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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.
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.
if we continue to allow voices to be silenced because they are afraid to speak up
If you can't make a point without using hate speech then remain quiet. Calling someone names has rarely resolved anything and if anything usually derails off the main topic. If you want to push the Nazi agenda nobody is preventing you from doing so on any media, you just have to do it without using hate speech.
If you think freedom of speech should be used to protect the rights for morons to write things like: "GO KILL YOURSELF FAGGOT" or "UR AN FN TARD" then I obviously won't get my point through to you.
within the available vocabulary without
Allowing hate to be
As far as I concerned the fact that one is allowed to express his HATE for another race, way of life is not constructive in any way to society and it
Nobody said opinions could not be spoken as long as they remain don't become hate . This is looking more like the Canadian way of doing things. For some reason in the United States "hate" is an acceptable
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.
If you can't make a point without using hate speech then remain quiet.
Who get's to define "hate speech"? Is it *me*? Oh, pleeaaasse let it be me!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
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.
Speech doesn't have a platform. That's why freedom of speech and freedom of the press are two different things. If you couldn't pay any printer to print your pamphlet or book, it didn't get printed. That didn't negate freedom of the press. Freedom doesn't mean someone else has to do something for you; it means the government doesn't have the authority to stop you from doing your own thing yourself.
I'd say 99% of people I've met in my life can tell what hate speech is when they read it. They can tell by using the moral compass they've developed over years of being part of a society. Maybe your the 1% I haven't met.
Society as a whole defines that. Everyone knows what is and is not hate speech, and at the margins there are very passionate debates. It doesn't take a single person - everyone in society already agrees about where the line is.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
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.
I'd say 99% of people I've met in my life can tell what hate speech is when they read it.
And 99% of Muslims believe that showing a depiction of Mohammad is hate speech.
And 99% of Christians believe that openly mocking or attacking Jesus is hate speech.
So may I presume that both of those will be banned as clear cases of hate speech?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Everyone knows what is and is not hate speech
Who is this "Everyone"? Don't think I've ever met that bloke. But I do remember an "Everyone" in the middle east who said that eating pork was bad. I guess he speaks for all of us, then.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
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
99.99999% of all stats on the internet are fake, especially if I disagree with them - Benjamin Franklin
Let us make it easy, here is the definition for hate speech:
Hate speech is a communication that carries no meaning other than the expression of hatred for some group, especially in circumstances in which the communication is likely to provoke violence. It is an incitement to hatred primarily against a group of persons defined in terms of race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and the like. Hate speech can be any form of expression regarded as offensive to racial, ethnic and religious groups and other discrete minorities or to women.
Is it overly broad, yes. But there you go.
In God we trust, all others require data.
Now imagine that almost everyone communicates only via printed pamphlets, but pamphlet-printing business controlled by one censorious individual eager to push his agenda to the detriment of others. Could freedom of speech exists in such hypothetical society?
In Twitter case there isn't "someone else has to do it for you", they are 'common carrier' for speech and nothing more. Starting now and moving forward online communication is more prevalent than in-person speech. It isn't inconceivable to imagine dystopian future where everyone communicates using only 'social' media, and few corporations determine what is acceptable. In such future nobody has freedom of speech, and we get there with unwise individuals pushing for "Right to not get offended".
Hate speech can be any form of expression regarded as offensive to racial, ethnic and religious groups
So depictions of Mohammad and bad-mouthing Jesus are indeed defined as hate speech then.
Okay, just checking.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Clearly, the same everyone who participated in satanic panics, hunted for communist sympathizers, and so on.
Welcome to the joy of definitions. Have fun. Do we need common sense, yes. However, we also need civility. Meh...
In God we trust, all others require data.
Have you seen what gets modded flamebait here ?
More or less hate speech is anything someone disagrees with, The stronger the argument and the more facts to support it, the more hateful they will think it is.
99.99999% of all stats on the internet are fake, especially if I disagree with them - Benjamin Franklin
My point was I don't know anybody that couldn't tell you when they read hate speech.
And thank you for posting the definition. As you mentioned in your later post, common sense needs to be used.
Right, just like generalizing and stereotyping games and gamers as a "Choose your own patriarchal adventure" doesn't deserve all the criticism and derision it got.. Oh wait, yes it did.
I guess I could generalize all women gamers with something like: "Women gamers must be a horde of ugly, fat, losers who can't get a boyfriend in real life, so they play online games to harass guys looking to unwind after work" because of statements made by a few women like anita and zoe quinn, but that would stoop to your level of fallacious argument and be just as untrue.
So depictions of Mohammad and bad-mouthing Jesus are indeed defined as hate speech then.
They did it knowing how much anger it would cause. Regardless they didn't deserve to die and neither does anybody else for publishing hate messages. This is why these policy changes are excellent. If people aren't happy with their speech being censored they will quit using Twitter. Otherwise they'll continue using it and the haters can go hate somewhere else.
I guess I could generalize all women gamers with something like: "Women gamers must be a horde of ugly, fat, losers who can't get a boyfriend in real life, so they play online games to harass guys looking to unwind after work" because of statements made by a few women like anita and zoe quinn, but that would stoop to your level of fallacious argument and be just as untrue.
What on earth are you talking about?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Been here for a while... yeah... We have this interesting neo-liberal-socialistic-libertarian-psychopathic political bent prevailing on /.
In God we trust, all others require data.
Are you just making this shit up?
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
Are you just making this shit up?
In essence, yes.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
No. That's from one of anita's videos.
"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.
Why not Google it and find out? That's what I did - took 10 seconds. That is a quote from Anita Sarkeesian, in this video where she says (apparently without irony) that "Women are being institutionally oppressed all the time, in nearly every facet of our lives" followed by the quote about porno fantasy, which is apparently about the game Bayonetta.
This is the "appeal to the reasonable man" approach. It's quite common in law. Basically punts the decision to a randomly selected judge who is just trusted to be reasonable.
The problem is that the people deciding what reasonable means are of course never a perfect cross section of society at large. In the UK there have been cases where e.g. someone posted to Facebook that he hated British soldiers and he hoped they would go to die and go to hell because of all the muslims they killed.
This was interpreted as being literal hate speech. He was arrested, charged with "a racially aggravated public order offense" and then found guilty of sending a "grossly offensive communication" and sentenced to community service. The police explained, "he didn’t make his point very well and that is why he has landed himself in bother".
Most likely this post would violate Twitters policies (if Twitter allowed such a long tweet).
Now what about posts like these? What about tweets that threaten "the terrorists" with death? Do you seriously think Twitter, an American company, is going to start shutting down these sorts of accounts? What about movie studios tweeting quotes from American Sniper to promote it?
I am seriously skeptical. Most likely it will be like every other attempt to do this I've seen - what is or isn't threatening or abusive will depend entirely on the world view of the people doing the moderation and how famous/politically connected the tweeters are. It won't ever attempt to be even handed.
... SJW. My feet stink and I don't love Jesus.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
How is Twitter not a public digital space?
Now imagine that almost everyone communicates only via printed pamphlets, but pamphlet-printing business controlled by one censorious individual eager to push his agenda to the detriment of others. Could freedom of speech exists in such hypothetical society?
Your scenario isn't that hard to imagine. Back when most people did disseminate information using printed pamphlets, only a few people owned the printing presses that could manufacturing such pamphlets en masse. We survived as a species, even though those pamphlets were often inaccurate and inflammatory.
It isn't inconceivable to imagine dystopian future where everyone communicates using only 'social' media, and few corporations determine what is acceptable. In such future nobody has freedom of speech, and we get there with unwise individuals pushing for "Right to not get offended".
You are upset about a possible future regarding "communication", but communication requires two parties - one speaking, one listening - and optionally includes a third party - one to convey the information from the speaker to the listener. In all cases, speakers have the most limited rights, as it exists today and as it would be in your supposed society.
No speaker has the right to demand the service of any given conveyor or the ear of any given listener, except for limited common-carriers such as the postal service. (Even then, they must only carry your service if you pay for the transaction, similar to other common carriers such as the phone company that have to carry your speech if and only if you maintain an account with them.)
On the other hand, listeners very often have the right to decide who can speak with them. I can choose not to pick up my phone, add my phone to a Do Not Call list, and block your number, and even have you charged with harassment if you don't stop calling. I can't stop all junk mail, letters, and post cards, but I can throw them away without reading them. I can't stop you from holding up signs on a public street or shouting out to me as I walk past, but if you do these things at my house I have various resources (harassment laws, noise ordinances, zoning laws, soundproofing) that can block you from me.
In this society you describe, what you mean by "everyone communicates using only 'social' media" is that listeners confine themselves to their homes and only make themselves available via social media platforms, and those platforms choose to cater to listeners over speakers, and that you as a speaker won't be able to post signs or yell at listeners who don't want to hear you. Your freedom to speak does not and never has imposed an obligation to listen, and listeners can choose to (or empower others to) filter content they hear. The system works as intended.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
What are you talking about? Are you suggesting that your ability to express your views depends on twitter allowing you to do so? If twitter won't let you, try facebook. If they're not keen, just set up your own webpage and put what you like there. If you can't do that, take an ad in the paper or stand on a street corner shouting whatever you like. That's free speech.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
Taking quotes out of context like that is just appalling. Normal people do not do that. The video you linked to is from one of the more vociferous gamergate leaders. Why not find the same quote of femfreq?
However, to answer your point:
"Women are being institutionally oppressed all the time, in nearly every facet of our lives" - this statement is hardly even remarkable. It's a standard feminist idea, which is discussed seriously all over the world. I can't imagine why you think the statement is odd or unusual. Here is a hint: there is feminist critique of every art form. If you don't like it, you don't have to read it or pay any attention to it. The problem here is that she has been receiving rape and murder threats because of what she says. Hopefully you can understand that that is not really appropriate.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
Don't be so stupid. Really, if you don't like twitter's policies, find another site to use. If you're right about this being a slippery slope, their business will collapse as millions of users drift away because they believe they are being oppressed. I don't think that's going to happen but maybe it will.
In the mean time, the rest of us will be able to guess with a high degree of accuracy what Twitter will and won't tolerate. If you're unable to do that, that's fine too. You can get banned or suspended or not.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
Surely it's their site and their policy? At the moment they are drawing a comparison between gamergate-style intimidation and normal social discourse out in the real world. Some interactions on Twitter do not feel like the real world to me and I guess Twitter wants that to change. But its up to them.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
Sarkeesian was completely unknown and had zero impact on games or gaming until GamerGate started shitting on the floor in fury that someone would dare think critically of games. Screaming and threatening and smearing shit all over the walls, Now she's famous, is taking in foundation money and her ideas are widely discussed among people who are in a position to affect games and gaming.
I hope you're proud you goddamn morons. You've set gaming back by a generation because you have poor impulse control (most likely the result of a poor experience during potty training). Every goddamn body hates you. From the e-celeb drama, it appears you even hate each other. You have become a punchline to a bad joke. Every single "op" or "happening" has either fizzled or has further embarrassed you.
Once you're lumped in with MRAs, child porn, swatting people, white supremacy, online harassment and stalking, you've kind of painted yourself into a corner. A very smelly, unpleasant corner that people try to ignore, like when a passed out drunk craps himself on the subway.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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
How is it out of context? Would you care to provide the missing context that makes her comments seem more reasonable? I picked that site because it was one of the first hits on Google for the phrase you claimed was "made up shit" - I have no idea who the person who made the video is. It just happens to contain her saying it.
Because it's obviously false, highly inflammatory garbage that no rational person would ever say. Women are not being "institutionally oppressed" in any sense of the term, and this kind of nonsense is exactly why prominent feminists attract so much negative attention. The fact that some of them actually debate this idea just goes to show how disconnected from reality they have become.
Go back a few hundred years when women couldn't vote, couldn't work in many professions and were basically owned by their husbands. That was institutional oppression.
I don't read it, which is why I had to search for the quote to see if your accusation that epyT-R was making things up was true. Obviously you don't read this stuff either, otherwise you wouldn't have made yourself look foolish by assuming that quoting Anita S's extremism was "making shit up".
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?
Choose your words carefully is what one of my French teachers once told me (yes, I'm French). The individual who wrote: "he hoped they would go to die and go to hell because of all the Muslims they killed" wasn't very smart in the picking of his words for his statement. To wish death on someone is a pretty strong hate message. To wish death on someone is a form death threat you know you can't carry out yourself but wish for it to be carried.
At the end of the day if Twitter censors too much (only time will tell) new services that provide more reasonable censorship will emerge but my bet is that most users don't care for this type of speech and they will stick to a service that censors it.
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
I don't agree with this Anita Sarkeesian, but at least she's not smearing the walls with shit and telling people with capital to invest that gaming is just too toxic to invest in.
She said, "Games have ridiculous and oppressive portrayals of women." Well, no shit, Sherlock. Who didn't know that? Except of course, the 200 or so creepy fucks who then decided to get back at her for talking bad about their binkies and became GamerGate.
I've got no time for Anita Sarkeesian, but she wasn't pissing in the swimming pool. GamerGate is so toxic that online companies are working on ways to keep you from spoiling their little dream worlds, and it's going to be a hassle for the rest of us. And then, you dare to try to portray people who are disgusted by you as "antis". Motherfucker, everyone besides you is disgusted by you.
So, as I said, GamerGate is fucking up the Internet for everyone. And just when we'd gotten to the point that games and gaming were starting to become mainstream.
When GamerGate decided that shitting on the street was a political statement, then of course fuckwits in Congress and corporate boardrooms were going to figure out how to stop you. Because you don't know how to act.
This is your fault. You were so disgusting that 4chan asked you to leave. Fucking Comic Cons are asking you to leave, and they let any skeevy fucker in those things. For chrissake, the only people in the media who will defend you are disgraced Breitbart losers like Milo who have fucked anyone they've ever worked with. And now, because you fucking don't know how to behave the whole class is going to have to stay after and deal with stuff like this Twitter "abuse" policy.
Fuckers. GamerGate. Honest to god. Get jobs and get the fuck out of the house.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.