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Twitter hides Donald Trump tweet for “glorifying violence”

• danso 6y ago
  Link to @realDonaldTrump tweet: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1266231100780744704 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/12662311007807447... tweet text: > ....These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you! Disclaimer text: > This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible. Learn more "Learn more" links to this page about "public-interest exceptions" https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/public-interest https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/public-intere... edit: here's the official thread from @TwitterComms about it: https://twitter.com/TwitterComms/status/1266267446979129345 https://twitter.com/TwitterComms/status/1266267446979129345
  • noobermin 6y ago
    Why is this reply being downvoted? It is merely informative.
    • doublesCs 6y ago
      > Why is this reply being downvoted? It is merely informative. Because this is HN. Expect some guidelines-lawyer to cite some section that was technically breached by that informative reply.
    • all2 6y ago
      It shows the actual words, which are hard to spin. If we keep what was done vague, we can spin it any way we please.
      • koheripbal 6y ago
        That's interesting. I interpreted it the exact opposite way. That looking at the words - they don't seem so bad, so the liberal-minded HN users downvoted to keep the details away. Funny how personal bias can twist perceptions.
        • augustt 6y ago
          Funny indeed. Maybe he meant shooting as in shooting footage! What a rascal. Those darn liberals can't expect the president to not be ambiguous about using lethal force every day!
        • all2 6y ago
          I think you and I are thinking the same thing: if the source is available, then the reader can form their own opinion.
    • dntbnmpls 6y ago
      > It is merely informative. That's the problem. When facts/information doesn't align with one's agenda, some people have a terrible habit of trying to have it hidden/banned/removed/etc. You would think in hackernews of all places, we'd upvote the comment to see exactly what trump wrote so that we can decide for ourselves when it was "glorifying violence". Sadly, many here don't want that to happen.
    • bilbo0s 6y ago
      I think because it just restates what's in the link being discussed, when the link is not inaccessible nor behind a paywall. There are a lot of people who think that's bad form on HN. That's my guess. People trying to force everyone to "read the articles" on HN.
      • ttonkytonk 6y ago
        I appreciate someone posting what was actually said because I have limited data.
        • doublesCs 6y ago
          I appreciate it because I don't want to open the sluggish website that is twitter.
          • Dayshine 6y ago
            I appreciate it because when I follow twitter links in my hacker news app I get rate limit blocked...
    • _prototype_ 6y ago
      HN is quickly turning into a leftist SJW and socialist haven, similar to Reddit
  • 0-_-0 6y ago
    For those who don't like opening Twitter links: https://nitter.net/realDonaldTrump/status-/1266231100780744704 https://nitter.net/realDonaldTrump/status-/12662311007807447...
    • asdkhadsj 6y ago
      Page not found
      • 0-_-0 6y ago
        Thanks! Here it is fixed: https://nitter.net/realDonaldTrump/status/1266231100780744704 https://nitter.net/realDonaldTrump/status/126623110078074470...
  • _fq4v 6y ago
    Completely agree with trump here honestly. Looting private business is not a form of protest against the police or the state for that matter.
    • xigency 6y ago
      You should investigate the racial history of the phrase “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” and also consider whether property crime deserves loss of life.
      • tathougies 6y ago
        > property crime deserves loss of life. This is not an isolated incidence of property crime. This is utter destruction more akin to waging a total war against a particular district of Minneapolis. It's a form of terrorism. Property -- in the form of business and services -- is essential to life. There is no absolute distinction between the two, despite what some pretend. These people are breaking property in their own community and then expect investors or the very government they're protesting to step back in and rebuild.
        • xigency 6y ago
          > Property -- in the form of business and services -- is essential to life. While that can be true in a literal sense at times, I don't believe shop lifting electronics from Target would have that effect. Even the destruction of local businesses, while indeed terrorizing, is not lethal. Violent rioting would be something that might require a lethal response, but stealing, looting, robbing, plundering -- no. > These people are breaking property in their own community and then expect investors or the very government they're protesting to step back in and rebuild. So you believe that what is right, instead of investing and rebuilding, is that these people should be killed?
          • tathougies 6y ago
            > Even the destruction of local businesses, while indeed terrorizing, is not lethal. Tell that to the poor immigrant family whose business, and thus livelihood in this country, was destroyed. This is how we get roof koreans. Why don't these rioters go stand with guns outside the state capitol or city hall or police dept? Instead of disrespecting the memory of George Floyd. I hope his death isn't used to defend people's 'right' to steal TVs without getting caught. That would be really really really sad. You don't have the moral high ground here. Terrorizing and instilling fear in your local community is wrong, whether it comes from the state through the police or your fellow countrymen through riots. Just as an appropriate response to the officer who killed Mr Floyd would have been violence, so is violence towards the rioters. We can't honestly say that just because the police are thugs, thus we ought to also let others be thugs. Both can be wrong.
• ykevinator 6y ago
  Why do police keep killing black people?
  • audessuscest 6y ago
    Why do black people keep killing black people (way more than police who are not all white FYI)?
• phtrivier 6y ago
  I find it clever that Twitter is not deleting the tweets, but simply adding their opinions about it. I don't know if you can call "censure" when your messages are still visible to the public, but the "editor-that-is-not-really-an-editor-but-sort-of" simply adds a banner saying "yeah, sure, right." I can't wait for Trump to protest the flagging, and Twitter to respond that "flagging tweets while letting them visible" is just expressing their free speech. Surely Trump supporters are all in favor of free speech in a free country, right ?
  • alkibiades 6y ago
    yes we support free speech but if they are editiorializing then section 230 no longer applies to them. we should prosecute them for all the child exploitation and other crimes such as defamation on their platform
• The_rationalist 6y ago
  If Twitter sucess to fight for the truth without exposing bias they will be the most remarkable heroes of the 2001 century and could begin a whole change of behavior of websites regarding fake news and hate speech
• logicallee 6y ago
  For anyone who doesn't want to click, Twitter quarantined (you can click "view" to see it, however engagement is disabled) a Presidential tweet in which he calls on a mayor to "get a city under control", threatened to send in the national guard, said the military is behind the governor, and said that if there is difficulty they will assume control. His specific reference to violence occurred at the end the tweet, which he ended saying "Any difficulty, and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!"
• shitShitty 6y ago
  The over-reaction here is just completely fucking stupid. The statement that juxtaposed "looting/shooting" is akin to juxtaposing a combination not unlike "drunk driving/car wrecks" or "where smoke/there's fire" and the like. But yeah, okay, just fly into apoplexy because you find the man tasteless and rude.
• user982 6y ago
  'Trump's phrase "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" is an unattributed quote of Walter Headley, Miami's police chief in 1967. It was a threat to citizens who were upset that police had terrorized a black teenager by holding him over a bridge.' (https://twitter.com/mattsheffield/status/1266246092393336838 https://twitter.com/mattsheffield/status/1266246092393336838)
  • kortilla 6y ago
    An unattributed quote?
    • user982 6y ago
      What is your question?
    • logicallee 6y ago
      The OP means that Trump didn't use quotation marks or mention that it was a quotation. (I myself didn't realize it was a quotation.) There is no attribution or quotation marks in the tweet. I found the attribution of the quote very informative and am very surprised it is currently downvoted. My own summary of the tweets is also downvoted, not sure what I could/should add to it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23347395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23347395 I tried to neutrally summarize the tweets, in case people wanted to know what they said without clicking.
• roenxi 6y ago
  This seems like a dubious foundation for Twitter to start with. If Trump controls the National Guard there is a definite public interest in knowing when he is likely to deploy the National Guard. It'd be headline news after the fact; it should be telegraphed beforehand. Trump might be bluffing, but Twitter can't possibly know.
  • danso 6y ago
    The president does not have the authority to call in the National Guard to perform law enforcement in a state — that is the governor’s decision: https://kstp.com/news/minnesota-national-guard-activated-to-control-protests-following-george-floyds-death/5743967/ https://kstp.com/news/minnesota-national-guard-activated-to-... https://www.npr.org/2018/04/05/599895184/why-president-trump-cant-directly-order-national-guard-troops-to-u-s-mexico-bord https://www.npr.org/2018/04/05/599895184/why-president-trump...
  • mike_d 6y ago
    > If Trump controls the National Guard there is a definite public interest But he doesn't. Also it is illegal for the federal government to use the military as a police force: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act
• 2019-nCoV 6y ago
  How is that glorifying violence?
  • rootlocus 6y ago
    > when the looting starts, the shooting starts. What part of this isn't?
    • 2019-nCoV 6y ago
      It doesn't unequivocally say that at all. It can reasonably be interpreted as: "once people are willing to break the law and start looting, it's not long before there are also people shooting" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
      • s5300 6y ago
        Who are you to try to infer alternative ways a direct statement from the POTUS should be parsed. Surely, you're trolling. HN isn't the place for that.
        • kecupochren 6y ago
          IMHO even HN is being astroturfed already...
          • jacquesm 6y ago
            In the general case: yes, absolutely. But in the specific, to make that claim for an individual account requires a high burden of proof. Some people are just stupid or trolls, not necessarily part of an astroturfing operation.
      • hoten 6y ago
        > It can reasonably be interpreted as: "once people are willing to break the law and start looting, it's not long before there are also people shooting" That's definitely not it. Walter Headley, Chief of Miami Police during the 1968 Republican National Convention. On the eve of the convention, he gave a press conference where he said this exact phrase. It wasn't an observation that crime begets more crime. It was a threat. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/08/07/how-three-violent-days-gripped-a-black-miami-neighborhood-as-nixon-was-nominated-in-1968/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/08/07...
• s5300 6y ago
  I actually reported it, and will act as if I actually played a role in this /s Very much looking forward to seeing how this plays out this evening. If I could recommend a title edit though, "Donald Trump" --> "POTUS"
• midasz 6y ago
  Wow. This man needs a lesson on how to deescalate a situation properly. Will this heavy handed approach really make people less angry? I doubt it..
  • 101404 6y ago
    The National Guard would go to stop violence, wouldn't it? Pretty interesting how people even here try to invert the situation for political reasons.
    • profunctor 6y ago
      Wouldn't they cause violence?
    • midasz 6y ago
      You tell me, he quite literally says the military is with him and ready to shoot when people start looting. Please tell me how I am inverting the situation? Or should I use your translation book to make sense of his tweets?
      • liaukovv 6y ago
        If those "people" started looting my property i would have very much liked for someone to shoot them
        • midasz 6y ago
          Ah so now they are "people"? The people who loot should be arrested and tried. Once you start using force many innocent people will be caught in the crosshairs, this will only further escalate the situation.
          • luckylion 6y ago
            > Once you start using force many innocent people will be caught in the crosshairs, this will only further escalate the situation. I don't have a dog in your fight, but you are aware that "arresting them" is literally done by force, right? And from what I hear, whether you send in the National Guard or a militarized police force is primarily a political difference, not so much a question of escalation.
• adrianN 6y ago
  I'm a bit surprised that this fight with the POTUS doesn't have a stronger influence on Twitter's stock value.
  • viraptor 6y ago
    He's not moving anywhere and any Twitter controversy gets more people to tweet about that controversy... Until he forces a significant part of his followers to leave, it's not a bad situation for Twitter to be in.
    • jacquesm 6y ago
      > Until he forces a significant part of his followers to leave, it's not a bad situation for Twitter to be in. That would be even better for Twitter.
      • all2 6y ago
        Or worse, in terms of discourse. I suppose twitter is awful for something as complex as political debate, but removing an entire half of a political spectrum would only serve to further divide our country, something which the real demagogues of the world would love to capitalize on.
        • jacquesm 6y ago
          Trump is not half of the political spectrum, he's organized a hostile take-over of a political party that was vulnerable to such take-overs.
          • all2 6y ago
            There's a reason he got elected, and it isn't because of some minority group in the US.
            • celticninja 6y ago
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• shiado 6y ago
  The service that hosts the accounts of all branches of the US military, all major weapons contractors, all three letter agencies, and many foreign militaries, governments, and world leaders guilty of all manner of war crimes, and this is where they draw the line for violence. Really interesting.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • doublesCs 6y ago
    The president is the most visible face of the government. Of all the ones you mentioned, it's the only one people actually vote for. What he says and does has the most impact. So I don't find it "interesting", I find it entirely reasonable.
    • jacquesm 6y ago
      People in the United States do not vote for a president. They vote for an elector who in turn will vote for the president. This is an important and often left out detail in how the American political system works, in theory it could have protected us from the current dumpster fire.
      • kortilla 6y ago
        It’s not actually that important. In many states it’s illegal for the elector to vote for something other than the popular vote and in the others it’s unheard of to go a different way and it would be made pretty quickly illegal if it happened.
        • noobermin 6y ago
          There was hubbub to do this when Trump was going to be elected and they prevented it.
        • anigbrowl 6y ago
          There's a case before the Supreme Court about this right now, and I can't really guess what the outcome will be.
• hacker_9 6y ago
  It's interesting Twitter finally started taking a stand in Trump's last year as president, I wonder if it's because they hope he'll get ousted and they won't have to deal with the backlash from him for too long. Or it's just a marketing ploy, perhaps customer count was falling.
  • noobermin 6y ago
    I'm not trying to valorize Jack, but why is it so hard to believe they just finally feel some level of responsibility? While you should always keep an eye out for more banal motivations, at some point one can only tolerate so much.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • chroma 6y ago
      I agree that Jack is well-intentioned, but I think he's making a huge mistake by choosing a half measure. Twitter's current policy allows Trump to claim he's being silenced while simultaneously allowing him to get his message out to his Twitter followers. It's the worst of both worlds. Twitter should either let him tweet whatever he wants or ban him.
      • noobermin 6y ago
        I said this above, I agree. Half measures will just upset everyone.
      • Traster 6y ago
        I think what you're seeing is Twitter building a track record that will allow them to effectively ban him. Take a look at Reddit, they've been following the exact same track for /r/the_donald. They're not interested in trying to make sure Trump stays on twitter, they're just interested in creating the trail of evidence that when they do kick him off they can talk about how incredibly tolerant they were.
• paganel 6y ago
  I said it yesterday and got downvotes, Twitter’s CEO decided to pick sides in the political battle so they should expect what’s coming to them.
  • s5300 6y ago
    I don't understand. He broke their TOS. They applied a punishment in line with their TOS. Do heads of state somewhere not-stated to the public have some sort of social media diplomatic immunity?
    • tracer4201 6y ago
      He attacks people on Twitter and pretends he can literally do what he wants without consequences — whether from the government and rule of law or in this case, a private company. You’re getting downvoted for a fair call out. There’s a deeper rot in this country where a select group believes freedom and fairness is something they can own and define, screw reality or objective fact. Anything else is biased and a conspiracy paid for by Soros, Obama, Hillary, Muslims, Hispanics, and the “swamp”.
  • rootlocus 6y ago
    Fact checking doesn't imply picking sides. Not fact checking does.
    • 2019-nCoV 6y ago
      And they're not fact checking Biden.
      • pm90 6y ago
        Biden doesn’t make multiple false claims everyday. Also Biden’s not the President (yet).
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    • 6y ago
• knowaveragejoe 6y ago
  Good, and frankly they should have been doing this sort of thing sooner.
  • osobo 6y ago
    I'm guessing they had been holding back until the campaigning season started. Now they get maximum impact.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • klyrs 6y ago
      His feed has been getting worse recently, and the publicity of his misbehavior has been escalating. Maybe he's acting out more because it's an election year. Bit of a chicken/egg issue that I wouldn't want to get stuck defending either side. But the fact of the matter is that the Citizens United ruling grants private corporations the right to free speech. He can continue to use Twitter, but they've literally got the right to campaign against him, editorialize, shadowban, or straight up ban him. He could choose to follow the site's rules, or run off to Gab. But he's doing it for attention and his tantrums and Twitter's non-enforcement actions are getting him a lot of that.
      • tathougies 6y ago
        Citizens united foes not grant private corporations anything. Their freedom to say what they like was determined to already have existed. Citizens united just stops lower courts from enforcing any law that violates this freedom. The government does not grant rights
    • tathougies 6y ago
      End corporate involvement in politics! Oh wait... Its okay if they attack republicans. /s
  • aeternum 6y ago
    Would you feel the same if Twitter were purchased by Rupert Murdoch and Twitter hid tweets that Fox considered not true? Remember that it's only a matter of time until ownership changes or another larger platform gains traction, perhaps even one owned by a foreign government with significantly different ideas of what is "true", IE TikTok.
• enriquto 6y ago
  I couldn't care less for the politics of the USA, but it is mildly amusing that twitter are trolling one of their most prominent users.
  • cm2187 6y ago
    ...and a particularly thinly skinned user.
    • enriquto 6y ago
      ... it is just as if they were intentionally trying to stir controversy, so that more and more people join the trollfest
      • totalZero 6y ago
        I don't see what's so controversial about applying their rules to one of their users.
      • anigbrowl 6y ago
        There's nothing preventing Trump for saying 'I made a hasty remark in a moment of anger, and will maintain a more thoughtful and respectful tone in the future.' It's inarguable that Twitter has been very, very accommodating of him and tried the hands-off approach for a long time while explaining their reasons for doing so to their other users.
  • loopz 6y ago
    Moderating a prominent troll and raising the standards to the level of every other user, is not really politics.
    • apexalpha 6y ago
      Oh, but it is. It is when the prominent troll is also POTUS. You and Twitter may want it to not be politics... But unfortunately both doing nothing and doing something are political moves by Twitter HQ, I'm afraid.
• fsflover 6y ago
  Time for Trump to use Mastodon.
  • perceptronas 6y ago
    Twitter was 'kind of' dying before Trump. Now its a pretty nice place with people to follow (Some sort of network effect?). But its too far from being open, requires phone number, lacks 'RSS' and etc. I wish he moved to Mastodon. Decentralized, open source. It only needs users
  • 101404 6y ago
    That would be really funny. Imagine all the devs and supporters of Mastodon trying hard to come up with a pretext why it is okay to block him from the network via technical changes.
    • AgentME 6y ago
      It's pretty established that individual Mastodon nodes are able to impose the rules they want and network with whichever Mastodon nodes they want. And many popular Mastodon nodes have stricter rules than Twitter, so it would hardly be surprising if they shunned someone who broke rules on Twitter.
      • lordCarbonFiber 6y ago
        110% I wouldn't federate with any node that allows that sort of posting (from Trump or anyone else). I run a a mastodon node precisely because I don't want to deal with the racism, homophobia, and transphobia so common on twitter.
  • user982 6y ago
    He'd love Gab.
  • andrethegiant 6y ago
    With how strange things have been lately, I wouldn't be surprised if he jumps on TikTok.
• hyko 6y ago
  "For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king"
• pumpTheNipples 6y ago
  Send all of the middle east into meltdown, as militants foment biblical anarchy, engage in AK-47 raids, snipe tanks with RPG attacks and indirect fire, and oh right, the beheadings, but woah, woah, woah. Trumpy say pee pee and poo poo, and that's a no no.
• millstone 6y ago
  Twitter's problem is that Trump wants to pick a fight, and there's no good way to avoid it. Trump's base is not on Twitter. Fact checking tweets provides more grist for the outrage mill, and the media which his base consumes amplifies the conflict and not the substance. So the tweets will get worse and worse. It's impossible to give Twitter good advice, it's a horrible position to be in.
  • noobermin 6y ago
    They should honestly just cross the rubicon and suspend his account. Playing both sides like they have will only prolong the conflict. Trump and the outrage mill alike will still find things to interpret as fighting until Twitter just pulls the switch.
  • totalZero 6y ago
    Trump chose Twitter as his platform; they never chose him. His tweets have been central to his political presence and his ability to immediately alter the country's (and world's) discourse about current events. It would be humiliating for him to lose that platform, because he embraced it voluntarily.
• Animats 6y ago
  Twitter policy: "We start from a position of assuming that people do not intend to violate our Rules. Unless a violation is so egregious that we must immediately suspend an account, we first try to educate people about our Rules and give them a chance to correct their behavior. We show the violator the offending Tweet(s), explain which Rule was broken, and require them to remove the content before they can Tweet again. If someone repeatedly violates our Rules then our enforcement actions become stronger. This includes requiring violators to remove the Tweet(s) and taking additional actions like verifying account ownership and/or temporarily limiting their ability to Tweet for a set period of time. If someone continues to violate Rules beyond that point then their account may be permanently suspended." Somewhere a counter was just incremented. It's going to be amusing if Twitter management simply lets the automated system do its thing. At some point, after warnings, the standard 48-hour suspension will trigger. Twitter management can simply simply say "it is our policy not to comment on enforcement actions". They've suspended the accounts of prominent people many times before.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_suspensions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_suspensions
  • _ZeD_ 6y ago
    following the wikipedia article I found https://www.avclub.com/twitter-releases-statement-confirming-itll-never-ban-do-1818766712 https://www.avclub.com/twitter-releases-statement-confirming... "Twitter releases statement confirming it'll never ban Donald Trump"
    • javajosh 6y ago
      Maybe. But there's probably a business model out there this is simply a Twitter clone that waits for the Trump account to move there, and bang, instant success.
      • Tenoke 6y ago
        There is and they (Gab) get an okay number of likes on every one of his posts promoting it. [0] Also Facebook is now well positioned to be his next platform if he moves off twitter. 0. https://twitter.com/getongab/status/1266347307391488002 https://twitter.com/getongab/status/1266347307391488002
• 83hajfjeijg 6y ago
  Oh just great. The american left should stop pushing people away by acting like spoiled babies. The idea that twitter's actions are going to lead to anything good is terribly misguided. The idea that acting out your collective trump derangement syndrome is helping is even more misguided.
• senectus1 6y ago
  haha, good. but I dont envy Twitter management. they have stepped onto a very slippery slope. and one they cant make a "winning" decision about. however this works out, Twitter will lose. As much as I hate FB and dont use it, they have made the "safer" decision.
  • totalZero 6y ago
    Part of the reason people hate FB and don't use it, is that their leadership is afraid to make risky decisions for the benefit of their users and the quality of their platform.
    • ddxxdd 6y ago
      It seems like Facebook is beating Twitter in terms of frequency and duration of use: https://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-network-landscape-chartoftheday/ https://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-... (2017).
  • celticninja 6y ago
    'safer' in this case means protection of their profits rather than protection of people. well done FB /s
• tracer4201 6y ago
  100K people dead and this guys priorities are Twitter and coming up with ways to throw more fuel on a dumpster fire of race relations and police brutality. Bravo.
  • bilbo0s 6y ago
    It's the US. Scapegoating blacks is how you win elections. I'm not saying it's right, I'm saying that it gets lots and lots of people to vote for you. So yes, to the extent that winning elections is important to politicians, this sort of thing is made a priority.
  • totalZero 6y ago
    It totally fits his history of drawing the public's attention away from the most unflattering things that he has done.
• 082349872349872 6y ago
  One can also check easily-discoverable recent US military policy https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23347453 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23347453 to discover that those who think these things through don't condone "looting ⊃ shooting". Bonaparte was a fan of the "whiff of grape" https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurrection_royaliste_du_13_vendémiaire_an_IV#/media/Fichier:Bonaparte_13_vendémiaire_Saint_Roch.jpg https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurrection_royaliste_du_13_v... but we all know how that ended.
  • meheleventyone 6y ago
    Isn't it a long standing thing that the US Military use of force rules in warzones are generally more restrictive than the policies for use on their fellow citizens by police back home?
    • oneplane 6y ago
      Doesn't that mostly have to do with the amount of training, responsibility, leadership etc. that comes with military hierarchy? It can still get pretty bad (coverup and/or violence wise), but it seems that at least they have some sense of the relationship between violent actions and their consequences.
      • trhway 6y ago
        >sense of the relationship between violent actions and their consequences exactly. Whatever you use in warzone you're risking that the same can be used against you, thus all the conventions on warzone weapons usage and prisoner treatment. Thus all the training, so that your soldiers wouldn't cross [too frequently] the redline to trigger the response. I remember reading for example that in WWI new young soldiers, i think in Russia, were sometimes issued old style non-flat 3-edged rifle attached combat knives. Whether the knife is flat or 3-edged wouldn't make any difference during the actual stabbing and the immediate time after that. Where it makes all the difference is outside of the immediate combat situation - those non-flat knives would make for unnecessary horrible very hard to heal wounds, and thus if you were found with such a knife on a battlefield you'd be killed right there instead of taken POW. So the older soldiers would make sure that the newbies would promptly lose the knives. The situation is similar to hollow-point bullets - they create those horrible wounds without any tactical benefit on actual battlefield.
• AgentME 6y ago
  One angle I don't see discussed: I wonder if Trump commits to more risky/bombastic/divisive plans as president because he feels confident that he can directly frame them and control the narrative by using his audience on Twitter, and he feels emboldened by how immediately Twitter is able to deliver the reactions. If there's a chance this is true, I can especially understand Twitter wanting to have no part in this. It would be fucked up to force anyone like Twitter to be the ones working to support this if they didn't want to be the ones doing it and associated with it.
  • dannyw 6y ago
    Twitter should have suspended the account of a repeated rule breaker a long time ago. If I threatened to shoot the president, I would be in jail already, not to mention my twitter account would be suspended.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • areyousure 6y ago
      https://twitter.com/search?q=%22shoot%20trump%22&src=typed_query&f=live https://twitter.com/search?q=%22shoot%20trump%22&src=typed_q... https://twitter.com/swoIIens/status/1266247882652278785 https://twitter.com/swoIIens/status/1266247882652278785 https://twitter.com/uwork4me247/status/1265065191311638529 https://twitter.com/uwork4me247/status/1265065191311638529 https://twitter.com/SweeetTeeeaaa/status/1263924178048241665 https://twitter.com/SweeetTeeeaaa/status/1263924178048241665 https://youtu.be/E4i3bAtEuJE?t=184 https://youtu.be/E4i3bAtEuJE?t=184
      • jeromegv 6y ago
        This is a wrong way to prove your point because we don't know how many tweets and accounts were actually taking down for threatening violence.
      • ceejayoz 6y ago
        Hit the "report tweet" button, just like people have been doing to Trump's tweets.
• bilbo0s 6y ago
  In fairness, Trump's tweets are not about actually doing anything, they are more about getting votes. So arguing the feasibility of suggestions outlined in a Trump tweet kind of misses the point.
  • Traster 6y ago
    Really? Because literally this week Trump tweeted something and then followed it up with an executive order.
    • umvi 6y ago
      He also promised to throw Hillary in prison for the emails. Still waiting on that one.
      • dathinab 6y ago
        I think he would have done so if he could. In the end the US president has a lot more power then president's in other democratic counties but still he's constrained by the law.
        • phlakaton 6y ago
          What law do you imagine constrains him from doing so?
          • sangnoir 6y ago
            On the contrary, the way the US constitution works is the government has no power at all, except granted by the constitution or laws passed by congress that are constitutional. The question is - which law empowers him to do so?
            • ModernMech 6y ago
              You are both mistaken. Laws are written by people, and the constitution is a piece of paper. The legislative body that passed these laws just heard arguments from the House that the President attempted to extort a bribe from a foreign allied government using taxpayer dollars, and on the other side they heard the President argue that not only is he within his rights to refuse handing over any and all evidence of that crime, it's not even a crime because if he believes it will benefit his election, and he believes his election will help the American people, ispo facto he cannot be removed from office. The Senate agreed with the President and decided not to remove him for this conduct. Not only that, he cannot be indicted for said conduct because the Justice Department has a policy stating they cannot indict the President. For instance in the Mueller investigation they documented no fewer than 10 instances of obstruction of justice by the President, a federal crime. The lead investigator in that case also testified under oath that the President was not truthful in his answers to investigator questions. This has emboldened the President to argue in court that not only is he immune from indictment, he's immune from any and all investigation. So the question is not which laws constrain the President, nor is it which laws empower the President. At this point after all that, the question is: "Who is going to do this for the President, and who is going to stop him?"
• fermienrico 6y ago
  Side topic: Should government control looting when it comes to violent protests?
  • iso1631 6y ago
    Isn't the US a federated country? Surely it's up to the local police to ask for help from other police if they wish to, and then perhaps ask for help from the national guard, not the other way round? And isn't it state governors who control the national guard, not the Federal president? I assume the Waco types will be out there opposing "The Feds" trampling over state rights?
    • SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      The US has a federal system, but people are guaranteed basic rights within it. If the local government can’t or won’t protect those rights (the police abandoned one of their five precincts to the looters!), the feds have the right and duty to step in.
      • evanb 6y ago
        Posse Commitatus prevents the military from performing law-enforcement duties. The _governor_ can activate the national guard for cases like this.
  • spacephysics 6y ago
    With innocent people being harmed, and at least one killed, I think they should. Letting this get out of control is not the best option, as tensions are already high from covid, and this could be a feedback loop to more unneeded violence, with unintended victims caught in the cross hairs. With a gas line possibly being cut, and ~170 business burned down, this is spiraling out of control [0] I mention the gas line (though I don’t know if this a fair comparison) for the potential of chained explosions like the one in Merrimack Valley [1] Regardless, I think many are using the protests as an excuse to loot, and let off steam from the tensions of lockdown, in addition to its obvious main reason. [0] https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2020/05/29/protesters-take-minneapolis-police-3rd-precinct-building-during-3rd-night-of-george-floyd-protests/ https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2020/05/29/protesters-take-mi... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrimack_Valley_gas_explosions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrimack_Valley_gas_explosi...
• pnako 6y ago
  Shooting looters?! Can't he drone strike middle eastern people or start another war, like decent American politicians do?
  • ravenstine 6y ago
    The former hits too close to home for people, literally.
• mimikatz 6y ago
  I feel really disconnected from what is the online mainstream thought. Trump is a huge embarrassment and this tweet should never come from our president. Twitter is doing some real selective enforcement that doesn't seem even handed or even logical. The Tweet in question vaguely qualifies, and there is much worse stuff being posted to Twitter that more clearly and more demonstratively glorifies violence. Search Twitter for "burn it down" (just a example phrase, but you could pick "shoot the cops" or any number of things) https://twitter.com/search?q=%22burn%20it%20down%22&src=typed_query&f=live https://twitter.com/search?q=%22burn%20it%20down%22&src=type... and you get https://twitter.com/Pork_Soda_187/status/1266287249261424641 https://twitter.com/Pork_Soda_187/status/1266287249261424641 https://twitter.com/katie80980282/status/1266287106147508231 https://twitter.com/katie80980282/status/1266287106147508231 https://twitter.com/hengebeat/status/1266286823480782852 https://twitter.com/hengebeat/status/1266286823480782852 and these are all in the last 5 minutes. Selective enforcement doesn't put Twitter in a good light and doesn't seem like something that is in the best interest of their company. Also it is a bad look that their head of site integrity was saying vile stuff about the other half of America. I really dislike Trump and will definitely vote against him. I don't get the overwhelming support for actions like this from Twitter.
  • loopz 6y ago
    It's often troubling, but moderation has always been selective.
    • makomk 6y ago
      This particular selective moderation is functionally equivalent to Twitter giving their backing to an actual, real-world riot and associated calls to murder cops whilst hiding behind Section 230 in order to avoid any liability. That seems... inadvisable, though obviously popular with the political faction most of their employees come from.
      • thosakwe 6y ago
        It's not equivalent to that at all. They deleted his Tweet because it explicitly called for gun violence against protestors. That's the ostensible reasoning. Can you see why it might be problematic for the president of the nation to do that?
• throwaway_1512 6y ago
  Please keep Twitter employees in your prayers, it’s really idiotic of Jack Dorsey to put all the employees at risk. I used to work at Uber in 1455 on Market St, right beside Twitter and every now and then we had to avoid going to office or come at odd times given the protests.
• tomp 6y ago
  This is amazing news, and I hope Twitter adopts this policy for all rules violations. Much better than deleting tweet or banning accounts, this lets people decide what they want to see. (Except for obvious spammers etc. which should probably be banned.) Even better would be if there were user-configurable "lists", whereby you could decide upfront what you want / don't want to see (like many sites do right now with NSFW content) - the default filter would be very "protective" (no porn, no violence, no gore, no hate speech) but users could turn off any or all of these "filters". The next step is the addition of user-curated "lists" / "filters" (e.g. "no democrats", "no republicans", "no vegans", "no dog lovers", ...).
  • anater 6y ago
    I believe twitter already does this through shared block lists
  • floatingatoll 6y ago
    They made clear when they introduced this that the “view tweet anyways” approach applies only when the public interest for an account of a public official outweighs the significant harm they consider to be done by allowing what you describe for all users in general. I don’t expect they intend to change their mind on that.
    • gowld 6y ago
      Most websites hide NSFW content behind a click. That's good manners. Why shouldn't Twitter?
      • floatingatoll 6y ago
        Twitter already does hide NSFW ("objectionable") content behind a click, removing it only when it violates the platform rules of conduct. They evaluated and rejected hiding "violates Twitter policies" content except in the rare cases where they deem it necessary for the public interest to retain that violating content behind a click barrier. https://help.twitter.com/en/safety-and-security/offensive-tweets-and-content https://help.twitter.com/en/safety-and-security/offensive-tw... has more details about the current policy, and you can read their blog posts from the past couple years about these policies to gain more context and background.
• throwawaysea 6y ago
  So is twitter going to hide tweets that have incited and glorified the riots in the first place? I haven’t seen consequences for the antifa and DSA accounts that are responsible for these riots. It certainly seems like Twitter has a double standard.
  • deleted 6y ago
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• deleted 6y ago
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• mc32 6y ago
  So many blockbuster movies... no more ads for those. Oh, I see it’s an official. Let’s see what violence means. Is encouraging people to oppose dictators encouraging violence?
• smitty1e 6y ago
  Should we just step back and laugh? What is funnier than people on both sides of an argument taking themselves way too seriously, and engaging in a bunch of troll-on-troll action?
  • x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
    So people not liking the head of the country talking about having people shot by the military is "taking themselves way too seriously"? Only one side is bringing death and lethal action into the discussion, not sure why you mentioned "both sides".
    • mantas 6y ago
      What should police do to stop looting? Loot looters' homes to stay at equal level of violence?
      • happytoexplain 6y ago
        The police should not, if possible, kill people to stop them from looting, even if they are destroying property. This is fundamental to civilization.
        • mantas 6y ago
          But it's not fundamental to keep up public order? What if my house is looted? If looter doesn't leave when asked nicely, should I just wait for him to take what he wants?
          • happytoexplain 6y ago
            It is also fundamental to keep up public order. That's not even close to being mutually exclusive to my statement. Nor is the obvious answer to your second question. You're engaging in hostile, bad-faith argument.
            • 6y ago
• illuminated 6y ago
  I know it is "never too late" for things like this to happen, but it's definitely late. One of the main reasons for bad things to happen is the lack of education (which, in turn, leads to resist to change) and, therefore makes people prone to believe to unbelievable things. Social platforms like Twitter should have long had things like "fact checking" ANY statements and should have restricting not only violence glorifying posts, but also the ones with racial or sexual discrimination and all the others . It is late, but I like seeing it happen at least for the person with the most "glorifying" record in dividing a society.
  • mc32 6y ago
    That would make sense if every message were placed on hold before publishing while it got reviewed. But this is a real-time system. And even then, there are often multiple sides to events.
    • wpietri 6y ago
      Is it a hard problem? Sure. Can they get everything? No. But that doesn't mean that they can't quickly act to minimize the total impact. As with many things, 80% of the value can be gained with 20% of the work.
      • SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        The hard question is whether 80% of the value is available. If you restrict 80% of the worst offenders, but the selection of the 80% is biased in some obvious way, that may be worse than doing nothing at all.
        • illuminated 6y ago
          Well, start should happen somewhere, no matter what those 80% consist of, then improve
    • illuminated 6y ago
      I'm not saying it's easy, but effort should be made as it is important. If you see the real-time voice recognition on the new Pixel phone, the technology for this type of action might not be that far away.
• darkerside 6y ago
  As President, or any public figure, you are responsible not only for the intention of your words, but also every feasible interpretation of your words, as well as the impacts of your words, regardless of intention. I say this not to imply that Trump didn't know that this statement could be taken in multiple ways, but to remind people that even if it can it doesn't matter. It's tragic this has happened, and also tragic to have a leader who reacts to the situation in this way, and that a large swath of the country applauds him for it. Vague and menacing threats are much more thuggish behavior than emotional reaction to the killing of an unarmed civilian. As for what Twitter is doing, I'm curious whether they follow this path to it's logical conclusion, which is, eventually Trump being banned from Twitter. He's a huge driver of traffic for them, but perhaps they're thinking about life after Trump at this point, months away from the election.
  • SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    Vague and menacing threats are admittedly thuggish behavior, but I think it's hard to argue that it's more thuggish than burning down a police station.
    • TeaDrunk 6y ago
      I believe there’s a suitable MLK speech in which it explains property violence in response to human violence is an attempt to push the majority to action using loss of property when it is clear loss of life means nothing. Given that it’s clear literal loss of life meant very little to people but property damage gets multiple multiple news coverage and POTUS coverage etc etc. it’s hard to consider burning down a police station when the police killed someone on camera to be completely improper. All attempts to appeal peacefully to the people who are supposed to deliver justice have failed, and in fact, those who are supposed to deliver justice have done the unjust thing...
      • SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        If the protesters decide it's your neighborhood that needs to be burned down next, would you be okay with that?
• mariodiana 6y ago
  Calling for the quelling of an insurrection is not "glorifying violence," it is exactly what a government is supposed to do.
  • ndespres 6y ago
    By calling for the military to shoot protesting citizens? Come on.
    • skocznymroczny 6y ago
      How is looting stores and destroying public property a proper way to protest?
      • krapp 6y ago
        Ever heard of the Boston Tea Party?
        • SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
          The Boston Tea Party was a deliberate provocation. If the protesters here are trying to incite a violent revolution, I suppose that's their right in some sense, but all of us who don't want a revolution have a right to be put out by it.
          • krapp 6y ago
            Sure, but in a country where the bar for legitimate protest is set by Constitutional law at "mass armed violence," everything else seems like fair game.
          • jonhohle 6y ago
            Replying to krapp: violent armed protest protected by the constitution is explicitly targeted at the government in response to loss of freedom. That may be justification for attacking a police station, but not local businesses.
• ikeyany 6y ago
  People are wondering "How far does this go? How can Twitter say this is not cool, but allow something like violent movies or games? Where's the line?" The leader of the United States encouraging law enforcement and the military to shoot American citizens for looting, that's the line.
  • dijit 6y ago
    We have laws in the UK that curtail speech like that, "Inciting violence" is a crime. Which I agree with to some extent, you're not innocent of a crime because you convinced a person to harm another, just because you were too cowardly to get your hands dirty yourself. But the US is rather famously not British, so I'm not sure if it's a relevant thing to add to the discussion.
    • chooseaname 6y ago
      People in the US will say the First allows him say such things. They'd be wrong.
    • 082349872349872 6y ago
      I'm also on the other* side of the Atlantic from this circus, but a little googling over lunch led me to the "Brandenburg Test" for when "Inciting violence" is no longer protected by the 1A. (NB: 1A is an entirely different subject than Twitter's TOS, which I addressed in the original thread) Briefly: speech which both incites imminent lawless action and is likely to produce such action fails to be protected as US "free speech". In this case, my IANAL analysis would be that the tweet had imminent application, but would be unlikely to produce action, for reasons given in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23347453 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23347453 (tl;dr lethal force is the last resort of a well-regulated militia when restoring public order) * and am therefore fond of "On the fact..." https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd06xx/EWD611.PDF https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd06xx/EWD611.PDF
    • mjburgess 6y ago
      There's plenty of "speech" criminalized in the US: many crimes are just matters of conspiring to X, or fradulently X... which may have been conducted entirely in speech. The relevant kind of speech for "free expression" is that which seeks to express an idea/opinion/belief of the speaker. That isn't criminalised in the UK as far as I'm aware, and would fall under the EHCR protections in any case which are in UK law as the human rights act.
• umvi 6y ago
  At this point I feel like Twitter is _trying_ to push Trump's buttons. 4 years of not censoring Trump's tweets and now all of a sudden they have an ethical obligation? Which straw broke the camel's back?
  • Covzire 6y ago
    I really don't understand what part of Trump's tweet is "glorifying" violence, can anyone help me out on the rationale?
    • mdszy 6y ago
      "when the looting starts, the shooting starts." Just read that a few times until you get it through your head.
      • umvi 6y ago
        rubber bullets? Everything need not be interpreted with such lethal intent.
        • mdszy 6y ago
          Are you joking? You really think that given Trump and his base that's how he means for it to be interprted?
          • umvi 6y ago
            > given Trump and his base Considering a huge chunk of Trump's base is the religious right, I don't think Trump's base is as bloodthirsty as you think it is.
            • mdszy 6y ago
              You've clearly never met anyone who claims to be religious and yet is incredibly ready to shoot a non-white person the moment they look at them funny.
• zenexer 6y ago
  Twitter must be a victim of the toilet paper shortage because they just wiped their ass with Trump’s executive order.[0] Jokes and politics aside, is this a smart business move on Twitter's part? I'm curious how they envision this playing out. I'm really not sure what I expect to happen; Trump may be a fool, but he's stubborn and persistent. There are also politicians on both sides of the fence who are at odds with social media right now--and often Silicon Valley in general. (See: encryption) I have no doubt Twitter put a lot of thought into this. Does anyone have insight into what Twitter expects to happen? Also, what would they expect to happen if they opted not to label/hide/whatever some of Trump's tweets? [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23342161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23342161
• satysin 6y ago
  This is very interesting to watch unfold in real-time. I find it fascinating the President of the United States is ranting about 1st Amendment violations with regards to a private business. Pretty sure there is nothing in the 1st Amendment that says he is guaranteed the right to tweet. I hope Twitter takes this a step further the next time he violates their ToS and gives his account a 48 hour suspension. I understand why Trump is picking this fight but I can't help but feel Twitter hold the power. Sure Trump has been a big driving factor in Twitter really hitting mainstream but I would be surprised if he was still adding huge value to the platform. If anything banning Trump would be the biggest thing to ever happen to Twitter as he wouldn't let it go. However I can't see a way for Trump to win such a fight. It could go all the way to the SCOTUS but if they sided against Twitter it would affect literally every big social media platform in the US which I can't see happening. Zooming all the way out I don't see why Twitter really care about such a fight as there is no way Google and Facebook (to name just two) would let things go against Twitter as it would be devastating to them as well.
  • KKPMW 6y ago
    With free speech it gets interesting how you interpret it. One interpretation, which I think Trump is using, is that "laws come last". There is a principle that says free speech should be protected and laws only come to cover the cases where the principle can be infringed. So twitter, in this interpretation, would be correct according to current law, but would stand on the wrong side with regards to a higher value of upholding the principle. However there is another interpretation which says that ability to remove someone from your private business is also an expression of free speech. And that private companies as well as individuals are free to choose who they do business with. But there is one nuance here - this is better served under another principle which is "freedom of association". Freedom of association states that you can refuse to deal with anyone you don't like. However in USA this principle recently lost its value after certain group of Christians were not allowed to refuse baking a cake for a gay couple. So it seems there are certain protections. But then there is a third thing which is that in some countries (and I am not sure here about USA) the president has the right to send a message using any media channel he sees fit, and the media channel cannot refuse. Informing and communicating with the public is one of president's duties and refusing to send his message infringes upon it. If USA has such a law and if Twitter could be interpreted as a media platform then it could be against the law for Twitter to do what it is currently doing. Unlikely thou, as twitter has a team of lawers and likely they were consulted beforehand. > Zooming all the way out I don't see why Twitter really care about such a fight Companies are ran by people and those people take political sides. Twitter is on the democratic party side, and the election season is coming. I predict we will se a bigger coordinated effort spanning Google, Youtube, and Twitter, and some other big corporations as we get closer to USA president election date.
• dmix 6y ago
  Promoting violence should have always been the red line. This is very different than regulating 'facts'.
• tantalor 6y ago
  @dang hey can we unflag this?
  • umvi 6y ago
    I vote we move the discussion to reddit, which is a better suited platform for politics.
    • stillbourne 6y ago
      I'm sorry, but technology does not exist in a vacuum insulated from the rest of the universe. An implementation of any given application, its code, its infrastructure, and its services may be apolitical, but as a platform that is used for communication it is important that conversations be had about how these platforms are used. Perhaps you can bury your head in the sand and pretend that society is not falling apart at the seams due in large part to the spread of misinformation across any number of internet forums and social media services, but I think the rest of us may have an opinion that is inimical to ignoring the problem.
      • hwbehrens 6y ago
        I don't necessarily agree that this article is not appropriate for HN, but I do agree with the parent that, in general, it is not an appropriate venue for political discussions. That is not to say that political discussions shouldn't be had -- simply that they shouldn't be had everywhere. In particular, different venues are appropriate for different discussions, and in my opinion we don't benefit if all spaces consist of homogenized topics. If I want to discuss and learn about tech, HN is a good venue for that. If I want to learn about cooking, I might go to Youtube or Chowhound. If I want to delve into politics, I might go to NYT or Reddit. However, when I'm searching for a recipe for banana bread, I don't care to discuss politics in the comments of that post, nor do I consider that preference to be burying my head in the sand. Adjustments to the amount of baking soda, or the replacement of bananas with plantains, yes; "orange man bad", no. Not because I don't agree, or because I am ignoring politics, but simply because it's not the place to have that conversation.
• catacombs 6y ago
  Free advice: Never tweet.
• quietthrow 6y ago
  Once again! Bravo Jack and the Twitter team! Thank you taking a stand against bullying.
  • antishatter 6y ago
    Now if only they would crack down on the huge wave of Chinese bullshit they allow.
    • dtf 6y ago
      They added fact-checks to two of Lijian Zhao’s tweets yesterday. Not sure if that counts as a crackdown, but it’s a high level account. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52833063 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52833063
      • koheripbal 6y ago
        Whether you agree with these actions or not - it doesn't bode well for Twitter. Politicians and other organizations will work to offer up an alternative platform where they won't be censored. These are literally the most powerful people in the world.
        • ridewinter 6y ago
          Ahh the beauty of the Internet, where a 16 year old kid can create a platform more powerful than the most powerful people in the world...
        • javagram 6y ago
          All they have to do is get on gab.com if they want a completely free speech platform. Strangely Trump and his ilk haven’t jumped over to Gab yet. Perhaps because they don’t want to be associated with what actually happens to a platform that allows unrestricted free speech.
    • whatever1 6y ago
      Did any of this bs you refer to come from the president of China directly?
• hsnewman 6y ago
  As they should.
• creaghpatr 6y ago
  The White House twitter account has issued a response: https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1266367168603721728?s=20 https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1266367168603721728?s=... This* Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence. However, @Twitter has determined that it will allow terrorists, dictators, and foreign propagandists to abuse its platform. *Referring to an attached picture of a Khamenei tweet about Palestine
  • gowld 6y ago
    That's amazing. Of all the horrific thing people post to Twitter all day long, a vague statement about Palestinian independence is the "best" whataboutist comparison Trump could find to match his own threat to open fire on the country he is sworn to defend.
    • mthoms 6y ago
      I don't think the Khomenni tweet is a valid comparison to Trumps (for other reasons) but lets be honest — This tweet is anything but a "vague statement about Palestinian independence", since it directly references and advocates for Jihad and Martyrdom.
      • onlyamuslimguy 6y ago
        but "jihad" and "martyrdom" are the same things we talk about when we pump up our soldiers to fight in our wars. what's the difference between that and how we talk in the US about what an honor it is to lay one's life down for his country? every country and every army in the world tells it's soldiers that sacrificing their lives for the sake of the war they are fighting is honorable and noble and that their families, friends, and nations are proud of them for doing so. how is that so much different than telling soldiers they will be rewarded in heaven for being martyrs? For those who are religious, if you sacrifice your life for the greater good (for the good side in a war between good and evil), isn't that a good deed? and don't good deeds get you into heaven?
        • 6y ago
• msoad 6y ago
  This might be helpful for the context. Mark Zuckerburg went to Fox News and Trump tweeted about how Facebook will not do the same. Zuckerburg also had Xi Jinping's book on his desk at some point.
• jacknews 6y ago
  I hate to have anything even vaguely in common with Trump, but there is some sense in this. The platforms have been shadow-banning (a particularly egregious policy), censoring, and otherwise shaping the content on their sites for a good while now. At the same time they claim to be merely a 'pipe', conecting content producers, and consumers. They can't have it both ways. This 'executive order' is obviously a spiteful, and frankly, unbelievable-that-it's-legal move by this, man, but there is still a germ of truth to it. For me, tagging content, but still making it generally available, is far less sinister than disappearing it, or only presenting it to profiled users, etc, etc. IMHO.
  • streb-lo 6y ago
    Any modern pipe connecting consumers to producers is going to rely on some sort of matching algorithm to map the two. If they just used some sort of dumb FIFO -- user retention and advertising dollars would disappear. Like it or not, there are political ramifications in that algorithm no matter how hard it tries to be neutral. Even platforms that stay 'hands off' are shaping content and it's almost impossible for them not to while retaining what we've come to expect from a modern platform.
• lowdose 6y ago
  Does Netflix have a documentary maker inside the Whitehouse at the moment?
• gowld 6y ago
  The hardest part here is deciphering what the incoherent tweet is trying to say. We have a President that is consistently harder to comprehend than GPT-2. Let that sink in. Here's some back on the phrase. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/where-does-phrase-when-looting-starts-shooting-starts-come-n1217676 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/where-does-phrase-... The amazing part to me is that Trump knows an authoritarian-violence catchphrase from 50 years ago. "MAGA" indeed.
• andrethegiant 6y ago
  I can't tell who needs who more in this symbiotic relationship.
  • ece 6y ago
    And here I was thinking the same thing about Facebook and Republicans.
• ddorian43 6y ago
  This how Donald Trump won in the first place. People just won't learn. They can continue bubbling themselves by losing the next election too and get shocked.
  • ddorian43 6y ago
    Downvoting me will increase your shock after the next election.
• devtul 6y ago
  Woke: POTUS is threatening violence on protestors Broke: POUTS want to stop the looting
• seesawtron 6y ago
  In 2017 a rogue twitter employee suspended Donal Trump's account on last day at the job. Did the world politics change in that downtime?
  • generj 6y ago
    The account was only suspended for like 17 minutes, and it’s not clear the POTUS even noticed. So no, no impact to world politics.
    • seesawtron 6y ago
      One week of A/B testing would an ideal experiment for social scientists studying impact of world leader's tweets on the world news. Almost a utopia.
• thefounder 6y ago
  This is great! Now we can have a real conversation about free speach, net neutrality and so on...hopefully Trump will get some some abusive dmca notifications as well. That would be gold!
• partiallypro 6y ago
  Twitter is well within the rights to do this, but I have seen tweets from blue check marks essentially calling for violence and Twitter didn't remove them. So, does that mean Twitter actually -supports- those view points now? If Twitter is going to police people, it needs to be across the board. Otherwise it's just a weird censorship that is targeting one person and can easily be seen as political. Everyone is applauding this because they hate Trump, but take a step back and see the bigger picture. This could backfire in serious ways, and it plays to Trump's base's narrative that the mainstream media and tech giants are colluding to silence conservatives (and maybe there could even be some truth to that.) I know the Valley is an echo chamber, so obviously no one is going to ever realize this.
  • youeseh 6y ago
    Instead of being the police, Twitter should do what Rotten Tomatoes does. There are plenty of people - journalists and researchers analyzing the facts behind what celebrities say. They should analyze what the analysts say and display a score.
    • tantalor 6y ago
      [insert black mirror joke reference]
    • AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      Even better, directly link the research on the topic, from both sides. Instead of drawing a conclusion on behalf of everybody, give people what they need to draw their own.
      • 12elephant 6y ago
        That's what already happens. Look at the comments on any prominent person's tweet and you'll see people going back and forth about what's right and what's false. No one needs to do anything here. People can research and find stuff out for themselves, and come to their own conclusions.
• deleted 6y ago
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• alkibiades 6y ago
  censoring the commander in chief is an active act of aggression against the american people. not only should we repeal section 230, we should view twitter as a hostile power. we should study twitters deep ties to the saudis and china. and jack should be investigated. they also should no longer be protected by section 230 and therefore should be prosecuted for the child exploitation they host
  • pbhjpbhj 6y ago
    Don't you have press conferences in your country? You know, where a leader or political figure can express their policy decisions without having to abide by private website ToS.
    • alkibiades 6y ago
      section 230 was a special provision that was passed to protect the fledgling internet 25 years ago. i don’t think it’s crazy to think it needs updating or repeal.
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• joewhale9 6y ago
  trump is going to create an onlyfans account now.
• lykahb 6y ago
  The neutral companies, such as utilities, online hosting or financial providers serve nearly everyone with little objections - they defer to the law rather than any internal policies. The more selective companies such as newspapers and TV channels are expected to restrict who can get published. By representing itself both as an open platform and as a company with progressive values, Twitter has put itself into an awkward in-between spot and is bound to create such controversies.
  • seph-reed 6y ago
    They fucked this up so badly. They could have just banned him and said "It's a free country and they felt like it." Instead they're trying to high-road, and it's.. such a mistake.
    • hypersoar 6y ago
      We'll, they're certainly escalating. I don't think that Trump actually wants to shut Twitter down, nor does he want to get banned there. The banning would rile up his base, but it would do so at the expense of his primary channel of communication. This action puts the ball back in Trump's court and asks him how far he wants to actually go.
      • riffic 6y ago
        let the white house spin up its own activitypub instance, then. shouldn't public communications occur on public infrastructure?
        • closetohome 6y ago
          Well that's the ridiculous part of all this. Anyone with $20 and a half hour to spare can whip up their own blog on their own domain and post anything they want. As far as accessibility goes, that website will be 100% equal to Twitter. These private platforms are only being conflated with public infrastructure because people have such a narrow view of what constitutes "the internet." It's ridiculous for a politician's primary means of communication to be over a private platform to begin with. Could you imagine if Clinton only talked to the press via AOL chatroom? The fact that we're debating it as though Trump is being censored by CSPAN just shows how much the abnormal has become normal.
• GhostVII 6y ago
  Hiding the tweet instead of removing it seems like a good compromise to me, but I think this sets a pretty difficult precedent for Twitter. Once you start hiding tweets like this, you are implying that any high profile tweets you don't hide are not classified as glorifying violence. And every time you hide a tweet for glorifying violence, people who supported that tweet will show examples of other tweets which were not hidden to show that it should not have been hidden/removed. Seems like an impossible standard to uphold given the amount of people glorifying violence on their platform.
  • koheripbal 6y ago
    Only if they applied the rules equally to all politicians, and only if the process were transparent. There's a lot of danger in allowing corporations to control the political conversation globally.
    • ViViDboarder 6y ago
      Too late for that. They have for many years. This is only the most visible form of control. Corporations spend enormous amounts of money every year on exactly this. I believe lobbying politicians to take their side and the shaping of media coverage has had an even larger impact than hiding a tweet behind a click.
• nateburke 6y ago
  This seems like an escalation. How would both sides continuing to escalate play out? Trump would probably get banned at some point, especially if his tweets start to endanger rank-and-file Twitter employees (inspiring death threats, etc.). How likely is he to get injunctive relief if he gets banned? I don't think Trump has thought this conflict through completely.
  • koheripbal 6y ago
    Given that this is an election year, I imagine that he is absolutely going to intentionally try to get himself banned - then spin the whole "liberal-bias-censorship" card. ...and it might work. These sorts of stories play riiiight to the centrist/libertarian/independents - whom he's grooming to not be afraid of showing up in person to the election booth in November.
• deleted 6y ago
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• peacelilly 6y ago
  It's long past time to regulate social media like a phone company, natural monopoly, or common carrier. The DOJ needs to break them up for violating the public trust, then limit their ability to refuse service to law abiding citizens moving into the future. Government has every right to force companies to be neutral platforms through regulation. It's time to revoke/enforce section 230, especially the "good faith" clause. Anyone who says that "Twitter is a private company that can refuse anyone" has never ran an actual company. There are plenty of rules against companies discriminating. That argument is the same argument used by Democrats against the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 which a Republican majority congress passed (82% of republicans voted yes). Remember when this forum was up in arms about NET NEUTRALITY? Remember when the big bad ISP was going to censor you? Remember when all the sites went black because thats what the ISPs would do? Now the sites that went black are all committing the censoring. All the sites that went black track every movement you make online. Who needs DNS when you have outgoing link tracking and like buttons on every page. Social media is about to be regulated. Its about time.
  • chooseaname 6y ago
    > The DOJ needs to break them up for violating the public trust... Twitter, Facebook, et al are entertainment. There's not trust to violate.
    • Nasrudith 6y ago
      Even if they were an informational service having the DOJ "break them up" would be way more illegal than anything they could directly publish.
      • peacelilly 6y ago
        You can have a monopoly and not abuse your power, or you can have your monopoly broken up. The Sherman Antitrust act still exists. Law still exists. There are already multiple anti-trust investigations underway by the states, and the DOJ. There is bipartisan support to break them up. Ask Warren. What is illegal about enforcing the law?
• bartelby 6y ago
  Twitter is definitely allowed to do this, legally, but seems like a pretty short-sited decision. There's no way that poking the bear like this is going to lead to anything except a more highly regulated platform.
  • ceejayoz 6y ago
    > There's no way that poking the bear like this is going to lead to anything except a more highly regulated platform. How? Attempts at regulating Twitter's ability to fact-check on their own privately owned platform would almost certainly fail a First Amendment challenge, and the Democratic House isn't gonna go a long with new laws to crack down on it either.
• lenwood 6y ago
  Trump seems to think Twitter is a public service within his domain, rather than a private company with its own agenda & governance. I'm glad Twitter is responding to him, I respect them for the position they're taking. In addition to his executive order [1], Trump has threatened to delete his Twitter account [2]. [1]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-to-sign-executive-order-targeting-social-media-11590681930 https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-to-sign-executive-order-t... [2]: https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/News/video/twitter-flags-trumps-tweet-protests-glorifying-violence-70947145 https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/News/video/twitter-flags-trumps-t...
  • koheripbal 6y ago
    Can you cite an alternative platform similar to twitter?
    • ViViDboarder 6y ago
      Mastodon is quite similar. Also, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Medium, Blogger, etc. will all let you post content to a group of follower.
      • koheripbal 6y ago
        I don't think any of those are the same at all. That's like banning someone from using a refrigerator and telling him he can use picnic coolers instead. These monopolies have their niche.
        • ViViDboarder 6y ago
          Facebook is far from a “picnic cooler”.
• pfkurtz 6y ago
  Seems like there's a whole lotta fascists on this internet.
  • koheripbal 6y ago
    ...where "fascist" is defined as: "anyone who disagrees with me".
    • deleted 6y ago
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    • deleted 6y ago
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    • albedoa 6y ago
      That this comment is still up five days later, and amidst the current news, is a shocking failure by the mods. What an embarrassment.
    • pfkurtz 6y ago
      Nope. Where it's defined as people enacting or cheering right wing authoritarian destruction of democratic society. Like the supporters of Donald Trump.
      • koheripbal 6y ago
        Feel free to keep putting those goal posts wherever you feel like today.
        • pfkurtz 6y ago
          I have no idea what this is even supposed to mean. But that's what fascism is — right wing authoritarianism built around a leader cult merging racist populists with a corporate elite, directing state violence at marginalized/demonized groups. Which is what Trumpism is.
• koheripbal 6y ago
  It begs the question... who's in charge here? The government or the corporations?
  • jaredmosley 6y ago
    Well, it is a private company's site, so I would assume the corporation. If I walked into a Starbucks and started being rude to patrons, I can easily be removed on a whim. Just because it is a place that encourages social interactions does not mean that they have to allow interactions they do not like. I do not see the difference here. Twitter is used for formal announcements because Trump himself has decided that it is a good place to make them, not because Twitter has placed themselves in that position. Granted, they make like being in that position and it probably benefits them greatly due to the increased ad revenue and engagement, but they can also make the decision that his presence is not worth the vitriol it generates. He can easily choose another avenue (Facebook, Reddit, News media, etc) to make announcements if it is no longer the best choice for him.
    • therealrootuser 6y ago
      I was suddenly struck with an image of Trump angrily posting his updates on Hacker News.
  • ip26 6y ago
    Who's in charge of Twitter? I'm going to go with Twitter.
  • cameronbrown 6y ago
    Neither. The population are, or at least should be.
    • SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
      The population should be in charge of twitter? Doesn't that seem a little funny?
• threatofrain 6y ago
  > Trump is intentionally or inadvertently quoting former Miami Police Chief Walter Headley. In December 1967, months before riots broke out during the (Nixon) Republican National Convention, Headley said “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” at the announcement of a new “get tough” policy for policing black neighborhoods. Headley promised to use shotguns, dogs, and aggressive “stop and frisk” tactics in a bid to reduce crime. “We don’t mind being accused of police brutality,” the New York Times reported him saying at the time. “They haven’t seen anything yet.”
• pmarreck 6y ago
  It did not "hide" the tweet
• illuminated 6y ago
  I wrote this on the duplicate topic here, copying as I believe it matters: I know it is "never too late" for things like this to happen, but it's definitely late. One of the main reasons for bad things to happen is the lack of education (which, in turn, leads to resist to change) and, therefore makes people prone to believe to unbelievable things. Social platforms like Twitter should have long had things like "fact checking" ANY statements and should have restricting not only violence glorifying posts, but also the ones with racial or sexual discrimination and all the others . It is late, but I like seeing it happen at least for the person with the most "glorifying" record in dividing a society.
• olivermarks 6y ago
  As an elected official and part of a giant bureaucracy the US president has a right to make proclamations, and the media has the right to criticize, refute and contradict. Where this gets delicate is with a person who holds enormous power and is literally leading the administration. People want to hear what this leader has to say, and censoring/hiding/second guessing what this person says is arguably undemocratic. Trump is irrelevant here, it could be any elected official or administration leader. Pompeo or the US military could be considered to 'glorify violence' with their statements, does this give Twitter the right to hide their tweets? This is a free speech issue at the heart of democracy, and Twitter keep overstepping their S230 remit.
  • trymas 6y ago
    But twitter is a private business or isn't it? Twitter users must agree to Twitter TOS isn't it? Your freedom of speech is also Twitter's freedom of speech and if you don't like that someone uses their freedom to calls you on your bullshit - then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . POTUS has whitehouse.gov if he thinks that private business does not let him say what he want's to say.
    • olivermarks 6y ago
      Section 230 'hands off' service provision rather than editorializing is the issue here as well as rights to free speech whoever you are. The fact Trump enrages most people is a separate distraction. This is a downward slope to more censorship by large unelected global corporations and their political proclivities and goals.
• disease 6y ago
  For everyone bashing Twitter's actions, including the President, why don't they just leave the platform for Gab or something else?
  • coopsmgoops 6y ago
    I don't quite understand the "if you don't like it leave" theory. Is it really so unreasonable for people to want to influence the way the established platform works rather than switch and be alone on a new platform. Nobody is going to bother coming with you to Gab.
    • AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      For J. Random Twitterer, sure. The President does have whitehouse.gov available, though.
    • deleted 6y ago
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    • KyleJune 6y ago
      You could make a similar argument about selling on Amazon. They have rules that you must obey if you want to sell products on their marketplace. If they were not allowed to moderate the content and curate it, then the amazon marketplace would be less appealing to customers and sellers. Twitter should be able to moderate and curate it's content to protect their brand image. If they don't challenge lies on their platform and remove toxic content, Twitter will become less attractive platform for both individuals and advertisers.
  • fullshark 6y ago
    Clearly rhetorical, but the reason is that's where the audience is. They will tolerate a lot for that reason but there's presumably some limit. I would not be surprised if whenever Trump leaves office, he announces he's leaving twitter for some twitter clone he's a part owner of geared for conservative audiences. He might be big enough and important enough to his supporters for this exodus to actually be meaningful. Don't think he'll do it until he loses an election or his 2nd term is up though.
• rayiner 6y ago
  What kind of utterly ridiculous policy is hiding posts for “glorifying violence?” So if I write a post about the Bangladeshi independence war, saying how great it was that we beat those damn Pakistanis, my post would get hidden?
  • reportingsjr 6y ago
    When you threaten to start shooting people you are glorifying violence. I am guessing you didn't even look at the tweets.
    • rayiner 6y ago
      So if I say it was great that India came in with guns blazing in 1971, killing thousands of Pakistani soldiers to liberate Bangladesh, that is a view that should be censored?
  • jakelazaroff 6y ago
    Why is that ridiculous?
    • rayiner 6y ago
      Because violence is one of the fundamental political and sociological forces in the world, and preventing people from talking about it in the abstract--as distinguished from targeted threats of violence to specific people--is completely off the reservation. As a Bangladeshi, I have a country because people like my uncle went to war and killed a bunch of Pakistanis. I bet Polish people are glad that Americans gunned down millions of Germans in the 1940s. Steven Spielberg's "Munich" was an amazing account of Operation Wrath of God--glorifying the assassination of terrorists that killed 11 members of Israel's 1972 Olympic team. Violence is often a proper subject of glorification. In practice, I strongly suspect the Twitter isn't actually applying the policy as written. Instead, they're applying the policy selectively, based on ideological biases.
• deleted 6y ago
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• monksy 6y ago
  Also something to note: Trump is using the POTUS account to retweet his personal not official titled account (realDonaldTrump). So.. If he gets banned, we have a cause of ban evasion. We might see 2 twitter accounts banned. This is going to be fun and amusing.
• Simulacra 6y ago
  Twitter has become the example of right vs left. I don't think this tweet "glorifies" violence, but my opinion doesn't matter, only Twitter's. That herein is the problem. It would be interesting if Trump left twitter and made the journalists follow him to some other platform.
  • RIMR 6y ago
    It's perfectly okay that you hold the opinion that the tweet didn't glorify violence. Your opinion is objectively wrong, but you're allowed to hold it.
    • Simulacra 6y ago
      Only according to your opinion. Just because you disagree with me does not mean you're right.
      • chrsm 6y ago
        Look into the history of the phrase he used - and you will realize that you are wrong.
        • hu3 6y ago
          History is full of lies told by those who won wars.
          • deleted 6y ago
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• thrown2020 6y ago
  Nuclear Hot Take: Covid-19 is the first social media virus. We all know what the "facts and science" are now and much of it is from misinformation and lies spread on twitter. Twitter needs to be taken down today!
• thrown2020 6y ago
  Don't forget to donate to Recall Gavin 2020 Campaign! https://recallgavin2020.com/ https://recallgavin2020.com/
• gigatexal 6y ago
  Hopefully they’ll just kick him and his acolytes off the platform. I’ve not met people so drunk on hero worship that they forgo facts and reason as I have when speaking with my trump supporting friends and family. And now he’s trying to sway elections by using misinformation? Openly using the pulpit of the highest office to spread patently false rumors? His fear mongering is harmful and has been violating Twitter’s terms for years but hey I guess it was good for business until recently... still good for them.
• Havoc 6y ago
  In other news, in an unfortunate training accident a low yield nuclear device was dropped on twitter HQ
• darepublic 6y ago
  As someone of mixed ethnicity who, if I was there could easily be victimized by a senseless mob to whom I owe nothing and have committed no crime against.. yea I am not happy with how the mainstream media promotes and covers this story, downplaying the victims of the chaos and sympathizing with outpourings of anger even if illegal. To clarify, looters should not be shot, law should prevail, and the policeman involved in the original incident should be investigated.. but the mainstream media is to my mind basically behind the looters, and I know if by chance I or someone like me were to be caught in the crossfire and killed, the mainstream media, posturing as champions of justice, would just implicitly shrug. So yea I can't help but feel disaffected by this coverage, no matter how vile the originating incident.
  • rayiner 6y ago
    Relevant: https://www.cnn.com/2017/04/28/us/la-riots-korean-americans/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2017/04/28/us/la-riots-korean-americans/... > The Rodney King verdict and the ensuing riots are often framed as a turning point for law enforcement and the African-American community. But it's also the single most significant modern event for Korean-Americans, says Edward Taehan Chang, professor of ethnic studies and founding director of the Young Oak Kim Center for Korean American Studies at the University of California, Riverside. > The nearly weeklong, widespread rioting killed more than 50 people, injured more than 1,000 people and caused approximately $1 billion in damage, about half of which was sustained by Korean-owned businesses. Long-simmering cultural clashes between immigrant Korean business owners and predominately African-American customers spilled over with the acquittals. I'm on the side of the protesters here, don't get me wrong. But the media sweeps under the rug how often the rage from these events gets taken out on Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, etc.-owned small businesses. There is a narrative the media wants to peddle (black versus white), and these complexities don't have any place in the media narratives.
    • UncleMeat 6y ago
      A fair amount of this is caused by the state and police. Why do you think that the rioters were in koreatown during the rodney king riots? Police defended the rich neighborhoods and pushed the riot into places where society tolerates more damage.
• pinkfoot 6y ago
  Out of curiosity, what is do the democratically passed laws in major economies actually say about the use of violence to stop looting ?
• woeirua 6y ago
  Twitter should maliciously comply with Trump's executive order. Suspend his account, and post a banner saying that it was suspended in compliance with President Trump's Executive Order.
• sigzero 6y ago
  Yet, Kaepernick's isn't hidden (which also pushes violence).
• buboard 6y ago
  Is there recent research on the effects of political polarization on the mental health and sanity of americans?
• NicoJuicy 6y ago
  And all the Trump bots seem broken with the situation. Normally a lot of botlike responders with a generic message on a message of Trump. Not on this tweet it seems.
• deleted 6y ago
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• factually 6y ago
  I am so, so tired of everyone apply "conservative" to outright nonsense. We should say "republican" or "trumpian" instead. There is nothing conservative in many of the far-right ideas, by any definition of the word. If the idea or opinion is: 1) Based on pure hate 2) Based on treating a protected class badly - you know, the whole reason we have class protections 3) Based on NOTHING AT ALL, no facts given, other than sometimes a turtles-all-the-way-down derivation of other crazy opinions, and sometimes with a "make it true" initiative bringing up the rear. Speculation is not a position. Speculation is not a position. SPECULATION IS NOT A POSITION! those are NOT Conservative. Those are crazy. Especially #3, employed all the time by the current POTUS. I personally believe the Conservative movement has actually been wildly successful over the last several decades, and the country has shifted significantly to the right. Now, all that remains is the crazy. That is all the right has to differentiate itself, and they're going all in. Anyway, TLDR: crazy is not Conservative, please use Trumpian or Republican if that fits. Also, speculation is not a position :)
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• neycoda 6y ago
  Maybe Trump should stop quoting racist violent people.
• ssorc3 6y ago
  So I have a question about this. Does free speech apply to platforms like Facebook and Twitter? I would have thought that a website owner has a choice about the content of their website, even if that content is user generated. Surely they could remove any tweet they wanted and not be sued?
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  • buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
    It depends. And the problem that people have is that social media companies want to be both publishers and platforms. For example, T-Mobile is a platform. They aren't responsible for anything you say when on the phone, using their network. CNN is a publisher. They are responsible for anything that gets posted on their website, and can get sued accordingly. Social media companies want to choose what is posted on their website, but also not be held responsible for anything that is posted on their website. They want the perks of being a publisher, and the perks of being a platform. Obviously there are arguments made on both sides. But that is the general disagreement, if I understand correctly.
    • mjburgess 6y ago
      perhaps there aren't two sides.. that there is a genuine third form: the publisher-platform -- one which best describes both how these platforms do operate, and how they should do so. When you have billions of users wanting to post content you can hardly be a publisher in any traditional sense; nor will the gov./society/users let you be a platform.
      • bobthepanda 6y ago
        I think there is a distinction between just creating content on a platform, vs. actively recommending content and surfacing it to people not already explicitly following the person. The latter is a type of tacit endorsement that to me, falls under the guise of "publishing", even if it's done in an automated fashion.
• justignoregdpr 6y ago
  After leaked recording with Joe Biden promising 1000000000 USD to Ukraine for helping his son with the criminal investigation, I doubt many people will vote for him. Here is one of the leaked records: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPVPBNGH2HA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPVPBNGH2HA
• plutonorm 6y ago
  I can’t believe everyone is suddenly in favour of censorship. Do you want 1984? Because this is how you get 1984.
  • unethical_ban 6y ago
    No, a private company putting up a warning the that President of the United States is advocating the execution of protesters for looting is not censorship. I don't have time to explain to someone for the umpteenth time how this is different, and even within the "well golly Twitter is a big company, maybe it's a public utility" argument, the president is a much more unique position and situation than the average user. The President could talk about how he thinks we should execute our fellow citizens, or call our political rivals skanks, or tell us that Coronavirus will magically disappear by Easter, or that hydroxychloroquine is a miracle cure, all by standing up his own microblog platform and blast it from S3 or Azure. He could hold his press conferences and bullshit to the whole nation, or set up email distros... all things he has done or could do. Please, for the love of society and sanity, stop throwing around 1984 references every time someone shuts someone else up. Read the goddamn book.
  • ddrager 6y ago
    Censorship comes in many forms. Governmental censorship? Bad. Self-censorship of a platform such as Twitter, good, and necessary.
    • plutonorm 6y ago
      Self censorship? How do you know those doing the censoring aren’t bought and paid for? Censorship is bad - period.
  • colinmhayes 6y ago
    I don't think it's fair to call this censorship because of the amount of transparency twitter is showing. Something like shadow banning people is probably inappropriate most of the time, but now that trump signed the eo twitter is responsible for the content on their platform, so they've got to protect themselves from legal liability.
• ngneer 6y ago
  publicity stunt
• corrupt_measure 6y ago
  Except it wasn't glorifying violence. Like at all. He was not saying that if looting continues then police would start shooting, that's a twisted and strained interpretation. He was stating simply that looting begets violence, meaning that the looting must be stopped before things become more violent. It is a call to action to those who appear content to let the looting run rampant as if it's somehow OK or justified. In such an escalation both protestors and counter protestors would be shooting, so bringing the situation under control quickly is in the best interest of the protestors and the community as a whole. It is a clear example of the dangers of allowing Twitter to moderate when such an egregiously bad interpretation of Trump's tweet triggers moderation.
• ausjke 6y ago
  so now twitter decides what is right or wrong? let's shot down this little evil bird. the media is so biased these days, their job really should be fair and balance and they totally failed, either too left or two right. social media polarized people more than anything we have seen in history, thanks to facebook, twitter, and google to some extent
• MarkLowenstein 6y ago
  I'd like to see a system like this: if your tweet is blocked for a reason, all you have to do is find a tweet that's worse than it is for that same reason, that is not already blocked. If the moderators agree then yours is unblocked and the other's is. Maybe disputes with the moderators' decision can be public, so people can see which way the wind blows with the particular social media platform. Lots of people here will propose ways of gaming this system, such as setting up fake accounts where they make worse tweets. I don't want to pre-argue with them by making this post really long though. I think that starting with this design it's probably possible to tweak it to encourage honesty.
  • BurritoAlPastor 6y ago
    Leaving aside the logistical and gamification reasons why this would be a bad idea – you’d also be creating an incentive structure for people espousing marginally offensive content to actively seek out and engage with more extreme positions? It would result in radicalization, not moderation, even if it worked as intended.
• bgorman 6y ago
  Objectively - how is this advocating for violence? I have not been following this deeply but it seems like there is already serious violence occurring where dozens of people have been charged with probable felonies and buildings have been set on fire? Isn't it the responsibility of the local government to protect private property? It certainly seems like the situation is out of hand when a police station is burned to the ground. The National guard has been dispatched in similar situations e.g. Rodney King riots. Ostensibly the reason for the deployment is to "ensure peace" I understand Trump walks a thin line, but in my opinion he is very skilled at never literally advocating for violence or overtly racist actions. I absolutely do not condone excessive force against anyone, but I fail to understand how this specific tweet is glorifying violence. I'm just trying to understand
  • advisedwang 6y ago
    The phrase Trump uses is a direct quote from a police chief who was explicitly giving the OK to his police officers to kill protesters. Much as I hate the over-use of the term "dog whistle" this is the exact thing it means. It has plausible deniability, but to the intended audience it sends a clear message. https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/05/29/when-the-looting-starts-the-shooting-starts-trump-walter-headley/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/05/29/when-the-l...
    • bgorman 6y ago
      I see, the original post didn't show this tweet
• cryptica 6y ago
  People who voted for Trump wanted chaos and now he is giving it to them. If he keeps going he might get re-elected.
• fareesh 6y ago
  Amusingly it looks like Twitter's report system contradicts the hiding by saying there's nothing wrong with the tweet: https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1266452015493906435 https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1266452015493906435 President Trump has also clarified his remarks, which is a welcome move.
  • ViViDboarder 6y ago
    If I’m reading that correctly, it’s a completely misleading assertion by @WhiteHouse. It appears as though this is in response to the quote of the original that was also reported. Given that the quote is adding a comment on to the original text, their ruling makes sense to me. That said, it looks like they’ve hidden it as well now. So maybe they see it as an attempt to circumvent the TOS and are treating it the same way.
    • fareesh 6y ago
      A plain non-technical reading of the email from Twitter doesn't describe the structure you're suggesting - so it's possible that Twitter's email template is not properly rendering the structure of the tweets.
• linkmotif 6y ago
  Yet somehow Ayatollah Khomeini tweets for the Nth time that Israel must be eliminated (verbatim): https://twitter.com/Khamenei_tv/status/1264541220006739968 https://twitter.com/Khamenei_tv/status/1264541220006739968. How do you go about "eliminating" a country and its inhabitants without killing them all? How can Twitter apply these rules inconsistently and be taken seriously?
• gabordemooij 6y ago
  I don't see the problem, just reject the special privs for twitter and treat it like a publisher. It should be fairly simple, either you do not moderate at all (and your not responsible for whatever people say on your platform) or you moderate and therefore you publish. It aint that hard. Twitter clearly moderates, that's fine, so it should be treated as a publisher, not as a public 'facility'. Simple.
  • pps43 6y ago
    Twitter does not want to be a publisher, because then lots of people will sue it for libel and other nasty stuff in twits.
    • NeverFade 6y ago
      So it should stop editorializing and moderating.
      • JakeTheAndroid 6y ago
        But they aren't generating the content, users are. Why should they be responsible for what you say? And it's their platform, why are you entitled to it insofar they can't moderate? Can Amazon not kick people off their servers without being responsible as a publisher? At what point can a company no longer decide what happens within their ecosystem? I thought we appreciated freedom of speech in the US, and that includes freedom to ignore speech.
        • NeverFade 6y ago
          > I thought we appreciated freedom of speech in the US, and that includes freedom to ignore speech. That's precisely the problem: freedom of speech. It's starting to seem pretty clear that people with certain views are getting moderated, censored, sanctioned, and generally have their speech policed and restricted on Twitter. People with different views are not being policed in the same way, even when they violate the same rules (see for example the Iranian president who never got moderated despite tweeting genocide ethnic cleansing threats on a regular basis). Freedom of speech is precisely the issue, precisely what's at stake here. Twitter is restricting the freedom of speech of right-wing users, then pretending they're just a neutral user-content platform. They can't have it both ways. Personally, I think free speech protections should apply to big platforms like Twitter, or else we risk the de-facto elimination of free speech in our time, since the contemporary town square happens to be owned by a private corporation.
• softwaredoug 6y ago
  One thing that's fascinating about this is how Twitter has become so centered around political discussion (& histrionics). It's become the backbone of the sort of inside-baseball of politics. The lightning rod at the center of both politics and Twitter is Trump. Trump is such a powerful force because he can bend the ridiculousness of the twitter conversation to his will. He's perhaps an outcome of all the incentives of the social network. So limiting Trump is to me a kind of commentary on Twitter itself. Maybe something like a Trump is the end-game of a Twitter-like network?
• krick 6y ago
  That's fun. Twitter did shut up foreign presidents a couple of times before, but I guess this is the first time with the president of USA. That's ballsy as fuck. Impertinently, even. Totally not ok to do, but fun to watch.
• scared2 6y ago
  I would like to see the impact of this feud , it will start with Twitter stock.
• scared2 6y ago
  Lol apparently Trump's tweets are in par with NSFW
• amgreg 6y ago
  I’m curious to understand HN’s algo: Why has this thread, with over 1299 comments, decayed so quickly to the bottom of the 2nd page?
  • dependenttypes 6y ago
    more upvotes -> higher more time passed, more comments -> lower
    • amgreg 6y ago
      So comments actually work against it?
• egberts1 6y ago
  But it’s okay for President Obama to call the Baltimore rioters “criminals and thugs”. https://nypost.com/2015/04/28/obama-calls-baltimore-rioters-criminals-and-thugs/ https://nypost.com/2015/04/28/obama-calls-baltimore-rioters-...
  • Wingman4l7 6y ago
    See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
  • Craighead 6y ago
    Enough.
• jungletime 6y ago
  You can make the case that humans often engage in threats to prevent violence. Having seen a few people threaten each other, and not get into a physical fight. But to walk way. I would say it can be preferable to actual fists thrown. Words are not violence.
• alexeiz 6y ago
  Keep digging, Dorsey.
• dingo_bat 6y ago
  Same twitter used to proudly keep up ISIS murder videos and used to defend it.
• dmode 6y ago
  There is more outrage in this thread about some Twitter policy than the dead black man and the racist president inciting violence on Americans.
• gabordemooij 6y ago
  Hiding = processing, so Twitter generates new content by filtering parts of the original content. Therefore, Twitter is a publisher and should be held responsible for all of its content. This should have been a no-brainer.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• sytelus 6y ago
  I’m now fully expecting republican mega donors coming together to trying to gain control of Tweeter as strategic asset. At $23B market cap it’s fairly easy target given there are already other major investors wanting to see Dorsey out. There already had been movement to buy off super cheap local radio stations and turn them in to conservative media at scale. Republican think tanks understands the immense value of building media channels and they have ton of money sloshing around. I can imagine Twitter with new CEO banning all tweets from Joe Biden because they are all deemed factually incorrect or misleading.
• andrenth 6y ago
  “ ....These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!” Which part of that tweet glorifies violence?