[HN Gopher] Ron Paul blocked from posting on Facebook
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       Ron Paul blocked from posting on Facebook
        
       Author : eruleman
       Score  : 48 points
       Date   : 2021-01-11 18:36 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (twitter.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
        
       | waynesonfire wrote:
       | why was he blocked?
        
         | Gibbon1 wrote:
         | Sedition
        
           | the_drunkard wrote:
           | > Sedition
           | 
           | objecting to a state's election process and /or electoral
           | votes is not sedition. in fact, it's been done by Democratic
           | senators after the 2000, 2004, and 2016 elections. this is
           | part of the democratic process.
           | 
           | https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/opinion/democrat-
           | republic...
        
             | viro wrote:
             | during an active insurrection it is. or did you miss the
             | planned attacks on the 17th
        
               | tastygreenapple wrote:
               | wasn't there an active insurrection in 2016 as well? The
               | Obama admin was trying to entrap members of the Trump
               | team and people rioted during the inaguration.
        
               | the_drunkard wrote:
               | > during an active insurrection it is. or did you miss
               | the planned attacks on the 17th
               | 
               | sorry, but participating in the democratic process is not
               | sedition.
               | 
               | and i would hope we never allow mobs to dictate our
               | participation in the democratic process. whether it
               | involves tallying (or objecting to) electoral votes or
               | confirming a supreme court justice.
        
       | metalliqaz wrote:
       | People don't seem to understand how close we are to an
       | unrecoverable fall into fascism.
       | 
       | This is not cultural censorship. Facebook is finally waking up to
       | the reality that lies about our elections are well on their way
       | to starting a civil war. With that display on the 6th, that
       | rhetoric is now over the line. They let it go, right up until the
       | consequences (as heinous as they are predictable) were clear.
        
         | admiralspoo wrote:
         | Google and Facebook already have documented ability to rig
         | elections, e.g.
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_manipulation_eff...
         | 
         | Politicians, including the incoming regime, are at their mercy
         | and ought to be careful not to step on any toes.
        
           | metalliqaz wrote:
           | They don't seem to be shy about criticizing big tech at all.
        
         | the_drunkard wrote:
         | > lies about our elections
         | 
         | for the past 4 years the media spun a narrative of Russian
         | collusion, one that largely proved to be false and filled with
         | fabricated stories.
         | 
         | Nanci Pelosi tweet May 2017: Our election was hijacked. There
         | is no question. Congress has a duty to #ProtectOurDemocracy &
         | #FollowTheFacts.
         | 
         | https://twitter.com/speakerpelosi/status/864522009048494080?...
        
           | ChrisLomont wrote:
           | >the media spun a narrative of Russian collusion
           | 
           | No, the media spun the narrative of Russian interference,
           | with possible collusion, something that turned out to be true
           | (interference) and collusion was left uncertain (Muller
           | stated quite clearly that if he could show Trump didn't
           | collude, then Mueller would have said so, but that he was not
           | going to say so).
           | 
           | "'The president was not exculpated for the acts that he
           | allegedly committed,' Mueller told the House judiciary
           | committee, adding that Trump could theoretically be indicted
           | after he leaves office." [1]
           | 
           | Then the Trump DOJ didn't release the summary of the report,
           | but their edited version, leaving plenty out, in order to get
           | people like you to write what you just did. Mueller was so
           | outraged at how the DOJ spun the report, that he immediately
           | did a press conference about it, an unprecedented step.
           | 
           | Here is Mueller's letter to Barr on exactly this [2].
           | 
           | Once Trump is out of office, and several years have gone by
           | without charges, then maybe you can claim these concerns were
           | false, but they most certainly were not fabrications or lies.
           | 
           | [1] https://www.politico.eu/article/mueller-refutes-trumps-
           | no-co...
           | 
           | [2] https://www.npr.org/2019/05/01/719004457/read-muellers-
           | lette...
        
             | the_drunkard wrote:
             | > but they most certainly were not fabrications or lies.
             | 
             | i'd strongly beg to differ. fake news was at its peak
             | during the first two years of "Russia-gate" with networks
             | reporting on hearsay and drawing wild conclusions
             | irrespective of hard evidence. journalistic integrity was
             | thrown to the wind.
             | 
             | it seemed as if every week a "we got him" story broke only
             | to fizzle as it turned out to be false.
             | 
             | the linked article below offers some examples of these fake
             | news stories about Trump. and I do recognize that the
             | second quote is written by Barr, not Mueller.
             | 
             | https://taibbi.substack.com/p/russiagate-is-wmd-times-a-
             | mill...
        
           | hehehaha wrote:
           | You mean the investigation that the Trump administration
           | actively obstructed?
        
         | Marinus wrote:
         | What does your comment have to do with Ron Paul?
        
         | CivBase wrote:
         | Can you point to any instance where _Ron Paul_ lied about our
         | elections? Genuine question. I don 't follow Ron Paul, but that
         | seems out of character from what I've seen of him many years
         | ago.
        
           | m463 wrote:
           | My take is that Ron Paul is probably one of the most
           | reasonable people in politics.
           | 
           | What's ironic is that people thought he was crazy when he
           | said it would be possible to abolish the IRS, even though he
           | had all the history and facts to back it up.
        
           | metalliqaz wrote:
           | I don't follow him either, but it is almost certain that the
           | movement of "stolen election" talk from allowed to verboten
           | is what caused his page to be suspended. I don't have access
           | to his previous facebook content, so I can't search it.
        
       | _red wrote:
       | The corporate party (ie mainstream D's and R's + MSM + BigTech)
       | seems completely desperate.
       | 
       | Perhaps its just the quality of blackmail the CCP has on them....
        
       | Kattywumpus wrote:
       | We really need a better vocabulary for talking about this sort of
       | thing than the 20th century terms of fascism, communism, and
       | liberalism. I don't have the words yet, but we need to start
       | inventing them.
       | 
       | We are in a new era, and our disasters won't look like theirs.
       | People who shrug away this kind of censorship with the magic
       | words "private company" are in a dangerous form of denial.
        
         | trianglem wrote:
         | Not really, the literal definition of fascism is a far right
         | authoritarian group and it defines the trump administration
         | well.
        
           | julioneander wrote:
           | I wonder where did you get that definition from?
        
         | metalliqaz wrote:
         | ... you say, as the OP links to a fully accessible social media
         | post by Ron Paul.
         | 
         | From Techdirt:                   Moderation is a
         | platform/service owner or operator saying "we don't do that
         | here". Personal discretion is an individual telling themselves
         | "I won't do that here". Editorial discretion is an editor
         | saying "we won't print that here", either to themselves or to a
         | writer. Censorship is someone saying "you won't do that
         | anywhere" alongside threats or actions meant to suppress
         | speech.
        
           | Kattywumpus wrote:
           | As I pointed out above, this is really 20th century thinking.
           | Social media allows for a kind of mob behavior that has shown
           | itself antithetical to the kind of market liberalism most of
           | our current assumptions are based on.
           | 
           | Or did you not notice that Parler and its hundreds of
           | thousands of users had literally been systematically erased
           | from the internet yesterday by hounding their service
           | providers?
           | 
           | It's bizarre to see the liberal left I grew up with now
           | defending a kind of insane market fundamentalism and
           | corporate control of the commons of free speech without even
           | blinking at the contradiction. I think that liberal left I
           | grew up with is dead.
           | 
           | We need a name for what it has become, and where they are
           | taking us.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | wallawe wrote:
       | For anyone who thought this was just about the recent events, you
       | now know have your answer. It is undoubtedly a political war
       | going on, driven by leftists at Big Tech.
        
         | RoyTyrell wrote:
         | Where's your proof of that? Do you think Zuckerberg is a
         | zealous leftist?
        
           | sarcasmatwork wrote:
           | Free speech in the form of non-violent speech is not free on
           | the various platforms as they say they are.
           | 
           | This is mostly targeted at users with a larger following...
           | 
           | As as example if you have a diff opinion, or say something
           | then you might get suspended or banned. Even so when others
           | on the platform are more violent, and encouraging violent
           | acts. Look at twitter accounts of Iran, China, and all the
           | accounts for antifa for example. They use twitter to cause
           | and incite violence, yet they remain.
           | 
           | A few come to mind phrases come to mind that may get you
           | banned on FB/Twitter:                   "#Hydroxychloroquine
           | is a safe drug.         "Eric Ciaramella"
        
             | michannne wrote:
             | It boils down to this. Left or right is irrelevant, these
             | companies will remove you if you say something they don't
             | want you to say, there's no additional complexity that
             | needs to be analyzed. Any judgement that one needs to make
             | on how to feel about the censoring they do can be made on
             | that simple rule alone. I'm amazed the discussions about
             | censorship have been muddied to this extent where even the
             | past relationships of people have been scrutinized to
             | determine if they were deserving enough of a ban. None of
             | that matters - did you say something they did not want
             | specifically _you_ (the individual) to say at this time?
             | Then they will decide to ban/suspend/remove you. Now how
             | you feel about that is how you feel but there's no reason
             | to even think "Well they let this person say this!",
             | because these companies are not in the business of free
             | speech. They can turn on a dime tomorrow and start banning
             | Antifa members left and right and it still wouldn't change
             | their bottom line.
        
           | wallawe wrote:
           | It's a continuation of what we've seen by big tech over the
           | past several months and years.
           | 
           | You've got Kathy Griffin tweeting photos a decapitated Trump
           | head
           | (https://twitter.com/kathygriffin/status/1323893513226870786)
           | which gets no penalty or ban. This isn't glorifying violence?
           | 
           | Yet, people on the right are being banned daily without
           | explanation for things much less egregious.
           | 
           | EDIT: if you disagree, maybe try having a conversation
           | instead of downvoting.
        
             | quickthrowman wrote:
             | Kathy Griffin was suspended from Twitter for that, please
             | find a better example.
        
               | wallawe wrote:
               | This is from November 4, 2020 right after the election.
               | She might have been suspended originally in 2017, but
               | wasn't this time and furthermore wasn't banned for
               | repeated breaking of the rules. You can click on the link
               | and still see the tweet.
               | 
               | Imagine if Trump had tweeted a photo of any Democrat's
               | decapitated head, do you think the reaction would have
               | been the same?
        
               | netsharc wrote:
               | Huh, but don't you see the difference, one of the
               | president, the other just a semi-obnoxious C-class
               | celeb...
        
               | wallawe wrote:
               | No, the twitter rules don't make caveats for different
               | positions in society. They are blanket rules that should
               | apply to everyone equally but are not. That's the entire
               | point I'm making.
        
               | justin66 wrote:
               | > No, the twitter rules don't make caveats for different
               | positions in society.
               | 
               | They do, though. (or rather, they _did..._ I honestly
               | have no idea what state their rules are in today, but
               | they 've changed some things) It's the only reason Trump
               | was allowed to stay on Twitter as long as he was, and
               | Twitter were transparent about that. [1]
               | 
               | https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2018/world-
               | lea...
        
             | aeternum wrote:
             | We can all choose to stop using facebook, instagram, and
             | whatsapp and their power evaporates.
             | 
             | In contrast we cannot choose to stop using the US
             | government. Would you really prefer to have the US
             | government decide what can and cannot be censored?
        
             | trianglem wrote:
             | Trump has received many warnings. Kathy Griffin was forced
             | to delete those and she complied and hasn't erred since.
        
               | wrycoder wrote:
               | She re-posted the image in a tweet on 06Jan. Twitter
               | deleted it because it violated their rules.
        
               | filoeleven wrote:
               | See wallawe's link above. That was on Nov 4 and is still
               | live.
        
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       (page generated 2021-01-11 22:03 UTC)