[Karunamon]

Mea culpa: I had the completely wrong idea on this post. See down thread. I would delete this comment if I could.

Is that why "Hang Mike Pence" was allowed to trend with 14K tweets, and later that same day "Hang Pence" with 55K?[1]

I'd wager every penny I own that almost none of those people were banned or sanctioned in any way.

[1]: https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1347791913806532609

[NineStarPoint]

Not only did twitter end up removing it, but it was a hashtag in response to a video from the protests of people yelling “Hang Mike Pence”, primarily not people actually calling for Mike Pence to be hanged. That I keep seeing this example being thrown around from conservative sources shows either a desire to argue in bad faith or a complete inability to research things beyond the absolute surface level. And it’s not like there aren’t other examples one could use to make reasonable complaints about censorship bias on twitter.

[Karunamon]

Did they actively remove it, or did it just age out of trending like everything does after a relatively short amount of time?

[debaserab2]

Shouldn't you be the one researching the argument you're supporting?

[Karunamon]

I wasn't the one that made the claim it was actively removed.

[debaserab2]

Come on, you threw out a baseless claim that didn't even survive a superficial level of scrutiny. Now you're just moving goal posts.

[Karunamon]

In fairness, I don't have a habit of applying tight scrutiny to things that appear, on their face, to be blatant calls to violence. It's usually self-evident by reading the words.

Twitter's actions aren't even self-consistent here. If these tweets were all innocuous, then why remove the trend? If they were primarily discussions of other people's activity, rather than explicit calls for violence, then there was no good reason to do this.

Also, there's nothing "moving goal posts" about asking people to at least try to substantiate what they post. The person I responded to didn't even bother posting a link.

[chickenpotpie]

And then Twitter removed it. Could have been faster definitely, but Parler would have never taken it down at all.

[dagmx]

It was brought about because the insurrectionists were shouting that after posts on Parler called for it. Twitter then moderated and banned it.

You're really cutting out a ton of context here to fit a narrative. Parler was the source of the posts and parler would not moderate it.

[danso]

How many of those tweets were users commenting on news reports that the rioters were chanting "Hang Mike Pence"? https://twitter.com/search?q=hang%20mike%20pence&src=typed_q...

[jmull]

That argument doesn't hold water.

"Hang Mike Pence", as has been noted many times, was trending because people were discussing the videos showing Trump rioters chanting that.

People were not banned for using that phrase for the same reason you and I are not going to be banned/flagged for using it here: we aren't calling for violence and murder.

edit: previously called this a bad-faith argument, but that's not fair.

[anigbrowl]

as has been noted many times

A big problem on social networks (including right here on HN) is that it's very easy for people to behave disingenuously and ask questions to which they already know the answer.It's a very effective wayt o either spread misinformation or steal the time of people who are concerned about misinformation, because it's much cheaper to repeat a BS allegation than it is to debunk it.

Another problem (more peculiar but not unique to HN) is that calling out such behavior is often regarded as uncivil. To my mind disingenuity is far more uncivil; I prefer a rude truth to a polite lie.

[Karunamon]

Yet another problem is the common willful conflation of simply being wrong with bad faith or disingenuity. People generally won't correct themselves if they know they're going to get screamed at or dogpiled either way.

[anigbrowl]

That's a lesser problem, because people who get something wrong once are typically fine with being corrected, and contrariwise people are unlikely to dogpile someone for making a single mistake.

Examples of disingenuity include people asking naive-seeming questions to which those same people have already received detailed answers in the past, or repeating factual assertions that they made previously and which were shown and acknowledged to be false. It's not so common on HN but sadly very common on big social media sites or on news commenting platforms like disqus.