Facebook Reinstates Trump's Account | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Reinstates Trump's Account

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66 pointspupdogg36 comments

He’s just gonna do it again. He doesn’t back down, he always doubles down.

It really would be surprising if he was able to reign in his worst tendencies until and after the 20th.

Even Merkel denounced the decision of big tech to do what they did. It’s so easy to see where cheering for this type of behavior leads to. Stop supporting big techs overreach just because it’s someone you disagree with.

Merkel prefers that governments are not bound by first amendment protections. I would not take her political opinion as applicable to America.

Sincere question: Do you have any ideas regarding how to mitigate the use of these platforms to disseminate disinformation and to incite and organize violence? Or do you not see it as a problem? Or do you agree it’s a problem, but one that we have to live with as part of the price of free speech?

[...] in the words of the Supreme Court - where there is time for better counsels to prevail, the remedy for speech is more speech. [...]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55640437

This is the American way. Europeans have a different approach to it and they do ban certain speech outright.

Free speech itself is the problem. If it's free, then as Forrest Gump says' "You never know what you're gonna get."

If some manager, somewhere, or even 'some random worker' can decide what you're going to get, then it ain't free speech. End of story.

"one that we have to live with as part of the price of free speech?" Yes.

In the words usually attributed to Voltaire: “I wholly disapprove of what you say—and will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Where’s FB’s conviction in their decisions on this?

They never said it was permanent.

"Facebook Bars Trump Through End of His Term"

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/technology/facebook-trump...

There is still a lot of damage he could do between now and Tuesday :(

Wednesday. The end of his term is Wednesday.

His first term.

His only term. Three-time loser of the popular vote.

Three time loser? He's only run twice. What's the third?

They go by the rule that every publicity is good publicity

I think the interesting thing will be Trump's influence after Biden becomes president.

Most former presidents keep quiet out of respect. Trump isn't going to do that. My guess is he will be a thorn in the side of the Democrats for a long time.

> Most former presidents keep quiet out of respect.

Not the 44th.

The relatively few times Obama has spoken out have been for respect of the office. T**, by contrast, will blather every day in feeble attempts to deflect, distract and divide.

Obama literally called trump a two bit dictator and several other personal things you can easily search yourself.

to say that Obama stayed quiet is just plain look-the-other way ignorance.

Not sure why this is getting downvoted, this indeed seems to be the case. https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2020/nov/03/obama-c...

He stayed quiet longer than most people did and eventually it seems that his compulsion to speak out against the evils he saw won out. At least nothing he said was in any way false.

Full disclosure: I voted against Obama. Twice.

And you can easily search yourself all the things T** has said about Obama. The difference is that what Obama said is largely accurate (though, to be fair, T** is only a wannabe two-bit dictator)

I won’t be surprised if he starts a TV show or podcast. He has a huge audience that will continue to listen to him.

I should add he's going to be a huge thorn in the side of the Republican party as well. Typically when a Republican president leaves office, some other high ranking party member takes on the face of the party.

Add on top of that a few Republicans have completely disavowed Trump (by voting for impeachment), you're going to see a bit of a sticky situation. The anti-Trump Republicans will be fighting with the pro- or neutral-Trump Republicans and then you'll have Trump spouting off with a regular frequency as well (and without regard for either faction).

It will be interesting to see how the dynamics play out and which side comes to dominate the party. Or maybe we'll see the party split?

Is he able to post?

I'm guessing they are letting him have access to the rope to metaphorically hang himself with.

“At this time, it is unknown if Trump has access to the pages.”

Shitty clickbait.

I am very happy to hear this news. In Communist China if someone's account were purged I doubt it would be reinstated, so regardless of what you think of Trump as a president, this action reflects very favorably on America with respect to free speech. I hope Twitter will follow suit, and that Parler will be reinstated on Apple and Google, and its AWS account on Amazon. There are blacklists being written up, I hope those are dropped as well.

Ordinary Americans should not have to think about signing up to the dark web, which law enforcement can't easily access, for their ordinary everyday lawful political speech. A former president certainly shouldn't.

I myself am not angry at Twitter, Facebook, Google, Apple, or Amazon that this happened. I am just so sad that free speech could be taken away in the first place.

This is a big win for free speech.

Below I copy the lead sentences from Wikipedia on free speech:

Freedom of speech[2] is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The term "freedom of expression" is sometimes used synonymously but includes any act of seeking, receiving, and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used.

Freedom of expression is recognized as a human right under article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and recognized in international human rights law in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Article 19 of the UDHR states that "everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference" and "everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice".

Sad that this is downvoted. Only sane comment.

There are no free speach implications to shutting down trump or parler. Every service in question is a private company. Every service used had a TOS. Freedom of speech does not extend to private establishments. Just as you cannot come into my home or business and be racist, without me kicking you out, these businesses are allowed to do the same. Failure to recognize this is intentionally ignoring a key component of reality and seems to be counter to the claims of supporting a free market that those screaming the loudest always say is important. Your argument is not sensible, it is either naive or intentionally misleading to support a narrative of victimhood.

> Ordinary Americans should not have to think about signing up to the dark web,

They don't need to sign up to the dark web. All they need to do is to use a website that doesn't forbid inciting violence (among other things). Just go ahead.

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