It's not that complicated, when you incite violent insurrection against the government and people follow through with it, you get shut down. It's not like any of these platforms had a choice given Trump's violent rhetoric and history of lying.
We support people rising up against what we consider bad governments using these platforms, and get quite angry when they’re banned though.
(Not picking sides, just trying to understand the nuance)
What’s the criteria?
If it’s a successful election; then the annexation of Crimea is legal and should not come under fire by these platforms.
Additionally, the Ukrainian government should not be permitted. (They were organising via Twitter and Facebook)
I don’t like rules which are like “things I don’t agree with are not permitted but things I do agree with are”- like the people who refused to bake gay wedding cakes should not be unhappy with trump being deplatformed from Twitter. I dislike hypocrisy so I’m trying to figure a rule in my head for this.
Do I understand your equation correctly? On one side are people under oppressive governments. And they are not oppressed only because they do not have access to free speech. On the other we have people that use baseless claims to justify violence.
Obviously this is not what you had in mind. But It can be perceived in that way.
I guess there were discussions like this after beer hall putch.
I do agree Trump has a huge history of lying, and was continuing to lie with his claims about the election. However, I find the claim that Trump "incited" the riot to be unfounded and am shocked to see everyone use that word so casually. If and when this goes to court, I guarantee they will not be able to prove that Trump incited a violent riot simply because the evidence does not support it.
Remember, there were tens of thousands of attendees in DC in support of Trump, across several separate events. To my knowledge, all these events had applied for permits and were granted them, allowing the city and other agencies (like National Park Service) to plan their response and presence.
At the capitol, a few hundred people came onto the capitol grounds. Of those, an even smaller subset engaged in theft, vandalism, and other violence. But the vast majority of people that came to DC this last week for Trump did not engage in violence. So how can it be claimed that Trump incited violence? He made false claims about the election, and a small number of people took those claims and used it as justification for criminality. But to me that seems like the fault of those who participated and not really a justification for banning Trump.
All of this reads to me like very typical motivational bluster that accompanies situations like protests. BLM organizers also use phrasings like "we're going to take back our city" and "show them our power" and so on.
Yeah, that’s incitement.
Regarding the "trial by combat" line - an article on Giulani's speech (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-electio...) describes it like this:
> While baselessly claiming that Democrats won elections because of fraud, Mr Giuliani bellowed to the crowd: “Who hides evidence? Criminals hide evidence, not honest people!”
> He continued: “Over the next ten days, we get to see the machines that are crooked, the ballots that are fraudulent, and if we're wrong, we will be made fools of. But if we're right, a lot of them will go to jail.”
> Mr Giuliani then suddenly yelled: "Let's have trial by combat!" to lacklustre cheers from the crowd.
To me this does not sound like a call to violence. It sounds like a bad joke or poorly-worded bluster or an attempt at hyperbole. Giuliani was quick to condemn the riot at the capitol, for what it's worth (https://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani/status/1347149858000556032).
He also does this with Tweets. Oh that retweet of that white supremecist, just a re-tweet. Doesn’t mean anything. Except there are good people on both sides.
But it does mean something when you are the President and you have a large number of followers.
People have been getting death threats for weeks about the stolen election. The only thing this President has done is continue to amp up the lies and demands of his followers to do something, anything.
The world isn’t a programming language, there’s no state machine and no precise instruction set. It is full of hints and innuendo.
Please interpret Donald Trump in context.
He asked the rioters to “remain peaceful”. As in, by all means, the thing you did to break into the building, that’s OK, but be peaceful. And by the way, the election was stolen from me and I love you.
It was only later, after sustained pressure that Trump told the rioters to leave.
This is like the police after being called to an in-progress home invasion telling the invaders to not break anything while in the house, and by the way we really like you.
But given the context of everything, did he incite violence? You’re saying I’m misinterpreting Trump. Given the situation he’s set up, is it a surprise at all that many others might have interpreted what he said in the same way?
If a BLM organizer says “lets go out there and protest peacefully” and then follows up with “but you know that Footlocker on Main and 34th? We definitely shouldn’t burn the place down. But you know, the owners of that place are awful people. We need to show strength. They are evil. But don’t burn it down. But really they’re evil”, I’d say that was inciting violence too.
Trump talked about marching to the Capitol building and “showing strength” at the rally. His employee, Giuliani, was making comments about hand to hand combat at the rally. Before the rally, he commented that it was going to be a wild day. During the riot, he praised the rioters by referring to them fondly as special people. I don’t think even this rundown does complete justice as to what Trump did.
In the context of a criminal trial, Trump could claim ignorance of what his actions meant. I think that would be a hard sell considering he’s a professional politician and the President of the United States. In the context of an impeachment trial, I don’t think claims of ignorance could hold. Even allowing it, that level of cluelessness and recklessness still qualifies as high crimes and misdemeanors.
Does he have to use rhetoric specifically calling for violence in order to justify the banning? At the rally beforehand he said "we can't let this happen", are you surprised at the outcome?
What the leader of the country says and how they say it matters. He doesn't need to specifically instruct them to overthrow the government... he's been fueling the fire for a long time now suggesting the election was rigged. While it's an obvious lie, because of who he is some people are going to believe him lie or not... remember the people who ingested fish tank cleaner?
We can all agree that "go and kill X" should be stopped, but it's not clear where the line goes. "X is a bad person" could be incitement too, depending on context.
In contrast to this, judges are generally able and trained to make such assessments by evaluating the circumstances and the intentions behind speech, and when they err there is a clearly regulated appeals process.
So I don't think it's a good idea for companies to be allowed to ban whole apps like Parler or persons like Trump, even though I principally endorse these measures. The wrong mechanisms are behind it. Instead there should be more oversight of corporations and how they make decisions that may massively affect someone's online life (which has become an almost essential part of life for most people). Mere accusations of crimes should not lead to a full-fledged ban.
I'm fine with limiting the number of people one can reach, e.g. Twitter disallowing retweets or Facebook sending posts only to closest friends. However, even these measures should be transparent, based on openly published and clear guidelines, and there must be an appeals process with several instances and humans in the loop.
Right now, the problem is that individuals and companies have no right of public online representation, and at the same time huge corporations have all the rights to cancel anyone's account without transparency or appeal. That is inherently unjust and will get worse the more important online features become for the rest of your life, e.g. what do employers think when you apply without Facebook account, and so on.