[hackersword]

They didn't "silence" him because his brand of politics. Their stated reason for banning him from their platform was literally " due to the risk of further incitement of violence."

Their TOS have specific "Glorification of Violence policy", which aims to prevent the glorification of violence that could inspire others to replicate violent acts and determined that they were highly likely to encourage and inspire people to replicate.

Further, the claim that Twitter "Silenced" the President of the United States, a man who literally has a press room in his house, and could have a room full of reporters convened at any hour of the day to speak to. He could issue any statement from official whitehouse channels and it would instantly be disseminated across every news outlet around the world.

He chose not do those things, because he is a coward. The quintessential Keyboard Warrior/troll who likes to rile up people safe from any counter argument.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

Everyone and their cat understands that it is hypocritical bullshit. They'd let his incitements slide easily if he was their political ally and not an opponent.

I don't have a horse in that race, but it is disgusting how people defend this blatant and obvious bias as perfectly normal thing.

[judge2020]

And what sort of incitement is coming from the left? is it "socialize healthcare" or "we should throw molotovs at protests", because the latter isn't allowed on Twitch either.

[NoOneNew]

Because the Summer of Love 2020 was so peaceful and innocent from either side of politics... seriously, get over it. Both the left and the right are cut from same cloth. They'll torch whoever doesn't agree with giving them the power. Both sides are just different flavors of control.

Let's not forget how it was Trump's DHS that was mistreating folks on the border back in the day. Is it still Trump calling the shots on the border? Is it still Trump wanting to bring manufacturing to the US instead of China? No, Biden is now implementing the same policies as Trump, except in blue flavor instead of red.

Get over yourself thinking your political party salute has meaning. They're all the same assholes. Twitter and Facebook are not against violence or hate, they're against whoever doesn't agree with them.

[judge2020]

Regardless of which flavor of capitalism is currently being pushed[0], this thread is about private platforms being able to exercise their first amendment right to choose who they associate with, which is why Twitch is allowed to ban people for their political views and Parler is also allowed to ban people for 'left-wing trolling'[1].

0: https://redd.it/jpuxrv (warning: politicalcompassmemes humor)

1: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200627/23551144803/as-pr...

[throwaway0a5e]

The Maxine Walters quote (she's a goldmine of things a professional politician is irresponsible to say) was the one I was thinking of but here's a link with a bunch of other stuff too.

https://twitter.com/RealSaavedra/status/1117508460407447552

[Alupis]

All of the "fight like hell" statements and similar that have been common-place in American politician's vocabularies for decades.

[kvia]

Twitter is a company, not a court of law. Trump tarnished their reputation like nobody else, so they ceased doing business with him when it was convenient. This was facilitated by him flagrantly violating their rules for years, culminating in the riot he incited via their platform. It's as simple as that.

[gsich]

Tarnished? No.

Twitter was in the news every day. They profited massively, but now that his presidency is over there is no interest anymore.

[kvia]

Precisely. They can have their cake and eat it too. That they attracted a lot of eyeballs while he was in office doesn't mean they want to be "that website that Trump rants on" forever.

[madeofpalk]

It’s really difficult to know whether that’s true or not when we have a sample size of 1

[lostcolony]

No one inciting violence is a company's ally, unless that company sells guns, ammo, etc.

Twitter, same as every other corporate entity, benefited from Trump's tax cuts. They went years without silencing him, despite cries that his posts were dangerous. They -wanted- to keep him on their platform; he kept millions engaged with it. They even created 'world leader' exceptions -just so they wouldn't have to apply their own terms of service against him-.

It is disgusting how people act like this is bias against Trump/the GOP, when it's so obvious that the bias flows the other way, and it took an actual armed invasion of the US Capitol for these companies to finally step up and do something.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

Armed invasion? It was meeker than peaceful protests from the last summer! Not even one building was burned! That shaman guy blessing everyone in capitol chamber (including guards!) was an extreme threat to the society, right.

It is unfortunate how personal biases stop you from understanding the danger to society from unchecked 'private companies'. Trump haters are ok with it so long as Twitter and Facebook silence him but too shallow to imagine that one day they'll silence the politician they support.

[hackersword]

Meeker....? 4 people died. You are insane if you can look at the footage of that riot and equate it with "meeker" ... do you mean "they weren't black" ?

[Alupis]

3 were from heart attacks and related complications. They were not killed by the riots.

The 4rth was shot in the chest by secret service, and the 5th was the police officer that later died of injuries.

[concordDance]

I personally have no idea where to find Trump's latest babble. This is also true for pretty much everyone I know.

He has been effectively silenced. (And at least in the case of Twitter, it was definitely not for glorification of violence given the two tweets they cited in their blogpost)

[tw04]

>I personally have no idea where to find Trump's latest babble.

We'll ignore for a second that just because he can't post on twitter doesn't mean that you can't find things he's saying on twitter - so that would be the first place. 30 seconds of searching and they've got 4 posts about trump in the last 48 hours.

https://twitter.com/oann

Fox News? OANN? Newsmax? He's on almost daily and not exactly difficult to track down if you want to.

Sure you don't get his diarrhea of the mouth for 18 hours a day, but that's a far cry from being silenced.

[concordDance]

The fact it's filtered makes a big difference.

I've been mislead too many times by filtered stories to have any trust in them.

[tw04]

What do you mean filtered? They literally put him on live television.

[lenkite]

I wish such matters were decided in a Court of Law with evidence. And not by private arbiters. Twitter banned Trump simply because they could so without any repercussions. All that "Glorification of Violence" is sheer hogwash. Risk of further incitement of violence is even more hogwash. Most of the democratic party leadership should be banned from Twitter in such a case.

[roenxi]

Twitter made the mistake of publishing their reasoning [0] where they attempt to construct a violent interpretation of two perfectly mundane Trump tweets, including the jaw-dropping "To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.".

After the 2016 election, the left ginned up enough hatred that some bloke attempted to gun down a Republican representative [1]. It passed with comment but not any particular shock. This is a good example of the routine (happened in 2011 against a Democrat) level of violence in US politics. The US famously resorts to action when passions are high. Trump simply wasn't inciting anything violent, especially against that high baseline.

Twitter's actions are unjustified, and it is highly likely that all the big tech companies are thinking like this, they are known to be left-leaning. This is a wake up call to the right that these companies are threats. Any right wing government anywhere in the world that ignores the tech companies is at risk of them becoming powerful and effective politically opponents - that is a much bigger thing than people have cottoned on to. This move was big.

[0] https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_baseball_shootin...