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Comment by tragictrash | Hacker News Reader

Please stop the whataboutism. The devil doesn't need an advocate. Go home.

I don’t consider it whataboutism, I think that many social media companies are clearly in literal violation of googles policies and thus citing policy to shut down truth social gets an “okay bro” reaction.

The moderation is clearly totally arbitrary in where it draws the line regardless of if truth social is or is not worse than other social media platforms. Google is effectively making this up as they go.

The distinction might be: are they at least trying and putting a reasonable investment into moderation, or do they not care / have no plausible plan.

Disclaimer: I have to idea what degree of content moderation Truth Social currently has... but it certainly wouldn't shock me if they have no viable plan or aren't bothering to try very hard.

It is objectively whataboutism, and welcome to the real world.

People pointing out rules that have gone unenforced being enforced the moment somebody unpopular comes along is not whataboutism. The point of the argument isn't admonishing the behaviour of others to cover for your own, which is the point of the whataboutism argument. Whataboutism requires you to avoid the critical question or argument, that is not the case here, the critical question is the interpretation of the moderation policy.

It is essential to discuss how policy has been enforced in the past in a discussion about the fairness of a policies enforcement. It would be very obnoxious if every time somebody cited a similar case to the current enforcement action they were accused of whataboutism and told to live in the real world.

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