Am I concerned about Twitter banning the President? No, because I've been online since I was 17 years old. Any venue too haphazardly moderated—either too strictly or too loosely—grows unstable and collapses.

So what if Twitter is Too Big. So was MySpace, Livejournal, Usenet...

Did Twitter make a mistake? I don't think so. Its primary concern is that its HQ is here in the US and frankly the Reps are more likely to drop the hammer on social media than the Dems, especially if the Reps can ignore election results.

The irony is that the recent conservative rage over Section 230 is so misplaced. If you want to turn social media into publishers responsible for the user-base's content, you're going to have giant swaths of users banned to avoid lawsuits.

Every town and city newspaper gets letters from their subscribers reading, "Jesus told me in a dream that we should go down to City Hall and string up the mayor! This Monday, at 3pm...."

They don't publish them. Think for two seconds as to why.

Same with printing. Years ago I edited the book SAVING PRIVATE POWER by Mickey Z which included images of a Nazi swastika. Printer wouldn't run the plate, and yes it was an anti-Nazi book.

Didn't want to have a worker traumatized by seeing 10000 swastikas go by.

One reason it really is difficult for some to wrap their heads around why it's fine that Trump is banned from Twitter is because "a private company can do what it wants" is an unsatisfying answer. And it really is unsatisfying, but it is also not the actual reason why it's fine.

The reason why it is fine is basic to cybernetics: the most unstable element of any system has the most influence over the system. Not control necessarily, but influence.

Trump is less *stable* in his messaging than Ayatollahs and the Chinese government, leaving aside the object-level horror of messages. He's less restrained than pornbots, and more powerful than a run-of-the-mill death threatener.

He's also the absolute center of world news and attention, every day.

Both the "censorship" and "private companies" crowds are arguing for a static abstraction in the face of a concrete dynamic.

And the concrete dynamic is that Twitter, headquartered and publicly traded in the US, with many employees who are difficult to easily replace, is being made unstable as both a communication venue and a company, by Trump's continued presence on the site.