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Comment by andrepd | Hacker News Reader

I don't like the thought of trillion-dollar advertising companies being the custodians of the platforms where (sadly) a majority of speech in the world happens. That being said, if direct calls to violence and to insurrection against a democracy aren't grounds to take away your megaphone, then what is? If you're a free speech maximalist you'll be opposed to any sort of "censorship" (then again, people with those views also tend to believe that "private companies" hold absolute authority over what goes on in their "property"). But if you believe inciting violence and other kinds of things should be punished by law, then you can hardly disagree with this.

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I don't quite disagree with this, but I'm willing to defend those who do because a slightly different weighting in my priorities would make my disagree.

Inciting violence should be punished by the law, not by Facebook. For regular people it makes sense to outsource some of this to Facebook, to minimize the load on the legal system. POTUS however is one very high profile person. His statements are not being missed by those who have the authority to enforce the law. There is public debate ongoing over what should be done. Facebook should not need to help out here.

Of course, as a result of an ubstroctionist attorney general (the baseless memo protecting the president from prosecution) and Senate (refusing to convict for political reasons) Facebook might actually be the best practical route, but them having to take that roll is actively damaging to society.

Trump did not incite violence. If anything, the media this summer was much more involved in inciting and fueling the BLM riots.

Yes he did, just watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBH7ql34Ex0 it's just lies and pushing people to do terrible things.

Trump is currently the most dangerous American alive, he's the most powerful person on the planet spreading lies over lies to his millions of followers.

Was it the

"I know everyone is getting ready to march over to the capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard"

part...?

Or was it the tweets? "Go home with love & in peace."(now deleted) https://www.thetrumparchive.com/

Maybe this one? "am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence!"

Or this video telling everyone to they they lost, and to pick up their toys and head home peacefully.

https://mobile.twitter.com/tom2badcat/status/134701535339052...

Am I in a media bubble? Where's the smoking gun of him inciting violence and trying to prevent a peaceful transition of power?

As far as I can tell, the only real source calling for violence has been the users on thedonald.win, which has caused the mods to step in and say that they will follow the Presidents call for peace and thus not allow the platform to contain calls for violence (https://thedonald.win/p/11RhAqC6sa/mods-are-compromised/)

Maybe check what the Republicans are saying, for example Bill Barr said:

>“Orchestrating a mob to pressure Congress is inexcusable. The president’s conduct yesterday was a betrayal of his office and supporters.”

https://twitter.com/GingerGibson/status/1347213610406313986?...

That’s a logical fallacy if I’ve ever seen one. Bill Barr has his reasons, I’m sure, for saying what he said. That doesn’t mean he’s right.

How is it a logical fallacy to check the opinions of both political parties? The parent asked:

> "Am I in a media bubble?"

Usually helps to check what both sides of the partisan isle are saying to avoid a bubble.

Or maybe the one where he said that he “loves” the violent mob without a single word of condemnation? How is this even a conversation at this point?

He literally stood outside near the Capitol and said, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore” and then encouraged the crowd to go to the Capitol.

What he literally said while he "literally stood outside near the Capitol" (he was almost two miles away from the Capitol):

"Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. After this, we’re going to walk down and I’ll be there with you. We’re going to walk down. We’re going to walk down any one you want, but I think right here. We’re going walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women. We’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong."

...

"So we’re going to, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we’re going to the Capitol and we’re going to try and give… The Democrats are hopeless. They’re never voting for anything, not even one vote. But we’re going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones, because the strong ones don’t need any of our help, we’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.

So let’s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I want to thank you all. God bless you and God bless America. Thank you all for being here, this is incredible. Thank you very much. Thank you."

Trump is a leader of a populist movement. The call was to march and protest outside.

He gave no direction for them to go inside. And soon after they went in, he made a video statements on Twitter for them to go home.

I also thought its the "Peoples House" after all. Not really sure what laws were broken other than maybe trespassing. BTW, democrats have occupied legislators too during protests.

If I make a dog angry, then take its muzzle off and make it go near you, am I liable when you get bitten? I didn’t give it direction to bite you after all.

I think you are missing the point. He has the support of 70 million people. This is a widely supported populist movement, backed by 20+ years of grievance with the current "uniparty"

Generally it only takes 1% of the people to start a revolution. If Trump intent was to overthrow these legacy fossils it would have happened yesterday. Instead he called his people back.

With every news article condemnation, supreme court rejection, and double standard like facebook banning or twitter trying to disrupt their communications, it only strengthens his backers sense of being aggrieved.

Trump will use these betrayals by republicans to start his own party. The goal has been democratic reform.

> If Trump intent was to overthrow these legacy fossils it would have happened yesterday.

And Putin said that if his security forces wanted to kill the opposition politician, they would have succeeded. If it didn’t work, it’s not a big deal right?

Human beings are not dogs. The law treats them as autonomous. Getting people riled up and angry and encouraging them to protest is not incitement just because a few of them take it too far.

"Fight like hell" does not mean violence. Political groups "fight" for this or that all the time. And yeah, go to the capitol to protest, like the vast majority of people did. Only a tiny percent had anything to do with breaching the building.

You can fight via protesting. That's not inciting violence. The BLM supporter in Chicago literally told people to loot and that looting was reparations:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/aug/11/ariel-atkin...

Should she be arrested? Probably not, even though she was wrong and a terrible person for saying that.

The law is very specific when it comes to free speech. You need specific calls to violence and Trump did not come anywhere near close to that here.

He's asking people to fight because the courts have refused to even hear testimony. Texas brought a lawsuit and was dismissed in three sentences for not having standing, in the only court legally allowed to decide cases between states.

If you still deny any and all election irregularity after all the videos and all the dead people voting and all the questionable information, that is part of the problem. An entire nation watched their court systems refuse to even listen to any evidence. People have lost faith in the system.

And this very minor breaking into a building, causing less than 1/10 of the damage of any BLM riot, is blown up into some crazy "this is the end of democracy" bullshit. People have taken over American federal buildings several times in American history.

The regular peasants walked around the the sacred place of the rich and they're afraid. Also a woman got shot. She's not black so her life doesn't matter.

>He's asking people to fight because the courts have refused to even hear testimony. Texas brought a lawsuit and was dismissed in three sentences for not having standing, in the only court legally allowed to decide cases between states.

You have been lied to.

Here's some actual information[0] about what the courts did (yes, they did take evidence and hear arguments, and where they didn't it was for appropriate reasons.).

Don't believe me. And don't believe anyone else either. Read the complaints, arguments and rulings yourself. Then make up your own mind.

[0] https://electioncases.osu.edu/2021/01/summary-of-post-electi...

Even Bill Barr, Trumps former AG, said Trump incited a mob.

>“Orchestrating a mob to pressure Congress is inexcusable. The president’s conduct yesterday was a betrayal of his office and supporters.”

https://twitter.com/GingerGibson/status/1347213610406313986?...

I feel the same way. It's a bad world we live in where tech companies have to moderate the speech of everyone, but until we're out of that situation (thanks to decentralization), then reducing hate and speech that causes harm is the right move.

I don’t think this is a problem caused by centralization. As I think about the past 4 years I think the blame lies with Congress, whom have effectively gridlocked themselves into inaction for the last decade. The powers that they have have already been spilling into other branches (such as using the courts to audaciously overturn laws) so it makes sense that those powers are spilling into the private sector as well.

In other words, the less Congress does, the more easily corporations turn into an authoritarian arm of the government

Do you have examples of the direct calls to violence and insurrection? Supposedly there were three tweets that Twitter required trump to delete, but I don't see the actual text of them anywhere.

I had one screenshot before it was taken down because I couldn't believe what I was reading: https://svkt.org/~simias/up/20210107-164543_trump.png

Here's the transcript of the deleted video statemenet: "I know your pain. Your hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other side. But you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law and order. We don’t want anybody hurt. It’s a very tough period of time. There’s never been a time like this where such a thing happened where they could take it away from all of us. From me, from you and from our country.

This was a fraudulent election, but we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So, go home, we love you, you’re very special. You’ve seen what happens. You’ve seen the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel. But go home and go home in peace."

Deleted tweets: "Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!"

"These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!"

So the deleted video contained the usual claim of the election being "fraudulent", and these imperatives:

"But you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law and order. We don’t want anybody hurt. ... We have to have peace. So, go home, we love you, you’re very special. You’ve seen what happens. You’ve seen the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel. But go home and go home in peace."

Why exactly was it deleted?

Thanks, I was able to actually find that, but that doesn't sound like calls to violence or insurrection to me. Quite the opposite.

I think it's easy to say Trump's comments condoned violence when you censor the comments themselves and everyone will just believe you because it's in line with their biases, like nearly every comment in this thread approving his bans.

As far as I'm concerned free speach is dead. You can only say what the corporate overlords allow.

Trump's statement this morning included the statement, "it's only the beginning of our fight to Make America Great Again". Some Trump followers read deeply into every word he says, and these words encourage them to mobilize and literally fight. Many had Civil War Jan 6, 2021 shirts, others had explicitly neo-nazi and anti-semitic symbols on clothing or tattoos. They consider Trump their leader, and they are committed to "making America great" at all costs. Clearly there are many opinions at play in a crowd like that, but by doing effectively nothing to stop what happened and by making statements that he knows will promote chaos, he is effectively supporting violence and insurrection.

By not conceding the election or accepting a peaceful transition after exhausting all legal remedies (accepting an "orderly" transition falls short of peaceful), using words like "fight", calling the opposing party "evil" while sympathizing with those breaching the Capitol by saying "I love you" and "I know how you feel", pressuring his VP to unilaterally reject certifying the election, not condemning extreme violence and tragic deaths because of a rally he promoted...the list goes on.

If there had been direct calls to violence, I would agree with you 100%

(opinion) Allowing incitement as free speech only makes sense if you can/will hold them accountable for the results of their speech instead. It's either/or, but not neither/nor.

If I say to you, "please shoot john smith", and you do - I should either be held responsible for saying thus, or accomplice in the result. I can't imagine anyone would claim I was without fault or responsibility. To my mind, free-speech maximalism should hold me innocent of saying it, but has no bearing on my being accomplice to the result.

I feel similarly. I'm traditional pretty nervous about these platforms taking action.

Yet at the same time its' hard to balance the idea that I want people to have as much free speech on these platforms... and at the same time support the use of these platforms to push anti democratic / misinformation / and actions that would seem to lead to ... other people's rights being infringed and curtailed.

Private companies have no more right to discriminate based on thoughts and ideas than a hotel or restaurant can based on race. These businesses are places of public accommodation and cannot discriminate.

And we can dispense with the "calls to violence" argument, which has been the democrat party platform since 2016.

I'm neither a free-speach maximalist, not a Trump supporter - on the contrary, I would say I'm pretty far left-wing. And that is exactly why I feel pretty ambivalent about this. Because what if next time there is a BLM demonstration in front of the Capitol, or for any other progessive issue? What if things get worse here, and we need a democracy movement / "peaceful revolution" like in east Europe? Then I might find myself on the other side of the ban.

I have the theory that we never really defeated fascism in western society. But mass media limited what you could say in public and so we kept a lid on it. Imagine someone disputing an election or calling for violence in the New York Times or on prime time TV. But with the internet and social media, this control function fell away. As a society we are realizing how problematic this can be and slowly reinstating the limitations that we had before the internet.

This silences the violent, the racist, and the extreme right-wing-nuts, but it can also silence progressive ideas and marginalized voices if we are not careful.

Right now we are moving to a situation where people like Trump cannot speak on the common public forum (putting the lid on them), but they can cause a lot of damage. I'd rather have the opposite situation, where they can rant as much as they want, but the society is so strong and principled that they cannot cause damage. But we are far from that, so I guess the pragmatic solution is to put the lid back on for now...

"I guess the pragmatic solution is to put the lid back on for now... "

I am not sure whether this solution is viable. People have drifted apart, there is a lot of general distrust in societies, I cannot see how this level of distrust can be mitigated.

Whoever is on the receiving end of the "lid", will try to find another way of communication. There is a strong desire in humans not to be silenced.

Without a desire to compare, my anecdote: I grew up in Communist Czechoslovakia; even though the state did its best to control communications among people, using outright force, they failed and everyone knew the latest gossip about the apparatchiks. Americans are probably not as competent in muzzling their opponents, plus openly disavowing the idea of free speech will make them internally unhappy. You yourself say that you'd rather have the opposite situation.

>direct calls to violence and to insurrection against a democracy

Did Trump really call for violence? Are those tweets still accessible somewhere? (Serious question, I did not follow his account.)

No, all he said was: "Big Protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!"

Protest is protected by the first amendment.

What happened was NOT a protest.

As CNN would say.. Fiery but mostly peaceful protest

They should've just declared an autonomous zone and solidarity w/BLM, the media would've loved them.

Regardless of what the media is labeling the events on January 6th, the people involved were acting of their own free will. Trump has no culpability for the actions of his supporters.

Honest question, by that logic, do you think Charles Manson was wrongly imprisoned?

They should have stolen some sneakers and televisions, that's what a protest is as I understand from the MSM.

In what world is a call for a "wild protest" not a call for violence?

are you serious? "wild protest" is about as ambiguous as you can get. There's no call for violence with the word "wild" any more than a "wild party" is a call for violence.

The source is the POTUS, not some frat bro.

Saying a big protest will be wild is a call for violence now.

Psuedo-reality

Does it really matter anymore?

> direct calls to violence and to insurrection against a democracy

Why do you believe this? The very last message Trump put out was telling people to go home. I've covered both BLM and Trump reallies and I've always felt safer at every Trump protest than at BLM. Even in the case of yesterday, we're seeing clear media manipulation. No one is covering how Trump supporters were let in; how Capitol Police lowered barricades.

Either Capitol Police were terribly incompetent at protecting one of the most secure buildings in the US, or they let this happen. There are videos of people taking selfies with capital police and patting them on the shoulder, thanking them for their service inside the building!

> But if you believe inciting violence and other kinds of things should be punished by law, then you can hardly disagree with this.

YES! Lets' arrest every single person who burned and looted a building during the BLM protests and put them all in jail! Every last one.

Same with the people who went in to the Cap building and stole things. Those are federal crimes; that will get you 3 ~ 8 years! I'm for that too.

Oh and that Federal Guard that shot the Air Force woman, he certainly needs to go to jail.

Only some of those things will happen. Pay attention to which ones.

> Either Capitol Police were terribly incompetent at protecting one of the most secure buildings in the US, or they let this happen.

So that must be what all the pictures of wall-climbing and drawn glocks are all about. </s>

The total and complete incompetence of the strongest and best equipped security force in the nation to defend one building?

Why yes. Yes it is.

They also shot an unarmed woman shooting wildly into a crowd for no god damn reason. That moron could have actually hit that other police officer too!

No, it’s a comment on your suggestion that the police let the insurrectionists in deliberately; I’m saying it’s wrong.

Any real free speech maximalist would first and foremost recognize Facebook's right to free speech. Suspending Trump is merely that right. The 1st amendment is between citizens and the government, not between other citizens.

Next version of "social networks" will be technically uncensorable. Law makers, courts, or Mr Suckerberg will be powerless.

> if direct calls to violence and to insurrection against a democracy aren't grounds to take away your megaphone, then what is?

Are you suggesting that Trump made direct calls to violence and to insurrection? If so, that is patently false.

From Trump's actual Tweet on December 19th: "... Big Protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!"

All he did was call upon his base of supporters to exert their first amendment right to assemble. To suggest this was anything more than that is pure confabulation.

Whatever you need to tell yourself to sleep at night.

Even Bill Barr just came out

>Former Attorney General William Barr said Thursday that President Donald Trump inciting a violent insurrection on Capitol Hill the previous day was a "betrayal of his office and supporters."

https://www.businessinsider.com/former-ag-barr-trump-betraye...

But go ahead and hide behind "well he never ACTUALLY said it!!"

Quote the wording you think Trump used to organize an insurrection.

Juxtapose that with the wording you would be okay with him using to organize a protest.

Then try to tell me that the difference between them is "insurrection".

As of 2:00 PM yesterday, the underlying context that several of his supporters are ready, willing, and able to commit sedition in his name is painfully obvious and to deny it would be willful ignorance. After all, they were in the act of committing it [1]. The statements that Trump made would almost unquestionably meet the Brandenburg v Ohio bar of incitement to "imminent lawless action" given that context, urging his supporters (some of whom, given the context, would be willing to commit a felony) to march to Congress to--I don't recall the exact wording--tell them what they think.

If Trump gave that speech this morning, with full knowledge of what transpired, you would have a strong case that he incited to "imminent lawless action." However, that key context isn't necessarily present yesterday morning when Trump actually gave his speech. You can make a case that a reasonable person should have known that a portion of the crowd would react in "imminent lawless action" (which would meet the bar). Likely, the courts would have judged that it's just "politicians saying things they don't mean" and dismissed it on the side of caution. However, the knowledge that imminent lawless action did occur as a result may persuade some people that a reasonable person really should have been able to predict this outcome, and thus that the speech actually meets the bar for incitement. It definitely is not a slam-dunk violation, but the fact that it isn't slam-dunk clear really should give you pause.

[1] 18 USC §2384 is the statutory definition of sedition. The mob yesterday meets all elements: "two or more persons" who "conspire[d]" to "by force" "delay the execution of any law of the United States." It isn't hyperbole to say that their act was sedition, it was literally sedition yesterday.

It's intellectually dishonest to say that he incited violence, especially when there's a heavily censored video of him explicitly instructing people to go home and to be peaceful [1].

[1] https://tv.gab.com/channel/realdonaldtrump/view/we-have-to-h...

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