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Comment by sthnblllII | Hacker News Reader

Trump was democratically elected (by commoners). Twitter was built with wealthy private investor money. The fact that Twitter banned many of the commoners who elected Trump, but couldn't ban Trump himself until now due to the fear of public backlash is a testament to how anti-democratic it is to have private control over the national means of communication.

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> private control over the national means of communication

Nobody was forcing the president to use twitter to communicate. Now he’ll have to find a different platform.

“Nobody forced you to breath, man. Just grow some gills or something”

Wow Twitter is oxygen now? Dramatic

All these platforms are literally dopamine gerbil wheels enslaving humanity to screens.

Stop pretending these are the progressive vanguards of society.

You're making the billionaire sound like he's a normal guy and everything else is undemocratic.

Who picked any of his family members in top positions? And his election was literally based on attacking the other candidate, not on content.

Your right to shout doesn't override my right to not have to listen to you.

And it so happens that most people don't want to listen or give their platform to a sore loser looking to overturn a democratic election by force.

Actually sore loser is a rather generous term. In Europe we call these people fascists.

> Your right to shout doesn't override my right to not have to listen to you.

So don't "follow" him? You know, that thing you do on Twitter to "listen" to people?

Or give you my platform to shout from.

You missed this part.

Twitter is not "your platform". It exists because almost the whole country uses it. Therefore, not just corporate executives, but the whole nation should decide what speech is allowed, and we already have! Speech in privately-owned public spaces like Twitter is governed by the First Amendment to the constitution.

https://jcalebjones.com/2020/10/15/the-first-amendment-and-c...

>It exists because almost the whole country uses it.

Simply not true. Roughly 1/10th of the US uses twitter actively. [1]

Even if everyone did use it, it's still a private platform owned by a company. Not the government. That means the company gets to run it.

Which is it? Do you want the federal government to stay out of shit, or do you want it to micromanage things? What's your stance on section 230? Without it, they would have been forced to ban Trump years ago.

[1] https://www.omnicoreagency.com/twitter-statistics/

Twitter is a private company. It's their platform. You use it under their terms. You can't force them to let you use their platform.

> Twitter is a private company.

Twitter is a publicly traded company, they agreed to abide by some restrictions by the government in order to get that status.

Do believe publicly traded companies are the same as state or federal public entities that serve the public via taxes? I recommend you look up the difference.

I'm aware of the difference, how does that impact the understanding that publicly traded companies have waived certain rights in exchange for certain legal privileges?

None of those restrictions are relevant to the question of who may and may not use their service.

They are relevant to the concept that they give up certain private property rights in order to gain other legal privileges, which is a precedent for requiring that they give up other property rights (such as the right to censor on the basis of politics, etc.).

Property rights are completely irrelevant to the discussion on hand. 'Right to censor' is a made up concept. Companies and individuals have no obligation to publish something they do not agree with. Anti-discrimination laws also do not protect Trump here. He isn't singled out for his race, sex or religion. He's singled out because he incited a seditious mob that overran Congress.

If anywhere near "most people" don't want to listen to Donald Trump, then why was he elected President? So if 51% of Americans don't want to hear about climate change should Twitter ban anyone who brings it up? I don't think so.

Your point is valid and well argued, but I have to highlight that it would be more compelling if Trump had won a majority of the 2016 vote, and if the turnout were closer to 100% (or even if every eligible voter was equally able to cast their ballot).

Let's just say, if you think that 51% of Americans banning discussion of climate change is bad, wait until you imagine about what Twitter's electoral college would ban discussion of.

You need to check the popular vote counts on that election again.

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