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Comment by paganel | Hacker News Reader

It's a purge, had just read 5 minutes ago that they had suspended Michael Flynn's account, now I'm seeing that FB has decided to ban a community of over half a million people [1] supposedly because their political opinions are not in the best interest of FB the company right at this moment. Of course, I had to get all that info from thedonald.win because almost no-one else is talking about this. Coincidentally, I also think thedonald.win is only hours away from having their domain name taken from under them. This is crazy, crazy stuff.

If it matters I'm not an American citizen, have never set foot in the US (even though it's a country I admire in many ways, just right now I'm reading a selection of Anti-Federalist papers in order to try and understand it better), have grown up as a kid in Ceausescu's one-party state Romania and I have to tell you that this doesn't look good.

[1] https://twitter.com/BrandonStraka/status/1347592064322719744

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> have grown up as a kid in Ceausescu's one-party state Romania and I have to tell you that this doesn't look good.

As an American, I can tell you that unfortunately nobody on either side will be willing to heed your warning here. In our polarized climate, everyone seems to think that they can do autocracy better.

I've grown up around a lot immigrants from Romania and other former-dictatorships and they're all shouting to anyone who will listen right now about how dangerous this all is. My ex-Soviet coworkers are discussing where in Europe they're going to relocate to this year.

> Of course, I had to get all that info from thedonald.win because almost no-one else is talking about this.

This and the Twitter account that you linked is the usual "no one is talking about this! they are hiding the truth" rhetoric that has lead to where we are four years later.

As an American, I will tell you the tweet author you quote is not a reliable narrator.

There are lots of non-reliable narrators on FB and Twitter (I ironically liked a witch's Suggested Page on FB just two days ago), that's no valid reason to ban them.

I wasn't suggesting that user should be banned; but that a quick glance at his profile and feed can tell me he lies a lot, and if he's your lens into America, you will not be seeing reality.

> Of course, I had to get all that info from thedonald.win because almost no-one else is talking about this.

Except on the news media [1], or the largest politics community on one of the largest social networks on the Internet [2].

[1]: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/twitter-bans-michael-...

[2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/ktcafe/twitter_ba...

Were private companies able to refuse to publish Ceausescu’s remarks? Were private companies even a thing?

It’s not a purge, it’s a website. And it’s a website that can ban users, even presidents, because it exists in a free land.

That’s not a purge. It’s a database change. Donald and Flynn can go make their own platform.

I had to move four pages into the comment thread to find this salient point. Once obvious infrastructure providers talk of getting involved in censorship, things get scary.

There's a bot (https://twitter.com/TrumpsAlert) which was intended to track Trump unfollows and it appears around 6% of ~500 people Rudy Giuliani follows had their accounts suspended today. I was surprised to see Ben Garrison on that list since I'm old enough to remember when the left liked his cartoons. It's like that scene where Catelyn Stark talks about what will happen if Robb fails.

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