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1061 points danso | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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partiallypro ◴[] No.23350905[source]
Twitter is well within the rights to do this, but I have seen tweets from blue check marks essentially calling for violence and Twitter didn't remove them. So, does that mean Twitter actually -supports- those view points now? If Twitter is going to police people, it needs to be across the board. Otherwise it's just a weird censorship that is targeting one person and can easily be seen as political.

Everyone is applauding this because they hate Trump, but take a step back and see the bigger picture. This could backfire in serious ways, and it plays to Trump's base's narrative that the mainstream media and tech giants are colluding to silence conservatives (and maybe there could even be some truth to that.) I know the Valley is an echo chamber, so obviously no one is going to ever realize this.

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kingnight ◴[] No.23351063[source]
The valley being an echo chamber doesn’t necessarily mean those implementing this have their heads in the sand.

It can’t be all perfectly achieved, but to do nothing, as they were before, could be now determined to be a worse case than providing these annotations to flagrant misuse by the highest impact profile that they can’t do away with entirely.

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sevenf0ur ◴[] No.23351131[source]
The issue is that the rules are being enforced selectively. Just this week Twitter fact checked Trump's opinion on mail voter fraud by linking to other experts' opinions. It seems more like a move to influence the election rather than enforcing the rules.
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ecf ◴[] No.23351326[source]
Let’s entertain the possibility that Twitter is doing this to influence the election.

So what?

There’s no law prohibiting these types of businesses from supporting a political candidate. They could plaster a huge “Vote For X” banner at the top of every person’s profile. Don’t like it? Don’t use it.

It’s not like Twitter is tax-exempt which would prohibit it from endorsing candidates like Churches.

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Notorious_BLT ◴[] No.23352434{3}[source]
By the same argument, Google could exclude a political candidate from their search results entirely, or bolster a fabricated news story claiming the candidate was a child-molsting satanist to the top of their results. Would you also consider that acceptable?

These companies have become, for many, infrastructural. For these companies (who also sell advertising) to take these kinds of actions would essentially be them bypassing campaign finance rules to give MASSIVE contributions of free advertising to candidates. I think its fair to argue that that would be unacceptable interference.

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1. dnissley ◴[] No.23354536{4}[source]
I certainly wouldn't like that they took such an action, even if I liked whatever candidate they were stanning for. It would come off as pretty classless to most people I think.

But should it be illegal? IMO -- no. If this is the hill that some company wants to die on, let them try. Why not?

Thought experiment: If there was a political candidate running on a platform to destroy the internet, I think it would be perfectly reasonable for internet companies to vouch for the competition.