Is anyone concerned by the coordinated efforts of Facebook Google, Twitter, Discord, Reddit, and Apple today?<p>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)?
Makes sense. They just set a policy and he immediately attempted a workaround.<p>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.
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.<p>People are cheering on the bans without thinking further of the massive negative consequences this slippery slope will likely lead to.<p>Glenn Greenwald did an excellent interview yesterday where he explained exactly why acting hastily after traumatic events and rage is so damn short sighted:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMVS9tfNyjc" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMVS9tfNyjc</a>
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
Question not directly related to this event, but triggered by this:<p>Has any of the countries around the world built a communication mechanism to directly reach its people without using any third-party platforms?<p>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?
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?
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.<p>There's no legal reason a private company cannot manage its content?
Welcome to the next chapter in our globally connected "society".<p>In other news, Orwell's "1984" is currently Amazons #7 best seller [0].<p>[0] <a href="https://www.amazon.com/best-sellers-books-Amazon/zgbs/books" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/best-sellers-books-Amazon/zgbs/books</a>
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.<p>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.<p>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.
Time for Trump to ratify the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace:<p>"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."<p><a href="https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence" rel="nofollow">https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence</a><p>Oh shit EFF just approved censorship.
So today we had:<p>* Reddit ban a number of pro trump subreddits (details at reddit.com/r/reclassified)<p>* Twitter permanently bans Trump and a number of other influential conservative accounts<p>* Discord has banned the donald win discord<p>* Google banned Parler from the Play Store<p>* Apple is strongly considering to do the same<p>This will go down as a very important day in American Internet history. A very important week in American history.<p>I can only wonder what the next two weeks will have in store.
I love the image of Twitter admins chasing Trump around the platform like trying to get rid of some ornery teenage troll.<p>Next he'll be logging into Ivanka's account.
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.<p>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.<p>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)
A dupe of <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25695741" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25695741</a>