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Comment by NDizzle | Hacker News Reader

Take a look at the two tweets that twitter used to justify the perma ban of Trump. It's weak, at absolute best.

https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio...

On January 8, 2021, President Donald J. Trump Tweeted:

“The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”

Shortly thereafter, the President Tweeted:

“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”

Those two tweets are perma-ban worthy? I'm glad nobody has paid attention to what I typed into region chat in MMOs for the past 20 years...

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That blog post looks pretty bad here in 2022. The rationale to justify the suspension is vague enough that anyone could be suspended for just about any reason. There is a lot of weasel phrasing in it ("...may also serve as encouragement" [according to who?], "...is being received by a number of his supporters" [who?], "...also being interpreted" [again, by who?], "...is being interpreted..." [by who?]).

It reminds me of forums I was on in the early 2000s; moderators would ban unsavory folks. How that actually happens is not "a rule is broken leads to a ban", but rather, rules are combed through when a ban is desired.

> How that actually happens is not "a rule is broken leads to a ban", but rather, rules are combed through when a ban is desired.

I had the experience of moderating one of the larger political forums on reddit and in my experience this still happens. There were some mods who clearly had ideological axes to grind despite their insistence of impartiality.

Wow, I didn’t realize those were the tweets he was banned for. That blog post includes some pretty twisted mental gymnastics to try and explain how those tweets justify their decision.

Correct. I'm glad I reached at least one person before I am downvoted to flagged for pasting twitter's own reasoning. Again.

You're leaving out the fact that those tweets were sent two days after an insurrection in which Trump used Twitter to target the Vice President with a mob. In the days thereafter, Trump was being urged to cool things down because tensions were still red hot. Instead, he refused to back off the very narrative that got people fired up enough to literally assault our democratic process. There was a legitimate worry that he was still using Twitter to signal to his supporters (who again, had just sacked the capitol) that they should attack the inauguration of Joe Biden next. That was the real and legitimate concern at the time.

How many insurrections are you willing to let Trump coordinate on your platform? Two? More?

Insurrection? The most armed civilian segment in the entire world, that didn't bring their guns to this fantastic insurrection event?! The same group who was let into various private chambers, for maximum effect, sometimes walking so close to single file that it would bring a tear to a second grade teachers eye...

If that's your definition of insurrection, there can be infinity more of them on my platform.

My definition of an insurrection is a coordinated violent movement intended to overthrow the government. Pay attention during the Jan 6 committee hearings next month and then get back to me, because it appears you haven’t really been paying attention to the developments on that front if you believe guns weren’t brought on Jan 6.

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