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I was on the fence about this, but reading the comments convinced me it was the absolute right decision. The fact that all these institutions just allowed this

I was on the fence about this, but reading the comments convinced me it was the absolute right decision. The fact that all these institutions just allowed this horrible hateful speech for four years, in the name of free speech etc, despite all the harassment, harm (mental and otherwise) it caused to so many people in America actually emboldened so many to the extent that now that they crossed this invisible line, they can't even really understand the ramifications of what happened. That what gets me. To be hyperfocused on the free speech or "big brother" aspect of these bans, not the fact that a small group of rioters were just a few feet away from irreversibly staining American history with the blood of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th in the chain of command of the United states of America, as well as overrunning the seat of power of the most powerful nation in the world, on national TV ... just tells me that things really went too far and should have been shut down much sooner. I'm sure a lot of the people at the capitol that day have the narrative running in their minds that they are the heroes of America democracy, but the reality is that there is simply no justification for any of this, that can be told. A smarter group of individuals would take all this on the chin, make penance in some way while staying under the radar to regroup and reconfigure their message/approach instead of citing private business overreach as some sort of justification for what happened

Rapzid 6y ago
One of the more concerning tactics I've witnessed over the past few years that Trump and other parts of the GOP rhetoric machine were using in service of lying to people.. Convincing people who don't understand very well their rights, democracy, civics, and etc that their RIGHTS were being infringed; by others exercising their rights. "Stop The Steal" is just another flavor of conflating 1st amendment "freedom of speech" protections with a "RIGHT" to be on some platform or another, or to talk at some venue or another.
- TearsInTheRain 6y ago
  > Convincing people who don't understand very well their rights, democracy, civics, and etc that their RIGHTS were being infringed; by others exercising their rights. I dont think we need to infantilize Trump supporters. They are capable of evaluating claims made by the GOP.
  - baumandm 6y ago
    Unfortunately I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that a large percentage of people across the political spectrum lack basic civics knowledge.
    - mjevans 6y ago
      We make people take a test to drive. People should have to take a Civics based test to vote. If someone wants to vote but fails the civics test, they should then immediately qualify for a minimum living wage job to go back to public education and get paid for getting at least an 80% grade at whatever grade level they're working at (obviously with either enrollment at lower grade levels, classification as disability if unable to learn or medically impaired, and similar options also on the table). The goal would be to make sure that an EDUCATED and Civically Informed public, able to use Critical Thinking skills is the baseline expectation for a functional society in which the general people have the civic duty to be involved in the processes of self government and representative selection for representative democracies.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - monocasa 6y ago
        We don't have tests because they were specifically used to disenfranchise large classes of people in the past.
        davmar 6y ago
        precisely. literacy tests are banned by the civil rights act.
        hammock 6y ago
        Ironic that you have to point this out to someone who is arguing that people lack civics knowledge..
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
npunt 6y ago
Your point about the 'invisible line' is astute. We're in a crisis of perception and reality right now, and this has caused many to lose sight of the very real lines that we have agreed upon to preserve society and democracy. I think the other important factor here is we are in a very vulnerable moment right now because we are in the midst of a transition of power. It takes time to transfer the apparatus and operations of state, and during this time there is a power vacuum that can be taken advantage of by adversaries foreign and domestic. Every state throughout history has struggled in these times. The failure to secure the Capitol was in no small part due to how the President has run the state in the waning months of his term. His cabinet and administration are running a skeleton crew, he's acting erratically, and he's making false claims about election results and inciting crowds in a bid to stay in power. Whether one supports his policies or not, it should be abundantly clear right now that his actions and rhetoric put the country in further danger during this vulnerable time, and that perhaps he need not have access to platforms that make this easier and more convenient. It should be hard to dismantle the state, to whip people into a frenzy, to cause the damage that has been caused.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  I am also worried. It feels like Big Tech flourished in last 4 years with advertisement revenue while staying hush about these issues, but all of a sudden they have an epiphany now. Big Tech leaders are selfish, cowards, clueless and just as vulnerable as the government leaders. They were interested in milking billions in Ads from these hate speech, particularly Twitter. If I were employees at these big companies, I would raise internal questions - why wasn't this done earlier? What changed? The US Capitol riots is the specific moment that made them all wake up? These are rhetorical questions. All big tech leaders appeared in front of Congress in last 4 years, and weasled and squeeked instead of prowl and roar. Spineless and immoral, speaking double speak to appease the board of directors and the shareholders. At some point, the world would be destroyed but we've created a lot of value for our shareholders. Reminds me of this [1]. Pardon my cynicism, open for your comments. [1] https://twitter.com/Benioff/status/549339156854214656/photo/1 https://twitter.com/Benioff/status/549339156854214656/photo/...
  - 6y ago
dukeofdoom 6y ago
A few issues: 1) The most radicalized are by Q. Which itself is a disinformation campaign, contributed to by government entities. 2) Bernie sanders brags about occupying government buildings. Would he be held to the same standard? OAC praised BLM protesters marching on the White House a few months ago, with Antifa trying to breach police lines and storm the White House. Should we throw her in jail for sedition. How about Pelosi that asked the army to ignore orders from Trump. The US might be a democracy. But just because you can vote, does not mean you have any meaningful amount of power. The powerful cabal of corrupt politicians, and their rich backers, they have power. And they have been there for a very long time. They are almost impossible to displace. This breach shook them, because it was common, everyday people that did this. The same people that have had their livelihood destroyed, and have been hurt by all the COVID rules, rioting, trade deals with foreign countries, and so on. Trump is great for democracy. At every turn he exposes the hypocrisy of the current system. He needles them, and each time they over react. Exposing all their flaws. The amount of backstabbing he gets just from the Republican party, is waking up millions of people. Thanks to him, we found out how convoluted and non transparent the election process is. How biased the media is. How the Supreme court cowers to political pressure. And now how big tech is working in collusion. All things that a democratic movement can help to fix.
- awb 6y ago
  > Bernie sanders brags about occupying government buildings. Would he be held to the same standard? OAC praised BLM protesters marching on the White House a few months ago, with Antifa trying to breach police lines and storm the White House. This is "what about"-ism. It deflects responsibility and puts the focus on other's behavior. In this philosophy for one side to accept that what they did was bad, it requires every single other person in the world to be perfect, which is obviously impossible and therefor insulates the person from criticism. But, I'll indulge anyway. Occupying a building is a form of civil disobedience, which in the US is a respected form of protest. I don't know what incident you're talking about with Bernie, but the results matter. Did he schedule the occupation of a government building that threatened the lives of elected officials and killed a police officer? Or was it a peaceful protest? For AOC, was she praising the mass of peaceful protestors and what they stood for or was she praising an attempt to breach the White House? There's a big difference, so I want to be clear. If it was the later, then that is definitely dangerous. But praising or bragging is a far cry from planning, persuading and instigating. Plus, Bernie and AOC aren't the leader of the free world. The President has a responsibility to serve the entire US, all 330M, regardless of who voted for him or against him. Bernie has a responsibility to Vermont and AOC to the Bronx. It's apples and oranges. If you want the highest public office in the country, you need to be held to the highest standards and not complain about how those with far less power might have acted.
awb 6y ago
> To be hyperfocused on the free speech or "big brother" aspect of these bans, not the fact that a small group of rioters were just a few feet away from irreversibly staining American history This. Violence, intimidation and death are the ultimate forms of censorship. Much more so than having to switch your digital payment processor or having to self-host your blog or social media app. Germany decided after WWII that it was better to mass-censor Naziism than it was to let Nazis freely organize or spread their ideas again. It's not that Germany doesn't like free speech, it's that Naziism and free speech are diametrically opposed and forced to make a choice, they choose free speech. It seems like a contradiction where censorship promotes free speech, but it all depends on your timeline. In the short term banning Nazis limits free speech, in the long run banning Nazis increases free speech. When we give violent groups space to grow and organize, we're more anti-free speech than we realize because the capital riots are the inevitable arc (and only the opening act) for very small groups to violently oppress large numbers of peaceful citizens who love democracy.
wnevets 6y ago
Lets be honest, republicans (including trump) fought hard to allow companies to do this and much worse. They just though only cake companies in the bible belt would do it to gay couples, not to republicans.
- heartbreak 6y ago
  > cake companies in the bible belt s/bible belt/colorado
- infogulch 6y ago
  Its not very wise to construct a political weapon to use against your opponents without also considering how they could use it against you.
  - paxys 6y ago
    I imagine that was the thought running through the head of every Republican in the Capitol that day. Their own monster, which they had spent the last couple of decades nurturing, was out of control and in their house ready to devour them.
rayiner 6y ago
What counts as “horrible hateful speech?” The media has been publishing articles recently with outright racist slurs against white people (using phrases like “unbearable whiteness”). Is that hateful speech? (I think so but then again I’m an elder Millennial.) And does the fact that it’s the President saying something warrant giving him more or less latitude? The right and moral thing to do was to give the duly elected President latitude until it was massive in scope and objectively false. In my mind, that didn’t happen until last month when he continued to claim the election was stolen after the rejection of his lawsuits.
- skedaddle 6y ago
  It was massive in scope and objectively false when he claimed Covid-19 was completely under control, compared favorably to the flu, was just misdiagnosed sniffles/flu, that it was going to miraculously disappear, etc
- tptacek 6y ago
  I'm surprised you keep bringing this up, because you know the counterargument here. "Whiteness" is in fact a problematic term. Italians, Jewish people, and the Irish have all been excluded from "whiteness" at times. The term expands as needed to provide solidarity against Black people. "Black", on the other hand, is an actual ethnicity --- the one we created when we kidnapped millions of people in Africa and stripped them of their original culture. Anti-whiteness crusaders can and frequently do go too far, but I object, strenuously, to the idea that mainstream articles about problematic whiteness are somehow comparable to anti-Black racism. That isn't true, and I think you know that.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    So I guess I don’t understand the counter-argument. I assumed you agreed using “whiteness” as a pejorative is a problem. I agree anti-Black racism is far more destructive. But I’m not trying to establish a hierarchy of the kinds of racism. I think anti-Black racism is far more destructive than anti-Asian racism, but as an Asian I’m pretty happy to see both kinds be deemed taboo in polite society. We can’t have someone’s skin color being used in pejorative terms, and insofar as there are many people who think it’s acceptable, that only underscores why I’m tremendously skeptical of private sector censorship, where those people will disproportionately be in charge of shaping debate.
UnitingFolks 6y ago
Not from US but my opinion, we need more powerful communication tool than that exists today. Usually it is recommended that for complex and emotional content email/text communication is not good. It should be done in person. In social media complex/emotional things are being discussed in text form which causes more rift. So we need better tools video/animation/pictures to discuss things that are being discussed in social media. These better tools should be easy to use for common person to use and communicate. I think banning things temporarily to finish Biden take presidency seems OK to me. But banning permanently means we are failing with arguments to win over people. Opposing violence permanently seems OK to me, but then a law should be made for it and not left for individual company. It will be also good to have a tool, which for any argument gives all the assumption being made. Such a tool can also help in communicating better. In short we need better communication tools and better laws.
Triv888 6y ago
The world is backward... my friends that are poor vote republicans and the companies that benefit from the republicans shit on them.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  That is by design. The Republican party only serves the wealthy who want government to serve them exclusively. Their numbers are too small to vote themselves into power so they cook up ways to convince disenfranchised groups to glom on. By not enacting policies that satisfy these people, the GOP elites maintain an agitated base that keeps voting for them because they believe all the party propaganda. It's 1984 as an operators manual. This scheme was almost too successful when the tea partiers got elected and weren't fully on board with the real game plan. They were either assimilated or fell out of favor. Boehner's inability to contol them is why he was reduced to tears.
roenxi 6y ago
> ...the fact that a small group of rioters were just a few feet away from irreversibly staining American history with the blood of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th in the chain of command of the United states of America... Let me ask for a quick accounting here - what is the evidence for this? My understanding is 100% of the gun deaths were from guns in the hands of law enforcement officers who were perfectly capable of defending themselves when pushed. There are a bunch of instantly iconic photos [0] with basically no weapons in the hands of protestors. They clearly didn't plan on breaching the Capitol or they'd have realised that they were all about to go to jail forever. This is a not a mob out for literal blood. [0] https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/07/us/capitol-mob-deaths/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/07/us/capitol-mob-deaths/ind...
- albertgoeswoof 6y ago
  There were gallows, bombs, armour, zip ties and guns brought to the protest. On many of the videos you can hear the trump supporters shouting cries to kill certain members of the government, calling them traitors. Oh and they beat a police officer to death. If they had found a senior official I don’t think they would have been safe.
  - roenxi 6y ago
    > There were gallows, bombs, armour, zip ties and guns brought to the protest. How many guns, bombs and zip ties? Was it even enough protestors to be called a minority who bought bombs? The press would love a few photos of people with guns storming the capital, because those that I've seen look like very poorly behaved tourists with souvenirs and selfies. Gallows happen to be a traditional prop at protests (eg, [0]). > If they had found a senior official I don’t think they would have been safe. Nobody feels safe when a protest gets out of hand, but that doesn't make it a fact that the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th in the chain of command of the United states of America were about to be injured. It is entirely plausible that the mob would have screamed at them then been broken up. That is the most likely scenario. [0] https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tommy-robinson-leads-brexit-betrayal-13709691 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tommy-robinson-leads-...
lliamander 6y ago
The left (including prominent politicians and media figures) are more than willing to provide cover or excuse political violence conducted for their side, and left-wing extremists used FB, Twitter, etc. to coordinate their actions over the past summer. This is not about removing "hate". This is about removing political opposition. The WalkAway campaign's FB page was removed, despite no violent content. The Articles of Unity project has been deplatformed from Twitter (and I believe FB) for a while with no justification and absolutely no hateful content whatsoever. Yes, there are many high-profile targets that seem easy to justify, but a much larger swath of those affected are completely unjustifiable.
- bilbo0s 6y ago
  I'm one of those people who has always loathed both liberals and conservatives, but the attack on the capitol went way too far. You guys want to march around and yell in the streets, I actually don't have a problem with it. I find it annoying, but as long as you're not killing anyone, I don't care. However, you want to go into congress and subvert the Constitutional order? Yeah, that's a whole different issue. I'm sorry if the conservatives can't understand the difference between BLM people yelling in the streets, and Trump people searching the capitol for senators and representatives to stop a Constitutionally mandated vote count. (Actually that was a lie, I'm not sorry. I don't give a mosquito's dick about either of you. I was just trying to be nice.) I'm done trying to explain the difference to these people, and I think these terrorists have pushed a lot of people off the fence with me. People are fed up. You don't understand the difference? You think too much of it's unjustified? Too bad. This is the way it's gotta be. We're not going to live in anarchy because conservatives and liberals want to play out crips and bloods on our republic. End rant. Edit: Man I'm getting old. That reads like I just told some kids to get off my lawn. But that's how I feel.
  - lliamander 6y ago
    > I'm sorry if the conservatives can't understand the difference between BLM people yelling in the streets, and Trump people searching the capitol for senators and representatives to stop a Constitutionally mandated vote count. That is manifestly not the comparison being made. Antifa and BLM rioters burned down apartment buildings with people still inside in Kenosha. Over the summer, dozens of people were killed and there was billions of property damage (that's peoples homes and livelihoods, not just "stuff"). And Democratic politicians - including the VP-elect - provided bail for these criminals. Many democratic DAs in cities like Portland simply refused to press charges. That being said, I abhor that Capitol police were attacked and that there were people who breached the Capitol with violent intent. But the deplatformings have gone well beyond the fringe few who actually engaged or promoted violence.
canoebuilder 6y ago
The events at the capitol were very bad yes. But I get the sense people are talking past each other to a degree because there are levels to this. It goes beyond trying to figure out what the hell happened at the capitol and figuring out how best to prevent it in the future, while maintaining a healthy non-repressive society. One issue is that these private businesses have become something close to, if not de facto public utilities/infrastructure. If you ask around you can learn that this "private business overreach" of "big brother" drawing the bounds of "permissible free speech" has actually been going on for some time. The "private business overreach" part of the story is getting more attention because it has been directed at the most visible person on the planet. Or, was the most visible until Twitter et al, performed "private business overreach" reducing his visibility considerably and simultaneously getting people's attention and raising questions about the nature of power, communication, etc. in the current age. Another issue is that the "rules" for who and what gets booted and censored from these realms by an always shifting, opaque, and selectively enforced set of rules is to a statistically significant degree clearly bunched in certain areas of the ideological matrix. Are the actors in these areas of the matrix just more prone to breaking the rules or are "the rules" whatever they are today, selectively and over-zealously enforced in order to repress certain ideas and perspectives? Is there some objective standard against high level US politicians doing things that could be interpreted as inciting, instigating, or glorifying violence? How about Kamala Harriss posting a bail fund for violent rioters and criminals this past summer, wouldn't that fall squarely over the line of inciting, or instigating, or glorifying violence? Curiously, crickets around that one... > just tells me that things really went too far and should have been shut down much sooner. So is this advocating for enforcement of "pre-crime?" We should keep an eye out for people saying things we don't like then repress their ability to act in the digital age, to prevent them from committing a future crime we have projected onto them? > The fact that all these institutions just allowed this horrible hateful speech for four years, in the name of free speech etc, despite all the harassment, harm (mental and otherwise) it caused to so many people in America actually emboldened so many to the extent that now that they crossed this invisible line, they can't even really understand the ramifications of what happened. That what gets me. Hate is an emotion, emotions are subjective. There is no clear objective measure of what is "hateful speech." "Speech" is a noun, an objective thing. Free speech, as in, as little restrictions on speech as are feasible was a great insight by America's founding fathers as to what would contribute to a healthy, dynamic, non-repressive society. Turns out they were right about a lot of things. Americans today have to be adults and understand that content of speech and someone's actions are different things. The speech of someone like Trump is actually much closer to being an action. But you can't just start repressing speech no matter how "hateful" unfortunately. How about contributing with Love wherever you see hate? > a few feet away from irreversibly staining American history Sometimes I think back to another time in the recent past when there was an even more clear and present danger to members of the highest level of the federal govt. I think back in a shocked disbelief of "Holy cow... what if some large fraction of the Congress was murdered in one day?" Does anybody even remember that?! It was just a couple years ago, multiple shots were fired at Congressmen at a baseball game. It's shocking to think what could have been then. But it just seems to have dropped off the radar. I wonder why there wasn't a crackdown then on speech about things like Rachel Maddow/NYT/Media Establishment type conspiracies, or even any interest in a public airing of the attacker's motivations.
eecc 6y ago
Free speech is about protecting the tolerant from an abusive and intolerant state, not to allow the intolerant to insult and attack the tolerant. A much smarter thinker called Popper came up with an eponymous paradox about this
antibuddy 6y ago
What did Trump say/do that called for violence? Why could rioters just go to the capitol? Seeing a dozen news articles the best argument seems to be that the mention of not attending the inauguration was a call for violence. I don't buy it.
- tehbeard 6y ago
  > ...not attending the inauguration was a call for violence. I don't buy it. It's a soft signal, one that really you should be looking at the wider context of the last 4 years and especially the last few months, rather than just in isolation. And to the mind of someone willing to use violence (such as say, those involved in the capitol riot), it becomes "hey guys, I still believe the election was stolen by those dirty libs and I won't be at this location, so if anything bad happens there, I won't be hurt. Wink Wink, nudge nudge." We have seen what his base will do. There is no longer a time to discuss hypotheticals, they will storm a goverment office with weapons, they will kill people, they will use IEDs, and they will put the Trump cult ahead of America; because that is what they did, in a Western capital of all places.
127 6y ago
Falsely imprisoned man is angry and lashes out, which proves he wasn't falsely imprisoned in the first place.
oceanplexian 6y ago
I feel like your analysis misses the forest for the trees. Even if Facebook, Twitter, etc, had banned all these platforms and politicians, I'm confident people still would have come out for the protest. Taking away people's ability to organize on mainstream platforms didn't stop the HK protestors from organizing against the CCP. The lack of online platforms didn't stop the Color Revolutions in Eastern Europe. Even the Arab Spring, while often attributed to Twitter, happened in the face of mass censorship and Internet shutdowns. IMHO the decisions to de-platform these groups will do nothing to put a dent in their political ideology, and will only serve to throw gasoline on the fire at a contentious period where many millions of people feel like they don't have a voice. And it's likely that peaceful discourse and political thought will be wiped out as collateral damage as a result of the decisions these companies are making.
- pm90 6y ago
  Deplatforming has been shown to have worked to reduce the influence of extremists, specifically those that incite violence https://www.vice.com/en/article/bjbp9d/do-social-media-bans-work https://www.vice.com/en/article/bjbp9d/do-social-media-bans-.... It doesn’t need to work perfectly for it to be useful. Btw do you know what doesn’t work? Appeasement. That only lets bad actors know that they can go even further. Resisting taking reasonable action for fear of violence is plain old appeasement.
redis_mlc 6y ago
Can you provide an actual example of hateful speech by Trump or a member of his cabinet? > this horrible hateful speech for four years I've heard the left call Trump a racist for 4 years, yet he has never said a racist word. If I'm wrong, provide an example. So where's the beef? You've fallen for the big lie.
diveanon 6y ago
I have been having ongoing arguments on this forum with people who just refuse to accept the reality of what is happening. I think there is a serious mental health crisis in the US right now, and that the majority of Trump supporters are mentally incapable of acknowledging that they have been lied too, taken advantage of, and as a result are on the wrong side of history. I have been having meaningful conversations with my family about this, and I feel like I am starting to break through. Unfortunately I just don't have the emotional bandwidth to coddle the bullshit I see people posting these days in defence of this attempted coup and the resulting murders. Perhaps a better person than me can be civil with these people, but I just don't give a fuck anymore.
thewindowmovie5 6y ago
Trying to engage with the MAGA crowd has been an exercise in futility. Despite no evidence of election fraud on the scale that would overturn the result and every institution in the country asserting the election was free and fair, they refuse to accept it. When they do not act in good faith, incite violence and commit terrorist activity - I think these actions, which were the last resort, is the only sane thing to do.
- sjwright 6y ago
  Far from merely lacking evidence, there is plenty of evidence that Trump was planning to play this hand before the election had even taken place. The accusation effectively pre-dates the supposed evidence for it.

Rapzid 6y ago

One of the more concerning tactics I've witnessed over the past few years that Trump and other parts of the GOP rhetoric machine were using in service of lying to people.. Convincing people who don't understand very well their rights, democracy, civics, and etc that their RIGHTS were being infringed; by others exercising their rights. "Stop The Steal" is just another flavor of conflating 1st amendment "freedom of speech" protections with a "RIGHT" to be on some platform or another, or to talk at some venue or another.

TearsInTheRain 6y ago
> Convincing people who don't understand very well their rights, democracy, civics, and etc that their RIGHTS were being infringed; by others exercising their rights. I dont think we need to infantilize Trump supporters. They are capable of evaluating claims made by the GOP.
- baumandm 6y ago
  Unfortunately I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that a large percentage of people across the political spectrum lack basic civics knowledge.
  - mjevans 6y ago
    We make people take a test to drive. People should have to take a Civics based test to vote. If someone wants to vote but fails the civics test, they should then immediately qualify for a minimum living wage job to go back to public education and get paid for getting at least an 80% grade at whatever grade level they're working at (obviously with either enrollment at lower grade levels, classification as disability if unable to learn or medically impaired, and similar options also on the table). The goal would be to make sure that an EDUCATED and Civically Informed public, able to use Critical Thinking skills is the baseline expectation for a functional society in which the general people have the civic duty to be involved in the processes of self government and representative selection for representative democracies.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - monocasa 6y ago
      We don't have tests because they were specifically used to disenfranchise large classes of people in the past.
      - davmar 6y ago
        precisely. literacy tests are banned by the civil rights act.
      - hammock 6y ago
        Ironic that you have to point this out to someone who is arguing that people lack civics knowledge..

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

npunt 6y ago

Your point about the 'invisible line' is astute. We're in a crisis of perception and reality right now, and this has caused many to lose sight of the very real lines that we have agreed upon to preserve society and democracy. I think the other important factor here is we are in a very vulnerable moment right now because we are in the midst of a transition of power. It takes time to transfer the apparatus and operations of state, and during this time there is a power vacuum that can be taken advantage of by adversaries foreign and domestic. Every state throughout history has struggled in these times. The failure to secure the Capitol was in no small part due to how the President has run the state in the waning months of his term. His cabinet and administration are running a skeleton crew, he's acting erratically, and he's making false claims about election results and inciting crowds in a bid to stay in power. Whether one supports his policies or not, it should be abundantly clear right now that his actions and rhetoric put the country in further danger during this vulnerable time, and that perhaps he need not have access to platforms that make this easier and more convenient. It should be hard to dismantle the state, to whip people into a frenzy, to cause the damage that has been caused.

systemvoltage 6y ago
I am also worried. It feels like Big Tech flourished in last 4 years with advertisement revenue while staying hush about these issues, but all of a sudden they have an epiphany now. Big Tech leaders are selfish, cowards, clueless and just as vulnerable as the government leaders. They were interested in milking billions in Ads from these hate speech, particularly Twitter. If I were employees at these big companies, I would raise internal questions - why wasn't this done earlier? What changed? The US Capitol riots is the specific moment that made them all wake up? These are rhetorical questions. All big tech leaders appeared in front of Congress in last 4 years, and weasled and squeeked instead of prowl and roar. Spineless and immoral, speaking double speak to appease the board of directors and the shareholders. At some point, the world would be destroyed but we've created a lot of value for our shareholders. Reminds me of this [1]. Pardon my cynicism, open for your comments. [1] https://twitter.com/Benioff/status/549339156854214656/photo/1 https://twitter.com/Benioff/status/549339156854214656/photo/...
- 6y ago

dukeofdoom 6y ago

A few issues: 1) The most radicalized are by Q. Which itself is a disinformation campaign, contributed to by government entities. 2) Bernie sanders brags about occupying government buildings. Would he be held to the same standard? OAC praised BLM protesters marching on the White House a few months ago, with Antifa trying to breach police lines and storm the White House. Should we throw her in jail for sedition. How about Pelosi that asked the army to ignore orders from Trump. The US might be a democracy. But just because you can vote, does not mean you have any meaningful amount of power. The powerful cabal of corrupt politicians, and their rich backers, they have power. And they have been there for a very long time. They are almost impossible to displace. This breach shook them, because it was common, everyday people that did this. The same people that have had their livelihood destroyed, and have been hurt by all the COVID rules, rioting, trade deals with foreign countries, and so on. Trump is great for democracy. At every turn he exposes the hypocrisy of the current system. He needles them, and each time they over react. Exposing all their flaws. The amount of backstabbing he gets just from the Republican party, is waking up millions of people. Thanks to him, we found out how convoluted and non transparent the election process is. How biased the media is. How the Supreme court cowers to political pressure. And now how big tech is working in collusion. All things that a democratic movement can help to fix.

awb 6y ago
> Bernie sanders brags about occupying government buildings. Would he be held to the same standard? OAC praised BLM protesters marching on the White House a few months ago, with Antifa trying to breach police lines and storm the White House. This is "what about"-ism. It deflects responsibility and puts the focus on other's behavior. In this philosophy for one side to accept that what they did was bad, it requires every single other person in the world to be perfect, which is obviously impossible and therefor insulates the person from criticism. But, I'll indulge anyway. Occupying a building is a form of civil disobedience, which in the US is a respected form of protest. I don't know what incident you're talking about with Bernie, but the results matter. Did he schedule the occupation of a government building that threatened the lives of elected officials and killed a police officer? Or was it a peaceful protest? For AOC, was she praising the mass of peaceful protestors and what they stood for or was she praising an attempt to breach the White House? There's a big difference, so I want to be clear. If it was the later, then that is definitely dangerous. But praising or bragging is a far cry from planning, persuading and instigating. Plus, Bernie and AOC aren't the leader of the free world. The President has a responsibility to serve the entire US, all 330M, regardless of who voted for him or against him. Bernie has a responsibility to Vermont and AOC to the Bronx. It's apples and oranges. If you want the highest public office in the country, you need to be held to the highest standards and not complain about how those with far less power might have acted.

awb 6y ago

> To be hyperfocused on the free speech or "big brother" aspect of these bans, not the fact that a small group of rioters were just a few feet away from irreversibly staining American history This. Violence, intimidation and death are the ultimate forms of censorship. Much more so than having to switch your digital payment processor or having to self-host your blog or social media app. Germany decided after WWII that it was better to mass-censor Naziism than it was to let Nazis freely organize or spread their ideas again. It's not that Germany doesn't like free speech, it's that Naziism and free speech are diametrically opposed and forced to make a choice, they choose free speech. It seems like a contradiction where censorship promotes free speech, but it all depends on your timeline. In the short term banning Nazis limits free speech, in the long run banning Nazis increases free speech. When we give violent groups space to grow and organize, we're more anti-free speech than we realize because the capital riots are the inevitable arc (and only the opening act) for very small groups to violently oppress large numbers of peaceful citizens who love democracy.

wnevets 6y ago

Lets be honest, republicans (including trump) fought hard to allow companies to do this and much worse. They just though only cake companies in the bible belt would do it to gay couples, not to republicans.

heartbreak 6y ago
> cake companies in the bible belt s/bible belt/colorado
infogulch 6y ago
Its not very wise to construct a political weapon to use against your opponents without also considering how they could use it against you.
- paxys 6y ago
  I imagine that was the thought running through the head of every Republican in the Capitol that day. Their own monster, which they had spent the last couple of decades nurturing, was out of control and in their house ready to devour them.

rayiner 6y ago

What counts as “horrible hateful speech?” The media has been publishing articles recently with outright racist slurs against white people (using phrases like “unbearable whiteness”). Is that hateful speech? (I think so but then again I’m an elder Millennial.) And does the fact that it’s the President saying something warrant giving him more or less latitude? The right and moral thing to do was to give the duly elected President latitude until it was massive in scope and objectively false. In my mind, that didn’t happen until last month when he continued to claim the election was stolen after the rejection of his lawsuits.

skedaddle 6y ago
It was massive in scope and objectively false when he claimed Covid-19 was completely under control, compared favorably to the flu, was just misdiagnosed sniffles/flu, that it was going to miraculously disappear, etc
tptacek 6y ago
I'm surprised you keep bringing this up, because you know the counterargument here. "Whiteness" is in fact a problematic term. Italians, Jewish people, and the Irish have all been excluded from "whiteness" at times. The term expands as needed to provide solidarity against Black people. "Black", on the other hand, is an actual ethnicity --- the one we created when we kidnapped millions of people in Africa and stripped them of their original culture. Anti-whiteness crusaders can and frequently do go too far, but I object, strenuously, to the idea that mainstream articles about problematic whiteness are somehow comparable to anti-Black racism. That isn't true, and I think you know that.
- rayiner 6y ago
  So I guess I don’t understand the counter-argument. I assumed you agreed using “whiteness” as a pejorative is a problem. I agree anti-Black racism is far more destructive. But I’m not trying to establish a hierarchy of the kinds of racism. I think anti-Black racism is far more destructive than anti-Asian racism, but as an Asian I’m pretty happy to see both kinds be deemed taboo in polite society. We can’t have someone’s skin color being used in pejorative terms, and insofar as there are many people who think it’s acceptable, that only underscores why I’m tremendously skeptical of private sector censorship, where those people will disproportionately be in charge of shaping debate.

UnitingFolks 6y ago

Not from US but my opinion, we need more powerful communication tool than that exists today. Usually it is recommended that for complex and emotional content email/text communication is not good. It should be done in person. In social media complex/emotional things are being discussed in text form which causes more rift. So we need better tools video/animation/pictures to discuss things that are being discussed in social media. These better tools should be easy to use for common person to use and communicate. I think banning things temporarily to finish Biden take presidency seems OK to me. But banning permanently means we are failing with arguments to win over people. Opposing violence permanently seems OK to me, but then a law should be made for it and not left for individual company. It will be also good to have a tool, which for any argument gives all the assumption being made. Such a tool can also help in communicating better. In short we need better communication tools and better laws.

Triv888 6y ago

The world is backward... my friends that are poor vote republicans and the companies that benefit from the republicans shit on them.

kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
That is by design. The Republican party only serves the wealthy who want government to serve them exclusively. Their numbers are too small to vote themselves into power so they cook up ways to convince disenfranchised groups to glom on. By not enacting policies that satisfy these people, the GOP elites maintain an agitated base that keeps voting for them because they believe all the party propaganda. It's 1984 as an operators manual. This scheme was almost too successful when the tea partiers got elected and weren't fully on board with the real game plan. They were either assimilated or fell out of favor. Boehner's inability to contol them is why he was reduced to tears.

roenxi 6y ago

> ...the fact that a small group of rioters were just a few feet away from irreversibly staining American history with the blood of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th in the chain of command of the United states of America... Let me ask for a quick accounting here - what is the evidence for this? My understanding is 100% of the gun deaths were from guns in the hands of law enforcement officers who were perfectly capable of defending themselves when pushed. There are a bunch of instantly iconic photos [0] with basically no weapons in the hands of protestors. They clearly didn't plan on breaching the Capitol or they'd have realised that they were all about to go to jail forever. This is a not a mob out for literal blood. [0] https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/07/us/capitol-mob-deaths/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/07/us/capitol-mob-deaths/ind...

albertgoeswoof 6y ago
There were gallows, bombs, armour, zip ties and guns brought to the protest. On many of the videos you can hear the trump supporters shouting cries to kill certain members of the government, calling them traitors. Oh and they beat a police officer to death. If they had found a senior official I don’t think they would have been safe.
- roenxi 6y ago
  > There were gallows, bombs, armour, zip ties and guns brought to the protest. How many guns, bombs and zip ties? Was it even enough protestors to be called a minority who bought bombs? The press would love a few photos of people with guns storming the capital, because those that I've seen look like very poorly behaved tourists with souvenirs and selfies. Gallows happen to be a traditional prop at protests (eg, [0]). > If they had found a senior official I don’t think they would have been safe. Nobody feels safe when a protest gets out of hand, but that doesn't make it a fact that the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th in the chain of command of the United states of America were about to be injured. It is entirely plausible that the mob would have screamed at them then been broken up. That is the most likely scenario. [0] https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tommy-robinson-leads-brexit-betrayal-13709691 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tommy-robinson-leads-...

lliamander 6y ago

The left (including prominent politicians and media figures) are more than willing to provide cover or excuse political violence conducted for their side, and left-wing extremists used FB, Twitter, etc. to coordinate their actions over the past summer. This is not about removing "hate". This is about removing political opposition. The WalkAway campaign's FB page was removed, despite no violent content. The Articles of Unity project has been deplatformed from Twitter (and I believe FB) for a while with no justification and absolutely no hateful content whatsoever. Yes, there are many high-profile targets that seem easy to justify, but a much larger swath of those affected are completely unjustifiable.

bilbo0s 6y ago
I'm one of those people who has always loathed both liberals and conservatives, but the attack on the capitol went way too far. You guys want to march around and yell in the streets, I actually don't have a problem with it. I find it annoying, but as long as you're not killing anyone, I don't care. However, you want to go into congress and subvert the Constitutional order? Yeah, that's a whole different issue. I'm sorry if the conservatives can't understand the difference between BLM people yelling in the streets, and Trump people searching the capitol for senators and representatives to stop a Constitutionally mandated vote count. (Actually that was a lie, I'm not sorry. I don't give a mosquito's dick about either of you. I was just trying to be nice.) I'm done trying to explain the difference to these people, and I think these terrorists have pushed a lot of people off the fence with me. People are fed up. You don't understand the difference? You think too much of it's unjustified? Too bad. This is the way it's gotta be. We're not going to live in anarchy because conservatives and liberals want to play out crips and bloods on our republic. End rant. Edit: Man I'm getting old. That reads like I just told some kids to get off my lawn. But that's how I feel.
- lliamander 6y ago
  > I'm sorry if the conservatives can't understand the difference between BLM people yelling in the streets, and Trump people searching the capitol for senators and representatives to stop a Constitutionally mandated vote count. That is manifestly not the comparison being made. Antifa and BLM rioters burned down apartment buildings with people still inside in Kenosha. Over the summer, dozens of people were killed and there was billions of property damage (that's peoples homes and livelihoods, not just "stuff"). And Democratic politicians - including the VP-elect - provided bail for these criminals. Many democratic DAs in cities like Portland simply refused to press charges. That being said, I abhor that Capitol police were attacked and that there were people who breached the Capitol with violent intent. But the deplatformings have gone well beyond the fringe few who actually engaged or promoted violence.

canoebuilder 6y ago

The events at the capitol were very bad yes. But I get the sense people are talking past each other to a degree because there are levels to this. It goes beyond trying to figure out what the hell happened at the capitol and figuring out how best to prevent it in the future, while maintaining a healthy non-repressive society. One issue is that these private businesses have become something close to, if not de facto public utilities/infrastructure. If you ask around you can learn that this "private business overreach" of "big brother" drawing the bounds of "permissible free speech" has actually been going on for some time. The "private business overreach" part of the story is getting more attention because it has been directed at the most visible person on the planet. Or, was the most visible until Twitter et al, performed "private business overreach" reducing his visibility considerably and simultaneously getting people's attention and raising questions about the nature of power, communication, etc. in the current age. Another issue is that the "rules" for who and what gets booted and censored from these realms by an always shifting, opaque, and selectively enforced set of rules is to a statistically significant degree clearly bunched in certain areas of the ideological matrix. Are the actors in these areas of the matrix just more prone to breaking the rules or are "the rules" whatever they are today, selectively and over-zealously enforced in order to repress certain ideas and perspectives? Is there some objective standard against high level US politicians doing things that could be interpreted as inciting, instigating, or glorifying violence? How about Kamala Harriss posting a bail fund for violent rioters and criminals this past summer, wouldn't that fall squarely over the line of inciting, or instigating, or glorifying violence? Curiously, crickets around that one... > just tells me that things really went too far and should have been shut down much sooner. So is this advocating for enforcement of "pre-crime?" We should keep an eye out for people saying things we don't like then repress their ability to act in the digital age, to prevent them from committing a future crime we have projected onto them? > The fact that all these institutions just allowed this horrible hateful speech for four years, in the name of free speech etc, despite all the harassment, harm (mental and otherwise) it caused to so many people in America actually emboldened so many to the extent that now that they crossed this invisible line, they can't even really understand the ramifications of what happened. That what gets me. Hate is an emotion, emotions are subjective. There is no clear objective measure of what is "hateful speech." "Speech" is a noun, an objective thing. Free speech, as in, as little restrictions on speech as are feasible was a great insight by America's founding fathers as to what would contribute to a healthy, dynamic, non-repressive society. Turns out they were right about a lot of things. Americans today have to be adults and understand that content of speech and someone's actions are different things. The speech of someone like Trump is actually much closer to being an action. But you can't just start repressing speech no matter how "hateful" unfortunately. How about contributing with Love wherever you see hate? > a few feet away from irreversibly staining American history Sometimes I think back to another time in the recent past when there was an even more clear and present danger to members of the highest level of the federal govt. I think back in a shocked disbelief of "Holy cow... what if some large fraction of the Congress was murdered in one day?" Does anybody even remember that?! It was just a couple years ago, multiple shots were fired at Congressmen at a baseball game. It's shocking to think what could have been then. But it just seems to have dropped off the radar. I wonder why there wasn't a crackdown then on speech about things like Rachel Maddow/NYT/Media Establishment type conspiracies, or even any interest in a public airing of the attacker's motivations.

eecc 6y ago

Free speech is about protecting the tolerant from an abusive and intolerant state, not to allow the intolerant to insult and attack the tolerant. A much smarter thinker called Popper came up with an eponymous paradox about this

antibuddy 6y ago

What did Trump say/do that called for violence? Why could rioters just go to the capitol? Seeing a dozen news articles the best argument seems to be that the mention of not attending the inauguration was a call for violence. I don't buy it.

tehbeard 6y ago
> ...not attending the inauguration was a call for violence. I don't buy it. It's a soft signal, one that really you should be looking at the wider context of the last 4 years and especially the last few months, rather than just in isolation. And to the mind of someone willing to use violence (such as say, those involved in the capitol riot), it becomes "hey guys, I still believe the election was stolen by those dirty libs and I won't be at this location, so if anything bad happens there, I won't be hurt. Wink Wink, nudge nudge." We have seen what his base will do. There is no longer a time to discuss hypotheticals, they will storm a goverment office with weapons, they will kill people, they will use IEDs, and they will put the Trump cult ahead of America; because that is what they did, in a Western capital of all places.

127 6y ago

Falsely imprisoned man is angry and lashes out, which proves he wasn't falsely imprisoned in the first place.

oceanplexian 6y ago

I feel like your analysis misses the forest for the trees. Even if Facebook, Twitter, etc, had banned all these platforms and politicians, I'm confident people still would have come out for the protest. Taking away people's ability to organize on mainstream platforms didn't stop the HK protestors from organizing against the CCP. The lack of online platforms didn't stop the Color Revolutions in Eastern Europe. Even the Arab Spring, while often attributed to Twitter, happened in the face of mass censorship and Internet shutdowns. IMHO the decisions to de-platform these groups will do nothing to put a dent in their political ideology, and will only serve to throw gasoline on the fire at a contentious period where many millions of people feel like they don't have a voice. And it's likely that peaceful discourse and political thought will be wiped out as collateral damage as a result of the decisions these companies are making.

pm90 6y ago
Deplatforming has been shown to have worked to reduce the influence of extremists, specifically those that incite violence https://www.vice.com/en/article/bjbp9d/do-social-media-bans-work https://www.vice.com/en/article/bjbp9d/do-social-media-bans-.... It doesn’t need to work perfectly for it to be useful. Btw do you know what doesn’t work? Appeasement. That only lets bad actors know that they can go even further. Resisting taking reasonable action for fear of violence is plain old appeasement.

redis_mlc 6y ago

Can you provide an actual example of hateful speech by Trump or a member of his cabinet? > this horrible hateful speech for four years I've heard the left call Trump a racist for 4 years, yet he has never said a racist word. If I'm wrong, provide an example. So where's the beef? You've fallen for the big lie.

diveanon 6y ago

I have been having ongoing arguments on this forum with people who just refuse to accept the reality of what is happening. I think there is a serious mental health crisis in the US right now, and that the majority of Trump supporters are mentally incapable of acknowledging that they have been lied too, taken advantage of, and as a result are on the wrong side of history. I have been having meaningful conversations with my family about this, and I feel like I am starting to break through. Unfortunately I just don't have the emotional bandwidth to coddle the bullshit I see people posting these days in defence of this attempted coup and the resulting murders. Perhaps a better person than me can be civil with these people, but I just don't give a fuck anymore.

thewindowmovie5 6y ago

Trying to engage with the MAGA crowd has been an exercise in futility. Despite no evidence of election fraud on the scale that would overturn the result and every institution in the country asserting the election was free and fair, they refuse to accept it. When they do not act in good faith, incite violence and commit terrorist activity - I think these actions, which were the last resort, is the only sane thing to do.

sjwright 6y ago
Far from merely lacking evidence, there is plenty of evidence that Trump was planning to play this hand before the election had even taken place. The accusation effectively pre-dates the supposed evidence for it.