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Do we really have to give this guy the #1 Hacker News story? He was fading into the background so nicely.

by rogual 5y ago

pibechorro 5y ago
You mean the person who was the sitting president of the united states, who got deplatformed in unison by big tech social media, and is now fighting against censorship by using tech? Yeah, that is not relevant at all to hackernews /s
- parrellel 5y ago
  That is an interestingly context free take. What did he do? What could he possibly have done, to get that to happen? It's like I wasn't sitting a mile from the capitol watching the WTOP national mall guy hiding behind a banister while the mob from his rally battered down the doors.
- krapp 5y ago
  I like how everyone always says "sitting President of the united states" when they mention Trump's deplatforming, as if to imply that being a sitting President gives Trump greater legal right to a social media account, or that deplatforming Trump was in some way an coup or overthrow of Trump's position as President, thus reinforcing the narrative of social media being an organized supranational conspiracy that poses a threat to national sovereignty itself. It's these consistent, subtle details that make the Trumpist propaganda so effective. The other side needs to start taking notes.
  - jimktrains2 5y ago
    As much as I dislike Trump, deplatforming is much more notable while he was in office than if it had happened afterwards. I agree, though, that it does sometimes sound like it's being hinted that something more nefarious was happening when people talk about it like this.
    - smhenderson 5y ago
      But he did violate their terms of service over and over while in office. You could argue that they should have booted him sooner, after a few warnings and repeated violations. And they can argue that they gave him, and other political figures, extra leeway due to their public positions and their newsworthiness. But at the end of the day he was repeatedly given special treatment that most of us would never get on any of the platforms he was banned from. If there was anything nefarious going on it was Twitter, FB, etc. looking the other way because they knew that his violations of their terms was attracting attention and therefore making them money.
      - adventured 5y ago
        > But he did violate their terms of service over and over while in office. One of the primary issues is that Twitter has routinely granted privileged protected status to their favored political side, and refused to ban prominent people on the left that have behaved dramatically in violation of their policies [1][2]. There were a huge number of examples of it from the left during the unhinged Nick Sandermann cultural conflict for example (a wave of direct calls for violence by blue checkmarks against underage children). Twitter has no qualms with unevenly applying their policies, so long as they're helping their political side. That has particularly been going on for four or five years non-stop at this point. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2013/11/12/5094762/spike-lee-sued-for-posting-wrong-zimmerman-address-on-twitter https://www.theverge.com/2013/11/12/5094762/spike-lee-sued-f... [2] https://apnews.com/article/north-america-donald-trump-ap-top-news-movies-jane-fonda-dc61fee9d4c84506a712dd6f4974ba17 https://apnews.com/article/north-america-donald-trump-ap-top...
        smhenderson 5y ago
        I certainly don't doubt there are plenty of other examples and I don't have any love for Twitter or any other SM platform these days. But as far as I could see, only seeing the former president's tweets in the news because I'm not a Twitter user, he was also granted protected status. So I fail to see it as some leftist conspiracy and find it more likely that Twitter just allows users that attract more attention this privileged status because it's in their best interest to do so. Honestly, I don't know who Nick Sandermann is and could not care less about what Jane Fonda and Spike Lee are up to on Twitter. You've just pointed out some great examples of why I left it behind a long time ago. However, as a US citizen, I do care what my president gets up to, even on social media. Given it's outsized influence on our society these days, I'm probably more interested in what the president is saying on social media, where he, and every other politician, seem to be able to get away with saying things they'd never have said on mainstream television or on traditional media not that long ago.
  - cabalamat 5y ago
    > as if to imply that being a sitting President gives Trump greater legal right to a social media account That's not what they're implying. The implication is that if they can do it to the office-holder of one of the most powerful jobs in the world, they are very powerful and can do it to you. > the narrative of social media being an organized supranational conspiracy When lots of social media companies do the same thing at the same time, what other explanation is there?
- jd115 5y ago
  No, we mean the fat orange KGB troll by the same name.
  - elzbardico 5y ago
    Please, trump has defects enough so we don't have to resort to this stupid Russian conspiracy lie.
    - ModernMech 5y ago
      I'm sorry but what part was a lie? Russians did hack the DNC, sparing the RNC. They did coordinate with Trump associate Roger Stone in the distribution of the materials, and Stone informed Trump of this. Trump's campaign did meet with a Russian spy at Trump's residence to discuss a quid pro quo deal in which dirt on Clinton was exchanged for relaxed foreign relations, both of which did materialize from the respective parties. Trump did solicit help from Russian hackers to attack Hillary Clinton, an attack which did materialize according to investigators. And to top it all off, Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort, who was deep in debt to a Russian oligarch (Deripaska) yet working pro bono for Trump (a billionaire), was caught giving internal campaign polling data to a Russian intelligence officer (Kilimnik) working directly for Deripaska, which was then used to target the social media psyops campaign by the GRU. This is exactly the collusion many said occurred during the 2016 election, and just because it took 5 years to prove doesn't mean we were wrong in 2016 when we pointed out what was obvious to us. Yes some took it too far and said Trump was a literal agent of Russia, but the effect is really the same agent or not - the Trump campaign was working hand-in-hand with Russia to get him elected over Clinton. They were coordinating in public and private, sharing data, making deals, and following through on those deals, and they all lied about all of it at every opportunity (establishes consciousness of guilt). Collusion. These are all facts laid out in the Mueller Report Vol I [1], the Senate Intel report on Russian Active Measures (especially Vol V) [2], and the US Treasury Department [3]. Calling all of this a "lie" at this point feel like memory holing. [1] http://opensourcemuellerreport.com/mueller-report-vol-1.pdf http://opensourcemuellerreport.com/mueller-report-vol-1.pdf [2] https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/publications/report-select-committee-intelligence-united-states-senate-russian-active-measures https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/publications/report-sele... [3] https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0126 https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0126
- knowfilter 5y ago
  > users cannot "disparage, tarnish, or otherwise harm, in our opinion, us and/or the Site." Sorry how does that count as "fighting against censorship?" Sounds like they can censor any user that disparages their platform (the way that Trump regularly disparaged Twitter, on Twitter.) https://truthsocial.com/terms-of-service/ https://truthsocial.com/terms-of-service/
thinkcontext 5y ago
He's not fading. He's firmly in control of the party and is purging those that won't repeat his election lies.
- HKH2 5y ago
  What a surprise that those people happen to be neocons. Somehow we're supposed to believe George W. Bush is a good guy after all.
  - thinkcontext 5y ago
    I'm confused, what do GWB or neocons have to do with a willingness to lie about elections? Are you saying those two are bad because they aren't willing to lie about it?
    - HKH2 5y ago
      My point is that he is purging neocons, and it seems you want to construe it as being all about election issues and that he was okay with them before that.
      - thinkcontext 5y ago
        Your contention is that Trump is purging people like GA Gov Kemp because he is a neocon not because of his statements that the election was not stolen? That's a puzzling position given Trump's many, many statements mentioning Kemp and the election but none that I've seen mention neocon.
        HKH2 5y ago
        I think you're right about that one. He often says 'RINO' or 'the swamp'.
    - aksss 5y ago
      I think there's two ways people interpret that - when neocons and progressives (or whatever, the slimiest of both parties) end up arm in arm denouncing a guy, you can either say that guy must be really bad, or really good. ;)
kreeben 5y ago
I think that looking upon him as The One Who's Name We Shall Not Speak and effectively killing him on the internet will lead to him becoming a martyr among his supporters. Considering his diverse support from a number of different grass root and/or radical movements, I would say it could backfire on you, hard. We've seen what powers he bestows. These will increase with martyrdom.
- zaik 5y ago
  Fading into insignificance does not make him a martyr.
  - adventured 5y ago
    Trump isn't fading into insignificance at all. He still overwhelmingly dominantes the right half of US politics. The social media ban has made Trump look much better than he otherwise would have had he remained on social media and been blathering this entire time. Big tech did him a favor with the ban. And meanwhile Biden's mainstream media poll numbers have collapsed (which is to say his real numbers are even worse). He's one of the least popular presidents in the past century thus far. It's setting the stage for Trump to make a legitimate run at the presidency in 2024 if he so chooses. Biden won't be competent to run in 2024 and Harris can't beat Trump. The tactic of hiding Biden, which worked very well in terms of letting Trump punch himself out, is no longer working now that he's president and being held to a different expectation; instead, it's tanking his numbers because he's viewed as a mediocre leader.
- MomoXenosaga 5y ago
  Anyone who thinks deplatforming works should read Goebbels.
  - h2odragon 5y ago
    Quoting the relevant passages or mentioning the name has been getting people banned, recently from FB, Twitter, and others... "The emperor has no clothes" ha! the skinsuit tore off and the naked Terminator machinery is on display for all to see. and its nowhere near as cool and fascinating as it was in the movies. It's just "keyword list" string match stupidity re-iterated yet again.
lynndotpy 5y ago
This is interesting to me because it's both a high-profile violation of AGPL, and because it's (for better or for worse) a high-profile usage of Mastodon in the wild.
- h2odragon 5y ago
  Gab was pretty high profile too, no?
  - rvz 5y ago
    That's also true. Truth Social can just do what Gab did and provide a password-protected file in a public self-hosted git repository and they will be compliant.
  - lynndotpy 5y ago
    As far as I know, Gab never violated AGPL, and I think a social media site backed by Trump will be a much bigger deal.
    - commoner 5y ago
      Mastodon's original developer sent a cease and desist letter to Gab on October 21 for not publishing the version of their codebase that is currently in production.[1] Gab updated their repo in one hour, and later shared the entire code tree instead of just a password protected archive file.[2] It's really not that difficult to comply with AGPLv3. Truth Social should simply release the code and keep the repo up to date. [1] https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/107181466903817162 https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/107181466903817162 [2] https://code.gab.com/gab https://code.gab.com/gab
MadeThisToReply 5y ago
Enjoy this brief respite, because it won't be long until he's center of attention again.
op00to 5y ago
No he is not fading into the background. He is still currently trying to overthrow the US government. He is attempting to delegitimize elections over the entire country. He is an evil man that will stop at nothing to regain power.
- s9w 5y ago
  lmao
- nxm 5y ago
  Lots of hyperboles there
  - parrellel 5y ago
    The last sentence is definitely opinion. I'd say short sighted and dangerously self centered. The man IS going around pushing election claims, and people down ticket ARE copying him.
- elzbardico 5y ago
  Man, you know how this sound like the party line against Trotsky during Stalin's time? Please, let's keep our opposition to trump decent, lest we look like ridiculous pearl clutchers
herbst 5y ago
Isn't it still the same America that voted for him not to long ago? Censoring reality never was good idea
- spiderfarmer 5y ago
  Amplifying nonsense was never a good idea either.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
JohnWhigham 5y ago
People never miss an opportunity to reap karma from a "Trump Bad!" story

Do we really have to give this guy the #1 Hacker News story? He was fading into the background so nicely.

by rogual 5y ago

Do we really have to give this guy the #1 Hacker News story? He was fading into the background so nicely.

You mean the person who was the sitting president of the united states, who got deplatformed in unison by big tech social media, and is now fighting against censorship by using tech? Yeah, that is not relevant at all to hackernews /s

parrellel 5y ago
That is an interestingly context free take. What did he do? What could he possibly have done, to get that to happen? It's like I wasn't sitting a mile from the capitol watching the WTOP national mall guy hiding behind a banister while the mob from his rally battered down the doors.
krapp 5y ago
I like how everyone always says "sitting President of the united states" when they mention Trump's deplatforming, as if to imply that being a sitting President gives Trump greater legal right to a social media account, or that deplatforming Trump was in some way an coup or overthrow of Trump's position as President, thus reinforcing the narrative of social media being an organized supranational conspiracy that poses a threat to national sovereignty itself. It's these consistent, subtle details that make the Trumpist propaganda so effective. The other side needs to start taking notes.
- jimktrains2 5y ago
  As much as I dislike Trump, deplatforming is much more notable while he was in office than if it had happened afterwards. I agree, though, that it does sometimes sound like it's being hinted that something more nefarious was happening when people talk about it like this.
  - smhenderson 5y ago
    But he did violate their terms of service over and over while in office. You could argue that they should have booted him sooner, after a few warnings and repeated violations. And they can argue that they gave him, and other political figures, extra leeway due to their public positions and their newsworthiness. But at the end of the day he was repeatedly given special treatment that most of us would never get on any of the platforms he was banned from. If there was anything nefarious going on it was Twitter, FB, etc. looking the other way because they knew that his violations of their terms was attracting attention and therefore making them money.
    - adventured 5y ago
      > But he did violate their terms of service over and over while in office. One of the primary issues is that Twitter has routinely granted privileged protected status to their favored political side, and refused to ban prominent people on the left that have behaved dramatically in violation of their policies [1][2]. There were a huge number of examples of it from the left during the unhinged Nick Sandermann cultural conflict for example (a wave of direct calls for violence by blue checkmarks against underage children). Twitter has no qualms with unevenly applying their policies, so long as they're helping their political side. That has particularly been going on for four or five years non-stop at this point. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2013/11/12/5094762/spike-lee-sued-for-posting-wrong-zimmerman-address-on-twitter https://www.theverge.com/2013/11/12/5094762/spike-lee-sued-f... [2] https://apnews.com/article/north-america-donald-trump-ap-top-news-movies-jane-fonda-dc61fee9d4c84506a712dd6f4974ba17 https://apnews.com/article/north-america-donald-trump-ap-top...
      - smhenderson 5y ago
        I certainly don't doubt there are plenty of other examples and I don't have any love for Twitter or any other SM platform these days. But as far as I could see, only seeing the former president's tweets in the news because I'm not a Twitter user, he was also granted protected status. So I fail to see it as some leftist conspiracy and find it more likely that Twitter just allows users that attract more attention this privileged status because it's in their best interest to do so. Honestly, I don't know who Nick Sandermann is and could not care less about what Jane Fonda and Spike Lee are up to on Twitter. You've just pointed out some great examples of why I left it behind a long time ago. However, as a US citizen, I do care what my president gets up to, even on social media. Given it's outsized influence on our society these days, I'm probably more interested in what the president is saying on social media, where he, and every other politician, seem to be able to get away with saying things they'd never have said on mainstream television or on traditional media not that long ago.
- cabalamat 5y ago
  > as if to imply that being a sitting President gives Trump greater legal right to a social media account That's not what they're implying. The implication is that if they can do it to the office-holder of one of the most powerful jobs in the world, they are very powerful and can do it to you. > the narrative of social media being an organized supranational conspiracy When lots of social media companies do the same thing at the same time, what other explanation is there?
jd115 5y ago
No, we mean the fat orange KGB troll by the same name.
- elzbardico 5y ago
  Please, trump has defects enough so we don't have to resort to this stupid Russian conspiracy lie.
  - ModernMech 5y ago
    I'm sorry but what part was a lie? Russians did hack the DNC, sparing the RNC. They did coordinate with Trump associate Roger Stone in the distribution of the materials, and Stone informed Trump of this. Trump's campaign did meet with a Russian spy at Trump's residence to discuss a quid pro quo deal in which dirt on Clinton was exchanged for relaxed foreign relations, both of which did materialize from the respective parties. Trump did solicit help from Russian hackers to attack Hillary Clinton, an attack which did materialize according to investigators. And to top it all off, Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort, who was deep in debt to a Russian oligarch (Deripaska) yet working pro bono for Trump (a billionaire), was caught giving internal campaign polling data to a Russian intelligence officer (Kilimnik) working directly for Deripaska, which was then used to target the social media psyops campaign by the GRU. This is exactly the collusion many said occurred during the 2016 election, and just because it took 5 years to prove doesn't mean we were wrong in 2016 when we pointed out what was obvious to us. Yes some took it too far and said Trump was a literal agent of Russia, but the effect is really the same agent or not - the Trump campaign was working hand-in-hand with Russia to get him elected over Clinton. They were coordinating in public and private, sharing data, making deals, and following through on those deals, and they all lied about all of it at every opportunity (establishes consciousness of guilt). Collusion. These are all facts laid out in the Mueller Report Vol I [1], the Senate Intel report on Russian Active Measures (especially Vol V) [2], and the US Treasury Department [3]. Calling all of this a "lie" at this point feel like memory holing. [1] http://opensourcemuellerreport.com/mueller-report-vol-1.pdf http://opensourcemuellerreport.com/mueller-report-vol-1.pdf [2] https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/publications/report-select-committee-intelligence-united-states-senate-russian-active-measures https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/publications/report-sele... [3] https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0126 https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0126
knowfilter 5y ago
> users cannot "disparage, tarnish, or otherwise harm, in our opinion, us and/or the Site." Sorry how does that count as "fighting against censorship?" Sounds like they can censor any user that disparages their platform (the way that Trump regularly disparaged Twitter, on Twitter.) https://truthsocial.com/terms-of-service/ https://truthsocial.com/terms-of-service/

thinkcontext 5y ago

He's not fading. He's firmly in control of the party and is purging those that won't repeat his election lies.

HKH2 5y ago
What a surprise that those people happen to be neocons. Somehow we're supposed to believe George W. Bush is a good guy after all.
- thinkcontext 5y ago
  I'm confused, what do GWB or neocons have to do with a willingness to lie about elections? Are you saying those two are bad because they aren't willing to lie about it?
  - HKH2 5y ago
    My point is that he is purging neocons, and it seems you want to construe it as being all about election issues and that he was okay with them before that.
    - thinkcontext 5y ago
      Your contention is that Trump is purging people like GA Gov Kemp because he is a neocon not because of his statements that the election was not stolen? That's a puzzling position given Trump's many, many statements mentioning Kemp and the election but none that I've seen mention neocon.
      - HKH2 5y ago
        I think you're right about that one. He often says 'RINO' or 'the swamp'.
  - aksss 5y ago
    I think there's two ways people interpret that - when neocons and progressives (or whatever, the slimiest of both parties) end up arm in arm denouncing a guy, you can either say that guy must be really bad, or really good. ;)

kreeben 5y ago

I think that looking upon him as The One Who's Name We Shall Not Speak and effectively killing him on the internet will lead to him becoming a martyr among his supporters. Considering his diverse support from a number of different grass root and/or radical movements, I would say it could backfire on you, hard. We've seen what powers he bestows. These will increase with martyrdom.

zaik 5y ago
Fading into insignificance does not make him a martyr.
- adventured 5y ago
  Trump isn't fading into insignificance at all. He still overwhelmingly dominantes the right half of US politics. The social media ban has made Trump look much better than he otherwise would have had he remained on social media and been blathering this entire time. Big tech did him a favor with the ban. And meanwhile Biden's mainstream media poll numbers have collapsed (which is to say his real numbers are even worse). He's one of the least popular presidents in the past century thus far. It's setting the stage for Trump to make a legitimate run at the presidency in 2024 if he so chooses. Biden won't be competent to run in 2024 and Harris can't beat Trump. The tactic of hiding Biden, which worked very well in terms of letting Trump punch himself out, is no longer working now that he's president and being held to a different expectation; instead, it's tanking his numbers because he's viewed as a mediocre leader.
MomoXenosaga 5y ago
Anyone who thinks deplatforming works should read Goebbels.
- h2odragon 5y ago
  Quoting the relevant passages or mentioning the name has been getting people banned, recently from FB, Twitter, and others... "The emperor has no clothes" ha! the skinsuit tore off and the naked Terminator machinery is on display for all to see. and its nowhere near as cool and fascinating as it was in the movies. It's just "keyword list" string match stupidity re-iterated yet again.

lynndotpy 5y ago

This is interesting to me because it's both a high-profile violation of AGPL, and because it's (for better or for worse) a high-profile usage of Mastodon in the wild.

h2odragon 5y ago
Gab was pretty high profile too, no?
- rvz 5y ago
  That's also true. Truth Social can just do what Gab did and provide a password-protected file in a public self-hosted git repository and they will be compliant.
- lynndotpy 5y ago
  As far as I know, Gab never violated AGPL, and I think a social media site backed by Trump will be a much bigger deal.
  - commoner 5y ago
    Mastodon's original developer sent a cease and desist letter to Gab on October 21 for not publishing the version of their codebase that is currently in production.[1] Gab updated their repo in one hour, and later shared the entire code tree instead of just a password protected archive file.[2] It's really not that difficult to comply with AGPLv3. Truth Social should simply release the code and keep the repo up to date. [1] https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/107181466903817162 https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/107181466903817162 [2] https://code.gab.com/gab https://code.gab.com/gab

MadeThisToReply 5y ago

Enjoy this brief respite, because it won't be long until he's center of attention again.

op00to 5y ago

No he is not fading into the background. He is still currently trying to overthrow the US government. He is attempting to delegitimize elections over the entire country. He is an evil man that will stop at nothing to regain power.

s9w 5y ago
lmao
nxm 5y ago
Lots of hyperboles there
- parrellel 5y ago
  The last sentence is definitely opinion. I'd say short sighted and dangerously self centered. The man IS going around pushing election claims, and people down ticket ARE copying him.
elzbardico 5y ago
Man, you know how this sound like the party line against Trotsky during Stalin's time? Please, let's keep our opposition to trump decent, lest we look like ridiculous pearl clutchers

herbst 5y ago

Isn't it still the same America that voted for him not to long ago? Censoring reality never was good idea

spiderfarmer 5y ago
Amplifying nonsense was never a good idea either.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

JohnWhigham 5y ago

People never miss an opportunity to reap karma from a "Trump Bad!" story