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Comment by mimikatz | Hacker News Reader

If I ran was in charge of a government after watching them all ban Trump's ability to communicate at the same time, I too would think about banning them to protect myself.

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Or maybe you could do some introspection and think about what would have to lead up to you being banned? Every politician on twitter has been fine except for 1 particular individual. Nevermind that 1 individual -chose- to use twitter as their primary base of operations, instead of the usual channels.

Why would you as a leader of the country leave it up to chance? What if your country was in conflict with America whose side do you think Google and Apple would side with?

Exactly this. If these media have favorites and push a particular agenda that isn’t quite aligned with these corps’s agenda then it would make sense for them, out of their own interest, to pre-emptively ban these orgs who now have proven to not be neutral parties.

I appreciate this point and it makes me think more and more about how we try to govern global businesses with national governments and how I wonder if we'll ever get a more powerful global body to balance the power of global organizations.

We will, and it will be a bad thing. Nowhere to run when it eventually goes corrupt and evil. Hopefully we will be space-faring before that.

I hear that point and agree it could bring fear, especially as it gets very powerful. What I wonder is, what shall we do as global organizations get stronger and stronger and play national governments against each other, or less nefariously, try to abide by 200+ national laws at the same time, which most certainly conflict with each other?

> Nevermind that 1 individual -chose- to use twitter as their primary base of operations, instead of the usual channels.

Isn't this perfectly reasonable to switch to the modern Internet channels as time comes? Or should all the presidents keep transmitting in Morse code over cable telegraphs?

No, they use official government channels like White House press conferences and the like. Please don’t make bad faith arguments as if I really were suggesting Morse code instead of Twitter.

Why Twitter or something like that should not replace White House press conferences like White House press conferences (mostly seen on TV, right?) have replaced cable telegraph or whatever was used before TVs?

Weren't others banned at the same time as Trump?

twitter did start banning some left extremists... i had never heard of a lot of them so I'd love to hear from someone educated on it if these other bans were just to appear bipartisan or actually meaningful

Africa is Africa, they always do coups and civil wars and shady shit. African leaders know that intervention is just a question of time.

> Or maybe you could do some introspection and think about what would have to lead up to you being banned?

Having the wrong party affiliation?

Russia just recently introduced laws that would allow to fine Youtube and social networks if they hinder propagation of important information, so according to them not only banning their propagandists, but even removing them from suggestion lists is prohibited by law. Of course they probably don't have means to enforce this law, but it's an interesting strategy.

Of course they can enforce it.

They fine them if they not do so, and if they not be willing to pay the fine, then they are blocked.

Russia will certainly be a large enough market that they will consider it a financial loss large enough that they might implement this for Russia's version.

Russia already have tried to ban Telegram, but due to help from AWS it turned out that the whole internet needs to be banned, so eventually they gave up. Not saying that Youtube will choose the confrontation the way Telegram did, but it doesn't depend on Russian government alone.

Russia can seize income from Youtube ads.

Banning Youtube is a means to enforce this law. And Russia can ban anything (on their territory).

Yeah that's how you run a successful government. Focus on eliminating enemies and threats. Stay in power at all costs.

If more people were willing to do the right thing and sacrifice their political career the world would be a better planet.

Unclear how banning the App Store prevents Twitter from banning you.

You go full China and ban those as well.

At the time of writing people were downvoting you, but I'd say to them that this is a legitimate strategy. China has succeeded in building their own internet economy, unlike the EU or Africa.

A "ban them all" strategy is not unthinkable.

There is no African union that is big enough to justify an African only app store. The primary goal behind the store ban is to ban installation of VPNs.

Trump has a press office and a whole press corps that shows up to listen to what he might want to say to them daily.

Most Americans don’t trust the media to accurately and fairly cover the news. So it shouldn’t be surprising that people don’t want their political leaders’ thoughts filtered through the media.

And then pick and choose sound bites to report to form a narrative.

That could be analysed. What’s the average length of clip of Trump/WH talking on the various news networks and total per hour on the subject. It’s measuring the quantitative part.

Honestly, I stopped believing the media reporting of Trump once I listened to the full audio of his speech about the awful events in Charlottesville. Literally immediately after the 'both sides' soundbite he goes on to explicitly denounce nazis, and yet the media censored that, to make it appear as if he were defending them. It's so blatant, it's insane.

Like I've said before around here, in 2016, I couldn't stand the man, but the way the media treats him, I find myself rooting for him. Every problem about Trump is their own creation.

Right. A serious percentage of people think the only way the president can communicate is via Twitter and there’s been this right wing persecution complex building for a few years now that they believe they are constantly being censored. Despite the fact that right wing news and pundits get a lot more shares on social media. It’s all part of the weird twisted mass delusion that we find ourselves dealing with.

They'd be wrong about only communicating through Twitter, but at this point I demand original long form footage before I believe the media in what a politician did or did not say. They simply don't do an accurate job of summarising.

Any numbers to support the "lot more shares for right wing media" claim ?

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