"On November 5, 2020, Twitter permanently suspended Bannon after he called for Dr Anthony Fauci to be beheaded in an episode."
It's good they finally pulled the trigger, but considering that Steven Bannon has been constantly putting oil to the fire on every single channel available, that point was very certainly much earlier.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/suspended
suspended = Caused to stop for a while; interrupted or delayed.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/banned
banned = Forbidden; not allowed.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/oxymoron
oxymoron = A figure of speech in which two words or phrases with opposing meanings are used together intentionally for effect.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tautology
tautology = Redundant use of words
And I would suggest '[permanent] suspension' may have connotations of a statement about reversibility. 'We have the ability to reverse this action [but we intend not to exercise that ability, ever].'
With a physical location, "banned" sometimes implies they've been declared a persona non grata, and the police will be called if they return. Clearly that doesn't apply to an online platform.
I can't really see this being a big deal, Bannon's got enough wealth to make his own website.
If you suspended someone and then said 'we're making your suspension permanent', it sounds like a 'cute'/think-you're-on-a-soap-opera way of saying 'you're now fired/expelled(/as applicable)'. Suspensions end. Even a suspension bridge for example is alluding to some temporal aspect, the natural outcome (gravity having its way) would be different.
Whatever form that innovation takes, I wonder if it will ultimately be the new standard and we'll all ultimately be on it and be facing the same problem again.
How come this person has not been prosecuted yet?
If you say "Democrats have ignored certain classes of Americans and pushed them to the brink and this is the result" - it's a heavily editorial opinion
The press overall uses these types of editorial lies daily.
The Guardian today is Blaming the existence of COVID on Boris Johnson, unsurprisingly. To me it's a stretch, and basically a lie, but well within editorial distortions we can expect these days.
I'm not fan of either of those Giuliani/Bannon fools, but this kind of 'lie' I don't think is ban-worthy.
Youtube might be using current political conditions I think to go after those they don't like.
If Giuliani was on the podcast actively calling for further acts of sedition - like he was at the rally a few days ago - then it would be a ban for sure. But he's not, so it's not.
We are in a situation where all sides of the argument are essentially lies (to someone) because of how we have had events framed for us. Is the media responsible? Depends on who you don’t like. Is Pizzagate or Russiagate real? Conspiracies have flown in all directions.
Lie itself is a term that is more persuasive than falsehood. When i hear someone call something a lie i tend to ignore everything that person says.
Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. Lie or falsehood? If you don’t give them the benefit of the doubt, call it a lie. I think using the term lie itself is a self-contained conspiracy theory. One is assuming that what they are hearing is not just wrong, but not worth investigating because the person saying it doesn’t actual believe it.
Even Fox news - after the election - was careful not to directly support Trump's false claims. Instead, they 'sympathized' with voters who 'felt disenfranchised' - which is a kind of indirect lie, but not a 'straight up lie'.
Even when facts are contentious we can still get the word out.
We absolutely need integrity in the system at all levels - which is why having a President that completely fabricates stories, it's a problem.
The press has been bending reality more since the election of Trump, which is why his presence adds to the toxicity - it just creeps into everything. It's why, despite however much some might agree with his policies, they come at an addition 'hidden cost' of the erosion of integrity in some of these systems.
We all have to play our part and try to be as objective as we can I guess.
The system needs integrity to work but it needs discipline to maintain it. Now it has neither.
Political pressure creates an us vs them mentality where reality must pass through a filter to get to the public and whoever controls this filter wins. This is the battleground of divide but it is also how we know what’s going on. This is why we have several versions of events and one’s belief in a version is entirely dependent on one’s political views, not evidence. Evidence is tacked on after the fact.
One thing I like to do is give people the benefit of the doubt. This helps me understand where they are coming from in their own words. Most people on any side of any discussion are decent and deserve to be heard.
At some point the lies need to be brought to court.
Who needs to stop them?
By which authority?
Who decides what is a lie and what is truth?
Who cross-checks them when they're inevitably wrong?
By which authority?
Simple dismissals like this miss the point. Until there are some good answers to these questions, kneejerk censorship is no solution at all.
Stating falsehoods should absolutely not be grounds for censorship, even the private kind undertaken by hosting providers.
I am also not advocating for compelled speech.
Very soon, it will be impossible to buy webscale hosting from anywhere but a half-dozen providers. Should those providers be the sole and exclusive authority of what is or is not allowed on the web?
Airlines aren't permitted the authority to decide who flies and who doesn't. Why is AWS?
This isn't a constitutional issue, or even an American one. It's one about the place that censorship has in our civilization.
A tiny number of infrastructure providers should not have a unilateral ability to veto unpopular speech, especially considering, as we just witnessed, the definition of unpopular can change on a dime with the wind.
Today, it's Parler and Stormfront. What will become the target of censorship in five years? Ten?
Increasingly services are linked to our identities, and bans are lifetime. Will creating new accounts after political wind direction changes endanger one's data storage, email, contact lists, or hosting/publishing ability one day? How many individual people or organizations are really provider-independent and could survive losing all of their data at a host because they once belonged to the wrong faction?
Don't underestimate this risk.
But lying is enough to get you banned?
All the discussion up to now was "there's no slippery slope, only calls for violence" will get you banned.
And now it's slipped to lying will get you banned?
It wasn't on Tuesday. It is now. Things are clearer.
The lies were frankly only the proximate cause. Bannon and his guests have often veered into the kind of violent rhetoric that begat Wednesday's assault on congress. Bringing Giuliani on to continue to inflame people makes it clear Bannon has no intention of stopping. So he's out.
Rest assured, though, lying will continue to be allowed except for this one lie for this one moment in time until this blows over. Google will be happy to let any content through as long as it makes money and they can get away with it without facing consequences.
Will this not lead to all posts having to be moderated before being published? Do we really want to go down that path, and the inevitable removal of many open discussion forums that will be unable to effectively moderate content?
This is a very difficult problem but I don't think the solution is to hold hosting organisations either legally or morally responsible for the content they carry.
Where does this leave the voice of minority groups that for some reason are seen as "unacceptable" to the majority of the population?
Should a non-religious voice in a religious society be banned from talking just because they express it would be nice if women could drive cars?
Should we ban the gay person who talks about the shitty treatment they get when trying to get medical treatment just because they live in a primarily heterosexual society.
Should we stop a group organising protests against deaths at official hands just because they are really pissed off and there is some potential that official organisation may react badly to the protest.
Personally I find the language and behaviour of your president and his cronies to be completely unacceptable and frankly unhinged. However would you prefer them standing in public sprouting their rubbish where we can all hear them and point out the ridiculousness of their words, or would you prefer to have them hide away in private, able to say whatever they want with no chance of opposing voice?
I don't really know what the answer to this movement is. I know one of the answers is better education, teaching people critical thinking, but I don't know that this is going to be something that happens quickly. What I do know is that you can never win somebody to your point of view unless you actually engage with them, rather than just tell them they are wrong and cut them off.
To quote a song that escapes me at the moment, we need to "Keep on Talking"!
Do not let GAFA evade responsibility just because they're scrambling to pull the plug after 7 years of digital sectarian chaos.
The cost of producing lies is way lower than producing real journalism.
With BLM there’s an argument to be made that public policy backed by Republicans (and Democrats) created an environment where blacks are disproportionately targeted and harmed by police without consequence, resulting in the inevitable death of yet another unarmed black man.
With the capital riots, all Democrats did was win an election and every single resulting court case.
Plus the riots during the early days of BLM were stoked by the videotaped suffocation of a black man. No one was fanning the flames. The videotape itself did that.
With the capital riots you have Trump and his “team” manufacturing anger with lies. If Trump put country over ego and conceded, none of this would be happening.
You don’t think Democrats were pissed off when the FL recount was ordered to stop and Gore lost by 537 votes? Gore could have easily seized that moment to create anger and perpetuate violence, but that’s not the kind of country we want to live in.
Plus, it’s not like these bans are coming preemptively. Companies are sensitive now because people have died and political leaders have been targeted.
If after the Young Turks comments you had targeted political attacks on Republicans, then I can see your point. But for me the capital riots are far worse because they’re being actively exacerbated with the intent of threatening our democracy.
Are you asserting that Republicans controlled the cities and police forces in which "blacks are disproportionately targeted and harmed by police without consequence"?
* defunding schools in minority areas via how school funding is created * war on drugs and mandatory minimum sentencing * selling military grade equipment to local police forces * supporting private prison infrastructure * preventing open discussion of criminal justice reform despite having the largest prison population in the developed world * sending drugs into minority communities via the CIA * supporting police unequivocally despite evidence of wrongdoing going unpunished
... are all public policies and social policies that can lead to that outcome.
It’s not like cities “control their police departments”. Police are all autonomous with their own cultures and political beliefs influenced by a lot of rhetoric and policy and experience.
All the things you listed (except for perhaps the selling of military equipment) is part of the policing responsibility of the states and local government. Those authorities have the authority and responsibility to "control their police departments"
No, not all cities, but certainly _some_ cities. Wether that is by design or by pure luck is incidental to the point that the Young Turks can blame the BLM protests on Republicans with at least some shred of plausibility and evidence. Sure, maybe it’s a cheap generalization that lets Democrats off the hook, but in some areas of the country the blatant segregationist racism of the 60s never died, and in some of those areas Republicans (and Democrats) have made direct or indirect attempts to continue that suppression:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-civil-rights-ex...
So wether you agree or not, there’s a logical path that can be drawn from oppressor to oppressed.
But claiming the 2020 election was rigged or stolen or had massive fraud to a degree that would have changed the election outcome was never demonstrated in any plausible way in any public venue. There are no dots connecting the oppressor and the oppressed. The “kraken” was never released. It’s simply a lie started by Trump that’s led to violent consequences and unnecessary death.
If the Young Turks don’t blame BLM on the Republicans, the riots still happen. If Trump conceded he lost a fair election, no one dies. That’s the difference.
The purpose of this site is intellectual curiosity, which is not compatible with political battle. Some political overlap is fine and inevitable, but when accounts go way beyond "some overlap", we ban them. We have to or else the site will be wrecked for its main mandate. More explanation here: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....
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. But please don't create accounts to break the rules with.
For many Trump’s breaking of norms was funny, admirable or simply inept.
But when you play with fire (like telling people a fair election was in fact stolen) and people die, it’s not funny anymore.
I mean sure with Parler it worked because of the coordinated effort of Apple, Google and Amazon, but can we always count on that?
Wouldn't it be better to have a centralised authority that regulates these things, with the legal authority to shut down any service that broadcasts lies and evil things? Like a Ministry of Truth.
To avoid people lying to each other in private conversations, I think it would be best if messaging services would also fall under their control, how else could we stop people from texting conservative propaganda to their friends?
huge if true
Imagine that all the news agencies actually spread the lie. Imagine that for the next 4 years of Biden's presidency, they would talk non-stop about election fraud, how he's illegitimate, and how there needs to be an investigation. Imagine that the opposition party appointed a special investigator who's sole mission was to take down Biden by uncovering fraud.
Now imagine that after 4 years, it turned out that all the evidence for fraud was actually based on lies, opposition research, or fabricated dossiers. The investigation found some other issues - but nothing that could take down Biden. Turns out they tarnished the presidency for four years for no good reason. You think apologies would be in order right?
Yet that's exactly what the Russian collusion narrative was. A lie. A four year lie perpetrated by the Liberal media, the Democrats - including very prominent leaders who openly lied to people's faces - as well as some members of the intelligence agencies.
So why didn't those lies need to stop? How would Democrats react if they had to deal with 4 years of fraud investigations, #Resistance, #NotMyPresident?
And let me be clear, I think these will be remarkably similar events in a way that's going to look almost comical in hindsight.
Imagine the outrage Democrats would have had if instead of being investigated, the courts had simply dismissed the Russian collusion narrative? If they marched, looted, and rioted with the courts entertaining the investigation, how bad would it have gotten if the Republicans of 2016 acted like the Democrats of 2020?
I'm sorry, did you not live through the entire Obama presidency?
The asymmetry that GP describes is real, and everyone should be wary about the way politics are carried out now.
> The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion. Evidence of Russian government operations began to surface in mid-2016.
What part of this was a lie?
https://www.npr.org/2019/04/18/708850903/read-the-full-muell...
That's false equivalency. There is 1000+ page report by the Republican led senate about Trump and Russia. It's highly suggestive that the senate was investigating him because of his and his associate ties with Russia. And Russia also interfered in the election to boot. No one knows the full truth yet and we may never know it.
As opposed to the election fraud claims from 2020: they are just baseless accusations from Trump that have no evidence to warrant further investigation and got thrown out of every court. If they turn out to be legitimate concerns, I'm sure the senate will investigate them.
BTW, most news media is overly dramatic regardless of which way it leans.
https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-international-news-el...
So you cannot tell lies on the internet? What happens to religion, then?
It seems to me that Trump is in the same position if you ask his devotees.
The existance of god is an extraordinary claim with no evidence.
Help me out here, Hacker News. This guy thinks: "Democrats attacked the capital", is an opinion.
How do we even talk to this person?
"They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past."
-- Jean-Paul Sartre
[1] The Alt-Right Playbook: Control the Conversation - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaPgDQkmqqM
We saw last Wednesday that it's no longer safe to ignore them.
We're fully post-fact now, and it's not just Republicans playing this game.
That is an opinion.
Either he has it or he doesn't.
The problem is many people act like evidence doesn't exist - just like with voter fraud.
Adults can talk to each other and listen ideas and make up their own mind without Daddy Tech deciding for them what's right or wrong. It's called personal responsibility and it's theoretically the corner stone of western society.
When "bad" ideas are removed from the public eye... they grow underground. The way to fight them is to make them public where truth will prevail.
That's not an opinion, it's a statement of fact whose truth can be evaluated. About the only thing that is even slightly ambiguous is how you define "Trump people", but given that essentially every person that has been identified in the insurrection has been shown to have documented pro-Trump views, what else would you call them?
So what about this statement isn't provably false to you?
The lack of -context- irks me far more than any other issue here - particularly when the context is so damning.
I’m always more frustrated with those with facts on their side when they fail to argue properly than with those who are wrong. Being wrong is easy - the burden of argument is on the intelligent - not the slow witted.
Are you actually serious? Did you miss the all the videos of the mob battling police? How do you think that cop was killed (hint: he was hit in the head with a fire extinguisher)? Yes, there were some videos of cops basically giving up and retreating from being outnumbered, but to say "no one really even tried to stop them. That sentiment seems true on its face." is just bullshit.
That's an impressive attempt to rescue the statement, but he didn't say “No Trump supporter scaled the walls”, he said “No one who scaled the walls was a Trump supporter.” While in a formal logic sense, of no one scaled the walls the latter would be true, it's not something anyone basically familiar with spoken English would use to express that concept; it is what you would say to acknowledge that the wall was scaled and deny the people doing it were Trump supporters.
And, in any case, forcible entry did occur, both through positions on the perimeter surrounding the building (prompting the perimeter to be generally collapsed as the guards at other points were then surrounded) and at some of the external entrances to the building (of which there is video), and at internal barricades (in one case, prompting deadly force to keep the mob away from withdrawing threatened civilians.)
And in some of those cases, there were people known to have been Trump supporters involved.
So, it's both an implausible interpretation and even if it was what he was claiming pretty clearly false, too.
I have to say, if you don't recognize the ambiguity it contains, you don't have a strong grasp on the language or you were not reading what was written. He's either saying that they weren't Trump people or that they weren't scaling the walls. It's not obvious which one he means.
“YouTube bans Steve Bannon's podcast channel hours after Rudy Giuliani appeared on an episode and blamed the Capitol siege on Democrats”
At some point the lies need to stop.