Person says bad things to whip up a mob - Twitter unsure to take him seriously or literally.
Mob actually materializes and several people die - Twitter sure they now have to take him literally
I find it surprising that they enabled the account again at all after the 6th.
They needed to take hostages to get published because most media wouldn't air their messaging because of their support of violence
In the modern age they'd all have free platforms and likely amplification.
It seems like those are examples of censorship driving individuals to violence.
Maybe it is obvious to those more well read on them.
I've therefore banned your account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. The rules are here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
"[Looting] also attacks the very way in which food and things are distributed. It attacks the idea of property, and it attacks the idea that in order for someone to have a roof over their head or have a meal ticket, they have to work for a boss, in order to buy things that people just like them somewhere else in the world had to make under the same conditions. It points to the way in which that's unjust. And the reason that the world is organized that way, obviously, is for the profit of the people who own the stores and the factories. So you get to the heart of that property relation, and demonstrate that without police and without state oppression, we can have things for free."
"Looting strikes at the heart of property, of whiteness and of the police. It gets to the very root of the way those three things are interconnected. And also it provides people with an imaginative sense of freedom and pleasure and helps them imagine a world that could be. And I think that's a part of it that doesn't really get talked about — that riots and looting are experienced as sort of joyous and liberatory."
"But there's also another factor, which is anti-Blackness and contempt for poor people who want to live a better life, which looting immediately provides. One thing about looting is it freaks people out. But in terms of potential crimes that people can commit against the state, it's basically nonviolent. You're mass shoplifting. Most stores are insured; it's just hurting insurance companies on some level. It's just money. It's just property. It's not actually hurting any people."
https://web.archive.org/web/20200903174123/https://www.newyo...
Also I should add that the original NPR interview was on the "front page" of link aggregator sites like reddit and hn, because that's where I originally saw it.
I suspect two factors went into the calculus this time: he has proved himself desperately dangerous AND he's got less than 2 weeks left in his term.
But he's not. He's a Bush Sr.-era Republican wearing a (D) at the end of his name.
Me telling someone to go fuck themselves probably isn’t a problem, but me telling someone with learning difficulties to go fuck themselves and them feeling compelled to do it and hurting themselves probably is a problem.
technically yes, but attempting a crime is often considered a crime itself.
"The only remedy until the removal of the Zionist regime is firm, armed resistance."
https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1263181288338587649
"We will support and assist any nation or any group anywhere who opposes and fights the Zionist regime."
Now compare that to the Trump tweets that prompted his suspension, according to the Twitter statement:
"The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!"
"To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th."
To claim that the second set of Tweets incites violence more than the first is absurd. Yes, context matters, but it also matters for the Ayatollah tweets. When the leader of Iran advocates "armed resistance" to the state of Israel, we know exactly what that means.
He tweeted praise for the rioters and justified the riot while the riot to stop the constitutional process of the peaceful transfer of power was in progress.
So in this case he might be technically correct in identifying the exact people he opposes... Possibly.
Iran is a bit weird, they actually have a seat of parliament reserved for a Jewish representative. See here for details of the current holder of this seat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Motamed
Twitter overtly adopted rules granting high government officials this preferential treatment to justify not acting on the many complaints of Trump's flagrant violation of what were previously nominally universally applicable rules on the platform at the outset of his term.
So, yes, Khamenei gets preferential treatment compared to the average user (as did Trump); that's the overt policy.
Trump on the other hand has clearly demonstrated his ability to incite action.
But one might reasonably argue that people who don’t follow certain ideologies get reported and suspended more often.
Presumably, while Don, Jr. did the same thing when making the same complaint, you mean “Iran’s Supreme Leader”, which is a unique position. There are a large number of Ayatollahs (and even several Grand Ayatollahs, including Supreme Leader Khamenei).
'ayatollah' is a title, not a name...
The Ayatollah has repeatedly tweeted in support of the violent destruction of the state of Israel. If that's not incitement of violence, I don't know what is.
It’s also a funny argument to me because you have people comparing trump to the ayatollah and mao and thinking it helps their case.
With this knowledge, Twitter would be complicit if they continued to enable and amplify it.
People with power have real consequences on the life of each individual. I admit I don't know how to treat those two groups but I don't think the arguments used for the average person are the same arguments that should be applied to world leaders, and vice versa.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seditious_libel#Seditious_spee...
No one has looked at the present election based off claims 8 months ago, people witnessed openly irregular behavior during the actual election and after.
The current fervor around silencing, labeling, and berating rather than reassuring fears and assisting in auditing to legitimize the election is a significant problem and not a healthy look.
You should read Section 230. It doesn’t say that if you filter some speech that you have liability. In fact it says quite the opposite: if you make a good faith effort to filter some speech then you aren’t liable.
Angry groups of protesters and resulting deaths are not a thing that started happening this week. Twitter are pathetic and have taken a stand once the writing was on the wall.
Weirdly Twitter didn't seem to wake up when that was happening.
Seriously, I sympathize with what you’ve gone through. I’m not trying to minimize the damage that was done in downtown Portland, but it’s not even close to the same thing.
I’m not sure how that video proves anything about “most” people’s intent.
But I agree that as the Democrats and social media companies still continue to poke and poke and poke already angry people that the consequences can get worse. I wish someone reasonable would try to de-escalate the situation instead of continuing to add gasoline to the fire with further suppression, insults, and contempt for Trump and his supporters--but Silcion Vally and Democratic leadership can't seem to help themselves and would prefer to further insult and alienate the 74 million people who voted for Trump just 2 months ago.
I also think most people who entered the Capitol building did so because they were just following the people in front of them; not conciously entering to voice their oppinions to the Senate and House.
What the reasons are for the individual follower is completely and utterly irrelevant, because it is overshadowed by the fact that the current head of the executive tried to overturn the result of an election.
And quite frankly: the only ingredient missing here was support of the military — if he had that the US very likely could have become a dictatorship right now.
Let's see again eight years from now :-(
The entire premise of the rally was “stop the steal”. Clearly they weren’t all extremely coordinated, but to varying degrees, the people who stormed the Capitol did so with the stated goal of overturning the election. That they were inept of that they failed isn’t evidence to the contrary.
People traveled from out of state. There was little that wasn’t deliberate about this.
Fine people on both sides!
But it is becoming hard to deny that the standards seem very conditional on whether you agree with the motives and end goal of the people committing violence or not.
I think what happened in the capitol was horrible and hope enough people get to face the consequences in court. Similarly what has happened in Portland and other cities throughout this year has been horrible, from what I can gather and your statement.
Yet events are covered completely differently.
I don't think that is the standard at all. Those who represent the voice of others are held to a greater standard.
Plenty of every day citizens can cheat on their significant other and aren't going to lose their job because of it. Any scandal can destroy an individual's career when in a position of authority, judges, chiefs, politicians, etc.
Plenty of every day citizens can go on vacation during the pandemic and be fine. Politicians who do this will have their position revoked (look to Canada for easy examples recently).
There is and always should be a double standard for those who represent the voice of many vs the single individual.
> “Trump 2020, something something”
People can vote for and support Trump and have their opinions, even if they are unpopular. But Capitol Hill is a sacred place and people did breach it. Many of which had neo nazi insignia on their clothes. If this isn’t an act of extremism, then what is?
If you are telling yourself otherwise you might wanna do a reality check. E.g. imagine the whole thing in flipped roles (if you have enough fantasy). Republicans would be completely outraged over all the actions they did in the past 4 years if it was the other team who did them.
I am not from the US and think the whole two party thing is silly anyways, but the shere cognitive distortion going on there hurts. Quite frankly it is below any HN user to uncritically wave a team flag that way, especially when it means you become blind to reality by doing so.
The US Dems would be a center-right party in most european nations and last time I checked we weren't the unfree ("socialist!") doomscape Republicans like to paint it as. In fact I'd rather live under the EU/German laws than under whatever the US system has become and I am not a nationalist by any stretch (I am not even German). Our system just leads to calmer streets, friendlier faces, less fear and stress overall (except for the tax system, I could really strangle the people who came up with that — not for the amount of taxes, but for the complexity of the system).
If presented with lies and reality, choose reality and try to correct for your own biases. Thats what good people do.
Just like communist “liberation” invasion is pure invasion
It's disgusting the absolute privileged bubble so many on HN live in.
Twitter gave a platform to those who had taken over six blocks of a city (CHAZ) without a single ban.
Twitter consistently allows all out racism towards white and asian people from verified profiles without a single ban.
Twitter allows the organization of mobs for the left without a single ban.
I think you are arguing in bad faith.
Yelling "fire" in an open field vs a packed cinema are obviously are easy to interpret. There's a whole bunch of grey area in the middle.
Holmes would later reverse his own ruling yet this quote will never die even though it has no bearing on actual law today and in realty "yelling Fire" would likely be protected speech
Remember "After Holmes' opinions in the Schenck trilogy, the law of the United States was this: you could be convicted and sentenced to prison under the Espionage Act if you criticized the war, or conscription, in a way that "obstructed" conscription, which might mean as little as convincing people to write and march and petition against it. This is the context of the "fire in a theater" quote that people so love to brandish to justify censorship." [1]
That is not a position one should be supporting if they value free Speech
It's Time to Stop Using the 'Fire in a Crowded Theater' Quote [2] Three Generations of a Hackneyed Apologia for Censorship Are Enough [1]
[1] https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...
[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...
It’s no longer good law, thank goodness. Now we have the much narrower Brandenburg test, which requires that speech be likely to cause “imminent lawless action”.
No they're not, instead they have a massive overlap. If I lie to my neighbor "Hey, Bob across the street has been stealing your mail", and my neighbor punches Bob in the face, my "statement that was false" led to violence and it can be argued that was my intention the whole time.
While King Henry II didn’t directly ask for the priest to be killed, it’s pretty clear that was the intention.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_tur...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/opinion/trump-capitol-pro...
And that article references the original piece in The Atlantic that, inadvertently, provided the get-out for what the NYT laments:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/trump-m...
Any idea that he hadn’t realized the effect his words would have and had learned his lesson go firmly out the window.
(If there were any remaining doubts before that... did anyone believe he didn’t know what he was doing?)
> Mob actually materializes and several people die - Twitter sure they now have to take him literally
By this logic do we not also have to delete the account of everyone prominent who tweeted anything to the effect of "no justice no peace" with respect to BLM, given that several people died there as well?
I thought the goal was supposed to be to do something that reduced the probability of violent conflict?
That Parler thing was temporarily offline under the load of all the new users. That's not the problem you have when you're having the actual problem of convincing enough people to switch.
This is not a trivial problem, but it's also not one that hasn't been solved a hundred times before, and seems to be something they've already handled.
But I also want to put something in juxtaposition here. You have on the one hand the argument that this isn't censorship because they're a private company and you can just make your own. On the other hand, the argument that booting them off is useful because making your own is impractical and they'll fail. If one is true then the other isn't, right?
Didn't everyone move to Parler?
The rally was organized by Trump, the mob that marched on the capital was there for Trump, marching with flags for Trump, encouraged and incited by Trump, and aimed at overthrowing a legitimate election in favor of Trump.
BLM was marching for lost lives that could no longer speak for themselves, organized by and for no single individual, carrying flags to honor the fallen, aimed at creating a future where less people would die unnecessarily at the hands of law enforcement.
I think it's a calculated risk knowing that Biden's win was actually certified so there's now no way this can come back and bite them. I am sure in an alternate universe @PresidentForLife would have been able to tweet indefinitely.
Twitter wants no skin in the game.
https://today.uconn.edu/2020/10/study-2020-protests-shows-di...
"While the summer of 2020 experienced 100 days of violence and destruction in cities, according to the the U.S Department of Homeland Security, the most recent CCC study of 7,305 separate events in May and June suggests that 96.3% of events involved no property damage or police injuries and 97.7% of events had no injuries reported. Pressman spoke with UConn Today about the new report."
In contrast, the attack on the capital building was a deliberately violent attack on the seat of our national government. Rioters brought zip ties to potentially hold lawmakers hostage, blunt force weapons, and firearms. It was inherently a violent undertaking with revolutionary aims.
This is a pretty terrible standard, since MAGA rallies are mostly peaceful as well. The issue is what do we do with the ones that aren't, not how many of them are.
Suppose the peaceful portion of BLM protests didn’t happen, would the violent riots go from being justified to unjust? Why would the presence of the peaceful protests change our moral assessment of the violent ones? Same with the MAGA demonstrations. It should not matter that there were numerous other peaceful MAGA rallies when assessing the storming on the capital.
What makes this unique is that there are records online of people planning violence in advance.
Certainly most of the large BLM protests ended in destruction and violence, at least in my state of Minnesota. There’s a reason the national guard had to be deployed. People find strength in numbers.
It's clear from the pictures of what happened in the capitol that it was done by a tiny fraction of people from the protests, so you don't need any statistical analysis for that.
1. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cnn+fiery+but+mostly+peaceful&iax=...
One group is rioting to protest frequent ignored murder of their community.
The other riot to attempt to halt an important democratic government process. That's clearly and demonstrably premeditated sedition and treason anyway you spin it, or ignore it in your case.
That's an insane assertion.
That's several orders of magnatude larger than the largest trump rallys and riots.
Painting BLM as one unified voice of violence is totally dishonest.
Protesting the police is not violent, calling for justice is not violent. The continued, undeniable unaccounted murder of citizens by police is understandable reason for a relatively small portion of the BLM protests to turn ugly, and the police have a major, direct hand in that escalation.
Again, please don't intentionally misconstrue what happened this summer in the BLM movement, or the impetus behind that.
And if you see those protests as "similar" to a fascist mob trying to overthrow the US government, well, I don't really know what to say, other than that you are obviously incorrect.
"Ramirez said in the Fox59 interview the two groups separated because they realized people in each group were armed. He said both groups then fist-bumped and went their separate ways. But someone opened fire from a nearby bridge and struck Doty-Whitaker, Ramirez said. He said the shooters then ran away. Ramirez said he fired back but did not hit anyone. When contacted by IndyStar, members of Doty-Whitaker's family declined interview requests."
https://www.wthr.com/article/news/crime/police-release-video...
This move is entirely political, Twitter should just man up and accept it, instead of insulting our intelligence.
He was banned for inciting violence using Twitter's platform.
I suppose if Trump ordered unlawful drone killings using Twitter, they also may have banned him for that, but Trump used Twitter to control mobs, not drones.
>He was banned for inciting violence using Twitter's platform.
He supposedly incited people with his rally speech. Besides, I don't think the mob was checking Trumps twitter feed for instructions. The violence seemed premeditated to me.
https://www.gq.com/story/man-predicted-capitol-coup-intervie...
I think he was banned because Democrats took control of power and FAANG is telegraphing their compliance to those now in charge of how they're going to be regulated. They're going to over-correct, as they're starting to do with banning Michael Flynn and more will follow.
Anyone on YouTube or Twitter that doesn't outright refer to the people who broke into the Capitol as terrorists or insurrectionists are getting demonitized/banned -- literally forced groupthink influenced by who is allowed to monetize their videos. People on the left are trying to extend the culpability of those who broke the law to those who voted for Trump. Implying nearly 70 million people are themselves insurrectionists. I don't think this will be good for the Internet the next time the GOP gets enough seats to pass legislation. I'd be happy knowing that's the worst of what's to come.
This protest in the Capitol is a right-wing escalation of a sustained left-wing effort to paint the 2016 election as illegitimate. The US is in trouble if this new thinking takes hold and businesses start exercising their right to discriminate politically. The country will be inoperable.
That is such a purposely flawed statement that it is effectively a pure lie even if some of those beats are somewhat true.
Trump has been claiming election fraud since 2016. He claimed he got more votes than Clinton and that three million people voted illegally in California which is why he lost the popular vote.
The only things claimed illegitimate by anyone with any power in the left were either "it isn't fair that the popular vote doesn't matter", "we shouldn't disenfranchise voters as the GOP keeps trying to do in the name of 'election security'" or "certain actors illegally acted around the 2016 election".
There is a world of difference between that last one (the closest to illegitimate) and an actual claim of fraud.
If that isn't a sustained effort to paint the 2016 election as illegitimate I don't know what is.
How many people got arrested as part of that bogus investigation again?
IIRC Trump also fired multiple people to get the investigation to end. Literally played the Nixon playbook and it was all fake... Sure.
"Our election was hijacked. There is no question. Congress has a duty to #ProtectOurDemocracy & #FollowTheFacts." [0]
Now I'm sure that is an out of context tweet and she probably didn't literally mean "Our elections [were] hijacked", but that would get Trump booted from Twitter.
It isn't a serious argument to say that Trump is bad because his opponents can deduce he means to do secret evil so it is OK to out-of-context quote him or purposefully choose the least charitable interpretation but Pelosi can say that and get the opposite treatment. The current situation is not that unusual for losers of a US presidential elections.
[0] https://twitter.com/speakerpelosi/status/864522009048494080?...
Are you saying the FBI is faking Russian interference?
Or do you have problems understanding the context of the issue at hand?
> but that would get Trump booted from Twitter
Trump has called for and praised violence for five years now. He only got banned after fanning the flames during an invasion of the capitol building. (He literally says stay peaceful but not even anything resembling leave until much later in the day)
> It isn't a serious argument to say that Trump is bad because his opponents can deduce he means to do secret evil so it is OK to out-of-context quote him
You don't have to out-of-context quote him.
"We love you. You are all special" while talking directly to those who have invaded the Capitol. That isn't out of context at all. It is exactly what he said and there is no alternative interpretation.
> Pelosi can say that and get the opposite treatment
Do I need to link all of the times where Trump repeatedly said he only lost the popular vote because of fraud. It wasn't a vague statement but a direct one that was repeatedly stated.
> The current situation is not that unusual for losers of a US presidential elections.
No president has waited more than a day to conceded in the modern era. Unless you count Florida where there was odd things going on. Even then it was over once the Supreme Court ruled on it.
Clinton was called out for not conceding the night of the election even though she did first thing in the morning.
These actions are not normal. And I am not even talking about yesterday. Way before that we were way away from normal.
https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/27/politics/donald-trump-voter-f...
Whereas Trump just pulled his 'electoral fraud' claims from a hat and his lawyer got laughed out of court.
Looking at any half-decent estimates of the size of those effects will show that you're drawing a false equivalence. There simply is no quantitative argument in support of voter ID requirements, because the kind of fraud they defend against is already practically non-existent and definitely not prevalent enough to sway the outcome of elections.
Analyzing voter ID as a voter suppression technique shows it easily has more harmful impact on election integrity than its notional benefits of preventing the kind of fraud that doesn't really happen to begin with. And this is why any calls for the institution of voter ID requirements in the US should not be taken at face value.
Your comment would have made a much stronger argument if you hadn't tossed in such an obvious, tired and deeply flawed talking point.
I'd honestly like to know what voter suppression tactics are happening in America. From what I've heard from Europeans they tend to be pretty amazed at how lax our process is.
The fraud made possible by not requiring voters to show ID is the possibility that someone could impersonate a registered voter and cast their ballot. There are natural limiting factors on how much this form of fraud can be scaled up. Any one person impersonating other registered voters can probably get away with at most casting one ballot per voting location, lest they be recognized as a repeat visitor. Each person voting fraudulently needs to pick a specific registered voter to impersonate at each location, and memorize basic information about this voter (eg. name and address), and physically travel to each voting location. And if any of the marks picked to impersonate end up trying to vote for themselves, the attempted duplicate voter will be detected. So each participant in such a fraud scheme is good for optimistically a dozen fraudulent in-person votes over the course of any one election day, and if committed at scale with a large number of people, the risk of detection quickly becomes very high. The real-world rate of detection of this kind of fraud is extremely low, so we can be confident that this impractical form of fraud is in fact seldom attempted.
> It seems we have no real election auditing in our country, which frankly should be something that's done automatically at least on a spot-check basis.
I don't think this statement is about voter ID.
> One large category of fraud that it would prevent would be illegal immigrant voting. In my state you can register by having someone that is already registered vouch for you. That's it. No other identification needed.
The Voter ID proposals that have been so controversial in the US in recent years (since ~2006) are not about showing ID to register to vote. They're about showing ID on election day, even if you're already legally registered and have been voting without trouble for decades. If you are saying "voter ID" but you mean to talk about tighter controls on the voter registration process rather than on the process of voting on election day, then you should use different terminology rather than using a term that has a different meaning in current common usage.
But aside from that terminology issue: requiring people to show ID when registering to vote ahead of the election is not the only practical way to prevent illegal immigrants from voting. Even if a prospective voter does not show current government issued photo ID when registering to vote, they still have to provide identifying information as part of the registration process. This can be audited before election day.
You can not function in modern society with our showing ID at various times, you can no rent a hotel room, a car, cash a check or hell even return merchandise to a store in many cases with out a ID
But you are telling me on of the most important civic responsibilities is suppressed by showing an ID, and ID that is freely available at no cost to all citizens
Come on Man...
And the context surrounding these laws is relevant, because in many cases the discriminatory intent is plain as day. The assumptions you're making about how universal photo ID requirements are in day to day life fall apart when you consider the specific demographics that have been targeted.
Taken together with the fact that these voter ID laws notionally address a problem that is only barely more than hypothetical, it's impossible to see these laws as anything other than political grandstanding and attempted voter suppression. They are much worse than merely being a solution in search of a problem.
It is possible to present the general idea of voter ID requirements as a harmless, well-intended security measure—as your comment attempts. But even the most cursory investigation into the specifics or history of voter ID in the US reveals that it is not harmless, does not solve a real problem, and is backed by malicious intentions. Which is why any "innocent" attempt to support the idea cannot be taken at face value. That well has been poisoned by an overwhelming volume of disingenuous propaganda.
Most states have had Free State ID's for longer than voter ID.
>>That well has been poisoned by an overwhelming volume of disingenuous propaganda.
There has been disingenuous propaganda on both sides of this debate you seem to only be able to recognize one side though
It is suppression because showing it on the election day is not the problem, it is getting that ID in the first place. The people who have problems getting that are largely specific categories of people, and the suppression comes via the obstructions which seem to have been purposefully put in place, years before the ID was required, and active opposition to removing them.
This quote, from Anatole France (The Red Lily, published 1894) summarizes it well:
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
PS the things you mention, wrt 'modern society' ? Yeah, those things are also difficult for people who have not got ID and the people who have difficulty getting ID? They simply don't do those things.
Such as, I would love to see a list of what you consider to be unreasonable obstructions to obtaining an ID. I have a strong feeling we will not agree as to either their unreasonableness or that they are obstructions
>>This quote, from Anatole France (The Red Lily, published 1894) summarizes it well:
So what is your solution, just allow people to steal as long as they are in need?
Sounds like you are advocating for a system not based on individual equality under the law, but a cast system where your position determine how the law treats you, except you would find it "just" if the system punished those you perceived as successful or to use the a more common phrase from authoritarian circles "privileged" and excuse the actions of those deemed to not have said "privilege"
That is not a system I can get behind, I firmly and unequally believe in individual equality
Everyone should be treated the exact same by government no matter their age, race, religion, creed, national origin, sex, orientation, income, or any other characteristic beyond their individual actions
In the EU most require Photo ID to vote, and Require Photo ID to obtain a mail in ballot (in the few nations that all mail in voiting)
US has some of the, if not the most lack voting requirements in OECD.
Categorically untrue. As a Canadian living in the UK for nearly 20 years. In both the UK and Canada, I can vote without a ID let alone photo ID.
We bring in our poll cards and they let you vote. Then they cross your name and address off a list so you can't come in to vote again. The polling stations coverage is very good and you can only vote in your designated station, which is usually within walkable distance unless you live on a farm.
We also trialed photo ID for voting here in the UK. It was a massive failure.
I can also get a postal ballot with no problems.
Whatever the problem in the US is, it can be fixed without photo ID.
This is true, Photo ID is not the only way to improve Election Security, but many US states do not have assigned Polling Stations anymore, these open polling stations methods need something more than just poling card, plus there is early voting as well.
Also the UK has other methods of verification done at the time of registration that do not occur in the States, US Voter rolls are infamously insecure, outdated and have all kinds of issues, UK seems to secure their election on registration side instead of the voting site
US does not do either, and any attempt to add security either during registration or on voting day is attributed to racism or classism or some other bigotry
The US already has a registration system. The information just need to be current and the system designed in such a way where a registered person can only vote once (which is not what campaigners are against).
Over here, the local council sends you a letter regularly for you to update your details in the electoral register. If you don't respond then you are not registered to vote in upcoming elections.
They send you a poll card which tell you where to go vote. If you don't have your poll card you can still vote by turning up at the correct polling station. You can't vote at another station.
You have to provide your name and address and they will look you up on the electoral register. If the staff suspect you are fraudulent, they will call the police. After you are provided with a ballot, they cross you name out from the list so that it can't be reused.
There are a small number of cases of error or fraud is very low as you need a lot of information on a large scale over a large area across many polling stations to do meaningful election fraud undetected.
Not all for lack of standing. The evidence that has been presented for fraud is ordinary and could not have affected the outcome of the election. That's consistent with what every one of the ~3000 county clerks in the U.S. will tell you about every election.
A much bigger issue is election fraud including voter suppression. What has pissed off Republicans this time around, is expansive mail-in balloting as a result of COVID mitigation. It managed to expand the voting pool against their wishes by making it generally easier for people to vote. It's difficult for judges to look at this and go, "ok so your legislative intent is to make it hard for some people to vote, but these are still legally cast votes per the legislature's own legislation, and you just don't like the outcome so you want me to disenfranchise them?" That's a no. A judge isn't going to do that.
I feel this is a dangerous cop-out. Some people feel this should be examined[1]. The evidence of actual problems in the election is suppressed by refusal to allow court proceedings and audit. This in turn renders remarks like yours more anecdotal than quantifiable. I'm not saying this is Venezuela, but there does indeed appear there are trout in the milk.
You are using language to evoke an emotional response to manipulate the reader into feeling that there is a problem, rather than identifying a specific problem in order to mitigate that specific problem. The language you are using is indistinguishable from anti-democratic propaganda.
This is reliable material about the voter fraud myth.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/debu...
As for your URL, more bullshit.
>>Claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Technically, mediabiasfactcheck used no actual evidence to dispute the veracity of "here is the evidence", only an assertion of "bias" against the sources. The Brennan Center report only asserts that other claims of evidence are false, not the ones in link I posted. Also it's rife with other tedious rhetorical fallacy. I can't see how you can make the leap without support. In fact, your arguments and the way you present your arguments seem to impeach the honesty of your claim.
(edit, since OP is apparently assuming I am a concern troll because my point was not clear to OP) Perhaps you have a polite and actually specific refutation to "here is the evidence"? Your comments seem deliberately demeaning and do not appear to have any actual substance.
No I don't. And, you have not provided a specific allegation to refute. You have expressed vague concern that is dire. You are a concern troll. Bye.
https://www.acslaw.org/projects/the-presidential-investigati...
Nothing in that turned out to be important enough for left-wing partisans to quote the report. The people bringing up the Muller investigation up first in the conversation tend to be told-you-so rightists; the left by and large would be happy for that debacle to fade into a distant memory.
This report concludes that some politicians don't want to cooperate with politically motivated investigations. The appropriate response to this revelation is shrugs and sniggering.
"The special counsel found that Russia did interfere with the election, but “did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in these efforts, despite multiple efforts from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign."
Obviously "things were uncovered". People were charged. But their charges were obviously not related to Trump-Russia collusion, given Mueller's findings. So why is it that half of the country believes that he did? The answer is so, so obvious.
But hey, maybe you have a better handle on this whole thing than the ABA. I'd be glad to hear your thoughts.
[0]https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2...
The investigation was about two things; Trump's collusion with Russia AND the obstruction of justice.
The report finds no overt collusion between Trump and the Russians. It details promises of influence to the Ukranians and the Russians by sleazy power brokers like Paul Manafort and Felix Sater, and Trump's associates soliciting Russians and pretty much anyone for Hilary's deleted emails but again, no substantial evidence of direct collusion.
Whether there was obstruction of justice seems like a much more legitimate cause for outrage. https://www.lawfareblog.com/obstruction-justice-mueller-repo... details the numerous ways this was attempted, though full-disclosure Brookings is left-leaning centrist think tank.
The full report is here https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf which you don't need to pass the bar to comprehend, though you do need a lot of free time. I've only read a few parts but it's further confirmed my belief that all politicians (right and left) are completely unscrupulous and must be in order win. "Democracy" is a vague, fungible concept that anyone vying for power will either disregard or interpret in their favor.
1) OP says Democrats haven't undermined democracy since the civil war.
2). I observe that Democrat leadership actively pushed the unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that Trump colluded with the Russians to gain power.
3) I provide evidence that half of the country believes that the President of the United States conspired with Russia to gain power.
The fact that Trump may have obstructed the investigation matters--of course it does. And if he did, he should have been punished for it.
But even if he did attempt to obstruct the investigation, that does not change the basic fact that the Democrats actively undermined our Democratic institutions by convincing the American people, with out evidence, that the President was in cahoots with the Russians.
I have not intended to assert that Trump is as clean as a whistle, or that the Mueller report found nothing at all. (My 'zero evidence' claim above was vague and lazy--it was intended to refer to the question of collusion alone) My intent was to convey that there is no evidence of collusion, and that the fact that the American people were intentionally mislead on this point was the result of a concerted effort by the Democrats to mislead the American people and undermining faith in the President (and, necessarily, the presidency and our republic as a whole.
It is also true that charges were brought due the the Mueller probe, though none led to any charges related to colluding with the Russians to affect the outcome of the Election.
It is also true that Trump may have obstructed the investigation.
All three are true. The fact that folks are refusing to address the first fact by merely observing the second and third facts should indicate how masterfully those other issues--which are related to the Mueller investigation but have no bearing on the question of collusion--have been used to muddy the waters and cover for the Democrats' role in spreading the collusion conspiracy theory, at great cost to the country.
I agree that Democrats pinned Russian election interference (which did happen) to Trump (which probably did not) in an attempt to undermine his presidency. I also think this is not too far away from the norm. Remember the birther movement? The stolen 2000 elections? How do you rank claims of widespread voter fraud in that list?
However, I'll contend with you on your claim 1). OP did not say "Democrats haven't undermined democracy". He said Trump's undermining of the electoral system was just worse than the Democrats.
Mueller felt as if his hands were tied in his ability to present evidence to prosecute a sitting President.
And the final Senate report details even more communication than previously believed. But since it came out in August, it really got less media attention than it deserved.
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/press/senate-intel-relea...
Say your spouse suspects you of being in contact with your ex, so she hires a private investigator. She is not sure whether you spoke to your ex in person, by phone, or through one of several dozen close confidants with whom you regularly interact. After the investigation, she asks the PI whether he is confident that you did not make contact with your ex.
How could he possibly be? The sheer number of contact interactions makes it impossible to rule out. This is why our criminal justice system operates on the presumption of innocence. For many crimes, it is practically impossible to arrive at "confidence that the [accused] clearly did not commit a crime".
>Mueller felt as if his hands were tied in his ability to present evidence to prosecute a sitting President.
Given that the report stated outright that there was no evidence of collusion, I assume this is in reference to the question of obstruction, which is out of scope.
No, immediately following the statement about "we would have said so", he goes into -- "a current president can not be charged with a federal crime ...". He then goes on to say that he was bound by this property. That's an odd next statement for someone you think is innocent, but just can't prove a negative.
With a new attorney general and Trump about to no longer be an an active President, we may revisit this.
Sadly, Barr took the opportunity to put a different PR spin on the lack of accusation.
Mueller made it pretty clear he could not exonerate the President, and if he could he would have. Not only were there unanswered questions about Trump's involvement and knowledge of Russia contacts, but the report includes instances of probable obstruction.
It's not like that's all he said...
> It's not like that's all he said...
Update: it sounds like Trump is now regrets telling people to stay peaceful:
> At the White House, Mr. Trump struck a defiant tone, insisting that he would remain a potent force in American politics as aides and allies abandoned him and his post-presidential prospects turned increasingly bleak. Behind closed doors, he made clear that he would not resign and expressed regret about releasing a video on Thursday committing to a peaceful transition of power and condemning the violence at the Capitol that he had egged on a day before [emphasis mine].
This a big reason why I dislike censorship. It distorts everything, and removes evidence.
You keep pouring gasoline on a fire and then keep complaining that it won’t go out. You think impeaching him again and banning him on multiple platforms is going to de-escalate the situation? You know it will do the exact opposite. The Democrats and media companies want to poke and poke and poke until they provoke a reaction. You're delusional if you think you can keep insulting the 74 million Americans who voted for Trump without destabilizing the country. But your brains are so broken by Trump that you can't help yourselves and you're destroying the country because of it. I didn't vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020, but I understand the rage Trump supporters are probably feeling. And I know who is primarily responsible: it's the same contemptuous out of touch elites that gave us Trump in the first place.
I have no doubt that if some of the more radical elements in the crowd had actually gotten hold of someone, things would have gotten a lot more serious.
Fortunately that didn't happen, so thank goodness for that.
If they had gotten hold of anyone (especially Pence), the violence might have spiraled completely out of control.
It was a really dangerous situation.
One would be forgiven for thinking you are a dishonest hack.
I've got this idea in my head where community-minded are people who like forums, facebook groups, etc. The leadership-minded like thought leaders. This might be a pro athlete, it might be a cutting-edge researcher, it might be the president. You might be a follower of many leaders, or you might be a leader yourself (or both). On Twitter, people can gain celebrity by actual thought leadership, or just applying their "street" popularity to the online world. Or by loudly shouting the most outrageous things you can, for clicks. Think of how people try to be "influencers" on Instagram or YouTube, for the dollars or for the attention.
When I've tried to make Twitter work for me, I've worked to curate my feed with thought leaders (and a few F1 drivers). But I find that I often just don't care about what they have to say except on a very very narrow set of topics. I don't care about celebrity, and the thought leaders don't post often enough about the topic they lead on, for the signal to be worth the noise. And I'm not interested in trying to be a "leader" for leadership's sake, but then, on the rare occasion when you have something to say, your voice is unimportant, because you don't have followers.
I've always been somewhat allergic to celebrity, and I'm not saying people who find value from Twitter are celebrity-seekers, but it does feel like the mindset is orthogonal to mine, and the value I derive from social networks, I have a very hard time deriving from Twitter.
I have things to say and share as well, and the product needs to tend to that in order to have me be interested in staying on as a user.
There are other platforms where I can follow AND be heard. HN is one of them. I've shared several projects that got to the front page. Whenever I post projects to Twitter, even put a shitton of hashtags on it, and all I get is dead silence for my 50+ hours of work put into something honestly interesting, while some "influencer" gets 100K likes and 10K follows for their one-line low-effort armchair tweet bashing Elon Musk that they spend 10 seconds on. That discourages me from wasting more time logging into Twitter.
That's just my experience as a user. If they want more people like me on there, they need to fix their product to improve discoverability of small creators. If they don't, that's fine, I don't really need Twitter anyway.
Trump thinks Section 230 is hurting him, but it's actually the only thing that's been protecting him.
The 9th Circuit ruled Sec. 230 did not shield a platform from civil liability arising from their “failure to warn” a potential victim of a violent crime. Meanwhile, the 2nd Circuit found Sec. 230 did protect Facebook from civil liability for hosting terrorism-related content.
And both of those were civil cases. In the context of potential criminal liability Sec. 230 couldn’t even be raised.
That’s not social media.
Rule number one for editors and “journalists” is don’t get sued.
That’s why you see the word “alleged” all the time and “so and so claimed” rather than stating an obvious fact.
But again, this is professional media.
Even trying to do moderation at that scale just results in thousands and thousands of workers with psychological issues, from how damaging the work is.
I’ve only given evidence that businesses not privy to the Section 230 liability shield are doing exactly the same thing that you claim would be prevented by repealing Section 230, and therefore repeal will not solve the problem.
It is a fallacy to extend this to say that Section 230 is not important to protect the internet in general, as the internet is about far more than companies putting profit over public safety. The absence of the liability shield will absolutely cause other chilling effects. See my reply to a sibling reply for more detail, with evidence to support this position.[0]
It's important if you want scalable P2P platforms; the offline businesses you are talking about have pre-distribution human editorial review of all content, which effects scale and focus and permits essentially only top-down communication.
FOSTA-SESTA punched a relatively small hole in the Section 230 liability shield using the pretext that web sites facilitating sex trafficking (read: Backpage) couldn’t be prosecuted otherwise. That was a lie; Backpage was eventually successfully prosecuted using legal tools which had previously existed[0]. The thing that legislators claimed they were trying to solve—sex trafficking—remains woefully unaddressed, but the collateral damage was significant and disproportionately affected marginalised groups and small web site operators (and may have actually made the sex trafficking problem worse)[1].
Claims that Section 230 need to be repealed to “take away power from Big Tech” or to “stop extremism” are just wrong.
A blanket repeal of Section 230 will only concentrate power even more with Big Tech since they’re the only entities with enough money and power to accept liability for every shitposting troll on the web. (Again, FOSTA-SESTA already illustrated this: the big dating services continued to operate, while niche/hobbyist sites—and subsections of sites like Craigslist where dating was not their primary focus—shuttered.)
A blanket repeal of Section 230 will not stop extremism since there are multiple other non-internet sources peddling misinformation.
Section 230 is not the cause of these problems any more than paved roads are the cause of deaths from high speed car crashes. Few people would seriously argue that we should go back to driving only on dirt roads, but it feels like that’s where so many people are with this subject, and it’s really taking the focus away from why extremism exists in the first place and what we need to do to tackle that root problem.
[0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/04/trump-signs-bill...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Enabling_Sex_Traffickers_...
Trump is usually careful to talk like a mob boss. He never explicitly asks for things. He implies, leaving enough gap for plausible deniability. But to this mob he was very clear - come to DC on the 6th, go to the Capitol, target Republican lawmakers who were “weak”, ie, not currently stopping the steal.
Fuck Trump and fuck everyone in this thread trying to pretend like the mob never got any directions from him.
Previously theoretic risks are now manifest, demonstrated, and cognizable.
Actual riots, insurrection, disruption of government, assaults on law enforcement, damage to government buildings, theft of government property, violence, and deaths, have occurred.
The instigator is unrepentent and non-credible in what are at best tepid disavowals.
The totality of context has changed. If "he has tweeted worse things in the past", the undeniable impact is abundantly clear.
The ban is absolutely warranted. If anything, it is many years too late.
Twitter specifically address these points:
Due to the ongoing tensions in the United States, and an uptick in the global conversation in regards to the people who violently stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, these two Tweets must be read in the context of broader events in the country and the ways in which the President’s statements can be mobilized by different audiences, including to incite violence, as well as in the context of the pattern of behavior from this account in recent weeks. After assessing the language in these Tweets against our Glorification of Violence policy, we have determined that these Tweets are in violation of the Glorification of Violence Policy and the user @realDonaldTrump should be immediately permanently suspended from the service.
From TFA
Because of the weakness of their justification, this could be further gasoline on the fire for his 74 million supporters. I frequently find myself having to argue with said supporters, and I can't argue that this justification makes sense other than to say... well they should have banned him before hand.
It feels like they were looking for almost anything remotely shitty that Trump said to ban him. More specifically, they are looking for a reason to ban him based on saying anything not in support of the next administration, because of his supporters storming the capital. I can see the chain of logic here, I just think it's a little weak and being selectively enforced.
Edited: to make more sense hopefully.
This is reducing repeat ignition and stilling winds fanning flames.
See Chamberlain on the effectiveness of appeasement.
However, mostly it’s based on party affiliation where people voting against him in a primary would vote for him in a general election.
"I do not support this man but I did want him to be President, and cast my ballot for him" is a concept I can't understand at least.
When you have such a limited number of options their isn’t an obvious reason for the choice. Both loving A or hating B more than you hate A can result in an A vote. With millions of voters some people are going to vote based on silly crap like a candidates name being similar to someone they know, or a coin flip. Hell, you can expect at least a few mistakes.
PS: 1,865,620 people voted libertarian, presumably a few felt the way you do but when you know someone isn’t getting elected that opens up even more options.
To kind of latch onto what you said, I'd say that there is 60% of those 74 million who would have benefited from a Twitter ban which was well justified. They are more on the fence and can be persuaded by the tides of big business and what seems like an over reaction on their part. The 40% are probably hopelessly convinced of anything that Republicans say.
So if you are still a “Trump supporter” at this point, I really don’t see how you can also say you “condemn what happened in the capitol”. Because Trump didn’t.
I’ve told all of my maga friends Trump is a clown all along. But again the left really didn’t have any issues with riots this summer and now everyone’s clutching their pearls.
I'm basically saying, it's a whole lot easier to be "brave" and deal a blow to a lame duck than a live tiger.
you can try telling that to the 5 dead people from the sacking of the Capitol I guess
This describes the past half-year in Portland, Seattle, and more sporadically in many other cities.
I believe that no accounts on the Left: organizing, not merely advocating - have been permanently shut down.
So, I'm very skeptical that anything legitimate has changed. It feels very political.
My guess is that we are quickly approaching a point in time when culture will start to swing the other way, and the internet will become this thing that people don't take seriously, haha much like it was in the 90s. That, and some combination of that and censorship. And the tech monopolies absolutely will not survive the level of influence they have now, even if they think they are playing it safe by supporting a particular political faction which happens to be popular at the moment. I think things are going to change fairly rapidly in this direction because it turns out being connected constantly is actually pretty awful in most of the ways that count. Thankfully, however, it seems most folks understand this in a kind of unspoken, visceral way. The same sort of "self-policing" feeling you get when you've wasted 12 hours straight playing Skyrim. It just feels dirty.
I hope you’re right but I have my doubts. Currently I see the left waging total war when it comes to censorship and control of allowed/disallowed speech. Their consolidation of power and influence (and their attack on foundations like free speech principles) has been rapid, and pervasive. When I look at the left trying to inject things like the factually incorrect “1619 Project” into schools, I see them trying to make their temporary power gains permanent by propagandizing, so that there is no avenue by which different thought can enter the Overton window.
Maybe I’m being overly cynical but I don’t see a way back from this. I foresee an increasing amount of leftist authoritarianism as the future of the US, because there won’t be a balancing politic on the other side to moderate us.
This is correct. The type of person that stormed the capitol will perceive this as an escalation. I’m sure that’s not what we need, but I’m also sure that there is no good way out of this mess.
One can argue that this type of person would potentially perceive any action (or inaction) as an escalation. That doesn't mean that action shouldn't be taken.
You've also been breaking the site guidelines egregiously and often, such as with personal attacks and name-calling. That's seriously not allowed here.
Therefore I've banned the account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. The rules are here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
I actually think that the reason we are in this mess is because there have been zero consequences for terrible behavior, so far.
Of all the terrible things Trump has done, it has taken inciting a riot, an attempted overthrow of our democratically elected government, for him to loose his megaphone. Why was incarcerating children at the border not enough? Or encouraging those "fine people" in Charlottesville who murdered a woman? Or one of the many other instances of him spewing hate?
We need more accountability. Actions have consequences, and it is long overdue that those people who take irresponsible, harmful actions, either out of desire for personal gain or sheer idiocy, start feeling the consequences.
The right is supposedly the side to which "law and order" appeals. Trump and his people are exactly the kind of people who need to know that they will get punished to the full extent of the law when they misbehave. That's the only thing that will keep them in line.
Because it's not like they have a moral compass to fall back on.
Obviously plenty of other people are currently posting abusively in these huge political flamewar threads—but most of them are not using HN primarily for that purpose. We ban the ones that are.
I've banned this account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
However, there's no evidence that the election was crooked - the courts think so too. In addition, the President's moral compass seems to be pointing towards strong arming election officials to provide him the exact number of votes (11,780) that he needs to overturn Georgia, pardoning his former friends and allies and convicted war criminals. And this is just within the last couple of weeks.
Haven't all of the cases been thrown out for lack of standing thus far? Doesn't that mean the evidence hasn't even been heard? How can the "courts think so too" if they haven't heard evidence?
Also, it's offensive when people say the election wasn't crooked to people that witnessed its crookedness firsthand. I am one of the many people whose ballot went uncounted.
? Please explain how your ballot went uncounted.
The way to kill the fraud narrative is by debating those raising the charge, actually hearing the cases in court instead of tossing them on procedural grounds and allowing full audits, signature matches in Fulton for example.
If you listen to the full phone call from which the carefully picked snippet you refer to was lifted Trumps moral compass seems far better than the shifty and obstructionist Georgia Secretary of State to me - Raffensberger has no explanation for simple charges and whimpers when reminded of the requests he has been actively ignoring [1].
It does not exactly scream "innocent" to anyone with half a conscience. Nor did the threatening and doxxing of children that occured during the certification of the Michigan electors.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/audio-trump-be...
Maybe you would want to provide examples of these then?
"The way to kill the fraud narrative is by debating those raising the charge"
I am actually not quite sure that debating the issue will kill the narrative but that's just my opinion.
"actually hearing the cases in court instead of tossing them on procedural grounds"
Frankly I have no comments here. What real evidence of fraud is there?
"Trumps moral compass seems far better than the shifty and obstructionist Georgia Secretary of State"
I never commented on the Georgia Secretary of State's conduct and frankly, that's not under review. If the President had just asked for the review of votes, that would be fine. Instead, we received the exact number of votes that he needed, statements to the tunes of: 'Fellas, what are we gonna do here? I only need 11,000 votes' and to do 'the review with people who want to find solutions but not with those who do not want solutions' or something to that effect. Claiming that someone stuffed ballot boxes does not constitute evidence.
Furthermore, this does not change my comments about the pardons either but that's not really the point under discussion.
It certainly seems to me that Trump and many of his most high-profile supporters have been remarkably free from serious consequences despite behavior that has been scandalous to an unprecedented degree. Going by the political and societal norms of just a few decades ago, Trump's political career should have been dead and buried dozens of times over.
The comment at issue did not use the phrase "kids in cages". That's you adding your personal color to a subject that you seem to object to being brought up in any manner at all. It looks like you're trying to build a straw-man or three, rather than justify the accusation that the comment in question is "entirely divorced from reality".
However, it's perfectly valid to construe Trump's comments as praise after the fact for the white supremacist rally, even though he specifically condemned the killing that resulted. Because Trump's assertions that there were "very fine people" on both sides and that there were many people on the alt-right side of that event who were not neo-Nazis or white nationalists are simply not credible claims. Trump was praising somebody. Even praising or encouraging the kind of white supremacists who don't get violent is abhorrent conduct on the part of the president, but the comment upthread exaggerated beyond this.
Let's say in this metaphor the doctor stands for maybe seeking therapy for paranoia and oppositional defiant disorder, or something like that. These people are not without agency in their own radicalization, though we could argue that society really doesn't help matters when it comes to mental health or pernicious algorithms that send people down conspiracy holes.
Also, how does one learn how to see the future with such certainty? It's like there was a sale on crystal balls and everyone but me got one. :(
No. But an inventory of some of those who left the grounds in handcuffs was performed. And various types of weapons, police-style zip ties and molotov cocktails were found.
Dozens were injured, five people are dead, one of them beaten to death.
Offices were trashed, items stolen and the seat of our government was vandalized.
You don't need a crystal ball to draw conclusions from that.
It's almost as if people have been hypnotized or something. No one has the slightest concern for what is actually true. I hope it's only people on internet forums that are like this.
I don't know about that.
I'll prognosticate that the close compatriots of the violent insurrectionists who are currently enjoying three hots and a cot courtesy of the US Government will almost certainly engage in more violent acts. Probably fairly soon.
History is generally a pretty good guide to the future.
Will every single person who smashed windows, beat on people with pipes and bats and went looking for Congresscritters to take hostage show up at the inauguration with RPGs to kill as many people as they can? I don't know.
I can't say for sure, but since they've already shown themselves to be angry, violent and willing to harm/kill others, it's a pretty good bet that a significant number of those people will attempt violent action against their perceived enemies in the future.
Why is that an unreasonable assumption to make?
I hear most people on the left support reforming criminals, and finding underlying root-causes. Do you?
I do, for root-causes such as poverty, lack of economic opportunity, lack of education, being victims of racist policies, etc... sure, reform is possible.
When the root causes are massive delusion, indulging in ridiculous conspiracy theories, general resentment that other people want to be treated fairly, cult-of-personality-like worship of a dictator, etc. Then unfortunately the root-cause is ignorance and the problem is unfixable.
And how do you know all this? You're pretty quick at finding root causes.
I didn't realize that whether people can or can't change was a political, left/right thing.
I'll assume you're asking that question in good faith, just somewhat awkwardly.
It depends on the person and the situation. Wouldn't you agree?
Exactly. However people seem reluctant to grant this to Trump supporters. They seem to be always lumped together as evil racists.
I find it more than a little ironic that you choose to paint others with a very broad brush while making the claim that those people paint others with a broad brush.
Personally, I try to treat others based on their individual actions. Perhaps you should try it sometime.
> Why is that an unreasonable assumption to make?
Your statements are fairly reasonable, and you have awareness of when you are speculating. If more people were like this, perhaps this tailspin could be averted. But look through threads like this and judge for yourself how many people are as reasonable as you.
Here, I'll give you a chance to see if you care about the truth:
SpicyLemonZest says:
> The people that stormed the capital have been pretty clear about their position here: they plan to continue escalating unless Trump is installed into power for a second term.
Can you come up with a plausible explanation for how this can be known?
> There's nothing we can do to meet people who think like that halfway; the only course of action which might avert further tragedies is to convince them that they aren't very powerful and won't be able to achieve their goals.
Can you come up with a plausible explanation for how this can be known?
Remember they are selling you a story and need you to watch.
My local news runs a promo every night that they have some super important message that you need to hear "what you could be doing wrong with kids". When they finally share it's something like 'yoga is good for your health'.
Journalism is a business. All news orgs are judged by selling papers to driving clicks.
Seeing a few people saying something means a few people said something. Assuming it applies to all and skepticism sets in.
The media tells stories, social media tells stories, our friends and family tell stories, and our own mind tells stories. But they are just stories. Some of them will surely come true, some of them will not.
It feels like you know, just as it feels to the people at this riot like they know - it is the very same underlying phenomenon: human consciousness, with its ability to see into the future, to read the minds of millions of people, to know the fine details of what happened at an event even though no one who was actually there may have witnessed it with clarity. It is the most powerful device on the planet, but if it isn't kept under control: watch out (as we saw at the Capitol).
Both sides have said 230 needs fixed/removed, if for different reasons. to think 230 can't be removed/fixed now is laughable.
https://www.businessinsider.com/obama-section-230-tech-firms...
> President-elect Joe Biden has said that he wants to revoke Section 230. When Biden was vice president under Obama, the administration was largely hands-off when it came to the tech industry.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/17/biden-wants-to-get-rid-of-te...
> Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden told The New York Times editorial board that tech’s legal shield known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act should be revoked.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2021/01/04/trump-biden-p...
> Democrats, including President-elect Joe Biden, urged Congress to revise Section 230 to force tech companies to remove hate speech and extremism, election interference and falsehoods. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called Section 230 a gift to Big Tech. "It is not out of the question that that could be removed," she said in 2019.
It makes even more sense when you consider that the second-order effect would be that people migrate their discussions to sites operated from countries outside the US, which have their own political agendas. Perhaps you can think of a country that has advanced cyber capabilities, strong control over local platforms, and resentment of US global influence.
This MO of triggering national self-destruction becomes more obvious the more examples you see, such as the spreading of misinformation about 5G or vaccines/masks, in order to radicalize citizens into destroying their own communications infrastructure and overwhelm their health services.
The problem with this, IMHO, in today's polarized world is who judges whether moderation is balanced? Whichever party currently runs the executive branch? A commission whose members are squabbled over like the SCOTUS? Etc. Similar to trying to bring back the FCC "fairness doctrine," it feels unrealistic at best... or a backslide into government censorship at worst.
I don't blame them. Would you rather ban a vindictive US president or an outgoing, lame duck US president in his final days of office? Besides, regardless of how you feel about him, he's one of the main reasons Twitter is still relevant today. If they banned him sooner, they would have lost a ton of traffic.
To be clear, I am not for or against Twitter. I'm just making sense of their rationale.
The scaffolding and wooden structure they were on is the JCCIC built platform, and that disgusting video of the tunnel is where POTUS walks out...
One rule for the king and one for the commoners isn't a very sustainable policy.
Nobody was forcing the president to use twitter to communicate. Now he’ll have to find a different platform.
Stop pretending these are the progressive vanguards of society.
Who picked any of his family members in top positions? And his election was literally based on attacking the other candidate, not on content.
And it so happens that most people don't want to listen or give their platform to a sore loser looking to overturn a democratic election by force.
Actually sore loser is a rather generous term. In Europe we call these people fascists.
So don't "follow" him? You know, that thing you do on Twitter to "listen" to people?
You missed this part.
https://jcalebjones.com/2020/10/15/the-first-amendment-and-c...
Simply not true. Roughly 1/10th of the US uses twitter actively. [1]
Even if everyone did use it, it's still a private platform owned by a company. Not the government. That means the company gets to run it.
Which is it? Do you want the federal government to stay out of shit, or do you want it to micromanage things? What's your stance on section 230? Without it, they would have been forced to ban Trump years ago.
Twitter is a publicly traded company, they agreed to abide by some restrictions by the government in order to get that status.
Let's just say, if you think that 51% of Americans banning discussion of climate change is bad, wait until you imagine about what Twitter's electoral college would ban discussion of.
I don't argue with them to change their mind, I argue with them for the crowd of 5-6 people listening who are on the fence. All of them were just pushed off that fence.
If they were pushed off the fence by this, they would have never landed on the other side of the fence in any case.
“violent inciting free speech” is a subject take on Trump’s tweets whether you like it or not. I’d rather make that distinction for myself instead of relying on the judgment of some Twitter employee I’ve never met.
Yes, but only if he/she has massive following that can actually incite "mob violence". With great power, comes great responsibility, while Trump is a kid who has been blaming everyone else for his defeat.
Twitter is never going to convince everyone that they are being fair, and that isn't their goal here. A better way to think of their timing is: "You come at the king, you best not miss."
If Twitter had banned Trump pre-election and Trump had won anyway, the political battle afterwards for the US government to censor social media would have been terrible. Now that Trump is a lame duck and top Republicans have criticized his actions, Twitter is acting from a position of strength.
So, it's certainly taking advantage of the moment. It's a brief period when the Republican party will be unable to strongly push back against banning Trump. If they successfully pull this off, not only will Twitter get rid of an annoyance, they will set a valuable precedent that they have the right to ban the US President from their platform.
Never let a good crises go to waste.
It's clear that people are trying to make this into a cultural moment where you either distance from / renounce Trump (which is almost costless given the immanency of his term's end) or you're treated as an unrepentant enemy of civil society. We're seeing pro-Trump hubs being systematically purged in various ways from a variety of platforms right now, and the symbolic value of moves like this is what's paramount.
One advantage may be that once the context is forgotten it will appear that Twitter has set a low bar for banning a powerful world leader from the platform.
Each and every tweet by him now simply shows "This tweet is unavailable." See the legendary covfefe tweet, for instance: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/86976699489946828...
I would prefer if they marked his account as read-only. Maybe after the inauguration.
Will these bans carry over and will they start to affect any who oppose the bans or simply parrot what he says elsewhere?
Will these spawn new social media sites or will they damage existing ones or do both? This is all so fascinating and frightening at the same time. People may want to claim there is no government interference but these sites have for many years recently reacted to the threat of it which in turn effectively is what is happening now.
I am just find this all so bizarre but I think these sites figure they can act now simply because in a short time he will not be in his position of power and lose the bully pulpit which he can use without them
Facebook in particular will obviously be the first to know about any such plot, long before any intelligence or law-enforcement agency. Twitter wouldn't be far behind.
When has he ever used this term before to refer to his supporters?
It's not a good time to begin to refer to your supporters in the context of using weapons to defend the country on the heels of the capitol building being stormed and four people dying during a final election recount.
The thing about manipulation is it always claims plausible deniability. We all know this.
"It's heavily taking advantage of the moment." Umm yes. Regardless of whether you are a republican or a democrat, storming capitol hill during an election recount diminishes the validity of either party and the country as a whole. This country is the center for innovation and generally the most sought after democracy in the world. The entire world is watching. Taking advantage of the moment is exactly what he is doing. If you read about coups in the past there was never an explicit sentence that drew the line between now I am and evil dictator and now I am not. It was building an army of radicalized supporters, patriots, if you will while government officials around the person in power dropped like flies as things escalated much like what is happening now. We do not need to repeat history to say we proved he did it because by that time it will be too late.
It is clear for months trump has been warned of how this kind of inflammatory behavior will impact the people at large and potentially radicalize either side and he has been nothing but inflammatory.
If he really cared about securing democracy at large as opposed to his own power in office he would be taking extra precautions at this point.
He is doing the opposite.
I get what you mean though. Unfortunately both sides have significant radicalized sides now. And looting storming buildings and murdering law enforcement and lighting fire to buildings has been normalized now by both sides in 2020.
My parents are trumpers in the deep south and these are the things they have said to me in the past couple of days:
Mark Zuckerberg is an abusive dictator not Trump.
My mother condescendingly whispered to me poor thing noone told me all the protestors were antifa who knew if they didn't storm the building and steal the ballots that trump would win. So they were all actually secret democrats.
They both believe trump is the rightful president for the next term.
(Similarly... I don't support Trump either, etc. etc.)
Doing so is an advantage if you want to create a display of raw power. The poorer the justification, the better.
On one hand, I agree with you, the actual content of those tweets is much milder than what he has tweeted before. On the other hand, that absolutely does not matter, at all. 99% of people aren't even going to read the details of what he was banned for. Those who are against him are going to think it was long overdue, and those who love him are going to see it as further evidence of Big Bad Big Tech. But in any case, the actual real, violent assault on the Capitol that was fomented by Trump is the important context of why he was banned - the details of the individual tweets are almost irrelevant.
Is the beginning where people get banned from social media for being part of a unwanted group. A case could be made for preventing anyone who has gone to jail from being on the platform in the efforts to cutdown on future crime / increase children safety, etc.
1. His tweets didn't incite angry mobs to assault federal buildings before
2. Some time ago when Twitter was defending why they aren't banning his account, they said something about this effectively being a public government account so banning it would do more bad than good (and instead Twitter went ahead and "annotated" his tweets instead of just removing them). This determination had both pros and cons for Trump, the pro being much harder to ban his account but the con being that he couldn't block people from replying to his tweets anymore. With him now out of office his account loses that status so it should be much easier to ban it.
It is a horrible state of affairs where you need this disclaimer in order for your ideas to be taken more seriously. Not directed at you personally, but as a descriptor of the situation.
Is it any surprise people are angry and furious and lashing out when they are dismissed solely on having differences of opinions from the establishment?
You imply there was some kind of due process, which there wasn't.
Perhaps it is fully within Twitter's legal rights as a private entity. That's not the issue. It's the practical implications that are terrifying. The power of censorship and influence Big Tech yields without any legal oversight is absolutely horrifying.
I mean, it's always good to have these thought exercises, but I think you're panicking a bit about the sky falling if the thought of a billionaire former president being banned from a microblog is what your mind is worried about in the current moment.
You're clearly carefully picking words that frame the event as inconsequential. That nameless "microblog" is how millions of Americans get their news, lol.
I'm glad you're so passionate about accountability, and you'll no doubt be shocked to hear how difficult it is to bring a legal case against a sitting president.
By the way, "Two out of three Democrats also claim Russia tampered with vote tallies on Election Day to help the President – something for which there has been no credible evidence" [0], are you interested in holding anybody to account for that?
[0] https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20...
That's an unhelpful strawman, but I'm sorry if the tone of my response to you was not constructive and disincentivized you engaging with it more seriously.
For what it's worth, I would prefer if silicon valley companies relied on the court system to decide what content to censor (or rather, kept up any content they thought was legal until required not to by a court order). Of course, spam and data which exploits software vulnerabilities should be filtered without a court order, on the basis that no reasonable person wants to receive that.
My actual intended point was quite narrow, namely that it would be practically impossible, specifically in the case of Trump's tweets, for an aggrieved party to challenge his tweets in court. However, I suppose it may be possible to bring the case against Twitter itself, and have the DOJ fight on Trump's behalf.
> Two out of three Democrats also claim Russia tampered with vote tallies ... are you interested in holding anybody to account for that?
Do you mean holding Russians to account for tampering, or holding Democrats to account for believing a narrative, or unspecified other actors for "tricking" Democrats into believing this narrative (which we'll say, for the sake of argument, is a false narrative)?
I assume you mean the latter of those three interpretations, but I can't imagine who you would want to hold accountable, or by whom, or what the process or punishment should be. Surely we agree that neither social media companies nor the government should be punishing people for spreading "false" narratives (at least if those narratives don't come with implicit encouragement to commit crimes)?
Where does the linked page say that? The best I can find is "Half of Clinton’s voters think Russia even hacked the Election Day votes..." and the graph also shows 50/50. That's some inaccurate paraphrasing you have.
You can ctrl+f the exact phrase I quoted earlier, I didn't paraphrase
The rule people seem to be advocating for here is that if a politician directs their supporters to protest at a particular location then they are responsible for all illegal acts their supporters carry out at that location. That seems to be unreasonable standard and it is also a standard that legally has not been applied before. In terms of politics/media I'm sure people have tried to apply this standard but it is very wrong. It seems every time some whacko commits a crime one side will accuse the other side of inciting the crime with their rhetoric. I don't think this is at all fair and I also believe it could lead to an equilibrium where people are incentivised to commit crimes. It is often quite hard to murder a politician (ask the baseball shooter) but if you can take a piece of the board by committing a crime and getting caught then that might be better option for a whacko. Obviously, this has not happened in this case but if this standard is enforced then this is something to worry about in the future.
It doesn’t matter. The standards of the courtroom are not being applied here. The facts are plain: there were a hundred off ramps for Trump over the 2 months since the election and he chose to take none of them. He failed in his duty to the Presidency as an institution and the idea of separation of powers and coequal branches of government. He tried to intimidate the Congress into doing his bidding.
You get that it’s a much more essential question than whether he is technically allowed to do what he did, right? Impeachment and the 25th amendment are political remedies that must be used both to punish what this president has done and to warn other presidents that they cannot cross the bright lines that define democracy.
He is the nations principal law enforcement officer and he aided and abetted lawlessness of the most dire kind.
Anti-Kavanaugh protestors did the exact same thing 2 years ago. Maxine Watters, AOC, Ayyana Presley all did the same. Madonna literally said she would blow up the White House.
Double standards + cognitive dissonance.
The manichaean thinking from both sides is what is really going to doom us in the long term. The other side isn't ever interested in improving the state of the world, they are evil and must be stopped. Even when they say the exact same things you said two weeks ago they are wrong, because it doesn't matter what is said, it matters who said it.
Best of luck to the future octopi civilization that will uncover these servers in the submersed ruins of the US.
That’s a great term. They write dozens of inaccurate statements stitched together with their own emotional baggage. What’s the result?
You have no idea where to attack/address/start because their entire wall of text is riddled with false assumptions and straight misinformation.
Never seen one Trump supporter have clear, cogent thoughts.
https://www.politifact.com/article/2021/jan/07/theres-no-pro...
The FBI says there's no evidence Antifa participated in the riots.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/live-blog/2021-01-...
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/2020-election-misinformati...
No, there is no evidence that antifa activists stormed the Capitol.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/2020-election-misinformati...
https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/533432-fbi-no-e...
I'd expect this on reddit, but not on hn
Pool seems to have ~1 million subscribers, which is less than the NYT or WaPo. Not to mention TV news. Rachel Maddow gets ~3 million viewers daily, which is similar to Tucker Carlson and Hannity.
And that doesn't even begin to cover things like NBC or ABC nightly news.
P.S. While I agree with Pool only ~60% of the time, he has around 1.5M on his other channel.
This doesn't follow. Just as an example, Maggie Haberman (an NYT reporter) has more than 1.6 million twitter followers, around 2x Tim's and more than he has subs on any of his channels.
(More broadly, there are a number of junior reporters who don't have big followings at the NYT and other conventional institutions, but there are also a number of very well known journalists who have large followings for their specific content).
The Capitol building was attacked by MAGA extremists, not Antifa. The MAGA extremists were egged on by the President and his associates and supporters.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jan/09/facebook-p...
Is this goalpost moving? Your prior comment was:
>It's highly unlikely that there were any members of Antifa among the rioters, and there is also no evidence of same.
My response was simply that it's confirmed that there were antifa people present in the capitol and the evidence is their very own stream. He later went on national TV and admitted to being present.
It's irrelevant what he claims. At a minimum he riled up the mob, such action being viewed on his stream.
If you want to make the argument that storming the capitol building wasn't an antifa action, I won't argue with you. If you want to say there were no antifa people present and there is no evidence of the same, then I'll correct you as you are objectively wrong.
All the ones identified and arrested are obvious Trump and qAnon supporters.
Since when was it Twitter's job to make sure that only true things are said? "Somebody is wrong on the internet" used to be a meme, but now its a solemn responsibility of content hosts?
This is a really dangerous path as it applies to political speech.
Imagine in the future if a company bans and demonizes a political opponent that they don't like because that candidate violated an arbitrary ToS - regardless of whether the candidate was right or wrong in violating those terms, due to the company's influence and reach, would it not, for all practical purposes, count as election interference?
If you ban all violence and racism? great... if you ban racism and violence from the right and allow it from the left? That's unacceptable.
I have no idea what you mean by the laptop story. The laptop existed and had some photos on it. The notion that it proved corruption was completely unsubstantiated and it was very clearly engineered as a political ploy.
Donald Trump and his supporters have been very deliberately concocting false stories to further a political agenda that has led to dangerous confrontations and culminated in a violent insurrection. Stories that utterly defy reality and are designed explicitly to sow discord. Stories that have hampered our covid response to the tune of hundreds of thousands of deaths. Trying to draw a parallel is absolutely ridiculous. There is a slippery slope here but we're at the bottom of that slope trying to climb right now.
False stories were allowed for weeks or months after facts were know without repurcussions
> laptop story
Stories about Hunter Biden were ACTIVELY suppressed on claims of "russian disinformation" without proof that they were in fact RD.
Stories about Trump with LESS evidence and more proof of "disinformation" are allowed to run unchecked.
> deliberately concocting false stories to further political agendas
And the same can be said of his detractors... INCLUDING among facebook/twitter. Both floating unverified stories and suppressing stories that haven't been proven false.
> explicitly sow discord
again... all the same is allowed from the left. Biden is allowed to claim "police treat BLM worse" when facts say the opposite... details that go against "trump mob violent" (IE antifa/blm individuals and groups in the "mob", cops letting protestors in, etc) are suppressed...
You want a slippery slope? allowing "facebook and twitter" to determine truth is THE slippery slope. They are biased and have been proven wrong repeatedly.
There is no "trying to climb out". Giving them unfettered power is digging the hole deeper.
At least one case was even dismissed due to lack of concrete allegations.
Their belief that nobody will listen to their evidence is just another part of their fantasy, another part of the complex of lies.
From a quick search, multiple courts have judged on merit, and found no compelling evidence provided.
Trump’s team has notched up over 60 losses in court so far.[1]
“They are being told by the other side that there is no evidence, but this is the same other side they think have been lying to them for years, so of course these people will not believe the other side.”
Actually at this point they are being told that by senior leaders from their own side - see the statements from Republicans Brad Raffensperger and Mitch McConnell this week.
[1]https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetillman/trump-electi...
There's still a 1 million $ award in texas if you have actual have proof.
The Biden voters actually did make effective moves to silence Trump supporters. That's also terrible.
Twitter is protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act which states in relevant part, "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(1).
Here, Twitter is the provider of the interactive computer service (Twitter) that will not be treated as publisher or speaker of the information (tweets) provided by another information content provider (@realDonaldTrump). Therefore, Twitter will not face any civil liability for Trump's tweets.
Can you put yourself into shoes of SOS of Georgia, policeman in DC, senator Lindsey Graham? The mob will tear them apart if they had a chance and mob is advised to do so by Trump. I live in Trump country. A lot of Trump supporters take his calls to action literally.
Should someone's freedom be curbed if it causes harm and death to someone else?
Practically though he will still have ways to reach his base. It'd be okay if they cook in their own soup but problem is that their madness spills over and innocent people get harassed, hurt and now killed. Imagine being on the plane with dozen of Trump supporters and no bodyguard that want to punish you? That's how Mitt Romney felt few days ago. Whose freedom of speech created this situation?
It's strange that they picked such a poor way to justify the ban when they could have made a significantly stronger case, and in doing so could have convinced millions more people that they are trying their best to apply policies evenly. For example, I have a hard time imagining why they chose to specifically quote "American Patriots", as if that somehow contributes to the straw that broke the camel's back. Perhaps they have a strategic reason for going about this how they did, but I think it will have some negative 2nd/3rd order effects. that they haven't yet realized.
I imagine we are still only in the early days of the conflicts that are to come in this sphere (and I'd include just about every company and political faction in them, unfortunately).
(Also because apparently I have to state this explicitly in every comment related to Trump: I do not support Trump, his supporters, the recent events that occurred at the capitol, etc etc)