Twitter suspends Trump's campaign account TeamTrump for violating its rules

It's kinda like when BLM was hot in the news and companies decided to paint their logo black. They didn't suddenly care about racism, they just chose an opportune time and had the excuse that other players were already doing it.

It's pretty pathetic yeah. In this case, better late than never, but still really fucking late..

If Wednesday wasn't enough to make it clear that Trump's rhetoric was inciteful, that news was.

And I don't think they had deals, it's more like nobody wants to be the last place where Trump is posting.

Ultimately, if a company is answerable to no one except themselves, then what do you expect is going to happen? They're just protecting their own interests.

You use the platform; you accept the TOS. You accept the arbitrary enforcement of the TOS.

That's how it works on every platform right now.

Right? Wrong? I don't know... but I'll tell you what I do know: a) I'm not surprised, and b) there is zero chance this will change without legal compulsion.

So right now, concerned or not, it is what it is. Suck it up, or accept legislative change; you can't have it both ways.

Trump attempting to overthrow the election is much more of a threat to Twitter than Trump being an otherwise typical GOP rage monger until now

Maybe.

There probably is a reckoning to be had about how access to social media is mediated, that social media companies have demonstrated the technical ability and willingness to do it doesn't limit future options to regulate how they do it.

Fine, fine, I get that a lot of people here are chilled by threats to open discussion. But please go further, how do you balance that with a private company's right to do what they want with their own product?

I personally find it very threatening as a product developer that there might be laws requiring me to allow people to use my products in ways that are abhorrent to me. Yes, the government has defined protected classes and I will respect those (not hard for me). But if a bunch of Trumpers wanted to use my software to organize a coup, do people really think I have to support that?

Where is that line?

> Now that Twitter has booted Trump, the next 24 hours will be devoted exclusively to people who don't understand the First Amendment explaining the First Amendment to people who do.

With a corollary I want to add that "everyone will believe themselves to be in the latter category."

Let's just avoid social media for a while and enjoy peace of mind.

P.S. He is also removed from Mastodon[1] too:

> The page you were looking for doesn't exist here anymore.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/08/twitter...

[1] https://mastodon.social/@realDonaldTrump

The president of the United States is in fact an extremist like Alex Jones and a white nationalist.

After a mob has killed a police officer, he said “we love you, you are patriots” ... half-hearted “go home” does not minimize a full throated “the election was stolen from us”.

If people are rioting over X, and you say “wow, X is really bad!” - is that not encouragement?

What, in your mind, is inciting violence? Iirc, he told supporters to punch protesters during the 2016 campaign, no?

> I've yet to see evidence that he was hoping for it to turn violent? And if he did want that why did he speak out against it?

He's not going to directly tell people to go commit violence. He's going to (and did) whip up a crowd using hateful language, demonize the people who he doesn't like, and make it clear that the crowd needed to "take action". He used the common formulae of a persuasive speech, but left the call to action portion vague, so he couldn't be held directly responsible; politicians do this all of the time.

> does this mean we can expect Biden to be removed from Twitter if tweets anything in support of BLM?

No. The are huge differences between the people who attacked the Capitol and BLM protesters.

1) Volume: BLM actions have been widespread and ongoing. Whatever these crazy Trumpers/white supremacists/insurectionists call themselves, they've had several orders of magnitude less actions than BLM.

2) Violence: even though there have been so few Trumper protests, they've almost always had violence and in several cases, murder. There has been violence during BLM protests before, but it is so much more rare compared to the number of protests that they've had. Also, in general, BLM violence is almost always directed at property, not people, and is usually as a response, unlike what we saw at the Capitol. Has ANY police officer been killed by BLM protesters? After literally thousands of protests? I haven't heard of it happening.

3) Purpose: BLM protests are generally about ending racism, social justice, and systemic equality. These Trumpets were taking action because they wanted to overturn the results of a democratic election. With that goal, they were basically trying to end our nation as a Democratic Republic.

4) Cause: BLM started, and has persisted, because people of color continue to be disproportionately killed by police (disproportionate in the reason why they were killed, not just in terms of numbers). It's funny how blatantly justified BLM's reason for existing became while watching how the Capitol Police handled the insurectionists. The Trumpets cause is that they didn't get what they want, because we live in a democracy.

So no, Biden showing support for BLM will not get him banned from Twitter, because BLM is activism in response to murderous racism, and because he has the moral compass not to try to cause the downfall of our democracy.

https://twitter.com/JDiamond1/status/1347741119434649603

Redundancy is key if you're warding against foreign interference, nuclear events and the like. But at the end of the day if you're a free democracy you let people use whatever they want for the day to day stuff and you end up having to use those platforms to reach your citizens as well.

My country tried doing its own thing a couple decades ago. It's called the minitel. Look it up if you haven't heard of it, it's pretty neat :)

What other people do with that, and what happens in return is above my paygrade... I'm also generally pretty careful about what I do say as a result.

Sometimes at least. I have my asshat moments, I'm sad to say.

Who defines intolerance? Historically that's the people in power.

In the 50's that was the US government and powerful people like CIA Director J Edgar Hoover and Senator Joseph McCarthy who used their power to root out leftists, branding them as communists. They said free america could not tolerate the intolerant leftists because socialism and communists were inherently intolerant.

The USSR did this by sending people who questioned party agenda straight to the gulags. "By going against party thinking, these people are pushing for an intolerant society that is stratified with the class structures of old. We need to get rid of them before they ruin our perfect tolerant society."

The same logic is used to try to stamp out Muslims in countries like India right now and other places in the world historically. "If we leave the intolerant Muslims around, they'll bring forth Jihad and enforce Sharia law on everyone. The Koran is very intolerant about how non-muslims should be treated, we need to force them out because their intolerance is a threat to tolerance everywhere."

Literally every Christian country post-Martin Luther in the middle ages used that logic to wage wars on other Christian countries. Not just Christian vs. Christian of course. It's why countries in the past fought against each other over religion so much. When intolerance is defined as views that I don't agree with, it becomes kill or be killed world.

One of the best features of the enlightenment thinking is the concept of tolerance. One of the fundamental principles of Western thought. It's literally the reason why non-Christians can live in formerly Christian countries without being persecuted. It's why we accept people thinking about other government types other than an absolute monarchy.

The fact that you can say that statement without irony is honestly so scary to me.

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

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25696026.

At the click of his fingers he’ll have cameras from every major news network and reporters from every newspaper in a room to listen to what he says. Inevitably whatever he does say will be on Twitter instantly. Not that it matters that much because the majority of the country aren’t even on Twitter. They read about his tweets in news reports.

I don’t buy that Twitter is a source of power for Trump. It is his communication medium of choice, certainly. But his power has always been in making controversial statements that generate headlines. He doesn’t need Twitter for that.

I think you are trying to make a reasoned argument and engage in meaningful debate, but can we really make the argument that the person with the nuclear codes, in control of a budget of trillions of dollars, receives any power from a free online publishing tool?

And what’s the alternative? Force them to provide service to every crazy person?

Further the president can literally call in air strikes or offer blanket pardons etc. They are often called the most powerful men in the world for good reason.

This is the fourth estate in everything but name. It doesn't have the same protections as the press, but it's no different than it was decades or even centuries ago, when media moguls could focus the heat.

If we would have kept all the tweets as 144 chars as text only, a full copy of all tweets would have been possible through a compressed distributed blockchain.

Time to reboot social networks folks!

Certainly it is true that it is hard to run a campaign without a media presence. That has been true for hundreds of years. Competent candidates have entire teams, if not the vast majority of their campaign, figuring out how to effectively contract with private media entities (whose freedom is protected by the First Amendment) to get their message out. That incompetent candidates exist is not a reason to change this system.

Presidents should not use social media, in my view. They have too much power and too much reach.

A simple TV broadcast should be good enough.

We've stooped so low that the entire world has one communication channel for politicians: Twitter.

I'm not from the US so will use example from my country.

I do not mind if my prime minister was banned from Facebook even though I'm ok with him (didn't vote for him, but we have more than two parties).Facebook is just some private company for me. It is monopoly in a way and pain that most of my social circle is locked there. But for any public figure? There is public broadcaster. It already is not good that he is not using his PR team that much.

You have put too much power in to the hands of private companies. Public broadcaster can be (and often is) misused for propaganda of ruling government. But so can be private one (and often is). But at least there is stil this balance of public/private spaces.

But I know this is irrelevant in the USA which tries to implement some utopias (like free speech) but others are considered as immanentization of the eschaton.

Edit: To be clear, I support the bans and would have loved to see them earlier. I am not lamenting them.

I just can't understand this site, I really can't. Our legislative branch was attacked at the direction of our executive branch on Wednesday. But what people are really upset about is the president's ability to tweet?

I mean... I get that it would be nice to have platforms that were politically neutral. But if that's not working out? Meh. There are plenty of places where conservatives can scream on the internet (including right here! I await my downvotes with resignation). You Just Can't Align Yourself With a Coup. Is that so terribly hard?

The day Censorship was made valid with hordes cheering them on. A very bad and sad precedent. This is going to backfire very, very badly. The Big Tech tested waters and realized they can behave like Supranational Powers and have support from the people. All it takes for Big Tech is for them to convince the popular masses on how to think. That is the last step to complete control. Elected Governments will be powerless against this kind of power. If they can do this to a sitting US President they can do it to anyone else and can influence elections and electorates in ways we have never imagined before.

Right now I support the effort given the context, but what happens if I'm on the other side of the table and in the right?

But the only thing I'm really worried about, is that his most extreme followers will feel even more marginalized - which could make the echo chambers even more dangerous.

I don't think these actions are as much coordinated, as they simply are a cascade of reactions. But from the outside, especially to those living in a bubble, it certainly would look like a surgical strike on Trump and his followers.

That alone, could absolutely elevate the "deep state conspiracy" psychosis to even more dangerous heights.

How long until some of the nutjobs actually start using their pipebombs and IED's?

Now that he is out of power, revenue from his enabling dwindles fast and criticism increases, so the business decision is to ban him.

In Trump’s case he can call a press conference.

Ultimately, Twitter gave dt a platform, and so it’s theirs to take away.