Comment by _qulr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _qulr | Hacker News Reader

A couple weeks ago Twitter inexplicably suspended @AppsExposed, an account that has repeatedly exposed scams in Apple's App Store and was recently featured in Forbes. The account is still suspended. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2021/02/02/porn-ap...

This has nothing to do with euthanasia, but that's the point. It could be anything, or nothing. Twitter doesn't even have to give a reason for suspending accounts. There is no accountability.

"Just don't use Twitter", some say. But Twitter has 300 million users, and you're supposed to "just" ignore that audience. How about "Just don't sell your product in the United States"? Doesn't sound so great, does it. The excuse is always is Twitter is a "private" company (not really, they're publicly traded). But Twitter is literally the size of the United States, it has approximately the same population. Facebook has a larger population than any country on Earth. These aren't just companies, they're almost nations.

I got blocked from posting on Twitter about 6 months ago. After a couple complaints and a couple weeks, they reinstated. No idea why. I don't even post mild political stuff.

>"Just don't use Twitter", some say.

And, yeah, it's one of the main ways I interact with a lot of people professionally. Losing access would be a major inconvenience and probably even somewhat professionally damaging.

Yes, I actually deleted my Twitter account and joined ADN. I was gone from Twitter for 4 years. But this accomplished nothing, it only hurt me professionally, and ADN eventually shut down.

Individuals can't win in this scenario. Like it or not, the big social networks have captured the masses.

I’ve not used Twitter in years and don’t know what the appeal was when I did.

“Audience” is specious to me considering the number of bots. Still, it’s an echo chamber regardless of which side you’re on.

So, yeah; I think we would all do well to recognize the immense bias of Twitter and ignore them. Soon enough their investors would punish them for these kinds of actions if we did. As it is, their investors love this nonsense because it results in “eyeballs”. Mine are rolling at Twitters antics.

Forbes is a blogging platform nowadays, something being published there should be given about as much weight as a medium article.

> Forbes is a blogging platform nowadays

What isn't? A lot of "hard news" stories nowadays are just republishing tweets. So-and-so famous person tweeted this, so-and-so other famous person tweeted a response, yadda yadda. [James Earl Jones voice] This is CNN.

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