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Comment by tshaddox | Hacker News Reader

It seems more interesting that a software platform like this would be expected to treat a president of a country different than a normal person. Should the queen of England get even more privileges to break rules on the platform? And the peerage somewhere below that (but still much higher than the common folk)?

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And what rules exactly did Trump break? He explicitly did not call for violence.

It seems like you want people silenced if they question the official narrative. That's precisely antithetical to free-speech ideals.

Do you know how often I've seen Republicans called Nazis? Or evil? Or that they need to be eliminated? I don't go crying to Facebook to censor opinions I don't like.

Insults are not actual call to immediate violence.

Calling thousands of supporters to go to the capitol and telling them "you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong." is a very precise call to violence.

> Calling thousands of supporters to go to the capitol and telling them "you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong." is a very precise call to violence.

"Kill them", "Attack them", "Burn down that building" is a very precise call to violence. "You have to be strong" is not. "You have to show strength" is not.

#KillAllMen on the other hand is a very precise call to violence, and yet nobody cares about banning that on social media.

It's a good thing our court system in the US doesn't play these games with semantics and instead tries to understand intent. You can use however many layers of coded language you want, but your intent still exists.

This goes the other way too, with obviously satirical hashtags.

Yeah, what could go wrong with courts analyzing for subtext and divining intent of free speech to see if secret crimes were being committed? I continue to be stunned by how utterly naive and blasé people are about freedom of expression.

> secret crime

Sorry, I forgot 18 U.S. Code § 2383 hasn't been declassified yet. [/snark]

It's not clear at all what your point is. Are you a freedom of speech absolutist? Do you not believe in due process?

I'm not familiar with #KillAllMen, but it sounds rhetorical, and even if it's not, it doesn't appear to meet the US standard of "imminent lawless action." Speech can only be limited if the speaker intends for it to incite violence, and that the violence is both imminent and likely. You can literally intend to incite violence at some unspecified future time and that speech is protected. You can also just tweet out incitement for violence at a specific time and it's probably protected if you're a random person with no following or influence that is likely to cause the violence to actually happen.

> #KillAllMen on the other hand is a very precise call to violence, and yet nobody cares about banning that on social media.

...are you quite serious? Has a single person in the world taken this as an actual call to action?

Either he’s serious and just deluded, or he’s acting in bad faith. In both cases you just shake your head and move on because no minds will be changed.

> "You have to be strong" is not. "You have to show strength" is not.

It is, in the context of the events from the past few weeks. Some of his supporters had been saying for weeks now that they were "standing by" and ready to do "what had to be done" when Trump would call to them. His speech yesterday was predicably heard as the call.

I don't believe for 1 second that he didn't intended for his words to be interpreted that way.

And for the record, #KillAllWhatever should be banned as well in my book, I'm not defending it.

> #KillAllWhatever should be banned as well in my book, I'm not defending it.

Thank you.

> It is, in the context of the events from the past few weeks

If something is "very precise" in context, then it is not precise. If we have to interpret words, then we have multiple interpretations and everybody can have their own truth. You can't say something is "a very precise call to violence" because of some people may interpret it their way.

His tweet (https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/13469127807005777...) is very precise. "I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence!"

So the tweet that wasn’t taken down is the one that isn’t a call to violence. Good to know.

Strength does not mean violence in this case. >99% of the gathering was peaceful. What if we applied the same standards we applied to the Black Lives Matter protests which also included elements of rioting, looting, arson, & even murder, yet were heralded as "mostly peaceful" (by the same people)?

>99% of BLM protests are also peaceful.

100% of the difference was military authorization for extra security and media slant. On some level this was allowed to happen.

Got it. Protesting should be illegal. Thanks for the lesson on free speech.

Man, I am sympathetic to the free speech argument and I agree that the right has been getting shafted in that department, but this does seem pretty close to the "don't yell fire in a crowded theater" exception. This was not a protest in the democratic sense. It is a shameful day for the country.

This is way beyond "don't yell fire in a crowded theater," which was an action considered to be outside the protection of free speech because it presented a "clear and present danger." That standard was later restricted further, and is now "imminent lawless action." The President's actions appear to blow right past "clear and present danger" and explicitly call for "imminent lawless action."

That was not a protest. It was a planned and coordinated terrorist mob attack on the US Capitol, and successfully breached it. The first such successful attack since 1814.

Trump and allies have been communicating the date and requesting this behavior for weeks. Anybody surprised at the result should be deemed mentally incompetent.

Using a platform to widely spread toxic disinformation about election fraud is probably against Facebook's ToS.

I'm sorry but this is silly (and I'm a "Trump supporter").

> He explicitly did not call for violence.

Effective communication need not be specific. Surely you possess this knowledge, but might it have been in "cold storage" at the time you wrote this comment?

> It seems like you want people silenced if they question the official narrative.

Reality is often not as it seems. Often it is even the exact opposite of how it seems.

> Do you know how often I've seen Republicans called Nazis? Or evil? Or that they need to be eliminated?

"Truthy", but orthogonal. Two wrongs don't make a right (or so "they" say).

Right before he was banned from Twitter, didn't several of his tweets specifically and emphatically urge protesters to avoid violence and respect the police presence?

Perhaps. Were they received by all participants? How were they interpreted?

These are humans, not robots.

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