
Twitter Takedown Targets QAnon Accounts - fortran77
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/21/technology/twitter-bans-qanon-accounts.html
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merricksb
Earlier discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23912455](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23912455)

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factorialboy
Are conspiracy theories a crime? Should they be censured? This seems short-
sighted. How much power should corporate social media giants assume?

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kevingadd
A private, for-profit social media service can decide which customers they
want business from and which customers they don't want business from. It's one
of the main rights you have as the operator of a business: the right to refuse
service.

The conspiracy theorist's right to free speech doesn't mean Twitter is
obligated to carry their speech, either.

If you dislike this your best available remedies are 1) find a service who
wants your business, or if none such exists, 2) start your own social media
service, or to "solve" the problem for good, 3) engineer the existence of
government-operated social media services such that law mandates all citizens
have unfettered free speech on the service

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thrwaway69
Stop government officials from making policies on twitter and we will consider
twitter private company. Still, no one thinks there should be additional
regulation on something like twitter? The past account hack just made me think
it should be scrutinized more.

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kevingadd
Twitter has the freedom to allow public officials to use the service for
either personal or professional purposes. Many government agencies in many
countries use Twitter to communicate with citizens via the service, similar to
how they use Facebook or e-mail.

As far as President Trump goes, Twitter has had to make policy exceptions in
order to ensure his continued access to the service, AND legal proceedings
have also resulted in rulings that govern his specific use of the service (for
example, he's technically not allowed to block citizens.) As such it's not
especially useful to look at Trump's experience on Twitter and try to
generalize it to anyone else.

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thrwaway69
I am not saying they shouldn't ban accounts or allow free speechers. But I
don't buy they should be allowed to do whatever they want because they are
private company. If the past hack resulted in market manipulation or a bigger
shit show, should twitter be liable for that?

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Kednicma
Turns out that no meaningful ideas for improving our society can come from a
culture of doxxing, brandishing weapons in public, and targeting public
figures for vigilante justice. It is good for Twitter to deplatform Q's
followers.

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bengotow
I think that this is a really meaningful step. The ability to find community
around a conspiracy theory or a wildly unacceptable belief on a mainstream
site reinforces that it is valid. If high schoolers discovering QAnon for the
first time have to log into a dumpy looking twitter clone, they'll know that
they have turned off the highway onto a sketchy back road of the internet.

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flyingfences
> they'll know that they have turned off the highway onto a sketchy back road
> of the internet

...and that just makes it seem cooler and more rebellious.

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motohagiography
I sympathize with the argument that social platforms are private and can do
business (or not) with whomever they please, the counter argument is that
these platforms are "Radical Monopolies"
([https://wikitia.com/wiki/Radical_Monopoly](https://wikitia.com/wiki/Radical_Monopoly))
apropos of a recent HN thread on Ivan Illich, where the analogy for the effect
of being kicked off a platform is not like Ford declining to sell you a car
where you can just go get another one, but rather, cancelling your license in
Los Angeles.

It's not 1:1, but if you lose your drivers license in a city like LA or non-
coastal state, your ability to participate in society (find work, etc) and
your social franchise in society is diminished because the automobile has a
radical monopoly in American cities.

Twitter and social platforms like Facebook have definitely become radical
monopolies for reputation, where if you have no social media presence, you are
excluded socially. (Regarding Facebook, try find a date without an instagram
page.) Facebook execs even commented publicly early on that people without
Facebook accounts should be treated as suspicious.

That QAnon types are so ridiculous and indefensible is what makes them a great
example for discussing how and whether to protect minority views. Twitter does
have the right to do what they want, and I'm optimistic that these purges will
create demand for the divergent platforms that will replace this first
generation of them, but to say this right is simple and natural ignores
precedents of radical monopolies that were enabled and sustained by political
protection, which seems naive. The non-libertarian case for limiting social
platforms ability to purge can be summed up in president Obama's thoughts,when
he said, "you didn't build that."

Arguably, social platforms that rely on network effects to become radical
monopolies didn't "build that," either.

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jdhn
This will only serve to enfore QAnon fans belief that they're being censored,
and that there's a huge conspiracy against them.

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fortran77
Mainstream progressives have very similar conspiracy theories. For example
they believe that tens of thousands of women are shipped around the world for
each Super Bowl to serve as prostitutes. See the NY Times article debunking
this popular myth held by mainstream democrats:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/01/opinion/the-super-bowl-
of...](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/01/opinion/the-super-bowl-of-sex-
trafficking.html)

Qanon, of course, pushes ideas that are batshit crazy. My point is more
moderate people dress them up a bit and push the same concepts.

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kevingadd
Never seen this particular conspiracy theory before. I think if it were
actually a mainstream democrat or progressive theory you'd see it brought up
pretty often given pro football's clashes with racial and social justice
advocates in the last decade instead of one NYT op-ed from years ago.

If you look up the author of that op-ed piece, she's a lawyer and devoted
anti-sex-trafficking advocate, so it is most logical to just view it as an op-
ed representing her personal interests and point of view, not representative
of The Times, or The Democrats, or The Mainstream.

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Applejinx
Yeah, I would have heard that, I maintain ties with both Democrats and lefty
progressives, which isn't always an easy task. Never seen that, even once.

