Twitter hides Donald Trump tweet for “glorifying violence”

Twitter policy:

"We start from a position of assuming that people do not intend to violate our Rules. Unless a violation is so egregious that we must immediately suspend an account, we first try to educate people about our Rules and give them a chance to correct their behavior. We show the violator the offending Tweet(s), explain which Rule was broken, and require them to remove the content before they can Tweet again. If someone repeatedly violates our Rules then our enforcement actions become stronger. This includes requiring violators to remove the Tweet(s) and taking additional actions like verifying account ownership and/or temporarily limiting their ability to Tweet for a set period of time. If someone continues to violate Rules beyond that point then their account may be permanently suspended."

Somewhere a counter was just incremented. It's going to be amusing if Twitter management simply lets the automated system do its thing. At some point, after warnings, the standard 48-hour suspension will trigger. Twitter management can simply simply say "it is our policy not to comment on enforcement actions".

They've suspended the accounts of prominent people many times before.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_suspensions

> Somewhere a counter was just incremented. It's going to be amusing if Twitter management simply lets the automated system do its thing. At some point, after warnings, the standard 48-hour suspension will trigger. Twitter management can simply simply say "it is our policy not to comment on enforcement actions".

I wouldn't be surprised if Twitter has exempted Trump's accounts from all automated moderation. However, I'm half expecting them to ban him about twelve seconds after he leaves office.

> However, I'm half expecting them to ban him about twelve seconds after he leaves office.

At the top management level, they are probably weighing the possibility that he never leaves office (a plausible scenario at this point), and how that scenario affects their bottom line.

They probably don’t want US institutions to dissolve into full-blown autocracy... But on the other hand, if that were to happen, then it would be better for the stock price if they hadn’t burned all bridges with the new leader for life.

You can bet that Zuckerberg is making the same calculus - except that he seems to have chosen a side. Facebook is no longer pretending to care about preventing autocracy. They are betting on the GOP coup succeeding, and are building bridges accordingly.

Note: no amount of downvoting by the alt-right fringe lurking here will make the facts go away. Downvote away since you don’t have the courage to write down and justify your true beliefs. You are an embarrassment to the technology community. You are the spineless, petty, cowardly foundation upon which all autocracies are built.

I agree that this system is more fragile than most people think; somehow almost preferring automatic government than the tediousness that functioning democracy requires. And sometimes people get a rude reminder of this.

I do not agree that the scenario you're talking about is probable (which is indicated by plausible). Perhaps you mean possible? Sure, but in that case it's also possible money instantly has no meaning, there is no Congress, there are no states, there are no judges or generals, there are no prison sentences, there are no laws at all whatsoever. Nothing matters, everything is possible.

That is a sense of unpredictability a society does not trend toward no matter how ill it is.

But try to understand that completely ending all constitutional order is not how revolutions tend to progress. Even in the U.S. civil war, there were two (federal) constitutions in place for two sets of states. There was order, even in that chaos.

I agree Trump has autocratic tendencies. But he is a weak minded fool. He will not make for a strong autocrat, he even contradicts himself and dithers too much for this. He is Side Show Bob. He's a distraction. To succeed he would need a very high percentage of authority, trust, and compliance - and there's just no way he's going to get that.

I question whether he even does something to sabotage the election. On January 20th his term of office expires. At noon he is not the POTUS if there's been no election. Further, there's no House of Representatives, because their term expires on January 3rd. And 1/3 of Senators are not Senators. But at 12:01pm on January 20th, there is a person who will become POTUS without an election. And that's the President pro tempore of the Senate. Following that, the states will surely already be figuring out how to reinstitute the House through either appointments or new elections. It's not up to the federal government. But to pass new laws, including a new election to make up for the delayed one, we'll need a Congress.

That has never happened. I can tell you many examples from history, things that are way more likely than any of this. Including from American history. Some of those things are violent, even in fact violent for just one person, that are way more likely than autocracy.

Trump's best chance is for the election to proceed.

So, while you can't for sure predict what's going to happen next, just try to have some imagination for rare events that have happened rather than events that have never happened. Trump is a chickenshit asshole but that's like, the least remarkable or interesting thing going on here, because he's been a chickenshit asshole his whole life - not news! And that doesn't really highly qualify (or disqualify) him as an autocrat. He's not going to be one because he's just too incompetent and steps on his own dick every chance he gets. Just try to calm down, let him have enough rope to hang himself, and he will.

> I question whether he even does something to sabotage the election. On January 20th his term of office expires. At noon he is not the POTUS if there's been no election. Further, there's no House of Representatives, because their term expires on January 3rd. And 1/3 of Senators are not Senators. But at 12:01pm on January 20th, there is a person who will become POTUS without an election. And that's the President pro tempore of the Senate. Following that, the states will surely already be figuring out how to reinstitute the House through either appointments or new elections. It's not up to the federal government. But to pass new laws, including a new election to make up for the delayed on, we'll need a Congress.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but how would there be "no election" to that degree? Rather than a single, centrally-coordinated federal election, doesn't the US have 50 state-coordinated elections (emphasis on the plural)? So to truly cancel the elections in November, you'd have to have buy in from all 50 state governments. In a slightly more realistic (yet still unrealistic) scenario you'd still have a POTUS, but one elected by electors from the states that held elections, and there'd still be a House of Representatives, but only with members from states that didn't participate in the cancellation.

I suppose the situation would be similar to what must have happened during the Civil War.

You are correct. It's federally mandated as to the date, but it's up to the states to administer the elections. And if POTUS were to "cancel" it - well it would get a good deal messier than I've suggested, and really wanted to avoid.

Let's say a few states agree to the cancellation? For POTUS and VPOTUS, they need 270 Electoral College votes to win. If states drop out, it's decently likely no one gets to 270. That means the House chooses the president, the Senate chooses the VP. In the House, each state gets one vote. I repeat, one. In the Senate each senator gets a vote. This has happened before and it can take a while. It could possibly take weeks. Also, the Congress that decides this is the new one, not the old one. So some election needs to happen because House terms, every single seat, expires on January 3. Do they have quorum? Did enough states elect House members to have a sitting Congress? shrug

Most states are likely to still be red states in the 2020 Congress, so if the decision goes to the House, Trump will probably get another term. Again, each state just gets one vote.