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Comment by FeepingCreature | Hacker News Reader

> They are with in their right to suspend who ever they want.

I realize this is heresy, but maybe they should not be?

> But that's not the actual issue, the real issue is coordinated and targeted bans from 'Big Tech'. These bans will always result in users using alternative platforms

Good. Please continue the coordinated and targeted bans. Compared to a Twitter that can't ban people, a diverse ecosystem of alternative services is a usable second place.

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> Good. Please continue the coordinated and targeted bans. Compared to a Twitter that can't ban people, a diverse ecosystem of alternative services is a usable second place.

So when the Big Tech companies start to coordinate, target and suspend YOUR accounts for 'any reason' that is also good?

Yup. But the real tragedy is there arent any alternatives. Antitrust legislation is what's needed imo.

If there were real alternatives nobody would give a shit about being banned from one. The outrage shows these companies are too big.

The outrage shows that people don't like being banned. Banned people generally tend to be outraged regardless of the circumstances. There's plenty of night clubs, but every person that I've ever seen getting thrown out of one was pretty mad, even if they were completely wasted and tried to get into a fistfight with the bartender. There are real alternatives to existing social media platforms, they're a click away. It's not clear to me at all what coercive power is being exercised here.

Keep in mind that a company having large market share does not imply they hold that position undeservedly. You actually need to show that this is the result of exercising market power, not consumer choice.

Alternatives exist. Look at the fediverse.

an alternative to twitter or facebook would have a comparable audience volume.

there are plenty of alternatives functionally -- but no alternatives realistically.

You interact with a limited # of people. I don't think it matters if there are 100 million or 1 million (or fewer). You can follow people, monitor your feed, chat with friends. There are enough people on the fediverse that it doesn't feel like you're missing much from twitter besides corporate accounts.

> it doesn't feel like you're missing much from twitter besides corporate accounts.

Having watched Twitter from some distance, isn't that half the reason it's so popular?

Would you add X strangers if your family wasn't on the platform you use?

You're forgetting about viral tweets

So promoting functional alternatives is the way to go if we ever want to get realistic alternatives.

Not when Apple and Google are in cahoots and both ban your new app.

There are fediverse apps on both stores.

There are fediverse apps on both stores because 99% of fediverse instances have a left-wing moderation policy.

What do you mean by a “left-wing moderation policy”? The naïve interpretation gets nowhere near 99%.

You can get up to 95% if you interpret that as “a moderation policy where spamming slurs at other users isn't looked on kindly” – but if “basic decency” is your definition of “left-wing”, then what's up with your “right-wing”‽

fediverse also caved to pressure from Big Tech to put in place a system of censorship

The fediverse is not a single entity. I am not aware of any such system.

serious "head in the sand" vibes from anyone who says that there aren't any alternatives.

Exactly, these are de facto monopolies.

It is only good in the sense that it pushes people off of big tech and hopefully creates new tech.

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