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Exactly. I'm even sort of glad all of this is happening, because it shows more clear than ever to everyone who can think calmly because he isn't into all this p
by krick 6y ago
Exactly. I'm even sort of glad all of this is happening, because it shows more clear than ever to everyone who can think calmly because he isn't into all this political bullshit (which are few, sadly), how broken all this stuff really currently is. And it's broken on so many levels.
First off, I don't see why, philosophically, the owner of a service shouldn't be allowed to decide, who he wants to do business with. And despite I do remember some stories when the same people who are cheering for Trump to get banned everywhere were defending, quite hypocritically, the opposite point of view, it really wasn't something new and outrageous, even back then, especially when dealing with all these internet-machines. We are long used to the fact, that getting banned on some internet forum is ok and you generally don't have the real option to appeal. The host is the host, and he bans whoever he wants. And while sometimes it may be much much more than a little inconvenience for the person getting banned, people never really cared, because it's rare enough for the consequences of it to be really tragic for people to feel empathetic: society doesn't give a fuck about the problems of an individual unless enough people fear the same might happen to them.
Second, it's never been a secret, where Silicon Valley (HN folks included) is leaning politically. So let's not pretend there are some justifications why they had to do all this shit to Trump for some greater good. The truth is, the entities involved just hate the guy, pretty much everyone in big tech except for Thiel was donating generously to his opponents. So no big surprise here either.
But the first thing that was really special about Trump being bullied by Twitter (quite a while ago) is that this was not some random guy, it was the acting president of a country that hosts Twitter, elected by (more or less) half of the country (on both occasions). So, while (arguably) playing by the rules, Twitter was basically showing that their opinion was more important, than the opinion of the guy half of their the country voted for. And there wasn't some other platform which he could move to, Twitter is Twitter and the rest is, well, the rest. So this was the first point.
Fast forward to now, Trump being banned from everywhere and apps that refuse to ban Trump being banned from Amazon/Apple Store/Google Play themselves, we arrive to the second point: things look a little differently, when there are like 3 major service providers that are supposedly competing with each other, and if they all agree that you're a person non-grata, you are fucked. Even if the half of the country supports you, it's nothing. What really matters that 10 guys on top of these big companies don't like you.
I don't really care about USA elections bullshit, so here is the real point: we don't usually see this, because, first off, there's supposedly not that many reasons for all of FAANG and such to dislike some random person, and second, if it happens, we'll never hear about it anyway. But if the guy half of the country supports (nevermind he is even so called POTUS) struggles to deal with this, everyone else is completely at their mercy.
So either there is decentralization, or there is this.