Twitter locked my account for a nine year old tweet

Seems like a very pertinent distinction to modern democracy / society.

Unlike in the 1800 when everyone could just go the the town square or publish their own pamphlet and have almost equal reach, today most discussion happens in 2-3 outlets: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.

Whether those started as private companies, whether those are not public goods, etc, should be irrelevant. They have de facto captured a big chunk of the conversation that shapes the public opinion.

I'd argue the same was true for TV and newspapers in the 1900-2000 -- they had a disproportionate power of shaping public opinion, and a monopoly of control on it. That was bad -- and it was already said that "he who controls the mass media, controls democracy". Even if people still had the "first amendment right" to open their own newspaper (as if that's practical), or whatever.

But at the time, at least, newspapers and tv stations had limited pages and run time, expensive production costs, and it was at least reasonable that they couldn't include everybody's voice.

Today, services like Twitter, Facebook, etc, not only have small marginal costs for including another voice, but they encourage and actively want to add more (all) people in their platform. So there's no excuse (from that point) of censoring people.

And some if it is plain hateful. Distasteful, and inflammatory. [1]

Not all words need to be respected. Sometimes people need help, and sometimes they ask for it in subliminal ways.

And of course it's a provincial US issue. The entire internet as we know it cannot exist without provincial US law holding it together, and a provincial US economy to keep it online. We own the internet. We own Microsoft. We own Android. We own Google and Apple and Facebook and Twitter and everyone else who matters. There are competitors in these fields, but they're not concentrated enough in any other nation to make a difference. If America fell off Earth tomorrow the internet and all the technology that connects to it would be useless. Full stop.

And that should be a good thing. Healthy for your point. You don't want the internet governed on the world stage, especially if you're American.

Grab your soap box and try that "easing of restrictions on freedom of speech on a global scope" bullshit in China. Even Chinese citizens will laugh at you. They don't care about their freedoms nearly as much as you do.

[1] https://cdn.hillreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/gab-...

>And some if it is plain hateful. Distasteful, and inflammatory. [1]

Saying what's "distasteful" is about arbiters of taste, and we shouldn't allow that. John Waters was "distateful" at some point, Rock music was, famous painters were, Henry Miller was, tons of movies, and tons of other things besides. Inflammatory stuff, doxing, etc, should be punishable under common law (libel, privacy laws, etc). Hate on the other hand is one of the basic human sentiments. Why censor it altogether? Besides, usually the case is that some hate is OK (if it's towards our enemies) but other hate is bad (if it's aimed towards our side). Again, arbiters of hate, like arbiters of taste.

>And of course it's a provincial US issue. The entire internet as we know it cannot exist without provincial US law holding it together, and a provincial US economy to keep it online.

Given the state of the modern internet, I'm not sure if that's for the better.

I'd take an old-style, CERN-invented internet back, any day of the week.

>We own Microsoft. We own Android. We own Google and Apple and Facebook and Twitter and everyone else who matters.

You say that as if it's a good thing.

>Grab your soap box and try that "easing of restrictions on freedom of speech on a global scope" bullshit in China. Even Chinese citizens will laugh at you. They don't care about their freedoms nearly as much as you do.

Well, if they don't, then I don't care about their freedoms either. I care about my freedoms, and of those countries that do care about their freedoms.

I don't want to "bring democracy" to places that don't want it (resource-grab style). I want to enjoy democracy (and fuller than today's theater of it) in places that do want it.

This is a new account on HN, but the downvotes are surprising, seeing as most people here have indeed used Twitter before.

It wasn't an attack on her ideas. It was an ad hominem attack: he called her a gender-coded name that reduces her to a piece of anatomy in a starkly vulgar way. People do this to women all the time, and they don't do it to men in the same way. You don't have to believe this for it to be true.

And yes, he continued to distribute it. He put it in a content-distribution platform and left it there, despite the ability to take it down at any time. The fact that he never got called out for it before is not very persuasive to me, any more than "but I've been an asshole for years, it's not fair to call me out for it today."

OP is probably not a terrible person, but this article is not what taking responsibility for your past bad behavior looks like.