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Comment by 762236 | Hacker News Reader

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>They repeatedly demonstrate that they are a company of bullies, with how they ban people from their service that don't conform to the left orthodoxy.

So the manner in which they conduct their private business, which is well within the rule of law, makes them ineligible for protection from those violating securities and contract law?

> makes them ineligible for protection from those violating securities and contract law

GP said he doesn't feel sorry for them. He said nothing about legal protections being inapplicable to Twitter. You just brazenly made this up out of whole cloth.

I said that I don't feel sorry for Twitter. The law should apply without consideration of political ideology.

What law are you talking about? The first amendment? It doesn't apply to private actors. Not only does it not apply to nongovernmental entities, it SHOULD NOT apply to them. To do so would be government compelled speach.

I'm referring to the law in the context of the purchase offer from Elon, as the person I'm replying to quite clearly stated "securities and contract law".

It’s not a violation of contract law to sue the other party. That lawsuit may find that the complainant did violate contract law, but the act of bringing the lawsuit is not in itself a violation.

So at this point, pending adjudication, Twitter has not been “denied protection.” The court is the protection. The two parties are suing each other, and the court will decide the appropriate remedies for whatever each of the parties has been “denied” due to any willful breach of contract by the other.

> This gets my curiosity going, so now I'm paying a lot more attention to conservatives than is normal for me (on Substack, YouTube, and Instagram).

This is a phrase right out of this playbook. No thank you.

https://medium.com/@DeoTasDevil/the-rhetoric-tricks-traps-an...

I don't get how his comment relates at all to your article. Paying attention to conservatives makes him a white nationalist?

Paying attention to them is fine, I think curiosity is an excellent trait. GP's comment is extremely similar to the "thanks for pushing normal people even further to the right" phrase in my linked article. GP is implying that right-wing talking points are being indirectly validated by twitter, and GP values are being changed because of that.

It's called the Streisand effect.

Fake streisand effect. Pretending even the tiniest act of moderation is a massive campaign to hide information.

How is it fake? I'd have never learned about, e.g., some of the gender critical viewpoints, if Twitter hadn't banned people expressing them. It wouldn't have come on my radar. But since Twitter did ban some of those people, those viewpoints came on my radar (being relayed by others via screenshots), which raised my awareness of it. That fits the definition of Streisand effect.

Because twitter wasn't trying to make those viewpoints go away or hide them from the world. They just didn't want to themselves amplify those views to hundreds or thousands or more people.

Twitter's not trying to keep gender critical viewpoints a secret, or remove them from anywhere outside of twitter.

They did amplify, or I wouldn't have learned about them. Twitter does seem to be trying to keep gender-critical viewpoints secret, but covertly, as they make it really easy to get banned for "hate speech" when you engage in gender-critical speech. The same for other topics that people label as misinformation, such as sharing the actual statistical results from vaccine trials. I never cared about the statistical results until people got banned for sharing them, thus Twitter indirectly amplified.

That is a ridiculously tortured argument. The censor not extending his reach to outside venues doesn't make him any less a censor.

Streisand effect is about information someone is trying to keep hidden. This kind of Twitter moderation fits neither half of that.

I don't want to fuss about what counts as "censorship" or not. That's not productive.

1. Detransition accounts are information 2. Twitter bans users specifically to suppress that information, i.e. minimize its reach, i.e. hide it

Bald-facedly denying censorship is certainly not intellectually productive, might I suggest you simply stop doing that?

Even if we grant the accusations of enforcing a leftist orthodoxy, that's twitter's prerogative, you may not like left wing people but they are allowed to have a website that caters to a left wing audience.

What personal consequences do you think should come to the members of the administration that sent lists of accounts to Twitter and other social media companies requesting bans?

I'm not familiar with what you're referring to, could you please provide a link?

Here's the first article that popped up. Easy to find from a simple google search. https://nypost.com/2021/07/15/white-house-flagging-posts-for...

What are your thoughts on TruthSocial, which is also "a company of bullies, with how they ban people from their service that down't conform"?

I haven't used TruthSocial, but if they do the same (but towards liberals), then TruthSocial has already failed.

I don't use the site, but I read that that was indeed the case:

https://www.businessinsider.com/truth-social-is-shadow-banni...

The fact you think that Twitter supports "left orthodoxy" just means the conservatives have successfully moved the goalposts to make you believe they're the real victims.

Twitter is full of very prominent hard-right voices. Douglas Murray! Charles Murray! Tucker Carlson! Dave Rubin! Ben Shapiro! Edit: Bannon! Paul Joseph Watson! Jack Posobiec!

I see lots of people getting banned for, e.g., being gender critical, or for sharing the actual stats from vaccine trials when those stats make the vaccines look bad. Twitter seems to respond to coordinated complaints against conservatives. My guess is that you can get Twitter to silence a conservative that doesn't have too many followers through these ambushes, but you can't get Twitter to silence established and well-known conservatives such as those you mentioned.

I know leftists that have been banned from Twitter too.

I'd encourage you to read this thread about moderation on social media platforms from the former CEO of Reddit: https://twitter.com/yishan/status/1514938507407421440

So you're an asshole and think others should have to put up with you? I doubt they do in real life, why should it be different online?

What about that comment warrants your calling the GP an asshole? That's incredibly rude and if the irony of your comment having not been flagged is lost on you, then congrats, you won the stupid game.

I don't understand this comment at all.

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