Hacker News Reader

Comment by admax88qqq | Hacker News Reader

> We never elected these corporations;

Sure we did. We voted with our wallets. I'm not sure why you believe it would be any different if we _had_ elected these companies with votes.

In the current policital landscape in much of the western hemisphere has lots of people arguing for restrictive policies around speech or access to healthcare.

At least with the megacorps there is the potential to build a competitor. If they were heavily regulated good luck getting your account reactivated when the government sanctioned monopoly decides it doesn't like you.

View on HN

> Sure we did. We voted with our wallets.

Give an equal alternative to Google or cloudflare? If I can't get a comparable product from someone else whose views align more with my own, than I can't exactly "vote" with my wallet can I? They are essentially "running" unopposed.

It's also very convenient that the voting system is "whoever can spend the most money wins" when we're dealing with corporations who have more money than entire nations. We need something a lot better than "deposit cash to cast vote" when it comes to choosing who controls what we're allowed to see and hear.

Trump was kicked off of Twitter and Facebook. Does he have any trouble getting his message out?

No one stops people from going to Trump rallies.

There are plenty of ways to get your message out if people want to hear it. It’s work. But it can be done.

Yes, he has trouble getting his message out. Obviously - that was the whole point.

Rallies? Trump had like a hundred million Twitter followers. The total number of people who even can go to a rally is like 30,000 at extreme scale. Even if he had a massive rally daily (impossible) with no repeat visitors (absurd) in a year he still wouldn't get to 1/10 of the people he could reach via Twitter. And he'd be able to reach them each once. Plus he'd never get any casuals or outsiders like me - people who go to rallies are already committed. Rallies are not a substitute for the entire edifice of modern social media.

A hundred million twitter followers isn't worthless or meaningless. If someone you liked was ever silenced like that, you'd be up in arms and rightly so.

Trump is still the hands on favorite to be the nominee of one of the two major parties. Truth Social is not facing any of the issues that Gab was facing as far as being deplatformed.

Conservatives love the free market until it’s not working for them. If the situation had been reversed, they would be the first ones screaming how regulation prevents innovation.

Trump is listed as one of the 400 richest people in the US, he really can’t get his message out there? I live in the South, I assure you that if he did some advertising and started heavily promoting Truth Social it would be successful.

So you think if he advertised it better, more people would download Truth Social from the Play Store?

They can always go to web. Android browsers supports push notifications what’s magical about an app?

Trump supporters: we are being treated unfairly and we can’t get our message out because of Twitter and Facebook, how will we ever Make America Great Again? Life is so unfair.

The civil rights movement: we are being beaten, we are being lynched, attacked by police, jailed, spit on just for trying to send our children to school, etc. Let’s start a grass roots organization.

There are definitely more MAGAs in proportion to the population and they are better funded than there were people working toward civil rights during the 60s. Maybe it’s not a matter of being persecuted it’s just incompetence when it comes to leadership?

Trump supporters overwhelmingly consider themselves Christians. If they really want to organize, they can do the same thing MLK did - go into the churches.

> Trump is listed as one of the 400 richest people in the US, he really can’t get his message out there?

Not to mention he has a ton of media, sycophants and critics immediately amplifying every little toot he makes.

Some types of regulation increase competition - for example, antitrust law.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com