Stopping Trolls Is 'Now Life and Death For Twitter', Argues Backchannel (backchannel.com)

"This is the year that Twitter's future will be determined," argues Backchannel's editorial director, noting that Twitter's revenue growth is slowing, and "None of the features that cofounder Jack Dorsey has introduced since he returned to the company as CEO last year have succeeded in attracting new users." But Backchannel suggests it's because the trolls "are winning," discouraging new sign-ups and driving existing customers to leave. "We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform, and we've sucked at it for years," Twitter's CEO wrote in an internal memo in 2015. Backchannel argues bluntly that Twitter "has a hate problem." New submitter mirandakatz writes: It's been exactly three years since Twitter first promised to solve its harassment problem. In those three years, the company has made countless such promises, introducing dozens of new "fixes" and even going so far as to ban notorious troll Milo Yiannopoulos last month. But still, abuse on Twitter continues, and stopping it is now critical to the platform's future success...
"Twitter did an excellent job of inventing a digital platform for realtime idea exchange, but it has yet to create the feature that allows the community itself to ferret out the abusers..." writes Backchannel. "And if it cannot figure out how to eradicate the harassers, Twitter's other challenges will remain intractable."

Comments

Oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another "SJWs are the good guys, conservatives are the bad guys" story.

Re:Oh no

[Fragnet]

He's a professional provocateur who's "act" is designed to smoke out arseholes like you. Seems to be working.

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for using the "SJW" moniker. People know and understand what SJWs are and they know and understand why they don't want every discussion to devolve into a social justice war around which topics should get censored.

(This message was posted to preempt the latest SJW tactic of "concern trolling" about the use of the term "SJW". They don't want themselves described that way because it highlights their bad behavior. You are supposed to be on the defensive, not them.)

Re: Oh no

[Opportunist]

That has nothing to do with homophobia, that's the same rubbish as "you must hate Ghostbusters or you're misiogynist". Shit is shit.

Yiannopoulos is mostly someone who has noticed quickly how it works today. Be loud, be obnoxious and most of all be controversial. And what could possibly be more controversial than a flaming homosexual who is also a conservative? All you really have to do today to become famous is to create a shitstorm and get people worked up about yourself. Content or an actual message are so overrated. For reference, see Sarkeesian.

All you have to do is get people worked up about what you say.

Re:Oh no

[AK Marc]

Nope. It's a story about the conflicting freedoms of speech and privacy. If I want to be left alone on my property, I can setup "no trespassing" borders, and allow in only what I want. That's the level of control people are used to. The "social media" is inclusive. If you join, you lose filters. There is no mechanism in YouTube to block a specific channel or person from showing up on your "recommended" list. In Facebook, it used to be that to block someone, you had to friend them first, then block them, or "trick" them into posting something that showed up on your own wall. If it was shared by a friend, it was un-blockable and un-filterable. It's still almost impossible to filter what's shared by friends. The only way to avoid the political posts by the one crazy aunt you don't want to cut off completely, is to cut her off completely, and try to remember to unblock her when the election cycle is over.

There is no mechanism in *any* of the social media to link to a person, but filter their content. And that's the problem nobody has solved.

Your right to speak doesn't mean You have the right to force me to listen. Sometimes people want social media to follow the activities of friends and family, and not get bombarded with everything any of them have ever liked. Social media is going to die if nobody can solve the signal to noise problem.

Re: Oh no

[AmiMoJo]

Posting obviously fake screenshots (he forgot to edit out the delete button, FFS) and encouraging others to harass people is not just being controversial, it's organizing a mob. That's why he was finally banned, after years of spouting "controversial" shit.

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you think people should be free to be bigoted? Should a small council of self-designated "experts" get to censor whatever they want by labeling it "bigotry", or "trolling", or "triggering", or whatever else they've decided to be intolerant of? Please let us know so we can tell whether you're an authoritarian censor or not. Thanks.

Re:Oh no

[hambone142]

When someone broadcasts their personal opinions and lives to the world on Twitter, they can expect differing opinions and criticism if done in a self righteous fashion.

Twitter is sort of like the old Usenet for commoners.

That is shat happens when the internet goes mainstream and low tech.

Re: Oh no

[Opportunist]

And by banning him all they accomplished is giving him a platform. You can't throw a dead cat over your shoulder without hitting a video on how he was treated unfairly by Twitter. I actually remember a video about him declaring that was about the best thing that could happen to him.

Say what you want, he's good at this game. He knows how to play people.

Re:Oh no

[hairyfeet]

Informative, really mods? I can go to ANY right wing site RIGHT now and say "GOP is the rich old white people party" and I will NOT be banned...compare this to how many left wing sites will ban your ass immediately if you talk about how Hillary is a crook that deserves PMITA prison.

I should know because I have said this very thing on many right wing websites...never banned, never silenced. Been called all kinds of names, told I'm a communist, never banned. Been banned from HuffyPo, Daily Kos, Young Turks, pretty much the only "right" you have WRT free speech with the progressives is the right to be a dittohead, anything else won't be tolerated.

But hey if you can show me a link to a conservative asking for "safe spaces", issuing "trigger warnings" for differing opposing views, setting off fire alarms to keep someone from speaking, or demanding a college girl be sent to "diversity training" for daring to say something liberal, like the girl who DARED to say "all lives matter"? I'll be happy to read it, otherwise I'm sorry......trigger warning..., but you are full of shit,

Re: Oh no

[DaHat]

and encouraging others to harass people

Sorry, but the harassment campaign against Leslie Jones was well underway before he said anything to/about her on Twitter.

Re: Oh no

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

For reference, see Sarkeesian.

Echh, no thanks. She's one of the most blatant con artists out there these days.

She practically pioneered the "I'm A Victim, Send Me Money!" movement.

Re: Oh no

[lgw]

Bah, I rather suspect you hate him because he's an outspoken conservative. Everything else is confirmation bias.

The schools have trained a generation now that "conservative == evil", and let confirmation bias do the rest. People are sure that the National Socialist party must have been right-wing, not from any study of history (where it gets into semantics, but there were lots of progressive laws early on), but because "duh, evil == conservative, any moron can therefore see the Nazis were conservative".

People actually believe that "liberals are usually right, conservatives usually wrong", in the face of the otherwise clear notion that almost all new ideas are wrong. You might make faster progress by being more accepting of new ideas, but you're necessarily going to be wrong more. But who cares about that logic stuff (logic is a tool of the patriarchy), obviously conservatives must be wrong about almost everything because "conservative == evil", and, duh, evil is wrong.

It's really remarkable what 16 years of political propaganda targeted at children and young adults can achieve. [As an aside, how many of you believe that teachers are underpaid because you learned that from a teacher growing up, and never really re-examined the idea as an adult? Maybe it's true, maybe not, but did you carry that belief into adulthood without ever realizing the conflict of interest?]

Re: Oh no

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

>Say what you want, he's good at this game. He knows how to play people.

Yep. He was masterfully pissing people off until their brains were exploding but managing to stay within the rules.

In response, they changed the rules just enough to justify banning him.

Personally I can't stand him, but like a stopped clock even he was right once in a while. And that's what they really couldn't stand, lol.

Re: Oh no

[Pseudonym]

Say what you want, he's good at this game. He knows how to play people.

He is damn good at it, but I wonder how long he can keep it up before the schtick gets old.

Still, every time he uses the term "professional victim" to refer to someone else, I chuckle to myself. They're all amateurs compared to him.

Re: Oh no

[Pseudonym]

Bah, I rather suspect you hate him because he's an outspoken conservative.

I am not the person you responded to, but I hate him because he is emblematic of what conservatism has become, to many people. Before you ask: No, it's not just conservatism. Jill Stein has been pissing me off all month in a completely different way.

I remember when every Slashdot commenter knew that "liberal" and "libertarian" were both kinds of "progressive". We were all united in the cause of human progress, and we all agreed on what the underlying problems were, even if we had ideas about how to fix them.

Post-Cold War, post-9/11, the polarised political machine has convinced us all that the enemy is the people living right next to us. Whether it's the new misogynist on the right or the anti-science hippie on the left, an intense hatred of progress has gripped large parts of the English-speaking world, and Milo represents this self-loathing in its most insanely stupid form. He's far from alone in this, but he is the one we're discussing in this thread.

Re:Oh no

[Pluvius]

Right-wing safe spaces exist *cough*r/The_Donald*cough* but they're not as pervasive.

Rob

Re:Oh no

[TooManyNames]

You had a point until the "which generally means people stop making them feel uncomfortable and allow them to be bigots" part. If that's what you're defining as SJW behavior, then there's no hope for you. You should be allowed to express bigoted views. Similarly, you should be allowed to call somebody out for being bigoted. Freedom of expression should basically be absolute (exceptions being when a serious and direct threat calling for actual, physical harm is made.

I'm stunned that you would go with the whole "whining about not being able to express themselves," argument instead of the more worrisome, "let's legislate that different people can't be different" argument.

Conservatives absolutely engage in authoritarian behavior, which is, incidentally, really what it means to be an SJW, but right now, it's really not conservatives that are the most problematic (in the US, at least).

Re: Oh no

[Khyber]

I wondered if your idiocy was going to show up in this thread. You're totally clueless about social life on the internet.

Try again when you've run things like BBSes and saw this shit LONG BEFORE Twitter ever existed.

I can spot these types a mile away, I've got 25+ years of dealing with them online.

I doubt you can spot your own genitals from three feet.

Re:Oh no

[Z80a]

Well, they're not SJWs because its a definition specific to a certain group of left winged people.
But yes, you can say that there are conservatives that act like SJWs, but for their own thing.
All you need is a "safe space" where the actual discussion is shot down by the moderation or similars and no idea coming from the "right person" is a bad idea to get to a group of lunatics.

Re: Oh no

[aevan]

Bullshit. If that were the metric, Randi Harper would have been banned ages ago instead of being lauded as their heroine against bullying.

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

Telling it like it is and not indulging unhinged SJWs is Trolling eh?

Back to yer Safe Space, you microagressed and Triggered loser.

Re: Oh no

[sycodon]

So...yer just pissed at everyone.

Do you keep a rifle at the front door in case someone wanders onto your lawn?

Re: Oh no

[cunina]

Are you joking? I would rather listen to her lecture me for an hour than copulate for five minutes with that hideous thing.

Re:Oh no

[TooManyNames]

Well, don't listen?

You make it sound like you can't not click on recommended videos, or scroll past your crazy aunt's political statements. Nobody's forcing you to listen to those things; you can see that it's something you'd rather not delve into, and move on. Now, if you see something you disagree with, and immediately react with "that's wrong! I must set them straight!" well, that's on you.

By the way, I'm not taking the position that Twitter-banning is necessarily wrong: they are, after all, a private (in the non-governmental sense for you pedants) company offering access to their platform, which is a privilege, and they should be free to remove that privilege from whomever they desire. That said, the privilege aspect applies to those needlessly taking offense, as well: Twitter should feel no obligation to appease anyone overreacting to inflammatory tweets beyond whatever market-competition demands.

Re:Oh no

[ArtemaOne]

Well that's because Trump is a RINO.

Re: Oh no

[Pseudonym]

So...yer just pissed at everyone.

Oh, there are plenty of Gen-Y/milennials who are intelligent and can think for themselves. They just don't hang around places like Breitbart, HuffPo, or (increasingly) Slashdot.

Re: Oh no

[RCL]

Not just English speaking word. I can give personal account that Poland is also affected by increased tensions between "right" and "left", to the point that the left set up a "Democracy Defense Committee" and does regular anti-governmental marches, while conservatives "unmask" them as traitors. Russia has seen its conservative "Movement against illegal immigration" banned by Putin due to concerns that it is leading straight to disintegration of the country by attacking (nominally) Russian citizens from North Caucasus.

Not from my personal experience, but my friends living in Hungary (remember Putin-leaning Orban?) and Scandinavian countries (remember Breivik?) are saying that intra-country social tensions are on the rise there too. The "migrant crisis" that is affecting the Europe at large is only exacerbating this.

Re:Oh no

[kuzb]

Milo is one of the few people that's trying to have an honest conversation about some major problems that are being caused by SJWs. Frankly I applaud his tenacity and willingness to try to take it on. It's near impossible to even begin the conversation with these people unless you bring in someone who fits the profile of one of their minority groups. Which he does. That should be saying something to you.

Re: Oh no

[Dog-Cow]

I am happy to say that I have never heard of this person before this /. post, and I still have no idea who he is. I guess I don't hang out in the shittier parts of the Web.

Re: Oh no

[ljw1004]

I'll bite. I believe teachers in the public sector are underpaid. I've never once had a teacher of mine mention anything about pay. I don't think my teacher friends mention it either. The fact that they routinely buy pens, books, supplies out of their own budget indeed suggests they're not underpaid.

But I see how so many people teaching are there because they passionately believe in it, and they'd get higher salaries elsewhere for their skillsets, and the reaching sector doesn't attract regular people who chose jobs that pay competitively. None of it is commensurate with how I think learning and teaching should be valued in our society. I'm glad I'll (just barely) be able to afford to send my three kids to a school that does pay enough salary.

Re:Oh no

[tsotha]

He's definitely a rhetorical bomb thrower. But look at what Twitter banned him for - not things he wrote, but things that people who follow him wrote. That's a site in its death throes.

Re:Oh no

[tsotha]

There's a difference, though. For the most part conservatives don't try to get people fired or arrested for things they say. That's a pretty standard SJW tactic.

Re: Oh no

[Mashiki]

Bullshit. If that were the metric, Randi Harper would have been banned ages ago instead of being lauded as their heroine against bullying.

And Brianna Wu, Anita Sarkeesian, Jon McIntosh, and several dozen other people. The big "anti-harassment" voices that the left and twitter like to promote as some of the largest harassers on their platform to this day. If Twitter has done anything, it's shown that if you're of the right political ideology they'll ignore you as long as it doesn't go too far. Much like how Facebook is happy to carry one particular point of view. But if you happen to be an ex-muslim bringing to light extremism/fmg/etc they'll be happy to say that your posts "violate community standards" while allowing the posts glorifying a violent jihadi lifestyle stay up.

Re: Oh no

[thunderclap]

Yep, Milo is standing on the kardashians shoulders. They figured it out first.

Re:Oh no

[sg_oneill]

Telling it like it is and not indulging unhinged SJWs is Trolling eh?

Back to yer Safe Space, you microagressed and Triggered loser.

See you can wobble your jowels and mash meaning-free slurs like "SJW" (or "cuck" or whatever the in-fad jibberish insult for liberals and academics is these days) into your keyboard all you like. But out here in the adult world, messaging african american women and calling them "black men" , "ugly" and "fat" because you didnt like a movie they where in, is generally considered "asshole" behavior.

Tell you what, go into a bar, find a black woman and call her (SHOUTING) an "ugly fat black man" and then when she responds call her an "SJW" or mock her for being "Triggered' (whatever the fuck that is) and see what happens. If you dont walk away with a broken nose and possibly a beer bottle wrapped around your head,, well hurray your right and I'm wrong.

But of course you wouldnt do that. Because your another boorish anonymous coward who'd rather throw around content free catch phrases like "SJW" or "Cuck" or whatever instead of standing by your own opinions and debating like a goddamn adult.

Re: Oh no

[thunderclap]

Yep, but Twitter's core problem is it wasn't just Milo it was the actress too. They don't want to ban her for the same reasons even though she did the exact same thing to others.

  That would look like racism. Hate is Hate and Trolling is trolling.

Once they setting on the fact that any account that uses specific words is deleted no matter who its attached too is the day they will regain the moral high ground and seriousness. Until then they are a tool of SJW and troll and will remain so. The rest of us will use it until like all birds it gets too old and dies.

Re: Oh no

[AmiMoJo]

In the UK conservatives have many similarities with National Socialists, in terms of policy. Protection of religious "rights", xenophobia, homophobia etc. They even quote Nazis, with things like "if you have nothing hide you have nothing to fear".

Maybe it's different in the US, but from what I've observed not really. That's not to say that conservatives are evil or anything like that, merely that it's not untrue to say that many conservative polices are less extreme versions of the ones National Socialists enacted.

More over, society has been progressing steadily for over 100 years now, liberalizing and rejecting "traditional" ideas. You can argue that's a bad thing, but most people see it as good.

Re: Oh no

[Aighearach]

It might have been a "generational project" that the neo-cons started in the 80s and is finally... ripening.

Re: Oh no

[Opportunist]

It's YouTube. And I'm honestly amazed and in envy how you managed to steer clear of him.

Re: Oh no

[Opportunist]

They are essentially doing the same that a school is doing that has a bullying problem. Because the school has no bullying problem as long as the one bullied doesn't fight back. Until then, it's just swell. Bullies bully and are satisfied that they pretend to be the kings of the school yard and the ones bullied just shut up and bear it. For the school, this is not really any kind of problem because everyone is either happy with the situation or shuts up about it.

Same with Twitter. As long as only one side is harassing, bullying and engaging in hate speech, and the ones who get targeted by it simply bear it and/or leave, they're doing great. Of course they're not happy about people leaving, but at the same time they attract a lot of people who enjoy that echo chamber where their point of view gets reinforced and their opinions get "confirmed". Think of it as the internet version of Fox News (or RT, or MSNBC ... pick your poison, they're working along the same lines anyway).

This works as long as the bullied doesn't fight back. Then it does become a problem. Schools deal with this by punishing the bullied for fighting back and upsetting the order of things (because until he did, until he didn't simply accept being beaten up as if it was some sort of natural law, everything was fine for the school), and Twitter deal with it by expelling those that upset the groupthink and punch holes into the echo chamber. Because that upsets those that want it to be their "safe space". And they're simply more.

In the end we'll probably see some sort of "Anti-Twitter" surface, a web page where the other side gets their echo chamber. In the end we'll probably end up with the same shit we have in other media already: Not a marketplace of ideas, but simply a place where you can go to get your opinion reinforced. Controverswe discussion discouraged.

Re: Oh no

[Opportunist]

So as long as I don't threaten to rape you it ain't harrassment?

Good to know...

Re: Oh no

[Opportunist]

So the ban of his can be seen as a homophobic act?

That's the problem with playing the minority card: The other side might be able to, too.

Re: Oh no

[Opportunist]

Sorry, but if I raise money with the explicit promise to use that money to create a line of videos, then create a fraction thereof with production values that don't come close to justifying even that fraction of the money committed, AND then on top of it ask for more money to continue...

Sorry, what's that called in English? Maybe there is another word for "con-artist" that describes that behaviour better?

Re: Oh no

[Opportunist]

So it's no longer needed to stand on the shoulders of giants to be successful, today all you have to do is climb on the trash heap.

Re: Oh no

[serviscope_minor]

Bah, I rather suspect you hate him because he's an outspoken conservative.

He's no conservative. He says whatever he thinks will get a rise out of people. He's a colossal narcissist interested in pushing himself and doing whatever it takes to achieve that. He does not appear to have any political philosophy beyond that. So I claim he's no conservative, to he will use conservative angles when he believes it will suit his agenda.

As an aside, how many of you believe that teachers are underpaid because you learned that from a teacher growing up, and never really re-examined the idea as an adult? Maybe it's true, maybe not, but did you carry that belief into adulthood without ever realizing the conflict of interest?

I can't say I ever thought much about career salaries until I was at least a mid teenager and so approaching the point where I could actually earn limited money. I certainly never had a teacher complain to me about his or her low salary throughout my entire time in school. Now I'm an adult and I can see what teachers are paid and have some idea of the value of various jobs? Hell yeah they're underpaid.

Re: Oh no

[serviscope_minor]

Ah yes Anita Sarkeesian. She bullied so many people by daring to talk about her opinions of videogames on youtube. Even worse she harassed the hell out of gamers by viciously having her kickstarter campaign get massively overfunded.

What an awful person, she should definitely be banned from twitter!

Since it's you, I eagerly await the evidence you post in the form of easily forged twitter screenshots on loopy blogs. Would you mind waiting until I have a nice bucket of popcorn before starting?

Re:Oh no

[bruce_the_loon]

I would say there's a difference between the two comments, directed attack against an individual versus a general attack, and one that is read as a joke these days, against the GOP as a whole.

What would be telling is if you posted something like "DEM party is a communist miser bastard party." and see what that gets you.

Or try "Trump deserves prison for stealing from college students.".

Gotta align the statements to claim the difference in behavior. I suspect the same reactions from the same sites as you got will happen, but who knows.

Re:Oh no

[serviscope_minor]

pretty much the only "right" you have WRT free speech with the progressives is the right to be a dittohead, anything else won't be tolerated.

So the people at the left wing sites tried to have you arrested, killed or otherwise permanently silenced? Or perhaps they understand (unlike you) that free speech is not the same as spending money to give you a platform so that you can annoy their users.

Getting banned from a forum is not taking mah freeze peach.

You still have free speech. You can come here and whine about it. You can go to conservative blogs and whine about it, you can wander round in public and whine about it. What you can't do is come into my house and whine about it.

Suck it, petal.

Re:Oh no

[silentcoder]

So... sexual harassment, death threats, rape threats and doxing are what 'good guys' do ?

Re: Oh no

[silentcoder]

>I doubt you can spot your own genitals from three feet.

To be fair, that's cause his gutt is in the way.

Re:Oh no

[AK Marc]

Well, don't listen?

Are you in the habit of repeating someone and pretending you are saying something new or interesting?

I said you could choose to not listen. But that, for things with so much effort in feeding you what you want to hear, it's almost impossible to filter what you don't. I don't care who you are voting for. I don't want to hear about Trump or Clinton. There's nothing that can be said to convince people in either's camps to switch sides. It's a complete subject. So I don't want to hear it. With social media, the two choices are to turn it all off, or block any individual that mentions them. For applications so focused on the content people get, you'd think they'd have figured out that sometimes, people don't want to hear something. Yes, we all know how to not hear something. It's not about not hearing something, but how to allow the listener to have some control over what they hear.

Re: Oh no

[Opportunist]

I really, really feel bad for coining that term. It just felt so fitting back then, if I had known what I start...

Now I know how Jesus must feel.

Re: Oh no

[Mashiki]

Ah yes Anita Sarkeesian. She bullied so many people by daring to talk about her opinions of videogames on youtube. Even worse she harassed the hell out of gamers by viciously having her kickstarter campaign get massively overfunded.

No one said feminists were smart. But considering that she's doxed people, yes indeed she should.

Would you mind waiting until I have a nice bucket of popcorn before starting?

Would you like to eat your crow now or later?

Re: Oh no

[No Longer an AC]

I've heard of him, but only a couple of times. I think your comment: " You can't throw a dead cat over your shoulder without hitting a video on how he was treated unfairly by Twitter." was a bit hyperbolic.

I guess it has to do with what one seeks out on the internet. I don't mean that to sound judgmental but if you keep seeing videos of this Milo guy and I've only heard of him a couple of times and that other poster has never heard of him at all then it's clear our internet habits are somewhat different. My content consumption is not necessarily better than yours. They're just different. We're both on slashdot so there is some common ground.

Re: Oh no

[Mashiki]

In the end we'll probably see some sort of "Anti-Twitter" surface, a web page where the other side gets their echo chamber. In the end we'll probably end up with the same shit we have in other media already: Not a marketplace of ideas, but simply a place where you can go to get your opinion reinforced. Controverswe discussion discouraged.

That's likely my guess. And wikileaks in the past has said that they're willing to start something not all that long ago as well. What I find amusing in all of this is just how upset SJW's get when someone calls them out on their bullying tactics and they have to virtue signal so hard that it seems like they're going to self-ignite over it all.

Re:Oh no

[No Longer an AC]

Informative, really mods? I can go to ANY right wing site RIGHT now and say "GOP is the rich old white people party" and I will NOT be banned...compare this to how many left wing sites will ban your ass immediately if you talk about how Hillary is a crook that deserves PMITA prison.

Really? A number of years ago I was somewhat interested in a presidential election and I really wanted to like the Republicans and so I joined some right-wing forums and gave some honest opinions. I got banned from a number of them even though I was trying not to be trollish or rude.

I didn't say anything like the "GOP is the rich old white people party" (that is trollish), but I did give my thoughts on a number of issues and some people even agreed with me on some of them. But the people who ran those websites couldn't stand any dissent within their ranks. They weren't even willing to offer any arguments as to why I was wrong.

Not that the left is any better. Or to be more accurate, there are idiots and intolerant people on both sides of the aisle. There are also sometimes reasonable people willing to present logic behind their views and to at least listen to other people's ideas.

Political discussion on the internet really sucks. Too many people view it as some sort of college football rivalry when ostensibly both Democrats and Republicans want what is best for our country even if they disagree on what exactly "best" is. It too quickly turns into insults and petty squabbles while the actual issues at hand are ignored or just turned into 140 character tirades.

Re: Oh no

[jmcvetta]

Years ago Twitter censored one of my first tweets - a link to a leaked copy of the (super creepy) implementing regulations for CALEA. That's why I stopped participating.

Today it does appear that Twitter - both the company and its core user base - is dominated by aggressively abusive hypocritical elitist bigots. I guess I am supposed to be outraged, but really I find it hard to care. Nothing of value has been lost.

Re: Oh no

[RCL]

Ok, I should have said "surge of refugees from both Syrian and Ukrainian wars that highlighted inefficiency of EU bureaucracy and its inability to timely accommodate them".

Re:Oh no

[Cl1mh4224rd]

Informative, really mods? I can go to ANY right wing site RIGHT now and say "GOP is the rich old white people party" and I will NOT be banned...compare this to how many left wing sites will ban your ass immediately if you talk about how Hillary is a crook that deserves PMITA prison.

These aren't equivalent claims.

Re:Oh no

[TooManyNames]

No, you were advocating actively blocking people in a manner akin to maintaining a "no trespassing" zone. At the end of your post, you said "your right to speak doesn't mean you have the right to force me to listen," and I completely agree, but you implied that posts from your crazy aunt or recommended videos you can't control constitute forced listening, which they just do not. Regarding social media, the notion that, "the two choices are to turn it all off, or block any individual that mentions them," is, frankly, just wrong. Again, nobody is forcing you to pay attention to those things, you can scroll past without blocking and without listening.

Are you in the habit of retroactively claiming things once they suit you?

Re: Oh no

[MalachiK]

Hey man, I'm a card carrying leftie these days, but I think the Conservatives = Nazis line is a bit strong. Do you have a link for that 'innocent have nothing to fear' quote? There is a deeply unpleasant and selfish element in the Tory party. Their housing policies are regressive and socially divisive, they are handing over the education system to a bunch of incompetent crooks and they want to privatise the NHS. That said, the Tory party is a board church. Saying that Conservative policies are less extreme versions of Nazi policy is easy to say, but I expect you could say that about policies from all parties. Do you have any examples of specific polices? I really am interested in your line of thought here.

Re: Oh no

[Opportunist]

I have to admit, a guilty pleasure of mine is watching videos where SJWs manage to prove to the world what batshit insane idiots they are. Mostly 'cause I'm more or less through with the religious nutjobs. My working hypothesis is that the more hair and lip color diverge from anything that could be considered normal, the higher the chance for crazy shit that makes your mind boggle.

So I guess that just might be a reason YouTube thinks I might be interested in some insanity from the other end of the spectrum.

Re: Oh no

[T.E.D.]

But I see how so many people teaching are there because they passionately believe in it, and they'd get higher salaries elsewhere for their skillsets, and the reaching sector doesn't attract regular people who chose jobs that pay competitively. None of it is commensurate with how I think learning and teaching should be valued in our society. I'm glad I'll (just barely) be able to afford to send my three kids to a school that does pay enough salary.

If you're talking about a private school, most of those actually pay less than public schools.

Re: Oh no

[Opportunist]

Fine, then it's a coincidence that it became common usage after I started using it, whatever.

But thanks for trying to ease my mind.

Re: Oh no

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

I really hate that phrase... it's not a defense of the person

That's right, and I'm not defending him- I'm merely pointing out that even someone you hate or disagree with can (occasionally) say things that are true. It's opposite of the defense of a person, more akin to damning with faint praise. But perhaps that nuance escapes you.

-

it's just saying no one is always wrong so you can't make that claim...

No, that's not what I'm saying. Some people are always wrong. Honestly, your comprehension of this whole thing seems kinda shallow.

-

trolls like this are parasites on websites like twitter, plain and simple.

What's your point? That anyone you label a "troll" should not be allowed to participate? Before you answer, keep in mind that there are probably people who would blithely label you as a troll,just because they don't agree with you (or you with them).

Re: Oh no

[ultranova]

The schools have trained a generation now that "conservative == evil", and let confirmation bias do the rest.

Because we all know there's nothing more efficient at turning a schoolkid away from something than having the school tell them it's bad.

Re: Oh no

[lgw]

Wow, you really responded just to post "conservative == evil"?

Re: Oh no

[AmiMoJo]

I'm not saying conservatives are Nazis, just that National Socialism is an extreme form of many of the policies British conservatives support. May's immigration policy is a good example, and she demonstrated more than once she was willing to lie to demonize them and get her way ("catgate", for example). More generally, the Tory party's policy on immigration is "foreigners are the problem", as opposed to say Germany where they simply get on with dealing with it.

Again, speaking quite generally the conservative movement tends to be quite authoritarian in the UK. Strongly supporting the rule and application of law, and empowering the police and security services. Again, see May and her Snooper's Charter. Of course authoritarianism isn't unique to conservatism, I'm merely making the observation.

Here's that link for you: http://indy100.independent.co....

I think he was genuinely unaware of the source of the quote. Must have been a bit of shock.

Re:Oh no

[Reziac]

Yeah, I've had the same experience. Talk whatever shit you want about rightwing, no problem (you might get called out but you won't get banned), tho you'll probably be expected to present supporting facts. Talk the same shit about leftwing, and it's KILL THE HERETIC and how dare you post facts we don't like!

On a similar note (and I think it's basically the same problem seen from another angle) get to talking politics with a rightie and you may hear "Your candidate is stupid because [list of reasons]", but with a leftie it'll be just "You candidate is stupid." Ask 'em why and they'll respond "Because he's stupid," no actual reasons offered. Seen this over and over.

Re:Oh no

[Reziac]

I kinda wonder if he's really why gays got pushed off the progressive stack. Cuz, ya know, gay guy who doesn't feel oppressed, ruins our image.

Re: Oh no

[kurkosdr]

Exactly: Since they don't have a clear definition of what is a troll, the message is "fall into the party line or we 'll ban you as a troll"

Re: Oh no

[skam240]

You can't throw a dead cat over your shoulder without hitting a video on how he was treated unfairly by Twitter

I feel like twitter is very much like pro sports or celebrity gossip. It's so self obsessed it can't conceive of a world outside of its self. "Did you see the game!?" "I don't even know what sports season it is let alone what game you're talking about". "Can you believe twitter banned Milo Yiannopoulos, EVERYONE is talking about it!?" "Who or what is a Milo Yiannopoulos?"

Re: Oh no

[skam240]

People call the Nazi's conservative because their social policies (what everyone remembers them for and judges them on) were conservative. No one cares about German economic policy leading up until WW2, although at the time they were held up as a model of strong economic growth during a global recession.

Nice stab at historic revisionism though. I suppose the Civil War wasn't really about slavery either even though every state that wrote a justification letter to go along with their articles of succession mention slavery.

Maybe your perception that the American school system demonizes conservatives is due to a lack of proper grounding in the real world.

Re:Oh no

[laxguy]

You're right.. it's called "asshole behavior" not "racism"

Re: Oh no

[cayenne8]

If a person can't handle a confrontational encounter, they shouldn't have left elementary school.

Well, the problem here is...THAT's exactly the thing we've taught all the special snowflakes coming out of our school system.. That everyone is special, you can't say anything that might offend anyone....everyone gets a trophy and everyone deserves a "safe zone".

Trouble is, these snowflakes are hitting the real world now and are un-prepared for the fact that aside from family and REAL friends, no one gives a shit about you, and the world is often a mean and dangerous place.

Re: Oh no

[MalachiK]

Well bugger me, it's true! I must have missed that when it happened. Thanks for the link.

I agree that there is a strong authoritarian tradition on both sides of the commons. There has been a lot of xenophobia going around lately. UKIP have dragged politics in that direction and the right wing of the Tory party have been happy to follow along. It's easier to get people to blame johnny foreigner for their problems that it is to get them to notice that their own society is screwing them over.

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

Twitter already makes it pretty easy to avoid the trolls though. If you protect your account, only people you approve can see what you post. Moreover, some services allow you to create filters for your TL - purge anything with the phrase "Crooked Hillary" or "SJW", for instance. You're correct about YouTube and Facebook, but this article is about Twitter.

Re: Oh no

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

How much did he actually encourage his followers - who are often rabid - versus just posting something and letting them do the rest? I've seen a lot of extremely rude tweets he made, with faked screenshots, but I haven't seen any where he explicitly told his followers to go harass her. Of course, if he did that, and there are archived versions out there, I'd be interested in seeing those.

Re: Oh no

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

Given her success rate at making videos (that were supposed to be released what, two years ago?), while still starting up new projects and accepting money from people, yeah, that's kind of a con. She got a whole lot of money to make videos, but then didn't make nearly as many as she said she would. Your quip "Perish the thought that a woman might get paid for the work she does." doesn't apply; she got paid for work she didn't do.

Re: Oh no

[bheerssen]

Twitter denying Yiannopoulos use of their platform (that is, banning him) is a real funny way of giving him platform.

Re: Oh no

[AmiMoJo]

Posting fake screenshots designed to enrage them is encouragement.

Re: Oh no

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

I don't think it counts as encouragement. He knew what would probably happen, because he knows his fanbase, but I don't think you should ban people for what their followers do unless they're explicitly encouraging them. Moreover, Leslie Jones actually did explicitly encourage her followers to harass someone, and she didn't get banned. She also retweeted a lot of her abuse, likely in the hopes that her followers would attack those people.

If you're going to ban one of them, I think - under any interpretation of the "no encouraging harassment" rule - you'd have to ban both.

Re: Oh no

[AmiMoJo]

Intent matters. If you give someone a gun, knowing that they will very likely shoot someone you don't like, the law holds you jointly responsible for murder. You knowingly set in motion a chain of events that lead to the killing.

Re: Oh no

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

In which jurisdictions? You would hold partial responsibility, but full joint responsibility seems like too much. Moreover, giving someone something that can be used to harm is very different from posting an image that might convince people to harm. The action of giving someone a gun is far more direct than posting an image.

Re: Oh no

[david_thornley]

People think of the Nazis (I doubt that many people know they preferred to be called National Socialists) as a right-wing party because they follow the historians who correctly label it as right-wing. If they just thought that evil had to be right-wing, they'd consider the Stalinist Soviet Union as right-wing also.

However, this goes against the conservatives' characterization of themselves as victims, so we have a lot of idiots believing the Nazis were left wing or something.

Re: Oh no

[AmiMoJo]

The law recognises intent. It's called mens rea and exists in many jurisdictions.

Re: Oh no

[Pseudonym]

If you believe Adam Curtis, it goes back at least to Leo Strauss.

Re: Oh no

[Pseudonym]

None of the "new right" as you put it censors the left but Milo himself has been kicked off of Twitter (even though Leslie Jones incited her followers to attack someone in the same thread: https://twitter.com/Lesdoggg/s...), had his event shut down at DePaul where he was threatened by Black Lives Matter, and nearly had other events shut down at other colleges, including UCLA.

Oh, you bet it happens. But according to the loonier parts of the "new right", whenever someone on the left has an event shut down it's a "false flag" operation or some such bullshit. For some reason it's easier to believe a grand unprovable conspiracy theory than admit that each side has its fair share of crazy people.

Regressive practices like censorship and threats may appear to impose a solution but they really just bully other points of view into silence, which breeds contempt and leads to the rise of the more radical elements, like Trump and Milo.

Trump and Milo more than take up the slack with threatening and dog-whistle threat incitement (respectively) on their side of the debate. (Also, kudos for recognising that Trump and Milo have a hell of a lot in common.)

Having said that, I agree with the general thrust here. A pox on both their houses.

Re: Oh no

[Pseudonym]

*whoosh*

Re: Oh no

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

I'm aware of mens rea. I'm saying that in most places, you wouldn't be held equally responsible for a murder just because you gave someone a gun and thought they would do it. Unless you ordered them or paid them to, you'd be charged with a lesser crime.

Re: Oh no

[Capsaicin]

I'm saying that in most places, you wouldn't be held equally responsible for a murder just because you gave someone a gun and thought they would do it.

At common law being an accessory before the fact carried the same liability as being a principal. As you envisage, legislative changes to the common law position vary and in some jurisdictions being an accessory before the fact to murder may carry a lower potential sentence. Now I would have thought that in most places the accessory is still subject to equal liability as the principal (which is not to say that they will receive the same treatment at sentencing). This is, of course, an empirical question which we will not answer by conjecture.

Re:Oh no

[AK Marc]

Are you in the habit of retroactively claiming things once they suit you?

You are the one claiming to know what a speaker meant, better than they do. That you don't like my clarification doesn't mean it isn't a valid clarification. I'm not retroactively claiming anything. You are claiming omniscience in knowing what someone meant better than they do.

Re:Oh no

[AK Marc]

So I'd have to subscribe to a 3rd party service, indicating it's impossible in the "default" application. Glad you are agreeing with me, but you should find a way to do so less disagreeably.

Re: Oh no

[Opportunist]

That guy knows how to play the various media. The "platform" they gave him was to enable him to present himself as the poor victim of a witch hunt now, which gave him an invitation to various interviews.

Re:Oh no

[sg_oneill]

How exactly is hounding someone with messages telling them they are "fat" or making fun of their race and appearance "having an honest conversation"?

Or for that matter photoshopping fake tweets from her (Which he fucked up) "having an honest conversation"?

Did you actually read what he was saying to her, or are you just gonna keep yelping out meaningless slurs like "SJW" hoping someone doesnt notice?

Re: Oh no

[AmiMoJo]

You are really, really reaching there. Her "doxing" consisted of posting screenshots of two hate emails she got. One was an obvious burner address. If you are going to make this claim, then surely ever screenshot of a tweet is doxing too, since it includes the unique identifier required to message that account.

Re:Oh no

[tigersha]

So you would prefer the Internet to remain a professional tool in the hands of trained elitists?

Re: Oh no

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

My criticism is relating to the original Kickstarter promise, which only talked about full-length videos. Her random short ones do not fulfill the original promise.

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

It's impossible in the "default" application, but it's not a problem nobody has solved. The solution isn't optimal, certainly, but there is a solution. It is baffling that Twitter hasn't even tried to install filters like that though; it shouldn't be that hard.

Re:Oh no

[TooManyNames]

I'm not claiming to know what you thought, just what you said, and what you said is pretty clearly not what you later claimed.

You sound like someone who can't stand to admit they're wrong. No wonder you have such issues with social media.

Re:Oh no

[AK Marc]

it's not a problem nobody has solved.

"but this article is about Twitter" and twitter hasn't solved it. In context, "nobody" was "none of Twitter, YouTube, Facebook". That you ignore context and restate words doesn't make them inaccurate. "Nobody" (from the sample group) has solved this problem. And they won't, because the trolls will leave, taking their entertainment value, if trolls are stopped. And users will leave if the service doesn't improve. IM is making a big comeback, where you can group IM, in place of social media updates, and use blog-like sites, rather than social sites, to post updates with limited feedback. "Social media" as currently defined is declining, and users are already moving to other means. Unless the big social media platforms can solve that problem, they will decline, severely over the next 5-10 years. Nobody among that group has solved the issue, and I see no reason to think they will.

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

If you mean "none of Twitter, YouTube, Facebook", then you should say that, rather than "nobody", because "nobody" has a broader meaning.

Re:Oh no

[MercTech]

With the limitations on number of characters on Twitter; there are only a very few things you can actually do with it.
1. Post assertions with no references or data.
2. Post a tinyURL link to who knows what.
3. Post a nasty comment
4. Go "neener, neener, neener" at someone you disagree with with no clue as to what you find wrong with them.
5. Get labeled as "hate speech" for posting verifiable facts.
6. Get summary news story links from news networks without having to tolerate the slow loading advertising bloated web pages of the major networks.
--- Beta tested Twitter years ago and still wonder "what good is it, anyway?"

Re: Oh no

[MercTech]

Teachers vs Instructors. I rather find it ironic that veteran teachers of the public school systems are often found lacking in skills to teach when they apply for a job giving continuing education classes to adults in the workplace.
      The industry standard is to take someone who is a "subject matter expert" and send them to a few weeks of "train the trainer' instruction.
      It comes down to a skill set for instruction or a skill set for indoctrination. An anthropologist friend of mine has the thesis that public schools in the U.S. were designed to turn out good factory workers for 1930s style factories. The schools are designed to turn out people indoctrinated to do what they are told, when they are told, how they are told, and not to question authority. Perfect attendance to all lessons is rewarded regardless of how much was learned. And the public school bureaucracy is so entrenched in this model they disqualify anyone who tries to actually educate.

Re:Oh no

[slashdotwannabe]

Yet another AC making a glaringly stupid statement, in this case a false dichotomy between SJWs and Conservatives.

Re:Oh no

[AK Marc]

I was clearly talking about the major social media groups. In that set, nobody has solved the problem. 3rd party add-ons weren't in the set addressed.

And you don't seem to get your hypocricy where you complain when I mention a non-twitter in a twitter-only discussion, then in a twitter-only discussion, you include 3rd party mods. If the world is wider, then it's your error for trying to narrow down the discussion to Twitter Inc. only, or it's your error for including a 3rd-party solution. All the bluster is cover up for your obviousl double-standard, so preserve your cognitive dissonance.

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

Your justification of your context is weak. You specifically said *any* of the social media; that includes 3rd party experiences.

3rd party mods relevant to Twitter, yes. They change the way Twitter works for people, including changing the harassment people get on there. It's relevant to the story. I didn't say the world was wider; I said "nobody" has a wider meaning that you overlooked. I didn't complain that you mentioned other sites. I'm just not interested in talking about them right now. That's not cognitive dissonance.

Re: Oh no

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

No, that anyone that *twitter* labels a troll should be. It's their fucking site, they can do what they want,

Yes, they can do what they want, I just hope they do it fairly and impartially. From some of what I've seen, that's not the case. But they certainly do have the right to enforce whatever rules of play they want.

-

and personally I think it's a good move to have rules about not dropping turds all over their property.

Right, until you somehow run afoul of their unpublished policies on what exactly constitutes "harassment" or "hate speech" or whatever they want to call it.

I'm all for hampering trolls and making life tough for them, not allowing them to ruin a site, or wrecking the tone and alienating users. Trolls suck and should not be allowed to wreck the joint, so to speak.

The problem is that all too often these kinds of anti-harassment rules end up being used as a sword instead of a shield. And they're often wielded based on a personal agenda rather than some sort of objective scale or guidelines.

Twitter isn't interest in stopping trolls unless

[SensitiveMale]

those "trolls" disagree with Jack.

If a troll or harasser happens to have the same political views as Jack, he doesn't care.

Milo a Troll ?

[Crashmarik]

Troll ?
You keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it does.

Let's face it, Twitter doesn't want people using the service. They would be best served if the incoming feed of people were AI generated and replies, tweets, and retweets never were allowed to go anywhere. That way all the brittle special snowflakes they want using their service would never have to face the chance reality contradicts them.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[elrous0]

of course they are going to support the 99.99999% of SJW's who don't want to be disagreed with.

FTFY

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[AmiMoJo]

It's interesting that it's always the anti-feminists and MRAs complaining any people criticising them, rather than making counter arguments.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[Fragnet]

What, like Christina Hoff Sommers? She's never made any counterarguments has she.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[Crashmarik]

I see your comment is moderated troll.

Would you care to explain how that is applicable here ?

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[Dutch Gun]

My understanding (I didn't even know who Milo was before this) is that he was saying things that some (many?) people found offensive. I read some of his articles after a quite Google search, and I can certainly see why. The man is a conservative attack dog, but is also an unabashed gay man - that's got to be frustrating to the political left, because he's both an 'enemy' as well as one of the 'protected' classes. But who was he harassing on Twitter? His followers?

I'm all for banning users who actively harass other people. I'm not sure this guy really fit the profile.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[AmiMoJo]

She generally doesn't complain that people criticism her though, she does the right thing and responds with a counter argument. I'm talking about the group that only complains, which unfortunately is quite large.

The funny thing is that they complain about "SJWs", while doing all the things that SJWs are known for. Complaining about people disagreeing with them, and demanding that they stop, and trying to alter society to that end.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[Opportunist]

Odd that you never heard about SJWs doxing and harrassing people, and I know of one case where they even tried to get someone fired for making counter arguments to their bullshit.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

You post is currently at +4, Troll.

I've not seen one of those in years, so 10 internet points for you!

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[ScentCone]

It's not about whether he was offensive. Twitter LOVES offensive. But only when it's in the service of their CEO's political orientation. It really is that simple. If you're offensive on his team, then there's no friction. If you're offensive on the team he hates, then you're evil and must be banned. It's the very definition of the SJW phony selective faux outrage strategy.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

I see how that works. The reasoning goes:

1. Once incident when some "SJW" did something bad.
2. You disagree with me therefore you are an SJW.
3. Because you're an SJW you're as bad as 1 even though I have no evidence of you doing anything bad beyond disageeing with me.
4. I can now ignore everything you say because SJW.

And that is why many, many people think that those spouting off about SJW are idiots.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[ScentCone]

Milo isn't a troll in the true sense, he's just a fuckwit who is determined to make a fool of himself in public.

But the only way that's relevant here is that he carries on that way in the service of an ideological leaning of which the Twitter CEO disapproves. He's welcome to ban anybody he wants from his private service. But the phony outrage that only applies to jerks on the other team, while jerks who support his preferred politicians are allowed to thrive in the twitterverse - that's the issue. He can do as he likes, but lying about the standards involved is just another Silicon Valley liberal showing his variable standards and towing the SJW line because it's useful for his politics (or, he thinks it is).

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[AmiMoJo]

As opposed to the GamerGaters who tried to get several web sites shut down or made bankrupt by convincing their advertisers to drop them? There are asshats on both sides, but it tends to be the anti-SJWs that are more organized about it. Fortunately their movement is largely discredited in the mainstream media, so their plans rarely work for longer than it takes the target to google them.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[AmiMoJo]

He isn't just controversial, he does things like post fake tweets purporting to be from his victims and uses them to encourage others to harass them. You can tell it's fake, by the way, because he forgot to edit out the delete button.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[Opportunist]

Replace SJW in your post with misogynist (or, hell, pick a label of your choice, it doesn't really matter) and it will be just as valid.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[Opportunist]

What's that got to do with ants?

Ok, ok, I bite. The main reason I found this article about the insects there was that there isn't even one about that overhyped bullshit in my main language. So I finally read up on the "bit controversy", which only did reaffirm my hypothesis that any "controversy" that needs to have "-gate" attached to it isn't even worth wasting time to know about. Anyway. The maker of a flash game breaks up with her boyfriend, he's going into a hissy fit and harasses her, and before anyone knows why or what, a bunch of geeks chime in and all hell breaks loose. Well. Welcome to the internet, where grown people act like little spoiled brats.

Maybe I'm too old for this, I don't know. Maybe my generation is even to blame for it, for we raised a load of spoiled kids who grew up with the feeling that everyone's a winner and that merely existing already means that they should get anything more than a kick in the ass.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[Crashmarik]

Oh and this doesn't apply to you.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[DaHat]

he does things like post fake tweets purporting to be from his victims

So posting made up things on the internet is grounds for banishment from a service? If that were the standard, I'd imagine some non trivial # of twitter accounts needing to be shut down.

Given some of the rather racist posting history of Leslie Jones... as Dan Rather would call them... 'fake but accurate'

and uses them to encourage others to harass them

So you know what he was thinking better than he did? It's not possible he was just posting something he found funny about an ongoing issue?

You can tell it's fake, by the way, because he forgot to edit out the delete button.

The delete button is easy to miss... doubly so if you are not the person who created the image. Do you have specific information that Milo was the one who created the image?

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[Dutch Gun]

Offering "proof" in the guise of a random internet screenshot doesn't say much. I've seen the same sort of thing accusing women of faking death threats against themselves, and it's always just screenshots with no way of validating them as genuine. And I've viewed that "proof" with equal suspicion. Someone could just have easily photoshopped that delete button IN. You can make screenshots say and look however you want them to, as I'm sure you well know.

Again, I don't know the guy, so maybe he did what you said. You think he deserved a lifetime ban from Twitter? That this wasn't politically motivated at all? If Twitter investigated and found evidence of this, then maybe that would explain it. If that's the case, why haven't they explained themselves, as it seems to be a somewhat controversial decision?

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

They would be best served if the incoming feed of people were AI generated and replies, tweets, and retweets never were allowed to go anywhere.

OMG I just had an idea for a great new web service.

It's called 'TwitstagramIn" and it combines the worst parts of both Twitter and Instagram, but it'll be styled poorly like Pinterest and run even slower than LinkedIn. You won't be able to do *anything* on it except view your own randomly-generated, personal user-engagement metrics.

I'm gonna be RICH!!!

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

"Milo is an anti-troll."

"Milo is a sociopathic prick"

Both of those things can be true. They're not mutually exclusive.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

And you just demonstrated that you're no different by stating "that is why many, many people think that those spouting off about SJW are idiots."

Thanks for serving as a self-referential example.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[aevan]

It's hard to counter argue when their respond with blocking communication, closing the venue to let you speak, refuse to debate, plug their ears on any facts, refuse to stop using any 'fact' that was disproven regardless of the source of the disproof, talk about feelings trumping facts- but if you have feelings or a story you've either 'internalised it' or are '____splaining it', cling to hypocritical theories like punching up vs punching down, and shriek about the invisible hand that is 'systemic'...

Basically, you can't reason with crasy.

That said, crasy exists on both sides.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[aevan]

The same media that parrots that the ISIS member doing ISIS tactics on significant occasions, that visited ISIS territories and has their acts claimed by ISIS...was only saying 'alu ackbar' for unknown reasons, probably was mentally ill? THAT mainstream media? Or do you not mean Fox/CNN/'BC/etc?

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[aevan]

Pretty much why any screencap 'reportedly from their twitter/paper/blog' you verify. I don't care if it's Milo, Trump, God or my dog that gave me the shot..if their is no archive link or active link? Yeah, no, not biting. You want nibbles, archive it so if it does get deleted or marked private the proof is still there.

Don't care what the Milo defenders say (and I adore Milo), the 'glorious faggot' is a narcissistic troll.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[TooManyNames]

Any time anyone has the ability to moderate or respond to others, they're interested in maintaining an echo-chamber sympathetic to their particular views. This is true for SJWs of any variety, anti-SJWs, anarchists, anyone. Why? People are biased.

I've seen posts that I personally thought were good, and partial to SJW messaging, down-modded, and I've seen anti-SJW posts that I personally thought were good down-modded. I've also seen you, in particular, down-modded, but not without reason (since, from what I've seen, you love your broad generalizations). If you think that you're being unfairly moderated, maybe it's not everybody else that's wrong, maybe it's you.

Anyway, any time people are involved in moderating discussions, mistakes are going to get made. That said, Slashdot's moderation system, while far from perfect, is actually the best I've seen thus far, mostly because it doesn't delete posts. If you have moderation in place (and there are obviously good reasons for moderation), you should at least make it possible to view all posts, which is what Slashdot does.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[tsotha]

They do have a fiduciary duty to shareholders, though. Don't you think the moves they've made toward censorship affect the bottom line? Specifically things like the Orwellian "Trust and Safety Committee"?

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[tsotha]

That's exactly the opposite of my experience.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[Mashiki]

You mean those sites that turned around and labeled gamers as sexist/misogynists/rapists/worse then isis/murderers and a dozen other things? Oh who'd think that a segment of the gaming community would go right after their advertisers and say "Hey, I'm a gamer. This site is denigrating the people that you're paying advertising to." And the segment that they're pandering to is gamers... The same sites that all came out and said "gamers are dead, gamers don't have to be your audience." And gamers responded with "xyz website is dead, it doesn't have to be our source for information and advertisers...you don't need to pay them anymore."

Stop lying through your teeth though, I've disproven your bullshit half a dozen times over the last nearly two years since this started. The media didn't discredit it, gamergate simply didn't give a fuck about it's image and continues marching along to this day. Note how the media tried to discredit it though: By using the same method that feminists and SJW's use. Labeling anyone they disagree with as: Sexists, racists, homophobic, murders, rapists, worse then ISIS, and so on. But never showing any proof. Hell the wikipedia article on it is the best example to show to the world as to why wikipedia is broken, lot of people in Gamergate are quite happy about that. How do you show something is corrupt? By letting those who want to push a narrative do all the hardw ork for you.

Gamergate itself could have been stopped in the first week. The very first fucking week, and game sites decided to double down on their corruption, cliques, and incestuous relationships and attack. Which led to ethical journalists breaking open "GameJournoPros" which was exactly like "Journolist" a clubhouse for journalists to craft narratives, stories, and all write the same stuff. You tell me, that people won't see corruption when 15+ articles are all launched on the exact same day(with a few articles a day or two after bringing the total up to 20), all decrying the same thing: "Gamers are dead..." and all those sites where people writing about their buddies, people they're dating/shacked-up with/etc from developers to the face of giant game companies like UBISOFT? They all have their little disclosures now, and all those native ads have their mandatory disclosure now thanks to those evil GGers. So at the end of the day, with saying "Fuck our image" they still won.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[Mashiki]

Anyway. The maker of a flash game breaks up with her boyfriend, he's going into a hissy fit and harasses her, and before anyone knows why or what, a bunch of geeks chime in and all hell breaks loose. Well. Welcome to the internet, where grown people act like little spoiled brats.

Let me fix that for you. The maker of a twine game breaks up with a boyfriend who she's physically and emotionally abused because she's screwing around with 5 people. Two of those 5 people belong to major gaming publications, one of them is a developer. Those two people who worked for said publications either directly worked on said project, and/or gave her positive coverage of her game that wasn't disclosed. On top of that several of her friends that she had either been living with or working with did exactly the same thing.

Welcome to games journalism. Where there is an entire incestuous relationship of backscratching for positive coverage, and that single event was something that broke gamers collective backs. Since it had been an on-going problem for nearly 12 years at that point. See other cases like the Dorito Pope or the "Kane and Lynch" sagas. And people had enough. And instead of the industry going well...you're right we have a problem with a huge buddy-buddy system, they doubled down and attacked their audience, really getting the entire thing going when they launched 15 articles all using upwards of 70% of the same content from a whole pile of different authors saying "gamers are dead." This isn't grown ups acting like spoiled brats.

Think of it this way if your programing favorite sites suddenly turned around and said "programmers are over, they're hyper-masculine sexists, racist-rapists, who don't have their own cultural identity." Then turned around and said that these sites you went to, and got off the ground because of you said you're the worst piece of shit on earth because you uncovered that they were being colluding fucks and taking kickbacks to promote particular points of view.

This isn't any different then what's going on currently with Trump. The vast majority of the media establishment is attacking him, many of the articles have huge amounts of similarity between another. And anyone who takes a look can notice how coordinated the attacks are.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

Ah I see that in your world, listening to what someone has to say and forming a judgement about that is entirely the same as hurling arbitrary insults around (like SJW) and then forming an opinion based on the fact you've just insulted someone.

Personally, I judge people on what they say. The correlation between "spouts off about SJW" and "raging twit" is currently awfully strong, but that's not my fault, that's just life.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[Opportunist]

So gamers are dead. Or programmers are dead. Or opportunists are dead. Write what the hell you want, who am I that I'm dependent on the opinion of some retards?

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[Mashiki]

So gamers are dead. Or programmers are dead. Or opportunists are dead. Write what the hell you want, who am I that I'm dependent on the opinion of some retards?

Does attacking your audience(including an entire culture) and then telling them that they're worse then Hitler sound like a winning business strategy to you? Does turning around an engaging in crony journalism endear you to people? Keep in mind that AmiMoJo is whining because game journalists attacked their audience and culture that funds what they're able to write. When the audience had a problem with them acting in an unethical matter, called them out on that bullshit, and they doubled down. The regressive left came out of the woodwork and started the you're all sexist/racist/homophobic for going after the companies that attacked you.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[AmiMoJo]

I'm not commenting on the reliability of the mainstream media, merely pointing out that it is fortunate that it marginalises GamerGate as a hate and harassment campaign rather than falling for the bogus "ethics in journalism" angle.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[Opportunist]

So I'm not only dead, I'm also sexist and racist and whatnot? Ok, dump whatever label you want to tack to me on the pile back there, yes, that with NAZI!!!, Pinko Commie, Libertard and Conservaduh. I'll ignore later.

Labels suffer from inflationary use. If you call everyone a nazi that disagrees with you, all you accomplish is that people won't take any mentioning of someone being NAZI serious anymore.

For reference, see "terrorist".

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Ah I see that in your world, listening to what someone has to say and forming a judgement about that is entirely the same as hurling arbitrary insults around (like SJW) and then forming an opinion based on the fact you've just insulted someone.

Thanks, but you couldn't be more wrong if you tried. The whole reason I use the term "SJW" is because of the judgements I've made over years and years of observing many of these people, people who self-identify as "social justice warriors". Not all people that want social justice are SJWs, but some are..

So it's not a just a catchy term I throw around, it's a specific term for a specific kind of person, usually an authoritarian masquerading as someone who pretends to want equality but is willing to crush the rights of others to get what they claim to want.

-

Personally, I judge people on what they say.

Really? No wonder you're so confused about all this stuff. I judge people not on what they say but on what they do.

-

The correlation between "spouts off about SJW" and "raging twit" is currently awfully strong, but that's not my fault, that's just life.

Some people are hard of hearing, but you, serviscope_minor, you're hard of thinking. And your descent into name-calling and labeling people ("raging twit") just proves my point.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

The whole reason I use the term "SJW" is because of the judgements I've made over years and years of observing many of these people, people who self-identify as "social justice warriors".

Uh huh. Well, I've been called an "SJW" numerous times (as an insult, I presume, though accusing someone of fighting for social justice is about on the same level as cursing someone by wishing them to earn a lot of money).

I judge people not on what they say but on what they do.

Saying is not passive. I'm gonna judge the daily stormer types for saying they want to kill all the Jews even if they never get round to atually murdering any Jews. Frankly I think it's petty silly to ignore people's opinions as part of your judgement of them.

Also, by your logic, you can make literally no judgement of me because you've never seen me do anything that's not just saying stuff.

Some people are hard of hearing, but you, serviscope_minor, you're hard of thinking.

Oh huh, looks like you ARE judging me based on whay I said. didn't you just say:

I judge people not on what they say but on what they do.

It appears you're mistaken about your own mind.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Well, I've been called an "SJW" numerous times

I rest my case.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

I rest my case.

Given that you arbitarily declared "SJW" as something people labelled themselves your resting your case makes about as much sense as the Chewbacca defense.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Given that you arbitarily declared "SJW" as something people labelled themselves

Don't be such an idiot...there are *lots* of people who proudly declare that they're "social justice warriors", in case you haven't been paying attention. Which you obviously haven't.

See for yourself: https://www.google.com/#q=i%27m+a+proud+social+justice+warrior

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

I love how you come up with nonsequiteurs, then declare "don't be an idiot" and then come up with more.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

I love how you come up with nonsequiteurs

And I love how you seem to be pathologically unable to admit when you're shown to be wrong.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

And I love how you seem to be pathologically unable to admit when you're shown to be wrong.

Wrong about what? So far you've claimed that SJWs are all self identified (apparently me noting I've been called an SJW is a cue for you to rest your case). You also claimed that you only judge actions not words, yet you judged me (called me an idiot) based olely on my words.

Nothing I'm wrong about in that lot. Try again, but this time with feeling.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

So far you've claimed that SJWs are all self identified

No, there you go again. I never said "all". What I said was, there are *lots* of people who proudly declare that they're "social justice warriors".
Maybe you are unable to distinguish between "lots" and "all". Hint: There are two different words because they mean two different things.

-

You also claimed that you only judge actions not words,

Nope, I never said "only". See how you either misunderstand everything or just make shit up to try and prove your points? That's why I think you're a jackass, serviscope_minor. You are utterly incapable of having an honest discussion. Every time we disagree about something you either make shit up or deliberately misrepresent what I've said. That's the mark of someone who's either stupid or dishonest, or both.

-

yet you judged me (called me an idiot) based olely on my words.

Lol, in your case it's all I need. Half the shit you write is idiotic, the other half is bullshit and lies. I'd bet serious money that you're just as big a jerk in real life as you are here.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

Maybe you are unable to distinguish between "lots" and "all". Hint: There are two different words because they mean two different things.

You original comment is ambiguous, so OK. I'm not really sure what your point is, though.

Nope, I never said "only". See how you either misunderstand everything or just make shit up to try and prove your points?

You said exactly this:

I judge people not on what they say but on what they do.

That is pretty clear and unambiguous. I have no need to "make shit up" as you put it, your own words are quite clear in this matter.

You are utterly incapable of having an honest discussion. Every time we disagree about something you either make shit up or deliberately misrepresent what I've said.

Your words mean what I witten on the screen. If you want to go all Humpty Dumpty, that's up to you, but it's awfully difficult to have a conversation with an egg. If you can't write clearly, it's not my fault.

Lol, in your case it's all I need.

Do you deny that you said:

"I judge people not on what they say but on what they do"?

Half the shit you write is idiotic, the other half is bullshit and lies.

No lies: your own words are there for all to see. If you misspoke, then you can always say "oh crap that's not what I meant!" or words to that effect. Or you know you can keep digging and deny that what you wrote means what it says.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[david_thornley]

Got evidence of physical and emotional abuse? That's accusations of criminal behavior, and should not be done lightly.

In what way was having sex with a reviewer with the expectation of getting a good review out of line with what I've been able to find of ethics in game journalism, assuming that is what happened? I can understand a revolt against the state of games journalism, but this seemed awfully focused to the point of tunnel vision.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[elrous0]

Yeah, except when the SJW's post a counter-argument, they don't have their videos labelled as "harassment" or get banned from Twitter for doing it. Pretty important distinction there.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Do you deny that you said:
"I judge people not on what they say but on what they do"?

Do you see the word "only" in there, as you just claimed? I don't.

But otherwise, yes, that's exactly what I said, unlike what you claimed I said.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[AmiMoJo]

Do you have an example of a non-SJW making a counter argument and it being labelled as harassment?

I keep asking for specific examples of these abuses and they are never forthcoming.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

Do you see the word "only" in there, as you just claimed? I don't.

Read your own words, dude. Putting "only" in there is redundant[*], that line means you do not judge on words. If you meant:

I mostly judge people not on what they say but on what they do

or:

I judge people not on what they say but on what they do except when I don't.

Then you should have said so. What you said is you do not judge on words only on actions. That literally means within the dichotomy set up by you, you only judge on actions. See the use of the word only there? It's what the words you said mean.

[*] I didn't claim you said "only", I was paraphrasing, so get off your high horse because you look really silly up there.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

I didn't claim you said "only", I was paraphrasing

Don't hand me this twaddle about "paraphrasing". That's exactly what you wrote:

serviscope_minor: "You also claimed that you only judge actions not words..."

I never claimed that, and it's blatantly obvious to everyone here that you were distorting the meaning of what I said.

Nice to see you finally admit that you weren't quoting me accurately, though. That's a first for you.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

Yeah that want a quote. See how I didn't quote you? Not a quote.

You did however say that you only judge actions. That's what your words mean.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

You did however say that you only judge actions.

No, I never said that, and anyone can go back through this thread and see what a liar you are.

-

That's what your words mean.

You're interpreting things I never said to fit your fantasy argument. Face it, you fucked up.

If I'd meant "only", I'd have said "only". I didn't, but you just can't accept that you got caught lying again in front of everyone.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

Yeah you did it. Anyone who speaks English will understand that's what your words mean. Perhaps you could enlighten me as to what you did men precisely. I could use a laugh when it doesn't match the words you actually used.

You said something stupid, I called you out on it, now own it instead of trying to pretend the meaning isn't clear.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

You said something stupid, I called you out on it, now own it instead of trying to pretend the meaning isn't clear.

You lied, I called you out on it, now own it instead of trying to pretend that you weren't caught lying in front of every person here.

To clarify, if you were to say "I like vanilla ice cream", would any reasonable person take that to mean, "I only like vanilla ice cream"?

Or if you said, "I like jazz". In your world that must mean that you only like jazz. You must not like any other kind of music, right?

Of course not. Applying an absolute to a sentence that didn't originally include one doesn't mean you get to claim it does. Admit it, you fucked up and got caught, and everyone here can see it.

Your foolishness and deceitfulness become more apparent with every post. Your weasel words won't win here.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

No, I didn't lie. I wasn't making a direct quote. Stop inventing reasons to get offended.

And your analogies suck because you forgot half of what you wrote.

It's closer if you had:

I like vanilla not other ice cream.

And I said "you only like vanilla"

And you said "liar I never said only". Now, very pedanticly you could claim that your original sentence didn't exclude really stupid reasons for you judging people like skin color, though the implication was so as you explicitly set up a dichotomy. Nonetheless you explicitly discounted judging someone on words, which is what you're doing now.

But basically you need to learn to read English properly.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[Mashiki]

So I'm not only dead, I'm also sexist and racist and whatnot?

Dunno ask what passes for journalists these days. They would likely respond with: "Yes, you are all of those and above, and worse." Then write a series of articles attempting to smear you because you're not in line with the group think. And if they get really wanting to go after you, they'll likely also toss in that you're a pedophile.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Face it, you got caught misquoting me and making shit up. Everyone here sees it as plain as day.

The more you try to "explain" what you meant and why you lied and misquoted me, the worse you look.

Go ahead, serviscope_minor, tell me what I really mean when I write something. I'm sure you know what I meant better than I do, right?

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

where's the quote? Hint: you won't find it.

As for what you mean, who knows? You seem to have an insufficiently good grasp of English to write what you mean, so all you can do is splatter words on the page then accuse your hapless readers of lying when they understand the words you wrote. You know rather than whatever's floating round your head. If you recall, I did wonder if you were going to go all Humpty Dumpty, and it appears that you did! 10 points for me I guess :)

I do note however that you're not actually denying the meaning that's clear in your words, you're instead directing you're not inconsiderable outrage at the reddest of herrings instead.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Face it, you got caught misquoting me and making shit up. Everyone here sees it as plain as day.

The more you try to "explain" what you meant and why you lied and misquoted me, the worse you look. Keep going. :)

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

That's lovely, except the whole thing is made up by you.

I note you a aren't actually denying any more that my interpretation of the meaning is correct. Good job, such a denial is clearly foolish. So now you're left fiercely attacking the precise words i used even though the meaning is correct. The only thing left for your is to keep insisting against all the evidence that I made a direct quote.

The funny thing is of course that despite saying that you don't judge on words (see the lack of quotes and lack of exact wording? Not a quote) you're still judging on words.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[Opportunist]

Ok, on the pile with it.

Last I heard I'm also a square.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Face it, you got caught misquoting me and making shit up. Everyone here sees it as plain as day.

The more you try to "explain" what you meant and why you lied and misquoted me, the worse you look. Keep going, you're doing a wonderful job of making yourself look like an obsessive liar. :)

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

It's sort of entertaining and sort of odd that you're simply making stuff up in order to claim that I am making stuff up. The irony seems to be lost on you.

But tell you what, I'm magnanimous. If you find a post where I quoted you incorrectly, I'll concede the point. The caveat of course is that it had to actually be a quote, not a fantasy of yours.

Now if you want to accuse me of misrepresenting you, that's entirely different and would apply to a representation not a quote. But you know it's only a question of English and meaning.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

If you find a post where I quoted you incorrectly, I'll concede the point.

I already did that, and you didn't.

Face it, you got caught misquoting me and making shit up. Everyone here sees it as plain as day.

The more you try to "explain" what you meant and why you lied and misquoted me, the worse you look. :)

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

Pics or it didn't happen.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Pics or it didn't happen.

No pics needed, just back up in the thread to where you start shooting off your mouth and you can see for yourself where you lied. And so can everyone else for that matter.

You got caught misquoting me and making shit up and now you're trying to distract from it, but it's too late, serviscope_minor- now everyone here knows you're dishonest and full of shit.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

I didn't misquote you, you're simply lying. If I weren't, it would be trivial for you to post a link. You can't because you're making it up.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

I didn't misquote you, you're simply lying. If I weren't, it would be trivial for you to post a link. You can't because you're making it up.

I don't need to post a link since it's in the thread and everybody saw it. :)

You got caught misquoting me and making shit up and, like Trump is so fond of doing, you're trying to claim that's not what you said. I's too late for that.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

it's in the thread

Prove it. Post a link to where I quoted you. I'll bet you can't :) :) :)

everybody saw it

Well, apart from the fact they didn't because it didn't happen, seriously dude, no one cares about this thread except us. You seem to be acting like there's some sort of grand audience of lurkers watching this epic battle. The reality is no one's sticking around to watch two people accuse each other of being liars.

You got caught misquoting me

Prove it! Bet you can't :) :) :)

I's too late for that.

ITYM too early, given it hasn't happened (yet?).

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

You got caught misquoting me and making shit up and now you're thrashing about, insisting it never happened.

You're like Trump, saying shit and then denying it, even when it's obvious you said it. That's why everyone here knows you're dishonest and full of shit.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

Bet you can't prove it :)

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Bet you can't prove it :)

Bet you can't disprove it. :)

Just admit it, you got caught misquoting me and making shit up. The more you try to "explain" what you meant and why you lied and misquoted me, the worse you look.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

Ahh so now I'm required to prove a negative? Your honesty shows more and more with every post. But go on prove I misquoted you by posting a link to where I quoted you. Bet you can't :)

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

You got caught misquoting me and making shit up and your cries of "prove it!" show how you'll simply ignore what's before your eyes.

You're a lot like Trump in that regard, which is probably why you're voting for him.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

Ah yes, if I demand evidence of supposed wrong doings so I must be guilty.

BURN THE WITCH!

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

You got caught misquoting me and lying, and your cries of "prove it!" show how you'll just ignore what's been said before.

You're a lot like Trump in that regard, which is probably why you're voting for him.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

You got caught misquoting me and lying,

You seem to believe that shouting the accusation enough will make it true. And you're the one accusing my of being like Trump. Your post is so ironic that it might actually start to rust.

you'll just ignore what's been said before.

And now you're making more stuff up. I mean you're lying about misquoting, so why not lie about me ignoring evidence too.

PS

Thew word you're looking for is "misrepresentation", not "misquote". They mean different things. Misquoting means I claimed to make a literal quote but got it wrong. Misrepresentation is where I claim you meant something but got it wrong.

Though I note you're not actually denying what I claimed you mean. I think that's why you're so hung up about inventing misquotations.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Fine, have it your way: you got caught misrepresenting me and making shit up. It's nice to see you admit it. And then you started insisting it wasn't so, even though the thread is there for you and everyone else to see. You can dither and fuzz all you want, but your dishonesty is abundantly clear.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

Fine, have it your way: you got caught misrepresenting me and making shit up.

So all those claims that I was misquoting were not true, eh? Iiiinteresting!

FYI, I haven't conceded that I was misrepresenting you, I was merely informing you that that must be what you meant! So tell me, what precisely did you mean by (quote may not be 100% accurate, but I CBA to dig it out):

"I judge not on words but on actions"

if not only judging on actions as opposed to, say, words?

This is the thing, see, you claim I misquoted. That turned out to be false. You claim I've misrepresented you, yet you still haven't even said what you believe you mean. So, it's a pretty hollow claim.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Oh, so now you're denying that too? Amazing.

You misrepresented and misquoted, claiming I said things I never said. And you know it. :)

You deliberately attributed things me to me that you know I never said, so yes, you lied and misrepresented, and misquoted.

But it didn't work, and anyone can go back through the posts and see to lying and making things up.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

Oh, so now you're denying that too? Amazing.

Duh. I know what you wrote. I know what I wrote. I contend that what I wrote was a fair representation of what you wrote.

Now here's the funny thing, I've said what I think your words mean. All you've done is invent stuff about misquoting. You've never actually tried to clarify what you mean. I'm going to claim now that the reason for that is that we both know I'm right and you'll only be all the more ridiculous when your supposed meaning doesn't remotely match the words you wrote.

You misrepresented and misquoted, claiming I said things I never said.

Prove it:
1. Prove I misrepresented: tell me what a fair representation of your words it. Or hey, even try and demonstrate it. So far your sole counter argument has been to prove that you're unclear on the meaning of "misquote".
2. Still banging that drum, eh? It doesn't matter how may times you accuse me of misquoting, without an actual place where I quoted you incorrectly, it's all just a fabrication.

You deliberately attributed things me to me that you know I never said

What I attributed to you was a fair representation of what you said.

But it didn't work, and anyone can go back through the posts and see to lying and making things up.

You're really obsessed with the idea that we have an audience: you've brought it up many times. Even my AC stalker has got bored and gone away. Trust me on this one, we're all alone here.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

What I attributed to you was a fair representation of what you said.

No, you deliberately distorted the meaning of what I said, and you know it. I never said "only", yet you keep insisting that's what I meant. It's not. Somehow you seem to think you know the meaning of what I wrote better than I did.

You're a liar and you got caught.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

No, you deliberately distorted the meaning of what I said, and you know it. I never said "only", yet you keep insisting that's what I meant.

I can tell the meaning of the words on the page, and there's no misrepresentation in my interpretation of them. The meaning is abundantly clear. I certainly can't tell what was in your head when I wrote it. Possibly wool and moths.

If you meant something different from what your words say, then clarify or retract. I note you have done neither.It is certainly not misrepresentation to go by the meaning of the words you crafed.

Somehow you seem to think you know the meaning of what I wrote better than I did.

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.'

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

You deliberately distorted the meaning of what I said, and you know it. I never said "only", yet you keep insisting that's what I meant.

Somehow you seem to think you know the meaning of what I wrote better than I did.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

You deliberately distorted the meaning of what I said,

Now *that's* misrepesentation!

I never said "only", yet you keep insisting that's what I meant.

That's what the words mean, we've been over thi and you've provided no other intrepretation.

Somehow you seem to think you know the meaning of what I wrote better than I did.

It would appear so.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Somehow you seem to think you know the meaning of what I wrote better than I did.

It would appear so.

And you'd be wrong.

Otherwise, What I think what you meant by, "I certainly can't tell what was in your head when I wrote it" is "You're right, I was caught lying and misrepresenting what you said."

Thanks for admitting to that you lied and misquoted me.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

I can tell what the words you wrote actually mean. Representing the words you wrote is not misrepresenting you no matte how much you wish it were othewise.

If the words don't mean what you intended, that's your fault and it's up to you to correct them.

Thanks for admitting to that you lied and misquoted me.

You aleady admitted that I didn't in fact misquote you. But now you're banging the same old drum again.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

I can tell what the words you wrote actually mean.

Apparently not, as you've shown before and are showing now. You deliberately distorted the meaning of what I said, and you know it.

Try again, serviscope_minor.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

Apparently not,

Yes so. I explained my reasoning.

as you've shown before and are showing now. You deliberately distorted the meaning of what I said, and you know it.

The meaning of the words is entirely clear. If you didn't mean what you wrote it's up to you to give a correction. It's not misrepresentation to represent accurately the meaning of what you wrote.

Try again, serviscope_minor.

Tell you what, how about you clarify the meaning? Until that point, you're full of hot air.

I am however glad you've stopped your unjust accusations of misquotation: that's not something I'd ever do intentionally. Come to think of it, I'd never intentionally misrepresent anyone. My current representation of you is IMO entirely fair and apart from telling me I'm wrong (see how that's not a direct quote?) you haven't told me what you actually mean. I think that's because there isn't really a possible alternative meaning for those words. I reckon you wrote something stupid and instead of owning it and saying "whoops oh yeah I didn't think that through", you're trying to bluster through with rage and prove that you're right.

Main problem is you haven't actually taken a position, so there's no right to prove.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

You deliberately distorted the meaning of what I said by misquoting me, and you know it.

Try again, serviscope_minor.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

Quoth you:

Fine, have it your way: you got caught misrepresenting me and making shit up.

Sound very much like you admitted there was never a misquote. So why start claiming it all over again? Is your memory so bad you forgot, or are you simply lying?

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

No, you misrepresented me by misquoting me, as you've admitted several times now.

You attributed things to me I never said, and we both know it. Like claiming I said "only". Apparently you forgot that in your haste to try and muddy the waters. :)

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

Like claiming I said "only".

I claimed you *meant* only. You see, words mean things. This seems to be a hard concept for you who seems to use the Humpty Dumpty approach for English---which is of course a great way to achieve glory.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

I claimed you *meant* only. You see, words mean things.

Ahhh, so you admit to misquoting me...now we're making progress.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

Ahhh, so you admit to misquoting me.

A meaning is not a quote. Without a quote, there can be no misquote. I'm entertained that you seem unable to grasp they very simple fact. :)

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

A meaning is not a quote. Without a quote, there can be no misquote.

Oh, so now you're even denying that? You just admitted to it, and now you're denying it? You sound more and more like Donald Trump every second.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

You just admitted to it, and now you're denying it?

If you think that then you have both severe problems with reading comprehension and with the meaning of common words.

I still invite you to point to the post where I quoted you incorrectly.

Bet you can't :)

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

I think you have severe problems with your memory, reading comprehension and with the meaning of common words.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

It appears you can't even think independently. Try not copying my insults.

Then go read a dictionary and consult the meaning of "quote". Then you will achieve enlightenmnt. You know, or not :)

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Try not copying my insults.

I wouldn't have to if you were able to stop misquoting me and misrepresenting what I said. And remember, you've admitted to do that.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

You have strange fantasies. Why not fantasize about something fun like being on a nice beach with swaying palm trees, or failing that, getting stinking rich?

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

I'm already very well off, which is why I have time to call out people like you for lying and misrepresenting what other people say.

You probably have to go to a job every day, all day and earn your tiny little paycheck at the behest of your masters, but not me. I sleep late most days and travel to various parts of the world with my wife from time to time, so "a nice beach with swaying palm trees" is nothing new to me. :)

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

Well, first you had this weird fantasy where I misquoted you and then admitted to it. At least you've temporarily dropped the accusation of misquoting, though last time you dropped it, it didn't stick. Nonetheless, I guess that fantasy didn't work out well for you because now...

You probably have to go to a job every day, all day and earn your tiny little paycheck at the behest of your masters, but not me. I sleep late most days and travel to various parts of the world with my wife from time to time, so "a nice beach with swaying palm trees" is nothing new to me. :) ... well now you've invented a fantasy I have a miserable life compared to you. Your life sounds good and if it pleases you to believe I'm some sort of cube dwelling wage slave then by all means don't let me stop you.

Here's the thing though, if you insist on comparing yourself to other people, you'll always end up finding someone who's doing better. Just enjoy what you have in front of you right now and focus on that, rather than peculiar fantasies about me. You don't even know me, after all, but trust me, you'll be happier that way.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Here's the thing though, if you insist on comparing yourself to other people,

Then I guess it's a good thing I don't do that.

-

You don't even know me, after all, but trust me, you'll be happier that way.

Oh, I quite agree I'd be happier if I didn't know you, of that I have no doubt. I expect nearly everyone you know feels that way.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

me: Here's the thing though, if you insist on comparing yourself to other people,
you: Then I guess it's a good thing I don't do that.

That's odd, you see in post #52738023, you said precisely this:

You probably have to go to a job every day, all day and earn your tiny little paycheck at the behest of your masters, but not me. I sleep late most days...

(by the way, that actually is a quote). Sounds awfully like you're comparing your imaginings of my life to your own given that you, you know, hold the two upside by side and well, dare I say compare them.

Anyway I see you've finally dropped the ridiculous claim I misquoted you. You also have dropped the unsupportable claim I misrepresented you too, so it's nice to see you finally seeing sense. I suppose I can say very much in your credit that when your fantasises collide with reality, eventually you realise reality must win.

On the other hand, it just seems an excuse to fantasize further:

I expect nearly everyone you know feels that way.

I don't get it. If you're as happy as you claim, why do fantasize that I am not?

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

That's odd, you see in post #52738023, you said precisely this:

No, that's contrasting, not comparing.

-

I don't get it.

I think we all realize that.

-

If you're as happy as you claim, why do fantasize that I am not?

I'm speculating, not fantasizing. You seem unhappy at your core, maybe it's your job, maybe it's your lack of social life or a partner, maybe it's just that you recognize most people have a negative opinion of you.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

No, that's contrasting, not comparing.

Hahaha! I'll give you that, you have a good sense of humour!

I'm speculating, not fantasizing.

Your words had a certain relish to them. It might be a speculation, but you're certainly enjoying the thought. That moves it very much into the territory of being a rather peculiar fantasy. Like this for instance:

You seem unhappy at your core, maybe it's your job, maybe it's your lack of social life or a partner, maybe it's just that you recognize most people have a negative opinion of you.

as I suggested, fantasize about something that makes you happy, not about how unhappy I am. If on the other hand fantasizing about how bad my life is makes you happy, then you need to have a good, long hard think about your life.

I don't get it.

I think we all realize that.

What's to get? You seem obsessed with how I have a worse life than you.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Your words had a certain relish to them. It might be a speculation, but you're certainly enjoying the thought.

I absolutely enjoy my life, no doubt about it. :)

-

If on the other hand fantasizing about how bad my life is makes you happy, then you need to have a good, long hard think about your life.

Thanks for the advice, but as I said, I'm not fantasizing about how bad your life is; it seems evident from the things you post that you're not a happy person. No need for me to fantasize about it. :)

-

You seem obsessed with how I have a worse life than you.

Not at all, just making an observation based on your behavior. Maybe things will get better for you. Maybe not.

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[serviscope_minor]

Thanks for the advice, but as I said, I'm not fantasizing about how bad your life is; it seems evident from the things you post that you're not a happy person. No need for me to fantasize about it. :)

So where did the fantasy about me having a low salary, a crappy job, no partner come from then, eh? It sounds very much like you are inventing this fantasy about me being an unhappy, lonely person, poor person with a bad job. Maybe it's to compensate for thoroughly losing the argument? I think that's the most likely thing :)

Not at all, just making an observation based on your behavior.

So far my behaviour has mostly being denying the unjust accusations you've levelled at me. Recently I branched out of course. Good to see though you've dropped the unsupportable accusations. Something else you do ultimately deserve credit for.

Maybe things will get better for you. Maybe not.

I think I shall bask in the reflected warmth of your fantasy! :) :)

Re:Milo a Troll ?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

You branched out from lying and misrepresenting to misquoting and envying my happiness. It's okay to feel jealous of those that are happier than yourself, just don't let it get out of hand.

Can't say I agree

[Derekloffin]

While trolls suck, they always had them. What they haven't had is inconsistent and overreaching policies for fighting these 'trolls'. We've seen in again and again, certain groups get free passes to say whatever they want, other groups say stuff even slightly, through a distorted lens, might look kinda trollish, banned. Get your current policies straight and consistent!

Re:Can't say I agree

[squiggleslash]

I was under the impression it was something specific to the attacks on Leslie Jones, specifically @Nero forging tweets from her and posting "screenshots" of them in order to whip up hysteria against her.

There was, obviously, a pattern of harassment, but there were very specific actions Yiannopoulos engaged it that were ban-worthy by themselves. The pattern merely contributed to the decision to make the ban pseudo-permanent.

Re:Can't say I agree

[Anonymous Coward]

was under the impression it was something specific to the attacks on Leslie Jones

@Nero didn't attack Leslie Jones. Nobody, including Twitter, can product a single tweet by @Nero that violated their TOS.

specifically @Nero forging tweets from her and posting "screenshots" of them in order to whip up hysteria against her.

Forging them? Did they hack into Leslie Jones' account and put those tweets there and then make nobody delete them for over a year? Because there they are:

• Lord have mercy...white people shit
• ok you white girls are starting to look alike like a mutherfucka.I swear i went to high school with them two girls!#ainteventryingtolookdiff
• @whitebecky1776 bitch I want to tell you about your self but I'm gonna let everybody else do it I'm gonna retweet your hate!! Get her!!

And here she is admitting the Tweet wasn't fake, but claiming her account was hacked just for that one Tweet.

There was, obviously, a pattern of harassment, but there were very specific actions Yiannopoulos engaged it that were ban-worthy by themselves.

They idea that people can and should be banned from any communications platform for mockery or for the actions of others is repugnant and oppressive. That's why Twitter is losing customers.

Re:Can't say I agree

[Fragnet]

Consistent how? Milo was banned but others (such as the subject of his ban) haven't been. Twitter is fast becoming an echo chamber for people who call themselves "liberals" but who are in fact authoritarians.

Re:Can't say I agree

[MightyMartian]

There's never been a good way to deal with actively disruptive individuals (whether you call them trolls, flamebaiters, or whatever). I remember back in the old Usenet days a few of the more "serious" newsgroups either becoming moderated or creating moderated subgroups simply to try to deal with spammers and trolls. Not a job I would have wanted.

The problem is bigger now because the Internet is bigger now, and it's every bit as hard to find a good solution to.

My attitude is that Twitter can do what it likes. It doesn't owe the likes of Milo Yiannopoulos a platform. Of course it risks going the way that so many moderated newsgroup did a quarter century ago, abandoned by users who couldn't stand the restrictive policies and uneven enforcement.

Re:Can't say I agree

[MightyMartian]

Yup, the treatment of Jones by Milo and his hoard of nasty little gutter dwellers that lead to the banning. I don't even know what the fuck the problem was. If you don't want to go see the Ghostbusters reboot, don't go see it. Honestly, I felt very sorry for Jones, whose only crime was that she was in a reboot of a movie some pretty twisted individuals now apparently regard as some sort of holy relic.

Re:Can't say I agree

[AmiMoJo]

This is the specific fake tweet, since deleted. Unfortunately I don't have an archive link, but it's been widely verified including by Twitter themselves.

It's pretty amateurish, he even forgot to edit out the delete button.

Re:Can't say I agree

[Anonymous Coward]

Jones was making racist comments about whites, yet she wasn't banned.

Re:Can't say I agree

[MightyMartian]

There's a reason Milo has so many fans around here. A lot of people want a version of free speech where no one can ever judge them for being fucking assholes, where there are no consequences for any kind of speech. These are the kinds of people who think a CEO of a company, that is its chief manager, can openly say homophobic things, even when many of the people working for him may be LGBTQ, because, "RIGHTS!"

All that freedom of speech guarantees is the State can't come and lock you up for saying unpopular, including bigoted things. It doesn't guarantee that your neighbors won't despise you, that your boss won't sack you, that your kids won't think your awful, and that you'll feel the narrow eyes of your fellow human beings on the back of your neck when you're buying some Corn Flakes at the store. The Founding Fathers knew very well that the best way to control nasty-mouthed people was via society's powerful levers of shame and shunning, and the State itself should never pick the winners.

My attitude is this. If Twitter won't let you say the kinds of things you want, go to a forum that does. But of course that's not what trolls like Milo want. They have no interest in echo chambers, because they fancy themselves provocateurs. They need to attach themselves to a wider audience that they can shock and irritate, and that way when they get called out, they can do their own version of "SJW", which is to whine like babies that they're being oppressed.

Re:Can't say I agree

[Kohath]

Yes. The was proclaimed guilty by association (of violating unwritten, otherwise unenforced rules) and then banned.

Re:Can't say I agree

[MightyMartian]

By "guilt by association", you mean encouraging his Brown Shirts to harass Jones. And there's also the matter of the faked Jones tweets. Milo got nailed, and got thrown off. Twitter doesn't owe him a platform.

Re:Can't say I agree

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.breitbart.com/tech/...

How about her mob encouraging comments?

Leslie Jones @Lesdoggg
@whitebecky1776 bitch I want to tell you about your self but I'm gonna let everybody else do it I'm gonna retweet your hate!! Get her!!

That's not just indirectly egging people on, it's literally commanding others to harass someone.

Re:Can't say I agree

[hsthompson69]

Name a single white slave in America before the civil war.

Name a single SJW who has been banned from Twitter.

Exactly who is being oppressed again?

Re:Can't say I agree

[MightyMartian]

You must have missed some context there, because it doesn't make any sense at all. How is that mob baiting?

Re:Can't say I agree

[Kohath]

Who else got banned for the crime of "encouraging"?

Twitter doesn't owe him a platform.

Of course not. Twitter is clearly an exclusive platform for affirmation of the daily groupthink.

Re:Can't say I agree

[Bing Tsher E]

You don't want any evidence you disagree with. Carry on, dude.

Keep calling people 'brownshirts' and ' nasty little gutter dwellers.'

It helps flesh out who and what you are.

Re:Can't say I agree

[MightyMartian]

Twitter is a private company. It can do what it likes and your choice is not to use it.

Oh and there were white slaves in the Americas, shipped over from Ireland during the 17th century.

Re:Can't say I agree

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a reason Milo has so many fans around here.

Because people around here are tired of being bullied by SJWs and Milo uses the SJW bullying tactics against the SJWs..

Re:Can't say I agree

[hsthompson69]

Ah, MM, you're in good company:

https://www.splcenter.org/hate...

Anyhoo, just not sure how SJWs can complain they're oppressed when they're the ones with the hand on the ban hammer :)

Re:Can't say I agree

[aevan]

"Get her", perhaps? Rather than explain herself why she thinks whitebecky is 'problematic', she chooses instead to retweet the message to all her followers with the request to "get her" i.e. requesting dogpile mob tactics

Re:Can't say I agree

[MightyMartian]

No CEOs cannot say whatever they want in their own time. CEOs, like many employees, have to sign employment contracts that require certain standards of behavior even outside of work hours (and really, with management, particularly senior management, the notion of work hours is a lot bigger than 9 to 5). Violate conduct clauses in your employment contract, and you can be terminated. The same goes for sexual harassment. If company policies and your employment contract say "CEOs can't ogle employees" and the CEO is found to be ogling employees, he can be sacked.

Once again, freedom of speech as a constitutional concept is limited to the State's ability to intervene to prevent your right to express yourself freely. Call your neighbor a pedophile because your pissed at his kids running on your lawn, you will very likely end up in a court room being sued for slander, and very likely either losing or making an out of court settlement.

Oh, and I do enjoy how you work in one of those delightful homophobic attacks that so many extremist Libertarian types think should just be fine, and that no one should ever call them out for. You can't even defend your position without being a bigot.

Re:Can't say I agree

[MightyMartian]

What people around here are being bullied? What, because you can be called out and shamed for being a bigot or an asshole? Seriously, the level of entitlement and undeserved feelings of martyrdom make /. one of the most ridiculous places around.

Re:Can't say I agree

[khallow]

The Founding Fathers knew very well that the best way to control nasty-mouthed people was via society's powerful levers of shame and shunning, and the State itself should never pick the winners.

The founding fathers had a phrase for that, "mob rule" and they were not big fans of it.

These are the kinds of people who think a CEO of a company, that is its chief manager, can openly say homophobic things, even when many of the people working for him may be LGBTQ, because, "RIGHTS!"

Were you equally pleased when society's "powerful levers of shame and shunning" were used a generation ago to ostracize your alphabet soup of sexuality rather than support it? Where there was no guarantee for someone who just was a little different gender or sex-wise that "neighbors won't despise you, that your boss won't sack you, that your kids won't think your awful, and that you'll feel the narrow eyes of your fellow human beings on the back of your neck when you're buying some Corn Flakes at the store"?

Social ostracism is a very dubious tool that has been grossly misused in the past. I think it's still being misused in the present.

Re:Can't say I agree

[MightyMartian]

Jesus Christ, the "ban hammer"? Twitter is a private company, short of you demonstrating that there was a breach of contract, if they decide to terminate your account, your shit out of luck. Go find a forum more to your liking. But, of course, for the likes of Milos, that won't do, because the kinds of forums that will permit his kind of ugliness are simply echo chambers. He's fundamentally a performance artist who largely gets paid to say vile things so loyal minions can clap and shout and declare "You got them SJWs real good!"

What you and your ilk want, as I've said many times, isn't freedom of speech, it's freedom from consequences of speech. Well, too fucking bad. You want to be an outrageous and vile asshole, be my guest, but you're going to get banned from many online services, and be generally loathed. I guess if that makes you feel special, then so be it.

Re:Can't say I agree

[MightyMartian]

Anything can be misused, but social ostracism can't be banned, and won't be banned. You will never get your freedom from consequences. You want to be a repugnant monster on the Internet, then you will be called a repugnant monster, and you will be banned from private services.

Re: Can't say I agree

[Stolovaya]

"Get her!"?

Re:Can't say I agree

[hsthompson69]

Why don't SJWs get any consequences for their hate speech on twitter?

It's hard to portray SJWs as oppressed, when twitter explicitly avoids imposing any consequences on them.

That being said, I've got no problem acknowledging twitter's right to abuse its own terms of service selectively - but their free speech has consequences too, and I'll call them out for censorship and bias :)

Re:Can't say I agree

[khallow]

Anything can be misused, but social ostracism can't be banned, and won't be banned.

Actually, people like Milo who flout the norms of society do an excellent job of distracting the mob. So sure, it can't be banned, but right now, the mob is too busy obsessing over Milo than it is messing with me. That's the way I like it.

Re:Can't say I agree

[Kohath]

Twitter is a private company...

Twitter is a corporation. People on Slashdot keep telling me corporations aren't people and don't have any rights. Did the groupthink change recently? Do corporations have rights now?

If corporations don't have rights because corporations aren't people, then Milo's rights to free speech and due process should be respected because Milo is a person and Twitter isn't.

Re:Can't say I agree

[AmiMoJo]

Thanks Martian, you said it far better than I ever could. I wish I was able to summarise these things as well as you do.

Re:Can't say I agree

[Capsaicin]

Twitter is a corporation. People on Slashdot keep telling me corporations aren't people and don't have any rights

Allow me to explain ...

People qua people don't have rights.* People have rights as persons (and people who are not persons are called 'slaves'). Corporations are persons (which is one of the two characteristics which makes them corporations as opposed to mere companies). Ergo corporations have rights. Most notably the right to enter into contracts and have those contracts enforced. Corporations are corporate persons not natural persons. Therefore those rights which pertain specifically to natural persons (we might call them human rights, but that could be a bit misleading) cannot be claimed by corporations. But none of this is particularly germane to the point at hand.

If corporations don't have rights because corporations aren't people, then Milo's rights to free speech and due process should be respected because Milo is a person and Twitter isn't.

Non sequitur. Even if it were the case that one party had a specific right, and another did not, this argument is questionable. However in the present case ...

While I'm not a US lawyer, my understanding is that Milo has no right to free speech at large, but only a right to stop government from impinging upon his "freedom" of speech. Corporations are private persons not government (though one might be forgiven for failing to apprehend the difference these days).

Now given that corporations do exercise so large an impact on public expression, of which this is a case in point, and given that corporations do not exist in nature but are creatures of the legislature, an argument could certainly be made that safeguards inhibiting the arbitrary exercise of power to shut down speech might be imposed on corporations. However (and absent any contractual obligations), unless the rights of corporations involved in publication, are legislatively constrained to the extent that they lack the right to determine whom they should and should not publish, there can be no right for Milo to prevail against Twitter. It's a business decision.

[*I'm using 'right' in a legal positivist sense, i.e. that which you can get enforced in your favour in a court of law]

Re:Can't say I agree

[Rakshasa Taisab]

Yes, he is so popular since people around here don't particularly care to be called "a bigot or an asshole" by assholes like you, especially when people like you are the biggest hypocrites.

Re:Can't say I agree

[houghi]

This is 2016. Pleqse let me know what insights the founding fathers had in the siciety we live in today. I also want to know why you need to hide behind something some people said more than 200 yeqrs ago.
Don't you have any ideas of your own? There is a HUGE difference between what somebody said as a wisper to the neighbour and to put it in writing and for everybody to see for all eternity.

So please stop telling what somebody said 200 years ago and instead say what YOUR opinions are, because even the Founding Fathers knew that things would change and adaptations would be made to whatever they thought then was a good idea.

And if they did not think things would change, that, to me, means they where not that smart to begin with and that wouldnot be true.

Re:Can't say I agree

[khallow]

While I'm not a US lawyer, my understanding is that Milo has no right to free speech at large, but only a right to stop government from impinging upon his "freedom" of speech. Corporations are private persons not government (though one might be forgiven for failing to apprehend the difference these days).

On the other hand, Milo may have inherited a right to free speech from his contract with Twitter or from advertising by Twitter. (I don't know since I've never bothered to read Twitter's terms of service or their ads.) For example, if I offer a public communication service and advertise that you can say anything on it, then censorship of legal speech in that situation would be a case of false advertising.

Re:Can't say I agree

[serviscope_minor]

It's almost like some people claim to believe in freedom of speech but not freedom of association (which of course includes freedom to actively not associate with someone).

Re:Can't say I agree

[coofercat]

The amount of personal investment you have in a twitter account is very low. As such, being banned isn't a big deal - just create a new account and go be a dick all over again.

Contrast this to (say) Facebook or Linkedin. There, your network is why you have the account. If you account gets blocked, you've somehow go to re-establish your network. Your close friends are probably easy enough, but those arms-length people that might be useful one day probably won't bother to re-connect with you. As such, losing your FB/Linked in account is a greater loss than on twitter.

If twitter can build in some features that make your account personally valuable (and a new account less valuable), then they might find a way around the problem they face far more than any other 'social network'. I'm no expert, but nothing I can think of fits in with the 'free speech' thing Twitter is all about. Hopefully for them, they've got some better brains than mine on the case.

Re:Can't say I agree

[squiggleslash]

Leaving aside definitions of "racism" or discussing context or whatever, there are plenty of people on Twitter who make nakedly racist comments, against groups historically discriminated against, and who aren't even making jokes, who haven't been banned.

This was never about @Nero's political opinions. The alt-right (and regular right) are heavily represented on Twitter. This was about how you use Twitter. Running a campaign against someone by forging Tweets is a surefire way to get yourself hauled off to Twitterprison, especially when you have a history of ToS violations and have used Twitter so regularly as a way to direct harassment that a popular anti-harassment tool is able to work well just by blocking people who follow you and a couple of other similar people.

Reminder: Donald Trump is still on Twitter. He isn't going anywhere.

Re:Can't say I agree

[MightyMartian]

Slashdot doesn't generally ban people at all, and relies on its moderation system. But even the moderation system is a censorship of sorts, though one that readers can get around by reading the -1s.

And once again, "free speech" as a concept of liberty is one that is between the State and the citizen. Citizens are not obliged to obey the same rules. If I set up a message forum, and I decide that I don't like what you say, I can terminate your posting rights. You are free to disagree with that on other forums, or start up your own forum and use whatever rules you want.

Twitter doesn't owe anyone a platform. That's not to say it is beyond criticism, but private organizations have far more leeway in what they allow posted on their servers. The only limitation might be where indiscriminate or clearly biased moderation of termination in violation of agreed upon contractual rules violated someone's *contractual* rights, but I suspect Twitter has sufficiently broad language in their EULA that it covers their asses so someone can't sue if they are thrown off.

And one more time; the First Amendment protects citizens from State interference or censoring of their speech. It does not in any way confer citizens with the right to compel other citizens or groups of citizens to have to listen to that speech.

Re:Can't say I agree

[MightyMartian]

Providing Twitter is not violating the EULA, where there might be some civil remedy for someone who feels they are unfairly treated, that's Twitter's business. If they apply their rules arbitrarily, they will lose users. That's the risk they take. Being banned from a web site, even unfairly, is not anything like the kinds of censorship the First Amendment was built to prevent.

Newspapers have done this sort of uneven censoring and banning for years. Often times newspapers will simply stop printing letters to the editor from particularly abusive or repetitive individuals. Is the newspaper being unfair in not printing John Q. Bitchy's latest screed on parking meters, the fiftieth in a year? From one perspective, I suppose so, but that little disclaimer "The editor reserves the right..." gives the newspaper the right to do it.

Don't like Twitter's uneven application of its rules, don't use it. That's your freedom as a citizen.

Re:Can't say I agree

[MightyMartian]

As an enforceable principle, at least in the United States, the First Amendment applies strictly to the State. There's no law in the US forcing newspapers to publish every letter they receive, or not to edit them for length or content, nor is there a law forcing Twitter to keep every account open. In fact, any attempt to do so would be violating the owners and managers of Twitter's 1st Amendment rights.

I'll repeat. Twitter does not owe Milo a forum on which to post. If they decide to terminate his account, then if he feels he has been unfairly treated, he can certainly try to sue them for violating some party of the user agreement he feels they breached.

Re:Can't say I agree

[DarkOx]

Well yes and no. True you don't have the right to not be despised if you say vitriolic things that others find offensive.

On the other hand the proclivity of certain groups who seem to enjoy privileged positions as media darlings to simply shout down anyone who disagrees with them, while maybe perfectly legal certainly goes against the ethos that lead us to adopt the First Amendment.

I can only assume when such groups shot down people like Milo its because they consider their own positions to weak to withstand debate or recognize they do not themselves posses the either the knowledge or the mental faculties around synthesis to respond intelligently so they instead just scream.

Re:Can't say I agree

[squiggleslash]

Curious to know why you posted this. Pretty much everyone is going to ignore it from the first sentence you composed onwards, because it's so ludicrously wrong. Why spend that much effort researching links and so on, with a post designed to appeal only to the "someone is wrong on the Internet" brigade?

Re:Can't say I agree

[Kohath]

Corporations are corporate persons not natural persons. Therefore those rights which pertain specifically to natural persons (we might call them human rights, but that could be a bit misleading) cannot be claimed by corporations.

Mostly the "corporations are not people" crowd want to say corporations don't have free speech rights. I disagree, but it shouldn't matter. The operative law is "congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech ...". Persons are not mentioned. Whether or not corporations have a human right to free speech, the government is prohibited from abridgment of their free speech.

(This is not really relevant to the Milo vs. Twitter situation. I think it's worth noting in general.)

Re:Can't say I agree

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

Their application of rules isn't consistent. Randi Harper is a serial abuser, and Leslie Jones directly told her followers to "get her" (about someone who was sending her abuse). Both of those people should have been banned under Twitter's ToS for pretty much the same reasons Milo was banned.

Re:Can't say I agree

[Capsaicin]

The operative law is "congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech ...".

No, the operative law is the interpretation courts have given to those words, which very clearly deviate from any obvious (even learned judicial obvious) reading of the constitutional text (note for example defamation law post NYT v Sullivan).

Persons are not mentioned.

Obviously not, it's implicit. Without legal personality you can't approach a court for it even to consider those words. This after all is half the motivation (the other half being limited liability) of conjuring the corporate form into being: to bestow upon a company the right to litigate.

Also by writing that you are arguing, if anything, against corporate free speech rights. Remember corporations are persons too!

Worse still, IMO, you would be arguing that dogs have free speech rights. Next thing some Animal Rights Activists will come along with a case overturning some municipal restriction on barking dogs ... :o (You realise there was recently a case in the US where Animal Rights bods sued to have the legal personality of an animal recognised? Fortunately sanity and law prevailed and animals remain non-persons.)

The reason I wrote that speaking of human rights is "misleading" is because we tend to think of freedom of speech as a human right, when in fact it may, in particular jurisdictions, be a right corporate persons enjoy as well. Indeed your argument is that it should be. And perhaps, on one view, freedom of speech is not a specifically human right in the US (again sorry, I'm a non-US lawyer so I can't be certain). However, surely the words following those you quoted, to wit, "... or of the press" restrain the legislature at the very least with regard to the "speech" of media companies acting in that capacity. Thus, on an alternative view, we might construe 'freedom of speech' as a human right, and 'freedom of the press' as a right pertaining to persons generally.

Re:Can't say I agree

[Capsaicin]

You missed the part where I wrote "absent any contractual obligations." In any case that is not a right to free speech, inherited or otherwise, but a right of speech bounded by the terms and conditions of the putative contract.

I don't know since I've never bothered to read Twitter's terms of service or their ads.

Since Twitter acted, no doubt on legal advice better than we here could confabulate, and since Mr Yiannopoulos failed to sue --in a context where given the least possibility of success one would expect him to --we can probably save our time and continue not to bother to read the terms.

What type of trolls?

[guruevi]

You basically have two types of trolls these days, there is the spammers and people spewing all sorts of predictable BS (like here on Slashdot you have the GNAA and Goatse). They are easy to block with Bayesian filtering or even plain blacklists. Then there are the more modern 3rd wave feminist trolls, they behave like they have a valid point and may even get a following of people agreeing with them, yet they make a community toxic by designating pretty much all dissent as "personal attacks". I've seen it happen recently in an otherwise healthy 20yo community, in less than 3 years it was destroyed by leadership trying to make the organization a "safe place" and more than half the membership left mostly voluntarily after key members were forced out.

I think Twitter has more of the second problem: trying to make a platform available that is "safe" for everyone meaning it will only ever be good for a single person because any dissent will be viewed as unacceptable speech.

Re:What type of trolls?

[Anonymous Coward]

The trolls getting banned from Twitter are organising harassment. Doesn't matter what they believe, what their politics are. It's the harassment that gets then banned.

Yep. That's why Leslie Jones was banned after she called on her 375k follows to go after another Twitter user. Ah, wait, she wasn't banned for that. Why? She has right think and right identity.

Re:What type of trolls?

[Mashiki]

It started with GamerGate, but it was never about shutting down "ethics in journalism" complaints, it was always about the harassment that was used to create the perception of persecution for people who didn't bother to read beyond the tweets.

You know if you've got proof of Gamergate actually engaging in harassment, there's been a cash bounty for proof for the last year(it hasn't been collected on). You can easily collect your $200 if you can show it. Go on, show someone who's in gamergate that's out there harassing. Not just some rando using the hashtag, and actual supporter.

I hope you realize how retarded you sound. GG even operated their own patrolling force on twitter to go after the 3rd party trolls and get them shut down, even protecting people who were against them. And in some cases, that was enough to get them to change their minds on GG as a whole, while their SJW buddies did nothing...then attacked them because GG protected their asses.

Re:What type of trolls?

[serviscope_minor]

You know if you've got proof of Gamergate actually engaging in harassment, there's been a cash bounty for proof for the last year(it hasn't been collected on). You can easily collect your $200 if you can show it.

I can see why it hasn't been collected on. I googled various varieties of cash bounty gamergate and harassment and came up with nothing. The interesting thing is I've been delivering smackdowns to you for well over a year on gater related articles and this is the first time I've ever heard you mention it.

If a dyed in the wool gater has only just heard of it and it's ungoogleable, it's fair to say that it's so obscure that it's no surprise that it has not been collected on.

Re:What type of trolls?

[Mashiki]

I can see why it hasn't been collected on. I googled various varieties of cash bounty gamergate and harassment and came up with nothing. The interesting thing is I've been delivering smackdowns to you for well over a year on gater related articles and this is the first time I've ever heard you mention it.

You apparently didn't search very hard, want to try again? You mean you run away every time that I post something that you disagree with, and when presented with evidence contrary to your opinion the first thing you do is turn around and claim it's fake/invalid/etc because it doesn't fit your world view. Even though the links contain archived copies of the actual messages. Gee who'd have thought on that.

If a dyed in the wool gater has only just heard of it and it's ungoogleable, it's fair to say that it's so obscure that it's no surprise that it has not been collected on.

Really? I guess that's why I had no problems finding it. It's only $200 but if you've got actual proof, and can figure out the search function on your favorite search engine you can cash in.

Re:What type of trolls?

[Adeimantus9]

Can you elaborate on the 20yo community that fell apart? I find stories like that very interesting.

Re:What type of trolls?

[AmiMoJo]

Ah, poor Mashiki, labouring under the delusion of a teapot orbiting Mars. Just because no-one can prove it doesn't exist, he thinks it must be out there, wizzing around in space.

That's why he never provides any links. It's a matter of faith, You have to believe in the teapot. Or in this case, the $200.

Re:What type of trolls?

[AmiMoJo]

Of course not, it doesn't exist. At most he means that he got fed up with or booted out of a community, and blames it on SJWs.

People said that Reddit would die when they introduced their new anti-harassment guidelines. Within a year everyone would have moved to Voat. In fact, Reddit is doing just as well as ever and Voat is an echo chamber for trolls. Same with Twitter, same with Facebook, same with Slashdot when user moderation was first introduced.

Re:What type of trolls?

[serviscope_minor]

You apparently didn't search very hard, want to try again?

Aaah the truth is out there, is it? Just like aliens!

oooo-eeeee-woooo-oooo.

Re:What type of trolls?

[guruevi]

Elaborate how? It has been happening all over with LGBTQ and other sex-positive communities. A few years ago, leadership said we needed to make our community more 'safe' especially to females and minorities (minorities within a minority group).

Everybody agreed, we had recently had an issue with an abusive personality getting into an otherwise private community as well as the advent of social media groups doing 'their own thing' not even knowing about our organization that existed. The main problem was imho exposure to the Internet-faring public, word of mouth kind of went out of the window 10 years ago.

At that point, the community started splitting on how to proceed. The long-term members (35yo+) wanted more exposure to the outside world through advertisements, revamping the website, social media outreach. The younger members, particularly subgroups of college students instead wanted to make the organization a 'safer place' by more stringent requirements and disciplinary procedure.

The second proposal was voted down by the majority but upheld by the leadership through a loophole that allows them to decide when a vote doesn't get >75% participation which was previously never used. Then the 'everyone is a rapist' people came out of the woodwork and people were being thrown out for frivolous things based on single testimony, no defense because after all "everyone's story is valid". Off course after 2 or 3 people got thrown out (the first few got a "well perhaps there was an issue"), people stopped trusting the leadership and subsequently the organization and many started leaving. And now it's got half the membership, won't be able to pay it's bills much longer and is on it's death bed and the same people that started this whole thing are throwing their hands up "well, what happened".

They attempt to ouster me as well, because criticizing their belief system and pointing out the problems was 'triggering' somebody, I defended myself so I didn't get the shame of being on the same level as the abusive personalities, but I no longer want to support the organization.

Re:What type of trolls?

[serviscope_minor]

That's why he never provides any links.

Not strictly true: sometimes he poduces links to easily forged sceenshots on loopy blogs or by random internet commenters.

Re:What type of trolls?

[squiggleslash]

- There's a review out there of one of Zoe Quinn's games, written by someone Zoe Quinn had sex with, he just knows it...
- There's a hidden message in one of Anita Sarkeesian's videos where she advocates censorship and for sexism in games to be banned, he just knows it...
- Speaking of whom, Sarkeesian is now in charge of all of EA's games, he just knows it...
- Nick Denton is paying you and I huge sums of money to post anti-gamergate comments on Twitter, he just knows it...
- @Nero was banned from Twitter for being a conservative, all other conservatives, including the The One, Donald Trump, is next, he just knows it...
- #notyourshield is made up entirely of women and minorities, he just knows it...
- Ghostbusters was a total flop at the box office, and nobody likes Female Thor, he just knows it...

When you know it in your gut, you don't need any of your fancy pants "evidence" and "facts".

Re:What type of trolls?

[AmiMoJo]

My favourites are the long lists of broken links. He's stopped doing it lately, but back in his heyday he would copy/paste long lists of long deceased URLs. The few that did work were invariably just blogs making wild speculations that when combined with the dead ones probably formed some sort of "body of evidence" in his mind, but by the time he posted it had all unravelled.

Re:What type of trolls?

[david_thornley]

I wouldn't go around trying to nail down evidence for $200, personally, even if I trusted the award.

Who is considered a legitimate member of GG? Where do I find the membership list? How do we agree on what's harassment? How do we prove it happened? How do we know there is a cash award, and how sure are we that it will be given? Any of these sound like reasons not to try to make the equivalent of my afternoon's salary.

They don't have a product

[Anonymous Coward]

They have a free service.

Btw, those who think it's great to "mine" Twitter, Twitter content is shit. Facebook and youtube have tremendous value. Twitter has none because it's just noise.

Now on the subject of trolling, it seems that the definition is now "anything unpalatable to the left"...

Re:They don't have a product

[Fragnet]

Oh sure, all those "blacklivesmatter" tweets are really civilised.

Re:They don't have a product

[Fragnet]

Yet of course you can easily see how if that tweet had made reference to killing black people or Muslims, by a white christian, they would have been removed from the platform immediately.

I think my case is pretty strong actually.

You idiots hired the biggest trolls of them all

[Anonymous Coward]

Your "Trust and Safety Council" is "manned" by people who can only be classified as trolls. Even if that was a conscious "you have to be one to know one" move, you sealed your fate then and there.

Hate problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, Twitter has a hate problem. But it's not the trolls posting expletives and slurs; it's the group of people who hunt for tweets to strip of context (Twitter already does a fine job of scrubbing nuance) and use them to start witchhunts. It's the many more people who will gladly go along with these witchhunts, never thinking whether their vitriol is justified or justifiable. And it's the management, who seem to have zero interest in stopping these when the victim is in the outgroup.

And what do people get in exchange? Advertising pushed on you, spam, reposts of buzzfeed articles?

It's not a matter of life or death,

[fustakrakich]

it's more important than that.

Sorry. Been watching too much football...

Re:Boy those guys at Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

I found this to be both informative and enlightening. I hope you will continue to contribute such high quality and well written comments in the future to assist in building a positive and supportive community here at Slashdot.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Management

Re:Twitter isn't interest in stopping trolls unles

[elrous0]

Haven't you heard? It's impossible for an SJW to be a troll or harasser, since "troll" and "harasser" implies a power relationship, it's impossible for an SJW to be one (since they don't have any power on the social media platforms they now completely control). So the powerless SJW's who now have all the power on all social media CAN'T harass or troll. Only the powerful conservatives and liberal dissenters who have no power on any social media platforms have the power on social media to be trolls/racists/sexists/abusers.

Also, it's very important that we protect LGBT rights and the rights of Muslims who support killing LGBT's.

trolling for clicks

[BarbaraHudson]

Backchannel is just trolling for clicks. Twitter sign up rates have slowed down for the same reason Facebook has - there's only a limited number of people interested in that shit on a day to day basis, and churn (people leaving because they have better things to do with their time) is now a problem. Besides, what the hell is Twitter good for anyway? Even Twitter doesn't know, or they would be doing it instead of copying other's ideas.

Re:trolling for clicks

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides, what the hell is Twitter good for anyway?

I've found that Twitter is good for answering the following sorts of questions:

Did I just feel an earthquake?

Did anyone else hear that explosion?

Is Netflix really down, or is it just me?

Etc.

Re:trolling for clicks

[Crashmarik]

Besides, what the hell is Twitter good for anyway?

I've found that Twitter is good for answering the following sorts of questions:

Did I just feel an earthquake?

Did anyone else hear that explosion?

Is Netflix really down, or is it just me?

Etc.

RSS is even better for that, and on the plus side stupid people don't even realize it exists.

Re:trolling for clicks

[hairyfeet]

Its also SJW shit, they banned Milo for saying Leslie Jones looked like one of his ex boyfriends while they ignored Leslie Jones saying things like "is that (famous black entertainer) sitting with a white woman? I'll fuck that bitch up" "sick of white people shit" along with stupid white bitch this and dumb white muthafucka that. She hasn't even bothered to delete all her racist shit because she knows its SJW heaven, you can go on her Twitter right now and look that shit up.

They lost a LOT of users over the Milo mess because the one they took up for was not only so obviously horribly racist but even fucked up and accidentally sent a private tweet publicly showing she was trolling her own channel when she tweeted "I can stay on for awhile,loved the racist posts @PaulFieg" trying to drum up drama for her new ghostbusters shitshow. It would be one thing if they actually applied their policies fairly, but the Milo mess provided proof you can be as racist and scummy as you wanna be on Twitter...as long as you are the right skin color and the left side of the political aisle.

Re:trolling for clicks

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Twitter sign up rates have slowed down for the same reason Facebook has - there's only a limited number of people interested in that shit on a day to day basis

Yep, once you've signed up virtually everyone on the planet who wants to play the Twitter game, that's when the growth suddenly stops (oh noes!), and membership and participation inevitably start to decline. (And Twitter is a game, just not one in the conventional sense.)

Twitter: The Confetti of The Internet

Re:trolling for clicks

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

RSS is even better for that, and on the plus side stupid people don't even realize it exists.

RSS? I've never heard of- hey, wait a minute!!

Re:trolling for clicks

[DavidRavenMoon]

Besides, what the hell is Twitter good for anyway?

I've found that Twitter is good for answering the following sorts of questions:

Did I just feel an earthquake?

Did anyone else hear that explosion?

Is Netflix really down, or is it just me?

Etc.

RSS is even better for that, and on the plus side stupid people don't even realize it exists.

Not on a mobile device. For example, I get Twitter updates from the NYC subway to let me know if there's a problem with the trains I use everyday to get to work. They happen instantaneously, and you can even reply back for more details. Or report trains where the AC isn't working, etc. I use RSS at home, but there's no decent mobile clients.

Re:trolling for clicks

[Crashmarik]

Opportunity there

Re:trolling for clicks

[spire3661]

"Did I just feel an earthquake?"

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/ear...

Why would i ask other users when i can immediately see what actual geologists and scientific instruments have to say?

Re:trolling for clicks

[Khyber]

Because that's nowhere near immediate. It takes at least ten minutes to update that map while the USGS confirms readings from instrumentation. I live right here in SoCal, I'm checking it constantly.

Re:trolling for clicks

[aevan]

Besides the things the AC noted, I've found it useful for catching various indie bands' plans to release new albums or appearances - in between photos of their dinner or latest cat antics. While not the greatest in signal:noise, it is at least better than the never-updated webpages or blogs whose last entry was 4 years ago.

Disclaimer: I don't have a twitter account, find it rather pointless for my own personal use [What, did you want to know the brand of OJ in my screwdriver? Thing the carton was white...]

Re:trolling for clicks

[RCL]

Twitter is really good at reaching out to people directly and in a semi-realtime fashion. It's like asynchronous IRC.

Re:trolling for clicks

[BarbaraHudson]

Who cares? If you have to ask if it was a quake or not, you're not in any danger whatsoever, and you can wait until the 6 o'clock news.

Re:trolling for clicks

[BarbaraHudson]

The phone is also great for reaching out to people directly and in a semi-real-time fashion (send them a text). Or in real time (give them a call). There are many other PITA services that do the same thing as twitter, without the word count limit.

Re:trolling for clicks

[oakgrove]

Twitter: The Confetti of The Internet

The most succinct description of the shitshow dubbed "micro-blogging" I've seen yet. Hope you don't mind my stealing it.

Re:trolling for clicks

[AmiMoJo]

No. Let's be absolutely clear since there seems to be a lot of confusion about this. Twitter banned him for harassment. Mere racism is not enough to get someone banned, as countless prior tweets by Milo himself prove.

They banned him when he started faking screenshots of his victim's tweets in order to encourage his mob of followers to harass her. Twitter can obviously see how messages are re-tweeted and then followed up by abuse. It's that coordination that got him banned, not all the many many offensive things he has said over the years. Twitter gives people like him a huge amount of leeway.

Re:trolling for clicks

[thegarbz]

RSS is even better for that, and on the plus side stupid people don't even realize it exists.

RSS has a content generation problem, more so because people don't realise it exists.

Like it or not currently we get some of the first news from twitter, that is then picked up by news groups who then put it on an RSS feed. But if you're willing to wait then you can always just watch the 6pm news.

Re:trolling for clicks

[Rakshasa Taisab]

Then show us the archived tweets where he harassed Leslie Jones.

Better start making some up since things that doesn't exist is rather difficult to find.

Re:trolling for clicks

[AmiMoJo]

Found it: https://tweetsave.com/nero/sta...

You can see that he posted a fake tweet supposedly by his victim, but forgot to edit out the delete button. Pretty sloppy work for a professional troll/victim.

Re: trolling for clicks

[RCL]

When reaching out via Twitter, the conversation is public - and you cannot share a phonecall. As for other services, what would they be? Facebook is too personal, at least for me - I tend to not friend people whom I didn't meet. On Twitter I follow anyone who tweets on topics I'm interested in.

Re: trolling for clicks

[BarbaraHudson]

Messenger, Google+, Whatsapp, Hipchat, Pinterest, Instagram, Reddit - heck, even slashdot if you like a mix of up-to-date and old news.

And you can most certainly share phone calls. That was possible even pre-Internet.

Re: trolling for clicks

[RCL]

I may be missing something, since I haven't tried all of them, but it seems that none of those platforms can be called an "asynchronous IRC"? That's the appeal of Twitter for me:

• Like on IRC, nobody expects you to write blog posts but short messages.
• Like on IRC, you are talking to complete strangers and can be anonymous if wished.
• Like on IRC, you can mention anyone and the rest can join the conversation if they want to.
• Unlike on IRC (not accounting for bots), each message is automatically logged and can be shared via a unique and permanent URL.

Oh, and like on IRC, technically minded people tend to gravitate to the platform. Is there anything except Twitter that would offer the same features? There used to be identi.ca, but seems like it's gone now.

Re: trolling for clicks

[BarbaraHudson]

You want Usenet. Twitter is garbage in comparison.

Re: trolling for clicks

[RCL]

Uhm, not really :) I used Fido which was almost the same. But both have much higher latency than Twitter, and what's worse, messages tend to grow in size (and time needed to consume them). Twitter's forced laconicism is very good at keeping discussions short and focused.

Re:trolling for clicks

[WallyL]

-1 for not mentioning "you insensitive clod!"

Re:trolling for clicks

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

And yet, they didn't ban Leslie Jones for encouraging targeted harassment of someone who was mean to her - that tweet is still up. That is against Twitter's ToS, but they didn't make her take it down or do anything to her.

Now, to be sure, she got a lot of abuse, and she didn't deserve that. But I think Twitter should at least try to enforce its ToS evenly.

Re: trolling for clicks

[BarbaraHudson]

Usenet was pretty fast if everyone was using the same server. So, everyone I know switched to using Google to access/post to usenet, and it was pretty much real-time.

Re:trolling for clicks

[AmiMoJo]

She said something unwise under a great deal of stress, one time. Milo is a serial harasser who has been sanctioned before.

Re:trolling for clicks

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

She retweeted her abusers multiple times - drawing attention to them just like Milo did to her. She directly and explicitly encouraged abuse; he did not, in this case.

You could argue that because Milo has done it before, his ban should be permanent, I understand that argument. But Leslie should have been forced to take those tweets down at the very least, if you want to claim even enforcement of the ToS.

Re:trolling for clicks

[Khyber]

"If you have to ask if it was a quake or not, you're not in any danger whatsoever"

Uhh, sinkholes that rapidly expand due to being in a heavily-fractured fault area. Explosions caused by wild fires reaching propane tanks or ruptured gas lines. Oil well explosions or underground gas storage explosions venting massive plumes of toxic crap into the air. Plenty of other things trigger seismic activity in an area.

Re:trolling for clicks

[BarbaraHudson]

And if it was so weak that you can't tell what it was, you don't need to worry about it. Sinkhole? If you didn't sink into it, what's your problem? If you're thinking of staying in a wildfire area until you hear the propane tanks blow, you deserve your darwin award.

Oil well explosions and underground gas storage venting don't represent an immediate threat to anyone who is not nearby - not even that big one out west.

Seismic activity by itself doesn't mean shit. Go stand next to a D9 moving dirt - you'll feel the earth shaking a lot more than a minor quake. And lets face it - quake alerts won't tell you about toxic gases in the air.

You'd be far better off looking for unusual activity by wildlife. They get the message before the fact, whether it's earthquake or hurricane. Looks like they're the smart ones, taking action before disaster strikes.

Re:Twitter isn't interest in stopping trolls unles

[Revek]

Well of course not. Its not trolling if its 'true'.

Re:Wake me up when they ban RealDonaldTrump

[epyT-R]

The real reason for the flack twitter gets is lack of honesty. If they only want progressive views expressed, they need to make it a policy/part of the TOS. Then everyone will know where they stand. No more passive-aggressive moderation of users who express contrarian political views. They'll be banned outright for TOS violation.

Can we choose death then?

[Kohath]

Twitter sucks anyway. It's a bad service run by haters and censors.

Re:Can we choose death then?

[slowdeath]

Twitter should die. It is just a source for rumors and unsubstantiated drivel. It no longer has any redeeming value.

When people played by the rules, it sort of worked. No longer. The dark side of humanity has found an outlet for their hate, and loves it.

Spew hatred and untruth to hundreds of thousand, and millions, of people, with just a #hashtag and a click.

Twitter is responsible for the rise of Donald Trump. He could not have done what he did without Twitter.

Twitter is responsible for the rise of DAESH/ISIL/ISIS. They could not have rose to the prominence they have without Twitter.

Twitter must die.

Re:trolls are good

[Boronx]

There are two problems with your idea. First, trolling and disagreement aren't the same thing. The only reality trolls reveal is that there are a lot of horrible people online who don't care about any standards of civilized behavior.

Also, the trolled can just leave twitter. Eventually it will just be trolls trolling trolls.

Re:What is a Troll?

[Falos]

Many groups try to control the entropy and decay of their label. Feminists and SJWs, sure, but what about "nerd" vs "geek", or hacker/cracker/phreaker/etc, even the anti-title "Anonymous", it happens all the time.

It's not ideal, but the most potent response isn't damage control ("only fucking shitlords say SJW") or arm-waving, loudly announced corrections ("ACTUALLY, hacker means...") it is to relabel.

Premature relabeling is futile and will probably make society miscategorize your subgroups further (eg the tumblrs) but if your entire group is clearly stuck under old stereotypes it's probably best to pack up and leave behind an empty shell for continued scapegoating, despite being uninhabited.

"Troll" hasn't even decayed in any particular direction. It actually has a wider, more chaotic, one-size-fits-all spectrum than "feminist". It was never very clear at any point, really. None of the 90's tech slang was, not by the time it made into the general population's documentations (ie news articles, course books).

In a few cases, trolling is done as an art. Twitter itself has entire accounts dedicated, some very dutifully, to this end. Roleplaying seems popular. My own commitment is enough that I may actually taint my phone with a tindr/grindr/etc. app so I can make one of those horse mask accounts. But calling it "trolling" is asking for misinterpretation, after so many headlines (present company included) the only distinction we've taught Normals to discern is "trolling=bad thing" so we're best off with a precisely calibrated replacement for the chaotic neutral performers out there.

Verified Account filtering options

[HalAtWork]

They might want to consider giving the extra filtering functionality given to Verified Account users to everyone else so such chaff can be more widely filtered out.

I've said it before and I'll say it again

[TimHunter]

The only problem with Twitter is that it has too many users. Do your part to help.

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[Opportunist]

He was removed because Twitter could only choose between pissing off the SJW crowd or the crowd following him. There was no middle ground for them Twitter could not win in this. They choose to side with the SJWs for the sole reason because they already know what kind of batshit insane shitstorm they're able and willing to cause.

It's a bit like how schools side with the schoolyard bully in the hope that whoever he beats up will stay silent and the bully is happy as long as he can continue bullying. Their problem is now that they're facing two bullies hell bent on kicking each other's ass.

What's the point of Twitter?

[RichPowers]

Can someone explain to this ol' fogey why anyone wants to own Twitter at $18/share?

A cursory look at the company's recent financials shows it's still losing money. The number of shares outstanding is also increasing, so even if the company manages to generate (real) free cash at some point, you're entitled to a smaller share of it. The entire thing is bizarre -- it's not like Twitter's in a capital-intensive business like aluminum or shipbuilding.

I wouldn't be surprised if Twitter is sold in the not-too-distant future. I suspect a grown-up management team could probably make Twitter profitably generate cash.

Re:What's the point of Twitter?

[Bing Tsher E]

How could this management team make Twitter generate a profit?

Any practical explanation would be welcome.

Re:What's the point of Twitter?

[Kohath]

There's a lot of easy money out there. People think Google or Verizon will buy Twitter before Jack gets done running it into the ground. Plus it gets a lot of media attention.

And it really should be possible to run a relatively simple Internet service like Twitter at a profit -- it's a 140 character at a time message board with zero editorial content. How hard could it be?

Re:What's the point of Twitter?

[RichPowers]

Exactly. The current SaaS/social media/bullshit.ly bubble is apparent when you examine these companies. In one ear you hear about how "cloud" makes IT operations cheaper. But then a glorified ad delivery platform like Twitter still burns through cash at alarming rates. The business has no moat -- it's a fad at best -- and I think everyone from Google to Twitter will be stung once the impact of widespread adblocking is fully priced into ad rates.

(My gut tells me a correction in the spyware/ad tracking/clickbait ecosystem/cesspool is overdue. This could be recency bias, though: I helped two of my older relatives install uBlock Origin last week. Google has the brains and balance sheet to weather a correction -- Twitter doesn't. Outside of ads, Twitter's only other source of revenue is "analytics," i.e., selling your data to others. But even if the "adblocking effect" doesn't materialize, Twitter probably couldn't survive a drop in ad spend during a recession. My guess is scarce ad dollars are more productively deployed outside of Twitter; as Warren Buffett says, when the tide rolls out we see who's been swimming naked.)

An enterprise is value-destructive to owners if all the sales, R&D, G&A, etc. never amounts to free cash for profitable reinvestment in the business or disbursement to owners in the form of dividends and/or share buybacks. Add to that continued dilution of shareholders and IMHO you're looking at one poorly-run enterprise.

That being said, if an acquirer can bolt the Twitter service onto its existing sales and ops teams, it can probably generate real free cash. Working at Twitter as a peon seems like standing on thin ice -- an acquirer thinking about turning Twitter into a cash flow engine will probably fire 2/3 of the employees, consolidate data centers, etc.

Root cause analysis: central banks and their terrible monetary policies make money too cheap and easy, which leads to grotesque misallocation of resources, bubbles, and painful implosions. Instead letting the market constantly course correct, we effectively subsidize bullshit for a few years, feel good about it, but then have everything explode catastrophically.

"Re-labelling"

[knorthern knight]

> It's not ideal, but the most potent response isn't damage control ("only fucking shitlords say SJW")
> or arm-waving, loudly announced corrections ("ACTUALLY, hacker means...") it is to relabel.

> Premature relabeling is futile and will probably make society miscategorize your subgroups further
> (eg the tumblrs) but if your entire group is clearly stuck under old stereotypes it's probably best to
> pack up and leave behind an empty shell for continued scapegoating, despite being uninhabited.

Blacks have "re-labelled" multiple times, but it hasn't helped their unerlying problems. E.g.

* "Colored People" as in NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People).

* "Negroes" as in United Negro College Fund and also Negro League Baseball https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

* "Afro-Americans"

* "Blacks"

life and death

[frovingslosh]

I find myself rooting for the trolls. #yeatrolls

Re:Signups with no phone #.

[Yvan256]

A form asking for a phone number in 2016 is as foolish as asking how many horses you use to pull your carriage.

Re:trolls are good

[MightyMartian]

No, trolls don't fucking do that. They're just mean-spirited sociopaths bent on making people feel bad. And quit the "snowflake" shit, your type have just as thin a skins.

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[Anonymous Coward]

He was removed because Twitter could only choose between pissing off the SJW crowd or the crowd following him. There was no middle ground for them Twitter could not win in this.

It's simply not true and you are on a site which proves it. The middle ground is to moderate them both down. Basically, any troll posts should be allowed, but should be very hard for people to find. Twitter is failing to do something which Slashdot has succeeded in doing for years. This is a clear sign of failure.

Re:Wake me up when they ban RealDonaldTrump

[AmiMoJo]

Do you have an evidence of this bias towards certain political views? I keep asking and never get any. Every instance I've ever seen has been harassment of some kind. Simple outright racism or other bigotry never gets a ban. Look at how many people tweeted that Ghostbusters photo with the ape, or the one of Michelle Obama made to look like an ape, without being banned.

Disagree != Troll, unless you're Twitter.

[sethstorm]

"Twitter did an excellent job of inventing a digital platform for realtime idea exchange, but it has yet to create the feature that allows the community itself to ferret out the abusers..." writes Backchannel. "And if it cannot figure out how to eradicate the harassers, Twitter's other challenges will remain intractable."

In other words, Backchannel wants a SOCJUS-friendly echochamber.

Re:Disagree != Troll, unless you're Twitter.

[frovingslosh]

Bullshit. The two terms mean exactly the same thing on Slashdot. That's obvious from the many times I've posted a political statement to see it marked up many as insightful, and then seen it marked down as Troll or Flame bait. These terms obviously mean that I didn't like what you said but I can't make an eloquent argument against it and would rather just see that you get less attention by modding you down.

Re:O, I get it

[MightyMartian]

Maybe Twitter is doomed, but it's doom will come a lot faster if it does nothing at all. I've seen this repeated many times over the years; a web forum or newsgroup of some kind gets popular, then the trolls invade, the management and moderators either cannot or will not bring it under control, and then all that's left are the Milos of the world. Hell, that even happened to one of my community's local web boards. A few trolls were allowed to run rampant, everyone else left, and by the time the owner finally shut it down, the only people even logging in were the trolls.

You know what I always say about twitter...

[moosehooey]

Fuck Twitter!!!!

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[hsthompson69]

Mod parent up. Regardless if you're an SJW, or a homosexual conservative, twitter has obviously created a double standard, and the problem isn't with what direction they've chosen (mobs from SJWs okay, mobs of conservatives not okay), but the fact that they chose a direction at all. The arbitrary nature of their actions should be a wakeup call to *anyone*, because tomorrow, it could be you.

What they should do is create "twitterleft.com" and "twitterright.com", and capture both audiences in their own spaces. Instead, they've at the very least disenchanted the people they censor plus a fair number of those who they don't censor but still care about censorship.

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[h33t l4x0r]

Leslie Jones got called a gorilla and left Twitter. I think she handled that pretty well. Twitter's problem was, should they let this guy keep driving users away from their platform? Believe me, they would have much preferred that Jones stuck around to send the hate back-and-forth for as long as possible.

Twitter doesn't care about hate, they care about their bottom line, and losing users like Jones hurts their bottom line.

Look up!

[s.petry]

*woosh*

Yeah, you missed it completely.

Re:Look up!

[Bing Tsher E]

Now, that's certainly a throwaway comment.

I suppose I missed something subtle and clever.

Re:Wake me up when they ban RealDonaldTrump

[epyT-R]

Every instance I've ever seen has been harassment of some kind.

Yeah because you conveniently choose to interpret it as such.

Simple outright racism or other bigotry never gets a ban.

Sure it does... whether it is or not, as long as the user is a white/male criticizing someone who's not.

https://i.sli.mg/fNAcRy.jpg
Of course when someone like Jones makes racist statements about whites, it's ignored. She was part of a movie that was deliberately designed to be sexist towards men as part of its comedic artistry (sexism is apparently ok as long as the targets are men). The movie turned out to be shit on multiple fronts, and when she played victim for the flack she got for it online, she got more of it. No shock there.

If twitter wants to take sides and become the social media DailyKos that's up to them. They should just make it clear in their TOS. I would prefer they stayed neutral, but if not, at least be up front and honest about their expectations.

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[Opportunist]

Twitter could not win in this. They were caught in between the battle of two groups hell bent on creating a huge shit storm if they don't get their will. Basically the position Twitter is in here is that of a school teacher caught in the fight between two groups of bullies not wanting to concede that the other one even exists.

On a more global scale you could compare them with the UN, caught between Israeli and Palestinians. You can't win that fight. The only thing you can do is take a side and endure the fallout.

The real answer

[s.petry]

Give people the ability to filter. One of the main purposes of Free Speech is to promote thought. Listening to other opinions is how we hone and change our own. Forcing everyone to live in a bubble results in what we have now in the College Snowflake (AKA SJW) class of people. Not only does this class of people live in an echo chamber, but they lash out at anyone telling them something not in their chamber. Ben Shapiro being banned from speaking at a campus instead of banning the people who don't want to hear him is insanity, not College.

Any time I hear speech I dislike I can walk away. Don't blame trolls for sites that make you see them, Slashdot for example allows browsing while ignoring them for the most part.

As for Twitter, they should have died long ago. Any company that bans and censors things they dislike while allowing death threats to the same people they claim are bad shows the hypocrisy their leadership. As an easy example, Milo receives death threats from all kinds of people who don't get banned from Twitter, yet he gets banned for mostly being obnoxious while defending his review of a movie. That was the last, not only, time he was punished by Twitter for having an opinion they didn't like. (Don't listen to the fabricated narrative, do the research and read his posts.)

Re:The real answer

[serviscope_minor]

yet he gets banned for mostly being obnoxious while defending his review of a movie.

The libellous faking of tweets had nothing to do with I'm sure. But that's just defending his review of a movie, right? Freeze peach!

Ban hammer

[AndyKron]

If Twitter is bringing the ban hammer down on people because someone's feelings got hurt, then it's game over. Bye bye Twitter

Re:Wake me up when they ban RealDonaldTrump

[hsthompson69]

https://twitter.com/Lesdoggg/s...

Why hasn't this user been banned for inciting harassment?

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[DaHat]

You forgot about her whole punching down campaign in response, including trying to get her followers to harass some of her harassers (still a violation of Twitter rules, something Milo did not do): http://www.breitbart.com/big-h...

There are assholes online, and if you are a celeb you are probably going to get more than your fair share of them. It sucks, and after she stomped off after her own bullying, she returned.

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[h33t l4x0r]

Twitter wins as long as nobody leaves. Twitter likes to pretend that they're the good guys, but they're not. And they're not supposed to be.

I couldn't agree more

[HBI]

I came here to basically say this. I mean, i've been around this block once or twice. Actual trolls are unaffected by the ban hammer. They'll make new accounts and create lots of duplicate accounts from different proxies and such to accomplish their goals.

The interesting part is that this isn't trolling, really, at least not in the Bartle sense of sociopathic "killer" personalities effectively destroying a social environment. This is a political problem more than anything else. It seems that it revolves around the alt-right, which is in itself a reaction to modern leftism. It seems obvious, now, that the reaction to the moral certitude of the modern Left that it has dominance would result in a Right that doesn't care about your morals. Essentially, the people that Twitter wants to keep as users are offended by the presentation of the alt-right point of view.

I believe the use of the ban hammer in this way is just as useless as trying to get rid of trolls with it, but there is a bit of nuance here. I think this is more evidence of the ultimate doom of the current constitution of modern leftism - its inability to tolerate dissent.

Watching Milo and people like Cernovich in action on Twitter was the only reason I even had an account. They are in fact the most interesting thing on Twitter, ironically enough.

*Leslie's* Harassment Campaign.

[sethstorm]

You mean Leslie's harassment campaign on Twitter to silence critics.

Re:*Leslie's* Harassment Campaign.

[thunderclap]

Oh I read her tweets. She deserves to be removed just as well.

Re:*Leslie's* Harassment Campaign.

[Reziac]

Haha, yes. I read both sides. Only one outright called for harrassment. The other, you have to squint.

Milo has the right of it here. Run off all the interesting people and what do you have left? falling stocks.

Full speed ahead.

[Z80a]

This is like watching a train heading to a broken bridge and the operator shoving more coal to attempt to make a jump.

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[Pseudonym]

Basically, any troll posts should be allowed, but should be very hard for people to find. Twitter is failing to do something which Slashdot has succeeded in doing for years.

Not really, most of the Slashdot old guard has abandoned moderation and the trolls have taken over duties.

The best way to view Slashdot today would be to make invisible anything which has an equal number of +1 and -1 votes. If one troll faction hates it and the other troll faction loves it, it's probably not worth reading.

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[MrL0G1C]

I've left, they wanted my phone number, I don't give that out to every tom dick and harry.

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[Mandrel]

The best way to view Slashdot today would be to make invisible anything which has an equal number of +1 and -1 votes. If one troll faction hates it and the other troll faction loves it, it's probably not worth reading.

That touches on the problem of thumb-up/thumb-down moderation often turning into agree/disagree. Slashdot tried to avoid this by naming the different downmods. But this may becoming less effective as newer users moderate as thumbs.

Re:Twitter isn't interest in stopping trolls unles

[aevan]

Difference is rapists don't get to teach courses in university to spread their views.

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[kenai_alpenglow]

Totally agree, insightful (but no mod points right now). I read too many "Troll" comments that are interesting and well written (even if I may disagree with its conclusion). I also see too many +5 Informative comments that are nothing but "me,too"'s or bashing.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Twitter isn't interest in stopping trolls unles

[ArtemaOne]

Yes they do.

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[Pseudonym]

If I could +1 Insightful, I would. But I can't, so I'll just "Like".

Re:"censoring everything I dont agree with" is now

[OrangeTide]

I think they mean the life or death of their business.

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[Anonymous Coward]

On twitter? Anyone that disagrees with you or is a white male.

Re: raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you kno

[Stolovaya]

I left Twitter, couldn't stand their double standards.

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[Mashiki]

My S/O left, and she's the type that twitter wants to keep. Very active(200+ posts per day), 4000+ followers and has social reach outside of her circle. And the very reason she did so was when they instituted their very 1984 named "Ministry of Truth, Justice and Love" sorry, I mean "Safety Council."

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[AmiMoJo]

She was somewhat unprepared and didn't handle the situation perfectly, like people who have been getting harassment from Milo for years do. But Milo can't make the same excuse. He knows what he is doing, he faked screenshots rather blatantly (forgetting to edit out the delete button, I never said he was competent) to encourage his mob. It says a lot that he had to do that, such as the restraint that his victim showed towards him and his followers.

Making one or even a few mistakes don't put anyone on the level of someone like Milo, a professional troll and victim who uses his manufactured Twitter persecution to further his own career.

Uh, really?

[hackel]

Ugh, Twitter didn't "invent a digital platform for realtime idea exchange." It simply invented a way for people to share their text messages with everyone! That's all. Twitter is dated and simply needs to die.

Re:Twitter isn't interest in stopping trolls unles

[JaredOfEuropa]

Rubbish. no one doubted that the "gay rights thing" would end up in schools, since that's where it belongs. And just what the hell are you insinuating about your teacher, teaching about gays and transsexuals and "living across the street". Afraid he's gonna come after your daughter? Come on...

By now it's pretty clear that many gays and transgenders discovered their sexuality at an early age, and that having had to suppress that during childhood and adolescence has caused untold emotional damage to them. No one is advocating that little 6 year old Johnny gets to play "nurse" with his little girlfriends at school, then gets whisked off to a hospital to undergo a sex change because he wants to be one of the girls. First and foremost kids need to be taught about this stuff so they can be comfortable with themselves and with any gay or transgender classmates. I do agree that (as always) the SJW crowd has taken things too far with the "rights" crap: you have the right to pick your own gender, race or species, and you MUST be respected on pain of (social) death. How many letters have we appended to LGBTqiwuwhbsjsjk these days?

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[Aighearach]

If twitter isn't willing to take assertive action to win these battles, they will lose their current exalted position. If you let haters drive people off, those people have left, and the haters are still there to rinse and repeat.

Same in other forums. You either have a system that can counteract it, or you completely lose majority demographics.

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[Rakshasa Taisab]

I haven't seen any of the 'harassment' if Jones that Milo was supposed to be behind. He didn't even get involved in any twitter exchange with her until after the trolls started trolling her.

Well, unless you call writing a review of the movie calling it out for the bad movie he thought it was.

She on the other hand called him the 'Uncle Tom of gays' and told her followers to harass him. The exact kind of hate speech and inciting other target an individual that Twitter claims Milo was responsible for. And there's quite a large number of people who have seen through the bullshit Twitter tried to peddle.

SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC

Oh, right... I see now where you stand, feel free to ignore my post and any facts it may contain.

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[AmiMoJo]

Doesn't really work on social media sites where people follow each other. Kind of the point of Twitter is that you can follow people you find interesting, which means getting a feed of everything they write rather than searching by hashtag etc. Messing with feeds sounds a lot like a shadowban.

Re:Twitter isn't interest in stopping trolls unles

[Opportunist]

Really? You can get a Bacc in Rapeology now? How would I have to envision the curriculum? Starts out with "introduction to rape theory" and "nonverbal pre-rape communication (aka "she's asking for it"), then bridges over "rape through the ages" along with "the impact of rape on culture and economy of the western world" and finally we get a hands on workshop and discuss our results (aka "bragging")?

Re:Twitter isn't interest in stopping trolls unles

[Opportunist]

So... learning about sex is now statutory rape? That sure escalated quickly.

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[serviscope_minor]

If your claims here are as accurate as as your claims about Anita sarkeesian (who you seem to be oddly obsessed with), then your post translates to:

I once heard someone in some blog comments somewhere say that someone popular once left twitter because of the safety council. Probably.

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[serviscope_minor]

Oh, right... I see now where you stand, feel free to ignore my post

OK.

and any facts it may contain.

Tell you what, when you start posting facts, I'll start deciding whether or not to ignore them.

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[Mashiki]

If your claims here are as accurate as as your claims about Anita sarkeesian (who you seem to be oddly obsessed with), then your post translates to:

Well since my claims are more accurate then the stuff you're posting, yes. Then again, since they're not the only person who's left since twitter's new "safety council" has started, I guess that reality. I find it amusing that you're supporting a person who is the feminist version of Jack Thompson though, nothing like benevolent sexism right?

Or it could be people do not like what Twitter is?

[SadButResolved]

Or it could be people do not like corporate, mega rich, establishment tools, showing bad behavior and have decided they do not need twitter for anything important or useful. http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/02/29/bernie-supporters-accuse-twitter-of-censorship-on-behalf-of-hillary/

Re:Twitter isn't interest in stopping trolls unles

[AmiMoJo]

Also, it's very important that we protect LGBT rights and the rights of Muslims who support killing LGBT's.

It makes more sense if you remember it's about freedom and rights. Freedom of religion, the right to be treated equally by society. And yes, just because you have those rights doesn't automatically make you a good person or everything you think/believe right, it just means you are a human being.

How do you know, when somebody got no clue on trol

[allo]

trolling?

When he mentions trolls and abuse in the same sentence.

Re:trolls are good

[seksi-seppo]

First, trolling and disagreement aren't the same thing.

What you point out here is the sad fact that large part of population and mass media do not really distinguish between these two. Labeling someone as troll either because they disagree with your personal opinions or some publicly spread opinion is not that rare these days...

Controlling the Narative

[WorkingDead]

The value of sites like Twitter and Reddit isn't in allowing individuals to have a voice. The real money is being able to demonstrate the ability to control the narrative. The model is to gain a large user base, gain control of the narrative, then sell that echo chamber to the powers that be. That's how Fox News became a thing. CNN, MSNBC and others are emulating that model. Gawker has been successful with it as well. This is the way the 'New Media' works. Censorship is part of the business model and to lose control of the narrative is to lose all value to your REAL customers.

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[denzacar]

The middle ground is to moderate them both down.

Do you see thousand of people on slashdot re-slashdotting slashes of people they dot on to the people that dot on them?
Slashdot doesn't even notify you about your "friends, fans, foes and freaks" posting something - AND THAT'S A GOOD THING.
It is a very different thing to moderate slashdot compared to twitter.
And that's just regarding the whole nature of the social network.
Let's not forget that slashdot predates twitter by decades, has a smaller and more tech/science oriented following, which is growing older faster than twitter's - and that people here CAN express in sentences longer than a bee's neck.

And then there's the whole thing of treating both sides of a trolling the same...
Which would be kinda like a government organizing an execution of their own random citizens - every time the terrorists attack.
"Ha-HA! That'll show em! Take that ISIS! You can't kill nowhere as near as many of us as we can! Who's got a small dick now?!"

Maybe they need Slashdot's system

[DrXym]

Randomly assign a moderator based on trust, give them moderator points, allow them to downrank the trolls into oblivion. If an account accumulates enough points then other measures can be taken to either restrict access to certain feeds or block devices or users entirely.

Re:Maybe they need Slashdot's system

[Lehk228]

rather than taking negative action, except in cases of violations of the law, they could assign a "hostility" rank to accounts, and you can set your view to only show posts by accounts below a threshold, just as you can browse slashdot comments at different thresholds, except twitter is more realtime so the rankings should be by poster rather than by post.

Blame who you dislike right?

[s.petry]

Honesty, you should try it sometime. Milo did not fake tweets, you are fabricating.

Re:Blame who you dislike right?

[MightyMartian]

If Milo didn't fake the series of fake Jones' tweets, then he went out of his way to make them appear legitimate.

Re:Blame who you dislike right?

[serviscope_minor]

Honesty, you should try it sometime. Milo did not fake tweets, you are fabricating.

So the one where he forgot to edit out the delete button on his 'shopped tweet never happened? Whether he made them himself or merely retweeted them, it's still libel.

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[T.E.D.]

What they should do is create "twitterleft.com" and "twitterright.com", and capture both audiences in their own spaces. Instead, they've at the very least disenchanted the people they censor plus a fair number of those who they don't censor but still care about censorship.

That's just not true at all. A large part of the value of Twitter is that its a place where people can interact with others whose real opinions they don't often get to hear. The problem is when people get upset that is happening, and a person with a black AVI wakes up daily to tweets calling them the n-word, a person with a female AVI gets snowed under with rape threats, a person with both gets both, etc.

I follow one palestinian guy who tweets about Arab Spring, and he gets harassment from everyone you can imagine. Both sides of every conflict sent him hate, and westerners do it too just because he's Arab. Atheists send him hate and death threats for daring to hold a religion, and extremist Muslims send him hate and death threats for not being extremist. How is your left/right twitter going to fix that?

This isn't a liberal vs. conservative thing. This is a listening vs. bullying thing.

What most people are missing is Twitter *already* has a moderation system: bullying. They just need a much healthier one.

Re: O, I get it

[MightyMartian]

I'd log in on occasion. Didn't post. There was no point, as the trolls weren't interested in discussion.

Re:O, I get it

[MightyMartian]

It was a private web forum. The owner could have taken some initiative, banned the assholes and maybe saved the forum. As it is, the only people that ultimately enjoyed any speech were the trolls, who finally got bored and departed as well.

A successful posting forum of any kind needs to have and enforce standards of conduct. There are ways to express even unpopular opinions that don't amount to bullying and being hyperbolic to the extreme.

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[serviscope_minor]

Well since my claims are more accurate then the stuff you're posting, yes.

Glad I got my popcon. This is getting entertaining!

Then again, since they're not the only person who's left since twitter's new "safety council" has started, I guess that reality.

I don't doubt some people have left. I doubt your pesonal stoy, because of your strong history of confusing you rather odd fantasies (seriously dude, why not fantasize about fun stuff?) with reality. Do I care that people have left because of the new "safety council"? Nope not in the slightest. I've not really got any skin in the game since I don't use twitter, but the onus is on them to stop it tuning into a complete shitfest and I think it's good they're finally waking up to their responsibilities.

The fact that it annoys you so much it mere icing on the cake.

I find it amusing that you're supporting a person who is the feminist version of Jack Thompson though,

Right, because she's sued people and been disbarred. Or do you mean that merely daring to voice an opinion is equivalent to absing the legal process badly enough to get disbared.

nothing like benevolent sexism right?

I think you need to consult a dictionary. As a first step, if I were you, I'd look up "sexism". For your second step, you should look up "non sequiteur".

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[Reziac]

"He was removed because Twitter could only choose between pissing off the SJW crowd or the crowd following him."

And that only because they decided to take sides in the first place. If they'd just ignored the SJW crowd (and for that matter, the anti-crowd), in Milo's own words -- "nothing bad happens."

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[Reziac]

I understand there is an effective blockbot for Twitter, so you can block whomever you like. I've heard of people getting blocked just for following someone that is disliked, having never interacted at all.

The real problem, tho, is people who are not only thin-skinned but feel compelled to read and react to every word that comes their way, having never outgrown that teenage narcissism that everything is about them, hence having never learned to ignore the morons.

Re:Twitter isn't interest in stopping trolls unles

[Reziac]

Just wait. It's a-comin', tho it'll be called something like "Intro to Victimology".

Re:Twitter isn't interest in stopping trolls unles

[Reziac]

"No one is advocating that little 6 year old Johnny gets to play "nurse" with his little girlfriends at school, then gets whisked off to a hospital to undergo a sex change because he wants to be one of the girls."

Actually, some of the more loony voices ARE advocating exactly that, or at least that Johnny promptly gets dosed with puberty-suppressing hormones; there's already been some backlash given this is not a risk-free or entirely reversible medical procedure.

You think twitter needs to do something about hate

[friesofdoom]

I've read hundreds of comments here about how twitter needs to deal with these "haters" like Milo... What about this hate?
https://i.redditmedia.com/vFlv7wp2V8YTGmKkeeyaglj08kPpO-q_MRDWZu1213Q.jpg?s=f07b4ce4c91e2be693f54fb923d9fd38

Double standard much?

Re:Wake me up when they ban RealDonaldTrump

[hsthompson69]

But somehow a gay conservative giving a bad movie review rose above that low bar? :)

Re:Twitter isn't interest in stopping trolls unles

[Opportunist]

But we already have gender studies, what would be the difference?

Oh, so you're a mysoginist. Makes sense...

[denzacar]

I don't even know what the fuck the problem was. If you don't want to go see the Ghostbusters reboot, don't go see it.

Men ARE from Mars.

And if you say you don't want to watch a Ghostbusters rema...rebo... restar... cynical cash grab then you are a sexist mysoginist buthurt baby child(?) salty regressive trans-hater.

You must also be one of those men (i.e. THE men) who sabotage female shows on imdb.
We know that cause you are pretending to ignore that "'The Angry Video Game Nerd,' a misogynistic web show whose sycophantic Wikipedia entry made me pine for hemlock in my coffee" even exists.
When it was after all, right there in the article featured right here.

BTW, all that was even before the movie which was promoted like this came out to fantastic reviews which keep talking about women and naysayers and ruined bro childhoods of little boys - and to a disaster at the box office.
Then again, The Nice Guys also had FANTASTIC reviews and yet it flopped... but the tone of the reviews is markedly different.

Now, take all that happening before the Twitter controversy and consider if there is perhaps a chance that the entire thing was blown out of proportion on purpose?
By a company known for faking reviews for marketing purposes.

Re:Twitter isn't interest in stopping trolls unles

[Reziac]

Good point.

Easy solution

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

There is, in fact, already an easy solution to prevent being targeted by trolls while still using Twitter - just protect your account. Only people you accept can see anything you post then. Blocklists are also available, for those who want to use them.

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

She only left Twitter temporarily, and handled getting trolled really poorly. Like, it's her account and she can respond however she wants to to abuse, sure. But retweeting the people sending you nasty stuff - giving them a bigger audience and more attention - is exactly the wrong way to deal with trolls. All they want is attention, and she was giving them tons of it.

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[skam240]

Separate Twitters based on ideology? I couldnt disagree with that idea more. There's way too much of that on the internet already. There's a reason right wing and left wing nut jobs are so noticable today and it's precisely because they increasingly have their own echo chambers that accomplish zero in actual discourse on anything of substance and only serve to rile people up and demonize the "other"

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[hsthompson69]

Well, given the option of "force twitter.com (aka twitterleft.com) to allow freedom of speech", or "create an alternative twitterright.com to capture the users censored by twitterleft.com", I'll assert the second one is less burdensome.

That all being said, it could just be time for twitter to die, and some free speech alternative to rise up.

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[david_thornley]

Okay, so at least two people left Twitter since they started a Safety Council. Do you have a point?

Re:Twitter isn't interest in stopping trolls unles

[david_thornley]

Also, it's very important that we protect LGBT rights and the rights of Muslims who support killing LGBT's.

Actually, the rights the LGBT community has campaigned for are things like the right to have their own sex life without official interference, the right to marry whom they love, the sorts of things other people take for granted. Rarely if ever do they campaign for special treatment.

And, yes, Muslims have the right to their religious beliefs, the same as everyone else. They can support killing LGBTs in principle, just like others can support the killing of Muslims in principle. Neither party can legally incite murder. Everyone has the right to be an asshole, and that's important, because it's really impossible to tell the difference between somebody just being an asshole and someone who has opinions most people find abhorrent, and we need those opinions to get floated every so often.

I am curious how you figure who has power on social media. Do the ones who annoy you have some sort of special privilege?

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[skam240]

I'll start this with stating the fact that i've never used twitter and have zero interest in it. It just seems like a platform made for oversimplified comments at best and trolls at worse. I'm also not a big fan of outright censorship like the banning of any type of speach that doesnt constitute an immediate threat.

With all that said, from everything I've heard, right wing views are very much alive and well on the platform.

Trolling vs Criticism

[sdguero]

My #1 use for twitter is to respond to local politicians in my city. I could see someone claiming I'm a troll because of the general negativity. Would twitter decide to ban me for my comments? If so, I'd definitely stop using the application. Not that I give twtr with any revenue anyway.

Re:Of Course NWO Agent

[Pseudonym]

I remember when "NWO Agent" (or words to that effect) was an accusation made by the anti-globalisation movement. If there was ever any doubt that left-wing crazy and right-wing crazy are two sides of the same coin, here's your evidence.

To scared anonymous coward

[RCL]

There's no NWO. There's a scared, weak Europe of 450M people who are afraid that ~1M hungry and dirt poor refugees will take over.

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[T.E.D.]

understand there is an effective blockbot for Twitter

I would imagine there are several. The one I've heard of is an app that allows groups of users to share block lists, which I think is an idea particularly well-suited to Twitter (where the same trolls tend to target the same groups of users). It would be nice if Twitter was capable of coming up with (and implementing) these ideas themselves though. Having support in the app is really important, particularly since they take the old "it ain't done until Lotus won't run" attitude towards supporting third-party apps.

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[Reziac]

Yeah, you'd think it would be fairly simple to incorporate a block-user command that could be applied whenever you wish, with a perusable block list so you can change your mind later. Geez, just a friend/foe function like we have here would suffice.

Or, of course, folks could just ignore people they don't like.

How about this: ...

[martinfb]

How about requiring posting subscribers to pass a test: one must prove, beyond all doubt, one's level of education, and knowledge of current events - the FACTS, not the media slant.

That may help. It seems most trolls are uneducated idiots that are there merely to create and/or spread unfounded gossip. And MOST media outlets do not help; being more interested in slanting a story or sensationalizing it!

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[T.E.D.]

The main thing I'm thinking is if it were incorporated in-app, you could do things like visually indicate how often a user has been blocked right on their profile, have block settings so you don't see stuff from highly blocked users (or better yet, users highly blocked by feeds you follow), etc. There are all kinds of things twitter could do with their app, but all they have is one dumb block button, and otherwise its the wild wild west.

A "social media" app in the modern era absolutely must have a way to crowdsource moderation. You can't hire employees fast enough to keep up with banning all the jerks, and the jerks know that. However, there are more of us well-intentioned users than there are jerks, so we as users can do the job easily, if given good tools to do so.

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[Reziac]

I don't disagree, but I'd also like a way to turn off that crowdsourced moderation, because if it becomes groupthink points that's not useful either.

As it stands... this banning people because they don't get along (for any value of getting along) will, as Milo puts it, result in the most interesting people leaving (at least for some values of interesting).

Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know

[Mashiki]

Glad I got my popcon. This is getting entertaining!

Would that be like your claim that anti-gamergate people don't actually dox people? You should notice some very big names there.

... The fact that it annoys you so much it mere icing on the cake.

The fact that you don't have a problem with the silencing of opinions that don't fit your world view says a lot more about you then anything else. You don't think that you won't be the next one on the list?

Right, because she's sued people and been disbarred. Or do you mean that merely daring to voice an opinion is equivalent to absing the legal process badly enough to get disbared.

You mean where she turns around and pushes for censorship, and is exactly the same as Jack Thompson minus the law degree, but you don't seem to have a problem with that?

I think you need to consult a dictionary. As a first step, if I were you, I'd look up "sexism". For your second step, you should look up "non sequiteur".

Perhaps you should try "reality" followed by "fact." Or you can try explaining why people give pro-authoritarian folks like Sarkeesian a microphone and openly support her point of view when if the sex was revered they'd not only be doing the opposite but there would be op-ed articles a mile long about how she's trying to restrict the freedoms of other people.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Too late. Twitter is already dead

[shanen]

Too late now. Twitter is already dead, though it isn't certain the trolls did it. The fundamental idea wasn't that great.

I can barely even speculate what the high traffic signified. Perhaps "If it is easy enough, many people will tweet"? Or maybe "Tweet now, it's easier than thinking"? Twitter is just noise, but it links to random stuff, some of which is not noise?

Anyway, looking for insight into trolls and lameness, and this was the most recent article on slashdot. Surprised not to find the Subject: comment, but I didn't really search that hard.

Certainly not anticipating finding any insight in association with Twitter, but you can never be certain. Maybe the thread is worth another scan for "insightful" posts? Or there must be some "funny" ones here?

But is there a solution to trolls?

[shanen]

So far this was the only post moderated "insightful" that wasn't an obvious troll (or sock puppet) mod. Seems to be about par for today's slashdot, but maybe I'll find another.. (Only two "funny" mods in such a target-rich environment. Slashdot has seriously broken its funny bone.)

[How is it possible to discuss the problematic topic when slashdot censors those discussions with the so-called lameness filter? Anyway, the rest of this post uses the substitute "trall" instead. Mindless censorship of any discussion of a problem is certainly not a solution, but there must be a story there.]

To me it makes little sense to worry about unsolvable problems, so the real question is whether or not the trall problem can be solved or at least ameliorated. I think that depends on understanding something of the tralls' motivations and short-circuiting them. Can the tralls be potty trained to short circuit themselves?

Focusing on the time-wasting and attention-seeking aspects of tralls, I think the focus should be on reducing the time they waste and starving them of attention. Here is a three-part proposal (as customized for slashdot) (and I would even be likely to help fund such a feature if slashdot had such a funding mechanism).

(1) Kill filter for long-lived tralls. Perhaps as an option on the "Foe" designation? If I can't see a trall's garbage then it won't waste my time.

(2) Maturity filter for short-lived sock puppets. To reduce the discouragement of newbies, it might default to "off", but I would start by setting mine to three months on the theory that most sock puppets die sooner than that.

(3) A reflexive sincerity check with an associated filter. When someone replies to a post (call it P1), then the system will check the visibility from the perspective of the author of P1. If the reply will not be seen, then it will give a warning and encourage posting elsewhere. The top of the article is always available, even to newbies. If a trall insists on replying to P1, then it would prepend a warning to the trall's comment: "Not a sincere dialog. <trall's handle> was notified this reply is not visible to the OP." The filter part would allow me to ignore all posts with the warning, again saving my time (and depriving the tralls of attention).

But slashdot censors discussions of tralls

[shanen]

Another rare "insightful" post that isn't a troll mod.

Per the subject, I'll use the substitute "trall" most of the time below. It's called the lameness filter, and there is probably a funny story behind it, but it's still bad insofar as it prevents discussion of the problem.

I agree with you on many points, but the problem with your tolerance is that your time is finite and there is an infinite supply of trolls eager to waste your time. Their freedom of screech should not forbid you from wearing earplugs.

Here is my three-part suggestion:

(1) Kill filter for long-lived tralls. Perhaps as an option on the "Foe" designation? If I can't see a trall's garbage then it won't waste my time.

(2) Maturity filter for short-lived sock puppets. To reduce the discouragement of newbies, it might default to "off", but I would start by setting mine to three months on the theory that most sock puppets die sooner than that.

(3) A reflexive sincerity check with an associated filter. When someone replies to a post (call it P1), then the system will check the visibility from the perspective of the author of P1. If the reply will not be seen, then it will give a warning and encourage posting elsewhere. The top of the article is always available, even to newbies. If a trall insists on replying to P1, then it would prepend a warning to the trall's comment: "Not a sincere dialog. <trall's handle> was notified this reply is not visible to the OP." The filter part would allow me to ignore all posts with the warning, again saving my time (and depriving the tralls of attention).

Has jujitsu been tried?

[shanen]

Only the third insightful comment that wasn't a troll mod, and I recognize the handle... Has this kind of solution been tried? (Using "trall" because of slashdot's censoring lameness filter.)

Here is my three-part suggestion:

(1) Kill filter for long-lived tralls. Perhaps as an option on the "Foe" designation? If I can't see a trall's garbage then it won't waste my time.

(2) Maturity filter for short-lived sock puppets. To reduce the discouragement of newbies, it might default to "off", but I would start by setting mine to three months on the theory that most sock puppets die sooner than that.

(3) A reflexive sincerity check with an associated filter. When someone replies to a post (call it P1), then the system will check the visibility from the perspective of the author of P1. If the reply will not be seen, then it will give a warning and encourage posting elsewhere. The top of the article is always available, even to newbies. If a trall insists on replying to P1, then it would prepend a warning to the trall's comment: "Not a sincere dialog. <trall's handle> was notified this reply is not visible to the OP." The filter part would allow me to ignore all posts with the warning, again saving my time (and depriving the tralls of attention).

Suggested implementation of yoru solution

[shanen]

With disrespect to the lameness filter, I'm using "trall" for "troll" below:

Here is my three-part suggestion:

(1) Kill filter for long-lived tralls. Perhaps as an option on the "Foe" designation? If I can't see a trall's garbage then it won't waste my time.

(2) Maturity filter for short-lived sock puppets. To reduce the discouragement of newbies, it might default to "off", but I would start by setting mine to three months on the theory that most sock puppets die sooner than that.

(3) A reflexive sincerity check with an associated filter. When someone replies to a post (call it P1), then the system will check the visibility from the perspective of the author of P1. If the reply will not be seen, then it will give a warning and encourage posting elsewhere. The top of the article is always available, even to newbies. If a trall insists on replying to P1, then it would prepend a warning to the trall's comment: "Not a sincere dialog. <trall's handle> was notified this reply is not visible to the OP." The filter part would allow me to ignore all posts with the warning, again saving my time (and depriving the tralls of attention).

Re:Suggested implementation of yoru solution

[AK Marc]

The studies I've seen are that it's easy to "kill" trolls. If you mask them such that they can see their post, and nobody responds, they rage-quit. They exist to annoy. They don't serve any other purpose. When they don't get responses, they get frustrated, and leave. If a normal person posts, and doesn't get responses, they assume everyone heard and agreed. When a troll doesn't get responses, they assume they didn't piss off anyone enough to cause a response. Silently filtering out trolls doesn't harm anyone. If the person filtered out for a month quits, then they were most likely a troll, not a normal. If the person continues posting after a month, then they aren't a troll. So an automated troll filter would mask responses randomly for a period of time. Though, nobody has studied whether this filters trolls if the trolls know the process exists.

Re:Suggested implementation of your solution

[shanen]

I certainly think that applies to some trolls, but I think there are various kinds of trolls, just as there are various kinds of mental illnesses. Some of them are worse than others, but I'm suggesting that we look for mechanisms that will make the trolls invisible precisely BECAUSE they are acting like trolls. Posting a reply that will not be seen may stop some trolls, but some of them will just play to the crowd in hopes of annoying someone else, even if they can't reach and annoy the person they are fake-replying to.

That is why I am advocating a self-flag mechanism for insincerity. I think one of the primary characteristics of trolls is that they are NOT interested in a sincere dialog.

Re:Suggested implementation of your solution

[AK Marc]

I don't think I was clear. Their posts disappear. They aren't there, except to be seen when they are logged on as themselves. Nobody else sees it, so nobody else will reply to it. You don't mask their replies, but mask the troll post from being seen in the first place by anyone.

They don't do it to annoy random people, but they do it for the attention/reaction. Block that, and they disappear.

That is why I am advocating a self-flag mechanism for insincerity. I think one of the primary characteristics of trolls is that they are NOT interested in a sincere dialog.

So the troll would voluntarily self-flag as troll? I don't see how a self-flag would work. The trolls will self-flag whatever is needed to cause a response.

Re:Suggested implementation of your solution

[shanen]

When the troll is trying to reply to a person who will not see that reply, the troll would only have two choices: (1) Post and self-flag, or (2) Don't post and go away. Of course I think (2) is better, but in the case of (1) the troll's lack of sincerity is clear. In case (1) the troll would apparently be 'playing for the crowd' of other people who might be reading the thread, but anyone who did see it would also know that.

I'm approaching the problem from the perspective of saving time. I simply do not want to waste my time on trolls.

Of course I also admit that it's a tricky question and you are right that the trolls will try to abuse any rules you set up. For example, a really determined troll could try to maintain an army of sock puppet identities of various ages to confuse the maturity filter.

Re:Suggested implementation of your solution

[AK Marc]

For example, a really determined troll could try to maintain an army of sock puppet identities of various ages to confuse the maturity filter.

The troll study I found showed that the trolls did use multiple identities to better troll, and having one troll post not be visible from the other account trolled the trolls, so they left. So, even if they found out what you were doing, it still drove them away. Though, the multiple accounts would take longer for any single one to have the troll ban placed on it, as the posts would be fewer per account. But many services look at IP, so someone with multiple accounts might gain a post or two more, but likely not much.

Re:Suggested implementation of your solution

[shanen]

Well, I think we are mostly in agreement that increasing the uncertainty will deter some trolls. However, I think slashdot should focus on relatively simple rules and mechanisms and let the uncertainty arise when people set their individual preferences using those mechanisms.

However, I still think that there are some trolls who will continue posting no matter what. Some of them are just insane, which is a perfect and perfectly useless explanation for their behavior. "He did it because he's nuts. Who knows what he'll do next? He's nuts."

Re:Suggested implementation of your solution

[fustakrakich]

The filtering system, using thresholds and moderation, available to Slashdot users is the best out there. And subscribers have it even better by controlling who can post in their journals.

Posting through a proxy can defeat IP banning.

The rules should be simple. If you want to filter something out, do it at your end. Don't try to control what other people can see or say. Nobody is forcing you to look and listen.