Slashdot Mirror
Twitter Rolls Out New Anti-Abuse Tools
An anonymous reader writes: After facing criticism that it gives trolls and hatemongers a platform to intimidate people, Twitter has now rolled out a new set of tools and policies to handle abusive tweets. Previously, they only prohibited threats of violence that were "direct" and "specific," but now that's been expanded to all threats of violence or tweets promoting violence. They said, "Our previous policy was unduly narrow and limited our ability to act on certain kinds of threatening behavior." Twitter has also added non-permanent bans, as well as this: "[W]e have begun to test a product feature to help us identify suspected abusive Tweets and limit their reach. This feature takes into account a wide range of signals and context that frequently correlates with abuse including the age of the account itself, and the similarity of a Tweet to other content that our safety team has in the past independently determined to be abusive." Twitter's general counsel recently said, "Freedom of expression means little as our underlying philosophy if we continue to allow voices to be silenced because they are afraid to speak up. We need to do a better job combating abuse without chilling or silencing speech."
This will be abused by SJWs so fast. I cannot wait to see the fireworks.
"Twiiter Anti-Abuse tools Abused. Hard."
4cha- sorry, let me rephrase that, 8chan will have fun with that.
Oh, how 4chan has fallen as the internets dick.
And all that jazz? It exists to ... well ... destroy the enemy. The enemy is ... well ... you.
>>>"Freedom of expression means little"
So if your platform is Twitter, you don't have freedom of speech. With all social media controlled by this or that corporation, this means that you don't have any freedom of speech in that media. If that main mode of communication, then you don't have that freedom, period.
Freedom of speech could only exist when people everyone hates can say things that everyone disagrees with.
There are plenty of people on twitter who seem to think that someone disagreeing with them or holding/promoting beliefs that counter theirs is a form of abuse or harm. They're nuts, but they exist and I expect this will just add to their bubble building toolbox.
ISIS ruins everything. Terrorists are why we can't have nice things.
Some things need to be said...
Is handing out torches to angry villagers. Going to be interesting to see how they square this.
Unless this is meat-space curated, this could unintentionally play right into the hands of trolls or anyone who believes any criticism of their '140 of wisdom' is a threat.
"Freedom of expression means little as our underlying philosophy if we continue to allow voices to be silenced because they are afraid to speak up."
So to protect against silencing, you're going to silence?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Sean: You are so on the team! Next week we've got the Crown & Anchor. We're going to annihilate them!
The Doctor: [suddenly in Sean's face] Annihilate? No! No violence, do you understand me? Not while I'm around, not today, not ever. I'm the Doctor. The Oncoming Storm. And you basically meant beat them in a football match, didn't you?
Sean: Yeah.
The Doctor: Lovely. What sort of time?
"Anti-Abuse Tools" = CENSORSHIP (the first paragraph of the wikipedia article about censorship:"Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication or other information which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments, media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions.").
An ancestor of mine, the ancient Greek Antisthenes wrote (roughly translated by me) "the examination of words is the begining of wisdom" - and Orwell wrote some things about the rape of language (and, by that, logic) in his "1984".
And this rape of language (and, by that, logic) it's a left-wing's tactic, both in Europe (where i live) and the rest of the Western World - this "Anti-Abuse Tool" (that is, the CENSORSHIP tool, if you still need the "translation") is going to be used against ME (a Greek/European that has nationalistic political views, is against Muslims/homosexuals/e.t.c., believes in racial differences, e.t.c.), not against anyone with left-wing views... AND YOU KNOW IT!
I support the right of any invividual/company to control what it permits/forbits in what it controls - but as long as i can express myself i will defend language (and logic) from rapist...
Why would anyone even want to use Twitter? What is the point of a communication medium that only allows you to communicate messages that have been approved by a hostile third party?
Solvng a social problem with a technical solution. Perhaps this time it really works.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Does this mean all the major media news organizations will be banned every time they promote their violent wars for their masters?
"Todaythe USA kills 20 'terrorists' "
That's promoting violence no matter how you look at it.
Instead, I bet twitter will selectively censor whatever it likes with these new policies.
This User Has Been Banned For Threats Of Violence
Guess we'll be seeing less of the SJW online outrage machine then...
when all is said and done, all a man has left are his blades and his honor.
There's no question that better Twitter abuse controls are needed...
But I really hope they are careful to be even-handed about what they consider abuse, as it's REALLY easy to consider everything one side of an issue says is "abuse" and silence them permanently.
I also wonder how this will square with some people on Twitter who aren't necessarily abusive, but really like swearing. Could they be at greater risk of being banned?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
all free speech will be silenced.
Right. Someone calling a woman's father on his cellphone at 3am with death threats is "criticism".
#GamerGate has its head so far up its ass I don't know how they breathe. They're nothing but a horde of socially inept losers who hate that the hobby they define as their identity is "under attack".
(For the record: I've been playing videogames for 30 years, and even worked in a video game store when I was a teen.)
Death threats and the like aside, this is just going to be abused.
Abusive speech is one thing, but "offensive" speech is subjective, and a totally a different matter.
"This person posted something which personally disgusted me. I want him banned!" *reported*
"Guy called me a moron! IT HURT MY FEELINGS!" *reported*
"We need to find a way quash free speech on our network while maintaining the illusion to our users that we are not quashing free speech."
Just like 'old Zuck said, most of their users are dumb fucks, too.
Just so we're clear this is Twitter acknowledging that they're anti-free speech. Anything someone deems "offensive" is forbidden. That couldn't possibly be abused, nope not at all! /s
"On a scale from 1 to 10, people are stupid"
Before you think "yeah fuck GamerGate" I'm referring to the people who claim abuse, when there is none, there are people on both sides of the fence of this debate and it would be nice to know that the anti-abuse tools can't be abused, like the mass autoblocker tool which was being used.
Suddenly labelled all kinds of nasty names, for disagreeing with someone isn't cool, especially if they get their 'clan of loyal followers' to mass report abuse against you as well. The SJW clan can be just as abuse in their own ways as the GG people, they seem to love censoring stuff they disagree with, not just abuse.
"This person is disagreeing, ABUSE!!"
Tools to help stop REAL abuse, great - but needs reviewing before action taken. (See also abusive DMCA takedowns on YouTube as well)
... SJW. My feet stink and I don't love Jesus.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Yeah, it's utterly unacceptable that people complain about rape and death threats.
It is unacceptable to pretend that only one side of a controversy is receiving those threats, and blaming the other side for them without evidence. Doubly unacceptable, if you're a supposed journalist doing that.
BTW: at this point SJW doesn't actually mean anything. It's just used as a "shit I hate on the internet" invective. There is no consistency in its use and people use it as a means of either rabble rousing or ad-homenim by trying to shut down a debate by flinging poo rather than actually engaging in a rational discussion.
Like your post for example.
No, SJW has gone mainstream with its core meaning intact: someone makes a show of standing up against oppression, but through their actions proves to be little more than a self-serving narcissist, seeking out offense even where there is none and making a mountain out of petty bullshit.
It's a play on "keyboard warrior" but the phrase itself is mostly irrelevant. I didn't always know why "mouthbreather" was considered an insult until I had a couple of them as coworkers for a while. No doubt for a lot of people, Gamergate has been similarly enlightening with regard to the term "Social Justice Warrior."
If you're looking for a word that has lost a lot of meaning through misuse while gaining popularity, see "troll."
Nice try. "Thanks to gamergate", three women have been forced from their homes from threats that law enforcement officers found credible enough to suggest that. Trying to pretend that gamergate has done anything but abuse people defines you as - at best - an imbecile.
It causes you physical pain that few here buy into the "mysogyny and harrassment" narrative, doesn't it?
The cover-up didn't work.
The week-long gaming press news blackout and ongoing user comment/forum censorship (in former free-speech strongholds such as 4chan and Reddit, no less) didn't work.
The coordinated, ongoing smear campaign that began with the "Gamers are Over" articles hasn't worked.
The endless train of embarrassingly desperate counter-hashtags hasn't worked.
The Wikipedia and Nightline hit pieces only damage those outlets' credibility for short-term effect.
The SVU episode . . . hahaahhahaha WOW, where do I even begin . . . it is progapanda that couldn't be more precisely crafted to the corrupt press's specifications (i.e. "narrative"), and broadcast to a national non-gamer audience, much of which likely accepted it as reality. It was a wake-up call to quite a few previously unaware or neutral parties, especially game devs*.
Eurogamer is the latest games journalism site to update its ethics policy in the wake of Gamergate, joining PC Gamer, IGN, the Escapist, and of course Kotaku/Gawker (though in Gawker's case, they put up more of a fight and the Gamergate pressure to be ethical had to be routed through the FTC).
Gamergate also got Brad Wardell (CEO of Stardock) some long-overdue apologies for hit pieces run against him:
https://twitter.com/iamDavidWi...
http://www.gamepolitics.com/20...
http://www.zenofdesign.com/in-...
Ask yourself how much of this you've seen reported in the corrupt media (which at this point, sadly, clearly includes Slashdot). Of course none of it ever had a chance of appearing in the Wikipedia article. Nothing enrages anti-Gamergaters more than someone covering both sides of the story, and that should tell you something.
Their side thrives only in an environment of propaganda and censorship, and evaporates when faced with integrity and transparency. They prove the need for Gamergate every time they write an article based on the assumption that terrorism and child porn^W^W^W^W misogyny and harassment have become the root passwords to the Constitution^W^W journalistic ethics.
* like Mark Kern and Ken Levine, who had nothing to do with Gamergate, but were so disgusted by the SVU episode that they publically called on the gaming press to stop slandering gamers. Both were instantly swarmed by anti-GG on twitter, and VG24/7 ran a hit piece on Kern without even getting his side of the story, and refused even after he specifically asked them. I think Eurogamer saw exactly what happened to Kern, and it's no accident that tha
The last couple sentences here are a perfect display of the liberal "you have to agree with me, or else!" Attitude we see so often. "Freedom of expression means little as our underlying philosophy if we continue to allow voices to be silenced because they are afraid to speak up. We need to do a better job combating abuse" Basically what that is saying is "my freedom of expression is more important than yours." And yes I'll clarify. The part "IF we allow voices to be silenced because they are too afraid to speak up" is inherently insinuating that we should not "allow voices to be silenced" because people are afraid to speak up. 1) that's not being silenced. That is choosing not to speak up. 2) and your solution is to ACTUALLY silence those who disagree with you, so that you may be more likely to speak up by choice. There is so much wrong and hypocritical with that thinking I'll leave it there. If you think you need to silence other voices by force so that they don't deter you from speaking by choice, then you are the root of everything which is wrong in the world today.
Let's see if they start using the banhammer for #killallmen and the like. I wouldn't be holding my breath.
Twitter CEO Dick (oops) Costolo, on harassment in a Salon article
I mean, I've no love for SJW-type whining identity politics (which is sadly what much of progressive politics has turned into), but what exactly are the stakes in the Gamergate debacle? Are gamers particularly worried that the industry is going to stop including sexy women and cliched plots to sell games? Because that's fucking stupid. The gaming industry will do that maybe 20 years after Hollywood stops.
So, I mean, are there any stakes at all here for the anti-SJW camp? Are there laws being debated in Congress? Are gamers being discriminated against? It's annoying to hear journalists pontificate about shit they don't understand, but that includes damn near anything they talk about. It's perhaps even worse to have to listen to a manufactured controversy, but still....
Why should we care? Let them troll away and then it all goes away once the journalists get bored with it. There are plenty of pro-egalitarian (i.e. anti-SJW) battles to be fought that have actual consequences, but this doesn't seem to be one of them.
Or am I really so old that I'm failing to realize that being a gamer really is a cultural identity and they really are being discriminated against?
Sure. That's what freedom of speech is for. I want you to be able to say such things. I'll pay attention to maybe two sentences before I dismiss you as a kook and ignore you thereafter, but you should be able to say it..
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Sorry this comes so late, but yes, there are reasons to care about Gamergate even if you don't care about video games. How about the censorship campaign that compromised vast swarths of the internet, including nearly the entire games press, Reddit and no less than 4chan itself for fuck's sake. The fact that there exists a faction willing and able to carry out such a campaign is IMO the most revealing (and shocking) part of efforts to stomp Gamergate out of existence. For anyone who witnessed it firsthand, “Nobody is going to take your games away” makes for a rather trite and feeble reassurance.
/.'s anti-Jack-Thompson days), and therefore you haven't been allowed to read a single article here describing anything in my GP post (i.e. anything about the actual journalism scandal). And that kind of censorship probably isn't limited to game content either.
Hopefully you can also be persuaded to care about journalists giving positive coverage to their friends without disclosing those relationships. And to care about journalists printing misinformation to push an agenda, instead of simply reporting the news. Read up on Rolling Stone's fake UVA rape story if you haven't already. The parallels to the Gamergate scandal are uncanny, and neither can be explained away by a mere lack of understanding on the journalists' part. And take notice of how many articles, even after the story was known to be horseshit, still try to push forward a ""silver lining" narrative that RS's reporting "raised awareness" about the "important issue" of "rape culture" on campus.
And it's not just games they want to dictate the content of. This has happened in comics, sci-fi, atheism, music . . . pretty much any subculture they think they can get away with co-opting and controlling. If that still doesn't hit close enough to home, remember that Slashdot ownership/editors have proven to be on the pro-corruption and pro-censorship side of the Gamergate controversy (in a total 180 from
Hope that helps.