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Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by 6gvONxR4sf7o on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @07:21PM (#25664974)
It's amazing that the reactions to this are both "should have banned him years ago for violating their rules" and "this is blatant dangerous censorship." Whichever side you're on, this is a lose-lose situation for twitter.
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by chillacy on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @07:31PM (#25665220)
There is no popular position with moderation, everyone hates the umpire.

On the flip side, if everyone hates you equally you're probably on the right track.

Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by skrebbel on Thursday January 07, 2021 @02:09AM (#25668121)
> everyone hates the umpire.

I'd say @dang is pretty liked around here! Ups to the great umpire, keep it up. This shit is hard.

Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by nindalf on Thursday January 07, 2021 @04:01AM (#25668859)
He is, but maybe there’s some survivorship bias there. We can’t really ask the shadowbanned people what they think of the moderation because they’re shadowbanned.
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by oefrha on Thursday January 07, 2021 @06:32AM (#25669860)
> We can’t really ask the shadowbanned people what they think of the moderation because they’re shadowbanned.

Just flip the showdead switch in settings and you can enjoy the infinite wisdom and feistiness of banned users. Can’t be easier. For instance, in this thread there’s exactly one banned sibling, making a gross, sexual personal attack.

Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by nindalf on Thursday January 07, 2021 @07:08AM (#25670105)
We don't know what they think of the moderation though. These folks aren't bright enough to know that they've been banned.
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by hef19898 on Thursday January 07, 2021 @07:32AM (#25670288)
Which always puzzles me. I have showdead on, just to get the whole picture. And because it is sometimes hilarious, to be honest. But how an you not realize you have been banned, when everyone on here is talking about it?
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by oefrha on Thursday January 07, 2021 @07:45AM (#25670385)
Moderator-banned accounts usually get a moderation comment announcing they are banned. There are accounts killed by software though.
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by dan-robertson on Thursday January 07, 2021 @07:52AM (#25670412)
Far fewer people are shadowbanned these days. And I think if people are commenting reasonably without realising they are shadowbanned, dang will try to get in touch to let them know they are banned.
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by szatkus on Thursday January 07, 2021 @06:26AM (#25669809)
You can turn on dead comments in your preferences and see all the nice things they have to say.
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by throwaway0a5e on Thursday January 07, 2021 @07:30AM (#25670266)
Most of the things they have to say are reasonable most of the time. Like mundane comments about programming languages and whatnot.

I think they would be pretty pissed off to know that they've been banned for months or more because they said something that rubbed the mods the wrong way at one point.

Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by stefantalpalaru on Thursday January 07, 2021 @10:07AM (#25671871)
> I think they would be pretty pissed off to know that they've been banned for months or more because they said something that rubbed the mods the wrong way at one point.

We know, but some of us enjoy reminding Ian Murdock's friends-in-need of what they did.

Preferably before it's their turn to ask for help...

Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by CJefferson on Thursday January 07, 2021 @04:46AM (#25669185)
I don't want to blame @dang for this, but I see plenty of people talking about the toxic content of "The orange website", and several people have bothered to explicitly block links from here.
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by ZephyrBlu on Thursday January 07, 2021 @05:31AM (#25669463)
Really? What makes someone view HN as "toxic content"?
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Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by dalmo3 on Thursday January 07, 2021 @06:01AM (#25669656)
HN also applies sarcasm without disclaimers.
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by loyukfai on Thursday January 07, 2021 @04:12AM (#25668932)
HN is a much more civilized place compared to the wild west.
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by colejohnson66 on Thursday January 07, 2021 @05:38AM (#25669509)
Could that just be a size thing? I remember Twitter being a lot more sane place before it was overrun by politics a few years ago. Or maybe the algorithm was better at keeping that stuff away?
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by tpxl on Thursday January 07, 2021 @05:54AM (#25669608)
It is a size thing, but it's also a moderation thing. I haven't seen moderation this good anywhere else, no matter the size.
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by woofie11 on Thursday January 07, 2021 @06:24AM (#25669800)
I think large scale makes it impossible to be good. Small scale doesn't guarantee good.

Reddit, slashdot, and a whole slew of others went through an HN-like phase of high-quality discussions and content before turning into cesspools.

I think what makes HN unique is benevolent sponsorship. There isn't pressure to grow. It's recruiting for Y-Combinator, which eliminates most of the normal pressures.

Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by froseph on Thursday January 07, 2021 @07:39AM (#25670350)
My favorite article on the life cycle (growth & collapse) of online communities is “Attacked from Within”* from the old kuro5hin site. I’ve always been curious to how it’s suggested solutions to the moderation problem would turn out.

* Archived here: http://atdt.freeshell.org/k5/story_2009_3_12_33338_3000.html

Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by dan-robertson on Thursday January 07, 2021 @07:54AM (#25670431)
It wasn’t so long ago (less than 10 years, perhaps more than 5) that HN was full of similarly bad comments
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by chasd00 on Thursday January 07, 2021 @08:11AM (#25670572)
i also think it's a content thing. the content of HN doesn't lend itself to lunatics most of the time. i say "most" because it certainly happens (see the early covid threads and the hatred spewed for anyone questioning or even just wondering aloud about the lockdowns)
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by h0l0cube on Thursday January 07, 2021 @04:02AM (#25668865)
I don't think the incendiary rhetoric of most of Twitter (let alone Trump) would pass muster with HN moderation.

Edit: People downvoting me even though I'm right. Take most of the comments you see on Twitter in subject matter and/or delivery, and they would be either downvoted or moderated off this platform. No-one in good faith (who has had reasonable exposure to Twitter) could argue this is not the case. Just to be clear, I believe this to be a good thing.

Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by midasuni on Thursday January 07, 2021 @04:52AM (#25669217)
> On the flip side, if everyone hates you equally you're probably on the right track.

This is the false equivalence argument. Some argue that 5g spreads covid. Some argue it doesn’t. You advocate both views and everyone hates you.

Doesn’t make you right.

Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by qmarchi on Thursday January 07, 2021 @06:06AM (#25669682)
So you're saying that 5G towers don't broadcast both COVID-19 _and_ 5G signaling? Why are there split bands then! /s
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by atleta on Thursday January 07, 2021 @08:12AM (#25670589)
I haven't heard of the false equivalence before, but it doesn't sound like this. There is that popular fallacy though, but I'm not aware if it has a name, where people think that the truth is always in the middle (the golden middle).

And you could say that this is it, but given the strong polarization and extremism around topics that involve politics it might be a good measure in this case. (Of course, depending on what exactly 'everybody' means.) By definition extremists of either side will see independent actors as hostile. But, of course, this is just a measure, not a proof.

Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by Can_Not on Thursday January 07, 2021 @09:56AM (#25671738)
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by beowulfey on Thursday January 07, 2021 @08:47AM (#25670935)
The umpire is not going to advocate for either stand in this metaphor. The umpire will restrict or disseminate information for both sides. If the umpire does so in a way that irritates both parties, then they are doing so equally. Thus why PC said this.
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by spuz on Thursday January 07, 2021 @06:53AM (#25670000)
What if you weight dislike by the number of people? There are surely more people who believe 5G doesn't cause COVID than those who do.
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by hef19898 on Thursday January 07, 2021 @07:30AM (#25670277)
Propably wouldn't work, as the minority is much more liuder and active than the majority.
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by pornel on Thursday January 07, 2021 @07:55AM (#25670444)
Some myths and conspiracy theories are dangerously close to being believed by the majority of people:

https://www.npr.org/2020/12/30/951095644/even-if-its-bonkers...

so in the end you have to anchor this to some expertise and grounded-in-reality judgement.

For example, the majority in the aforementioned poll believed that COVID-19 was created in a lab in China. And to be honest, an average person really has no way of truly knowing this. They're not virologists or spies. They can only judge based on a gut feeling whether China is/isn't evil, and that is likely based on other things they've heard, which may include rumors, propaganda and Bond movies.

Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by edbob on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @08:04PM (#25665776)
> On the flip side, if everyone hates you equally you're probably on the right track.

This gives pedophiles the moral high ground.

Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by chillacy on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @08:42PM (#25666154)
* when moderating But touché, I could have been more clear as to the scope of my statement.
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by akiselev on Thursday January 07, 2021 @01:04AM (#25667760)
It's the Neverland Law: as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving pedophilia or Epstein approaches 1.
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by yurielt on Thursday January 07, 2021 @04:32AM (#25669087)
T. Pedophile
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by chasd00 on Thursday January 07, 2021 @08:18AM (#25670643)
best to be a moderator who is loved. next is a moderator who is feared. worst is a moderator who is hated.
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by optimalsolver on Thursday January 07, 2021 @06:11AM (#25669723)
You were the chosen one!
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by edbob on Thursday January 07, 2021 @01:21PM (#25675023)
What do you mean?
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by polka_haunts_us on Thursday January 07, 2021 @02:58AM (#25668473)
I dunno, I was friends in college with someone who moderated a subreddit whose head mod was univesally hated to the point where a rival subreddit formed and eventually outpaced the original.

I have to say from everything I heard about the guy, and my own rare interactions with him, the hatred of him was 100% justified. Some people are just very shitty and lack any sympathizers.

Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by inglor_cz on Thursday January 07, 2021 @04:35AM (#25669109)
There is a problem when the umpire is an empire. If HN decided to ban Trump, no one but local hacker population would notice. In case of services with billions of registered users, quantity has its own quality.

Facebook, Twitter et al. built enormous platforms for speech and thus got caught up in the middle of all cultural and political conflicts on this planet. Not just American election(s), but elections in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Germany, UK, Brazil, plus religious conflicts such as Islamists vs. people who draw Muhammad.

They cannot possibly stay neutral in all those wars at once and when they start taking sides, they will be hated first and then, later, either dismembered or regulated to be a de-facto arm of the government.

Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by watwut on Thursday January 07, 2021 @07:37AM (#25670325)
> There is no popular position with moderation, everyone hates the umpire.

Afaik, one big issue is that this account was operating under different rules then everybody else. As in, twitter was more permissive with Trump then with other people.

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Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by abootstrapper on Thursday January 07, 2021 @01:19AM (#25667864)
The hell he’s been tweeting them to calm down.
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by tjpnz on Thursday January 07, 2021 @05:17AM (#25669380)
>Only in this case the President is using Twitter to talk directly to supporters and try to calm down people.

The very same people he was winding up a few hours earlier.

Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by na85 on Thursday January 07, 2021 @02:56AM (#25668460)
>Only in this case the President is using Twitter to talk directly to supporters and try to calm down people.

He's pretty explicitly doing the opposite of trying to calm people down.

[dead]
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by dang on Friday January 08, 2021 @12:45AM (#25681888)
Please don't do this here.
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by KozmoNau7 on Thursday January 07, 2021 @04:15AM (#25668952)
They should have treated his personal Twitter account like any other, no white glove treatment.

If he wants to tweet in the official capacity of the President of the United States of America, there is an official Twitter account for that.

Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by Cthulhu_ on Thursday January 07, 2021 @04:40AM (#25669146)
And they will, once he's out, but they have made a formal statement effectively stating Trump's account gets preferential treatment for being such a powerful person.

Of course, the cynical reason is that Trump's tweets are responsible for a significant percentage of Twitter's "engagement" metrics; I'm sure that internally they have figures that indicate how much revenue they generate from Trump alone.

Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by 6gvONxR4sf7o on Thursday January 07, 2021 @01:02PM (#25674714)
It’s not just the engagement. It’s the publicity and brand awareness too. Every time the news wants to report on what trump said, they talk about and link to twitter.
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by hef19898 on Thursday January 07, 2021 @07:38AM (#25670338)
I sa an interview with Nicole Wallace today, the Nicole Wallace from MSNBC that used to be on W. Bush's WH team. Never thought I would agree someone from the W. admin, but she was right in saying, that she hersefl and the media at large were way to soft on trump, already before the election. I gues the same can be said about social media.

i do get the diffficult choice Twitter faced, Trump was / is the president. So everything he says is part of the official record. So I guess banning his personal account would ba quite difficult. Twitter, Facebook, YoutTube and so on could have added disclaimers already much earlier, so.

Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by odessacubbage on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @07:48PM (#25665522)
once you stop being content-neutral infrastructure, you can only lose.
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by vkou on Thursday January 07, 2021 @04:16AM (#25668955)
You can also lose by being content-neutral infrastructure that is used for organized violence.
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by watwut on Thursday January 07, 2021 @07:39AM (#25670345)
They were not content neutral. They by themselves said that they wont apply the same rules on Trump then on other political players on twitter. They did not wanted to ban or limit him, because he was president and thus special.

That is not being content neutral. Had it been content neutral, his account would be policed the same way as other peoples years ago.

Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by snarf21 on Thursday January 07, 2021 @09:59AM (#25671786)
No, it is a win-win for Twitter and FB and YT. They have made billions on the faux tribalism fight. Look at Parler: it is a ghost town because people want to argue and pwn the other side. Just talking to other people that agree with you is boring and not sticky. Twitter and FB and YT and FN and CNN and the rest have the sole goal of outrage to get more views and more ad revenue. This is the root of the problem.
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by vonmoltke on Thursday January 07, 2021 @10:17AM (#25671985)
> the sole goal of outrage to get more views and more ad revenue

How does outrage lead to more ad revenue? Who wants their brand advertised next to outrage? How many outraged people click on ads?

Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by amanaplanacanal on Thursday January 07, 2021 @11:10AM (#25672661)
People who are outraged stay on the platform longer and view more ads. The platform gets paid.
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by simonswords82 on Thursday January 07, 2021 @05:49AM (#25669576)
I wonder how much banning DT from Twitter will hit their bottom line and whether this factors in to their decision making process?
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by optimalsolver on Thursday January 07, 2021 @06:12AM (#25669730)
I predict a cost of absolutely zero.
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by hef19898 on Thursday January 07, 2021 @07:39AM (#25670344)
He can still use Telegram, like all the other conspiracy wakos.
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by Dziurkacz on Thursday January 07, 2021 @08:12AM (#25670587)
I believe that the blame is hard to pin here. Instinctively I have blamed media for not reporting the truth, which led people to believing in so many mutually exclussive news. However, because the news media have to compete with social media they are bound to put out cheaper and more clickbaity content or go extinct.
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by DenisM on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @07:25PM (#25665074)
With power comes responsibility.
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by giarc on Thursday January 07, 2021 @11:03AM (#25672545)
I find it odd to say taking him off twitter is censorship. Twitter is used by 22% of adult Americans (according to Pew).

Trump and any president, on a whim can speak live to all Americans through all cable news channels. He could have called NBC, Fox, CBS, ABC etc to the Oval Office and in 5 minutes be live on basically every channel (including being streamed live on twitter). Instead he choose Twitter.

Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by 6gvONxR4sf7o on Thursday January 07, 2021 @01:00PM (#25674675)
Apparently somewhere between 30 and 40% of adult Americans get news from TV, depending on whose surveys you look at. And cable news is only 16-19% of adults, having fallen enormously since 2016 and 2017 surveys. It was more than twice the proportion just a few years ago!

But yeah, he can always address the press and let the press disseminate his statements, which has its own pros and cons.

Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by sleepysysadmin on Thursday January 07, 2021 @08:17AM (#25670629)
>It's amazing that the reactions to this are both "should have banned him years ago for violating their rules" and "this is blatant dangerous censorship." Whichever side you're on, this is a lose-lose situation for twitter.

A month from now Trump will not be on Twitter. Nobody will actually see what he allegedly says but he'll be gone.

Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by chasd00 on Thursday January 07, 2021 @08:23AM (#25670690)
my gut says the moment trump is not in office he starts a news channel or some sort of media company, I bet he even still have rallies. he'll leverage his supporters to influence elections and politics.

i think he's addicted to the attention and the chearing throngs.

Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by sleepysysadmin on Thursday January 07, 2021 @09:32AM (#25671425)
>my gut says the moment trump is not in office he starts a news channel or some sort of media company, I bet he even still have rallies. he'll leverage his supporters to influence elections and politics.

You're right, no doubt. Though technically all the previous presidents do that. even Michelle Obama is on book tours and such. George W Bush does stuff with Michelle Obama as well.

>i think he's addicted to the attention and the chearing throngs.

True even before potus.

Here's the reality though. The political divide in the USA is at like 30+ year high. It used to be just democrats who divided. Republicans hadnt really changed much over the last several decades.

With platforms like twitter pushing republicans off their platform. It means the echo chamber will be becoming much worse. The political divide just begun for the republicans. The divide will become much larger than it is today because there's even less intermingling.

Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by amanaplanacanal on Thursday January 07, 2021 @11:17AM (#25672840)
Wait, is Twitter pushing republicans off their platform? I’m not a Twitter user, but this would surprise me.
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by sleepysysadmin on Thursday January 07, 2021 @11:50AM (#25673437)
>Wait, is Twitter pushing republicans off their platform? I’m not a Twitter user, but this would surprise me.

The joe rogan podcast #1258 with Jack Dorsey and Tim Pool is a pretty good watch. Twitter has extensively banned right-wing personalities off their platform while outright allowing left-wing people break the rules.

For example Twitter recently blocked virtually all negative news about Joe biden and hunter biden during the election. For example in place of blocking the NYpost's coverage of hunter biden's corruption. They banned people to hide the story and then put a counter news article that called it fake news as trending.

Flipside, Twitter allowed Smollet's hate crime hoax. Twitter allows celebrities calling for the death of that maga hat kid. They allowed the russian collusion stuff that turned out to be completely false.

twitter is very biased.

Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by chasd00 on Thursday January 07, 2021 @10:18AM (#25671997)
i think Trump will go beyond book tours, i think you're going to see "TrumpTV" and serious competition for other traditionally conservative leaning outlets like fox news etc.
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by LudwigNagasena on Thursday January 07, 2021 @09:44AM (#25671570)
Well, my position is that no institution, private or public, should possess such powers in the first place.
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by syndacks on Thursday January 07, 2021 @09:09AM (#25671182)
F* Twitter. Trump clearly violates their ToS yet they keep him on... I wonder why that i$?
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by wolco3 on Thursday January 07, 2021 @08:34AM (#25670799)
Both can be true.

Banning him years ago would be censorship but with clear rules equally applied to all.

Now we are unequal censorship.

Twitter is trending down and will probably not recover but they were going to take a nosedive after Trump left. This gives them political points with the left.

Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by solveit on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @07:25PM (#25665066)
Both sides are correct.
Re:The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours by Tokkemon on Thursday January 07, 2021 @01:57AM (#25668050)
No, they are not.