When the closest allies of the USA (France, Germany), the Russian opposition leader and countless other leaders telling you, that banning a president of your country goes against everything the USA meant in the world, maybe it's time to hit a pause button and reflect on that. For many people all over the world this is the lowest America has ever stooped.
If the POTUS wouldn't have kept breaking Twitters TOS service daily, he wouldn't have been banned. The same policy which applies to everyone else. Twitter also isn't "America", it's a private company that can ban whatever unprotected category of people it wants to do. Also I'm pretty sure Germany still has bands on much Nazi propaganda and paraphernalia as a whole.
Trump is free to have a press conference and take questions at any time.
A company bans a malicious user who happens to be President of the United States and that's the lowest we've ever stooped?
I'm sorry, have you met us? In the ways in which we've gone against everything we meant in the world, I'd think at least all the torture prisons we ran would be a lot higher on the list than this.
There is a lot of people around the world living in countries where a single wrong word can cost you and your family a lot. All those oppressed masses would immigrate to the USA in a heartbeat if they could and you think they care about terrorist getting tortured?
The lies need to stop somewhere. The invation of Iraq on faulty grounds destabilized the region. The prisoners of that war escaped and formed ISIS, which turned out to be an even bigger problem.
> "The right to freedom of opinion is of fundamental importance," Merkel's spokesman said.
Oh, c'mon. Germany explicitly bans - at the government level, not individual private corporations - "use of symbols of unconstitutional organizations", including that of Nazis, Communists, and Islamic extremism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strafgesetzbuch_section_86a
Ok, Merkel's opinion is invalid because she is "baffling hypocritical". Why is the opinion of the French finance minister invalid (he said he was "shocked" to hear what twitter did)?
Why is the opinion of the Russian opposition leader Navalny invalid?
You miss the point. In america you are non stop partial and confro tational, to the point of lying all the time, at THE MEDIA LEVEL. The journalist are merely an extension of your partys.
This was before trump. Trump used it and abused it and went to the extrem but he didnt create the problem.
What merkel says here, is that Big Tech is now playing the same game to the extrem too. This is not gonna end well.
>“The chancellor sees the complete closing down of the account of an elected president as problematic,” Steffen Seibert, her chief spokesman, said at a regular news conference in Berlin. Rights like the freedom of speech “can be interfered with, but by law and within the framework defined by the legislature -- not according to a corporate decision.”
In 2020 a major theme was "de-escalation" when it comes to policing. Instead of ratcheting up the intensity the police should try and calm things down. I think most people on HN can agree with that idea. Let cooler heads prevail.
So why then are people applauding Big Tech and the politicians when they do the opposite? De-platforming the president, cutting off Parler, these actions will inflame already high tensions. Impeaching trump again with 9 days to go before he's gone? It's a major escalation. The media and the politicians seem to want armed rebellion. It's so totally fucked up. And half the country doesn't see the other half as anything but "racist".
Half the people believe America is overrun by the nazis or the fascist. And they the heroes fighting them, and when people from other countries look at them weirdly, when people who understand and felt what an oppressive regime does to a man, say what are you talking about, they double down.
It would be a fun experiment to see how many times those two words occur on average daily on HN.
And the escalation is actually welcome news to Trump. It supports his narrative of being the enemy of the "deep state" and the "swamp".
Sidestepping the moral question of whether the bans are deserved or not, they are a huge strategic mistake that will strengthen the very same people they try to silence.
Just wait until we're talking in a few years about "Why extremist candidate X won" like the many "Why Trump won" threads we saw 4 years ago.
It’s unfortunate but maybe the tech balkanization has an inverse Conway’s law effect.
Also now that half the country’s internet population will be free from big tech control, imagine all the truth that can now be discussed out in the open without restriction on alternative platforms.
MSM, including Facebook and Twitter, empowered this monster and profited from it. This joke of a candidate was propped up and put front and centre instead of being ignored. They fed the Troll and moments before he turns to stone, they take credit for cutting him off.
The final straw for me was in 2016 when he was nominated. I deleted all social media and actively avoided US news--even then I'd hear conversations about it everywhere--even outside of the US.
Well, they had two options: 1) Do what they did, and inflame some of the pro-Trump types with thinking that he and they are being persecuted and oppressed. Or 2) let Trump keep the megaphone (MAGAphone?) and hope that in the next 10 days he didn't say anything that would inflame some of the pro-Trump types into thinking that they had to violently try to reverse the result of the "stolen" election.
Note that there is no option that doesn't leave a segment of the pro-Trump crowd inflamed, angry, and perhaps looking for trouble.
Let cooler heads prevail is good advice. Except in this situation, cooler heads already were not prevailing.
I think it's entirely possible that de-platforming will actually have the effect of de-escalating. It's like putting a child in timeout: it gives the child a moment to cool off before resuming normal activity. Clearly people's passions are inflamed at the moment and they were feeding off each other's anger. Some time off may allow cooler heads to prevail, even if it's just the time it takes parler to set up an alternative infrastructure.
Of course, I may be completely wrong about this, but it's not clear to me that this is a worse option than doing nothing.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 69.5 ms ] threadTrump is free to have a press conference and take questions at any time.
I'm sorry, have you met us? In the ways in which we've gone against everything we meant in the world, I'd think at least all the torture prisons we ran would be a lot higher on the list than this.
The lies need to stop somewhere.
Oh, c'mon. Germany explicitly bans - at the government level, not individual private corporations - "use of symbols of unconstitutional organizations", including that of Nazis, Communists, and Islamic extremism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strafgesetzbuch_section_86a
Holocaust denial is also sanctionable, along with "Disparagement of the Memory of Deceased Persons". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_Holocaust_denial#G...
I have demonstrably stronger freedom of speech/opinion protections here versus Germany.
This was before trump. Trump used it and abused it and went to the extrem but he didnt create the problem.
What merkel says here, is that Big Tech is now playing the same game to the extrem too. This is not gonna end well.
You need to be back to more objectivity.
>“The chancellor sees the complete closing down of the account of an elected president as problematic,” Steffen Seibert, her chief spokesman, said at a regular news conference in Berlin. Rights like the freedom of speech “can be interfered with, but by law and within the framework defined by the legislature -- not according to a corporate decision.”
So why then are people applauding Big Tech and the politicians when they do the opposite? De-platforming the president, cutting off Parler, these actions will inflame already high tensions. Impeaching trump again with 9 days to go before he's gone? It's a major escalation. The media and the politicians seem to want armed rebellion. It's so totally fucked up. And half the country doesn't see the other half as anything but "racist".
The media has ruined America. Game over.
It would be a fun experiment to see how many times those two words occur on average daily on HN.
The same as I call the people on twitter who write "kill all white men".
And when you see somebody with a Che Guevara t shirt or Mao t shirt on the street, do you start seeing marxists conspiracy everywhere?
Sidestepping the moral question of whether the bans are deserved or not, they are a huge strategic mistake that will strengthen the very same people they try to silence.
Just wait until we're talking in a few years about "Why extremist candidate X won" like the many "Why Trump won" threads we saw 4 years ago.
Also now that half the country’s internet population will be free from big tech control, imagine all the truth that can now be discussed out in the open without restriction on alternative platforms.
MSM, including Facebook and Twitter, empowered this monster and profited from it. This joke of a candidate was propped up and put front and centre instead of being ignored. They fed the Troll and moments before he turns to stone, they take credit for cutting him off.
The final straw for me was in 2016 when he was nominated. I deleted all social media and actively avoided US news--even then I'd hear conversations about it everywhere--even outside of the US.
Good luck America, you'll need it.
Note that there is no option that doesn't leave a segment of the pro-Trump crowd inflamed, angry, and perhaps looking for trouble.
Let cooler heads prevail is good advice. Except in this situation, cooler heads already were not prevailing.
Of course, I may be completely wrong about this, but it's not clear to me that this is a worse option than doing nothing.