371–380 of 391 posts
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Does @jack use dummy accounts to boost the popularity of his tweets?
That's not even a relevant question - the excuse given by Twitter was "the account was “artificially” amplifying information" not "bots were 'artificially' amplifying the account"
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He was using Twitter to try to overthrow the country. Please.
Really. I am not a trump fan but this is completely bolocks. Yeah, good for political discourse, but not something reasonable people really believe. Don’t live in America though, maybe I am wrong.
There is no evidence whatever that it was an effort to take over the country - much less that Trump, or anyone beyond possibly a couple of wingnut far-right House reps, conspired to bring it about. It was some angry hicks going on a rumpus.
As a side note, it's disturbing to see that 'the paranoid style in American politics' now extends to the (centre-centre-)Left as well as the Right. First it was the ludicrous fact-free conspiracism about Russia conniving to install Trump as President; now it's the (transitively contradictory) theory that Trump, unable to cheat the election, tried to bring about a coup - not via the enormous tools at his disposal as President, but by supposedly encouraging some morons in fancy dress to storm the Capitol building and then aimlessly wander around stealing petty artefacts.
I suppose the paranoid style is simply a response by the dispossessed - but this is the first time that the rich and comfortable suburban centre has experienced being dispossessed.
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What I especially detest is the implication that if you disagree with Twitter's banning Trump, then you must be a Trump supporter. It's the epitome of the "first they came for X" strategy. I can disagree with Trump, and still also disagree with the precedent of arbitrarily banning a political figure for much less than other figures and groups are allowed to get away with.
He was using Twitter to try to overthrow the country. Please.
I'm not a Trump supporter in the slightest – I think he's a ridiculous buffoon – but I loathe even more the politicisation of truth, and the idea that anything goes, provided it attacks the right people.
What you're saying is not true. That shouldn't be a political statement.
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> more credible people aren't being suspended yes, but this one was the most popular. If they're looking at suppressing news or attention, they'd want to ban the most popular, not the most credible necessarily.
That doesn't seem right to me - they're saying this account had something like 500k followers (which, again, let's assume that's true) you're going to see reporting from WSJ, NYT, WashPo etc. all of whom have millions of follows. Even some basic reporters have way larger followings - for example I don't know who this guy is: https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec but he's got 1.5m followers and seems to be very active repo…
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It's ridiculous that this utterly obvious joke is being downvoted. I'm amazed -- and I say this kindly, as someone with Asperger's -- at the aggregate autism level on this site.
Please don't post name-calling putdowns to HN. Adding the word 'kindly' doesn't make something kindly, and it's against several of site guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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Again. Zero proof. Think about all the dots to connect for it to be a murder and how few for it to be a suicide. He had absolutely every reason to be suicidal and the evidence says it's very likely. For it to be murder we have to assumed a giant chain of events for which we have proof of none. * Very powerful people procured his services for something illegal * Epstein had incriminating evidence on those powerful peo…
Yea you're right, it would require some kind of centralized intelligence agency to exist in order to pull off such a feat. That simply doesn't exist as we all know as that is absurd to have such a thing doing that exact thing professionally for over 50 years in the name of national security.
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> newspeak You guys keep using that word, but I don't think you know what it means. Twitter is a private company. Newspeak was a language developed by the government in Orwell's 1984. VERY different contexts here. For the record - what Twitter communicated is not clear and potentially deceptive, but this response wasn't written by some Twitter PR person. Some support person pressed a button and a canned twitter respo…
I am genuinely curious as to why you seem to assert that "Orwellian" can only apply to governments. I personally sense that we are entering an age where corporations can wield power and influence on the same level as governments themselves. And, that they are able to utilize many of the same tactics that states used in the past century. Why, in your view, would it be incorrect to apply the term to the actions of thes…
Because that's literally how it's use in the book.
> Why, in your view, would it be incorrect to apply the term to the actions of these private/publicly traded companies?
See point above.
From 1984:
“Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’ And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. ‘Reality control’, they called it: in Newspeak, ‘doublethink’.”
The Party is a political party.
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> newspeak You guys keep using that word, but I don't think you know what it means. Twitter is a private company. Newspeak was a language developed by the government in Orwell's 1984. VERY different contexts here. For the record - what Twitter communicated is not clear and potentially deceptive, but this response wasn't written by some Twitter PR person. Some support person pressed a button and a canned twitter respo…
Yes, and the Dutch East India Company was just a trading operation that had no long-term repercussions on the world. They're both transnationals (something that is an abomination against humanity, in my opinion). There is no good faith reason to be on Twitter's side unless: 1). You work there, and it aligns with your interests for your current employer to continue to operate and generate profit (likewise if you hold…
Where did I say I was on Twitter's side? That's a whole loaded comment full of completely unfounded assertions.
Y'all are raising pitchforks when you haven't actually heard Twitter's side, just their automated message responses.
Personally, I think Twitter is a net negative for society, but there is an implication here that there is some totalitarian government control (i.e. anti first amendment) which is simply not true.
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> newspeak You guys keep using that word, but I don't think you know what it means. Twitter is a private company. Newspeak was a language developed by the government in Orwell's 1984. VERY different contexts here. For the record - what Twitter communicated is not clear and potentially deceptive, but this response wasn't written by some Twitter PR person. Some support person pressed a button and a canned twitter respo…
Everyone knows Twitter is a private company, that is besides the point. Consider this: Whoever governs society is the government. Reality does not have clear lines like a textbook about economics and politics might have. When does a company begin to govern society? In my opinion, companies like Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Amazon, etc. are large enough to govern society. And as such they can be considered in a differe…
Except all of the people who think Twitter is violating first amendment rights?[0] The idea of private vs government is pretty core the first amendment debate.
[0] - https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=twitter%20violating%20...