[beltex]

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

— George Orwell, Animal Farm

I understand the moves by Stripe, Twitter, and co. However, I would argue that the long term implications set by this precedent are much worse. When the Snowden story first broke back in 2013, many on HN argued that, hey it's all good, I have nothing to hide, and I trust our President. Three short years later, who took the office? Would you have every imagined that? The same goes for this. Think five minutes into the future if you will.

If the leader of the free world can be banned from all social media and co, who are based in the very same nation, and who are monopolies, then what hope is there for the rest of us?

[Griffinsauce]

> If the leader of the free world can be banned from all social media and co, who are based in the very same nation, and who are monopolies, then what hope is there for the rest of us?

1. "leader of the free world" is an incredibly arrogant statement.

2. He can be banned for the same reason that the rest of us can: inciting violence. I'd argue that having equal rules for everyone (or even _stricter_ ones for politicians) is good and healthy. The banning of people inciting violence gives me hope.

[ergocoder]

It's your opinion that Trump incited violence.

If you ask Trump opposition, they will all say he should go to jail for 1000 years for hundreds of crime that Trump committed.

I'm not close to he situation, but I'd feel much better if a judgement like this actually comes from a trained judge with a proper due process.

[nailer]

Trump called for a March on the Capitol building. This is a very common thing for politicians to do. This does not constitute inciting violence.

[tadfisher]

You may read his statements so, but his followers treated them as marching orders.

https://twitter.com/LiteraryMouse/status/1347873498925064194

[root_axis]

> When the Snowden story first broke back in 2013, many on HN argued that, hey it's all good, I have nothing to hide

Wow, that's some impressive revisionist history, unfortunately for you its possible for us to actually look back in time and see exactly what was said.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5849932

[ramraj07]

Can you prove that the same people who said "so what" to Snowden said "this is fine to these tech actions? My personal experience is that the people who opposed to mass surveillance are fully in support of these actions. At least I do.

It's fairly clear where these companies are drawing a line, and for most people like me, it's a perfectly acceptable line. Being the cause of actual violence and death means you get to be banned. Fairly clear?

The more murky question is people who think all cake shops should serve gay weddings but twitter should also be allowed to ban trump. Tough call and nuance involved there, but I doubt there's much ambiguity separating where one stands on Snowden's revalations and these recent bans

[LadyCailin]

I'm one of those "murky question" people, and here's my take on it.

Discrimination is discrimination, and can and should be prohibited. Free speech was not invented when Twitter and Stripe were created, and thus it cannot be deprived by being banned from these platforms. Fomenting violent revolution is most certainly worth preventing, as is discrimination against people for their immutable traits. Fomenting violence is not an immutable trait.

I see the point people try to make when they equate the two, but I don’t think it’s a good one, because then it equates lgbt discrimination with private company platform bans for fomenting violence, implying that if you have one, you must tolerate the other, but that’s not true. One can ban discrimination while at the same time allowing Twitter or whoever to ban people promoting violence on/with their platforms. The principals are internally logically consistent, even if one disagrees with them.

[weixiyen]

> When the Snowden story first broke back in 2013, many on HN argued that, hey it's all good, I have nothing to hide, and I trust our President.

Most of the public was pro-Snowden, especially the tech community. Telegram rose like a rocketship as a result of concerns over NSA backdoors.

[astura]

>When the Snowden story first broke back in 2013, many on HN argued that, hey it's all good, I have nothing to hide, and I trust our President.

Wtf? Nobody said anything of the sort, and if they did they would have been downvoted to the maximum. This is just totally absurd revisionist, we were only five years removed from the W Bush administration, which committed legitimate war crimes and left office with a 22% approval rating.

[acdha]

> When the Snowden story first broke back in 2013, many on HN argued that, hey it's all good, I have nothing to hide, and I trust our President

This is … not even remotely how I remember that period, more of a sense of outrage and companies rushing to encrypt internal connections and deploy PFS.

> If the leader of the free world can be banned from all social media and co, who are based in the very same nation, and who are monopolies, then what hope is there for the rest of us?

This isn’t a great fit: Trump isn’t being banned for being a conservative or talking policies, but for inciting violence which lead to a deadly mob. If all that happens are companies enforcing their terms of service against violence or hate speech evenly, that bothers me a lot less — especially since in this case it’s treating everyone consistently rather than singling him out for special treatment.

[osgovernment]

Strength through adversity? Maybe this will be the fire needed to improve decentralization and alternative currencies that are more censorship resistant?

[awb]

> “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

Actually, the problem is that those with power can get away with this but others can’t.

Think five minutes into the future if you will where there are no consequences if you have enough political power. Some day that might be a socialist or a communist or a white nationalist or a fascist encouraging an armed group to intimidate the legislature. Will we encourage companies to continue to do business with them as well? Or do we specifically grant Republicans and Democrats the privilege to abuse the power of their office?

Imagine Jamal from down the road hammering his neighbors with lies about an election and then organizing a march into the capital that beats a police officer to death with the goal of killing the VP of the US. Jamal had no status, no privilege, no financial resources and no one to pardon him. No one is worried about Jamal or his supporters ever attaining political power and seeking revenge because they have no connections, no wealth and no access to the halls of power. No communities are “healed” by not prosecuting Jamal, so he ends up going to jail for a long time. On the flip side, Stripe has never heard of Jamal so he gets to keep his preferred payment processor after he’s released from prison. Meanwhile Trump who’s been pardoned and is living under Secret Service detail at Mar a Lago is still somehow “not as equal” as Jamal because Trump is only able to make money online through other payment processors but not his preferred Stripe gateway.

[jevgeni]

Americans didn’t Weimar-Republic into a fascist regime this time, thankfully.

The prevailing idea on HN is however “let’s have no regulation than bad regulation”... Guys, there’s such thing as good regulation.

[Griffinsauce]

To be fair, it's far from over. If this is analogous to the beer hall putsch it can be evaluated in a decade or two perhaps.

The very most dangerous thing that could be done right now is to say "glad that's over and nothing happened".

[Dumblydorr]

You're pointing out Snowden in 13 and Trump in 16 and implying there's a causal relationship between the two. This is ludicrous, Trump was elected due to numerous factors, it'd be hard to place Snowden in even the top 10. immigration, trade, feckless GOP, crowded primary field, biased dem primary, weak dem candidate, I could make massive list more important than Snowden. All trump's supporters would say about Snowden is that he's a traitor, they'd understand or care little about what he leaked.

Maybe this is a HN bubble, the vast majority of Americans wouldn't be able to tell you what Snowden even specifically leaked...or rather, the journalists leaked on his and our behalf.

Trump is not the leader of the free world any longer. He's clearly on the way out, and he invited violence while the door was closing. Even the weakened GOP must admit he is a wannabe dictator, and his rhetoric led to 5 deaths, nevermind untold thousands to pandemic.

So no, I think there is not much slippery slope implication to deplatforming insane people like Trump, Alex Jones, KKK members, Nazis, terrorists, etc. Why should these people retain the privilege of posting harmful and murderous content on a company's website? Where in the constitution is tweeting an enshrined right?

[Rexxar]

> You're pointing out Snowden in 13 and Trump in 16 and implying there's a causal relationship between the two.

Your are misinterpreting his comment. He says that you can't 100% trust in long term government/administration. There will always be a bad guy somewhere at some moment.