6 ms·

Moreover they control most of the public-facing tech companies. Shut down Google search or Facebook for a week and it will have a bigger impact than shutting an

by rdtsc 10y ago

Moreover they control most of the public-facing tech companies. Shut down Google search or Facebook for a week and it will have a bigger impact than shutting an airport down. There are 0 Trump supporting search engines or Facebook equivalents.

anarazel 10y ago
> There are 0 Trump supporting search engines or Facebook equivalents. Given that I, a not very well networked person, know of people supporting Trump at both google and facebook, I'm afraid that that's wishful thinking. It's not a large percentage, but they're there. But even if so, what'd be the way to use that fact? I don't think the way to deal with Trump is to go blow-by-blow with Trump (he'll drag you down to his level, and beat you with experience, and all that).
- rdtsc 10y ago
  It was really just a crazy idea I had based on seeing calls to block airports blocks and seeing some tech CEOs come in support of immigrants and thought, what could they do really, and naturally thought --- well shut down their service...
  - georgemcbay 10y ago
    The greatest action a tech company could make that would really sting would be twitter shutting down his account. I don't expect they will do this, but ultimately they can shut down anyone's account for any reason and unsuitability of their platform for what he is using it for sounds like a good enough reason to me. It is kind of insane to me that nobody in the general mainstream media is making a bigger deal out of the fact that the POTUS is generally signalling public policy and overall decision making via twitter (not exactly the securest of platforms) to both the media and apparently his own party. And he accesses this account over what is reportedly a completely unsecured Samsung Galaxy S3 (too old for security updates). If his twitter account were hacked the results could be literally catastrophic in terms of the damage that might be caused to the subject of the tweet before it came to light that the tweet was not legitimate.
    - rdtsc 10y ago
      > The greatest action a tech company could make that would really sting would be twitter shutting down his account. Shadow ban! > If his twitter account were hacked the results could be literally catastrophic in terms of the damage that might be caused to the subject of the tweet before it came to light that the tweet was not legitimate. Agree, wish there was more talk about that. That is scary. He distrusts the press, I can see why. But what are the procedures for him to deny quickly something that was posted there by a hacker. "Lol, launching nukes to China". What is the turn-around time for an urgent TV / radio address saying "oops someone guessed my password and trolled everyone" before China launches anything back.
      - adventured 10y ago
        It wouldn't be an urgent TV address, that would take far too long. There are direct lines of communication in multiple ways between the US and China, both at the political level and militarily. The White House would also issue an immediate release to the press, which would be global distributed essentially instantly. Further, both China and Russia have the ability to detect that long range missiles are being hurled at them. There are an awful lot of crazy notions being floated in this thread. The unnecessary hysteria is getting out of control. It's like the old Reagan days times ten (we were all supposed to be dead in the 1980s because Reagan was going to get us killed in a global nuclear war).
newmanships 10y ago
Hmmm, that's an interesting thought exercise. I wonder what would happen in FB/Google blocked access in states that voted Trump, or in the future for states of X candidate but not Y and the impact that would have. What happens if they're blocked for a day, week, month, etc? Interesting.
- rdtsc 10y ago
  Yeah it was just a crazy thought I had. Blocking a whole city is hard, takes coordination, blocking all the streets etc. Blocking Facebook is shutting off connections to a region.
adventured 10y ago
Then the Federal Government takes temporary control of Google on the basis of national security. Employees are forced at gun point to perform their functions, on the basis of otherwise threatening national security. Some of this has already been tested out in political theory, during the time in which Ballmer floated the idea of moving Microsoft to Canada over the anti-trust ruling, and during the NSA vs tech company conflicts recently. The power structure in DC, that exists outside the bounds of Democrats / Republicans, would never allow such a threat to themselves and their power to persist. It would be quelled fast. You're talking about directly threatening the United States Military (the NSA gathers vast amounts of its data from such companies).
dragonsky 10y ago
If you claim to still want to live in a democracy, this is a completely ridiculous suggestion. If you truely believe in democracy you have to regain power using the structures of democracy, not by employing the tactics of those you are fighting against. The only way to effectively get change is to change the attitude and beliefs of those who support what you are fighting against. In this case, those Trump supporters. I'm sorry, but short of Trump doing something silly (likely I know) and him being impeached, you are stuck with him until the next election. You have until then to convince his supports that he is not the answer they were looking for. You also have to have a credible alternative who they can get behind. People who populate Hacker News are almost by definition educated and analytical. They are people who are able to identify falsehood and participate in a logical discussion. They tend to believe that information is valuable and of a sense that "information should be free". Please don't discard your values and call for censorship just because things are happening that you don't like. Be yourselves, stand up and have calm and sensible discussions, present your facts, support your facts with evidence. Understand that overcoming the negative attitudes that have invaded our society will take time, but in the end, the truth always wins, even if those who have changed their view, may not ever admit that they have changed.
- rdtsc 10y ago
  I should have mentioned that was mostly a thought experiment. Would I want them to do that, no. But I was wondering how many would want to do it? Maybe there are some rogue employees who wouldn't mind crashing an burning the system to "protest". However, now that I think about it, this type of censorship has already happened. A while back on Reddit, the CEO himself modified a comment from a user from a Trump supporter. As in directly went into the database backend and switched the text blob there. https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/5ektpc/rthe_donald_accuses_the_admins_of_editing_t_ds/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/5ektpc/rthe... I didn't follow what happened afterwards, don't think he was punished or fired or anything. Maybe someone else knows. Anyway just as I was saying it was theoretical what-if. I remembered that case. It is scary in way also because posts on the social sites could be used in a court cases as evidence. Makes one think... > You have until then to convince his supports that he is not the answer they were looking for. You also have to have a credible alternative who they can get behind. Good point. I think without self-analysis and reflection more than name-calling and blaming, we'll just have Trump for 8 years. And then another Trump and so on. If name calling and public smearing had worked, he wouldn't have even got off ground in the Republican primaries. Throwing more labels at Trump supporters over Twitter and Facebook will surely not be a winning strategy, because otherwise he would have been back in his tower by now, licking his wounds in defeat. Another way of looking at him is as a symptom. Something was already happening in this country planted probably a decade ago, that lead the the conditions of him winning.

by rdtsc 10y ago

anarazel 10y ago

> There are 0 Trump supporting search engines or Facebook equivalents. Given that I, a not very well networked person, know of people supporting Trump at both google and facebook, I'm afraid that that's wishful thinking. It's not a large percentage, but they're there. But even if so, what'd be the way to use that fact? I don't think the way to deal with Trump is to go blow-by-blow with Trump (he'll drag you down to his level, and beat you with experience, and all that).

rdtsc 10y ago
It was really just a crazy idea I had based on seeing calls to block airports blocks and seeing some tech CEOs come in support of immigrants and thought, what could they do really, and naturally thought --- well shut down their service...
- georgemcbay 10y ago
  The greatest action a tech company could make that would really sting would be twitter shutting down his account. I don't expect they will do this, but ultimately they can shut down anyone's account for any reason and unsuitability of their platform for what he is using it for sounds like a good enough reason to me. It is kind of insane to me that nobody in the general mainstream media is making a bigger deal out of the fact that the POTUS is generally signalling public policy and overall decision making via twitter (not exactly the securest of platforms) to both the media and apparently his own party. And he accesses this account over what is reportedly a completely unsecured Samsung Galaxy S3 (too old for security updates). If his twitter account were hacked the results could be literally catastrophic in terms of the damage that might be caused to the subject of the tweet before it came to light that the tweet was not legitimate.
  - rdtsc 10y ago
    > The greatest action a tech company could make that would really sting would be twitter shutting down his account. Shadow ban! > If his twitter account were hacked the results could be literally catastrophic in terms of the damage that might be caused to the subject of the tweet before it came to light that the tweet was not legitimate. Agree, wish there was more talk about that. That is scary. He distrusts the press, I can see why. But what are the procedures for him to deny quickly something that was posted there by a hacker. "Lol, launching nukes to China". What is the turn-around time for an urgent TV / radio address saying "oops someone guessed my password and trolled everyone" before China launches anything back.
    - adventured 10y ago
      It wouldn't be an urgent TV address, that would take far too long. There are direct lines of communication in multiple ways between the US and China, both at the political level and militarily. The White House would also issue an immediate release to the press, which would be global distributed essentially instantly. Further, both China and Russia have the ability to detect that long range missiles are being hurled at them. There are an awful lot of crazy notions being floated in this thread. The unnecessary hysteria is getting out of control. It's like the old Reagan days times ten (we were all supposed to be dead in the 1980s because Reagan was going to get us killed in a global nuclear war).

newmanships 10y ago

Hmmm, that's an interesting thought exercise. I wonder what would happen in FB/Google blocked access in states that voted Trump, or in the future for states of X candidate but not Y and the impact that would have. What happens if they're blocked for a day, week, month, etc? Interesting.

rdtsc 10y ago
Yeah it was just a crazy thought I had. Blocking a whole city is hard, takes coordination, blocking all the streets etc. Blocking Facebook is shutting off connections to a region.

adventured 10y ago

Then the Federal Government takes temporary control of Google on the basis of national security. Employees are forced at gun point to perform their functions, on the basis of otherwise threatening national security. Some of this has already been tested out in political theory, during the time in which Ballmer floated the idea of moving Microsoft to Canada over the anti-trust ruling, and during the NSA vs tech company conflicts recently. The power structure in DC, that exists outside the bounds of Democrats / Republicans, would never allow such a threat to themselves and their power to persist. It would be quelled fast. You're talking about directly threatening the United States Military (the NSA gathers vast amounts of its data from such companies).

dragonsky 10y ago

If you claim to still want to live in a democracy, this is a completely ridiculous suggestion. If you truely believe in democracy you have to regain power using the structures of democracy, not by employing the tactics of those you are fighting against. The only way to effectively get change is to change the attitude and beliefs of those who support what you are fighting against. In this case, those Trump supporters. I'm sorry, but short of Trump doing something silly (likely I know) and him being impeached, you are stuck with him until the next election. You have until then to convince his supports that he is not the answer they were looking for. You also have to have a credible alternative who they can get behind. People who populate Hacker News are almost by definition educated and analytical. They are people who are able to identify falsehood and participate in a logical discussion. They tend to believe that information is valuable and of a sense that "information should be free". Please don't discard your values and call for censorship just because things are happening that you don't like. Be yourselves, stand up and have calm and sensible discussions, present your facts, support your facts with evidence. Understand that overcoming the negative attitudes that have invaded our society will take time, but in the end, the truth always wins, even if those who have changed their view, may not ever admit that they have changed.

rdtsc 10y ago
I should have mentioned that was mostly a thought experiment. Would I want them to do that, no. But I was wondering how many would want to do it? Maybe there are some rogue employees who wouldn't mind crashing an burning the system to "protest". However, now that I think about it, this type of censorship has already happened. A while back on Reddit, the CEO himself modified a comment from a user from a Trump supporter. As in directly went into the database backend and switched the text blob there. https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/5ektpc/rthe_donald_accuses_the_admins_of_editing_t_ds/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/5ektpc/rthe... I didn't follow what happened afterwards, don't think he was punished or fired or anything. Maybe someone else knows. Anyway just as I was saying it was theoretical what-if. I remembered that case. It is scary in way also because posts on the social sites could be used in a court cases as evidence. Makes one think... > You have until then to convince his supports that he is not the answer they were looking for. You also have to have a credible alternative who they can get behind. Good point. I think without self-analysis and reflection more than name-calling and blaming, we'll just have Trump for 8 years. And then another Trump and so on. If name calling and public smearing had worked, he wouldn't have even got off ground in the Republican primaries. Throwing more labels at Trump supporters over Twitter and Facebook will surely not be a winning strategy, because otherwise he would have been back in his tower by now, licking his wounds in defeat. Another way of looking at him is as a symptom. Something was already happening in this country planted probably a decade ago, that lead the the conditions of him winning.