President Trump got banned from social media. How does this impact indie hackers?
Twitter has finally done it — they've permanently banned President Trump for inciting violence. And since Twitter booted the president from their platform, others are following Twitter's lead:
- Facebook has banned him for the next two weeks until President Biden takes office
- Shopify has taken down affiliate stores
- Google has pulled Parler from the App Store
- Instagram has banned him until Biden's inauguration
- Snapchat has disabled his account indefinitely
The takeaway: While President Trump may be temporarily banned, this isn't the last we are going to hear from him. Rumors are already swirling about Trump forming his own media company, according to The Hill.
Drama on alternative social media platforms
The fallout: Users disenchanted by the censorship have signed up to Parler in droves.
- Parler, a self-described "non-biased, free speech social media" app, became popular over the last year as Twitter and Facebook fell out of favor with right-wing and conservative groups.
- The app took a laissez-faire approach towards moderation, drawing in users with the promise they wouldn't ban them regardless of the nature of their conversations.
The problem: Parler was asked to present a content moderation plan within 24 hours to Apple. Google, on the other hand, promptly banned the social app.
What's next: Parler's CEO, John Matze, called the social media platforms who banned President Trump "cowardly authoritarians." The company is known to have the support of high profile Republicans like Sen. Ted Cruz and Fox political commentator Tucker Carlson.
Will President Biden regulate social media?
Social media regulation may become a top priority for Democrats set to take control of Congress and the White House.
According to Politico, Democrats are ready to step up their regulatory efforts.
For the many indie hackers relying on social media for marketing and distribution to grow their products, any regulations or rule changes could carry huge implications.
Stay informed on the ways Big Tech impacts indie business:
What happened: As the U.S. copes with the aftermath of a pro-Trump mob storming the U.S. Capitol, a growing chorus of politicians, business leaders, and citizens are calling for greater regulation on social media companies.
While social media regulation has been an intractable challenge for years, plenty of Democrats have come out against a variety of platforms for not acting sooner to stop President Trump's support for the rally on Wednesday. Five people, including one police officer, died during the mayhem.
The problem: Many lawmakers believe that rampant misinformation spread on Facebook, YouTube, Parler, and other social media helped incite rioters and enabled the planning of a deadly insurrection on the U.S. Capitol.
Misinformation campaigns on social are getting worse — not better
Why this matters: To drive revenue, social media companies continue to use engagement tools that have pushed conspiracies and extremist ideas. And just because President Trump will be leaving office soon doesn't mean the spread of misinformation on social media will stop. In fact, many analysts feel the situation will grow worse.
The data: In 2016, Facebook researchers found that about 64 percent of users joining extremist groups did so as a result of its recommendation algorithms. Twitter has also been criticized for serving extremist, inflammatory, and conspiratorial content amongst trending topics. Such accounts have served as fodder for lawmakers looking to regulate the platforms. However, under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, social media companies have broad protections from the content their users post on their platforms.
The reality: For years, there's been strong political will for new regulations on social media companies. The challenge is that Republicans and Democrats disagree on what should be done. As a result, nothing meaningful has happened. That impasse, however, could change. Following the events at the U.S. Capitol and Democrats regaining control of Congress, there may be a stronger appetite to regulate and punish social media companies that allow misinformation to spread on their platforms.
Democrats and Republicans debate next steps
The debate: Republicans and Democrats have historically disagreed on the root of the issue. The GOP sees social platforms censoring conservative viewpoints. Dems contend that revisions to Section 230 should make companies more accountable for moderating hate speech and misinformation. While the GOP may have a stronger appetite for regulation after Jan. 6, it's still unclear if the two parties can reach a consensus on comprehensive or even limited policy remedies.
What's changed: Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff won Georgia's Jan. 5 runoff Senate elections, providing Democrats narrow control of the Senate. That means Dems can openly debate policy changes and push bills to the floor for votes. Former Vice President Joe Biden also is set to be president, enabling him to seek rules changes and possibly executive orders to regulate social media.
What they're saying: Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut that's poised to lead Senate panels focused on tech policy, believes social media companies are in part culpable for the violence and destruction at the U.S. Capitol.
What Sen. Blumenthal, Andrew Yang, and Roger McNamee think
Here's Blumenthal (via Washington Post):
They bear major responsibility for ignoring repeated red flags and demands for fixes.
On Twitter, former presidential candidate Andrew Yang added that there are 3 main media problems that have fueled polarization, including "social media's supercharging of conspiracy theories."
Social media author and Wired contributor Roger McNamee were blunter.
In their relentless pursuit of engagement and profits, these platforms created algorithms that amplify hate speech, disinformation, and conspiracy theories. This harmful content is particularly engaging and serves as the lubricant for businesses as profitable as they are influential. These platforms also enforce their terms of service in ways that favor extreme speech and behavior, predominantly right-wing extremism.
How social media regulation can impact indie hackers
Indie implications: Indie hackers often use social media to help with marketing and distribution. Any changes to Section 230 would have a significant impact not only on social media giants but also on platforms such as Wikipedia, Reddit, Quora, and even indie hackers' social media products.
For example, new social media products could face a spillover effect where they're prevented from policing user-generated content, or conversely, forced to beef up their moderation practices. With growing vocal support for social media regulation, indie hackers would be well served in keeping an eye on Capitol Hill's interest in social media regulation.
What are your thoughts on social media regulation? Have the events of Jan. 6 affected your position? Please share your thoughts.
Seems ironic to me that U.S. big tech companies are becoming anti-Free-Speech. Now I'm not saying that posts that advocate violence shouldn't be moderated, but once we start moderating "misinformation" it seems we've started down a slippery slope. After all, isn't that usually the line used by oppressive regimes everywhere?
People get banned from Twitter and Facebook every day. I've banned people from IH for hacking, spamming, instigating fights, excessive self promotion, astroturfing, and even once or twice for spreading misinformation. Even out in the real world, there are things you can say that will get you arrested and jailed, fined, fired, or sued. And they range from making death threats to yelling "fire" in a crowded theater to asking the wrong kinds of personal questions in a job interview.
So there's always been a line.
And when you get close enough to any line, it always seems a bit arbitrary what falls on one side of it vs not. That's just the nature of drawing lines. So I wouldn't say that these platforms are suddenly becoming anti free-speech.
The only thing that's new at the moment is that politicians are getting involved, both in terms of getting censored and also (potentially) drafting legislation on what can or can't be censored.
Even that's not really new, however. Twenty years ago I doubt the major TV networks would've just let anyone on to say whatever they want and continued broadcasting to their viewers no matter what. Perhaps in a major event, like a debate, but not in an impromptu format.
It's clear things have changed quite a bit in the past decade. In 2011, the then CEO of Twitter famously proclaimed, "We're the free speech wing of the free speech party." To the best of my knowledge, they never blocked anyone over political speech at that time and were even proud of their role in the Arab Spring protests/rebellions.
Even more extreme was a few years earlier, when Google's top organic result for the search "Jew" was a particularly hateful page. Many people, myself included, argued that it should be demoted. However, Google's founders (both Jewish) were such staunch free-speech advocates that their solution was to buy ads against it to outrank the page with disclaimer rather than change the organic results. Joel told the story on the old Stack Overflow podcast.
I don't think Reddit banned any subs until the past five years or so. Now it's commonplace. And of course it's hard to think of Reddit politics back in the day without remembering Ron Paul, who is now blocked from his Facebook page. His case is a particular head-scratcher given how much less active he is on Facebook than a decade ago and how he's opposed to Trump on almost every axis, in terms of both personality and politics.
What's happened this week is extraordinary, particularly in the case of AWS.
Perhaps you have internal YC-related or bay area secrets I don't, but it's extremely difficult to believe that the web has not become more centralized and controlled in the US over the past decade.
As one commenter on HN wrote:
As an indiehacker who steers far clear of offensive social media, none of this effects me at step 3, or probably even 4. Part of me would love to run a totally open source Android phone but I'm not motivated enough to.
I've also lived in places that have already reached step 5 and have tightly controlled internet, though, and I didn't like it. I also have some concern about how easily some of the largest tech companies can impose their will across most of the globe.
Why you keep deleting my comments?
Please please, Courtland, don't let IndieHackers becomes a political platform. Please ask that theses discussions are moved somewhere else.
This comment has been voted down. Click to show.
This comment was deleted 3 years ago.
This comment was deleted a year ago.
This comment has been voted down. Click to show.
That’s not what the Senator Warren’s letter means. From your comments here and elsewhere on IH, it is clear that you’re trying to project lies and spread bullshit on this site with no critical thinking or regard to the feedback being given to you.
I beg you to stop right now.
This comment was deleted a year ago.
This comment was deleted 3 years ago.
It is also 'save your a..s' strategy by social media companies. Victims families could potentially sue social media companies, and hold them criminally responsible.
When the call to 'Take down Mike Pence' gets circulated via Twitter - what is media company to do?
This comment has been voted down. Click to show.
Free-Speech is obviously non-existent on Twitter. Unless you share the opinion of the Democrats when it comes to political issues.
That is popularly held republican opinion.
Since we all are Indie-hackers and accept data-backed fact - can you please point to more research so I can educate myself?
Just look at the trends on Twitter.
So much hate is being spread against Trump, and Twitter has no problem with it.
In contrast, accounts of republican politicians are blocked because they raise the issue of vote-rigging, for example.
Strangely, however, this was not a problem in 2016 AGAINST Trump.
The influence of a company like Twitter or Facebook on the formation of users' opinions is enormous. So deleting statements is always also a distortion of the perception of the real circumstances and these companies behave as if they had the truth leased with every post they delete.
As if it were that simple...
So, there’s no facts just your opinions?
It’s pretty obvious that people don’t like trump, and especially after what happened with his supporters at the capitol. They killed a cop. Does that bother you?
No one was suspended for the completely idiotic claims about vote rigging. If so, I’d be happy to see who was.
The accounts being suspended now are due to them being complicit in the violence and unrest that their supporters caused. Twitter released a statement on why they did it. Read it, they provide proof(facts).
This comment has been voted down. Click to show.
Yes Twitter having banned Trump’s personal Twitter account is a fact.
Twitter bans only those users who incite violence or spew hateful speech.
This, you might agree, is also a fact.
Now, if statistically more republicans users have spewed violent vitriol on Twitter, then it is likely that more republican accounts have been banned or purged.
Would you agree?
If yes, then this would be a statistical fact.
I know it is also an inconvenient truth, but more important is that it is a fact. Facts aren’t what suit our convenience, won’t you agree?
Have you read Twitter’s post on what led them to ban Trump’s personal Twitter account?
That post specifies the exact tweets that Trump himself sent out following his encouragement of the confederate insurrection at the Capitol building.
Those are the facts.
At the time of coup (push for martial law) the senate were ratifying the election results for the in-coming president-elect Biden.
That is a fact.
What else do you want to know about facts?
I’m happy to help!
That is just naive
Twitter's statement is a fact because he(they) broke their terms of service, which they wrote.
That's a true fact, but a specific one. Here's the same fact, but improved: Twitter bans accounts that break their rules
Have a good one
Pretty obvious that people don't like Trump? Please get your facts straight. He got nearly 75 million votes, more than Obama ever got. So, he was more popular than Obama. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election#Popular_vote
I was referring to average users on Twitter in the current political climate and to Christian's comment. I'm aware of how many votes Trump received because I know that Biden got "nearly" 82 million, which is 7 million more than Trump did.
This comment has been voted down. Click to show.
This comment has been voted down. Click to show.
Your comment displays a sad lack of critical thinking skills. More people than ever were mobilised to vote in the recent elections - either by pure motivation to remove a certain person from office, or by being swayed by propaganda and 'alternate facts', or fake news.
Also, there are more people in America itself since the 2008 and 2012 elections. All this adds up to more votes being cast.
To extrapolate your point, this must mean that Biden is more popular seeing as he got millions more votes than DT? Doesn't it? (I won't hold my breathe for the (already debunked multiple times) standard Q-whineon evidence-less talking points about dead people voting or rigged machines or suitcases of ballots etc.)
I fear that your propensity to just quote unsubstantiated propaganda talking points, and inability to grasp rational thinking makes any further discussion moot, so I just wish you well and will instead spend my energy on more productive discussions elsewhere.
Sorry to break this to you, but people do like Obama.
He’s just a smart lovely person to be around. And there’s nothing you can say or do to change that.
😉
Edit: Go figure. 😂
This comment has been voted down. Click to show.
This comment has been voted down. Click to show.
Do you know the meaning of trends on twitter? Clearly not from the sounds of it
Obligatory XKCD:
https://xkcd.com/1357/
This comment was deleted a year ago.
This comment was deleted a year ago.
Sorry, but that's the biggest load of crap I've read in the last few weeks.
Twitter's monopoly position means that it now has an enormous influence on the opinions of millions of people.
Private organizations also have to abide by the law.
But they don't. Obviously!
Censorship can very well be carried out by private organizations, and this is obviously happening with companies like Twitter, Facebook and Google.
Quite apart from that, it is very naive to think that a monopoly like Twitter has no influence on politics.
You can be naive, but you shouldn't let yourself be fooled.
Especially after the incidents that have happened in recent months.
Dude, @Primer is right. Go educate yourself about what the 1st Amendment means instead of selling bullshit of others being naive or being fooled by “leftism” here.
Jesus, the audacity of this guy!
Surely then Twitter has no problem publicly announcing that they are deleting Political Opinions that they don't like and making it unmistakably clear that they are a part of the Democratic Party.
Anything else would be hypocritical.
Don't be fooled ;)
This comment was deleted a year ago.
You are writing a lot about others being naive... Seems like you are using it to end a discussion whenever somebody is not in line with your thinking.
As Primer pointed out, Freedom of speech doesn't mean you can force private companies to publish your writings.
Here are some examples where freedom of speech is not applicable:
This comment has been voted down. Click to show.
This comment was deleted a year ago.
I think you know how to attract attention these days. Nobody cares if someone says, "In my opinion, the election is rigged." It's like a court case. Everybody has their own view on a certain subject but everybody calls it a fact. That's why you need judges, evidence and a lot of time to find out the "truth".
It's important to me that people realize that it's not just Trump who uses these polemical devices. They all do it to pursue some goal. You can see it even in startups on their homepage, where they try to attract new customers.
My problem with the whole situation is that it currently seems like Twitter has the facts. That's just not true. If only for the reason that it is so difficult these days to sort out the "truth" from the flood of information.
We are not talking about fake news for no reason.
In all your comments, however, you never addressed the fact that Twitter, with its monopoly position, has a gigantic influence. Deleting Trump in the current situation on Twitter shows strongly what form of power it wields.
Information is power, and whoever controls the flow of information has power over everything. You can't seriously ignore that if you want to seriously discuss this topic.
This comment was deleted a year ago.
That's exactly what I mean.
You call me a "moron" and think that's okay.
On Twitter it's exactly the same problem, only worse.
I met you and wanted to discuss seriously with you. But nothing comes of it except an insult at the end.
Really sad.
Arrogance and naivety.
A dangerous mixture.
This comment was deleted a year ago.
This comment was deleted 3 years ago.
It's interesting to look back at how social media platforms have responded to political figures in the past. It's crazy to think that President Trump was banned from social media. He seems to be back in the game now. If you're interested in keeping up with the latest news in politics, I can suggest a great website I use, that covers a variety of political topics: https://www.politiq.net/US_President_Republican_Party_Primary_Election_2024 . They have articles on everything from elections to foreign policy and could be a great resource if you're looking to stay informed. There's already speculation about the 2024 Republican Party primary election? It's still a ways away, but it's always interesting to see who might be in the running.
Please please, do not let Indie Hackers become a political platform. @csallen
I though about this. AWS and some larger tech companies think they have control. They don't.
No matter what you think, the beauty of the internet, it is like a river that a dam will not harness.
AWS was never good for us, and it is a larger player like Google, but not the only game in town.
My message has zero political spin, rather about the internet and freedom of information movement.
We used servers in Panama for specialty email. We used servers in NY for low cost hosting. Big competitors to AWS are here : https://www.alibabacloud.com/solutions/hosting
There are dictators from multiple countries who literally post hate speech and how they going to bring down western civilization. But Twitter does nothing to them.
And someone just about political rivalry got banned.
If your point is "Well other despots and dictators get to do it!" then i think you need to reassess your priorities.
This comment was deleted a year ago.
Really? Examples of such leaders? Please don't say Khamenei of Iran or King Jong-un of North Korea because they don't use Twitter. Back your statement and show me these leaders' accounts and the said speech about how they will bring down western civilization? Oh, and as for bringing down western civilization, it's the other way round. It's the west doing the attacks with the aim of putting its stoggies in power, IraqLibya, Syria anyone? (hundreds of thousands of innocent people killed and destruction of their economies) Cut the crap about poor Trump or western victimhood. It's laughable. Tech companies are babies in the game. They have a very looooooooooooong way to go to even get to .000000001% of what our western govt's are doing when it comes to controlling people and the destruction of lives and livehoods. Loving the hypocrisy though lol
Well what you expect by doing terrorist attacks in Europe or USA? Receiving flowers? This is just their karma.
Just leave the Middle East and Taliban Afganistan region free for 10 years and they again started suicide bombing all famous cities in Europe, USA and South Asia.
Every action nahs equal reaction.
Don't bomb USA if you don't want to get bombed.
Libya, Syria, and Iraq terrorists attacked the USA? lol Funny because Saddam, Gadaffi, and Assad were the ones battling terrorists in their respective countries. Clearly, you are ignorant and your knowledge of international politics is lacking. Again I ask you - show me the Twitter accounts of those world leaders who said they want to bring down western civilization.
It's weird to say the least. Comes off as disingenuous and I can't be on Twitter's side just for the blatant hypocrisy. I don't even like Trump.
I always wonder why it would justify misbehaviour, if somebody else did something equally bad. Is this the world we are living in, looking who else is worse instead of looking forward how to make the best of ourself? Sure, the latter is more work....
Anyway, how your words (also on twitter) are weighted is also dependent on the influence you have and to who you are talking:
On Influence: You can't tell me it's the same if you reach out to say "I will nuke nation X tomorrow" or "as patriot, go to the streets and fight the steal" compared to a world leader stating this.
On Audience: It also makes a difference if you say "as patriot, go to the streets and fight the steal" and you are a comedian on a stage or if you say that to a violent crowd.
There might be some small accounts that are just tolerated by Twitter even as they are not aligned with the T&C but they usually lack both 1) and 2).
BTW, I would also like to see the dictators twitter accounts you mentioned.
This comment was deleted a year ago.
This aged well :)
https://i.imgur.com/s6CQBYf.jpg
People honestly don't understand the Constitutional definition of Free Speech.
The First Amendment protects your right to free speech from censorship by the government. Meaning they can't silence you or "disappear" you for saying something they don't like.
Twitter is a privately owned corporation platform. If they ban you, for any reason, it is in NO WAY a violation of your free speech. The individuals in question, in every circumstance, violated the Terms of Service for the platforms they've been removed from.
They are also completely regulated by the free market, which is obvious from this incident. The people that pay their checks spoke and they listened.
Anyone that's kicked off one service has a million and one other platforms they can go to in order to get out their message. They can even start their own. Boom. All the free speech you can eat, all Shoney's buffet-style.
No rights were infringed upon. Period.
This comment has been voted down. Click to show.
I thought long if I should answer at all. Call me naive for trying it ;)
As I mentioned above in a comment, when you say something, it depends on your position/influence and on your audience. It is not the same when a comedian would say "storm the captiol" or if a terrorist leader would say that to his following. And between these extremes there is a wide gray area of course.
And yes, Trump never said "Storm the Capitol". But if the President of a nation calls the election rigged and stolen over and over again what do you think should happen? As a patriot of the nation you should actually do whatever you can to stop it.
But wait, should we trust the words of a president that lied over and over (Covid will go away over summer, etc)? Thanks god there are independent courts. Let's look what they say:
More than 50 courts cases showed no evidence of wide spread fraud. So should I trust one person who lied to the world before?
One extra: If there is evidence for fraud, why has he not released it? (e.g. a list of dead people voting)
https://hereistheevidence.com/
This comment has been voted down. Click to show.
lol you just downvote me because you can't.
This comment was deleted a year ago.
This comment was deleted 8 months ago.
This comment was deleted a year ago.
This comment was deleted 3 years ago.