They banned him because he refused to attend Biden's inauguration. I posted a link to @TwitterSafety earlier where they openly admitted this. Trump did not tell people to go out and be violent, if he did, he deserves the ban.
Context matters. Sure he didn't tell them "go and kill a cop at the Capitol" but he did tell them to go there and disrupt the proceedings and it resulted in violence. It's disingenuous to deny that Trump's rhetoric is inciting violence. And he is not backing down from the underlying false claims of election fraud, which is what encourages his supporters to be violent.
I'm not defending Twitter in any way - I think their whole system is thoroughly fucked since it's basically a trolling platform - but Trump doesn't have any plausible argument in this dispute. If he's too obnoxious even for Twitter that's entirely his problem.
He's responsible for being inflammatory. Absolutely agree on that. There is a fine line of incitement and reckless political rhetoric. Trump has engaged in reckless political rhetoric similar to when Bernie Sanders demonized Republicans causing a staunch supporter of his to go shoot up a baseball field. Lot of people like to wear rose colored glasses when they look back upon Steve Scalise being shot because Bernie Sanders reminds everyone of a grandpa that means well, but taking a quick glance at his Twitter feed - it's clear he is as divisive as it gets. Politics tends to be a zero sum game and it's all about smearing shit on the wall for short term victories. Trump tends to take a bulldozer to the wall most times though so you have a point.
Trump is responsible for raising the temperature and creating tension, but he can't be held responsible unless he was a direct cause of the violence -- meaning he didn't tell people go out and riot, be violent.
Yes, they did - over and over. Mostly when he was spreading misinformation about the election process and outcome.
Well they sure sound like a publisher when they fact check him over and over again. Regardless, that wasn't the primary reason of the ban. And sure, Trump did spread a lot of unhinged conspiracies that were wildly inappropriate. People do here as well. Doesn't mean I personally think they should be banned. But that is Twitter's choice.
You should click on the link and read the article. If you already did, it would seem like you're intentionally taking it out of cont
No no no. Their reasoning was complete utter shit and I am taking absolutely nothing out of context.
Twitter's reasoning for the ban:
"We assessed the two Tweets referenced above under our Glorification of Violence policy, which aims to prevent the glorification of violence that could inspire others to replicate violent acts and determined that they were highly likely to encourage and inspire people to replicate the criminal acts that took place at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021."
The cited tweet was Trump saying that he would not attend the inauguration. That is reaching at straws. With how lose the interpretation is, you could tie literally any tweet from a politician as a call for violence. When democrats were whining about the election in 2016 and delegitimizing Trump's victory, I'm sure I could find some tweets that could very loosely encourage violence by bending over backwards in logic the way Twitter is.
Bernie didn't incite violence. Trump did. Many times. So, no, I don't think Bernie should be banned from Twitter. But if Twitter wants to ban Bernie, I think it should be the response of their users they have to worry about, not the government.
And they aren't my rules. It's basic ethics. Dorsey built twitter and is the current CEO - if someone is using twitter to do something horrible, it's his responsibility to stop them from using twitter.
Bernie didn't incite violence, just talked about how evil Republicans were and how they wanted to kill your grandmother through social security and Medicare cuts.
Setting that all side -- the US is beyond the point of repair and you are not looking at the bigger picture here. Twitter is not doing this because Trump tweets stupid shit. They're doing this because they know democrats control the government and will pressure them into removing Republican presence on social media sites. It's a whole lot easier to win elections when you control forms of online media.
And on this point, silencing people who I disagree with is generally an awful take and it is incredibly decisive. 74+ million voted for Trump, and it's clear Joe Biden/Kamala Harris will not be the unifiers. For some reason, I don't see many people condemning Kamala Harris for when she posted a bailout fund for Minneapolis rioters that were arrested. From what I see, every Republican condemned the violence that occurred this past Wednesday.
