[neartheplain]

How many times a year do you watch C-SPAN? How often do you browse the press release page for your local elected official, much less someone else's? Whatever you think of this particular Congresswoman, Twitter is one of the largest and most influential outreach platforms. It's like getting banned from radio in the 1940s and saying, "Who cares? There's still newsletters and speaking engagements." Getting banned from Twitter is a big deal for people who engage with mass audiences.

[mkr-hn]

She still has her congressional account. This is only her personal account.

edit to add: That said, she can say things on C-SPAN that would get the congressional account suspended too (see: Trump hopping accounts as they got suspended after the initial ban). And those things would be reported by people who can do so under the cover of reporting, so it's not like she has any less reach for the goofballery now.

[rektide]

> It's like getting banned from radio in the 1940s

It'd be like getting banned from one station, perhaps. Radio? To my knowledge the FCC has never banned anyone from the airwaves.

This pretense that the big social networks are so big that politicians must be granted access is just poisonous beyond belief to what the internet is. No one is stopping MTG from setting up countless points of her own presence, or sharing links to MTG-related media on Twitter.

Alas, that getting banned from one of the big networks is a crude, de-facto facsimile to a truth is quite the sad sign of the state of affairs. That we have become so very centralized, that our primary way of connecting is via such heavily centralized pillars that hold up so very much of the online experience is nothing short of a travesty. I mainly try to calm myself by reminding myself how recent all this is, how new. And assuring myself of their inability to create new & visionary ways of connecting; the big networks are beholden to their experience as massified, consumerized, common experiences. Their own impermissiveness, their own slowly closing, setting ever more fast in concrete rules & expectations bring hope that the frontier & more open communications might rise again.

[josephcsible]

> It'd be like getting banned from one station, perhaps. Radio?

It's more like if one company owned a large proportion of radio stations in every town, and that company banned you.

[clowd]

> It's like getting banned from radio in the 1940s and saying, "Who cares? There's still newsletters and speaking engagements."

It's more like getting banned from one radio station in the 1940s and going "Who cares? She can still go on a bunch of other radio stations, and most people are capable of tuning in, if they want to."

She's on Facebook. She's on Gab. She's on Parler. She's on Gettr. She went on a cross-country tour last year. She appears on TV and will probably get even more TV appearances out of this. Anyone who wants to hear whatever she's saying has their choice of outlets from which to do so.

[josephcsible]

Facebook has a habit of politically motivated bans too, so she'll probably get banned from there next just like everyone else has. And Gab and Parler have a really hard time getting users since Google banned them from the Play Store (and I think Apple did the same), so it's disingenuous to pretend that they're equivalents to Twitter.

[clowd]

I don't think "everyone else" has been banned from Facebook; aside from Trump, I can't think of any other American elected official they've banned. Gab and Parler both work fine in a web browser.

[josephcsible]

That didn't take Facebook long: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

[jml78]

Do you realize her official Congress account is not banned? Only her personal account that she used to spread misinformation.