Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

It seems like any remotely political post on HN gets flooded and upvoted with provable incorrect comments. Twitter team which is doing "fact checks" is severely biased and factually wrong.

Twitter's "Head of Site Integrity" Yoel Roth boasts on his LinkedIn that he is in charge of "developing and enforcing Twitter’s rules".

> “He leads the teams responsible for developing and enforcing Twitter’s rules”

Here's a few of his tweets:

> Massive anti-Trump protest headed up Valencia St. San Francisco.

> I’m just saying, we fly over those states that voted for a racist tangerine for a reason.

> The “you are not the right kind of feminist” backlash to yesterday’s marches has begun. Did we learn nothing from this election?

> Yes, that person in the pink hat is clearly a bigger threat to your brand of feminism than ACTUAL NAZIS IN THE WHITE HOUSE

> How does a personality-free bag of farts like Mitch McConnell actually win elections?

> “Today on Meet The Press, we’re speaking with Joseph Goebbels about the first 100 days…” —What I hear whenever Kellyanne is on a news show

This same person doesn't stand up to his own purity tests:

> It wouldn't be a trip to New York without at least one big scary tranny.

> "Trans is a category worth being linguistically destabilized in the same way we did gay with 'fag,'" he wrote. "Sorry, but I don’t subscribe to PC passing the buck. Identity politics is for everyone."

Twitter's "fact check" is literally wrong. Until few years ago, every one agreed that mail-in ballot has massive fraud:

> “votes cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised & more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth, statistics show.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/us/politics/as-more-vote-...

Just 1 week ago: Close Results In Paterson Vote Plagued By Fraud Claims; Over 3K Ballots Seemingly Set Aside - A county spokesman said 16,747 vote-by-mail ballots were received, but the county's official results page shows 13,557 votes were counted — with uncounted ballots representing 19%

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/close-results-in-pater...

> California Secretary of State confirmed double-voting in one case and suspected double-voting by a number of other registered voters on Super Tuesday:

https://www.scribd.com/document/456618983/CA-SOS-Duplicate-V...

Yesterday, WEST VIRGINIA – Thomas Cooper, a USPS mail carrier in Pendleton County, was charged today in a criminal complaint with attempted election fraud, U.S. Attorney Bill Powell announced.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndwv/pr/pendleton-county-mail-c...

In 2004, Jerry Nadler (Democrat) asserts that paper ballots, particularly in the absence of machines, are extremely susceptible to fraud:

https://streamable.com/tbzu47

Future head of the Democrat Party Debbie Wasserman Schultz opposing mail-in ballots due to the risk of election fraud in 2008:

https://streamable.com/2tyqp1

West Virginia Mail Carrier Charged With Altering Absentee Ballot Requests:

https://time.com/5843088/west-virginia-mail-carrier-fraud-ab...

Also Twitter’s Trump ‘Fact Check’ Does Not Disclose Company Partnered with Groups Pushing Mail-In Ballots.

-----------

https://twitter.com/yoyoel/status/822654925217873921

https://twitter.com/yoyoel/status/823312544425132033

https://twitter.com/catfashionshow/status/298477704666300416

https://twitter.com/yoyoel/status/890812999874691073

https://twitter.com/yoyoel/status/823260235796094978

So he’s biased. Does that mean him fact checking is wrong? Sure, we should demand accountability on both sides, but it’s hard to be completely neutral.

Did you read my comment in full? I provided 5 different sources (all liberal too) that Twitter's "fact checking" is 100% wrong.

Sorry, do these data points prove that votes cast by mail are not "less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised & more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth"?

Did you read my full comment?

Yes, and I saw your examples. But do they prove that mail-in votes are:

1. less likely to be counted 2. more likely to be compromised & 3. more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth?

Or are they just some examples of mail-in voter fraud? (Some aren’t even that, still just discrepancies being investigated)

No, you just provided some examples. You didn’t prove that their statement is wrong.

This is great signal. It's a shame instead of saying any of this, the President makes wild accusations without any citations.

These sources fail to prove that Twitter fact checking is wrong.

He has made citations. It’s literally on the White house website for anyone to see. He has also tweeted it out several times.

I think you are being dishonest and therefore impossible to change your mind.

Did you even click on the nytimes article or nbc article? It literally proves their statement is wrong. I think it’s impossible to change your mind when you aren’t willing to read it.

The NBC news article I quoted explains exactly what you are asking:

> Close Results In Paterson Vote Plagued By Fraud Claims; Over 3K Ballots Seemingly Set Aside

> A county spokesman said 16,747 vote-by-mail ballots were received, but the county's official results page shows 13,557 votes were counted — with uncounted ballots representing 19 percent of all votes cast

> The spokesman later told the Paterson Press that the additional 2,390 disqualifications were due to the election board comparing signatures on the ballots to those previously on file for voters, and the new ones not matching up. The spokesman also would not explain the breakdown of what ward those ballots were from, or which candidates were voted for in those disqualified ballots. According to the Paterson Press, four wards had more votes go uncounted than the winner's margin of victory — meaning the uncounted ballots possibly could have tipped the election in favor of one of the candidates.

I think it’s not worth debating political topics on HN because all I get is comments flagged (aka disappears), downvoted and people being intellectually dishonest. Seems like no one clicks on any of the sources before downvoting and attacking.

Hey, resorting to an ad hominem is always easier than discussing the point or defending the facts you present. Your summary statement, "every one agreed that mail-in ballot has massive fraud," can't be reconciled with a fact that several states have had no-excuse-needed vote by mail for decades. and nothing has indicated that their fraud rate is higher than the election result fraud rate in other states.

If your experience has been that everyone is in agreement on the topic, I suggest it's because you're getting your information from sources with a specific political leaning. The consensus is not aligned with that statement; In fact, the general consensus in the statistical community is the opposite.

It was not an ad hom attack. Saying someone is being dishonest is not an ad hom attack when you didn't even make any point. You made a single statement "These sources fail to prove that Twitter fact checking is wrong." without any exact points on any of the sources I provided. You gave a 1 line "not true" comment. An ad hom attack is when I am not "criticizing the points you are making" but you never really made any points except just say "fails to prove." That's like you writing a research paper filled with sources and your professor gives you a 0/100 with a one line response "fails to prove."

My comment literally states from a NYTimes article that stats agree with me:

> “votes cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised & more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth, statistics show.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/us/politics/as-more-vote-...

This case from just last week had a 19% fraud:

> Close Results In Paterson Vote Plagued By Fraud Claims; Over 3K Ballots Seemingly Set Aside

> A county spokesman said 16,747 vote-by-mail ballots were received, but the county's official results page shows 13,557 votes were counted — with uncounted ballots representing 19 percent of all votes cast

> The spokesman later told the Paterson Press that the additional 2,390 disqualifications were due to the election board comparing signatures on the ballots to those previously on file for voters, and the new ones not matching up. The spokesman also would not explain the breakdown of what ward those ballots were from, or which candidates were voted for in those disqualified ballots. According to the Paterson Press, four wards had more votes go uncounted than the winner's margin of victory — meaning the uncounted ballots possibly could have tipped the election in favor of one of the candidates.

Unless you can actually counter my sources without crying victim of "ad hom" attack which I certainly didn't, my original statement stands true.

The counter argument looks like this. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mail-in-ballot-voter-fraud...

But in addition to direct counterarguments, there's also the need to consider effects and what beliefs about what is happening predict should be observable.

How does one reconcile these cherry picks against the larger pattern that states that allow no-excuse-needed mail-in voting don't have higher fraud rates than states that do?

Using snopes as a "fact check" is the same as using CNN to claim Trump is a Russian puppet.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/07/18/snopes...!

You're attacking the source instead of the information. And you continue to refrain from addressing the question: if mail-in voting is more susceptible to fraud, why are the states that have allowed it for decades not showing more fraud than states that don't?

You still haven't answered this from NYTimes article in my very first comment, so I have the luxury to wait for your response to this stat:

> “votes cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised & more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth, statistics show.” - Ion Sancho, the elections supervisor

Archive if the NYTimes link shows paywall:

http://archive.is/6ZEMO

The question is my response. The facts the NYTimes cites imply there should be predictable, observable outcomes in races in states that have allowed more mail-in balloting for decades. Where is evidence of those outcomes?

If you look, there's plenty of evidence. When doing search, set the date range to be before 2015 because since 2015, pretty much all media has lost their minds and started reporting the exact opposite of what they used to report. It's as if they have all erased their history and search results now hide it thanks to Google.

Here's Georgia:

https://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/23/us/georgia-gets-tough-on-...

Here's Florida:

https://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/29/us/18-are-arrested-in-199...

You can find plenty of examples of voter fraud, vast majority is through mail-in (including absentee and ballot harvesting)

> The Miami Herald won a Pulitzer Prize for its investigation of a 1997 mayor’s race in Miami that was thrown out by the courts because of an estimated 5,000 fraudulent absentee ballots.

> A 2003 mayor’s race in East Chicago, Indiana, was overturned by the Indiana Supreme Court because of absentee ballot fraud, as well as other problems such as individuals voting whose registered residences were vacant lots.

> A stolen election in Greene County, Alabama, involving hundreds of fraudulent absentee bal­lots resulted in 11 people being convicted of voter fraud.

> In Essex County, New Jersey, there is an ongoing investigation of fraudulent absentee ballots in a 2007 state Senate race. Charges have already been filed against five people, including campaign workers who were submit­ting absentee ballots on behalf of voters who never received or voted the ballots.

Even the democrats used to agree to this fact until Trump came along:

In 2004, Jerry Nadler (Democrat) asserts that paper ballots, particularly in the absence of machines, are extremely susceptible to fraud:

https://streamable.com/tbzu47

Future head of the Democrat Party Debbie Wasserman Schultz opposing mail-in ballots due to the risk of election fraud in 2008:

https://streamable.com/2tyqp1

This isn't just about mail-in voting. It's about absentee and ballot harvesting too which accompanies mail-in voting.

The question isn't whether fraud is possible with mail-in ballots; it's about whether mail-in ballots materially change the likelihood of fraud, or ease of committing fraud successfully, relative to in-person voting.

You accused me in your first reponse to me on this subthread of having a mind impossible to change. What I'm looking for is correlation; that would make me reconsider my position. While correlation is not causation, a causal explanation ("mail-in ballots make it easier to commit undetected fraud") without a correlation it predicts is highly suspect. Find correlation between the states that have had mail-in voting for longer periods of time, and for more people, and identified instances of voter fraud. Confirm there are more instances in those states than in states that have more curtailed access to mail-in voting. Tricky to get the numbers right (probably have to do a state-by-state search of laws to find when they enacted no-excuse absentee voting), but here's the list of states that allow it (https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/vopp-t...) and here's a collection of voter fraud incidents identified (https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud-print/search?name=&state...).

I haven't spread-sheeted this, but at a first glance I'm not seeing a correlation between no-excuse-needed mail-in and fraud. Alaska allows no-excuse-needed and has 0 instances recorded. Texas does not allow it and has ~25 recorded.

The President's administration itself commissioned a study on voter fraud and did not find widespread fraud activity (https://apnews.com/f5f6a73b2af546ee97816bb35e82c18d/Report:-...).

To pop this entire discussion up a meta-level to the original topic: clearly this is, at least, a controversial issue. I think given the combination of the controversy, the President's one-sided take on it, and the authority from which he speaks granted him by his office, Twitter was at least justified in fact-checking him. This is a controversial topic, and he speaks as though it is not from a position of authority encouraging people to believe him without questioning the details. I appreciate you question, even if your conclusions disagree from mine; in contrast, the way Trump uses his Twitter feed to push one side of a topic juries are still out on is irresponsible as a President, and while Twitter taking "the medium is the message" somewhat literally in fact-checking him makes me slightly uncomfortable in terms of what larger rules they might employ, I'm glad somebody from an equivalent position of authority to his voice on their service is doing so.

... and we should probably all find the response of the most powerful civil servant in the United States being to threaten to close that institution in response, unconscionable.

What sentence from the NBC or NYT article indicates that mail-in voting is MORE fraudulent than in-person voting? That’s the statement right?

This all hinges on this one thing, anything short of this and Twitter’s statement on Trump’s tweet is correct.

You are probably being downvoted because you are moving the goalpost:

I am not asking you if mail in voter fraud has ever happened, I am asking you if there is proof that there is more mail in voter fraud than in person voter fraud.

I don’t think you will be able to give me anything that indicates this, much less proves it, Twitters statement stands correct

They accused him for 3 years of being a traitor and a Russian agent meanwhile he and his family was being spied on and framed by intel community. They setup a 35 year military servant of being a Russian agent just because they hate his politics. They are still accusing him of killing 100,000 people from COVID. Everything from the Jussie Smollett hoax to the Covington High School kids hoax was blamed on him. So when Trump fights back, everyone loses their mind. Everyday, they spit at him, frame him, accuse him and shame him. People want him to simply keep being a punching bag and folding like a lawn chair. But he's not going to do that because he's been this way his entire life - and everyone loved him for exactly that until he ran for President as a Republican. Twitter using these same people who spit on him every single day as "fact checkers" is insane. I think people are letting their disdain for him cloud their judgement.

Would you prefer a president who's a punching bag for the entire world? Or one who fights back?

Who is "they?"

And how is this relevant to whether voter fraud claims that are made in an absolutist manner by the President when they are still controversial should be pushed back on by other authoritative voices?

And is it acceptable for the President to "fight back" by threatening to cease to uphold his oath of office and attempt to undermine the First Amendment directly by shutting down a media source for reporting facts in response to statements by a civil servant?

"they" is the media sources Twitter used to "fact check". I was replying to the last part of your comment about what a president should and shouldn't do. US has seen what a "presidential president" can do for decades - from the Carters to Bush's to Clintons to Obamas. All the nice guy "presidential presidents" and politicians came and left with more and more problems for everyone and people now blame the man who's barely been in office for 3.5 years (3 of which were spent on Russiagate) for all the problems just because he fights back on Twitter.

"authoritative voices" doesn't mean anything now a days. Look at WHO debacle.

Before, being correct made you an authority. Now a days, being an authority makes you correct.

Somehow all the authoritative voices got everything wrong in every hoax I mentioned.

I caution against cherry-picking authorities making errors to conclude authority is a flawed concept. Societies have gone down the anti-intellectual road before, and it ends poorly. Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. Stalin's USSR.

Correlation doesn't imply causation. Authorities on topics making errors get reported on more often because it's news. They also have more responsibility to be correct; the alternative to authority isn't truth, it's people taking wild guesses without the benefit of training. They are wrong more often, and they don't tend to make newspaper inches without that error causing some disaster because it's expected that people spouting off in a field outside their expertise would be wrong more often.

Nobody is systematically fact-checking HN comments, for instance, because none of us are assumed to be authorities on anything. ;)

A President, in contrast, is supposed to be an authority on, at least, the Constitution (or at the least, to know when their expertise is lacking), as he takes an oath to uphold it. The current President is demonstrably not (multiple EOs overturned by the courts are evidence of this). And his threats against Twitter show an extremely disturbing willingness to abdicate his responsibility to uphold the First Amendment. If the media is being hard on him, it's because they're doing their job; his behavior admits scrutiny beyond the extreme scrutiny his office alone already admits. When not even the Federal Election Commission agrees with the President's grandiose statements (https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/499890-fec-chairwoman-...), the media is asleep at the wheel if they aren't fact-checking him.

Correlation does not imply causation. I hypothesize problems increasing while we've had Presidential Presidents (and to my memory, we've only had the one type!) isn't being caused by Presidents; it's caused by the world becoming increasingly complicated as systems interconnect, economic engines get larger, and money, people, and information flow more swiftly. I know some people believed electing a "non-Presidential President" might generate a different result, but honestly... Are things, on net, better now than they were in 2016? Not even the economy is on an upswing anymore.

Regarding the AP article you mentioned:

https://apnews.com/f5f6a73b2af546ee97816bb35e82c18d/Report:-...

It does not mention mail-in voting anywhere. Also this line:

> In a letter to Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who are both Republicans and led the commission, Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap said the documents show there was a “pre-ordained outcome” and that drafts of a commission report included a section on evidence of voter fraud that was “glaringly empty.”

This tries to confuse the reader for political reasons as if it was a Republican who made the conclusion. But it wasn't, Matthew Dunlap is a life long Democrat. Since AP mentions "who are both Republicans", then they should have also mentioned that Matthew Dunlap is a democrat but they didn't - which shows there is a bias in this article and they are trying to sell a specific side of the story. Another easy way to point out the bias in the article is that later on, it quotes the vice chair of the commission:

> “For some people, no matter how many cases of voter fraud you show them, there will never be enough for them to admit that there’s a problem,” “It appears that Secretary Dunlap is willfully blind to the voter fraud in front of his nose,” Kobach said there have been more than 1,000 convictions for voter fraud since 2000, and that the commission presented 8,400 instances of double voting in the 2016 election in 20 states. “Had the commission done the same analysis of all 50 states, the number would have been exponentially higher,”

Yet despite all these, the article's headline is "Trump commission did not find widespread voter fraud". The correct headline would be "Trump commission found more than 1000 convictions for voter fraud Democrat Matthew Dunlap says that's not enough proof for voter fraud."

Also "there hadn’t been any prosecutions for double voting or any non-citizen voting in years" is simply 100% false.

> California Secretary of State, Alex Padilla, Democrat (described as activist, engineer, and civil servant) confirmed double-voting in one case and suspected double-voting by a number of other registered voters on Super Tuesday:

https://www.scribd.com/document/456618983/CA-SOS-Duplicate-V...

^Seems like this has been deleted but this article talks about it:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/california-confirms-...

You can filter this page by all double-voting fraud criminal convictions. There's 8 pages of names all the way till 2019 for double voting:

https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud/search?combine=&state=Al...

https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/commentary/datab...

I am aware of flaws in cherry-picking authorities. That's exactly what everyone else is doing (including the media since 2015) while accusing the other side what they are guilty of.

From Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals - "accuse them of what you are doing"

> Matthew Dunlap is a life long Democrat

Irrelevant. The relevant fact is "The now-disbanded voting integrity commission launched by the Trump administration uncovered no evidence to support claims of widespread voter fraud, according to an analysis of administration documents released Friday." The individuals who had to FOIA the informtion because the Executive refrained from turning it over voluntarily don't factor into the outcome of the FOIA'd data. Kobach's commentary on what the commission didn't find is irrelevant, and he did not provide evidence to back up his commentary anyway. Political allegiance is a smokescreen here. The facts show "Trump commission did not find widespread voter fraud."

You and I disagree on that interpretation because, IIUC, you think 1,000 instances is significant. It is not. Not across decades of data and millions of votes. In fact, it basically shows the integrity-maintaining systems in place are working as intended.

Saul Alisnky's rules cut both ways. If you don't want people cherrypicking, stop doing it.

It's 1,285 convictions now. And that's just the ones which were caught.

> 1,000 instances is significant

Now that's just silly. You are conflating "1285 convictions" with "number of votes" which is wrong. 1 person can manipulate thousands of votes - and they have. Read the convictions. Entire elections have been overturned. It takes 270 to win.

I also stated the "there hadn’t been any prosecutions for double voting or any non-citizen voting in years" is simply 100% false but you didn't reply.

You can see all the way till 2019, there's been several convictions of double voting:

https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud/search?combine=&state=Al...

The article is literally saying one thing while the data says exact opposite and yet you are trusting the article instead of the raw data. I don't know what else to tell you.

I don't know why we should focus on the error in statement made by "Republican commission member and election lawyer J. Christian Adams." I didn't comment because I agree with you; his statement appears erroneous.

We'll agree to disagree on what the data says in the report; you claim it's significant, I (and statisticians and voting law scholars and some Congresspeople) claim it's not.

All of this is an irrelevant distraction to the top-level question of whether it's acceptable that the President of the United States---a country that clearly enshrines freedom of speech, and of the press, for the purpose of disputing the facts as accepted by civil servants---should respond to a private corporation exercising those rights by threatening to shut it down. Every recursion we add to this thread is further evidence of why those rights are baked into the Constitution and why they're necessary, and casts a dark cloud on any civil servant who would attempt to thwart them.

Hypothetical: imagine instead of Twitter, the President had chosen Hacker News as his primary avenue for broadcasting short messages to the public. And instead of the two of us dithering on this topic, it were https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dang using his editorial voice as site moderator to drop a top-level fact-check subthread under the President's threads.

In response, the President threatens to shut down HN. Acceptable or no?

Saying "President threatens to shut down HN" is silly. It should be "President threatens to shut down HN unless they either stop censoring libertarian and conservative voices OR they declare themselves as publishers which allows average Joe to sue them if needed". Right now they are acting as a publisher while enjoying the immunities offered by claiming to be a platform.

60 years ago, LGBT voices would have been censored on tech platforms. Few years before that, blacks were censored.

I am a brown immigrant myself (I try not to bring it up as I think it shouldn't matter but it does in this context) and I get called nazi and white supremacist and all sorts of names on Reddit just because I have certain right leaning views. I am libertarian myself. I am banned from pretty much every politics and news subs. I find it impossible to even put my voice on Reddit on political topics and the same is true here for HN too. People say "build your own site" but when we do, we get attacked and dropped by providers. I think people have a hard time empathizing because they aren't in the same shoes.

Also the "private corporation" excuse is never used when for example the Baker who couldn't bake the cake for the gay couple for religious reasons got taken to court 3 times. I don't agree with the Baker and I would bake the cake myself but I would allow him to practice his own religious views. I don't like the double standard.

Also it is well studied that the brains in left leaning people is different than right leaning. For example the "amygdalas" is more active in right leaning people. It's an area of the brain that's associated with expressing and processing fear and threats. It's a biological difference. Falls in a similar category of race, sex etc.

When 50% of the population is being throttled, I think it's time to fix things.

Do you think it's fair for a site like Reddit to provide all sorts of porn to a 12 year old kid but ban right leaning views? How can democracy exist when half the population can't voice their opinion.

Also I am not just talking about censorship of right wingers. I am talking about people like Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang too. Nor am I talking just about US. Canada and others like HK and Taiwan too.

1 more thing. From the proposals made by Josh Hawley:

> Preserves existing immunity for small and medium-sized companies. The bill applies only to companies with more than 30 million active monthly users in the U.S., more than 300 million active monthly users worldwide, or who have more than $500 million in global annual revenue

So HN won't be covered anyway.

A persons signature often changes over time - it’s a ridiculous reason to void a vote.

All that should matter is the form being delivered to the correct address of a registered voter, and that voter only voting once - with the obvious identity / address checks being undertaken on registration.

Size is irrelevant. 5 people or 50 million, freedom of the press is freedom of the press.

And Twitter enjoys no immunity here. If the President wants to sue them for defamation or libel for fact-checking them, he's welcome to. They own the fact-check copy. I'd have no issue with him suing them as a private citizen. Good luck with it, I say to him. Truth is an affirmative defense.

As for the rest... I don't know what to tell you. Freedom of the press does not imply requirement others listen, or obligation to provide presses to people. Demanding those things implies the ideas cannot stand on their own in the common marketplace.

(Baker is a different issue; sexual orientation is a protected class in law. Political views or "being President" is not, for self-evident reasons).

We should start blocking electricity, banks, food and water too next!

Slippery slope. None of those are speech.

Forcing a baker to bake a cake by taking him to court was speech I am sure.

Do you remember the outcome of that case?

There's been several cases of this type:

> Justices handed a small victory to Melissa and Aaron Klein, the owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa in Gresham, Oregon by dismissing a state court ruling against them and telling state judges to look at it again. By doing so they avoided a high-profile decision on competing claims between gay rights activists and businesses which refuse to serve them on religious grounds, an issue which could have become electric in an election year had it stayed on the court's docket into 2020...

So in this one, the supreme court didn't really make a decision. They sent it back to the lower court.

But that baker is now back in court again with a different gay couple. So people definitely like forcing him:

https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/masterpiece-cakeshop...

Another case had opposite outcome:

> 2018 ruling, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, in which the Court ruled that a Colorado baker who refused to make a cake for the wedding of two men must do so.

Another case also had opposite outcome:

> A similar case, involving a florist in Washington state who refused to provide flowers for a same-sex ceremony there, is on the way to the high court. The Washington Supreme Court had previously ruled against the florist, reviewed the case in light of the Masterpiece decision, and recently reaffirmed its unanimous decision.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/06/17/supreme-court-passes-...

https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/usa-supreme-court-re...

Notice the common thread: the bakers in question are only able to even float the case by claiming their cakes are artistic expression, and therefore protected. Good luck passing the most basic argument that providing electricity is artistic expression. And this entire diversion is irrelevant to the meta-question; the President is trying to censor speech he doesn't like, he's not trying to force speech out of someone who would prefer to be silent. Your examples of LGBT and black voices being censored in the past are irrelevant; if the President were, hypothetically, saying "Black people" or "LGBTQ people are human beings, deserving of all rights" and Twitter were fact-checking with boxes saying "[citations from phrenology] indicate black people have inferior brain construction," that would be distasteful and disgusting in the extreme, and worthy of leaving Twitter over as an individual user... But not something the President should shut them down for. The First Amendment exists (among other reasons) so the President's viewpoint isn't the only legally allowed viewpoint, for good and ill.

You dodged the meta-question by trying to appeal to the specific attack on Section 230 that has been proposed (scoped to particular sizes) so you didn't have to answer whether the HN shutdown hypothetical would be acceptable. It would not be. Neither would shutting down Twitter. Size is irrelevant.