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Comment by DanBC | Hacker News Reader

> Are we really okay with the big tech companies having this much power?

Yes, absolutely. An alternate reading is that a sitting president ignored for years the contracts he agreed to when signing up to those services, and now he's not president they're finally getting around to enforcing those contracts.

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Another alternative reading is The Gulag Archipelago, which precisely and painfully lays out the consequences of what happens when a small group of people decide which ideas are okay to discuss or believe.

I don’t support trump in any shape or form, but if this mass de-platforming doesn’t make you the slightest bit uncomfortable, that in itself should make you a bit uncomfortable.

People seem intent on reliving the mistakes of the twentieth century. At this point, it’s become so blatant, I’m starting to doubt that it’s just out of ignorance.

There is a saying that democracy has to reconfirm itself each generation.

Both the left and the right hate democracy now. On college campuses, the idea gets increasingly popular that free speech is a harmful concept. This is not just an empty phrase. This generation is graduating and will one day hold the keys to power. Let alone the dystopian gang ruled crime infested places that they built during the BLM riots. On the right side of the political spectrum, you have the Capitol trespassers, pipe bomb layers, cop killers. I'm worried.

> Another alternative reading is The Gulag Archipelago, which precisely and painfully lays out the consequences of what happens when a small group of people decide which ideas are okay to discuss or believe.

Honest question: when was this ever not the case for mass media?

He's the President of the United States. He's free to speak to every media outlet in the world every day in the Press Room if he wants. He just chooses not to as that would make him accountable and it's easier to rant on Twitter instead of doing his job. The Gulag Archipelago is as much about the unchallenged silencing of free media outlets, opposition parties and growth of tyranny ("Yes communists have some fringe ideas but they won't really be that bad when they come to power"). FB, Twitter, YT have been banning all sorts of groups over the years, in Palestine for example - it's just more people are noticing it now.

Jesus, enough with the Gulag Archipelago references.

Donald Trump was banned from Twitter. “Conservatives” were not. You are still free to engage in all manner of conservative speech on Twitter that does not call for violence against your ideological opponents.

Did he really call for violence against his ideological opponents?

I don't follow twitter, but it would be good to have some evidence.

It's not so much that he has intentionally incited violence - I don't actually think that's the case. It's that he's been engaging in political brinkmanship for some time now, and in the process become a spiritual leader to an extremist faction which caused violence.

To allow him to continue to engage in that same brinkmanship after violence has already occurred is allowing him to continue inciting violence, unintentional as it may be.

He was banned from everything from Shopify to Spotify. This was a weaponised, coordinated deplatforming. People have been banned on Twitter before, and in fact other state leaders tweet significantly worse: https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1003332853525110784?s...

This is about a small group of people coming together whilst collectively possessing significant power on the fabric of society and choosing to erase an individual.

What do you suppose that example proves? If the account continues to post shit like that it should be banned too.

It’s a large group of people. A large group of people all made the business decision that it’s better not to associate with Parler/Trump. That’s not coordinated deplatforming, that’s just a society making a decision.

> An alternate reading is that a sitting president ignored for years the contracts he agreed to when signing up to those services

So why wasn't he removed earlier?

> now he's not president

I don't know US system that well, but from what I heard he is still president and will step down in a week or two.

Because they thought letting him stay was overall the better idea. Twitter added some rules around "world leaders" when they were pressured to give a reason: https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2019/...

US government officials have accused him of incitement of insurrection, and are working to impeach him and remove him faster than scheduled.

Trump was very profitable for the media. But this shit is getting too real, and they know it, so now they go the opposite direction.

In the absence of hate speech laws and some guidance to regulate social media to prevent mass psychosis, this kind of thing is expected.

It is true that Trump shouldn't have relied on social media that much, and used official channels for communication.

But on the other hand, you can't deny that a few services became indispensable to get any kind of reach... So if we accept that those companies decide what content gets in or not, we accept that they control what content gets to be shown publicly or not.

Exactly. Maybe he could have used the telex and fax machines, as that is the category where 'websites' 'blogs' and 'mailing lists' have been relegated to for a while now.

I'm not a fan of the man but in practice nearly all non media framed public discourse happens on FB, YT, Twitter and a few tier 2 services. If the social media conglomerate decides to nix you, you are done with reaching the broad public directly.

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