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Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

(techcrunch.com)
707 points patd | 1 comments | 27 May 20 12:21 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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standardUser ◴[27 May 20 19:46 UTC] No.23328914[source]▶
There seem to be some upside down priorities here. Many folks seem to be arguing that its an unacceptable form of censorship for a private platform to annotate content it allows others to post. Meanwhile, I'm seeing barely a mention of the fact that the President of the United States has threatened to use government power to shut down an entire sector of the economy devoted to communication. The latter is almost certainly a violation of the Constitution. The former, almost certainly not.
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1. fzeroracer ◴[28 May 20 00:06 UTC] No.23331781[source]▶
Because that's how far we've gone from reality. The word censorship has lost almost all meaning in online arguments when people are trying to argue that what Twitter did constitutes censorship while Trump publicly threatening them with shutdown somehow does not.

It's become increasingly obvious that the argument around censorship has never been actually about censorship but rather as another political bludgeon you can use to beat your opponent over the head with by scoring some easy points since censorship = bad. They ignore the power dynamics at play which is what makes censorship possible.