If these groups and individuals that were banned were violating the TOS before, why did they leave them in place for so long? How do these companies decide when to enforce their rules, since obviously it's not immediately? And do they make deals with one another (I'll ban someone you don't like if you ban someone I don't like)?
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..
What happened here is opportunistic, not principled. There were plenty of other cases i can think of where companies did take riskier stands after evaluating pros and cons (cloudflare springs to mind). Those you can call principled.
Basically, they are just full of shit and are willing to hop on whatever bandwagon makes them look the best.
Isn't his time up on Jan 20? It really looks like collusion to this Aussie (me), who has no stake in the game.
> while it makes good PR.
I'm sure there's quite a few million Trump voters who would disagree it's good PR.
As mercurial as he's been, he is still the sitting president of the country which lauds itself as the greatest (personally I disagree with the latter assessment).
So, what does it mean when the tech companies have put a gag on their own sitting leader?
From the outside it looks very humorous (probably more humorous than what Mr Trump has been in the past 4 years!)
Two weeks before the end of the term is just about as late as you can take such an action, short of taking it after the 21st (which twitter was rumored to be waiting for).
> what does it mean when the tech companies have put a gag on their own sitting leader?
I can ban my country's president from my own software platform if the mood strikes me. The reason twitter is different is because of the massive audience. What does it mean, indeed. I'm kinda looking forward to the republican reaction to this, maybe suddenly they'll care about the fact that media companies have insane amounts of power in the US.
Jumping on a bandwagon isn’t collusion. Twitter started by fact checking him back in November. Other sites followed. Over time, Twitter got more aggressive about it before banning him. Now everyone else isn’t the first to ban, so it’s not as “scary” to do so.
It took as long as it did because no one wanted to take that “first step”.
"This claim is disputed", yet the Flat Earth Societies page remained unchallenged. It's clearly political bias more than a search for the truth.
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.
Twitter banned some stuff temporarily the other day, now they upgrade those bans and add some more. Google removes parler from the Play Store today, a different action (not banning trump). Apple didn't ban anything, but is considering it.
These seem like different actions by different companies, responding to the same news.
Also, pedantic as it may be, it's not political action. These companies are not political entities. Just because groups of people communicate about politics on the platform doesn't make them political.
What we are seeing is major internet companies responding to and banning perpetrators of treason and sedition, of domestic terrorism.
This very subjective and probably different person to person especially given AI driven filters and the ability to choose who to follow or friend on these sites.
When I check one of the sites you mentioned, I see almost exclusively voices from the American right-wing. On the other one, it's significantly more moderate but with some opposing viewpoints from either extreme thrown in. It all depends on who someone friends or follows and what the filter chooses to show.
Of course, this ignores what "liberal bias" is, which is a subjective determination that varies according to the bias of whomever makes such a determination.
Although, this is a distraction from the question raised early in this thread. of whether some coordination happened behind the scenes or if these bans are a result of distinct actions in response to the same circumstances.
His own party is disowning him after years of playing along.
This is a bit beyond violating a TOS.
Unaligned politically or voters in the other side outnumbered Trump. Yet he clings to fantasy he can just steam roll over them.
This has to be taken into a context that’s a bit more than dictionary definition of censorship.
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.
Regimes fall every now and then. Coup attempts happen all the time. I have never seen media or social media ban any Government account over it.
I guess Social Media has a different conscience for when regime change/coup-d'etat happens in say Iraq vs when it happens in USA.
What this has done is set a very bad precedent. The Big Tech is acting like Supranational Powers overriding what Elected Governments can and cannot do. Remember that the transfer of power hasn't completed yet. Trump is still the elected President of USA until 20th of January.
If Big Tech can do this to a sitting elected President, it can do it to anyone else. No Government in the World is safe from Big Tech censorship.
(per 4chan/qanon) it's all false flags. that lady wasn't shot. she threw herself back on to her padded backpack... because "they" knew that if someone "died" then they could quell the uprising. (which is actually pretty insulting to the "revolution" isn't it?)
i spent the day poking around a lot of conspiracy theories and videos and man.. that's one big rabbit hole of mental illness.
But on the subject at hand, I can't imagine a platform that was required to carry Trump's content that I would want to be a part of.
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
And I don't think they had deals, it's more like nobody wants to be the last place where Trump is posting.
If Wednesday wasn't enough to make it clear that Trump's rhetoric was inciteful, that news was.
Maybe.
I'm not going to ban you because you've also been posting some good comments. But if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN in the intended spirit, we'd be grateful. The rules apply regardless of how wrong other people are or how badly they behave. The commons is fragile, especially right now, and we need community members to contribute to protecting it, not destroying it.
Okay, you win, that's a good point. Tbh "don't take conversations further into hell" sounds like an excellent additional guideline, even if it can be read between the lines.