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Comment by uberman | Hacker News Reader

Twitter should politely respond by closing his account

>Twitter should politely respond by closing his account

I've thought about this in the past. Why wouldn't they begin closing accounts they think are troublesome? There is no legal right to a twitter account. Except for public blowback, what would the net result be for twitter?

High profile individuals would think twice about using Twitter as a means of communication. Users would go to the platform that has the content they want.

This would be a loss for Twitter. They need Trump as much (or more) than he needs them.

Maybe not. I stopped using Twitter because they allow Trump to say whatever he wants without consequence and I refuse to use Twitter until they treat Trump the same as everyone else. So there's that.

It would be sneaker to derank him, so it shows up lower or never in feeds. More of a shadowban. Display fake view and retweet numbers.

"We arent censoring you, but our algorithm now treats you as spam."

An interesting idea. What would the consequences be? No one knows.

IMO the US is sitting on a powder keg when it comes to power-sharing between the government and Big Tech. What if Google's board took their ball and went home, shutting everything down and becoming a hedge fund? What Jack Dorsey gets fed up and does the same, or worse, loses his mind and forms a cabal that secretly uses Twitter to sew global conflict?

These extreme scenarios point to an ever-present reality: if things really go South between the US government and Big Tech, it won't be simple submission from the industry, it will be a disaster. The side that can threaten violence wins, but when the other side controls what counts as true, what sort of battle is that?

Or move all business operations offshore, and basically claiming to be a non-US corp, and not bound by the USA's jurisdiction to prosecute.

I’m not sure if this is in Jest, but the federal government has a lot of coercive power with most Nations, so this wouldn’t really help.

Oh wow, let's see how that would work with tariffs and taxes. The U.S. government can do a lot to screw with business operations, domestic or abroad. A bureaucrat sitting in an office at the DOE or Trade can hold up a shipment of controller boards for any number of reasons almost indefinitely; piracy, hacking, heck even conflict minerals.

Maybe it is worth asking ourselves if we are okay with the government having so much power that it can “do a lot to screw with business operations, domestic or abroad.” I agree that this is the case and seriously wish it wasn’t so.

And new politicians will replace old ones, and bygones will be forgotten - winds will change. I mean, twitter could just decide to completely ban Trump now in retaliation. Nothing he could do about that.

That would be great for the share holders of twitter. lol

A neat idea, but I think Trump is extremely important in keeping Twitter relevant as it's core numbers stagnate.

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