Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
Trump criticizing Twitter for shadow banning (bloomberg.com)
8 points by cklaus 2886 days ago
3 comments

``` Twitter “SHADOW BANNING” prominent Republicans. Not good. We will look into this discriminatory and illegal practice at once! Many complaints. ```

What kind of idiotic crap is this? Twitter is a private company, they can control what is on their site in any way they see fit. Shadow banning, while potentially destructive to the reputation of the company, is in no way illegal.

We have a moron for President.

It's just manufactured outrage. We need to collectively ignore this nonsense. It's intended to distract.
I'm no Trump fan but shadow-banning is one of the worst practices in online discussion forums IMHO.

That said, Trump has gotten a free pass countless times on violating Twitter's TOS so if anyone actually deserves a shadowban...

Except if you look at this, Vice used the wrong word. People were not shadow banned, they were not excluded from participation. They were delisted in search. The article should read "Conservatives delisted from some twitter search indices."
When did Trump violate the ToS?
That post does not answer the question.
Why the hell does Twitter even allow Trump at all? He's violated their TOS so many times I can't even. I report him all the time but for some reason his account still exists.
Politicians play by a different set of rules: https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2018/.... From the blog:

> Blocking a world leader from Twitter or removing their controversial Tweets would hide important information people should be able to see and debate. It would also not silence that leader, but it would certainly hamper necessary discussion around their words and actions.

Sounds like an easy way out of taking a stand from the spineless, "@jack" and his ilk.
what specifically did he do to violate TOS?
- https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules

See Abusive Behavior; You may not engage in the targeted harassment of someone, or incite other people to do so. We consider abusive behavior an attempt to harass, intimidate, or silence someone else’s voice.

See Violence and physical harm; You may not make specific threats of violence or wish for the serious physical harm, death, or disease of an individual or group of people.

See Threats to expose / hack; You may not threaten to expose someone’s private information or intimate media. You also may not threaten to hack or break into someone’s digital information.

meh, rappers do this all the time.
Thank you!
Posting the ToS doesn't answer the question.

- Are you saying that Trump threatening the North Korean leadership is a ToS violation?

- Would you say that Obama threatening the Syrian leadership is a ToS violation?

I like Obama a hell of a lot more than Trump but if you're going to ban military leaders (which includes most heads of state) you have to do it consistently to avoid accusations of bias.

Twitter's own rules set out what does and does not violate the rules. My opinion is irrelevant.
I know you don't work for Twitter, but the point is Twitter has to be consistent if they want to be seen as an unbiased discussion platform.

If Twitter believe a military leader stating consequences to a foreign regime, or a law officer lawfully stating consequences of breaking the law consistitutes a threat against a group of people, they need to ban all military and police from the platform.

Alternatively, they could state that conducting lawful military and police work, which includes stating the possibility of a response to an action, is not considered a threat. Or that a 'government' or 'people who have broken the law' are not a protected group.

That's classic whataboutism. Obama has nothing to do with this.
Yes he does. Obama threatened Assad repeatedly in public as part of his role as commander in chief.

Examining how people would handle Obama acting as Commander in Chief on Twitter is a great way to determine whether they're against threats by military leaders or simply against Trump.

https://www.gq.com/story/donald-trump-twitter-account-violat...

"Threatening to nuke someone is a 'violent threat,' no?"

We need every Twitter employee to quit 1 at a time and ban Trump on there way out the door.