Twitter Confirms It Halted 'Hang Mike Pence' as a Trending Topic

Post by wvenable » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 10:23 PM UTC

creato wrote: post #32

harmmonica wrote: post #6

This would be whack-a-mole otherwise, but when I saw this trending the vast majority of the tweets were sharing videos of people chanting that slogan in the Capitol amidst the storm. By suppressing the sharing of that information people are actually less likely to be aware that's what they were chanting (I know I would be less aware because that's where I learned about it). Now I guess there's the potential they were…

This is a perfect example of why social media is a total disaster and no one should be trusting it for anything at all. There are many, many things that seem to be taken as fact on social media that are impossible to find on any reputable media source. Maybe the crowd was chanting hang Mike Pence, maybe not. I'll wait until a credible source reports it. The AP had reporters in the crowd (getting assaulted [1]), presu…

Post by throwaway201103 » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 10:24 PM UTC

virtual_void wrote: post #99

adnzzzzZ wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

President Trump supported the Capitol -protests-, not the invasaion. The media has worked very hard to conflate the two. Nobody wants our institutional buildings to be invaded. That was also a general and very peaceful invasion, not people specifically targeting small businesses during a pandemic and burning them down for no reason other than because they can. It's not really comparable unless you omit all context.

Some people clearly do want it. It happened. If trump didn’t want it he could have stopped it with the platform he has / had.

Post by xnx » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 10:25 PM UTC

hehehaha wrote: post #95

ansible wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost everyone (including really terrible people) don't want people killed. That is why it is often necessary to de-humanize the enemy. We give them labels, make them not worthy of the protections of civil society, and then it is justified if they die. Because they are not people anymore.

That’s just not true. We have nearly an entire human history to prove otherwise. The only reason why we stopped killing each other is due to nuclear bombs.

Post by nevi-me » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 10:25 PM UTC

gkoberger wrote: post #98

Darmody wrote: post #34

If that was about reporting what happened at the Capitol I don't think it should've been removed. But if people was asking in Twitter for Pence to be hanged, then yes. We shouldn't treat the same way reporting violence than violence itself.

I don't think I agree. Me tweeting "it's bad to say 'hang mike pence'" is still letting the concept of Mike Pence being hanged propagate. I mean, we're talking about it right now on Hacker News, even! Toxic ideas are like a virus, and even well-meaning opposition can serve as a host, allowing them to spread rapidly rather than die out.

Post by vladTheInhaler » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 10:26 PM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #67

amluto wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try to steer people to the media outlets that are still mostly balanced? NPR comes to mind. Or encourage people to read a leftish and a rightish source? And encourage people to think for themselves? It would also be nice, albeit maybe very hard, to encourage even the less balanced media to try to speak to everyone and to write critically and honestly. For example, I personally lean left, but I find the New York Times…

NPR does a good job of presenting the basic facts in their news segments, but their commentary, editorial, and human interest programming is 100% progressive.