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Comment by cm2187 | Hacker News Reader

Though the article doesn’t mention the coordinated and active censoring of the NY Post story, even in private conversations, which was already a heavy stroke of interference in the elections. It’s a lot of precedents. And there is nothing that suggests the temperature will cool down in the short term. I agree that big tech companies may do a lot more collateral damage but in my opinion they also already painted themselves with a bull eye on their back. Republicans will get back to power sooner or later and I think we should expect a regulatory backlash.

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I think it’s exceedingly unlikely they will get back into power in anything like their current form. We will now see a democratic government that is fully aligned, and has deep ties with, silicon valley. The big tech industrial complex has infinitely more control over our thoughts and proclivities than any previous power center.

True but I still think there is a limit to how much one can influence a population’s opinion. My favorite example is Poland which after 60 years of communism, is the most conservative catholic country in Europe. Elections are often won at the margin (and this one was particularly tight in the key states), and therefore a marginal influence may be enough to tip the outcome. But I think it will do nothing to a broad base movement.

Ah but a modern welfare state combined with the power of all the social networks, and much of the internet infrastructure, that combo can exert much more power than the soviet communists ever could.

> We will now see a democratic government that is fully aligned, and has deep ties with, silicon valley. The big tech industrial complex has infinitely more control over our thoughts and proclivities than any previous power center.

Nope. Huge swaths of the democratic party are opposed to these SV companies because they see Twitter, FB, etc, as having played a huge part in Trump gaining the influence he did and the conspiracy nutjobs evangelizing their craziness as well.

I expect pushes for regulation, just a different sort than Trump would've pushed for.

Here we have people dying because a President who was afraid of losing spent months preemptively setting up a fraud excuse. An excuse that was enabled and amplified by social media platforms that also helped people spread conspiracies about the supposed non-existence of a global pandemic, and thus the need for different behaviors.

Even if you end up saying Trump himself shouldn't have been banned, you have a huge echo chamber problem that has now passed the point where we can dismiss it with stuff like "they just need to feel heard." Lots of people listened, and it led to lots of violence, and is the way we're currently (not) regulating social media sufficient?

All of these nutjob theories have gotten MORE prevalent in the past 4 years DESPITE their candidate winning the 2016 election and DESPITE their candidate completely failing to expose any national pedophile conspiracy or any of the other nonsense they spout... The ultimate influence of the big social media platforms has been anything but left-leaning.

> Though the article doesn’t mention the coordinated and active censoring of the NY Post story, even in private conversations, which was already a heavy stroke of interference in the elections.

You packed a lot into this one sentence.

Please share your evidence.

Straight from the source itself: https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/facebook-twitter-block-the-pos...

The NY Post's credibility is in question on this matter, specifically. (Also, more generally.) Can you please point to another credible source?

That wasn’t what was in question, it was whether or not Twitter censored them, which they did. See the sibling comment to your post here for additional info from Twitter even on the topic. Even though they reversed the censorship, they _did_ do it.

And Twitter corrected their action:

* https://twitter.com/jack/status/1317081843443912706

* https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/10/twitter-facebook-blo...

That doesn’t make what they did okay — if anything it shows exactly how much power and influence they wielded in suppressing a news story at a critical point in informing people during an election cycle. That cannot be understated.

> Republicans will get back to power sooner or later and I think we should expect a regulatory backlash.

It depends which type of Republicans, right now it looks like the party is de facto split in two. Even though today's vote showed that they still think the Trump side will win out in the medium to long term, otherwise I can't explain why they chose to face the media storm directly and voted against impeachment.

I think Trump has become radioactive, even within the republican party. They may not want to impeach (and I am not sure what is the point of impeaching a president after he left office) but I doubt a come back is on anyone’s mind at this stage. But Trump’s electorate will remain however.

> I am not sure what is the point of impeaching a president after he left office

Impeachment may prevent him from running again: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-impeachment-exp...

> I am not sure what is the point of impeaching a president after he left office

If a military officer commits a felony offense the week before they're discharged, I don't think the military would/should say "well you're so close to leaving, so we'll still give you an honorary discharge and a pension."

I feel like the same concept applies here, otherwise we're opening the door to the president being able to commit impeachable offenses with impunity as long as they're close to the finish line.

Also, not a lawyer, but I feel like conviction after impeachment would make conviction in subsequent civil suits a slam dunk.

>Also, not a lawyer, but I feel like conviction after impeachment would make conviction in subsequent civil suits a slam dunk.

I doubt it. Congress can impeach for almost anything - it doesn't have to be anything illegal - they just need to have enough votes for it.

> Congress can impeach for almost anything - it doesn't have to be anything illegal - they just need to have enough votes for it.

I know this part is true. However, and again I'm not a lawyer, but I think inciting an insurrection is actually illegal?

> However, and again I’m not a lawyer, but I think inciting an insurrection is actually illegal?

It is, but even if they use the name of a crime or tort, Congress isn’t bound to apply the same definitions or rules of evidence as a court of law, and the decisions of the Senate in an impeachment trial can’t be entered as evidence of the facts found by the Senate in a civil case the way a criminal conviction can.

So, while the trial (regardless of outcome) may generate a potential trove of free-for-others-to-use evidence, I don’t think a Senate conviction (or acquittal, for that matter) has much direct bearing on future civil litigation.

> Also, not a lawyer, but I feel like conviction after impeachment would make conviction in subsequent civil suits a slam dunk.

No, unlike a criminal conviction, I don’t think it would.

OTOH, any evidence gathered and publicly presented against Trump in the impeachment trial could be a valuable gift to those with substantially-related civil claims.

>I am not sure what is the point of impeaching a president after he left office

Doing so bans the person from holding federal office forever. In other words he couldn't run again in 2024.

Alcee Hastings was impeached, convicted, and yet became a Congressman quickly after.

> Doing so bans the person from holding federal office forever.

Not inherently, but presumably (as it is the only remedy left, and apparently requires only a majority vote after conviction) the Senate would adopt the forward ban allowed by the Constitution if it convicted.

> They may not want to impeach (and I am not sure what is the point of impeaching a president after he left office)

Trump has already been impeached the second time (it didn’t happen after he left office.)

Conviction after he left office would be limited to a lifetime bar on future office (assuming it is legal at all, but I suspect that were it challenged it would be found to be), but the main purpose would arguably not be the actual disability to Trump, but drawing a line of accountability for Presidents in general. (Politically, it would also be an opportunity for some Republicans to concretely distance themselves from Trump, which they may see as beneficial for future elections.)

He could potentially also lose his pension. Given how strapped he is right now, this could be quite painful for him.

Rep Swalwell (member of intelligence and judiciary committees) said on msnbc today that several republicans lawmakers told him they would vote no because they feared for their and their family’s safety. The Republican Party is afraid that Trump’s base will murder republicans who turn against Trump.

It doesn’t matter who wins, they’re united on that point. They’ve seen the power of the platforms to filter the information people get and the willingness of the folks who control it to put a thumb on the scale in favor of Democrats.

No. Conservative thought absolutely rofltstomps on Facebook and is all over Twitter, which was, until a few days ago and by his own choice Trump's most important media venue. Conservative thought is so prevalent on Youtube that people post videos of the insane PragerU stuff their 8 year olds get recommended after watching a video or two.

There's really only two things that have reliably gotten people booted from any of these platforms:

* Appeals to violence

* Overt KKK-grade bigotry

I've been watching the "alternative" platforms for the last couple years. It got boring last year when it was looking increasingly like one of the major two, the one accurately described as "one of the less popular Mastodon instances", was simply going to fold --- the bot posts were outnumbering the real ones. That's because all the conservatives were on Twitter and Facebook, and they still are.

This kind of comment suggests that you are completely devoid of conservative perspective. When people respond to complaints of biased moderation by saying that social media is full of conservatives, they haven't heard the complaint. The fact that you call PragerU "insane" seems to further support that.

Even though I find that it's rare for folks on the left to understand what's happening on the right, I'm surprised that even you are so misinformed about what gets people booted. Appeals to violence and "KKK-grade bigotry" are not what these complaints are about, and don't even approach the correct universe in describing the types of folks getting moderated (although hate speech should be allowed IMO). Not only that, but twitter is chock full of appeals to violence, which, as long as it's directed at conservatives, has remarkable staying power compared to anything directed elsewhere.

It's worth watching some of the opposing folks that you've been taught to hate once in a while, even if just to keep abreast of the concerns being discussed. Otherwise, all you get are the distorted caricatures of the fringes.

> Even though today’s vote showed that they still think the Trump side will win out in the medium to long term, otherwise I can’t explain why they chose to face the media storm directly and voted against impeachment.

Personal fear of the people whose affection for Trump led them to erect a gallows and storm the Capitol with weapons, restraints, etc., screaming “Hang Mike Pence!” when Pence merely wouldn’t steal an election for him could also be a factor.

While I think it would be cowardly to withhold action on that basis, I don’t think anyone in their position could fail to have significant fear that betraying the GOP base by supporting impeachment would be painting a giant target on themselves for violent domestic extremists who are often more even more hostile to betrayal from “their side” than they are to the other side (to whom they are plenty hostile to start with.)

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