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Comment by handmodel | Hacker News Reader

I think the logic isn't that hard.

Person says bad things to whip up a mob - Twitter unsure to take him seriously or literally.

Mob actually materializes and several people die - Twitter sure they now have to take him literally

It's really important realize this distinction. Imagine a newspaper printing a letter to the editor from a person whose words have previously incited a riot.

I find it surprising that they enabled the account again at all after the 6th.

In the terrorism of the 60s through to the 90s a common demand in hostage situations was to have a letter read out in the media. The PFLP would do it, the Red Army Brigades, even the Unabomber demanded his manifesto be printed

They needed to take hostages to get published because most media wouldn't air their messaging because of their support of violence

In the modern age they'd all have free platforms and likely amplification.

If they had a platform, wouldn’t they then not need to resort to violence to get their message heard?

It seems like those are examples of censorship driving individuals to violence.

You also can't rule out that if they had a platform, they'd use it to incite others to resort to violence on their behalf. For example, the Unabomber's manifesto expresses his belief that violence was necessary to provoke revolution against the technological society. The Unabomber's bombings were the "pre-violence" required to get his ideas out there, of which of which a violent revolution was one.

Agreed. It doesn’t seem obvious to me whether or not censoring results in less violence in the parent’s examples.

Maybe it is obvious to those more well read on them.

Censorship driving people to violence in this case is much like a girl being pretty driving a goon to rape. The cause of the act in both cases is the perpetrators warped sense of ownership. Specifically ownership of other's thoughts, body, and time. They would feel entitled to that ownership whether met with resistence or not. In this case censorship seems reasonable otherwise you end up tacitly fostering the perpetrators view of ownership with your submission.

Given Trumps comments about women and Giuliani getting caught with his hands down their. The statement "not able to keep his hands in his pocket" is super on point.

Your account has been using the site primarily (exclusively even?) for political and ideological battle. That's the line at which we ban accounts, regardless of which politics or ideology they're battling for (see [1] for more explanation). We have to, because it destroys what HN is supposed to exist for, which is curious conversation, not smiting enemies.

I've therefore banned your account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. The rules are here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

I believe they did so to fire a warning shot, to be able to argue later that they were not banning immediately. I bet they knew that guy wouldn’t be able to keep his thumbs in his pockets – and that’s 100% on him.

Additionally I believe wholesale banning the leader of a country from a platform like twitter is not black or white. Their persona is different and requires different treatment than any other given account.

I suspect two factors went into the calculus this time: he has proved himself desperately dangerous AND he's got less than 2 weeks left in his term.

I don't disagree. But sedition isn't protected speech. So if they didn't ban him they're opening themselves up for lawsuits. In no country on earth is it legal for anyone to publicly advocate the overthrow of their government. And there's already decisions on the books proving this, as well as the legal precedent of cold-war anti-communism laws.

Point out the sedition.

listen to his speech inciting his followers to go to the capitol. You can decide if it’s sedition or not, but the end result is undeniably an insurrection, and his words are what directly invited them to do this.

He has been laying the ground work for this since at least last summer to hedge against an election loss. He has been sitting baseless accusations about mail-in ballots, solve he knew Democrats would be more likely to vote by mail because they took the pandemic seriously. What was the "stop the steal" slogan supposed to accomplish other than create the overthrowing of the legitimately elected president? If he had legal ground he wouldn't have needed a slogan, but just won his court battles.

Your assertions are wrong.

No one has looked at the present election based off claims 8 months ago, people witnessed openly irregular behavior during the actual election and after.

The current fervor around silencing, labeling, and berating rather than reassuring fears and assisting in auditing to legitimize the election is a significant problem and not a healthy look.

The fact that there even is a discussion about whether what he's saying really is sedition is enough. They're a private company, that just opens them up to way too much liability. It's not their responsibility to be a platform for all sides, for better or for worse

Twitter was very happy when after vote fraud in other countries it was helping to promote revolutions, several years ago. Section 230 specifically frees them from responsibility if they behave as a platform and opens to much more liability if they decide to filter out some speech.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...

You should read Section 230. It doesn’t say that if you filter some speech that you have liability. In fact it says quite the opposite: if you make a good faith effort to filter some speech then you aren’t liable.

Sorry, I meant to say: You aren’t liable for good faith efforts to filter speech. It doesn’t say anything about being liable forever more.

Thank you, i was misremembering the description of how someone wanted to change section 230 as the actual section 230.

Sedition is in fact protected speech. One of the things that makes the US is a great country is our robust free speech protections.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seditious_libel#Seditious_spee...

As long as it does not indicate an "imminent" threat You are correct, I was to broad.

They still let the Ayatollah Tweet.

This. Double standards all the way.

Care to elaborate? Are they violating sanctions?

I’m not sure of any other time Twitter did the banning of it’s own volition.

But one might reasonably argue that people who don’t follow certain ideologies get reported and suspended more often.

Is there a tweet from his account that violates twitters ToS?

https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1263551872872386562

"The only remedy until the removal of the Zionist regime is firm, armed resistance."

https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1263181288338587649

"We will support and assist any nation or any group anywhere who opposes and fights the Zionist regime."

Now compare that to the Trump tweets that prompted his suspension, according to the Twitter statement:

"The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!"

"To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th."

To claim that the second set of Tweets incites violence more than the first is absurd. Yes, context matters, but it also matters for the Ayatollah tweets. When the leader of Iran advocates "armed resistance" to the state of Israel, we know exactly what that means.

Isn't it just bluster on the part of the Ayatollah? Do you think it at all likely to inspire action?

Trump on the other hand has clearly demonstrated his ability to incite action.

How are Khamenei's tweets any different from those of US politicians against Iran or other "enemy" nations? Should we apply the same standard to US politicians who have tweeted threats to Iran or supported actions aimed to the collapse of Iranian regime?

Come on, Twitter has been banning plenty of users for posting blatantly anti-Semitic dog-whistles like "the Zionist regime". It's quite clear that Khamenei is getting preferential treatment.

"Zionist regime" is not an anti-semitic "dogwhistle" (trendy term used to assign words whatever meaning you like, disregarding the literal one). It's a derogatory appellative for a country. Zionism is a political ideology and Israel is a country engaged in blatant apartheid and ethnic cleansing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism

So in this case he might be technically correct in identifying the exact people he opposes... Possibly.

Iran is a bit weird, they actually have a seat of parliament reserved for a Jewish representative. See here for details of the current holder of this seat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Motamed

> Come on, Twitter has been banning plenty of users for posting blatantly anti-Semitic dog-whistles like "the Zionist regime". It's quite clear that Khamenei is getting preferential treatment.

Twitter overtly adopted rules granting high government officials this preferential treatment to justify not acting on the many complaints of Trump's flagrant violation of what were previously nominally universally applicable rules on the platform at the outset of his term.

So, yes, Khamenei gets preferential treatment compared to the average user (as did Trump); that's the overt policy.

Those aren’t the tweets that got Trump suspended.

He tweeted praise for the rioters and justified the riot while the riot to stop the constitutional process of the peaceful transfer of power was in progress.

In this tweet he says "death to American politicians":

https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1093791374204420097

He can say march on the Capitol all he wants. If a mob shows up then you can bet your ass he’ll be off the platform.

It's not so much about the words as the material consequences of those words.

That's a bad line to draw. "We're helpless to do anything until someone dies" isn't likely to draw a lot of sympathy.

That seems like a great place to draw the line to me.

Isn’t that the way laws work? You can’t prosecute someone until they’ve committed a crime. The issue here is whether the “crime” is tweeting stuff that starts an insurrection, or tweeting stuff that could be interpreted as potentially starting an insurrection.

Me telling someone to go fuck themselves probably isn’t a problem, but me telling someone with learning difficulties to go fuck themselves and them feeling compelled to do it and hurting themselves probably is a problem.

> You can’t prosecute someone until they’ve committed a crime.

technically yes, but attempting a crime is often considered a crime itself.

Oh well, there's hundreds of tweets by US politicians threatening violence against other nations (Iran or N.Korea or Syria). That's what nations do, right?

Recall last year when the rioting was going on and Kaepernick was calling for more violence on Twitter? @Jack gave him $3m.

When did the Ayatollah advocate for the abolition of his own government?

Well, 1978, although I am not saying I agree with the equivalence.

That ayatollah died in 1989...

'ayatollah' is a title, not a name...

Right, the person who now has that title was involved in the revolution, but thank you for sharing, maybe that is a new fact to someone.

my bad, I thought khomeini was the one being referenced. I guess it should be more specific, given how many have the title ?

No worries, I agree it is less clear than it could be, given the shift in time between question and answer.

According to Twitter's public statement, Trump's rule violation was incitement of violence, not "advocating for the abolition of his own government."

The Ayatollah has repeatedly tweeted in support of the violent destruction of the state of Israel. If that's not incitement of violence, I don't know what is.

Reminder that trump did and said the same things for a long time. It’s only once the mob actually showed up that they banned him. If the ayatollah was saying “go here and destroy this building” and it got done then they’d ban him based on this precedent

It’s also a funny argument to me because you have people comparing trump to the ayatollah and mao and thinking it helps their case.

While private businesses, homes, and police precincts were burning, many politicians were promoting more rioting and reminding us that "rioting is the voice of the unheard."

Creating accounts for political flamewar isn't ok here. Please stop creating accounts to break the site guidelines with.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> They still let the Ayatollah Tweet.

Presumably, while Don, Jr. did the same thing when making the same complaint, you mean “Iran’s Supreme Leader”, which is a unique position. There are a large number of Ayatollahs (and even several Grand Ayatollahs, including Supreme Leader Khamenei).

I have come to this realization recently as well. "Deplatforming" people of significant real-world power, or largely any world leader, is notably different than deplatforming an average person. A lot of comments I feel are conflating the effects of banning an average person, or an average person trying to become more well-known ("candidate Trump"), with an established world leader.

People with power have real consequences on the life of each individual. I admit I don't know how to treat those two groups but I don't think the arguments used for the average person are the same arguments that should be applied to world leaders, and vice versa.

Actually, deplatforming a world leader has less power. He could call a press conference and say whatever he wants at any time. He could order his staff to setup a 24x7 conference call and just literally pick up a phone and rant about anything he wants at any time, and have millions of people listening.

Except Trump can't call a press conference; not really. He hasn't been able to stand up to sustained real press questioning for years. That's why there have been essentially zero real press conferences at the White House lately.

Responsible news networks would refuse to relay seditious talk. Would be constrained to his media bubble.

It does have a moderating effect in a literal sense: it takes more than a few seconds to arrange a press conference.

That was what I meant to imply, although my comment did not come across that way. Deplatforming a world leader affects that individual less than an average user.

Don't forget GA - Dems won full control, and will now have at least some ability to legislate. So Twitter et al need to be thinking about how to get ahead of the complaints that the left has against section 230 (the left hates it because they are not forced to aggressively moderate, the right hates it because they are allowed to moderate at all). This was not looking likely to be something they had to worry about until the surprise sweep in Georgia, so I'd argue that may have played as big a role as the craziness in DC.

I had forgotten about 230. Banning Trump makes a lot more sense with that in context.

I haven't heard anybody anywhere near the left criticizing Section 230. Not sure where you heard that.

Joe Biden has called for 230 to be revoked immediately. I would think that counts.

It would, if Joe Biden were anywhere near the left.

But he's not. He's a Bush Sr.-era Republican wearing a (D) at the end of his name.

Have you ever heard Kara Swisher go off on this? She's vicious on the topic.

The latter I think is being underrated as a major contributing factor.. fear of retribution and all that.

AND the evidence this movement is organizing more violence around the inauguration.

With this knowledge, Twitter would be complicit if they continued to enable and amplify it.

> Mob actually materializes and several people die - Twitter sure they now have to take him literally

Angry groups of protesters and resulting deaths are not a thing that started happening this week. Twitter are pathetic and have taken a stand once the writing was on the wall.

Yeah their hesitation shouldn't have happened. They shouldn't have issued those weird corrections to his statements either, they would have had MORE credibility had they come down sooner by actually assigning someone to give the public legitimate reasons for them to ban him.

You’re missing the point. If Twitter had a spine and was actually acting in good faith in accordance with their rules they would have issued a ban years ago. They would have done a lot of other things too so this is purely a hypothetical. They waited until after confirmation of the election and strong evidence that the powers that be are now firmly on their side before lifting a finger.

I’m not defending race rioting. But the context of the riots that occurred over race and the riot that occurred where a mob was two doorways away from killing members of congress is contextually important, as is the fact that the capital rioters answered to exactly one (1) person. And the fact that that one person who had the power to call in the national guard to prevent such deaths appeared uninterested in doing so.

This was happening during BLM endlessly last summer. Verified profiles calling for this kind of action, saying looting is part of the struggle and the right thing to do, etc, etc.

Weirdly Twitter didn't seem to wake up when that was happening.

looting isn't the same as storming the capitol.

but still falls under Twitter's "Glorification of Violence policy"

Looting is stealing. Is stealing violence?

It is when you break windows or otherwise damage property to enable the theft.

More than speech is.

Yes, and people were violently killed.

Looting is stealing the same way that storming the capitol is trespassing.

instead of ordering from Amazon or UberEats all the time, why don't you go speak to an owner of a store downtown and say this to them.

It's disgusting the absolute privileged bubble so many on HN live in.

I live in Portland OR a few blocks from where there was a months long siege against federal and police buildings. Yes there was millions of dollars worth of damage done here by looting but thats barely scratching the surface of what happened. The siege of the federal courthouse and central police station involved crazy violent actions on a daily basis, but there was no national outcry to dox and arrest the people responsible for that. People (not "nazis", some not republican/conservative) within blocks of my home have been murdered, beaten, businesses shot up (like the black owned sandwich shop across the street from my apartment because the owner "supported the police") yet there was no deplatforming for the leftist extremists responsible for this. I speak from what I saw right in front of me, what I heard from my living room and bedroom day after day for months, I'm sure there are similar stories from all over the country. Maybe I'm biased by personal experience but it just seems like if angry white kids smash stuff up and say shout some leftist slogans while they're doing it they get a pass but if the angry white kids shout "Trump 2020, something something" while they're doing the same stuff suddenly its sedition and terrorism.

You have got to be kidding. It’s not “suddenly” sedition and terrorism. People went into the Capitol with the stated goal of overturning an election, effectively overthrowing the government. That is sedition!

Seriously, I sympathize with what you’ve gone through. I’m not trying to minimize the damage that was done in downtown Portland, but it’s not even close to the same thing.

Overturning an election is not effectively overthrowing the government, and it's certainly not sedition.

I also think most people who entered the Capitol building did so because they were just following the people in front of them; not conciously entering to voice their oppinions to the Senate and House.

> not conciously entering

People traveled from out of state. There was little that wasn’t deliberate about this.

Not from the US, but when the current president of any nation whips up a crowd of fanatic followers at the end of his term to stay in power against the will of the people that is a coup.

What the reasons are for the individual follower is completely and utterly irrelevant, because it is overshadowed by the fact that the current head of the executive tried to overturn the result of an election.

And quite frankly: the only ingredient missing here was support of the military — if he had that the US very likely could have become a dictatorship right now.

> the US very likely could have become a dictatorship right now

Let's see again eight years from now :-(

If violently installing someone to power who wasn’t legitimately elected isn’t overthrowing the government in your mind, I have to wonder what qualifies.

The entire premise of the rally was “stop the steal”. Clearly they weren’t all extremely coordinated, but to varying degrees, the people who stormed the Capitol did so with the stated goal of overturning the election. That they were inept of that they failed isn’t evidence to the contrary.

https://mobile.twitter.com/59dallas/status/13469631997788282...

Fine people on both sides!

I’m pretty sure those rioters were also chanting about overthrowing the government, calling it illegitimate, burning the flag, setting up independent zones trying to secede from the country, literally attacking the seats of power in their local districts and states. The Trump protestors went for a bigger target but their actions were tame in comparison to months of riots, arson, assault and murders.

Most stayed in velvet ropes and took selfies: https://youtu.be/y9WPuA6EUaw

So the people trying to break into the chambers were just going to have a nice talk?

I’m not sure how that video proves anything about “most” people’s intent.

I think it was a very concerning and unpredictable situation, but describing this group as "violent rioters" while describing the riots over the summer as "mostly peaceful protests" is farcical gaslighting. The potential consequences were more grave here, but the actual conduct itself seems much more orderly.

But I agree that as the Democrats and social media companies still continue to poke and poke and poke already angry people that the consequences can get worse. I wish someone reasonable would try to de-escalate the situation instead of continuing to add gasoline to the fire with further suppression, insults, and contempt for Trump and his supporters--but Silcion Vally and Democratic leadership can't seem to help themselves and would prefer to further insult and alienate the 74 million people who voted for Trump just 2 months ago.

This is going to end badly.

This is my conclusion as well. The standards we hold must hold for everyone.

But it is becoming hard to deny that the standards seem very conditional on whether you agree with the motives and end goal of the people committing violence or not.

I think what happened in the capitol was horrible and hope enough people get to face the consequences in court. Similarly what has happened in Portland and other cities throughout this year has been horrible, from what I can gather and your statement.

Yet events are covered completely differently.

> The standards we hold must hold for everyone.

I don't think that is the standard at all. Those who represent the voice of others are held to a greater standard.

Plenty of every day citizens can cheat on their significant other and aren't going to lose their job because of it. Any scandal can destroy an individual's career when in a position of authority, judges, chiefs, politicians, etc.

Plenty of every day citizens can go on vacation during the pandemic and be fine. Politicians who do this will have their position revoked (look to Canada for easy examples recently).

There is and always should be a double standard for those who represent the voice of many vs the single individual.

Didn’t thousands of people get arrested for BLM though? 15 people have been arrested for Capitol Hill.

> “Trump 2020, something something”

People can vote for and support Trump and have their opinions, even if they are unpopular. But Capitol Hill is a sacred place and people did breach it. Many of which had neo nazi insignia on their clothes. If this isn’t an act of extremism, then what is?

Guess fighting racism gets a pass in a way that overthrowing democracy doesn't.

On top of that one is the reaction to real, both ongoing and centuries old injustices and the other is quite frankly an attempted coup. Protesting that the other guy won is one thing. Storming the capitol to force your guy in while the votes are counted is a completely different thing.

If you are telling yourself otherwise you might wanna do a reality check. E.g. imagine the whole thing in flipped roles (if you have enough fantasy). Republicans would be completely outraged over all the actions they did in the past 4 years if it was the other team who did them.

I am not from the US and think the whole two party thing is silly anyways, but the shere cognitive distortion going on there hurts. Quite frankly it is below any HN user to uncritically wave a team flag that way, especially when it means you become blind to reality by doing so.

The US Dems would be a center-right party in most european nations and last time I checked we weren't the unfree ("socialist!") doomscape Republicans like to paint it as. In fact I'd rather live under the EU/German laws than under whatever the US system has become and I am not a nationalist by any stretch (I am not even German). Our system just leads to calmer streets, friendlier faces, less fear and stress overall (except for the tax system, I could really strangle the people who came up with that — not for the amount of taxes, but for the complexity of the system).

If presented with lies and reality, choose reality and try to correct for your own biases. Thats what good people do.

Looting is reasonably acceptable especially in light of genuine BLM grievances with police brutality. This was storming of the capitol with highly malicious intent (pipebombs, zipties, guns) based on utter lies. You’re arguing in bad faith.

I am absolutely not. Looting does nothing to the Police or the authorities and everything to businesses including those who are barely keeping going after the lockdowns.

Twitter gave a platform to those who had taken over six blocks of a city (CHAZ) without a single ban.

Twitter consistently allows all out racism towards white and asian people from verified profiles without a single ban.

Twitter allows the organization of mobs for the left without a single ban.

I think you are arguing in bad faith.

I disagree, Trump is a fascist and all fascists are criminals. Starving fascism of air is the best way to keep it in check. In most cases racial justice gets a pass especially if it’s a properly warranted as in the US. All this right wing whataboutism to justify a racist and a fascist. You should be ashamed.

Do you say the same when someone says all white people are racists on Twitter? Should we starve them of Oxygen too? Are you reporting those tweets?

Ah, yes. Looting and disrupting the process of democracy seems on the same level. No? Oh.

Does Twitter have enough resources to police all verified profiles? It would seem to me Twitter has an App Store problem when it comes to inconsistent enforcement of rules?

Racist justice always gets a pass when compared to fascist nonsense based on lies. For the sheer scale of the BLM protests they were overwhelmingly peaceful.

Which is why interpretation of speech requires context.

Yelling "fire" in an open field vs a packed cinema are obviously are easy to interpret. There's a whole bunch of grey area in the middle.

And that grey area is admittedly harder to give context to when the medium for it is text....but since he's the president and he's been physically SAYING falsehoods that lead to this situation, he should have been banned sooner.

So any politician that states a falsehood on Twitter should be banned? Or just U.S. presidents?

The amount of harm caused by a lie is proportional to the size of the audience who hears it

As well as the authority of the person spreading it. The fact that we've decided the President is above libel, slander, and felony charges is a new thing. Thank god people stopped this nonsense when he started advocating terrorism. Equality under the law, implies MORE scrutiny for the powerful. Unfortunately, up until this point we have normalized the opposite.

It seems like most societies have some kind of a reflex towards monarchy. We elect our leaders but still treat them in many ways like monarchs who need to be revered rather than like people we hired to do a job for us.

Falsehoods that lead to this situation. People who post beheadings on Twitter should be banned. People who incite violence should be banned. Nothing was said about U.S. Presidents.

“Statements that are false” are an entirely different ballpark of discussion than “statement that incite violence”. Likely, some of the statements that incited these crowds weren’t even false statements at all, but imperative directions (be strong, go to capital) or predictions that turned out to be completely true. (Going to be wild!)

The root of all this were the lies he has been spreading to undermine election security and this confidence in the results since long before election day.

> “Statements that are false” are an entirely different ballpark of discussion than “statement that incite violence”.

No they're not, instead they have a massive overlap. If I lie to my neighbor "Hey, Bob across the street has been stealing your mail", and my neighbor punches Bob in the face, my "statement that was false" led to violence and it can be argued that was my intention the whole time.

“Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”[0]

While King Henry II didn’t directly ask for the priest to be killed, it’s pretty clear that was the intention.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_tur...

Yelling Fire is "Holmes' famous quote comes in the context of a series of early 1919 Supreme Court decisions in which he endorsed government censorship of wartime dissent — dissent that is now clearly protected by subsequent First Amendment authority." [1]

Holmes would later reverse his own ruling yet this quote will never die even though it has no bearing on actual law today and in realty "yelling Fire" would likely be protected speech

Remember "After Holmes' opinions in the Schenck trilogy, the law of the United States was this: you could be convicted and sentenced to prison under the Espionage Act if you criticized the war, or conscription, in a way that "obstructed" conscription, which might mean as little as convincing people to write and march and petition against it. This is the context of the "fire in a theater" quote that people so love to brandish to justify censorship." [1]

That is not a position one should be supporting if they value free Speech

It's Time to Stop Using the 'Fire in a Crowded Theater' Quote [2] Three Generations of a Hackneyed Apologia for Censorship Are Enough [1]

[1] https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...

really discouraging to see this come up again and again. every time, someone posts this article and people ignore it to continue arguing in the other subthreads. thanks for posting the correction; I hope eventually we can stop having this conversation here.

The phrase “fire in a packed theater” in the legal context is actually based on a case where someone was jailed for peacefully protesting the draft for WW1 (Schenck v. United States). It has no relation to actual violence, and is in fact a fantastic example of how “harm” by speech can be abused by a malicious government to jail people for what should be protected speech.

It’s no longer good law, thank goodness. Now we have the much narrower Brandenburg test, which requires that speech be likely to cause “imminent lawless action”.

The seriously v literally question is fascinating. It was the basis for this recent NY Times article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/opinion/trump-capitol-pro...

And that article references the original piece in The Atlantic that, inadvertently, provided the get-out for what the NYT laments:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/trump-m...

I think it's simpler than this. There will likely be an inquiry, and "enablers" may be held to account. This potentially includes social media platforms such as Twitter.

As they should be, equality under the law should include the President. And the things he said were not protected speech.

They were protected speech, even if lies.

I thought the term "protected speech" usually means speech that is protected from government censorship by the 1st Amendment. But I'm not sure that has any bearing in this context since government censorship isn't involved here.

Sedition, terrorism, and advocating the overthrow of the government ARE NOT PROTECTED SPEECH

In the US, they are actually protected speech unless relating to an imminent threat. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seditious_libel#Seditious_spee...

Just to clarify (belatedly), my point was that whether or not it's protected speech doesn't matter when we're discussing Twitter - because Twitter isn't beholden to the 1st Amendment. They are free to block speech even if it is "protected."

Michael Sherwin, the US Attorney for the District of Columbia, told the Associated Press: "All of those charges [sedition, unauthorized access, theft of federal property] are on the table... We’re not going to keep anything out of our arsenal for potential charges. We will bring the most maximum charges we can based upon the conduct." https://apnews.com/article/arrests-district-of-columbia-crim...

I think its easier to ban him based on political justification than it would be to ban in in a post-presidency. I also think they are less than interested in enduring his antics as a former president considering how much he abuses the court system to get his way.

He also tweeted praise for the insurrectionist and justifications for the insurrection during the attack.

Any idea that he hadn’t realized the effect his words would have and had learned his lesson go firmly out the window.

(If there were any remaining doubts before that... did anyone believe he didn’t know what he was doing?)

The tweet that got him banned literally said go home in love and peace. The perception of him as an adversary and that everything he says has some hidden meaning is the only thing getting him banned by tech companies. This entire blog is trying to out words in his mouth as well.

> Person says bad things to whip up a mob - Twitter unsure to take him seriously or literally.

> Mob actually materializes and several people die - Twitter sure they now have to take him literally

By this logic do we not also have to delete the account of everyone prominent who tweeted anything to the effect of "no justice no peace" with respect to BLM, given that several people died there as well?

In this case you had people with flags bearing a specific person’s name on them. Certainly muting the only person bearing that name will have a direct effect.

The direct effect being that the bulk of the people on the other side of the isle lose the last shred of respect for these institutions, and switch to or create other sites, causing each side to become part of a permanent echo chamber with a mutually irreconcilable set of accepted facts that cause members of the different groups to come into violent disagreement whenever they encounter one another in physical reality.

I thought the goal was supposed to be to do something that reduced the probability of violent conflict?

You’re underestimating the value of immediate, global, and easily accessible coordination. Trump can try to build his own Twitter but it’s nowhere near the trivial proposition you’re making it out to be. Without this coordination mechanism the mob becomes headless and decentralized.

The hardest part about creating your own Twitter is convincing enough people to switch at once to create a critical mass. Transferring the sitting President of the United States and several other prominent members of his party at the same time in a very public way is exactly how you induce that to happen.

That Parler thing was temporarily offline under the load of all the new users. That's not the problem you have when you're having the actual problem of convincing enough people to switch.

That’s one thing that’s hard about it. Scaling and running the service reliably is far from trivial and this tends to be severely underestimated by “let’s just build a competitor” crowd.

https://parler.com/

Didn't everyone move to Parler?

that aged like fine milk

> Scaling and running the service reliably is far from trivial and this tends to be severely underestimated by “let’s just build a competitor” crowd.

This is not a trivial problem, but it's also not one that hasn't been solved a hundred times before, and seems to be something they've already handled.

But I also want to put something in juxtaposition here. You have on the one hand the argument that this isn't censorship because they're a private company and you can just make your own. On the other hand, the argument that booting them off is useful because making your own is impractical and they'll fail. If one is true then the other isn't, right?

These two situations couldn’t be more vastly different.

The rally was organized by Trump, the mob that marched on the capital was there for Trump, marching with flags for Trump, encouraged and incited by Trump, and aimed at overthrowing a legitimate election in favor of Trump.

BLM was marching for lost lives that could no longer speak for themselves, organized by and for no single individual, carrying flags to honor the fallen, aimed at creating a future where less people would die unnecessarily at the hands of law enforcement.

The primary difference I'm seeing is that one group was there to protest something you don't agree with.

Person says SARS-Cov-2 is no big deal or cured with quackmeal, causes deaths, not de-platformed.

I think it's a calculated risk knowing that Biden's win was actually certified so there's now no way this can come back and bite them. I am sure in an alternate universe @PresidentForLife would have been able to tweet indefinitely.

Twitter wants no skin in the game.

I've not seen a source for this claim

Black Lives Matter is still allowed on Twitter. Dozens of people have died from their protests and riots, not to mention hundreds of businesses vandalized, looted, and set afire. Ditto Antifa. This ban is utterly political, which, depending on how "libertarian" you are, may be fine. But the precedent is not a good one in my opinion.

Who has died? Can you name names?

19+ people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_and_controversies_dur...

I think that list is only Minneapolis. There are more.

How about David Dorn, retired St Louis Police Captain.

The suspects have been caught and charged. Dorn was not a Trump supporter and wasn't killed for political reasons. Debra White told the paper that her father opposed much of Drumpf's rhetoric and policies, including "the things he said about Colin Kaepernick, the kids locked up in cages, the racist remarks." Dorn's daughters stated their father did not want to support the "law and order agenda".

Jessica Doty-Whitaker shot for saying all lives matter.

This is a very strange case. But nevertheless it can't be said if she was killed for that. And the incident was not part of any kind of protest or riot.

"Ramirez said in the Fox59 interview the two groups separated because they realized people in each group were armed. He said both groups then fist-bumped and went their separate ways. But someone opened fire from a nearby bridge and struck Doty-Whitaker, Ramirez said. He said the shooters then ran away. Ramirez said he fired back but did not hit anyone. When contacted by IndyStar, members of Doty-Whitaker's family declined interview requests."

Police later released the video. She was shot just moments after yelling out “All lives matter”.

https://www.wthr.com/article/news/crime/police-release-video...

Considering the sheer number of protests and protesters involved, BLM protests were mostly peaceful.

https://today.uconn.edu/2020/10/study-2020-protests-shows-di...

"While the summer of 2020 experienced 100 days of violence and destruction in cities, according to the the U.S Department of Homeland Security, the most recent CCC study of 7,305 separate events in May and June suggests that 96.3% of events involved no property damage or police injuries and 97.7% of events had no injuries reported. Pressman spoke with UConn Today about the new report."

In contrast, the attack on the capital building was a deliberately violent attack on the seat of our national government. Rioters brought zip ties to potentially hold lawmakers hostage, blunt force weapons, and firearms. It was inherently a violent undertaking with revolutionary aims.

It usually only takes one to change public perception. And DC was a sample of one. OTOH, BLM has media covering for them(1) to make the group look peaceful.

1. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cnn+fiery+but+mostly+peaceful&iax=...

And that was a small fraction of the people who were there to protest, so they were mostly peaceful as well.

Certainly most of the large BLM protests ended in destruction and violence, at least in my state of Minnesota. There’s a reason the national guard had to be deployed. People find strength in numbers.

I like how you respond to a thoughtful post with statistical data with your own conjecture.

That statistical data is pretty bunk. What constitutes an 'event?' It seems that they cast a pretty broad net if they came up with thousands of them. There was a protest in my town with all of 30 people in attendance - does that count? For several nights in a row I tuned in to the news in my state to watch straight up riots in Minneapolis.

It's clear from the pictures of what happened in the capitol that it was done by a tiny fraction of people from the protests, so you don't need any statistical analysis for that.

People brought firearms to BLM events, too. Whether they brought them before or after riots broke out is unknowable. I support BLM and not rioters, fwiw.

What makes this unique is that there are records online of people planning violence in advance.

> Considering the sheer number of protests and protesters involved, BLM protests were mostly peaceful.

This is a pretty terrible standard, since MAGA rallies are mostly peaceful as well. The issue is what do we do with the ones that aren't, not how many of them are.

I think the comparison was BLM protests to this “protest”, not all MAGA rally’s.

which is sort of silly. the source cited higher up is counting how many separate BLM events involved police injuries and/or property damage. how does it make sense to compare that figure to a single event? with a sample of one, it can only be 100% or 0% by that methodology.

But this wasn't a rally. This was literally them storming the halls of Congress to take back their country from what they believe are corrupt communist deep state agents. Why do they believe that? Because their leader Trump has been amplifying this type of conspiratorial misinformation on Twitter for the past 4 years

The “the percent of protests that are peaceful” largely depends on what you decide to include in that category.

Suppose the peaceful portion of BLM protests didn’t happen, would the violent riots go from being justified to unjust? Why would the presence of the peaceful protests change our moral assessment of the violent ones? Same with the MAGA demonstrations. It should not matter that there were numerous other peaceful MAGA rallies when assessing the storming on the capital.

If you murder every 100th day, are you 99% peaceful?

99% of days you are.

100% agree, these social media companies with their fake empathy and double standards are not fooling anyone.

So Obama, Biden, Bush, et. al. should be banned too for all the completely unnecessary wars/drone strikes that killed civilians?? Or is killing civilians sometimes accepted?

This move is entirely political, Twitter should just man up and accept it, instead of insulting our intelligence.

Trump was not banned for his wars/drone strikes that killed civilians (which he increased, BTW: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/trump-afghanistan-middle-... ).

He was banned for inciting violence using Twitter's platform.

I suppose if Trump ordered unlawful drone killings using Twitter, they also may have banned him for that, but Trump used Twitter to control mobs, not drones.

I will take that link at face value, so Trump is just as bad as Obama? Great, they're both loathsome in my book. Count me in. :)

>He was banned for inciting violence using Twitter's platform.

He supposedly incited people with his rally speech. Besides, I don't think the mob was checking Trumps twitter feed for instructions. The violence seemed premeditated to me.

> When all these people were talking about their contingencies, it was always if and when Trump tells us to. The overriding message I was seeing was, "We're here to do a job, we don't know what that job is yet. When Trump said we're going to go to the Capitol, I guess our job is to go to the Capitol." But then they didn't get any further instructions, so there was a moment of, "Okay, now what? Surely this isn't why Trump called us to DC, we don't get it. This was where he was supposed to unveil the evidence, or arrest the plotters, or reveal that China is behind it." And then none of this happened.

https://www.gq.com/story/man-predicted-capitol-coup-intervie...

Should there be a distinction when the bad things aren't said on Twitter itself? Ignoring the argument that what happened in DC was the culmination of Trump's incitement throughout his presidency, his order to his supporters to march to the Capitol, and claiming he would be marching with them, was _the_ direct call to action. It was given during his in-person speech in DC. Why should Twitter ban him for that?

I think he was banned because Democrats took control of power and FAANG is telegraphing their compliance to those now in charge of how they're going to be regulated. They're going to over-correct, as they're starting to do with banning Michael Flynn and more will follow.

Anyone on YouTube or Twitter that doesn't outright refer to the people who broke into the Capitol as terrorists or insurrectionists are getting demonitized/banned -- literally forced groupthink influenced by who is allowed to monetize their videos. People on the left are trying to extend the culpability of those who broke the law to those who voted for Trump. Implying nearly 70 million people are themselves insurrectionists. I don't think this will be good for the Internet the next time the GOP gets enough seats to pass legislation. I'd be happy knowing that's the worst of what's to come.

A left-wing aligned media business has just taken a serious political action against the sitting president. They didn't even wait for the dust to settle and Trump to leave office. Twitter has not had time to link tweets in the internet world to actions in the real world; there is normally a settling after this sort of event where it turns out that what actually happened was different to the first two weeks of media reporting. When everyone calms down a month after the crisis, this will be looked back on as opening a can of worms that was a horrible mistake.

This protest in the Capitol is a right-wing escalation of a sustained left-wing effort to paint the 2016 election as illegitimate. The US is in trouble if this new thinking takes hold and businesses start exercising their right to discriminate politically. The country will be inoperable.

Donald Trump was the one saying the 2016 election had massive voter fraud. He was saying it before, after, and during that election. His words in 2016 and 2017 we're much worse in spreading distrust in the electoral system than any democrat since the Civil War. [0]

https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/27/politics/donald-trump-voter-f...

> sustained left-wing effort to paint the 2016 election as illegitimate

That is such a purposely flawed statement that it is effectively a pure lie even if some of those beats are somewhat true.

Trump has been claiming election fraud since 2016. He claimed he got more votes than Clinton and that three million people voted illegally in California which is why he lost the popular vote.

The only things claimed illegitimate by anyone with any power in the left were either "it isn't fair that the popular vote doesn't matter", "we shouldn't disenfranchise voters as the GOP keeps trying to do in the name of 'election security'" or "certain actors illegally acted around the 2016 election".

There is a world of difference between that last one (the closest to illegitimate) and an actual claim of fraud.

Look, I'm sure it is about to become an over-repeated political talking point, but there is a @SpeakerPelosi tweet on the record where she says in May 2017.

"Our election was hijacked. There is no question. Congress has a duty to #ProtectOurDemocracy & #FollowTheFacts." [0]

Now I'm sure that is an out of context tweet and she probably didn't literally mean "Our elections [were] hijacked", but that would get Trump booted from Twitter.

It isn't a serious argument to say that Trump is bad because his opponents can deduce he means to do secret evil so it is OK to out-of-context quote him or purposefully choose the least charitable interpretation but Pelosi can say that and get the opposite treatment. The current situation is not that unusual for losers of a US presidential elections.

[0] https://twitter.com/speakerpelosi/status/864522009048494080?...

Our election was interfered with my a foreign country. That is not at all the same thing as widespread fraud.

> but that would get Trump booted from Twitter

Trump has called for and praised violence for five years now. He only got banned after fanning the flames during an invasion of the capitol building. (He literally says stay peaceful but not even anything resembling leave until much later in the day)

> It isn't a serious argument to say that Trump is bad because his opponents can deduce he means to do secret evil so it is OK to out-of-context quote him

You don't have to out-of-context quote him.

"We love you. You are all special" while talking directly to those who have invaded the Capitol. That isn't out of context at all. It is exactly what he said and there is no alternative interpretation.

> Pelosi can say that and get the opposite treatment

Do I need to link all of the times where Trump repeatedly said he only lost the popular vote because of fraud. It wasn't a vague statement but a direct one that was repeatedly stated.

> The current situation is not that unusual for losers of a US presidential elections.

No president has waited more than a day to conceded in the modern era. Unless you count Florida where there was odd things going on. Even then it was over once the Supreme Court ruled on it.

Clinton was called out for not conceding the night of the election even though she did first thing in the morning.

These actions are not normal. And I am not even talking about yesterday. Way before that we were way away from normal.

She's talking about this for example: https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/cyber/russian-interference-in-201...

Are you saying the FBI is faking Russian interference?

Or do you have problems understanding the context of the issue at hand?

You seem to be forgetting the 3.5 year long wall of propaganda we were inundated with claiming that Donald Trump was a Russian puppet and Russia hacked our election. You had prominent, important elected officials accusing those that disagree with that assessment of "carrying water for Putin", " doing the bidding of a dictator", things like that. You had many of the same people calling for unrest in the streets until Donald Trump is removed from office.

If that isn't a sustained effort to paint the 2016 election as illegitimate I don't know what is.

While we are on the topic of multi-year propaganda campaigns, can you help me spell Benghazi?

Trump complained more about Russia than anyone else ever did.

How many people got arrested as part of that bogus investigation again?

IIRC Trump also fired multiple people to get the investigation to end. Literally played the Nixon playbook and it was all fake... Sure.

I'm not saying the election of 2016 was legitimate. I never claimed the investigations and claims were bogus, just that they occurred. I'm responding to a claim that this election is called illegitimate by partisans whereas the previous one was not. Whether either election was legitimate or illegitimate, political opponents of the victors put in great effort to paint them as illegitimate. Both sides are playing this game, and to demonize the one doing it now while forgetting that it has been happening for 4 years already is disingenuous.

What bad thing did he say to incite the mob?

He literally told people to stay peaceful...

> He literally told people to stay peaceful...

It's not like that's all he said...

>> He literally told people to stay peaceful...

> It's not like that's all he said...

Update: it sounds like Trump is now regrets telling people to stay peaceful:

https://nyti.ms/3ot6MhR:

> At the White House, Mr. Trump struck a defiant tone, insisting that he would remain a potent force in American politics as aides and allies abandoned him and his post-presidential prospects turned increasingly bleak. Behind closed doors, he made clear that he would not resign and expressed regret about releasing a video on Thursday committing to a peaceful transition of power and condemning the violence at the Capitol that he had egged on a day before [emphasis mine].

Yeah, and so did Charles Manson, who also never laid a hand on anyone.

Yes, in the tweets that stayed up.

This a big reason why I dislike censorship. It distorts everything, and removes evidence.

Did you actually read the Twitter blog post explaining the ban? They claim Trump Tweeting that he will not attend the Biden inauguration is “an incitement to violence”. That’s delusional.

Yep, as ‘delusional’ as all the warnings from people who said Trump and his group of psychopaths were going to end up causing a violent attack on democracy... that clearly was an overblown concern, right?

Now I get it, they’re trying to equate the Capitol Hill thing to a revolution. That’s funny, let’s see how far that gets. My bet’s on it falling flat in a few weeks like everything else.

You mean the violent attackers of democracy who stayed inside the velvet ropes and took selfies? https://youtu.be/y9WPuA6EUaw Seems like there is a comically biased double standard when describing protests and riots.

You keep pouring gasoline on a fire and then keep complaining that it won’t go out. You think impeaching him again and banning him on multiple platforms is going to de-escalate the situation? You know it will do the exact opposite. The Democrats and media companies want to poke and poke and poke until they provoke a reaction. You're delusional if you think you can keep insulting the 74 million Americans who voted for Trump without destabilizing the country. But your brains are so broken by Trump that you can't help yourselves and you're destroying the country because of it. I didn't vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020, but I understand the rage Trump supporters are probably feeling. And I know who is primarily responsible: it's the same contemptuous out of touch elites that gave us Trump in the first place.

Some of the protest videos show peaceful conduct like this one. Others are extremely unpleasant to watch (NSFL).

I have no doubt that if some of the more radical elements in the crowd had actually gotten hold of someone, things would have gotten a lot more serious.

Fortunately that didn't happen, so thank goodness for that.

Except for - you know - the Capitol Police officer that got killed. Other than that, a perfectly peaceful protest.

A grand total of 5 deaths I believe. For what it was, that's probably just about the best possible outcome you can hope for. (Small consolation.)

If they had gotten hold of anyone (especially Pence), the violence might have spiraled completely out of control.

It was a really dangerous situation.

Nice that you chose to focus on that and not on the police officer that got killed or the video of another police officer that for almost crushed to death while being repeatedly punched in the face.

One would be forgiven for thinking you are a dishonest hack.

It reads like left wing conspiracy theories, it’d be funny if it wasn’t so sad.

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