204 Comments

I’m looking at it the same way Simon & Schuster cancelled Hawley’s book contract. It’s their prerogative. He can get his book published somewhere else. Trump enjoyed Twitter bcuz it gave him access to millions of people who otherwise would want nothing to do with him. Now he has to figure another way to do it - the old fashioned way. It’s a free platform - they own the rules and now they have to enforce them which is probably a harder job than Trump has finding a new platform.

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It's a necessity as a matter of national security not just here domestically, but internationally as well. Yes, we want freedom of speech, and do not want the manifestation of 1984, or scenes from V for Vendetta. But there are already reports that his supporters were being emboldened, and galvanized to plan a secondary DOMESTIC TERRORIST attack on January 17th, and other days subsequently. Therefore, it is a necessity to shut him down, on every single form of media, and it's sweet that it is "Big Tech" that is doing it. If he wants to speak, he can bust out a typewriter and put out a "Presidential Statement", the traditional way. His conduct was given the longest leash in the world, and unfortunately, NOW he has been perceived to have gone too far. There's a trove of opportunities in which action could have been taken. And now there is a trove of those complicit, such as Ted Cruz and the Josh Hawley's of the world. They should be subjected to prosecution by the full extent of the law, as well. In the words of Simon & Schuster, "This BOOK has been CANCELLED!"

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From the statements released by the socials, this is being done because the coup is still ongoing and not simply something that started and ended Wednesday. We're not in the clean up phase and the worry in particular is the inauguration.

Its not a speech issue, its counterterrorism according to them.

I'd be surprised if they weren't following protocols established for a foreign terrorist attack now applied to continuing domestic terrorism.

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On a completely separate topic: I am *really* opposed to the self-appointed internet sleuths who are trying to ID the capitol rioters themselves. We should *not* be encouraging that behavior. Remember what happened with Reddit and the Boston Marathon bombers? Just let the FBI do their jobs, they're really good at it.

Sorry Yashar, I know it's off-subject, but I had to write that somewhere.

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The thing is with other media—there has always been some sort of guiding mediator—running for office is essentially selling your brand. A brand is not allowed to repeatedly advertise that their product without does something that it has been proven it does not. Suggest, sure—promise? No. People believe him, as a brand—and people follow him—we are entitled to opinions and to thoughts, not to create new truths. He has created an entire world full of bogus claims and lies. It’s worse than Hitler, honestly.

Also I resent that no one ever mentions the fact that all of our freedoms in the constitution—freedom as it is defined—is only guaranteed as freedom—in so much as it doesn’t prevent, or or infringe upon any other citizens right to freedom. Thus—not wearing a mask is not your freedom—as it impress my freedom to live...etc etc. Seeing as Trumps rhetoric repeatedly calls for his freedom at the expense of others freedom of well being—he deserves none of it.

With freedom comes responsibility.

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It’s fascinating that trumpers are more angry about trump’s social media bans than they are why he was banned. Additionally, someone needs to explain to them “free speech” does not mean free from consequences. The 1st amendment guarantees you won’t suffer governmental repercussions, but social media platforms are private companies.

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I’m genuinely scared for the next few days/weeks. I just don’t see how this ends well. No matter what scenario plays out, I’m more scared for the safety and future of our country than I’ve ever been. :(

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This should have happened a long time ago, when it was possible to take a firm stance against violent hate speech and it hadn't radicalized so many people. Now, he's already had so long to brainwash his rabid, militant followers who will follow him anywhere & believe that all reliable media organizations are against them. The filth he's been allowed to spread isn't going away.

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He set the precedent himself by going after TikTok as a political stunt. He should have been banned for attacking these platforms from the Office of the President.

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After watching the 40 min video of what unfolded at the Capitol, taking a tour through Maga-land social media and digesting Twitter's statement which lays out very clearly why they took this step, my only regret is they didn't act sooner.

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I would have preferred his removal from office than the Twitter ban. I understand why Twitter did what they did but I feel like this move would be, for both Trump and his followers, like a wild animal being cornered. They will lash out with out a care. And with out the platform for release, you never know what he and his followers are going to do or how much worse it could be.

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Makes me a bit anxious, we're only 12 days out and we don't know how he'll react.

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I’m honestly torn. I understand Twitters perspective and imagine they feel risk of being accused of facilitating another attack if coordination happens on Twitter. I also worry that this confirms what many Trump supporters think; that the left wing wants to censor everything so we can install a communist government. (Sidenote: the fact that Joe Biden is called a radical leftist is hilarious to me, and I think some are in need of a government refresher). There are no good options in my mind but I don’t think this is the last of this. I just can’t see a world where they keep him off Twitter forever.

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VP-elect Kamala Harris called for his Twitter account to be suspended time and time again and it fell on deaf ears.

She was scoffed at by Elizabeth Warren for it. Chris Hayes didn’t take her seriously. Progressives everywhere thought it was a joke.

The attack on the Capitol two days ago however was not a joke. An attacked called on by Trump via Twitter on Jan 6.

Those are the facts. He used a social media platform to incite violence and it led to death.

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Trump is also banned from Face Book, too. He's the cause of Wednesday's killings & destruction. They weren't protesters. They were domestic terrorists.

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It’s honestly not at all that surprising. In any eventuality Trump was going to most likely lose his social media privileges as a Private Citizen once he was out of the Presidency. A lot of people don’t seem to grasp the fact that most law or regulation regarding Social Media Entities themselves haven’t been all that well regulated or established. So it just interacts as a Wild West Saloon of sorts. Saloons are still a Privately-Owned Establishment in context, so that includes a person on Social Media. You signed a terms of user agreement, if you break it THEY CAN KICK YOU OFF. Personally, I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner with his personal account, because the fact is they could’ve had a difference in standards for Twitter with an Official Account for a World Leader versus the account of a private citizen. Now that Trump has opened that can of worms using the Official POTUS Twitter, the easiest thing the Company could’ve done is “officially” hand the account over to the Biden team early. Instead they’ll have to grapple with the headache of international users which means banning dictators and human rights abusers (which why let them on to begin with). Facebook and Twitter are basically going to have navigate that, but they choose not to deal with the problem until now. The longer someone waits to deal with a problem, the worse it gets.

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I think the only thing that will shut him down is prosecution. I've heard people say it's a bad image to show a former Pres in an orange jumpsuit but is there a worse image shown to the world than those on Jan 6? He is directly responsible for an officer dying. Gotta go.

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I could not be happier, but I am very concerned. He is addicted to twitter. I think this may be similar to an addict going through withdrawals. He is already unstable. We should all worry.

Also social media has led to so many genocides. I have very little tolerance for free speech arguments. You are not owed reach, or to have followers delivered to you.

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I don’t like it. Repression of freedom of speech only leads to further division. Now, all the Trump people are going to have their own platform. This further leads to isolation, more groupthink, and less critical thinking. As far as Trump, who knows what he will do.

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too little too late. Twitter's suspension policy is arbitrary, not democratic. trump's tweets were racist sexist and undermined our government which led to what we all witnessed this week. i believe in free speech but yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre isn't acceptable, ever! i am glad Google suspended Parler and Apple needs to do more than threaten. As more evidence comes forward, i am horrified how close we came to losing our country. these as a woman on the cross-connection coined "vanilla isis terrorists" were there to do physical harm and hold people hostages. social media played a big part in this and needs to be looked into.

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(Long, but I make a point. Bare w/me) I was stationed overseas in Europe from 2016-2019 as a military videographer and broadcaster. My command sent me to various countries in the 6th fleet (Europe and Africa) to document military exercises with our NATO allies. One of the main trainings the participating nations focused on every year was cyber warfare. Every year I wondered, "Dafuq does cyber warfare entail😐?" By the way, this information is public on DOD and NATO websites. They write these articles all the time. Unfortunately, the average American, even the "patriots," don't read these articles unless it's sensationalized news, but I digress. This s*** is probably some form of cyber warfare those trainings meant, except the exercises were thinking foreign countries, not ourselves :/.

Ex: Fake Conspiracy group creates multiple SM pages. They come up w/wild s*** to connect into theories that'll prey on internet-obsessed anti-socials with no purpose and no group to belong to. Conspiracy group recruits and gives meaning to hero complex individuals. They declare a leader to follow that represents their ideals to start a "revolution." They grow in numbers. "Leader" uses Twitter or other SM to communicate to Charles Manson-level loyal minions to do illegal dirty work. Devoted followers devise a plan that comes off domestic terror-ish but patriotic to them. The conspiracy group could be fake from the start to push their real agenda.

It may seem silly and dramatic to say it's cyber warfare. That's only because cyber warfare sounds too tactical to be connected to Twitter, Facebook, and any other social media platform. Still, we have to remember we live in a time where tech is everything, and we've become slaves to it.

**Trump loyalists didn't just casually trash Nancy Pelosi's office. You have to realize they trashed the office of the 2nd person in order of succession, that most likely had CLASSIFIED documents that they stole from and did who knows what to. Stealing anything classified can come off as espionage. They did more, but this is just a prime example. Banning him from Twitter and SM is the right thing to do. He would still get intelligence briefings after his term, so letting him keep his Twitter or any other social media platform can do more harm than good.

Also, I'm a veteran here to tell people to stop using veterans as the face of their agenda no matter what side it is. Stop putting us on a pedestal to be your poster child. Veterans are also people with different opinions and should not be put into one box. Stop having "Who's More Patriotic and American" contests. Chillll.

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I’m a Texas girl so this topic is something that is very controversial amongst my family/friend group so I put a lot of thought into my feelings on this. I was torn on who to vote for but after the events on Wednesday I think myself and a lot of people on the fence like me were disgusted by what happened and horrified and many here would have voted differently if they could have a do over. I am happy with the social media bans only because I know firsthand the influence that Trump and others had on people over the last few years especially leading up to this election that scared people and misled them. These friends say things that are so cult like that shock me. Well educated and well-meaning people. I feel like if they see support from the outside world of how crazy this is that maybe it will change their mind.

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Off topic but I see they took down Chinese Embassy’s pro-genocide tweet about Uighurs.

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My favorite Asian proverb is: “The higher a monkey climbs, the more it exposes its ass.” There comes a moment, an “emperor has no clothes” moment, when it is impossible not to recognize evil for what it is. For most of us, when that moment comes, evil is confronted, contained and restrained. That’s what we’re seeing happen right now, and it is a predictable and appropriate response to a critical challenge to our democracy and way of life. Make no mistake, we just avoided a dictatorship of the minority, led by an unhinged mad man who would be king.

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I think every business has the right to do what they want, most especially stores like Google & Apple. What really troubles me is the inconsistency in the enforcement of rules. If the rules were consistently enforced 1. Trump would have been banned long ago. I mean, really, those last two tweets were the final straw? Give me a break. And 2. Thousands more would be banned from countries which have posted far more egregious things than what Trump posted today. It’s annoying. I hate trump, and I won’t miss him on Twitter, but I just can not believe the way these social media companies have handled themselves.

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I am strongly opposed to Trump and think he should be impeached again, but Twitter saying "President Trump’s statement that he will not be attending the Inauguration is being received by a number of his supporters as further confirmation that the election was not legitimate and is seen as him disavowing his previous claim made via two Tweets (1, 2) by his Deputy Chief of Staff, Dan Scavino, that there would be an “orderly transition” on January 20th." seems a bit bogus.

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My four year old throws his share of toddler temper tantrums. He can't help it, he's four. But *nothing* compares to the tantrum he throws when we take away the iPad.

(seriously, it's like world war 3. If you have a young kid, you know what I'm talking about)

The tantrums we are seeing on Twitter tonight remind me a lot of that. People, even politicians, tweeting in ALL CAPS about the followers they've lost. It's embarrassing.

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I firmly believe private companies like Twitter, Facebook etc have the right to ban whomever they want. And I certainly support their right to do so. I just don't think it was a good decision to ban Trump at this point, so close to the end of his term. And I am uncomfortable with the idea that three major tech companies can so easily decide to erase and eject anyone from the internet, including the sitting president of the United States. The inconsistency behind these decisions is also disconcerting; the CCP can openly brag about genocide on Twitter and yet their account remains active. I think that if you try to hide speech you don't like, it simply goes underground and festers -- it does not disappear. Those Trump supporters so steeped in conspiracy who believe the election was stolen will now see this latest move by big tech as proof that they were right all along (totally unfounded and crazy but still, will easily feed their narrative).

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These actions are temporary. Companies aren't trying to be on the right side of history, they just want eyes-off until they can claim free speech again. Trumps loss of power, when hindered by impeachment or just out of office, would be cited as reason he is no longer a threat? He is after all, white. And companies are being 'good' to stave off future regulations or punishments. They definitely don't want to be in (mostly congress's) conversation of insurrection past the memo's and statements they're making, akin to the performative BLM ones months ago. No credit, it's way too late for a terms and services stance, or a moral stance. Maybe they'll point to Trump like a participation trophy when new horror rises, and thus debate endlessly about how much is/isn't like Trump.

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Long overdue. Shouting “Fire” in a crowded theatre is not protected speech. Trump has essentially been doing so via every communication outlet he can access. Should have been banned immediately as he has never done anything but lie and incite to violence.

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It would be easier to accept if they enforced their policies in some sensical way. As long as we have the Chinese government openly advocating forced sterilization on Twitter it all seems like political nonsense.

It is also not Twitter’s right to do so. They sought and received special protections as a common carrier and should act like one or drop the protection.

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Loved your open discussion last night. Have been interested all day in your opinion on this topic!

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I think this will be their new shtik (republicans, trumpers and the like) They Want To Silence You, Communism, blah blah, which will give new life to them and will incite them even more.

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It’s too little too late. I give them credit for doing it now, but he’s been a threat since day one and Americans have been in this toxic emotionally abusive relationship with him and some of his ardent followers for a long time, especially us black folk - we tried to warn ppl like man others. We are traumatized, and the damage is done. Perhaps social media and other platforms should have cared just as much when Charlottesville happened. I mean just look at today, you see a comparison to the terrorist attacks that we just witnessed in the capital people are literally trying to “stop the steal” of our FAIR election. Fox News went on a whataboutism spree today and started comparing black lives matter protest to this terror attack when not one of us BLM ppl have ever committed a coup, an OBVIOUS distinction - but just like trump I think Fox News thinks it’s important to teach their supporters how to be victims at all times. Social media censorship will help but there is still a large amount of misinformation on so many other platforms including television. Fox News is literally telling their millions of followers that we hate all trump supporters, We are going to take over, etc. Trump literally started his political career with racist Birtherism remarks regarding Obama. His resume is shit and shows very clear history of racism and yet somehow Hillary Clinton was too evil to vote for even after he stated that Mexicans are rapists and grab a woman by the Pussy. I think we are living in a moment where we have to acknowledge this is turning into various cults as we see with Qanon and while the censorship is important, it’s obvious that the damage is already done and we need to start thinking about how do we deprogram people from this extremist ideology that can obviously turn into domestic terrorism.

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Setting aside a private business choosing what their users/employees post (not a 1st amendment issue), I think revisiting net-neutrality would be prudent. It is a complex issue that warrants its own discussion; pay to play, accessibility, being just two that come to mind.

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I think the suspensions are fair. We sign up to use these social media platforms and play by their rules. Just like Twitter has locked accounts for hours when civilians violate the terms - this is no different, just on a larger scale when it’s a powerful person is using Twitter’s platform to incite violence and spread misinformation.

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In all my 65 years, I never thought I would see this type of abuse of power in America. It saddens me to see how low some people will stoop just to prove a point. These megalomaniacs need to be taken down several notches. The whole purpose of social media is to be able to share your thoughts and opinions with others, whether others agree with those thoughts and opinions or not. To silence anyone simply because you don't like them or what they say - and these people have shown their hatred and bias on a daily basis for the last four years - makes you a tyrant with a god complex. I've watched these men go before Congress and lie through their teeth about manipulation of data, as well as targeting certain people because they don't share the same political views or religious beliefs. It is censorship to almost the highest level. Next, they will have people arrested who post anything they disagree with.

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I can't think of anything else except the current wild ass situation. It's taking away my ability to think more than a week into the future. The madness has to stop. How much more can we take?

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Long overdue. TMP continues to egg on seditionists, incite violence, and recite lies. If I owned a business and a customer repeatedly came in and trashed the place I would no longer let them in the door. Private business can run their operations they way they see fit, within the boundaries of the law. FB, Twitter, etc are not state-run media (thank God).

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The Parler news is good. Hope Apple does same.

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He should be shut down because he incites violence. But what is missing from this conversation is the algorithm effect, technology, profit, tech companies and misinformation all are intertwined in a new way.

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I'm happy to see they are finally taking action. Trump and others have gotten away for far too long with lies and inciting violence. Lives could have been saved if this had been done, earlier, but I'm happy to see it happen now, even though we're already seeing the "censorship" tweets/posts beginning.

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Long overdue. I agree with your assessment that leaders of oppressive countries should be restrained as well. Only fear is not knowing what's going on in his head at every moment.

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Obviously I'm a proponent of freedom of expression, but the level of discourse of certain groups has not only become toxic, it's now overtly violent. I can understand any concerns to an extent, but this had to happen. This is a consequence of attempting to overthrow democracy.

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From the sound of it it seems like they're not going to be able to remove him from office in the next eight days, which means that the intention seems to be dragging this out for as long as possible for as much political capital as possible

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Because I tend to be pragmatic or practical-minded, for years I struggled with the concept of "Facebook". When I decided to dip my toe into the pool that is Facebook I realized it was misnamed, because it should be called "Fakebook" to reflect the overall reality.

I gave up on Fakebook Black Friday 2015 when I realized that by using Fakebook I was being used by Fakebook, and I also realized that "Social Media" is equally misnamed owing to the undeniable fact most 'Social Media' is anti-social. Again, from a practical perspective I could not understand the concept because the potential has been squandered.

A demanding standard was applied to President Trump through "Social Media". Respectfully, will the standard be applied equally to his successor?

https://iamcolorado.substack.com/

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Twitter is not the problem, people who commit violent acts are. There is a long history of white Americans committing violent acts against

Other Americans. Not just Timothy McVeigh. Do yourselves a service and do your internet search on the heinous acts perpetrated against black

Americans by White Americans!

Start with Lynching. This is what only white Americans are allowed to get away with for majority of the participants. You younger commentators check out your white history of violence.

It is not pretty!

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Twitter and @Jack made a lot of money from Trump, who brought with him thousands of news users and increased daily traffic. They allowed him to personally attack anyone, including businesses, media, and journalists, who spoke against him. To close his account after he lost the elections is no different than Lindsey Graham distancing himself from the president after he used his support to get reelected.

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He wants to start his own channel but I don’t see how he can pull together if big tech chose to not work with him.. For example, they could refuse to host their Cloud data making it more complicated for him to undertake building the entire solution solo.

I think his days are over and he is going down hard. His influence will lessen although there will always be the hard-core followers who will make him a martyr. I wonder about his kids. How does their future look? Shunned? Or next Florida Governor? Do people start relocating to Florida to be with their kind?

what happens to his enablers?

How do we hold politicians accountable for messaging? Politicians must stop lying and conspiring. How do we dial down propaganda ads and go back to the basics when it comes to politics? I think they should be held accountable if they publish lies online. This must stop!! It was remarkable to see how many of the ppl who they manipulated & they lost their lives fighting for Trump were cognitively slow, recovering addicted, etc. QAnon is praying on a lot of vulnerable ppl with conspiracies.

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Long past due. I am so tired of everyone raving about their rights and ignoring accountability.

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