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Comment by dannyw | Hacker News Reader

I’ve been sitewide banned from Reddit twice. It’s always been this way.

you aren't the president. Any future elected official now has to consider if these social media companies are a good medium to communicate with the people. If that elected official doesn't play big tech's rules, the looming threat of a ban might change their mind.

It's crazy naive to not see the implications of this

The President has access to TV (this one mainly uses it to go on long winded rambling call-ins to Fox and Friends), not to mention a fairly comprehensive web platform of his own to communicate.

This is a President who wouldn't even use the designated @potus account because he is so narcissistic he wanted the follower count for himself.

the implications being??? that it's not a great idea for the POTUS (or equivalent) to consider a private communications platform as their official "channel to the people"? well, duh! who'd have thunk?

The president has to follow the TOS just like any other user. They aren’t a king.

What good reason is there for the president to not simply communicate via whitehouse.gov or equivalent?

You might argue that it has lesser reach compared to a major social media site, but there are countless individuals and organizations that would jump to be the first one posting a link to a presidential address on social media sites.

It's almost as if there are official channels to communicate information. Ones that aren't private companies.

Twitter and the like were never a good medium to communicate with the people. Seldom can you say anything serious in 140 characters.

I get banned all the time from reddit. So much so that I have like 10 alt accounts premade so I can just slowly shift from one to the next. Sometimes I don't even know why I get banned.

That statement is incoherent.

If you say things big tech doesn’t like, you get deplatformed. This applies to everyone.

If you got banned the first time you couldn't get banned a second time.

Which is more than just semantics. Suspending an account and the associated momentum without actually banning the person might be a good mechanism to have in place.

You're not the president of the United States.

There really shouldn’t be any distinction. The President, while a very powerful figure, is still a citizen. If we’re going to complain about rich people having privileges that poorer people don’t, then Trump is no different in that respect.

Regardless, if Trump wants to, he has official means (through whitehouse.gov) to issue statements. He choose Twitter when he had other options.

If anything, the president should be held to a higher standard.

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