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Nice, it only took 4+ years of violations.
by colmvp 6y ago
Nice, it only took 4+ years of violations.
- mattnewton 6y agoOr one lost election.
- colmvp 6y agoYes, you're more accurate. If he won re-election, Twitter would've likely bent the rules around his behavior.
- pvfffghhr 6y agoWhat exactly do they accuse him of? Edit: nobody has an answer? It seems a very important question. Like if you say “spreading fake news”, you are saying Twitter should act as an authority of truth. Since they can’t possibly be that, where does that leave us?
- Technically 6y agoviolating their terms of service, presumably. However, it's a private site & they don't need to justify their giving service or not.
- ricc 6y agoI don’t know why you’re in HN if you can’t use a search engine... but one of his violations is inciting violence.
- bra-ket 6y agothat's not true though, he explicitly said: "I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order – respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!" https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1346912780700577792 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/13469127807005777...
- nindalf 6y agoYou’re arguing in bad faith. It is a fact that that this election is over, and Biden won fair and square. 60 losses in State and Federal courts proves that. And yet Trump continues to incite his supporters by spreading falsehoods - the election was stolen, the other side committed fraud, patriots need to #stopthesteal and so on. Even yesterday he promised never to concede. But sure, selectively look at the text where says “remain peaceful”. What a joke people like you are.
- sneak 6y agoClaiming that false things are true is not inciting violence.
- andy_ppp 6y agoIt can incite violence, would these people have stormed the capital building if he’d said “fair enough guys, Joe got more votes than me, I lost”.
- La1n 6y agohttps://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/capitol-mob-trump-supporters.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/capitol-mob-t... ------ >Be There. Will Be Wild! ------ a supporter misspelled the word “cavalry” in tweeting that “The calvary is coming, Mr. President!” Mr. Trump responded: “A great honor!” ------ But first came the remarks of the President, delivered on the Ellipse, just south of the White House. “We will never give up,” he said. “We will never concede. It will never happen. You don’t concede when there’s death involved. Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore.”
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mattnewton 6y agoYou’ll notice that tweet was _not_ taken down, but tweets that told the protestors they were special people and something needed to be done about the stolen election were taken down.
- emteycz 6y agoTwitter is a company providing free service, and they have the right to prevent anyone from using it at their discretion without any explanation whatsoever. Twitter can explain their position but it can be completely wrong, and an explanation definitely does not make them any authority of any kind, and doesn't mean anything about other cases.
- devwastaken 6y agoYou're not legitimately looking for an answer, therefore few are going to spend the time on it. Your questions are answered by honest research and taking the time to argue against yourself before doing it to other people.
- paganel 6y agoThis is very slippery-slopy, the next Trump will know to take definitive actions against corporate entities like Twitter from earlier on.
- mcguire 6y agoWhy do you think they are attacking Section 230?
- colejohnson66 6y agoDoesn’t Section 230 actually protect them? Without it, they’d have no “safe harbor” protections against his account and would be forced to proactively remove stuff and would overmoderate to avoid lawsuits.
- antris 6y agoFascists want to use laws against their detractors whenever possible, but also want none of the law apply to them. The USA could be a dictatorship if Trump were just slightly smarter.
- OniBait 6y agoI think it is more that they see selectively removing content as equivalent to moderation and thus they shouldn't have safe harbor. So maybe they want them to only remove illegal content or something?
- mcguire 6y agoAs OniBait says, I think (I've given up trying to figure out the details of what they're doing) they are using the threat of removing 230 as a stick to stop social media companies from any moderation at all. Withou 230, the user-generated-content business model is untenable.
- int_ 6y agoTrump is no longer profitable for Twitter.
- sandworm101 6y agoReally? He would seem to be the king of all whales. His extremes draw people to the platform. No doubt countless seniors only ever installed the app so that they could follow trump. Like it or not, he draws in new users.
- sangnoir 6y agoHow about legal exposure, or loss of political goodwill (especially by those who are in positions to provide oversight)? Profitability is impacted by more factors than just raw "number of eyeballs"
- andrewfong 6y agoWell, the funny thing is they're mostly protected from legal exposure by Section 230, that thing Trump keeps trying to get rid of.
- asiando 6y agoIn 2017 I saw Twitter advertising in Tokyo’s metro with Trump tweets. Even if their PR said “we don’t like it but it’s in the public interest,” it was obviously in their interest. Twitter has been mentioned daily in the news for the past 5 years, they turned a huge profit thanks the guy. The only reason they’re acting now is that their excuse is about to expire. If they found another good excuse, Trump would stay.
- hef19898 6y agoBack then, it was in everyones interesst. Trump caused controversy, that drove traffic. Same applied for mainstream media and TV, everyone covered im because he drove engangement. The world would be much different, if everybody would just not have covered him and his rallies already in 2016. Everybody did, so.
- drukenemo 6y agoNow it’s OK to be political on Hacker News?
- pvfffghhr 6y agoOnly if you have the right opinions.
- zorpner 6y agoEvery single comment on HN is political to varying degrees. The ones decrying politics are, ironically, among the most political; they specifically seek to perpetuate the status quo.
- seizethecheese 6y agoTautology
- zbentley 6y agoHow?
- arp242 6y agoIt's been OK since forever; there are loads of political discussions, and there have been for as long as I remember.
- dragonwriter 6y agoAnd at the outset, they changed the rules specifically to make his violations not violations (with an exception for leaders motivated by the constant complaints about his incessant violations); it was only toward the end that they restored the idea that there were rules that could apply to Trump (though they were still weaker than the generally applicable rules.)
- arp242 6y agoI think that made sense to be honest; like it or not, Trump is the elected president, and denying the democratically elected president of your country access to your platform is quite the step. I mean, I sure don't like the entire situation as such, but in the same position, I probably would have done something similar.
- vkou 6y agoHe should be subject to the same rules as everyone else. Are all men not equal in this country?
- arp242 6y agoAs an elected official you're usually given a bit more breathing space in these kind of issues. This is the case in more or less any similar country.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> This is the case in more or less any similar country. reply That’s true in the sense that Twitter’s rules change specifically motivated by Trump’s violation of their pre-existing rules applied globally, not just in the US, and enabled and was seized on by similarly-oriented leaders elsewhere, as well.
- arp242 6y agoIt's not just about Twitter; in my own country the courts gave our own Trumpian firebrand Geert Wilders more leeway on account of being a democratically elected MP in two separate rulings. Actually, many countries have presidential and/or parliamentary immunity laws, partly so they can say what they think without fear of prosecution. Twitter is just following this long-standing precedent.
- totalZero 6y agoTrump is the best thing that could have happened to Twitter. His content keeps millions of people engaged.