Did Twitter Exec Censor #WhichHillary In Advance of Sunday Fundraiser, Key Primary? (dailykos.com)
An anonymous reader writes with the key claim of a story at The Daily Kos: In a truly egregious move yesterday, Twitter suspended the account responsible for #WhichHillary, activist @GuerrillaDems. Twitter also removed #WhichHillary from trending status, which is odd, considering the hashtag received more than 450,000 tweets in less than 24 hours. Twitter now says the suspension of @GuerillaDems was a mistake. Although this may just be a coincidence, it isn't the first time Twitter has exerted political control. Many users think it is a demonstrable conflict of interest, in light of Twitter Executive Chairman Omid Kordestani's Sunday, 2/28 fundraiser with Clinton.
The Daily Kos itself offers at least a perfunctory caution that it's unclear "whether it was intentional removal, or algorithmic coincidence."
The Daily Kos itself offers at least a perfunctory caution that it's unclear "whether it was intentional removal, or algorithmic coincidence."
When ever did a twitter algorithm, remove a trending topic that was not hate speech?
This was almost certainly intentional. The only real question is was it paid for by Hillary or a staffer. We will likely never know.
Silence is a state of mime.
The Democratic Party, being the party of the devil, shows that the deletion was intentional.
Twitter has become a partisan hack site rather than a communication platform -- as is their right. Likewise, it is my right to have deleted my account. No worries.
A: Okay, Twitter is going to be a beacon of free speech. We're not going to censor it in any way, and we're going to fight anyone who attempts to like hell.
B: Great! I agree. This is going to be a great site!
A: Uh, okay, people are pretending to be other people for purposes of satire. We should probably add some sort of verification so that people can know tell the real person's account from the joke ones.
B: Makes sense.
A: Right, now let's just shut down those joke accounts, to minimize confusion.
B: Uh... wait.
A: And a bunch of people are being mean to other people. We'll just shut that down as well.
B: But--but--
A: Now, that may be unpopular, so we'd better organize a committee made up entirely of people on a single side of the political spectrum to decide who gets to speak and who doesn't.
B: Now just hold on a min--
A: Oh, and according to our committee, all the people on the other side of the political spectrum are the ones being mean. We'll just ban them outright.
B: [censored]
A: Actually, why don't we just start censoring things all the time for no reason, with no real justification or even a discernible pattern.
In fact, the success of both the Trump and Sanders campaign are ample evidence that people are getting pretty fed up with this kind of bullshit. People don't like being TOLD who to vote for! This was the same phenomena that got me elected Student Government president in college; the corrupt dorm manager told everybody working for him and everybody living in the dorms to vote for his hand-picked candidate -- so they all voted for me instead!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
to ask for forgiveness than to get approval.
All these "coincidences" surrounding Hill's campaign?
Didn't Citizen's United make it legal for a corporation to support a political candidate in any way they choose?
Twitter can refuse to provide service for the opposition (delete every post) if it choose to do so, and there ain't shit any one can do about it.
Absolutely. That doesn't mean inhibition of speech shouldn't be called out though.
An enterprising lawyer might make a case about the Communications Decency Act and that entities seeking safe harbor shouldn't just be protected from liability when exercising discretion, but said discretion should be held to something higher than an arbitrary standard... Older FCC-style "equal time" discretion or something... But that probably wouldn't go very far. The market should and will decide these things.
FTR, it's not just "Hillary" stuff, the recent SJW wisdom has caused random Conservatives to get disappeared as well:
http://nypost.com/2016/02/23/twitter-targets-trolls-but-winds-up-silencing-conservatives/
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
I don't think the Republicans were the ones responsible for suspending an account that pointed out the two faced nature of the Democratic candidate. I also don't think it was the commie Bernie. Maybe you need to look a little closer to home, either the Which herself or #WarlockBubba.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
It's taken awhile... but they are finally starting to learn from the other side... only a few decades behind and without the Anointed Lying Bitch to lead.
We'll have to setup a Republican Foundation... take bribes for access to Washington... refuse to send help for a few stupid diplomats...
Give us a few years, and we'll catch up to the Democrats... a few Decades...
Don't you even understand that the site pointed out the two faced nature of the bitch? The Republicans would not be the one to try to silence anyone over this. Only the Which herself or #WarlockBubba would do that. Now that it has been explained to you, do you still consider it a violation of the First Amendment and a dirty trick, or has it somehow now become a virtuous act?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Well close to it,...........
They continue to censor hashtags in the name of "anti-harassment" the /extreme/* SJW's continue to dox people, harass them, incite having people be fired. Fools like WilW promote his shared blocklist which censors 11,000 people (As someone who got on that list for a single, very harmless tweet, I assure you, his list is ridiculous as is the concept of sharing a blocklist, thereby getting blocked by hundreds of others you've never interacted with, because "groupthink!!") /extreme/* SJW's continue to get away with lies / libel / hypocrisy, if you disagree with them or say "god you're an idiot" the return will be "did you just say you hate niggers and threaten to rape me?!" they (/extreme/* SJW's) continue to misrepresent what people say and HATE being disagreed with.
Continually hashtags are suppressed with auto-completion not working or not being listed as trending topics.
The
The PRIMARY message of SJW's, overall is one of being nice, not racist, not sexist and so on. Therefore of course debating with them, it's easily implied you're against those things. Problem is the /extreme/* SJW's hijack the cause and take it to extremes. Censoring debate of any kind.
I wish I'd never discovered any of this but the more I look into it, the worse it gets, these people are smart, they build contacts within communities in the name of "anti-harassment" and helping, once they have their teeth in, they control what's being discussed. Anything that doesn't fit the status quo, in almost any capacity "must be harassment and needs to go"
* NOTE: I have the /common fucking sense/ to not label ALL SJW's as extremist loonatics, MANY of them are perfectly normal, nice, people who just want a bit of equality, the bad ones, using bad methods are the problem here. I am capable of distinguishing the fact that "not all SJW's" are loonies. It's a real shame that the loony SJW's don't have the common sense to stop claiming "all men are rapists" or any other such thing.
(I hate to bring up gamergate, but as someone who has spent a fair amount of time reading on this, it's incredible how much vitriol has been spit at this group, with only a small fraction of them being dicks, don't let that stop a HUGE group of people and the media endlessly claim that it's 100% without question internet misogyny terrorism of the highest order though)
Anonymous post again unfortunately, lest someone tryu and get me fired or arrested. ...)
(and the fact I feel compelled to post anonymously is a real issue on this, especially since "they don't harass"
I don't think the Republicans were the ones responsible for suspending an account that pointed out the two faced nature of the Democratic candidate. I also don't think it was the commie Bernie. Maybe you need to look a little closer to home, either the Which herself or #WarlockBubba.
I find it funny you refer to Bernie as a commie, when it's been the last couple (plus the current) Presidents who keeps passing laws that are turning us more into commie russia then the freedom loving america we claim to be.
Be seeing you...
Despite the Authoritarian bent of the past and current presidents and most of the current candidates, authoritarianism is only an enabling mechanism for communism, not the goal itself. Bernie's rhetoric is pretty clearly of the "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" variety, which is the goal of communism.
It happens that many authoritarians use communist rhetoric to seduce populations into ceding power to them, but that is not the only kind of rhetoric that achieves that goal.
BTW, is anyone else bothered by the fact that both parties talk about the unemployment problem in terms of "Putting Americans to Work" as if the work itself is some kind of virtue that people should be "put to" rather than the means by which people obtain resources to improve their living conditions?
Does make you wonder just how many people they can exclude before they lose the benefits of the network effect.
Well they decided to do it with atheism, and with gamers, and now they're doing it against people who don't share their political ideology. Looks like they're doing a great job at making sure they want to become irrelevant like myspace. I wish them the best on that journey.
Om, nomnomnom...
Given a choice between lies that reflect contempt for establishment wisdom and talking points and lies that are carefully crafted by focus groups: I'll choose the outrageous and unbelievable lies any day of the week.
If Donald Trump promised to invade Pluto, I would vote for him that much harder. If Bernie Sanders promised to nationalize the banks: I would vote for him that much harder. I don't believe we're invading Pluto, and I don't believe Bernie Sanders can single-handedly nationalize the banks, but both of these candidates are saying shit that would get corporate sponsors to run away screaming which is proof to me that they aren't bought and paid for.
They obviously don't actually want to win, and that's what's so endearing about them. Trump's obvious contempt for the journalists and their desire to see a "horse race" played by traditional rules (where they run the show) is contagious, and Bernie Sander's obvious desire to help the middle class is infectious as well.
Honestly who gives a shit how well they conduct themselves when they get there?
The best possible thing for the American people would be 8 years of continuous veto's of anything other than clean spending bills. I think both Trump and Sanders can make that happen. Observe, if either one of them passed an executive order directing the FBI to arrest congress for treason if they didn't have a clean bill on his desk: I wouldn't complain!
As for SCOTUS: I hope the senate obstructs this nomination and every nomination until the entire court is dead and there is no Supreme Court left. It's my opinion that Marbury v Madison & Judicial Review represented an usurp of power by the Judicial Branch which has enabled the Congress to balloon the federal government without a single constitutional amendment to legitimize this attack on the 10th Amendment.
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Fuck Hillary, Fuck Rubio, Fuck Cruz, Fuck Congress, and Fuck SCOTUS. They're all in the same club and their political machine thinks they have the vote rigged: if a vote for Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump is a more effective protest to enrage these fucking Lizard people then the only regret I have is that I'll be forced to choose between them in the General Election. The people have obviously spoken. The only question remaining is how far past the "Ballot Box" have we gotten? Personally: I'm already in the "Jury Box". I will never reach for a box of ammo, nor will I raise a voice in protest when the next Federal Building turns in to a camp site. "Yeehawd" was fucking hilarious and anyone who got butt-hurt clearly needs to lighten up.
This must be posted anon. I've a forum that has a number of people. It's pretty active but has a limited scope. I never bring it up on Slashdot, nor is it relevant where the site is. I do not even use the same username on that forum.
Over three days four people joined and started being active participants except they don't have any domain knowledge. They literally don't know anything about the subject. Though, they've picked up a little bit now - at least terminology and whatnot.
Anyhow, they all joined right at about the same time and out of nowhere. I've had a few PMs asking me if I knew them, who they were, where they came from. We're small but fairly active - only a few hundred people. They've never indicated why they showed up.
After a while at building up a reputation, such as it is, they've begun to make small suggestions. One of the things they're suggesting is that we need an AUP/CoC. They've all sent me PMs mentioning that there have been a few off-color jokes and innuendo. I should point out that there's no racism and no abuse. I'd not tolerate such - nor would the rest of the group.
Obviously they will never "gain power." Obviously, I will not be making changes. The only people who are offended are four people who are fairly new (no longer the newest) and they're a little annoying but not too bad, yet. They don't have proxy addresses - as far as I know. I've checked the IP addresses (admins can see that). It's almost certainly four separate people but there's a chance that it's just one person and they've never made one single mistake.
The reason for disclosing this (a first and probably only disclosure) is because community leaders should probably alert for this sort of thing. As near as I can tell, they joined simply to do this. I can not figure out, nor can anyone else that I've communicated with, what attracted them - we aren't big, noisy, or even widely known. We just all have a few things in common, a hobby, and that's it. We're not even all males, straight, or white.
I do not know if it's a concerted effort. I do not know if I was targeted. I keep a pretty clear and distinct line between myself and that identity but it's not like a secret identity or anything. I just don't think they were targeting me specifically, is the point. If you own a site and have an active community, you just might find a few people joining and then trying to control things.
I've had them, all four of them, PM myself or one of the other moderators with requests to be made either a mod or an administrator. They've said things like it looks like we could use some help (we've never deleted a comment, ever) because we're busy. They've even said things like they could run the place better and make it so that we'd attract new users. (We don't need/want more users and don't even have ads on the site.)
I'd just kick and ban them but I really want to see where this is going. I also don't want to deal with the backlash that may come from that sort of activity. They're not actively disrupting much - yet. It's slowly escalating and you can see it's a deliberate attempt to gain control and favor. It will probably come to a head at some point. We're okay with that. Then we'll tell them to stop and ban them if they don't.
Key point in this, as I know there are others here with forums and good communities, is to keep an eye out for them. If one of the moderators hadn't been alert, I might not have noticed.