Comment by ardy42
5 years ago
> Somewhere a counter was just incremented. It's going to be amusing if Twitter management simply lets the automated system do its thing. At some point, after warnings, the standard 48-hour suspension will trigger. Twitter management can simply simply say "it is our policy not to comment on enforcement actions".
I wouldn't be surprised if Twitter has exempted Trump's accounts from all automated moderation. However, I'm half expecting them to ban him about twelve seconds after he leaves office.
I would never let a machine automate any decision regarding Trump's account, considering that any action would be scrutinized by the entire world and could have massive repercussions...
So definitely not "a counter incremented somewhere". This is a political decision.
Yes, a political decision to manually increment a counter.
> However, I'm half expecting them to ban him about twelve seconds after he leaves office.
At the top management level, they are probably weighing the possibility that he never leaves office (a plausible scenario at this point), and how that scenario affects their bottom line.
They probably don’t want US institutions to dissolve into full-blown autocracy... But on the other hand, if that were to happen, then it would be better for the stock price if they hadn’t burned all bridges with the new leader for life.
You can bet that Zuckerberg is making the same calculus - except that he seems to have chosen a side. Facebook is no longer pretending to care about preventing autocracy. They are betting on the GOP coup succeeding, and are building bridges accordingly.
Note: no amount of downvoting by the alt-right fringe lurking here will make the facts go away. Downvote away since you don’t have the courage to write down and justify your true beliefs. You are an embarrassment to the technology community. You are the spineless, petty, cowardly foundation upon which all autocracies are built.
You've been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly lately. That's not cool. Emotions are inflamed right now, and that makes it more important, not less, to follow these rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Yes, it appears that I have.
"they are probably weighing the possibility that he never leaves office"
I think you are very far from reality
I'd love to live in this world, but it is not one I think anyone can afford to live in. This man is a true narcissist who has very little respect for the office, the institutions he's responsible for, or more than half the country. All sorts of things that were very far from reality are no longer.
But I would love to be able to agree with you. That would be a better world. But the world we live in is where the President says "when the looting starts, the shooting starts," a racist dog whistle to the 1960s, who "jokes" about staying past any term limits, where enablers in Congress and in the media allow him to toe the line of criminal behavior with no accountability as long as it benefits them. That's reality. I wish it were different, but I cannot take your position and reconcile it with what's in front of us today.
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very very far from reality. i heard the same thing from liberal friends about GWB and i heard the same thing from conservative friends about Obama.
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I dont.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/02/trump-jokes-rigg...
> Since assuming office in January 2017, Trump has made at least 27 references to staying in office beyond the constitutional limit of two terms. He often follows up with a remark indicating he is “joking,” “kidding,” or saying it to drive the “fake” news media “crazy.” Even if Trump thinks that he’s only “joking,” the comments fit a broader pattern that raises the prospect that Trump may not leave office quietly in the event he’s on the losing end of a very close election.
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When Trump leaves office he will be open to an enormous amount of investigation, litigation and prosecution. I don't know how probable it is that he tries to stay in office, but I don't think it is zero. Twitter planning around that possibility seems be less likely.
How far do you think he would go in order to try?
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> At the top management level, they are probably weighing the possibility that he never leaves office
Statements like this won't get you taken seriously.
I'm not any of those things. I'm just down voting you on the basis you're complaining about down votes with personal attacks.
I agree that this system is more fragile than most people think; somehow almost preferring automatic government than the tediousness that functioning democracy requires. And sometimes people get a rude reminder of this.
I do not agree that the scenario you're talking about is probable (which is indicated by plausible). Perhaps you mean possible? Sure, but in that case it's also possible money instantly has no meaning, there is no Congress, there are no states, there are no judges or generals, there are no prison sentences, there are no laws at all whatsoever. Nothing matters, everything is possible.
That is a sense of unpredictability a society does not trend toward no matter how ill it is.
But try to understand that completely ending all constitutional order is not how revolutions tend to progress. Even in the U.S. civil war, there were two (federal) constitutions in place for two sets of states. There was order, even in that chaos.
I agree Trump has autocratic tendencies. But he is a weak minded fool. He will not make for a strong autocrat, he even contradicts himself and dithers too much for this. He is Side Show Bob. He's a distraction. To succeed he would need a very high percentage of authority, trust, and compliance - and there's just no way he's going to get that.
I question whether he even does something to sabotage the election. On January 20th his term of office expires. At noon he is not the POTUS if there's been no election. Further, there's no House of Representatives, because their term expires on January 3rd. And 1/3 of Senators are not Senators. But at 12:01pm on January 20th, there is a person who will become POTUS without an election. And that's the President pro tempore of the Senate. Following that, the states will surely already be figuring out how to reinstitute the House through either appointments or new elections. It's not up to the federal government. But to pass new laws, including a new election to make up for the delayed one, we'll need a Congress.
That has never happened. I can tell you many examples from history, things that are way more likely than any of this. Including from American history. Some of those things are violent, even in fact violent for just one person, that are way more likely than autocracy.
Trump's best chance is for the election to proceed.
So, while you can't for sure predict what's going to happen next, just try to have some imagination for rare events that have happened rather than events that have never happened. Trump is a chickenshit asshole but that's like, the least remarkable or interesting thing going on here, because he's been a chickenshit asshole his whole life - not news! And that doesn't really highly qualify (or disqualify) him as an autocrat. He's not going to be one because he's just too incompetent and steps on his own dick every chance he gets. Just try to calm down, let him have enough rope to hang himself, and he will.
During the Colfax Massacre during Andrew Johnson's presidency, there were two factions that claimed they had won the gubernatorial election for Louisiana. They both tried to set up governments. White Democrats murdered freed black men and Republicans in the streets. The President at the time was sympathetic to the south's cause and only reluctantly sent in the army to take charge of the situation.
This is already part of American history. You're describing some amazing world where people follow the rules even during chaotic situations, and I guarantee that will not happen if there's a contested Presidential election with Donald Trump on the losing side. It will be a lot more like the racist South trying to claw back its power, because his most ardent followers are exactly the same kinds of people. He doesn't need to be good at being an autocrat, he just needs to encourage enough people to support him no matter what, and eventually he'll encourage someone who IS good at it. So you're right that he is not the risk, alone, but he's not alone. He's surrounded by enablers, criminals, and domestic terrorists who have a vested interest in his success.
> I question whether he even does something to sabotage the election. On January 20th his term of office expires. At noon he is not the POTUS if there's been no election. Further, there's no House of Representatives, because their term expires on January 3rd. And 1/3 of Senators are not Senators. But at 12:01pm on January 20th, there is a person who will become POTUS without an election. And that's the President pro tempore of the Senate. Following that, the states will surely already be figuring out how to reinstitute the House through either appointments or new elections. It's not up to the federal government. But to pass new laws, including a new election to make up for the delayed on, we'll need a Congress.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but how would there be "no election" to that degree? Rather than a single, centrally-coordinated federal election, doesn't the US have 50 state-coordinated elections (emphasis on the plural)? So to truly cancel the elections in November, you'd have to have buy in from all 50 state governments. In a slightly more realistic (yet still unrealistic) scenario you'd still have a POTUS, but one elected by electors from the states that held elections, and there'd still be a House of Representatives, but only with members from states that didn't participate in the cancellation.
I suppose the situation would be similar to what must have happened during the Civil War.
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"Plausible" does not "indicate" "probable". It's actually a lot closer to "possible". What you've done there is textbook strawman.
I agree with you. But what Trump is doing is, he's paving the way for a real autocrat, by breaking down the norms and systems that keep an autocrat from being able to function.
> no amount of downvoting by the alt-right fringe lurking here will make the facts go away.
What facts? What alt-right fringe?
Trump was voted in by tens of millions of Americans and still has tens of millions of supporters.
> At the top management level, they are probably weighing the possibility that he never leaves office (a plausible scenario at this point)
Trump is in his 70s...
> since you don’t have the courage to write down and justify your true beliefs
What true beliefs are you hinting at here and why would they take courage to write down?
> about twelve seconds after he leaves office.
which will be in 18 years
He isn't competent enough to pull that off. He can't even get his own staff to do what he wants most of the time.