Facebook bans 'voice of Trump' from platform | Hacker News Reader

Facebook bans 'voice of Trump' from platform

bbc.com

18 pointsgscott10 comments

A former Democrat party operative is now working for Communications at Facebook, and this person buried a negative story for the Democrats and promised a fact-check on the story. [1]

6 months later, the fact-check never came. He lied. He simply buried a story for political reasons.

With the revolving door between Facebook and political operatives, this is an obvious result. Partisan censorship and "deboosting".

[1] https://twitter.com/andymstone/status/1316395902479872000

Out of curiosity, why do you refer to them as the "Democrat" party? Do you refer to their opposition as the "Republic" party? Seems asymmetrical no? Is it just for the harsher/more awkward pronunciation? I've seen a trend of this lately and I've been wondering - has it always been this way and I haven't noticed?

The press used it long before it became insulting, though asking when and why it changed evokes actual insults.

Sorry if it came across that way, that wasn't the intention; was just curious. Thanks.

No it was a fair question. Real answer here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_Party_(epithet)

My politics aren't aligned with Trump, but I find this utterly disturbing, and I'm amazed people seem to be celebrating this move (at least on Twitter). Facebook (and other massive social platforms) seem to have way too much unchecked power over this kind of thing. To ban the voice of a previous president is just... remarkable.

I also can't help but notice that this article is no longer listed on HN - I just went through all of the pages looking for it.

I both agree and disagree.

I agree that these platforms shouldn't have so much power in terms of controlling global speech. It's a big mistake that the world's social fabric is now mostly controlled by a handful of companies, whose incentives don't even align with their users'.

I disagree that the platforms themselves should be forced to do anything. They should be free to publish (or not) whatever they want. Trump and his team are welcome to set up his own website and publish there, and offer an RSS feed or similar for readers to keep up to date.

I am actually quite happy that all this happened, as this raises the discussion about the problem beyond the tech industry. Now there's a much larger chunk of people (outside of tech) that are dissatisfied with the situation and would be more open to using alternatives that aren't under the control of any single company.

I'm not aligned with Trump's politics either, but if he and his supporters manage to fight back "big tech" and the whole advertising-driven social media industry then I'm all in for it. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

There was an article in the WSJ today about Facebook running Chinese propaganda ads that try to dispell the Uyghur genocide.

Regardless of how I may personally feel about Trump, it's sickening to see the double standards held by Facebook and many other companies.

Trump incites hate/violence and I assume the Chinese are the trying to correct the record from your description. I don't see the problem.

Side note: I don't trust the WSJ. Ever since Rupert bought it the fake outrage/news knob has been cranked to the maximum.

Whatever you think about banning Trump by Facebook, this is fully consistent with their position. If they allowed other accounts to share what Trump says they can easily become a proxy.

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