Comment by fsloth | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fsloth | Hacker News Reader

Before this turns into a culture-war-fest consider this: if Twitter is to be a global platform, it probably should NOT take political sides and if it is to censor anyone permanently, it should mostly adhere to local courts and similar entities. It's not about Trump or United States. It's about everyone else.

World is a really messy place. It's not very easy generally to decided if in a political conflict one or other party has moral high ground. For instance we have several Nobel peace price winners now participating in plausible genocide (Aung Sang Suu Kyi and Abiy Ahmed). Who has the moral high ground? I have no frigging idea, but I don't think an unelected corporation should decide either.

If Twitter takes the side Trump is a crook and should be perma-banned, this creates a precedent for silencing the voices of opposition voices around the globe.

Edit: I mean in the context if Twitter is designed to be a fair medium for anyone to express themselves. Of course it does not have to be like that and can block anyone without infringing anyones rights as such.

Twitter should enforce their ToS no matter who breaks them.

Should twitter maintain all it's old bans if it changes it's ToS, which Musk wants to do?

Should twitter update it's ToS so that it doesn't have to?

Their TOS and policies are vague enough to allow selective enforcement, which is a complaint that I've seen many times. Fewer people would take issue with Twitter (and all social media) if they were more transparent.

Trump wasn't banned for being a crook but for inciting violence and repeatedly breaking the terms of service. He got away with far more instances of breaking the ToS than any normal person would.

I know there is a fine line between things like Freedom Fighters/Extremists/Terrorists depending on how it's viewed and who is viewing it. Similarly inciting violence could be muddled away with enough rhetoric or only selectively enforce, as governments often do.

Likely the best solution is to update the laws around social media use or extend the previous laws to include those instances and then apply it equally to all.

All of that said though, Trump very much repeatedly broke the ToS and rightfully deserved to banned before he became president.

How come this is not a widely held opinion? This view should be a norm. Do not ban a president of a country on social media. Period. When a private company decides to do so, it should be profusely condemned by everyone. Should Putin's twitter be banned as well?

Yes.

I still view Twitter (back when I was on it) as a private business. Like a pub. Chat rubbish, cause trouble, get thrown out.

At the time of the elections, do you remember all the memes about how Twitter was just a tiny portion of voters and that the vast majority were not even on Twitter?

Twitter is not a town square or a centre of free speech. It's a small dive bar in the corner of the city.

Cause trouble, get ditched in the gutter.

Ban everyone you disagree with. Yeah, that will lead to great things.

That's how successful clubs are run.

Because that's exactly what I just said...

Good grief...

Politicians don't have the right to be on a private website. They already have official channels to communicate.

Twitter has every right to ban Putin, or Trump, or Duterte, etc.

Where did I say that politicians have the right to stay on a private website? Yes, Twitter has the right to ban people. As do restaurants not serve certain people. But if a restaurant decides to not serve Jews let's say, I will obviously condemn them.

If you believe in free speech you should have absolutely condemned Twitter when they banned the president.

I find this comparison strange. Yes, a restaurant should not be allowed to not serve Jews. But they should be allowed to not serve _a_ Jew, if the Jew in question breaks their rule of conduct. Like the case with Trump and Twitter.

The point I was trying to make is that just because a company has a right to do something it doesn't mean it cannot be condemned by people.

> if a restaurant decides to not serve Jews I will obviously condemn them.

They'll have serious legal problems pretty quickly for doing something so illegal.

> If you believe in free speech you should have absolutely condemned Twitter when they banned the president.

I believe in free speech and property rights. Which means if Twitter decides someone can't be on Twitter anymore due to their actions then that's their right. And if Twitter's new ownership makes some different decisions on who's allowed to be on Twitter, that's also their right.

Once again... Where did I say that Twitter doesn't have that right?

> If you believe in free speech you should have absolutely condemned Twitter

You advocated condemning Twitter for exercising their free speech rights.

But you're right I missed the first part of your comment where you acknowledged Twitter had the right to ban anyone based on their speech.

But this puts Twitter in the business of fomenting insurrection against the country it operates in. Trump was banned not for expressing morally ambiguous political positions, but because he fomented a mob to attack the Capitol and he used Twitter specifically during that insurrection to cause the mob to focus its attack on the Vice President. He was watching the events in real time on TV, and he was using Twitter to stoke the flames. Why should Twitter allow its platform to be used that way?

What is Twitter supposed to do, ban Trump for a week every time he uses their platform to advocate for violence? Does that mean we can all advocate for violence on Twitter? I mean, have they really thought this through?

I think there are quite a few parties who would like to use twitter as a weapon of genocide / sedition / insurrection.

What nonsense.

Donald Trump violated the twitter ToS on the daily, as well as local law. I'd be permanently banned from Twitter if I did what he did.

Plenty of people are not banned for breaking the rules. People literally calling for the death of people are on Twitter and their tweets still up. You may have been banned, but there is no guarantee.

A sitting president with millions of followers has a lot more power to create actual harm via some random tweet than some random teenager with 3 followers. How is this not obvious?

I'm not talking about a person with 3 followers. People with hundreds of thousands of followers have made calls to violence as well.

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