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Comment by guscost | Hacker News Reader

Twitter’s official statement on this is one for the history books:

https://mobile.twitter.com/Policy/status/1349059275461685250

> Access to information and freedom of expression, including the public conversation on Twitter, is never more important than during democratic processes, particularly elections.

The jokes write themselves

I don't think so. There's a big difference between a reactive censorship of a single powerful person by Twitter and the proactive censorship of an entire population of people with very little power by a government -- both functionally and philosophically.

Trump can summon a press conference 24/7 and have his message broadcast to the entire world. He controls publication on multiple personal and government websites. What comparable publication powers do the people of Uganda have besides social media?

The impact of censorship is only relevant in the context of power.

Trump wasn't banned before the elections. He wasn't banned after Charlottesville, and then wasn't banned for 3.5 more years while he continued to undermine American institutions. He was only banned after refusing to accept the election results and inciting insurrection with conspiracies.

People are /really/ reaching for something that isn't there. To be clear, I don't think Twitter is "the good guy", but the comments in this subthread are very disappointing.

This after repeatedly violating rules that tend to get other uses banned.

Twitter always said they had more lenient rules for world leaders, and that part makes sense, since anyone that is an elected public official needs to communicate with the public and sometimes talk about controversial topics.

But if that elected official is refusing to accept the same system that elected them in the first place, then that's a logical dead-end and no amount of reasoning will do any good, or even matter in that case. Without the framework of elections, there is no such thing as an elected official.

It's strange how they think they are part of an open internet movement.

Maintaining the illusion is an important part of any propagandists toolset. Of course your enemies will see right through it, this kind of content is produced for the people you have thoroughly cut off from all other sources of information. It reenforces the the true believer's inner narrative that they are a part of GoodGuyInc.

It's funny.

The first tweet condemns internet shutdowns. In the second tweet they say they suspended a number of accounts targeting the election in Uganda.

Wow, exactly.

The phrase of the day is "Cognitive Dissonance".

Hilarious - it should be abundantly clear that Twitter are the guys.

Are the people running Twitter high 24-7 or just during election season?

What's the link? twitter banning a single user for repeatedly breaking the rules is comparable to a countries government banning the social network ahead of an election? seems tenuous.

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