Hacker News Reader

Comment by maest | Hacker News Reader

This only holds if there were only one bar that everyone went to.

There are many ways for anyone, let alone a president of the United States, to make his views known. He can call a press conference; call into a host on a favorable network; issue a press release. Somehow the 40-odd presidents of the US whose terms ended before Twitter did get themselves heard from.

Sure, but that's besides the point I was replying to.

I’ve been to places where there is literally one bar for 60 miles. They still within their rights to throw you out.

are you saying Twitter is the only website on the internet?

Clearly I am not, and strawmanning me won't help the conversation.

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you really did miss my point:

Twitter controls access to a very large audience, only rivalled maybe by Facebook. If you get banned from Twitter, you can't easily go and use a competitor. If there were tens or hundreds of Twitters in the world, then yeah, the "being thrown out of a bar" analogy would hold.

Twitter is not bigger than a head of state calling a presser. That audience is on multiple platform and T-dog is in a position to reach out to ANY media and they'll listen - and distribute.

Wow if twitter is that important you should probably stay in their good books and follow their rules, hey?

Twitter also has its Terms of Service and we are all expected to follow those. There have been many that have been banned from Twitter for violent and/or hate speech. What makes the President any different? Why should he get held to a different standard?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com