Slashdot Mirror
Twitter Bans 'Hateful Conduct' (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Twitter has updated their site rules to prohibit "behavior intended to harass, intimidate, or use fear to silence another user's voice." According to the new rules, "You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability or disease." This follows criticism that Twitter (and other social networks) haven't done enough to prevent the ramblings of the Islamic State and other terrorist groups. "Tuesday's announcement did not disclose changes to Twitter's enforcement strategy. A company spokesman declined to say if any were in the works. The new rules also said that Twitter might respond to reports that somebody is considering 'self-harm' by contacting the person to express concern and provide contact information to mental health practitioners."
Twitter ban 'dissenting political opinions'.
Prohibiting "behavior intended to harass, intimidate, or use fear to silence another user's voice"? Does that include the hate speech against muslims that has become a part of the Trump campaign's effort to get votes? The hate speech against "the great Satan" you get out of some in the middle-east? The hate speech again Israel you get out of millions of people worldwide? The hate speech against Palestine you get out of Israel? The hate speech against ISIS you get out Paris in the wake of the terrorist attacks? The hate speech against Parisian Jews you get out of Parisian Muslims?
Isolationist, anti-foreigner Joe McCarthyism, Anti-Semitism, Donald-Trumpism, there is always someone trying to use fear and hate as part of a power grab in a country's domestic political narrative. Do we really want corporate leadership at Twitter to be in charge of deciding when that's okay and when it should be censored?
Far too many people believe that dissenting opinions are threatening and abusive in and of themselves.
Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt. --Herbert Hoover
Seems odd you can’t voice a dissenting opinion without what amounts to threatening violence to express your political opinion.
This rule won't be used to ban users who threaten violence. It will be used to ban those all who disagree with the orthodox radical-leftist ideology of Silicon Valley SJW's. "Hate speech" has long-ago been broadened on the radical left to not only include speech which ACTUALLY threatens violence, but all speech which the hearer BELIEVES to be threatening, or intimidating, or to create a "hostile environment," or to be even remotely critical of them, etc, etc.
In other words, it won't be used against posts saying "I'm going to kill you" (which are already illegal). It's going to be used against any post that disagrees with a very specific radical ideology.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Twitter is a business. You, the cattle, are free to imbibe at the trough so long as you dont:
1. kick or bite other cattle
2. produce bad milk. Just because youre the biggest user of the pasture, doesnt mean you own the farm.
Good people go to bed earlier.
if you cant post your "dissenting opinion" without "threatening people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability or disease", then you have some issues you need to work on.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Instead of
"You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of..."
How about
"You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people." PERIOD
I don’t joke about harming people. It’s stupid and rude. Hell, I don’t joke about harming terrorists. I just make statements about how they need to be stopped. And there are a few cases that I believe are criminal, like threatening to kill the US president. Anyone who threatens to commit voilence or even jokes about it deserves to be smacked around (but in a figurative sense, of course).
That being said, I think that explicitly prohibiting statements like this is a can of worms that you don’t want to deal with.
Actually, twitter prohibiting this kind of speech is totally legal, because it’s a private business.
But what I’m concerned about is any time a stupid joke can be taken too seriously by humorless people in authority, and some kid’s life gets ruined because they had a moron moment.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I believe that, with the exception of a few very rare cases, all speech should be protected, no matter how stupid it is.
And don’t get me started on this “safe zone” bullshit that’s been popping up at universities.
if you cant post your "dissenting opinion" without "threatening people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability or disease", then you have some issues you need to work on.
Ok, lets talk about what they claim, and how this will go down in reality. Because Twitter has a really bad track record of saying one thing and enforcing another.
For example. There is a delightful young transwoman named Sarah Nyberg who has been harassing gamers on twitter for months now. (But that's ok, because harassing neuroatypical white males is socially acceptable. Especially if they're overweight and straight, too.)
Sarah Nyberg is a pedophile. She openly admits this. She also openly admits that she took photos of her 8 year old niece in her underwear and shared them online. She openly admits that doing so gave her an erection.
She admits all of this, but that it was ok because some people were rude to her and that's somehow worse.
TALKING about this, due to Sarah Nyberg being part of the SJW clique, results in you being mass-reported by a botnet and your account auto-locked by Twitter's algorithms until you delete the "harassing" posts.
The people doing this openly brag about doing this. Twitter does not care.
Twitter can post all the fluff pieces about how this is going to combat trolls and harassers they want. People who have been the victim of this passive agressive "crybullying" know that the authoritarian nutjobs involved claim any disagreement with their socio-political views is "harassment" or "Cyberviolence" and that Twitter apparently agrees with them.