4 ms·

"While signing the executive order on Thursday, the president said he would shut down Twitter if his lawyers found a way to do it. "I'd have to go through a leg

"While signing the executive order on Thursday, the president said he would shut down Twitter if his lawyers found a way to do it. "I'd have to go through a legal process," he told reporters." Cutting off the nose to spite the face

vmception 6y ago
Hm, if I wanted to do it I would hit them with the federal FOSTA-SESTA law targeting their complacency with sex worker's profiles, and also coordinate with states to levy charges related to hosting child pornography and failing federal record keeping obligations (2257a), then use that to assume their normal financial transactions are illegitimate so leveraging wire fraud statutes, and then hit them with securities fraud statues because they lied/omitted information about all those issues to their shareholders, have the SEC freeze their stock, really prepare to get civil forfeiture laws challenged by freezing their domestic assets too under the assumption of illegality in separate charges against their assets instead of Twitter itself. Twitter should be able to beat all of it, but the point would get made and shareholders would bounce as soon as they could. Don't forget to seize the website in the process. None of this represents my opinion. It would be negligent to not notice the tools already exist.
function_seven 6y ago
Assuming he could nuke Twitter off the face of the planet, I wouldn't see it as nose-cutting. His 80,430,710 followers would follow him to Facebook or Instagram. Or even Gab. His direct pipeline would remain intact.
- notahacker 6y ago
  I'm not sure most of them would, especially if it was Gab or something more obscure still. Ironically I think initially at least to get the message across he'd rely on coverage of whatever platform he chose to vent on coming from his other bugbear: mainstream media.
  - function_seven 6y ago
    Good point. It would be some fraction and not everyone. It just occurred to me that I follow him on Twitter, but would never create a Gab account. Hell, I don't log into Facebook anymore, and he wouldn't be enough of a reason to start doing that again.
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  You say this very glibly but are you sure the question doesn't deserve more thought? Everyone has a twitter account? How many people would you lose in transition just via friction? If he spewing hate via twitter to spewing hate via instagram/facebook then facebook might ultimately find themselves pressured to do something about it especially if a major US company had been cratered in an obvious repressive act of tyranny. Zuckerberg might lack in character and backbone but do you really believe all its employees are equally lacking? If he moves to the neo nazi land of gab might even less of his followers follow? Can gab even handle increasing its userbase by 80x? Do you think the nature of the platform doesn't matter at all as far as engagement or value of engagement? People engage on twitter a lot already even without the president. Familiarity implies normalcy. On twitter his crazy crap is bookended by all the more normalcy of people's regular lives. If it was surrounded by white supremacists and crazy it wouldn't carry the same cache and would turn off a good chunk of the moderates. I'm going to call it. He can't pull the trigger on Twitter even if he was allowed because it would reduce the effectiveness of his messaging by half.
  - function_seven 6y ago
    I wrote the "assuming he could" preamble because I agree with you that he can't pull the trigger on Twitter. And you're probably right about the atmosphere on Gab not allowing him to use that platform to get the same reach. But Facebook. That's a platform with more subscribers than Twitter. Way more. 3 times as many in the U.S. So, going with the premise that Trump was able to nuke twitter, how quickly do you think Zuckerberg is going to pick a fight with him if he decides to post there 30 times a day instead of at twitter? I'm not so sure all that much.
    - michaelmrose 6y ago
      I guess one question is why isn't he using facebook right now if its an even better platform? Facebook is now that thing that I only ever log into on my computer when I want to talk to family members and ignore people sharing dumb things. Twitter is that thing that chimes 2 seconds after someone I am interested says something interesting. I don't think they are the same thing at ALL.
Canada 6y ago
He can't be serious. Based on how much he's on it, it's obviously his favorite site. Just look at his numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_on_social_media#Rate_of_tweets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_on_social_media#R...

vmception 6y ago

Hm, if I wanted to do it I would hit them with the federal FOSTA-SESTA law targeting their complacency with sex worker's profiles, and also coordinate with states to levy charges related to hosting child pornography and failing federal record keeping obligations (2257a), then use that to assume their normal financial transactions are illegitimate so leveraging wire fraud statutes, and then hit them with securities fraud statues because they lied/omitted information about all those issues to their shareholders, have the SEC freeze their stock, really prepare to get civil forfeiture laws challenged by freezing their domestic assets too under the assumption of illegality in separate charges against their assets instead of Twitter itself. Twitter should be able to beat all of it, but the point would get made and shareholders would bounce as soon as they could. Don't forget to seize the website in the process. None of this represents my opinion. It would be negligent to not notice the tools already exist.

function_seven 6y ago

Assuming he could nuke Twitter off the face of the planet, I wouldn't see it as nose-cutting. His 80,430,710 followers would follow him to Facebook or Instagram. Or even Gab. His direct pipeline would remain intact.

notahacker 6y ago
I'm not sure most of them would, especially if it was Gab or something more obscure still. Ironically I think initially at least to get the message across he'd rely on coverage of whatever platform he chose to vent on coming from his other bugbear: mainstream media.
- function_seven 6y ago
  Good point. It would be some fraction and not everyone. It just occurred to me that I follow him on Twitter, but would never create a Gab account. Hell, I don't log into Facebook anymore, and he wouldn't be enough of a reason to start doing that again.
michaelmrose 6y ago
You say this very glibly but are you sure the question doesn't deserve more thought? Everyone has a twitter account? How many people would you lose in transition just via friction? If he spewing hate via twitter to spewing hate via instagram/facebook then facebook might ultimately find themselves pressured to do something about it especially if a major US company had been cratered in an obvious repressive act of tyranny. Zuckerberg might lack in character and backbone but do you really believe all its employees are equally lacking? If he moves to the neo nazi land of gab might even less of his followers follow? Can gab even handle increasing its userbase by 80x? Do you think the nature of the platform doesn't matter at all as far as engagement or value of engagement? People engage on twitter a lot already even without the president. Familiarity implies normalcy. On twitter his crazy crap is bookended by all the more normalcy of people's regular lives. If it was surrounded by white supremacists and crazy it wouldn't carry the same cache and would turn off a good chunk of the moderates. I'm going to call it. He can't pull the trigger on Twitter even if he was allowed because it would reduce the effectiveness of his messaging by half.
- function_seven 6y ago
  I wrote the "assuming he could" preamble because I agree with you that he can't pull the trigger on Twitter. And you're probably right about the atmosphere on Gab not allowing him to use that platform to get the same reach. But Facebook. That's a platform with more subscribers than Twitter. Way more. 3 times as many in the U.S. So, going with the premise that Trump was able to nuke twitter, how quickly do you think Zuckerberg is going to pick a fight with him if he decides to post there 30 times a day instead of at twitter? I'm not so sure all that much.
  - michaelmrose 6y ago
    I guess one question is why isn't he using facebook right now if its an even better platform? Facebook is now that thing that I only ever log into on my computer when I want to talk to family members and ignore people sharing dumb things. Twitter is that thing that chimes 2 seconds after someone I am interested says something interesting. I don't think they are the same thing at ALL.

Canada 6y ago

He can't be serious. Based on how much he's on it, it's obviously his favorite site. Just look at his numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_on_social_media#Rate_of_tweets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_on_social_media#R...