Those people with molotov cocktails have been almost exclusively targeting property rather than people, and specifically corporate rather than personal property. I'm not suggesting you should approve that, but it is categorically different.
As for your question, it makes a huge difference. While any weapon can be used to inflict harm (by definition), some make that significantly easier than others. It's facile to ignore this and pretend all harms are equivalent.
...
> I therefore believe that it is completely wrong to justify Twitter's continuing trials on discoursive influence over the notion that it's alright since Trump might be a particularly bad actor.
what you see is a global company acting locally and so not too surprising, no? Algorithmic biases and assumption engineered so the service is successful with a US ideology. Nobody asks the question in any tech company does the product only work in my market (unless you're outside the US). There are plenty of German companies (start-ups especially) which first design for a market that works in the US. Even language support is first English before they become local. FAANG and every SV start-up thinks first whether that works here in the US. It's just normal business sense and no big scheme of why they do this. Twitter does it because it makes sense for them to fight back against lies and disinformation that end up killing people. Free Speech ends here.
I get everyone thinks free speech is essential, but we live in a world where free speech is not a thing for very valid reasons. Germany only promises freedom of opinion; they don't actually promise you can tell anyone that opinion, try denying the holocaust. And in Germany, you're not legally allowed to insult someone (civil matter, but still not legal), in Berlin, and someone got convicted (eventually overturned but the fact it happened is massive) for farting on a police officer. The US, which claims to be the centre of freedom, has one of the lowest press freedoms and a multitude of laws to keep things secret. There are things that we know people shouldn't be allowed to say. Freedom of speech is a myth and should not be used to enable the destruction of democracy or to spread propaganda (in any sense).
I'm sure the majority of people here would agree terrorism propaganda videos shouldn't be hosted on twitter or youtube, and people shouldn't be allowed to promote terrorism. Well, this is basically the same, in many of the Trump supporter stuff, I've seen calls for domestic terrorism.
Also, I think a lot of people don't realise why we're seeing an increase in companies stepping up here. Biden has offically won, now. All states have certified who won. The election is over. All that can be done now is stirring up hate and starting a civil war.
I don't think Bush/Gore undermined anything.
I don't think Hillary undermined them when she told Biden not to concede under any circumstances. I don't support her or Biden's politics, but I cheered that position.
That's because in that case you had the infamous butterfly ballots in one large Florida county, where a very poor UI led to a large number of people voting for both Gore and Buchanan. You also had a large number who voted for Buchanan but for all the other offices voted for people that it was very unlikely a Buchanan supported would vote for.
For those not familiar with them, the ballots listed Bush at the top of the left page, with Gore listed second on that page. Buchanan was listed on the top of the right page, with the list on the right page vertically offset so it was like this:
------
Bush | |----------
-----| | Buchanan
Gore | |----------
-----| | McReynolds
Browne | |----------
-----| (and so on)
Nadar |
(and so on)
The ballot was wide enough that you might not realize that there were Presidential candidates on both pages.
It is very hard not to conclude that many people who wanted to vote Gore saw he was second on the left page, and so punched the second hole, and some realized their mistake and tried to correct it leading to both holes two and three punched.
That's why the challenges there did not undermine anything (other than confidence that whoever designed those ballots was competent). We had actual concrete and sound evidence that a large number of ballots did not reflect the intended vote of the voter, and there were enough of these to affect the outcome because it was an extremely close race.
The 2020 challenges so far have failed to include any concrete and sound evidence. Its all been things like that surveillance video that they say shows extra ballots being sneaked in late at night, which when you look at the whole video instead of just that short clip you see that those were ballots that had always been there--when counting stopped for the night they were put in their standard ballot storage containers, and what the clip is showing is those ballots being removed from those containers when counting resumed.
Or things like that statistical argument that was in the Texas Supreme Court filing that said there was only a one in a quadrillion chance that Trump could lead in the evening and then behind after more ballots were counted overnight, which completely overlooked that in-person ballots were counted before absentee ballots, and that Democrats were far more likely to vote absentee because of COVID than were Republicans.
That's why 2020 challenges are undermining in a way no previous election challenges were. They aren't going to force any strengthening against fraud because they are failing to point out any fraud to strengthen against.
Such proclamations come off as either "Nothing to see here" or "Lock her up" rhetoric to me. Too much, too soon.
Some of us are trying to be open-minded about the evidence being presented, while others accept the first argument that supports their bias. I think it's wiser to take the first tack.
How much more research do you do on any particular piece of evidence after some media outlet tells you that you don't need to worry about it?
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ha7iWECm_8E [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-nblE8ps2M
I have so far seen no reason to worry about the latter bit.
The ability to run a standing army can be used for ill. Yet we have an army.
The ability to regulate corporate pollution can be used for ill. Yet we have pollution regulations.
The ability to throw people in prison via the justice system can be used for ill. Yet we have laws and courts and prisons.
The article is about Twitter exploring new ways to shape interactions with the content from Trump, a retreating politician, on their platform.
This development is far more relevant to me than the largely US american pro/contra Trump debate, as my own societies discourse is dependent on those very same platforms.
I therefore believe that it is completely wrong to justify Twitter's continuing trials on discoursive influence over the notion that it's alright since Trump might be a particularly bad actor.
I think that's off topic and misses the point.
I just thought I'll explain since the thread appears to be very heated right now. People might attribute up & downvotes to a far smaller set of reasons than they should on a platform as global as HN.