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Comment by pyinstallwoes | Hacker News Reader

It shows collusion with politicians to coordinate censorship.

Does it though? I don't think a campaign staff pointing out tweets that might violate the TOS counts as collusion. That's just a campaign interfacing with Twitter the same way everyone else does. If it was collusion, then every white house press briefing in history would be too. Which, sure, might be Chomsky's point of view, but I don't think anarchists need to be convinced that Joe Biden is bad.

It's not "the same way everyone else does". We use the Twitter web UI's Report button. We don't have contacts in Twitter's Orwellian "trust and safety'"division. I can't tell if this is bad faith or ignorance.

Alex Berenson was unsuspended after he sued Twitter (unbannings were unprecedented, as this was before Musk's takeover), after he proved that Biden staffers had demanded his suspension. Government employees and legislators are not legally allowed to pressure companies to remove speech, as the Supreme Court ruled that it goes against the 1st Amendment.

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1597663153739169794

It makes sense for them to have expedited handling for ToS violations that affect a public or political figure. Otherwise a very easy exploit would be to simply have people keep reposting them, relying on there always being a few that haven't been taken down yet.

Why aren't Taliban tweets removed that violate the TOS?

Stuff like that gets removed all the time. It's a meme that posting certain Islamic songs can get you banned on Twitter. They might not get them all, especially with a reduced moderation team, but tons of Islamic terrorist tweets are removed every day.

But Taliban leaders are not and have active accounts while a former US president is banned

In all honesty they're probably a little more careful and don't flagrantly violate the rules.

* was formerly banned.[0]

(You may have been using the "historical present tense"[1], in which case what you said is technically correct, but potentially misleading to some readers.)

[0] https://www.makeuseof.com/twitter-unbans-donald-trump-truth-...

[1] https://www.thoughtco.com/historical-present-verb-tense-1690...

Some might say, what does that tell you about that former President?

Wasn't that one of those things certain people deride as "conspiracy theories".

These days the difference between a conspiracy theory and accepted reality is 3-6 months.

Didn’t take long for this post to bring new folks in off the woodwork.

New? We've been here for years.

Collusion implies coordinating on something illegal or worth hiding from the public - what exactly is the alleged wrongdoing? That Twitter had people that worked with both presidential campaigns to expedite the review of moderation requests? I mean, by this definition, what interaction between private institutions and politicians doesn't qualify as collusion? Like what principles are even being violated here?

It shows that politicians asked. Which should be pretty obvious. Anyone can ask. Speaking of collusion, why is this getting so much hype right now coming on that heels of the new GOP House majority announcing that they're going to make it a focus of next term? That seems extremely well timed to me. And the underlying story behind the whole thing is still fishy and not interesting.

Here come the big words. "Collusion" sounds borderline criminal. "Censorship" is something a government does, not a private entity. This is not hard.

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