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Comment by pannSun | Hacker News Reader

And the internet isn't print journalism, yet it struck a near-fatal blow to newspaper budgets. That's the economic side of it. The other side is, as you say, established media discreetly [1] censoring alternatives that don't toe the line. But I don't care to have my web browsing be censored by the ADL, no matter how they justify it.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Tartaria/comments/ktwypc/warning_re...

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All this Reddit/Bitchute/newspaper stuff is a non sequitur — we're talking about Twitter and Mastodon, not any of those other things. Censoring Mastodon is a new policy under Elon.

The point of the "hate speech" comment is that there's a plausible reason to suppress Bitchute that doesn't involve stifling competition (especially because, as GP mentioned, Bitchute isn't actually a competitor to Twitter). So it's not even analogous to what's happening here.

> we're talking about Twitter and Mastodon, not any of those other things.

I don't view things so narrowly. If you want to limit yourself to only Twitter and Mastodon, you are free to do so, but that does not make similar cases non sequiturs.

You haven’t demonstrated that they’re similar. So far, all you’ve shown is that Twitter previously displayed sensitive content warnings on links to a video site known for hate speech. That’s the whole point of a content warning. It's not analogous to the current situation, which is that Twitter is abusing that warning to stifle a competing service.

It's both censorship, you just like the excuse/justification given in one case.

> all you’ve shown is that Twitter

And Google, and reddit. Somehow, when shown the gatekeepers of online attention all censoring in concert with each-other, you see only isolated instances.

"It's completely different. They censored Bitchute before, but now it's Mastodon."

It's censorship when they take down spam bots and child porn. But I don't hear you comparing that to what's happening here, because they would be ridiculous comparisons. Again, what is the point of a sensitive content warning if not to warn people about sensitive content?

If, as you allege, the major social media sites are all in cahoots, why is Twitter the only one making it difficult to share links to Mastodon?

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