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Comment by naasking | Hacker News Reader

> On the other hand - some fraction of big tech banned the previous US president, while he was still in office, with no such fears.

Sure, they banned him after he lost the election and could no longer retaliate meaningfully against them, while his opponents were coming into power. I'm not sure why you would neglect that. Maybe they would banned him anyway, or maybe not. We can't evaluate that counterfactual, but what actually happened is consistent with the narrative.

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>Sure, they banned him after he lost the election and could no longer retaliate meaningfully against them, while his opponents were coming into power.

What means of retaliation do you believe Trump would have had against social media platforms while in office? A President doesn't have the legal authority to simply outlaw companies they disagree with, nor do they have a right to a social media account, or to force businesses to accept them as a customer, or carte blanche to violate contracts or terms of service. Sign an executive order making it illegal to ban his accounts? Executive orders aren't laws, and Presidents aren't monarchs.

Meanwhile, as a billionaire celebrity even out of office, Trump remains perfectly capable of suing over his social media bans, which he is currently doing.

He can direct the justice department to investigate all sorts of possible infractions, costing them considerable money in legal fees, disrupting business activities, and causing negative PR. Trying to do any of this as the election loser it just comes across as sour grapes, and the justice department wouldn't follow any directions of this sort. And this is just scratching the surface.

Texas has been doing this to big tech

https://gizmodo.com/texas-big-tech-google-meta-social-media-...

That still doesn't make him unable to meaningfully retaliate, just unable to abuse Justice Department resources while doing so.

If your quibble is on what I specifically meant by "meaningfully retaliate", I think everyone understands that the threat of the full weight of the US government is "meaningful", where lawsuits from individuals are fairly routine for these companies and so I wouldn't count those as particularly meaningful by comparison.

Why couldn't he retaliate after he lost the election?

I said "meaningfully retaliate", not just "retaliate". I address this further below:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32939850

Either one, why wouldn't he be able to? Nothing changes post election until jan 20th

For one example, the justice department is not going to act on directives from a President that will simply be overruled in two weeks when the next President comes into power, it's just a waste of resources. They'll take the paperwork but they'll just sit on it.

Is that a guarantee or is it possible they would follow his orders?

Also it's 6 weeks and the executive doesn't control the justic department how would it be overruled?

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