Most liked posts in thread: American Election

There’s a debate, both morally and legally, there to be had as to whether social media platforms are responsible for the content that they host. Ironically Donald Trump actually blocked section 230, which would have ensured the platforms had taken responsibility for the content they hosted.

Trump broke the rules on election specific policies, Covid specific policies, disinformation, threats against groups of people, inciting violence, among others. Whether you agree with those charges is somewhat by the by. There are plenty of examples of providers deciding what content is fit to grace their platform. Plenty of social media networks do not allow pornography, should they be forced to?

But let us not forget that Trump was using these platforms to commit actual crimes (or incite violence), and a very real risk that he would continue to use these platforms to commit the same crimes.

 

A number of years ago...?
3? How many elections have we had since ?

 

His comment is from 2014, last time I checked we are in 2021

 

This petition was submitted during the 2017–2019 Conservative government

 

But the quote is from 2014.

 

I don't see that but whatever.....

 

Currently they're not responsible though am I correct?

I'm genuinely interested to know which tweets actually incited violence. The definitely incited scepticism about a lot of things and probably an element of rebellion against the establishment (as others have without being banned) but actually encouraging violence specifically. Not sure.

 

Section 230 is a pretty archaic piece of legislation that is complex, and probably doesn’t fully encompass the array of things that a platform host should and shouldn’t be responsible for. In short, it needs revising, but they are not responsible for content posted by third parties, but do have a responsibility to act on illegal material.

I think it can be fairly argued that, in conjunction with his speech to the massed hordes in the morning, his tweet “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long” can only be seen as an endorsement of the violence, and inciting further violence. These things don’t necessarily have to be explicit to be clear cut.

There is also a blog post from Twitter which I think is reasonably transparent in how they came to their conclusion: https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension.html

 

There's no incitement if violence in those tweets and nothing illegal.

I suooose if they can want to extrapolate those tweets to the nth degree and assume meaning then they can do but they are causing themselves problems in the future without being accused of inconsistency.

Given those two tweets you could probably justify "incitement of violence" from absolutely anything!

 

“There’s no question the president formed the mob, the president incited the mob, the president addressed the mob. He lit the flame,” said Elizabeth Cheney, the No3 House Republican.

Trump told the crowd, ""If you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore."

"Big protest in D.C. on January 6th," Mr Trump tweeted. "Be there, will be wild!"

I think it's the combination of him encouraging people to protest at the Capitol - using language that was clearly a dog whistle to those inclined towards violence - and the likelihood that he would encourage further violence at Biden's inauguration.
Twitter is clearly worried that it may be used by Trump to incite further violence and wants to avoid it's platform being associated with that.

 

It's now emerging that the assault on the Capitol was far more threatening and dangerous than initially reported. This makes grim reading.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/capitol-riots-senators-lawmakers-help-police-b1785079.html

 

I think the violence and destruction we saw in the protests earlier this year was largely and correctly condemned pretty much immediately.

There’s almost inevitably a fringe of any protest that is going to do something that is to be condemned. That thing may be large, or it may be small. Heck, any large gathering of almost any type is going to produce some kind of event to be condemned - and that is not usually the direct aim of the protest.

I do think though that this one is different. It’s reasonably clear to most bystanders that Trump has had a direct hand in effectively rearing a violent movement. There was a, small but legitimate, chance that we could have had the execution of Nancy Pelosi live-streamed in front of our eyes. This isn’t really on the same scale as the issues we saw in the summer.

Trump knows full well that the aim of this group is essentially armed insurrection. As @Offcomedun above mentioned, he says "If you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore." - it is, again, reasonably clear and obvious that Trump sees stoking this fire as his last hope of power, regardless of the civil risks that brings about.

As to whether this is the thin end of the wedge - I hope it isn’t. I think there are legitimate grounds to de-platform Trump - regardless of which, it is a private platform and they possess the ability to make and enforce their own rules (as it should be! A nationally governed social media platform sounds grim). And I would hope they would act consistently across any national leader that behaves in this way.

As to whether this is too much power in the hands of private enterprise, maybe it is! This broadly links into the whole topic of net neutrality, which is going to be a really big issue in the next few years.

 

Of course the rules should be applied consistently. There's no question about that.

But is there any evidence that anyone did deliberately incite violence during the George Floyd killing protests?
My understanding is that the vast majority of the BLM protests were peaceful. The reports I've read suggest that the burning and looting that took place were spontaneous outbursts of anger in very localised areas where police heavy-handidness is the norm, which, of course, the media focused on because it's much better news than peaceful protest. And, of course, Trump and other Republicans then seized on the limited outbreaks to give the deliberately misleading impression that entire cities were being ransacked by Antifa mobs. That's not to say that the damage wasn't considerable or that it was justified. Of course it wasn't. But was it deliberately incited?

 

No doubt that toad, Nigel Farage, will be lying low in a swamp somewhere.

 

Guilliani was probably worse that Trump with that statement - "fight like hell" isn't necessarily an incitement to physically fight though.

I do feel like there was encouragement to gather and not necessarily peacefully in the summer. Especially after the frst lootings/riots took place then everyone knew what was happening.

Trump's behavious generally during the riot at the Capitol was appalling - it's just whether that should be accounted for by twitter?

 

I think Twitter are looking at the whole picture - both what has been said online and in person - and making a judgement that they don't want their platform used to stir up more sedition and violence, especially at Biden's inauguration. Although I'm uncomfortable about the suspension of his account, I can see why they are doing it.
Trump has been breaking their rules for ages - posting outright lies and baseless conspiracy theories, not just his political opinions. He has been asked to refrain from doing this and has persistently ignored them. He clearly believes that he is entitled to tweet whatever he wants, no matter how inaccurate, untruthful or deliberately inflammatory. He know that many of his base are angry people with guns, yet he continues to send them messages that fall just short of instructing them to mount violent insurrection, knowing full well that that's how they will be received and acted upon.
Trump is the President. He is expected to behave more responsibly than ordinary people who are incensed by endemic police harrassment, not less so. He has been given numerous chances to tone down his inflammatory remarks and disinformation. Sooner or later something has to give.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/11/us-capitol-attack-warning-signs-charlottesville-michigan?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

 

There were idiots on the streets but everyone has a right to protest if they want and the worst we got was farage and that tosser from live aid shouting at each other on the thames. Thats why I called it a deflection mate cos pretty much to a tee nobodys died at a pro or anti brexit rally etc, and as divided as our own country is nobody pulled anything like storming parliament so I couldn't see the connection you were getting at mate. Remainers might have moaned about the result but its neither a crime nor undemocratic to moan about something

 

0 proof, please provide evidence or I'll report this post. sick to the back teeth of idiots advancing misinformation based on nothing but fairy stories.

 

LIBERATE MICHIGAN etc etc,

literally telling them at his capitol rally they need to 'fight like hell'

The issue with trump is there is no factual basis for what he is saying to people. Part of the reason I hate him as much as I do is because he's manipulated anger in people who have every right to be angry at the state of the world and weaponised it for his own gain. Those people who died at the capitol have died for absolutely no reason whatsoever, which is the part that makes me really angry about all this. This is also why as much as people bang on about the right to free speech, we as a society need to have a hard look at ourselves about the responsibilities that come with that right. One person's careless words have got 5 others killed here.

 

i get what you're saying in the latter part but the actually phrases aren't that bad. I bet you could find hundreds of thousands of tweets from Scottish Nationalists, Pro EU supporters and BLM advocates that reference liberation and fighting for their cause.

The bit about why people don't like him and his obvious failings is true, I'm just not sure it justifies the action from a private company, or at least makes it very difficult to apply consistently regardless of agreement with the views.