't have enough staff, ventilators, bed space etc... Did you not read the articles?
> The situation on the Comfort in NYC (swapped my coasts, oops!) was... complicated. The Navy was essentially commanded to "Send a big ship to NYC so it can be seen."
This has nothing to do with how overrun NYC hospitals from, nor how effective the Navy hospital ships were at helping ease the burden.
And right back at ya: Please see guidelines for HN commenting. Specifically, "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
One thing that disappoints me most about the entire response is the shifting narrative.
I'm in a technical field. I understand the fits and starts and retractions that constitute actual scientific process.
But my understanding from reading earlier governmental / military pandemic wargames is that there was one overriding discovery: never hide or obscure the truth, as once public trust is lost it can never be regained.
This was always participants' original sin, and again and again it failed. You need public participation and adherence, and you can't do that without their trust.
So in scenarios where you have limited test kits available, don't tell people they don't need to get tested. Tell them the scenarios they should get tested in, on Day 1, and then explain that there's a shortage of tests, who they're currently going to, and what you're doing to increase the supply.
A vacuum of information creates panic. Trustworthiness, even in dire circumstances, creates shared goals.
(PS: I'm painfully aware the US president was leading most of this, but prefer to treat that situation like the racist uncle at Thanksgiving. Roll your eyes, dig a steak knife into your own leg, ignore what he said, and get on with the business of talking to other adults)
Agree. I used to respect and defend the scientific establishment. In the days of Covid it seems more of an appeal to authority on what some scientist says rather than actual science. And there are plenty of other experts who are ignored for going against the mainstream narrative.
Out of interest what do you actually expect him to have done regarding covid?
He wanted to ban flights from CHina but that was shouted down as being racist.
We have had all sorts of nonsense restrictions here in Europe, masks have been mandatory for months and they don't seem to have made a noticeable difference (case numbers keep going up, so restrictions are made tighter, but nothing changes).
A number of vaccines have been created in record time (not sure Trump had a great deal to do with that but he certainly didn't hinder it).
Question not directly related to this event, but triggered by this:
Has any of the countries around the world built a communication mechanism to directly reach its people without using any third-party platforms?
Isn't this a must, in case external/foreign malicious actors forcibly take control of the major third-party platforms used in a country someday in future?
Sure, most countries have such systems, multiple different ones in fact, not all necessarily using the internet. They're usually used for emergencies only though.
Redundancy is key if you're warding against foreign interference, nuclear events and the like. But at the end of the day if you're a free democracy you let people use whatever they want for the day to day stuff and you end up having to use those platforms to reach your citizens as well.
My country tried doing its own thing a couple decades ago. It's called the minitel. Look it up if you haven't heard of it, it's pretty neat :)
Do state media platforms count? FDR had his radio broadcasts, the UK has the BBC, various countries have emergency broadcast systems. In any case, it's certainly not something a government would find difficult if they found a need, it's probably just too much more convenient to have media companies handle most of the time.
What I think more common is that head of the state is not a priori directly broadcasting through account on private page. What is quite common is public broadcaster.
Honest question: Are people who are upset about this upset because they believe that Twitter should never ban anyone, or are they upset because they believe Trump has not violated any of Twitter's policies, or are they upset because they believe that Trump should not be banned even if he violates Twitter's policies?
I'm a bit of a hard liner against banning anyone. I may not care much for some of the stupid or horrific crap people say, but I'll put my life on the line for their right to say it unimpeded.
What other people do with that, and what happens in return is above my paygrade... I'm also generally pretty careful about what I do say as a result.
Sometimes at least. I have my asshat moments, I'm sad to say.
Remember when people said "it's only extremists like Alex Jones" and "white nationalists", yeah well now Twitter has banned the president of the United States.
I'm not a supporter of Trump, but I'm yet to hear him explicitly incite violence. I know he encouraged the protest at the Capitol but I've yet to see evidence that he was hoping for it to turn violent? And if he did want that why did he speak out against it? He's also repeatedly said there will be a peaceful transfer of power.
Am I missing something here? I've been told I can be quite a naive person so perhaps I'm taking him at face value too much. Either way, I'd appreciate if someone could help me put my thinking right on this.
Also, does this mean we can expect Biden to be removed from Twitter if tweets anything in support of BLM? I'm not comparing events here but both protest groups have had pockets of violence. I suspect he wouldn't be and that points to a bigger problem here. If you think the wrong things like the election was conducted unfairly or you disagree with lockdowns, too bad, big tech will silence you online. If you believe conspiracy theories about Russian election interference or write a book called "in defence of looting" you're fine, you might even find you'll get praise from people in the media.
>Remember when people said "it's only extremists like Alex Jones" and "white nationalists", yeah well now Twitter has banned the president of the United States.
The president of the United States is in fact an extremist like Alex Jones and a white nationalist.
Again, I want to be clear here that my defence of Trump isn't because I support him, I don't.
That said, I don't know how he can be an extremist given he received such huge support from the American public twice. He's called both a populist and an extremist, which seems - at least to me - to be an oxymoron.
I guess I also don't know why I should think he's a white nationalist? Could you expand on why you think that?
We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines, repeated flamewar, using HN primarily for political battle, and ignoring countless requests to stop, including one less than 24 hours ago:
> The president of the United States is in fact an extremist like Alex Jones and a white nationalist.
This sounds like a comment from Reddit. From an outsider perceptive (European) he seems neither an extremist nor a white nationalist. He is a nationalist for sure, but I have never heard Trump talk about people grouping them by skin colour, unlike Obama. I have only heard Trump talk about "Americans" and he divides that into the left or right.
After a mob has killed a police officer, he said “we love you, you are patriots” ... half-hearted “go home” does not minimize a full throated “the election was stolen from us”.
If people are rioting over X, and you say “wow, X is really bad!” - is that not encouragement?
What, in your mind, is inciting violence? Iirc, he told supporters to punch protesters during the 2016 campaign, no?
Do you think the people who were supporting BLM while condemning the violent components were encouraging violence? If not what would you say the difference is?
> Iirc, he told supporters to punch protesters during the 2016 campaign, no?
Yes, that would obviously be inciting violence. I hadn't heard about that. Do you have a source?
I think you are naive in several of your statements, or at least your understanding of these situations has been significantly filtered. Let me break down a couple of your statements:
> I've yet to see evidence that he was hoping for it to turn violent? And if he did want that why did he speak out against it?
He's not going to directly tell people to go commit violence. He's going to (and did) whip up a crowd using hateful language, demonize the people who he doesn't like, and make it clear that the crowd needed to "take action". He used the common formulae of a persuasive speech, but left the call to action portion vague, so he couldn't be held directly responsible; politicians do this all of the time.
> does this mean we can expect Biden to be removed from Twitter if tweets anything in support of BLM?
No. The are huge differences between the people who attacked the Capitol and BLM protesters.
1) Volume: BLM actions have been widespread and ongoing. Whatever these crazy Trumpers/white supremacists/insurectionists call themselves, they've had several orders of magnitude less actions than BLM.
2) Violence: even though there have been so few Trumper protests, they've almost always had violence and in several cases, murder. There has been violence during BLM protests before, but it is so much more rare compared to the number of protests that they've had. Also, in general, BLM violence is almost always directed at property, not people, and is usually as a response, unlike what we saw at the Capitol. Has ANY police officer been killed by BLM protesters? After literally thousands of protests? I haven't heard of it happening.
3) Purpose: BLM protests are generally about ending racism, social justice, and systemic equality. These Trumpets were taking action because they wanted to overturn the results of a democratic election. With that goal, they were basically trying to end our nation as a Democratic Republic.
4) Cause: BLM started, and has persisted, because people of color continue to be disproportionately killed by police (disproportionate in the reason why they were killed, not just in terms of numbers). It's funny how blatantly justified BLM's reason for existing became while watching how the Capitol Police handled the insurectionists. The Trumpets cause is that they didn't get what they want, because we live in a democracy.
So no, Biden showing support for BLM will not get him banned from Twitter, because BLM is activism in response to murderous racism, and because he has the moral compass not to try to cause the downfall of our democracy.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 307 ms ] threadThis represents a vast check on presidential power that exists purely in the hands of these incredibly wealthy and powerful social media executives. I don't necessarily disagree with Twitter's decision given the events of the last few days, but this undeniably strips Trump of a major source of power for him, and that merits a discussion of the role that private social media companies play in our discourse and presidential function as well.
edit: imagine trying to run for re-election without a social media presence. It's hard to imagine that anyone could mount a serious campaign without it, let alone win.
At the click of his fingers he’ll have cameras from every major news network and reporters from every newspaper in a room to listen to what he says. Inevitably whatever he does say will be on Twitter instantly. Not that it matters that much because the majority of the country aren’t even on Twitter. They read about his tweets in news reports.
I don’t buy that Twitter is a source of power for Trump. It is his communication medium of choice, certainly. But his power has always been in making controversial statements that generate headlines. He doesn’t need Twitter for that.
He had a tendency to say things like "I got twice as many votes as Obama did when he was reelected." (I don't think he actually said that one, but it's hard to find a real example when... they deleted his twitter account.)
And then that isn't true. Trump got ~74M, in 2012 Obama got ~66M, that's not twice as much. But it's more. So if they run the story correcting it, they're running a story that tells people that Trump in 2020 got more votes than Obama did when he won in 2012.
At some point the media got tired of this, but what are they supposed to do about it? If they don't correct it, the claim stands unopposed. If they do, they're still running the story Trump really wanted, telling people he got more votes than Obama.
They eventually started omitting the context. So then the headline becomes "Trump lies that he got twice as many votes as Obama" and then that's the entire story. No mention of how many there actually were. But that didn't work, because then the first comment on the story is from some Trump supporter providing the actual numbers and you're back to having a story about Trump lying that still benefits Trump.
So then they want to do something about the Trump supporters because they keep providing the inconvenient context that Trump's controversy generator left there on purpose. So they censor them in some way. But then the supporters feel wronged -- being punished for saying something true -- so they support Trump even harder and it backfires.
The whole thing made them so angry that they're now willing to cross every line in order to destroy him. But the current strategy seems to be to censor him as much as possible so that nobody sees the rebuttal to the rebuttal because nobody sees the rebuttal because nobody sees the original claim.
Which might actually work to destroy Trump, but only by destroying a structural pillar of the democratic process at the same time. And anybody who thinks that such a weapon, once used, will only be used once, is delusional.
I agree, and I'm not saying that Twitter acted in the wrong here. Imagine a hypothetical scenario where Dorsey threatens a president to say or not say something under penalty of deplatforming. That's a pretty significant lever to have over POTUS. That's the point I'm trying to make here.
The threat would be a criminal offense.
> where Dorsey threatens a president to say or not say something
https://codes.findlaw.com/us/title-18-crimes-and-criminal-pr...
No need for threats.
how did he break the contract with Twitter? the tweets twitter references hardly seem to encourage mob violence.
twitter subjectively interprets their own set of rules and it's clear there's a double standard.
when politicians on the left encourage protests and riots that result in the destruction and burning of private property, there are no repercussions.
and i'm not attempting to say that two wrongs make a right; encouraging violence or mobs is wrong, but Twitter's enforcement of their own rules is clearly influenced by political ideology.
I think you are trying to make a reasoned argument and engage in meaningful debate, but can we really make the argument that the person with the nuclear codes, in control of a budget of trillions of dollars, receives any power from a free online publishing tool?
i respectfully disagree. imagine FDR without his radio fireside chats, JFK without his television appearances, or even Trump without Twitter.
the usage of media platforms and ability to communicate directly with constituents is a source of power.
If you had said HBO and Sirius radio, I would agree.
And what’s the alternative? Force them to provide service to every crazy person?
Further the president can literally call in air strikes or offer blanket pardons etc. They are often called the most powerful men in the world for good reason.
This is the fourth estate in everything but name. It doesn't have the same protections as the press, but it's no different than it was decades or even centuries ago, when media moguls could focus the heat.
If we would have kept all the tweets as 144 chars as text only, a full copy of all tweets would have been possible through a compressed distributed blockchain.
Time to reboot social networks folks!
Certainly it is true that it is hard to run a campaign without a media presence. That has been true for hundreds of years. Competent candidates have entire teams, if not the vast majority of their campaign, figuring out how to effectively contract with private media entities (whose freedom is protected by the First Amendment) to get their message out. That incompetent candidates exist is not a reason to change this system.
Presidents should not use social media, in my view. They have too much power and too much reach.
A simple TV broadcast should be good enough.
We've stooped so low that the entire world has one communication channel for politicians: Twitter.
I'm not from the US so will use example from my country.
I do not mind if my prime minister was banned from Facebook even though I'm ok with him (didn't vote for him, but we have more than two parties).Facebook is just some private company for me. It is monopoly in a way and pain that most of my social circle is locked there. But for any public figure? There is public broadcaster. It already is not good that he is not using his PR team that much.
You have put too much power in to the hands of private companies. Public broadcaster can be (and often is) misused for propaganda of ruling government. But so can be private one (and often is). But at least there is stil this balance of public/private spaces.
But I know this is irrelevant in the USA which tries to implement some utopias (like free speech) but others are considered as immanentization of the eschaton.
* Reddit ban a number of pro trump subreddits (details at reddit.com/r/reclassified)
* Twitter permanently bans Trump and a number of other influential conservative accounts
* Discord has banned the donald win discord
* Google banned Parler from the Play Store
* Apple is strongly considering to do the same
This will go down as a very important day in American Internet history. A very important week in American history.
I can only wonder what the next two weeks will have in store.
Edit: To be clear, I support the bans and would have loved to see them earlier. I am not lamenting them.
There are numerous instances where activists have pointed out glaring breach of T&C, nothing was ever done, because it was good for business
(I mostly think it's hilarious that he's slowly rounded up from 74 million)
The coup failed, the dust settled, Biden will be inaugurated, and most importantly, the Democrats took control of the Senate for the next two years. Ajit Pai announced that he's dropping his plan to creatively reinterpret Section 230 because he won't get the rulemaking done in time. The consensus of the country and the world is that the far right has crossed a line, and there is significant public sentiment against the platforms that enabled them. It is suddenly no longer net profitable to keep them around. Every platform independently came to the same conclusion at the same time because they saw the same facts.
I just can't understand this site, I really can't. Our legislative branch was attacked at the direction of our executive branch on Wednesday. But what people are really upset about is the president's ability to tweet?
I mean... I get that it would be nice to have platforms that were politically neutral. But if that's not working out? Meh. There are plenty of places where conservatives can scream on the internet (including right here! I await my downvotes with resignation). You Just Can't Align Yourself With a Coup. Is that so terribly hard?
The day Censorship was made valid with hordes cheering them on. A very bad and sad precedent. This is going to backfire very, very badly. The Big Tech tested waters and realized they can behave like Supranational Powers and have support from the people. All it takes for Big Tech is for them to convince the popular masses on how to think. That is the last step to complete control. Elected Governments will be powerless against this kind of power. If they can do this to a sitting US President they can do it to anyone else and can influence elections and electorates in ways we have never imagined before.
Right now I support the effort given the context, but what happens if I'm on the other side of the table and in the right?
But the only thing I'm really worried about, is that his most extreme followers will feel even more marginalized - which could make the echo chambers even more dangerous.
I don't think these actions are as much coordinated, as they simply are a cascade of reactions. But from the outside, especially to those living in a bubble, it certainly would look like a surgical strike on Trump and his followers.
That alone, could absolutely elevate the "deep state conspiracy" psychosis to even more dangerous heights.
How long until some of the nutjobs actually start using their pipebombs and IED's?
But reality doesn't matter to them. We gain nothing but lose so much by pandering to these people for whom facts mean nothing. They will do what they will do, including an insurrection in the national's capital while a joint session of Congress is in order to enact the peaceful transition of power, one of the most sacred tenants of democracy, and nothing we can do will convince them otherwise.
Let's have the free speech discussions debated through representatives. I can agree that violence should be removed by platforms immediately, and that "Stop the Steal" did promote just that.
P.S. He is also removed from Mastodon[1] too:
> The page you were looking for doesn't exist here anymore.
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/08/twitter...
[1] https://mastodon.social/@realDonaldTrump
The same with our sordid past.
But that is another story...
P.S. In 2018 I uploaded photo of the highest flagpole with the State Flag of Ukraine from presidential website to Wikimedia Commons archive[3] (as photo archive was under CreativeCommons). Since 2019 this photo was removed[4] from presidential website... Probably that is the only survived direct copy of this photo (except those which are available in Internet Archive's WaybackMachine snapshots of this site).
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
[0] https://president.gov.ua
[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20190520174801/https://www.presid...
[2] http://web.archive.org/web/20190519173435/https://www.presid...
[3] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_Ukraine_over...
[4] http://web.archive.org/web/20190421232312/https://www.presid...
For some reason, I thought that Mastadon was supposed to be free from censorship (for the sake of discussion, let's just call it that) because you could run your own servers.
Did Trump get removed from a specific server or from Mastadon in general? Or did everyone else choose not to link (not sure of the terminology) with him? And if it's possible to get removed from Mastadon, what makes it different than an ad-free clone of Twitter?
Each Mastodon instance chooses which other instances they can federate with (whitelist or blacklist). Given that Mastodon's early adopters included a large amount of people who switched because they thought Twitter should have banned more people (often because of perceived harassment), they tend to quickly ban or blacklist anyone they see as bad actors.
It's free from censorship in the sense that someone could run their own server, but doesn't guarantee an audience.
https://twitter.com/JDiamond1/status/1347741119434649603
US presidents have the biggest, loudest loudspeakers available at their fingertips. Obama's administration had a whole protocol about how to use Twitter as one of their official comms medium and not have it be a de facto one. Biden is so far following it.
Trump brought this on himself. (And btw, you can believe this, AND believe the ban is a good thing, AND believe twitter and media companies have too much power. These things are consistent)
Y'all should be thankful this failed authoritarian was so incompetent.
Now that he is out of power, revenue from his enabling dwindles fast and criticism increases, so the business decision is to ban him.
It's all about advertising revenue and profits.
There is some grey area that was definitely crossed the last few years where banning him from twitter would have been the right thing to do. It was long before Jan 6th but i don't think it was so early in his term either.
What's done is done, I'm just glad it's over now tbh.
Replace Dorsey with Murdoch for a day and tell me twitter doesn't have too much power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
The paradox of tolerance is one of the weirdest concepts I see being quoted everywhere that absolutely makes no sense to me. It seems so obviously inherently flawed.
________________________________
Who defines intolerance? Historically that's the people in power.
In the 50's that was the US government and powerful people like CIA Director J Edgar Hoover and Senator Joseph McCarthy who used their power to root out leftists, branding them as communists. They said free america could not tolerate the intolerant leftists because socialism and communists were inherently intolerant.
The USSR did this by sending people who questioned party agenda straight to the gulags. "By going against party thinking, these people are pushing for an intolerant society that is stratified with the class structures of old. We need to get rid of them before they ruin our perfect tolerant society."
The same logic is used to try to stamp out Muslims in countries like India right now and other places in the world historically. "If we leave the intolerant Muslims around, they'll bring forth Jihad and enforce Sharia law on everyone. The Koran is very intolerant about how non-muslims should be treated, we need to force them out because their intolerance is a threat to tolerance everywhere."
Literally every Christian country post-Martin Luther in the middle ages used that logic to wage wars on other Christian countries. Not just Christian vs. Christian of course. It's why countries in the past fought against each other over religion so much. When intolerance is defined as views that I don't agree with, it becomes kill or be killed world.
One of the best features of the enlightenment thinking is the concept of tolerance. One of the fundamental principles of Western thought. It's literally the reason why non-Christians can live in formerly Christian countries without being persecuted. It's why we accept people thinking about other government types other than an absolute monarchy.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We had a coup attempt on Wednesday! We're already there. This is the attempt to recover. Maybe it won't work. I'm not super hopeful. But in a country where the president can aim a riot at congress, his ability to tweet doesn't really seem like the freedom we should be most concerned about.
It wasn't even close to a coup. https://mises.org/wire/capitol-riot-wasnt-coup-it-wasnt-even...
>This is the attempt to recover.
This is a massive step forward to authoritarianism. Internet monopolies colluding to censor the internet, politicians calling for protestors to be put on the no fly list without due process, growing calls for the government to censor the internet, and more to come.
You'd never say that if it wasn't "your people" in there. Never. Don't claim to be a patriot ever again if you think dismissing the first successful attack on a congressional session (hell, the VP was in there too) in the history of the republic is a good argument to make. Hell, five people died. That's more than at the Reichstag fire (I checked with Godwin, by the way, he approves).
This was a moment of deep shame. And comments like yours make it worse.
>This was a moment of deep shame. And comments like yours make it worse.
The people turning their back on our civil liberties are far more shameful.
You say so only because it failed. If the tunnels didn't exist? If the mob had been faster or better armed? How would it have ended? Would Pence and Pelosi still be hostages?
(Edit: not worth continuing. But I bet anything if I kept going you'd eventually pull out a thesaurus and zing me with BUT it's REALLY an "autogolpe!")
https://theconversation.com/was-it-a-coup-no-but-siege-on-us...
In short, a coup is an organised action to seize power. For that, it's essential to have secured the support of at least part of the armed forces, and a plan to replace the top of the power hierarchy. Nothing like that was seen in the Capitol riots, which seemed disorganised and essentially demonstrative in nature. Once entering the building, the rioters proceeded taking selfies.
The authors said a coup has 3 criteria.
> 3) Do the plotters use illegal and unconstitutional methods to seize executive power?
The authors said yes.
> 2) Is the target of the insurrection the chief executive of the government?
The authors said yes.
> 1) Are the perpetrators agents of the state, such as military officials or rogue governmental officials?
The authors said no because Trump can deny meaning to incite it. They're extremely charitable. And this isn't part of the common definition of a coup anyway.
I have no clue why the author checks this. The rioters entered a building (which is by the way the seat of the legislative power) and that's it. Even if they had killed everyone inside, that wouldn't have put them an inch closer to seizing the power, as the power is simply not there. Power is alliances and a chain of command, not being in a room with shiny big buttons.
I do agree that Trump's position is ambiguous: one cannot deny that he was probably hoping for more. In that case he would be the only one to have imagined a coup, as the rioters were just a few... impressionables.
The insurrectionists thought most voters and at least 150 members of Congress supported them. The commander in chief egged them on. Coups have succeeded with weaker allies.
Some insurrectionists thought they could pressure enough members of Congress to block certification and send the election to the House. Some wanted Trump to declare martial law. Some openly welcome civil war.
Congress has executive functions too. Like counting electoral votes.
Those groups have imagined a coup for years. These are the same people who were rumbling about a cold civil war turning hot any moment now during the Obama years, quoting the revolutionary language of the Founding Fathers and strongly implying that something must be done about the leftist menace when they thought the Tea Party would actually follow through.
The fairly overt goal, articulated in only slightly elliptical language by the President in inciting the mob, was to cause, by intimidation, members of Congress to alter their behavior re: the count of electoral votes so that Trump would be declared the victor and thus retain executive power.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Absolutely wrong [0].
> We are heading toward authoritarianism.
With the failure of this insurrection and the (unfortunately very weak) backlash against Trump, the primary leader of this failed coup, we've actually moved away from authoritarianism. If anything, we need stronger action by the government to prevent this from happening again.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
This isn’t authoritarianism, and we can still rightfully claim to be a tolerant society with sound rejection and banishment of hate speech. Hypothetical example, my religion does not believe in gay marriage, yet I don’t prohibit others from pursuing a happier life. But (the royal) you must absolutely draw the line at enabling hate.
Unless it's directed at white people. That one's been embraced by our tolerant overlords.
Who defines intolerance? Historically that's the people in power.
In the 50's that was the US government and powerful people like CIA Director J Edgar Hoover and Senator Joseph McCarthy who used their power to root out leftists, branding them as communists. They said free america could not tolerate the intolerant leftists because socialism and communists were inherently intolerant.
The USSR did this by sending people who questioned party agenda straight to the gulags. "By going against party thinking, these people are pushing for an intolerant society that is stratified with the class structures of old. We need to get rid of them before they ruin our perfect tolerant society."
The same logic is used to try to stamp out Muslims in countries like India right now and other places in the world historically. "If we leave the intolerant Muslims around, they'll bring forth Jihad and enforce Sharia law on everyone. The Koran is very intolerant about how non-muslims should be treated, we need to force them out because their intolerance is a threat to tolerance everywhere."
Literally every Christian country post-Martin Luther in the middle ages used that logic to wage wars on other Christian countries. Not just Christian vs. Christian of course. It's why countries in the past fought against each other over religion so much. When intolerance is defined as views that I don't agree with, it becomes kill or be killed world.
One of the best features of the enlightenment thinking is the concept of tolerance. One of the fundamental principles of Western thought. It's literally the reason why non-Christians can live in formerly Christian countries without being persecuted. It's why we accept people thinking about other government types other than an absolute monarchy.
The fact that you can say that statement without irony is honestly so scary to me.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25696026.
In Trump’s case he can call a press conference.
Anyone but Trump or the banned-wagon. If Trump hosts a website on GoDaddy or any other hosting service, it will be removed immediately.
> In Trump’s case he can call a press conference.
Depends where it can be streamed. Given he's just been de-platformed from most streaming services for the general folk. CSPAN perhaps?
Sure the media will do it but they can't help but edit it after it has been streamed.
He has websites. They have not been removed. There are decentralized streaming tools that do not depend on any monolithic platforms. You are describing a non-reality.
He’s been banned from a few social networks for terms of service violations. That’s all.
Given that people are already calling for Godaddy to suspend donaldjtrump.com, I will look forward to the day that it is kicked off of Godaddy just like when they kicked Daily Stormer off for 'inciting violence' [0] and Gab [1] for promoting and encouraging violence against people.
> That’s all.
You honestly think it will stop there? That is just the start of it all.
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/15/godaddy-ceo-we-booted-the-ne...
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/28/18036520/gab-down-godadd...
People were ‘calling’ for Twitter to suspend Trump for years. People ‘calling’ for something means nothing.
You could be right though, but there are many ISPs. I’d never trust GoDaddy in the first place. I’m sure some are run by Trump supporters.
Private businesses get to do business with whoever they like.
Ultimately, Twitter gave dt a platform, and so it’s theirs to take away.
"Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather."
https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence
Oh shit EFF just approved censorship.
Stormfront has been an openly racist community forum, spouting hate speech unimpeded for 24 years. Their one weird trick: they're not relying on someone else's platform to do it.
Except that's not a problem at all, let alone "dangerous." You're entitled to free speech, you're not entitled to 'reach' or any audience for that matter.
Fine, fine, I get that a lot of people here are chilled by threats to open discussion. But please go further, how do you balance that with a private company's right to do what they want with their own product?
I personally find it very threatening as a product developer that there might be laws requiring me to allow people to use my products in ways that are abhorrent to me. Yes, the government has defined protected classes and I will respect those (not hard for me). But if a bunch of Trumpers wanted to use my software to organize a coup, do people really think I have to support that?
Where is that line?
edit: and to be clear the thing I am most disappointed in my comments is the brevity. I am disappointed in myself the most for making terse comments.
You're asking for logic from people who learned from a young age that doing bad things gets them attention.
Trump is their icon. He was quick and happy after the "capitol storm" riot to finally say there will be a peaceful transition on the 20th. Why? Because he was asked to do it and he feels he is being helpful by complying.
Nevermind that he created the problem in the first place. He's always felt, since a young age, that he didn't get enough attention, and only received it when he acted out. Like, when you use your fork to eat food for the first time and dad doesn't even look at you. Then you throw it on the floor and Dad is suddenly alert. Boom, that's a life lesson. Repeat that scenario 1,000 times, give the child a billion dollars and you get someone like Trump.
In my view the query posed by this conflict is, what is the solution when private platforms hold apparent monopolies over public discourse?
And IMO the answer to this is to encourage competition by lowering barriers to entry for new content providers. Bring back net neutrality with the FCC and FTC's Antitrust should crack down on regional broadband monopolies, content conglomerates, zero rating, etc.
Breaking up Google/Facebook isn't going to provide sufficient competition. We need to ensure there is space for new pastures.
> Now that Twitter has booted Trump, the next 24 hours will be devoted exclusively to people who don't understand the First Amendment explaining the First Amendment to people who do.
With a corollary I want to add that "everyone will believe themselves to be in the latter category."
Let's just avoid social media for a while and enjoy peace of mind.
Next he'll be logging into Ivanka's account.
There's no legal reason a private company cannot manage its content?
If Twitter made the decision based on government pressure, it would be because of influence by the upcoming administration. I have not seen evidence to this effect.
If these groups and individuals that were banned were violating the TOS before, why did they leave them in place for so long? How do these companies decide when to enforce their rules, since obviously it's not immediately? And do they make deals with one another (I'll ban someone you don't like if you ban someone I don't like)?
Point to a time in history where you gave up all the creature comforts afforded to you by this nation’s imperialism.
You’re a political agent raised on propaganda; everyone is. I don’t see you rocking the boat and picking a fight with the establishment? Why would Tim Apple or Dorsey, typical humans biologically, be held to a different standard?
All the armchair soldiers in this thread are entitled first worlders.
Literally no one here has achieved such a unique accomplishment to be above reproach.
Sit down, America. Nobody really cares. They go along because bigger military.
One could argue tech companies have a monopoly problem but you’re just saying a private company should allow anyone to say anything on their platform and throwing a ridiculous slippery slope out in front of it.
AWS is reportedly considering banning Parler. If this trend continues we'll soon have a completely balkanized internet where everyone lives in their own bubble and is banned from posting their viewpoints in the opposite bubble.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/cloudflares-ceo-...
It's like complaining about shutting down the old chuck e cheese on the interstate.
Slightly off topic: This presents an interesting thought exercise- how would that stat be calculated? Does a dev with a github repo, Twitter account, and active account on a discord server have more or less of a presence on the web than a retiree with a Facebook account, two yahoos, and a google profile that frequently comments on the youtube videos they binge watch daily?
Not disputing, just musing.
https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/thedonald.win
It is not as simple as you make it out to be. The real slipperly slope is unlimited powers that Big Tech currently enjoys. But yeah you and everyone else will realise in days to come as to why this argument of yours was wrong to begin with. You haven't thought it through. You just want a short-term problem resolved immediately: throw Trump out of office asap, shutdown conspiracy theory sites and stifle any expression for the right wing. You haven't thought of the long term consequences a.k.a Second Order Effects.
It's kinda like when BLM was hot in the news and companies decided to paint their logo black. They didn't suddenly care about racism, they just chose an opportune time and had the excuse that other players were already doing it.
It's pretty pathetic yeah. In this case, better late than never, but still really fucking late..
What happened here is opportunistic, not principled. There were plenty of other cases i can think of where companies did take riskier stands after evaluating pros and cons (cloudflare springs to mind). Those you can call principled.
Basically, they are just full of shit and are willing to hop on whatever bandwagon makes them look the best.
Isn't his time up on Jan 20? It really looks like collusion to this Aussie (me), who has no stake in the game.
> while it makes good PR.
I'm sure there's quite a few million Trump voters who would disagree it's good PR.
As mercurial as he's been, he is still the sitting president of the country which lauds itself as the greatest (personally I disagree with the latter assessment).
So, what does it mean when the tech companies have put a gag on their own sitting leader?
From the outside it looks very humorous (probably more humorous than what Mr Trump has been in the past 4 years!)
Two weeks before the end of the term is just about as late as you can take such an action, short of taking it after the 21st (which twitter was rumored to be waiting for).
> what does it mean when the tech companies have put a gag on their own sitting leader?
I can ban my country's president from my own software platform if the mood strikes me. The reason twitter is different is because of the massive audience. What does it mean, indeed. I'm kinda looking forward to the republican reaction to this, maybe suddenly they'll care about the fact that media companies have insane amounts of power in the US.
Jumping on a bandwagon isn’t collusion. Twitter started by fact checking him back in November. Other sites followed. Over time, Twitter got more aggressive about it before banning him. Now everyone else isn’t the first to ban, so it’s not as “scary” to do so.
It took as long as it did because no one wanted to take that “first step”.
"This claim is disputed", yet the Flat Earth Societies page remained unchallenged. It's clearly political bias more than a search for the truth.
Twitter banned some stuff temporarily the other day, now they upgrade those bans and add some more. Google removes parler from the Play Store today, a different action (not banning trump). Apple didn't ban anything, but is considering it.
These seem like different actions by different companies, responding to the same news.
Also, pedantic as it may be, it's not political action. These companies are not political entities. Just because groups of people communicate about politics on the platform doesn't make them political.
What we are seeing is major internet companies responding to and banning perpetrators of treason and sedition, of domestic terrorism.
This very subjective and probably different person to person especially given AI driven filters and the ability to choose who to follow or friend on these sites.
When I check one of the sites you mentioned, I see almost exclusively voices from the American right-wing. On the other one, it's significantly more moderate but with some opposing viewpoints from either extreme thrown in. It all depends on who someone friends or follows and what the filter chooses to show.
Of course, this ignores what "liberal bias" is, which is a subjective determination that varies according to the bias of whomever makes such a determination.
Although, this is a distraction from the question raised early in this thread. of whether some coordination happened behind the scenes or if these bans are a result of distinct actions in response to the same circumstances.
His own party is disowning him after years of playing along.
This is a bit beyond violating a TOS.
Unaligned politically or voters in the other side outnumbered Trump. Yet he clings to fantasy he can just steam roll over them.
This has to be taken into a context that’s a bit more than dictionary definition of censorship.
If Wednesday wasn't enough to make it clear that Trump's rhetoric was inciteful, that news was.
And I don't think they had deals, it's more like nobody wants to be the last place where Trump is posting.
Regimes fall every now and then. Coup attempts happen all the time. I have never seen media or social media ban any Government account over it.
I guess Social Media has a different conscience for when regime change/coup-d'etat happens in say Iraq vs when it happens in USA.
What this has done is set a very bad precedent. The Big Tech is acting like Supranational Powers overriding what Elected Governments can and cannot do. Remember that the transfer of power hasn't completed yet. Trump is still the elected President of USA until 20th of January.
If Big Tech can do this to a sitting elected President, it can do it to anyone else. No Government in the World is safe from Big Tech censorship.
I can't argue with dumbness. Big Tech literally has unlimited powers. What kind of media does Trump have? Nothing. You haven't thought it through. Every platform will keep banning Trump because of popular opinion. This is a very fucked up precedent. Today it is Trump, tomorrow it can be Biden. It can be Clinton. It can be any President/Prime Minister in the World. It can be any Government. It can be any Dictator. Unlimited power doesn't discriminate. It is not bloviation but just your inability to think it through as you want your short term issue to be resolved. This is how we enabled surveillance and become accustomed to it. We will become accustomed to censorship as well. Like a frog in slow boiling water.
(per 4chan/qanon) it's all false flags. that lady wasn't shot. she threw herself back on to her padded backpack... because "they" knew that if someone "died" then they could quell the uprising. (which is actually pretty insulting to the "revolution" isn't it?)
i spent the day poking around a lot of conspiracy theories and videos and man.. that's one big rabbit hole of mental illness.
But on the subject at hand, I can't imagine a platform that was required to carry Trump's content that I would want to be a part of.
Ultimately, if a company is answerable to no one except themselves, then what do you expect is going to happen? They're just protecting their own interests.
You use the platform; you accept the TOS. You accept the arbitrary enforcement of the TOS.
That's how it works on every platform right now.
Right? Wrong? I don't know... but I'll tell you what I do know: a) I'm not surprised, and b) there is zero chance this will change without legal compulsion.
So right now, concerned or not, it is what it is. Suck it up, or accept legislative change; you can't have it both ways.
Trump attempting to overthrow the election is much more of a threat to Twitter than Trump being an otherwise typical GOP rage monger until now
Maybe.
I'm not going to ban you because you've also been posting some good comments. But if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN in the intended spirit, we'd be grateful. The rules apply regardless of how wrong other people are or how badly they behave. The commons is fragile, especially right now, and we need community members to contribute to protecting it, not destroying it.
Okay, you win, that's a good point. Tbh "don't take conversations further into hell" sounds like an excellent additional guideline, even if it can be read between the lines.
There probably is a reckoning to be had about how access to social media is mediated, that social media companies have demonstrated the technical ability and willingness to do it doesn't limit future options to regulate how they do it.
In other news, Orwell's "1984" is currently Amazons #7 best seller [0].
[0] https://www.amazon.com/best-sellers-books-Amazon/zgbs/books
People are cheering on the bans without thinking further of the massive negative consequences this slippery slope will likely lead to.
Glenn Greenwald did an excellent interview yesterday where he explained exactly why acting hastily after traumatic events and rage is so damn short sighted:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMVS9tfNyjc
They had to rewrite their content policies to give him a loophole a long time ago, since any normal person would be banned for what he said. They recently started having to add disclaimers, because even the loophole wasn't enough to counter his wrongness and influence.
- no free healthcare means you initially had to pay to get tested
- underdeveloped healthcare system (initial wave saw NYC overwhelmed)
- lack of labor laws means that you have few rights: no sick days and can easily be fired with no grace period
- polarized political environment means that government help takes a lot of time and has to be executed in mammoth size packages
- very large country seen as one makes it an easy target for the press (x number of people died instead of x%)
Varied from state to state, no?
> underdeveloped healthcare system (initial wave saw NYC overwhelmed)
New York City was not overwhelmed in the first wave, and had both Javits and the Mercy as unused spare capacity.
> lack of labor laws means that you have few rights: no sick days and can easily be fired with no grace period
Varied from employer to employer. For example, my employer at the time added Covid-quarantine-specific PTO, full PTO for high risk groups that felt uncomfortable, and bonuses for those who chose to work during the pandemic.
> polarized political environment means that government help takes a lot of time and has to be executed in mammoth size packages
This has always been true of the federal response. States can't typically defecit budget, by law, so the federal government typically allocates money for them in chunks.
This is not in line with the facts as I understand them. Multiple health care workers I know told me in March-April that their ability to treat Covid patients were capped by constrained resources (not enough ventilators, not enough staff, not enough beds) during the first wave. Here [1] is an article that supports these anecdotes.
Also, the Navy hospital ships refused to accept patient transfers, even as the hospitals were completely full [2]. "On top of its strict rules preventing people infected with the virus from coming on board, the Navy is also refusing to treat a host of other conditions. " and "Mr. Dowling said he has had to tear his hospitals apart, retrofitting any unused space, including lobbies and conference rooms, into hospital wards.".
So no, you are incorrect. NY hospitals were absolutely overrun during the first wave. Please do not perpetuate a narrative that isn't supported by facts.
1) https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/30/us/brooklyn-hospital-coronavi...
2) https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/nyregion/ny-coronavirus-u...
> [...] the ICU is at capacity, patient beds line the hallways of the emergency department, and the morgue is overflowing. [...] has a capacity of about 300 people at any given time
They then talk about converting elective space and hallways into bed space. Which was pretty normal everywhere.
And critically, NYC, as with all major metros, operates as a system of hospitals. So the data to support your assertion would be total NYC bed & ICU bed capacity & utilization.
"Overwhelmed" means unable to provide care. Not busy. Not lacking in specific equipment. Not being diverted to another hospital. It means ambulances showing up with patients and being told "No, we can provide no treatment."
The situation on the Comfort in NYC (swapped my coasts, oops!) was... complicated. The Navy was essentially commanded to "Send a big ship to NYC so it can be seen." Everyone I've talked to in Navy medicine thought it was idiotic, for reasons too numerous to list.
However, given the order from on high, the least &@$_ed way of fulfilling it was to use the Comfort to offload non-Covid patients from local hospitals, thereby freeing capacity, thereby creating more Covid bed space. (Just to be clear, swamping an enclosed ship with large numbers of patients infected with a highly communicable virus is a terrible idea. Land-based facilities, if existent, are infinitely superior for isolation in this scenario)
Only... nobody had thought about how that transfer was supposed to work. Or the legal ramifications of transferring patients from hospitals to US military care. Or any of the other minutiae.
Consequently, the Comfort essentially sat there waiting for hospitals to transfer patients and... they didn't.
Essentially the same story with Javits (staffed by military medical). What Javits did get tended to be folks the hospitals thought would be unable to pay, and/or Medicaid (ie capped reimbursement rates).
The general feeling on the military medical side is that hospitals didn't want to lose the revenue patients represented, and so were retaining as many as possible, even as their doctors, nurses, and staff (rightly so) told the media they'd been working non-stop for weeks.
Source: doctors in NYC, people who served at Javits and had colleagues on the Comfort
Please see guidelines for HN commenting. Specifically, "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> And critically, NYC, as with all major metros, operates as a system of hospitals. So the data to support your assertion would be total NYC bed & ICU bed capacity & utilization.
> "Overwhelmed" means unable to provide care.
Yes, and about half of [2] comes from Michael Dowling, the head of the largest hospital system in New York, where he goes on at length about patients dying in hallways having never been treated because they didn't have enough staff, ventilators, bed space etc... Did you not read the articles?
> The situation on the Comfort in NYC (swapped my coasts, oops!) was... complicated. The Navy was essentially commanded to "Send a big ship to NYC so it can be seen."
This has nothing to do with how overrun NYC hospitals from, nor how effective the Navy hospital ships were at helping ease the burden.
And right back at ya: Please see guidelines for HN commenting. Specifically, "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- You can't get free tests easily. - almost overwhelmed hospitals - pretty much at their limit.
We have pretty much the same % deaths as the US - 0.1% of the population, so less than Heart disease or cancer, but worse than an average flu.
I'm in a technical field. I understand the fits and starts and retractions that constitute actual scientific process.
But my understanding from reading earlier governmental / military pandemic wargames is that there was one overriding discovery: never hide or obscure the truth, as once public trust is lost it can never be regained.
This was always participants' original sin, and again and again it failed. You need public participation and adherence, and you can't do that without their trust.
So in scenarios where you have limited test kits available, don't tell people they don't need to get tested. Tell them the scenarios they should get tested in, on Day 1, and then explain that there's a shortage of tests, who they're currently going to, and what you're doing to increase the supply.
A vacuum of information creates panic. Trustworthiness, even in dire circumstances, creates shared goals.
(PS: I'm painfully aware the US president was leading most of this, but prefer to treat that situation like the racist uncle at Thanksgiving. Roll your eyes, dig a steak knife into your own leg, ignore what he said, and get on with the business of talking to other adults)
He wanted to ban flights from CHina but that was shouted down as being racist.
We have had all sorts of nonsense restrictions here in Europe, masks have been mandatory for months and they don't seem to have made a noticeable difference (case numbers keep going up, so restrictions are made tighter, but nothing changes).
A number of vaccines have been created in record time (not sure Trump had a great deal to do with that but he certainly didn't hinder it).
So what in your opinion should Trump have done?
Has any of the countries around the world built a communication mechanism to directly reach its people without using any third-party platforms?
Isn't this a must, in case external/foreign malicious actors forcibly take control of the major third-party platforms used in a country someday in future?
Redundancy is key if you're warding against foreign interference, nuclear events and the like. But at the end of the day if you're a free democracy you let people use whatever they want for the day to day stuff and you end up having to use those platforms to reach your citizens as well.
My country tried doing its own thing a couple decades ago. It's called the minitel. Look it up if you haven't heard of it, it's pretty neat :)
What other people do with that, and what happens in return is above my paygrade... I'm also generally pretty careful about what I do say as a result.
Sometimes at least. I have my asshat moments, I'm sad to say.
I'm not a supporter of Trump, but I'm yet to hear him explicitly incite violence. I know he encouraged the protest at the Capitol but I've yet to see evidence that he was hoping for it to turn violent? And if he did want that why did he speak out against it? He's also repeatedly said there will be a peaceful transfer of power.
Am I missing something here? I've been told I can be quite a naive person so perhaps I'm taking him at face value too much. Either way, I'd appreciate if someone could help me put my thinking right on this.
Also, does this mean we can expect Biden to be removed from Twitter if tweets anything in support of BLM? I'm not comparing events here but both protest groups have had pockets of violence. I suspect he wouldn't be and that points to a bigger problem here. If you think the wrong things like the election was conducted unfairly or you disagree with lockdowns, too bad, big tech will silence you online. If you believe conspiracy theories about Russian election interference or write a book called "in defence of looting" you're fine, you might even find you'll get praise from people in the media.
The president of the United States is in fact an extremist like Alex Jones and a white nationalist.
That said, I don't know how he can be an extremist given he received such huge support from the American public twice. He's called both a populist and an extremist, which seems - at least to me - to be an oxymoron.
I guess I also don't know why I should think he's a white nationalist? Could you expand on why you think that?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25681963
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
This sounds like a comment from Reddit. From an outsider perceptive (European) he seems neither an extremist nor a white nationalist. He is a nationalist for sure, but I have never heard Trump talk about people grouping them by skin colour, unlike Obama. I have only heard Trump talk about "Americans" and he divides that into the left or right.
After a mob has killed a police officer, he said “we love you, you are patriots” ... half-hearted “go home” does not minimize a full throated “the election was stolen from us”.
If people are rioting over X, and you say “wow, X is really bad!” - is that not encouragement?
What, in your mind, is inciting violence? Iirc, he told supporters to punch protesters during the 2016 campaign, no?
> Iirc, he told supporters to punch protesters during the 2016 campaign, no?
Yes, that would obviously be inciting violence. I hadn't heard about that. Do you have a source?
> I've yet to see evidence that he was hoping for it to turn violent? And if he did want that why did he speak out against it?
He's not going to directly tell people to go commit violence. He's going to (and did) whip up a crowd using hateful language, demonize the people who he doesn't like, and make it clear that the crowd needed to "take action". He used the common formulae of a persuasive speech, but left the call to action portion vague, so he couldn't be held directly responsible; politicians do this all of the time.
> does this mean we can expect Biden to be removed from Twitter if tweets anything in support of BLM?
No. The are huge differences between the people who attacked the Capitol and BLM protesters.
1) Volume: BLM actions have been widespread and ongoing. Whatever these crazy Trumpers/white supremacists/insurectionists call themselves, they've had several orders of magnitude less actions than BLM.
2) Violence: even though there have been so few Trumper protests, they've almost always had violence and in several cases, murder. There has been violence during BLM protests before, but it is so much more rare compared to the number of protests that they've had. Also, in general, BLM violence is almost always directed at property, not people, and is usually as a response, unlike what we saw at the Capitol. Has ANY police officer been killed by BLM protesters? After literally thousands of protests? I haven't heard of it happening.
3) Purpose: BLM protests are generally about ending racism, social justice, and systemic equality. These Trumpets were taking action because they wanted to overturn the results of a democratic election. With that goal, they were basically trying to end our nation as a Democratic Republic.
4) Cause: BLM started, and has persisted, because people of color continue to be disproportionately killed by police (disproportionate in the reason why they were killed, not just in terms of numbers). It's funny how blatantly justified BLM's reason for existing became while watching how the Capitol Police handled the insurectionists. The Trumpets cause is that they didn't get what they want, because we live in a democracy.
So no, Biden showing support for BLM will not get him banned from Twitter, because BLM is activism in response to murderous racism, and because he has the moral compass not to try to cause the downfall of our democracy.