(I think Ron Paul is a problematic character and not at all the idealist he's portrayed as by his fervid followers, but that doesn't matter here in the least).
How so? You call them conspiracists and they might very well be. In fact, let's say they are 100% conspiracists.
If "real conspiracists" are OK to be banned, how would you discern conspiracists from realists that tell it like it is?
Just because Twitter and Facebook says so?
There has been no shortage of actual stolen elections and/or election fraud worldwide (and one would presume, in the US historically).
Would Twitter by OK to ban people complaining about stolen elections in some Latin American country (where we can all agree that they might very well be stolen)?
The facts are, the most recent US presidential election was not stolen, as confirmed by judges, experts, people in the administration, bipartisan states. It's ridiculous to claim that it was "stolen".
That has absolutely nothing to do with elections where there is actual doubt and irregularities, and where people can rightly say elections were "stolen" or influenced or cheated.
And you did nothing to address his point. Iirc, the judges and authorities and experts in Venezuela supported Maduro. Guaido nonetheless had a case and it would be wrong for a random tech company to decide if he should be deplatformed.
>actual doubt and irregularities
Again, who says what is ACTUAL doubt and irregularities? Cause I kind of don't want it to be the crowd or twitter/facebook.
If those were generally thought to be independent (as judged by other institutions e.g. internationally... there is no final arbiter here! It's turtles all the way down) then that would make a big difference. But they aren't.
This is a pretty easy thing to see subjectively. I think the mistake here is believing that
a) There could be a rigid objective framework for how this should work. A simple "manual" for how companies should act in these situations instead of having to rely on subjective or biased decisions.
or
b) In the absence of such a framework, companies must instead never take any action because it risks being arbitrary/subjective/...
That's clearly not going to happen. a) isn't possible yet b) is absolutely not desireable.
so you can see how people might disagree with you on whether someone is independent/reliable/etc.
>a) isn't possible.
Sure it is. "You deplatform someone after court order", or "you deplatform someone after measuring public opinion".These algorithms are just illustrative, before someone starts to point out why they're bad.
I just want objectivity and symmetry. Because I've seen far too many people do mental gymnastics and apply double standards when it comes to "our side" and "their side".
>b) is absolutely not desirable.
it is desirable for me. When it comes to politics, I'd prefer if everyone had a voice, even if you or I disagreed with them on a fundamental level.
I see it, and raise you a "thought-stopper"
>That has absolutely nothing to do with elections where there is actual doubt and irregularities
This being said just "not agreeing" with someone is not a reason for censorship.
Which is neither here, not there. Those banned weren't those that stomed the capitol.
It is the answer to your question* though, along with a practical example of what happens when instead of stopping obvious radicals and extremists you just ask "but how do we reaaally know?".
>> * how would you discern conspiracists from realists that tell it like it is?
If you are willing to take radical action with no evidence, or encourage others to do so you may be called a "conspiracist" and you are definitely a danger to society and democracy. DJT and "Stop The Steal" (whose ban you were objecting to) are today definitely way into the realm of "baseless accusations and incitement to radical actions". And it turns out reality unfolded exactly as predicted. So what was your objection to them being banned? That they were only "telling it like it is"? That it was FB and Twitter deciding? That it's just opinions and won't lead to anything more?
Your comment was in effect a mix of many mostly questions-related fallacies and vague implications but no direct, actual argument. That's no way to carry a useful, productive conversation.
But I will say it again, just not agreeing with someone is not a reason to ban them. Banning should be a protective measure when facing an imminent threat.
This seems to suggest that because we can't always tell facts from lies, we must never act on information as being factual. That to me just seems wrong.
> Would Twitter by OK to ban people complaining about stolen elections in some Latin American country (where we can all agree that they might very well be stolen)?
They indeed were (e.g. Maduro in Venezuela is a recent one). I hope Twitter doesn't ignore such situations. There will always be a need for biased and subjective action.
> There has been no shortage of actual stolen elections and/or election fraud worldwide (and one would presume, in the US historically).
One should be really careful when talking about election fraud, to not confuse widespread systematic outcome-changing fraud (which is extremely rare) from instances of fraud (which is almost universal in any election but usually doesn't matter).
Given that, why does the fraud have to be widespread and systematic in order to be valid? Also, why silence or dismiss even the smallest amount of fraud? It definitely matters regardless of which party/politician benefits.
However, Congress spends years investigating sketchy, anonymous claims about Russian interference in 2016 elections?
Who is ignoring evidence? Courts?
> because you and others summarily deem it not widespread or systematic
"and others" includes every court presented with such evidence. As luck would have it, those weren't courts that could be said to be exactly "hostile" to the administration either. That would have been problematic.
I'm not trying to claim there is no substantial evidence of fraud. Anyone who has that evidence is free to present it in legal processes. If it has any merit, there could even be a case. There has been no such examples. That means either a) there was no significant fraud, b) there was fraud but it left no evidence, or c) there was both fraud and evidence but courts across the country rejected it because they are hostile to the administration. Which one do you suggest happened? Or put more clearly: what should happen before you believe a)?
I suspect and hope this will be reverted very quickly.
To be clear: I'm not saying this is what happened. Only that we know targeted mass-reporting to get people banned happens and is successful, so it's one of possibilities.
Well, Facebook did jump to conclusions and even moved to action and banned people.
So "jumping to conclusions" is the least people can do in return...
>I suspect and hope this will be reverted very quickly.
That would still be at the mercy of FB, a bad precedent, and perhaps "testing the waters" to see how far they can take it atm.
This is precisely the jumping to conclusions. We don't know if it's related to the recent bans. FB was pretty open about the reasons for banning Trump and it got an announcement from Zuckerberg. There's lots of people banned every day for wrong reasons and lots not banned for wrong reasons. Of course they're all at the mercy of FB - that's not new.
And they do it while enjoying strong protections (Section 230) that most other private businesses don't receive - have this in mind when making the "private web property" argument.
If it takes more than 24h - and we are approaching that - but the US is sleeping so let's allow for that, their inaction starts to look malicious.
When Facebook or Comcast or Google start censoring opinions they don't like, I want to hear about it on other places like hackernews so that I and my friends can use them less.
But they are nowhere close! The competition is just so very, very fierce. Koch industries. Cargill. Archer Daniels Midland. The unit of Bayer formerly called Dupont. The outfit once called Blackwater, Xe, now Academi. Halliburton. Alphabet. Microsoft, even still. Companies more evil even than them, that we don't even know the names of.
Alphabet by itself is far more evil than FB could ever hope for, and they have just started. Other companies directly cause cancer by the millions, or have single-handedly eliminated whole species.
In what way have they been right? What has he written that is against their policies, or against a sane policy? Like I legitimately want to hear, what adequate reasons to you think they had to ban him? I haven't been able to find any, at all.
Or is your definition of "right" just referring to the fact that it's their private platform and they can ban whoever they want based on their own political views?
Essentially, supporting a violent insurrection into the capital building was the line.
“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”
That's what he got banned for? I don't have all the details, but it sure looks similar to the autoritarian governments and police forces locking people up because "they know they meant it". There is no appeal to violence in that tweet. Just because some nutjob can interpret anything like an appeal, doesn't mean it's an appeal.
That was literally 1 of two tweets that god him banned, the first just describing a generic Trump tirade about his supporters. How can anyone honestly think this is democratic behavior to ban someone over two tweets that have no appeal to violence?
I don't care about pro-trump or anti-trump, but this is political censorship.
> two tweets
A huge number of commenters here said the obvious "yes, quoting selected tweets was unfortunate when it was clearly not those particular tweets alone that was the cause".
That's still true. It was useless messaging. Ignore the quoted tweets and read the rest. Or read them as (poor) examples only.
There is zero way that the message from Twitter should be interpreted literally as "these two tweets only are what caused Trump to be banned". Anyone who thinks that obviously doesn't interpret their message in a charitable way.
Or can you show anything? Can they do it? After all the criticism they received, they still can't produce a IoV tweets as evidence? This does not look questionable to you?
A question I have is - why am I even asked to be reading twitter's thoughts about a matter, instead of actual tweets or things that the account wrote? Who is twitter? Why should I care about their opinion, who gave them right to affect opinion? Why are they supposed to have the moral authority to decipher complex situations for me and tell me how I should understand one message or another? Who elected them? What was the democratic process behind it?
It is these questions that make the situation real shady, not the two tweets.
The ironic thing about this situation is that Twitter exercising their own judgement on what can and cannot be hosted on their platform is actually a good thing for the demonstration of independence of social platforms from government control.
Trump's departure from office plus the riot was where the balance was tipped (ie Twitter's potential future income from Trump's controversies was no longer greater than the reputational cost in keeping him on the platform).
I think not. I just don't think we'll ever have functioning legal frameworks for that.
Basically: freedom of speech and expression will only apply to what you do with your mouth, in the street. "Speech at scale", such as social media, will simply not be able to be included in it.
That might seem like a pessimistic take, but I don't think it is. The alternative is democratically elected governments taking a greater role in social media, effectively claiming services to be part of the substrate of society (Twitter, Streets...). I don't like that idea either. The lesser evil seems like the first scenario: freedom of speech not including at scale.
Most jurisdictions have, for example, protections for renters. As in "the landlord cannot barge in at 2 a.m. and kick you out, even though the place is legally his/her".
This kind of legislation was motivated by an effort to protect weaker parties against capriciousness of stronger parties, even though the housing market is nowhere near to an oligopoly.
Now, a Star Chamber of Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and Visa banning, e.g. a small business owner overnight will destroy his/her business without recourse and prevent it from getting on their feet again. In my opinion, this is even graver problem than a landlord kicking someone out at will.
What, you don't think they have copies along with an enormous number of other people?
Yes, copies of his tweets exist, although I am also not sure if they are legal. Iirc Twitter demands that downloaded Tweets are being deleted when they are being deleted on Twitter. Trump himself may have the rights to publish them, though.
It's no more effort than looking up something in a speech or a press conference.
They don't explicitly say what tweets are the actual reason for his termination.
I found an archive of Trump tweets. It consists of 50000 tweets. Finding tweets in there that somehow confirm the claims that he was calling for violence is more work than just a couple of minutes.
And getting all of them is as easy as getting a speech recording, if not easier.
> I found an archive of Trump tweets. It consists of 50000 tweets. Finding tweets in there that somehow confirm the claims that he was calling for violence is more work than just a couple of minutes.
The exact same thing happens if his twitter is unbanned and you go there for context. I'm not seeing the issue.
Ironically Twitter moderating their own platform is good censorship because it means they're able to operate independently from the government. The alternative is the government intervening and dictating what social platforms can and cannot publish...and that sounds a whole lot more shady than the complaint you're making.
Without wanting to get dragged into a parenting debate (those seldom go well on HN)...the problem we face is that adults should have the maturity to chose which content they consume where as children do need some degree of protection from some content. People will obviously disagree on exactly where that line should be drawn, which is fine, but few would argue that there shouldn't be a line in the first place.
The real crux of the distinction is that obscenity laws are about censoring artistic flourishes (nudity, graphic violence, bad language, etc) that many feel is unsuitable for children, rather than filtering news content that is subjectively deemed as "wrong" due to a political bias. If the US (or any other government for that matter) abused obscenity laws to filter content aimed at children to an extent that then pushes a political bias (for example) then such a censorship would shift from a "good thing" to a "bad thing".
Agree. We can't have censorship (or moderation) without bias and intepretation. The question is then whether we want biased moderation or no moderation.
> This does not look questionable to you
Not at all. I completely support Twitter's right (and decision) to make a subjective call. It's not an easy one, but given the circumstances I consider it correct.
> There is nothing in his (other) tweets that incites violence.
A public official falsely claiming (for example) that Trump "won the elction in a landslide" is now clear incitement of violence. It's knowledge we have after the fact. The violence already happened. The reason Trump wasn't banned for those same tweets earlier? Because those same messages could charitably be interpretated as hot air. And Twitter did use that interpretation. They are only seen as inciting violence after the violence.
One could argue that waiting with banning people for inciting violence until after the violence occurs is a ridiculously high bar!
Ehm, what is your logic behind that? That one event has happened before the other one? Since when is that enough of a "clear" statement? How do you go from that one correlation that you picked to somehow being sure of the causal (not only that, primary causal) connection between the two? Also how did you assign responsibility? Should marilyn manson's music be banned because a columbine shooter has listened to his music days before shooting up a school?
That one event happened due to the other one.
> Since when is that enough of a "clear" statement?
I think it's clear enough for these platforms to take action.
> Also how did you assign responsibility?
I think a large part of the responsibility lies with president, because of the power of the office.
> Should marilyn manson's music be banned because a columbine shooter has listened to his music days before shooting up a school?
No?
As I said elsewhere, I think the mistake in reasoning when objecting here is that people seem to think
a) There could be a rigid objective framework for how this should work. A simple "manual" for how companies should act in these situations instead of having to rely on subjective or biased decisions.
or
b) In the absence of such a framework, companies must instead never take any action because it risks being arbitrary/subjective/...
I think a) is impossible and b) is less desireable than arbitrary/subjective actions like these. That's all.
I want to add I also strongly believe this. But I also strongly believe that this situation isn't using (and shouldn't be using) the standards applied to an individual.
A US president with millions of followers, and a 14 day timeframe to the event, I think makes for an extraordinary situation that could require extraordinary action.
So to be clear: I think the bar here is, and should be, lower.
Anyone who lives in a world where
The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-and-his-allies-set-the-st...
Hypothetically speaking, the tension could die down over the next few weeks and the context could become a single violent protest against the background of BLM. The right wing are not known for competently organising sustained protests. There is a future here where unless something surprising happens Twitter gets a lot of egg on their face for, in a panic, ejecting a sitting president for things that are pretty banal when read literally.
Twitter accepting this risk is not something that bodes well for them.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/one-trump-fans-descent-into-the...
"Hey, I need my digital soldiers to show up on January 6".
"We fight like hell".
"And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore".
I also remember something along the lines of it's going to be wild on January 6.
Some of this was live, some on twitter.
The point is that the effect of what you say is what people hear, and these people obviously hear him (and other nationalist thought leaders) speak of a battle for the soul of the country (based on lies).
That is the natural effect of the kind of rhetoric he uses.
I don't care about Target, they can deal with it. But it ruined lives, some of which were lost, of many normal day to day people that are just like you and me.
https://jonathanturley.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/CNN-He...
I happen to be of controversial opinion that the lives of normal people are more important than those of lying politicians, who provoke the violence among the former for their own political gains and profit.
Quoting from the Secret Service press release:
"Some demonstrators repeatedly attempted to knock over security barriers, and vandalized six Secret Service vehicles. Between Friday night and Sunday morning, more than 60 Secret Service Uniformed Division Officers and Special Agents sustained multiple injuries from projectiles such as bricks, rocks, bottles, fireworks and other items. Secret Service personnel were also directly physically assaulted as they were kicked, punched, and exposed to bodily fluids. A total of 11 injured employees were transported to a local hospital and treated for non-life threatening injuries.”
And yet they managed to control the scene with no injuries to rioters and only one arrest.
Here is his full speech.
> I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
Trump is missing a shield here that most presidents enjoy. International leaders would still say polite things about Bush the Younger despite him doing objective global damage by leading the invasion of multiple countries. My read on why is because they see a risk that people committed to his policy legacy still hold power in the US government.
I wouldn't have a problem with legislation requiring disclosure of specific reasons for locking users out of their accounts, once a social media company, payment provider, or other online service provider reaches a certain size. Of course, under libertarian principles, Ron Paul would object to such a law, but that's where we are nowadays. Lots of ideological chickens coming home to roost.
Shouldn't it be a hallmark of free societies that election results can be discussed and questioned?
"She told party donors that President Putin had a "personal beef" against her for describing Russia's parliamentary elections five years ago as rigged."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38347684
While none of the heads of the party went so far as to say it should be overturned, we did go through many years of activists saying it should be.
I'm not here to say "CLINTON IS AS BAD AS TRUMP" "THE EMAILS" or whatever. I'm just pointing out that, to someone outside of the US, it's pretty obvious this is the second election in a row that has been declared rigged and needing to be challenged by a large number of the losing side.
Edit: Just to clarify, as this is a sensitive topic. Neither claim has merit. Trump won 2016 and there's no evidence Russia swung it for him. Biden won definitively in 2020 and, whatever Trump activists are saying, the president of the US should not be pushing this narrative. Anyone going beyond conspiracy/sore loser level "election was rigged" talk in to "we should overthrow the government/hang politicians" should definitely be removed from social media – and it's a failure of social media that they have seemingly turned a blind eye to this subject for years now.
I'm sure some individual activists may have, but I certainly didn't see a large number on the losing side in 2016 saying the result should be overturned. Even if they were, they certainly weren't wound up enough to do so by violent means. Comparing the two situations is absurd.
However silencing the political opposition is always a necessary step we have to make, so as to have a good functional democracy.
https://www.google.com/search?q=ron+paul+racism&oq=ron+paul+...
https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.theatlantic.com/pol...
https://www.fox19.com/story/16449477/reality-check-the-story...
Wikipedia is maybe a more reasonable averaging of all sources. And it's mostly a long history of bigoted stuff that Ron Paul was not responsible for but somehow kept showing up in a newsletter with his name on it:
Nice try, but referencing an equally baseless but more extreme claim doesn't make your own claim less baseless.
Anyway, it's not enough to "not be racist", that's like the default, like "being nice to others" is. What are you when you're not nice? Just "there"? No, you're a prick.
When it comes to racism, if you're not openly against it, you condone it, and you're part of the problem.
Take Trump; in his position, he can take down the extreme right paramilitary organizations, the Proud Boys, the KKK, the conservative churches, etc. But he chooses not to, instead dogwhilstling his approval and support; statements like "stand back and stand by", encouraging the crowds to storm the Capitol, etc etc etc. He knows he'd be booted out hard if he starts to hard-R his way through speeches, but dogwhistles have no consequences, and inaction has no direct consequences.
You are right on all your words except that one part. Of course politicians know how string together two sentences with nice sounding words to convey any meaning they want. But Ron never said a homeless of one colour is more homeless than any other colour. A hungry of one colour more hungry of any other colour. But if you want to put your words into any other person, that's the start of a theocracy.
Many stuff about the climate change, are almost any other religion. And of covid too. Ron says many times hair raising stuff for the newly minted religion of the atheist left.
P.S. i personally eat the bark of the pine tree every day almost all day, specifically for climate change. If we make it economically viable to plant big trees in cities, because people will be benefiting from them as a food source, then climate may reverse in no time. But it may not be man made. And meat production is the worst for the climate, i am a vegan for years.
No ideology on the planet based on "us vs them" is legitimate. Nobody is going to rile up people for you, for free.
Currently, there is a push to increase the minimum wage to $15. If I oppose this on my concept of what it is, a vestige of systematic racism that contributes further to that system, then what do I make of proponents of the increase who argue that voting against it is racist.
The entire endeavor is a waste of time, the politicos will do what they want and then tell you why we should hate Eurasia.
Emphasis mime.
That's a fine mix my friend!
Greetings from a conservative churchgoer who'd rather not be lumped together with KKK!
But do they? Because you feel like it? Or because they have some real obligation?
However it seems that limits to free speech are expressed differently for newspapers and Facebook.
I am still thinking about this.
Newspapers always have selected expressions. This is just because it is unfeasible to let everybody express themselves in a newspaper. It is a lot of work to print someone's free speech, so the newspaper has to select. This is not limiting someone's free speech.
And for social media companies the barrier to let someone express themselves is a lot lower. As a society we are still figuring out what this means for free speech.
Five hundred years ago with the print press the balance shifted, too. Monarchs in Germany were ousted. Society learnt to appreciate the freedom of the print press and to draw lines in the sand with slander and libel. We need to find out the rights, obligations and prohibitions concerning social media.
It's a process. It needs time.
I think, a novel concept will be that society's trust in information is a worth needing protection. It's similar to the concept that public health is also something that needs protection. This means: five hundred years ago with printing presses people learnt to extend protection from insults to newspapers. A few hundred years later protection of personal integrity from slander is part of Human Rights.
And now this seems to be repeating with society's trust in information.
It's also easy to be be complacent when it's not our views under attack, but all you need is the thought exercise of how this will be abused when the other side takes power.
Next phase, antitrust trials.
https://www.npr.org/2020/12/16/947160910/the-case-against-fa...