It sounds like he tweeted new things today that they considered breaching their earlier warning? Does anyone know what those tweets were?
Edit: Oh, damn, I had just seen the Twitter Safety and just assumed that this was linking to that, not to a separate blogpost. As many people have pointed out it was for these two tweets:
On January 8, 2021, President Donald J. Trump tweeted:
“The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”
Shortly thereafter, the President tweeted:
“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”
> The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!
> To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.
Ok so he’s dissing the incoming President... ok, that’s rude. But the other preceding text is pretty anodyne.
I think it’s clear about controlling the narrative.
In the end what this will do is kickstart more of an echochamber on another service, they’ll diverge and we’ll get people in one camp on one platform, the other camp in the other. Except they’ll be more extreme on both sides as moderates tail off.
He hasn’t been charged with anything, so no. I would like to think Twitter would ban any public figure who appears to be inciting a second terrorist attack mere days after inciting a first one.
There's blood and bullet holes in the halls of Congress! Principles of neutrality and restraint fly out the window when the seat of government is attacked by a violent mob. We can't just keep our fingers crossed that they don't mean it when they say they're coming back.
Not much more than a big gorilla with a lot of guns. That's why maintaining the principles of neutrality is so important - and why we must react so severely when someone breaches the principles of neutrality to try and install their preferred politicians into power.
> The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!
> To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.
Imagine living in a society where saying either of these things is a banning offense. To all the censorship apologists here: you've given unelected and unaccountable people at big tech companies the ability to decide what people can say in public. Is that really the world you want to live in?
Everyone focuses so much on censorship but nobody focuses on the opposite, that is - what does social media promote by default.
Well, this is what they promote: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6380/1146 . They promote content that results with engagement since thats most profitable for them, above all else. It just so happens that emotional fake novelty spreads the most and leads to maximum engagement.
Optimizing for engagement above all else is what has lead to that unhealthy, toxic environment. Monsters have been created, and they are out of control. It doesn't matter who social media companies ban, or what was actually tweeted: if there is a way to interpret it in the most emotionally charged, exciting way, it will eventually be reinterpreted that way, just like a game of broken telephone.
Yes, because as the article discusses, in context these tweets are being interpreted by his followers as, “don’t give up.” There are already postings on Parler about coming back to DC on the 19th and 20th.
His entire presidency was marked by #NotMyPresident and every democrat member of government, media, and tech all supporting protests against him for 4 years straight. Did they give up? If not, then why should his supporters?
> To all the censorship apologists here: you've given unelected and unaccountable people at big tech companies the ability to decide what people can say in public. Is that really the world you want to live in?
You have things backwards: they haven't and in fact I do and already do.
What gives Twitter the right to decide what can be said via its software is the first amendment to the US constitution. Which is a world I live in and do want to live in -- it's stronger and better than the "free" speech guarantees in Europe.
The first amendment prevents elected people from deciding what people can and can't say in public.
And twitter banning someone doesn't actually control what they can say "in public", merely on Twitter. I don't use twitter and I heard about this from one of those other channels.
Throughout US history the person with the press has been able to decide what is printed on its press. Today there are more opportunities to be heard than ever before.
Would you support the electricity and water companies shutting off people's supplies because they have the wrong views? There are some services so fundamental to participation in society that only the state ought to be able to take them away. Social media is on the list.
> There are some services so fundamental to participation in society that only the state ought to be able to take them away. Social media is on the list.
Ah, reading that opened my eyes because, personally, I really couldn't disagree more. I suspect that disagreement on this is behind much of why people don't see eye-to-eye on this "private censorship" issue. I know very few people who use social media, and I don't see anything lacking from their role in society as a result. No offense, just my $0.02. :-)
The linked blog post actually did the opposite of what you're doing and put these tweets in context. He didn't just say these words unconnected to anything, man.
Gotta love people -- on a news site made for people who tinker with computers -- thinking in binary and not having nuance.
> Imagine living in a society where saying either of these things is a banning offense.
These tweets HAVE to be taken in context. It would be disingenuous to take every single one of his tweet at face value without considering his influence and position. He's dog whistled enough in the past, and look where that led.
> .. what people can say in public
Twitter != public
Twitter cannot prevent you from physically speaking your opinion
The very idea of "freedom of speech" translates pretty poorly in the era of social media. Giving someone the freedom to speak their mind is orthogonal from giving them the ability to instantly amplify and broadcast their speech.
Absolutely not. But neither do I want any tech that becomes successful to be automatically be controlled by some somehow elected instance.
So, for this specific case: OK, Twitter, got you. We happen to be on the same side, but your reaction makes me migrate my (non-existing, for the same reasons) twitter account to something else.
IMHO, we need to ban every government and their agencies from relying on commercial services only: A minimalistic message routing protocol should exist that governments require participants in their market-place to support.
The guardrails they've laid down are incredibly wide. A police officer died as a result of extreme rhetoric they left up from this guy - he had more than enough chances. I agree that these Tweets are only mildly inflammatory; but given the context that he should be doing everything in his power to calm the situation he caused, they're completely inappropriate.
Given that, "Is that really the world you want to live in?" ... Yes.
I'd rather live in that world than the world where my national legislature flees their chambers in fear of a mob trying to overturn the democratic process. Do you have a third option to suggest?
Subtext is important. The "Assessment" section of the linked article is pretty clear:
This determination is based on a number of factors, including:
- President Trump’s statement that he will not be attending the Inauguration is being received by a number of his supporters as further confirmation that the election was not legitimate and is seen as him disavowing his previous claim made via two Tweets (1, 2) by his Deputy Chief of Staff, Dan Scavino, that there would be an “orderly transition” on January 20th.
- The second Tweet may also serve as encouragement to those potentially considering violent acts that the Inauguration would be a “safe” target, as he will not be attending.
- The use of the words “American Patriots” to describe some of his supporters is also being interpreted as support for those committing violent acts at the US Capitol.
- The mention of his supporters having a “GIANT VOICE long into the future” and that “They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!” is being interpreted as further indication that President Trump does not plan to facilitate an “orderly transition” and instead that he plans to continue to support, empower, and shield those who believe he won the election.
- Plans for future armed protests have already begun proliferating on and off-Twitter, including a proposed secondary attack on the US Capitol and state capitol buildings on January 17, 2021.
Context is important when evaluating words. The president has historically shown a pattern of speaking out of both sides of his mouth ("stand back and stand by"). The pattern continues here.
If you read the post it's pretty clear that a random person saying either of those won't get them banned. Twitter talks a lot about the context around them, how other people are interpreting them, and how past actions of Trump are influencing their decision.
> Due to the ongoing tensions in the United States, and an uptick in the global conversation in regards to the people who violently stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, these two Tweets must be read in the context of broader events in the country and the ways in which the President’s statements can be mobilized by different audiences, including to incite violence, as well as in the context of the pattern of behavior from this account in recent weeks.
That's so Orwellian. That so obviously reads... "we wanted to ban him, so we did".
Like, if you want to ban him based on past tweets, just do it. But to claim that this tweet is inciting violence is just farcical.
Be prepared for more nebulous, uncharitable "you're lending support to those who promote violence" bans in the future. Wouldn't be surprised to see it being used more aggressively across a variety of platforms in the coming weeks.
The second Tweet may also serve as encouragement to those potentially considering violent acts that the Inauguration would be a “safe” target, as he will not be attending.
Plans for future armed protests have already begun proliferating on and off-Twitter, including a proposed secondary attack on the US Capitol and state capitol buildings on January 17, 2021.
It seems possible if not likely that Twitter is closely monitoring how his followers are reacting to the tweets (at a scale that none of us are really capable of), and the permanent ban results most closely from that.
It is also possible that Twitter is trying to evade liability in case there are more attacks and there was some organization on their platform.
The downvotes on these sensible comments clearly shows me HN is filled with anti-liberals who support big tech billionaires while claiming to be resistance.
Definition of Liberal used to be: "Willing to respect or accept behavior or opinions different from one's own; open to new ideas. Relating to or denoting a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise."
You've been using HN primarily for political battle, which we ban accounts for, regardless of which politics they're battling for or against. We have to, because doing that destroys the curious conversation HN is supposed to exist for (see [1] for more explanation). I've therefore banned the account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. The rules are here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Not surprising. The election of a Democrat government has emboldened them to start censoring their political enemies with less fear of government reprisal.
This should hopefully spur more competition in the micro-blogging space as conservatives are now forced to create their own alternative. Previous alternatives didn't see much usage since the biggest names like Trump were still on Twitter.
TechnoFog, an account which literally only tweets lawsuits just got banned too.
#WalkAway is a movement of ex liberals who have left the democrat party. Founded by a gay dude, majority blacks, hispanics, gay etc. Had over half a million users who shared their testimonials on why they left the democrat party. Facebook banned the group today along with the founder and all the members.... all 500K of them
Edit: Oh, damn, I had just seen the Twitter Safety and just assumed that this was linking to that, not to a separate blogpost. As many people have pointed out it was for these two tweets:
On January 8, 2021, President Donald J. Trump tweeted:
“The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”
Shortly thereafter, the President tweeted:
“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”