Slashdot Mirror
Former Twitter Employees: 'Abuse Problem' Comes From Their Culture Of Free Speech (buzzfeed.com)
Twitter complained of "inaccuracies in the details and unfair portrayals" in an article which described their service as "a honeypot for assholes." Buzzfeed interviewed 10 "high-level" former employees who detailed a company "Fenced in by an abiding commitment to free speech above all else and a unique product that makes moderation difficult and trolling almost effortless". An anonymous Slashdot reader summarizes their report:
Twitter's commitment to free speech can be traced to employees at Google's Blogger platform who all went on to work at Twitter. They'd successfully fought for a company policy that "We don't get involved in adjudicating whether something is libel or slander... We'll do it if we believe we are required to by law." One former Twitter employee says "The Blogger brain trust's thinking was set in stone by the time they became Twitter Inc."
Twitter was praised for providing an uncensored voice during 2009 elections in Iran and the Arab Spring, and fought the secrecy of a government subpoena for information on their WikiLeaks account. The former of head of news at Twitter says "The whole 'free speech wing of the free speech party' thing -- that's not a slogan. That's deeply, deeply embedded in the DNA of the company... [Twitter executives] understand that this toxicity can kill them, but how do you draw the line? Where do you draw the line? I would actually challenge anyone to identify a perfect solution. But it feels to a certain extent that it's led to paralysis.
While Twitter now says they are working on the problem, Buzzfeed argues this "maximalist approach to free speech was integral to Twitter's rise, but quickly created the conditions for abuse... Twitter has made an ideology out of protecting its most objectionable users. That ethos also made it a beacon for the internet's most vitriolic personalities, who take particular delight in abusing those who use Twitter for their jobs."
Twitter was praised for providing an uncensored voice during 2009 elections in Iran and the Arab Spring, and fought the secrecy of a government subpoena for information on their WikiLeaks account. The former of head of news at Twitter says "The whole 'free speech wing of the free speech party' thing -- that's not a slogan. That's deeply, deeply embedded in the DNA of the company... [Twitter executives] understand that this toxicity can kill them, but how do you draw the line? Where do you draw the line? I would actually challenge anyone to identify a perfect solution. But it feels to a certain extent that it's led to paralysis.
While Twitter now says they are working on the problem, Buzzfeed argues this "maximalist approach to free speech was integral to Twitter's rise, but quickly created the conditions for abuse... Twitter has made an ideology out of protecting its most objectionable users. That ethos also made it a beacon for the internet's most vitriolic personalities, who take particular delight in abusing those who use Twitter for their jobs."
Each moderator here is basically a little Hitler, with the power to censor five posts they don't like. It's basically a power trip for people who are otherwise completely irrelevant in this world. Those mod points are generally used to censor posts they don't like as being trolls. As a result, Slashdot is incapable of providing an uncensored view of current events. Unless you're rapidly anti-government and anti-Microsoft to a ridiculous extreme, you'll be censored by the little Hitlers. Right now, several moderators are furiously stroking their tiny cocks at the thought of being able to censor my post to -1. Sadly, as long as moderators are around, Slashdot will never be a place where a truly open discussion can take place.
I'm shocked that anyone would think free speech is a good idea! All speech should be moderated by a team of SJWs to suppress any opposing opinions! All adult material must be censored because "think of the children"! This free speech nonsense must end!
Twitter should look to the UK, where we have a genuine Thought Police backed by an army of volunteer SJWs:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3739348/Scotland-Yard-ploughs-2million-new-thought-police-unit-snoop-web-users-hunt-trolls.html
I was also going to link a liberal source for this, but the Guardian didn't appear to cover the news and the Independent seems to have removed their rather critical article after realising the liked the idea of a leftist Thought Police:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/scotland-yard-thought-police-online-hate-crime-social-media-trolling-abuse-racism-post-brexit-racism-a7189971.html
Can I ask the people on the left, when did the left start to view free speech as being a bad thing? Do people on the left agree with the current moves towards oppressive censorship or is this simply the ruling class acting on their own?
Twitter provides a block feature, a mute feature, the ability to report harassment, and various features to control how public your tweets are. If someone is harassing you, why don't you block them? I'm not sure why we need to kill free speech to fix a problem that appears to be already solved...
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
"Free speech" doesn't mean anyone has to listen to you. Unfortunately the Twitter staff act like it does.
Twitter lacks effective ways for people not to listen to things. Users lack ways to filter the content they see, filter who can send to them, filter seeing third party mentions of them, and so on.
The asshole problem on twitter is that they can be effective assholes: twitter makes it hard, or impossible, for the targets of attack to block or filter out the messages, so the targets of abuse receive the messages, so the assholes succeed in abuse. "Not using twitter" is not a realistic option for many people who work in media, PR, or whose jobs and lives are about communication - so they end up in a situation where they are the targets of the assholes and cannot do much about it.
Twitter should care more about the recipient users, not the sender users - and they can do that without compromsing anyone's ability to speak.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled"
Open windows let in foul air, as well as fresh air.
Same deal with foul speech and fresh speech.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
. . . perhaps if you have the correct POV. Anyone on the Right, however, seems to be subject to arbitrary and capricious censorship on the Twitter platform, without explanation or even appeal.
And it happens to targets large and small: the obvious large example is Milo Yiannopolous, but also lesser lights like SF author Brian Niemayer.
Add to that, the recently created Trust and Advisory Board which all comes from the same end of the political spectrum. Apparently, Twitter is all about Free Speech. . . only some Speech is More Free than others. . .
That Twitter has an abuse problem? That an abuse problem is the result of free speech? That Twitter is committed to free speech? That what they're doing isn't meant to silence just a point of view they don't agree with?
If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. People who make provocative statements can't expect to be shielded from criticism, even harsh criticism. Free speech does not mean you get to unload your opinion on other people and they can't express their protest. Assembling a bunch of SJWs into a "Trust & Safety Council" is to free speech like a "Fire Prevention Initiative" made up of arsonists is to a barbecue.
When Twitter quits banning people who haven't broken their rules, we'll talk.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
But publishing standards should not.
What anyone posts on Twitter is, by every definition of the word, publishing. So, if People Magazine makes a statement like, "Pollux is a child molester," they are making an untrue public statement that may easily be subject to a libel suit. Trolls everyday on Twitter say the same, so why don't we hold Twitter to the same standard? They are the medium and should be held as equally responsible as any paper printing of the same libelous statement.
"We'll do it if we believe we are required to by law." No, you aren't.
Either you believe in free speech or you don't.
Unfortunately even in today's modern world, unpopular opinions continue to need Voltaire's "defending to the death" because those in power are all too ready to mete it out (if they only could) - instead of countering it with their own opinion and civilized debate.
And it doesn't matter where in the political spectrum you fall, people everywhere pay lip service to "free speech" only when it suits them. To the contrary, those on the left are often the most intolerant of people saying something falling foul of the accepted orthodoxy.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Agreed. Slashdot has easily the single best method of moderating out of every major website
Kind of adorable that you think slashdot is still a "major website". 10-15 years ago slashdot kind of mattered. Someone posted a link and it would generate so much traffic it could crash the server (slashdotting). Not so much anymore. Comment volume has dropped substantially, a lot of the "celebrities" (for lack of a better word) that used to read and comment have long since moved on. Many of us (myself included) still find it amusing and fun but slashdot isn't the force in the geek community that it once was.
trying to define what is free speech and what is abuse it like jumping on a slippery slope with ice shoes
the obvious large example is Milo Yiannopolous
The guy was banned for organizing troll mobs. Freedom of speech isn't freedom from consequences, if you shout "fire!" in a theatre you will get banned regardless of your rights.
If anything he is proof that Twitter will give people every possible benefit of the doubt and every opportunity to remain on the service. The amount of racist crap he spewed out over the years was pretty awful, but Twitter tolerated it because they only ban over direct threats and mobbing, the former of which is a crime in their jurisdiction.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Because repeatedly sending out abusive tweets directed at one person in particular should be allowed.
It is one thing to disagree with someone, criticize their actions or point of view, but to repeatedly and ad nauseum go after them because of their race, that is not something which, despite free speech, should be tolerated on someone elses platform.
As Twitter said when banning him:
"People should be able to express diverse opinions and beliefs on Twitter. But no one deserves to be subjected to targeted abuse online, and our rules prohibit inciting or engaging in the targeted abuse or harassment of others."
But go ahead. Whine about how only one point of view was censored while completely ignoring the relevant facts.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Maybe I should check them out...
Thanks
The amount of racist crap he spewed out over the years was pretty awful
Any examples? I know he tends to judge various cultures, but a culture is not the same as a race. You knew that right?
Didn't we just read about them using algorithms to suppress political speech they don't like?
So... since they didn't suppress some speech, does that mean they support the message or just are completely apathetic when comes to people or causes they don't support?
This is just more propaganda on the road to criminalize dumb service providers. One day they'll want to make Twitter responsible because "someone with a Twitter account committed suicided because of abusive comments". The same way Cox Communications was made financialy responsible for its customers torrenting copyrighted materials. Absurd!
The purpose is to scare into compliance all those companies that sell themselves as "dumb pipes" into establishing their own internal censorship. Desired result: the end of freedom in the internet as we know it, since in that case the only solution to speak your mind would be to make your own platform on your own turf and keep it private.
Twitter already has a "thought police" department but some interest groups are not satisfied yet. They never are.
Honeypot for Twits. That is all.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Who do they think their fooling?
Twitter is well known for either being extremely tolerant or intolerant of bullying, death threats, personal attacks all based on your politics. Want to threaten to kill a cop? Go right ahead. Fancy hate speech against white people? That's okay. Want to use twitter to propagate terrorist propaganda? No worries, they can't be bothered to do anything about it.
With twitter, free speech depends on who your victim is. In fact their executives refuse to go on the record saying that they support free speech.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-g...
...an article which described their service as "a honeypot for assholes."
No, Twitter is only part of the internet.
I think it is time to rethink how we classify, view, and regulate social media platforms. The fact is that these platforms have moved beyond the age where they existed simply to swap selfies and funny cat videos. Over a very short period of time, these platforms have transformed into essential networks where most of the free exchange of ideas take place. Couple this with the fact that many people might be unwilling or unlikely to seek out other platforms in which they can engage others in political discussion with others, and you will reach a frightening realization. Not only are people self-limiting themselves to getting much of their information from these networks, but the social media network owners are absolutely free to manipulate what data is presented to the users of said network. In effect, this gives these companies what might be considered a loose "monopoly" on what ideas people are "allowed" to view and interact with.
Now, naturally, people are absolutely free to seek out other sources of information, use other social media platforms, or avoid the internet entirely. However, the questions that I think we should engage with here are these.... Are they going to other sources? How viable are these other sources? How well traveled are these other sources? How well networked are they?
If people are not making use of these sources, or worse, are actively being encouraged to avoid them by the very same social media companies which keep people voluntarily "locked" into their networks (insofar as the fact that no one is going to use a social media platform that has no one on it, meaning that people really are "locked" into using the ones that have high rates of use), then one cannot consider these to be viable alternatives. Even more imporantly, if there are no viable alternatives to these major social networks, I would argue that a new form of monopoly has developed. This new monopoly, even if one can voluntarily disengage in it, is engaged in a widespread campaign of censorship, media, and information manipulation designed entirely to alter the political discourse of our societies. This places the majority of political discussion in the hands of a very select group of people who can now essentially control everything you are allowed to see, hear, read, watch, and discuss.
This is too much power for anyone, even if any association with these companies is technically voluntary. I would argue at this point that we need a new form of telecom legislation, along the line of the common carrier laws, which force social media companies to be completely neutral in regard to controlling what information will or will not be displayed.
We could bicker over the fact that these are private companies and that people can use other platforms, but I feel these are technicalities at this point. We've had no issue in the past reigning in the abusive and monopolistic practices of an entire spectrum of other industries when the public good was at stake, and I think it is time to bring the social media platforms to heel. The fact is that these networks now control what billions of people see and hear, and, whether we like it or not, people are going to continue to go solely to these platforms, because that is where their family and friends are also.
Our political discourse should not be in the hands of the elite.
I couldn't mod this up enough, spot on sir.
I'm guessing you use that meaningless bit of semantics to justify your own racist attitudes, right? "Oh, he's judging a culture, not a race. Therefore he's not racist and I'm not racist for agreeing with him."
You know what's nice about people like you? You'll all be dead sooner or later and the world will be better off without you.
Have you noticed lately how censorship enthusiasts always resort to ad-hominem attacks against unnamed crimethinkers? Their basic argument goes like this: "oh, they're just a bunch of assholes, they don't deserve free speech like me and my goodthinking buddies do."
He made up quotes that purportedly came from Leslie Jones. Anyone willing to defend that as not breaking the Twitter rules?
Congratulations, you've checked the box for "the most famous and pervasive lazy cheat in American dialogue about free speech."
Nevermind dropping the whole "falsely" thing. Banning someone for yelling "fire" when there is a fire, however small, is the height of idiocy.
...if they in ANY way moderate their content, then they're akin to a bbs provider or chat room provider and thus liable to the content itself. If someone is abused or stalked or whatever, then Twitter should be held liable. ...if they refuse to control content in any way, then I think they'd have the protected status of a common carrier like a telco. I can't sue the telco (with any reasonable chance of winning) if someone calls me up and tells me I'm an asshole (ok the truth may provide a defense there in any case...).
or
Of course, from my understanding they have been practicing filtering, some might say tendentiously, so IMO that should make them massively vulnerable to anyone suing them because of trolls, etc.
After all, we seem to have forgotten a few fundamental fact of Twitter: NOBODY *HAS* to look at the fucking thing. If you're uncomfortable with what's being said...stop reading it?
-Styopa
The examples of Milo's racism are very easy to find:
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
In case you don't realize why depicting a black person as a gorilla is racist, here is a little history:
http://www.authentichistory.co...
You are welcome on my lawn.
"organizing troll mobs" was just an excuse to ban him for daring to criticize a colored person with a vagina and other such horrible things, she on the other hand is a free to do what ever she wants because she is of the protected class and has the "correct" political opinions
...there are worse reasons for having an abuse problem.
But is it really because they truly believe in free speech, or is that just a PR-useful side-effect of not wanting to be bothered with piddly shit like chasing down trolls?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
"right-wingers tend to be vindictive hateful assholes" ?
They might say mean words on the twatter, but it's the left wings SJWs that organize hate campaigns to get people fired for daring to say things that they don't like
Buzzfeed
I instantly knew that everything I would see is cringe worthy uninformed bs. based solely on some feeling.
Link is from a pro social 'justice' site, of course. Buzzfeed.
They set the stage with the presumption that users need protection from words on the internet and that free speech is so terrible because it protects expression from the 'most objectionable users'. This seems to imply that the majority/popular view needs shielding. Why? Users do not need protection from words whether their positions are shared with the majority or not. The only thing that needs to be protected is the ability to express those words.
The abuse problem comes from people trying to shut down peer-to-peer communication by introducing man-in-the-middle attacks. A lot of the abuse is bot generated to support this agenda.
Twitter cannot deny that it has allowed the US gov access to its indexers and that they control the statistical flow of info on Twitter. This has been well analyzed.
So whilst freedom of speech may exist on Twitter, the freedom of others to hear that speech is not guaranteed.
Free speech is NOT a problem, and your right to not get offended is imaginary.
But it is expedient, in the same way animal control neuters the male instead of spaying the female because he "gets around".
Sad fact is that the 1st Amendment will be neutered. Too many people already believe it goes too far in protecting the right to speak. The fascists win again.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Here's the latest:
http://www.washingtontimes.com...
The hype in this article about how Twitter is about "free speech" is designed to distract/deflect from the obvious fact of extensive politically-based censorship on Twitter.
Alternative Right.
I expect a poor job from Government. Hillary Clinton plans to propose a change to the First Amendment of the US Constitution. If this regulation were in place, it would have suppressed speech against her. Isn't suppressing negative opinions the act of a repressive, despotic government? She is likely to win, and make good her promise. Bad. (The NY Times is not a 'person', either). Reference: Citizens United. http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/16/...
unlike old DeRay who organizes real mobs yet still somehow manages to keep his Twitter account in good standing. While I don't agree with Milo on a lot of things, there's a lot of truth to the fact that Twitter has been capricious and diligent about silencing conservative voices and yet they put an icon symbolizing unity with BLM thuggery. If you're going to say "ban all hate related speech" then do it uniformly Twitter and people can live with it, or not.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Man, I just love the SJW-to-skeleton Chrome extension. It makes reading threads like this a lot more entertaining.
Don't forget the rightwingers physically attacking Planned Parenthood and others, for providing 100% legal services.
Eat the rich.
You'll be dead soon too, and guess what, nobody will care, because nobody ever thinks about you.
While I agree that Reddit is the nadir of the internet, I am not fond of Slashdot's system, as it also suppresses any dissent that is actually threatening to the narrative, while tolerating token dissent in a public show of how virtuous Slashdot is for tolerating such outre opinions.
I wish I could agree. I have seen too many quality posts get voted into the negatives to believe that. As to why, the answer is obvious: it is the same group of people voting here who are voting on Reddit. Ordinary people, in groups, make decisions based on emotions, fear and anger. They hide that behind a veneer of civility, called "liberalism" or sometimes SJW, but essentially, they are anti-realists who are posing at being open-minded while simultaneously striking out against anything that reveals the instability of their position.
Alternative Right.
What the fuck is this even about? Twitter is constantly suppressing speech that is not of the approved political opinion variety. Free speech as long as it's what we want you to say, maybe.
Well, that's because right-wingers tend to be vindictive hateful assholes a majority of the time.
This differentiates them from left-wingers how exactly?
Why would Milo get banned and not the people making racist, homophobic and abusive messages to and about him?
Twitter's censorship policy may be equal in concept, but it's demonstrably flawed to hell in practice.
Be sure to mention that to those who have left twitter because they ran afoul of the SJWs (case in point: The artist on Steven Universe who was harassed incessantly by SJW's who didn't like her depiction of a character on her OWN Tumblr site.) Or when Brianna Wu went to lunch with the CEO of Stardock and was harassed by the SJW "thought police"... I could go on, but you don't seem to give a shit about facts.
But by all means, paint the "right wing" with a large, bristly brush.
How would you like it if you had to go through life knowing that when most people see you they automatically think, "Oh right. Picard's catamite."?
Alternative Right.
"a honeypot for assholes"
Damn, I wish I had coined that phrase for Twitter!
Chill out, dude. We all know Twatter can and do eagerly censor whomsoever they want. That's a given.
We also all know that Twatter is a de facto public forum. Thus many here and elsewhere call that company's leadershipo to account for their policies that diminish the scope of public discussion.
Also - get over the tired left/right meme. Leftist = rightist = centrist = capitalist. Bellyfeel notwithstanding, they're all the same, and all enemies of the people.
twitter can ban anyone they want but doing so with clear political slant while claiming to be a platform for free speech is false advertising
Because Hasbara Trolls.
This article isn't about Twitter's right to ban people. It is about twitter supporting free speech. Twitter 100% has the right to ban who they want - but they don't also get to claim they are a platform for free speech while doing it. Well technically they are trying to claim both - but they, and you, should not get upset when they are called on it.
It's not free speech when gays, blacks, and other "minorities" that don't tote the party line are silenced faster than actual homophobic people or racists.
Seriously, that's the fastest way to make them go away. Seriously, they're looking for attention and recognition and seeking to get reactions. The more of this they get, the more gratified they are. In my experience (I first got on the Internet when it was just a college network, in the early 90s, well before the Web got big) this is the most effective route to take.
It's when you strike back at trolls that the problem blows up. They feed off of it, and almost certainly, their time is worth less than yours, so they have more of it to sit and post.
Another tip: You don't "win" if you get in the last post. You "win" by making cogent, persuasive arguments.
Oh - you've really nailed a mainstream problem. Right-wing attacks on abortion clinics are a just something you see every... oh wait, I think you have your right-and-left backwards. Why not stop spreading your false narrative, and check out the reality of https://www.thereligionofpeace.com/ - if you're interested in physical attacks.
You are a fucking idiot. The news story you linked to shows an account other than Milo's posting that.
I guess it is OK to make false allegations against gay people though.
Of course lets ignore Leslie Jones racist and antisemitic remarks:
https://twitter.com/Lesdoggg/status/564965558408327168
https://twitter.com/lesdoggg/status/504540440813916160
https://twitter.com/Lesdoggg/status/564664734268411906?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Well, that's OK, but remember that its a different amendment, not the free speech one.
And Left-Wingers tend to be self-aggrandizing, obnoxious, and with a penchant for social engineering.
It has been my experience that ANY group, given a sufficient echo chamber, becomes obsessed with their own voices.
Left:
"We have to promote "Progress!" (Of course, no two of us can define what that is! We bicker about the minutia behind closed doors.) We have to get society to abandon its false gods, and accept the only one truth of secular humanism-- Cultural heritage is only valuable when we can embrace it, and destroy it through dilution, and incremental change into OUR culture. Anyone who tries to stop us, or say we are destroying ways of life is just a backward idiot! Oh, BTW, We are totally down with Science, except where its methods contradict our policies. Pointing out how our policies have been historical failures is a no no.. We preach freedom of speech and association, as long as that speech and association aligns with the ideals of secular humanism. Anything else, and it needs to be squashed-- for the betterment of humanity and society of course."
Right:
"Change is bad. The status quo has been good enough for centuries! Why do you hate Jesus? Embrace the glory of the skyfairy! The bible/Koran/$ReligiousTextHere clearly defines the correct and proper way for society to function, why do you insist on challenging it!? Science is EVIL, because it contradicts divine will! Those in positions of political power are there through the grace of $Divinity, and should never be questioned! Disobedience is the source of all misfortune! Disobedient messages must be squashed, for the benefit of society!"
and etc.
Me? I am a centrist.
I say:
If something has been shown historically to be ineffective or counterproductive, why do you waste resources trying to prove otherwise? This includes both the old guard of the far right, and the extremist humanism of the far left. Utopia is clearly not attainable by human kind by either of these methods, so why do you two keep hammering your doctrines like rabid lunatics? Reality is what manifests itself around us. It does not care about what we humans want. Because no two humans can completely agree on what the perfect society is like, no perfect society can exist. The best that we can hope for is a society where most things we want come to exist, and where most things that are harmful are prevented. The first society to recognize that utopia is not possible, and that the reality of the world is what is king, (and thus, focuses its energies on causal relationships, and inherent properties of the material world, including how people behave, in order to better meet the needs of the majority of its citizens, and not just the most privileged or least privileged) is genuinely the most progressive, because it will seek to find better means of providing for its majority, and will know from history that providing for the privileged results in catastrophe, and from reason that lavishly wasting resources on the underprivileged has diminishing returns beyond a certain point. Those two groups will both be carried upwards by the rising tide of the majority, as history has demonstrated. Due to the nature of problem, there is no perfectly ideal solution. Only locally ideal ones, for specific subsets of features one wishes to consider. I deny any ideology that claims to be universally ideal. There is only the "Good enough" and the "Acceptable" As such, voices that claim something is unacceptable need to never be silenced. Even when the majority disagrees-- It is only through these objections, and the natural ebb and flow of popular opinion that a fringe view becomes the majority view. A society that embraces the simple truths I have pointed out has no choice but to accept this truth also. Society must be allowed to swing in any direction that majority wishes, in order to meet these guidelines-- that means allowing "horrible" ideas to flourish. One does not need to find something agreeable, for it to be truth.
Let's remember though, this is the same Twitter that believes in free speech as long as you're on the left side of the fence.
He's actually more subtle than that most of the time, which is what makes him such an asshat. He uses tactics like criticising African American vernacular as "wrong" and uneducated, when it definitely isn't. He become quite a pro.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
This sort of issue demonstrates the difficulty of running society as truly libertarian or truly un-governed. "Free Speech" is generally seen as a good idea; everyone should be free to express themselves as they see fit. OTOH there are concepts of "civil behavior", like not expressing yourself by loudly swearing in the middle of a children's playground. But OTOOH the boundary of "civil behavior" that any particular onlooker draws may exclude what others consider acceptable, like: a child brought to that playground by an adult with tattoos (thus "exposing" the onlooker's child to something the onlooker disapproves of), or a "nonstandard" couple (ditto).
We want freedom for all in the abstract. But we also want our own freedom from other people's freedom impinging on ours, which is the broadest definition of "civility". "Abusing freedom" is a contradiction in terms; one cannot possibly misuse freedom in the abstract, because it means one can do whatever one wants. The problems are judging the point at which one person's freedom of speech impinges on another person's freedom from interference and harassment, and enforcing any kind of limitation on that freedom when we have already committed to freedom in the abstract.
Why the hell would anyone care about what a news outlet (Buzzfeed) that routinely abuses large demographics of people wants? Why the hell does anyone care what Buzzfeed has to say? When did they become the arbiter of what is GoodThink and WrongThink online?
Fuck Buzzfeed.
our sound byte and screen-addled brains are no longer capable of understanding nuance. Free speech is protected speech, but we are also still allowed to make rules for services. This is more trigger warning bullshit, to be sure (ultimately WE decide how words will impact us based on our own understanding, as on their own they are 100% inert. Other people can't *make* us feel anything) but at the same time, a service is perfectly entitled to reserve the right to keep things civil. I don't think any generation has been doomed by its own fucked up and self-inflicted mental states to the extent of gen Y. This is all unbelievable to anyone that has been in the world for 45 years or more. All of them on all sides need to grow the fuck up and get on with their lives. Thinking of being slighted is thinking of one's self. Try to think about other people once in awhile and get off the damn victim bus.
Fenced in by free speech.
That's some Orwellian shit right there.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
That's basically what Voat became. When the Reddit censorship shitstorm was blowing full gale some people went over to Voat. The owners of Voat thought that was great and encouraged it, but it's turned their site into 4chan with voting.
The simple fact is, if you allow absolutely anything you will turn into the next 4chan. Even 4chan has some rules and banned the worst abuse (including GamerGate), which sparked the migration to 8chan. But even 8chan has some rules, because people won't rent you servers if you allow illegal material on them. Maybe you could set up a .onion site, see how many hits you get on that.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The left has just replaced the traditional religions with their own cult, with all the usual ingredients; the good, the bad, myths, and don't ask questions just believe.
and for some unfathomable reason they seems to go out of their way to make up excuses to defend Islam, even though it goes against everything else they claim to fight for
The actual source of Twitter's abuse problem is that it is all about identity and popularity, rather than content or discussion. You can't make much of an argument in 140 characters, but you can engage in social signalling and trolling. The most successful Twitter users are those with the most followers, and narcissists and minor celebrities want to increase that number; and the easiest way of increasing those number is through self-righteous indignation and trolling.
The solution to Twitter's problem is simple: discourage the use of real names. You'd find that most Twitter users with many followers would drop in popularity to nothing, and they would be discouraged from trolling people.
Look more closely at the article and its links. When Milo retweets these racist items, he's doing so to incite a mob of followers to attack someone. It's been his MO since he glommed onto another hashtag hate group back in 2014.
http://www.themarysue.com/milo...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Yep the only times I get negative karma are when people don't realize I'm joking. Maybe I'm not being funny enough :|
That's correct: you're not funny enough.
So? Use another service if you're not satisfied.
Eat the rich.
Oh - you've really nailed a mainstream problem. Right-wing attacks on abortion clinics are a just something you see every... oh wait, I think you have your right-and-left backwards. Why not stop spreading your false narrative, and check out the reality of https://www.thereligionofpeace.com/ - if you're interested in physical attacks.
Wait, wait, are you confused, and think that the various Islamic fundamentalists are on the left?
They're not.
But yes, attacks on Planned Parenthood are real. And even the non-violent actions are flawed, since they're based on fabrications and misrepresentations.
Still, if you're not satisfied, don't use Twitter. No one is forcing you.
Eat the rich.
You forgot the stories about computer life in the 70's-80's. That's a guaranteed track to +5, as almost everyone on Slashdot is a curmudgeon over 50.
Yeah, back in the '80s, when we didn't even have the internet, just usenet and dial-up BBs and BITnet, we had flame wars that would singe your eyeballs. Moderation? Ha!
(In fact, we actually invented moderation because the flames got so bad on usenet. But the web, when it came, had to re-learn all those lessons again.)
LOL nice hate site you've got there.
Why don't you just go die in a fire, and take your hateful, racist xenophobic ideas with you. Thanks.
Eat the rich.
All systems run by humans are flawed, that's just how the world works.
I will shed no tears for Milo. He's got every little bit of it coming to him.
Eat the rich.
Well of course, now you're talking about the American Left and American Right, who are both completely bonkers, in their own little ways.
That's why I think they both suck, and like to fan the flames a little (it seems to have worked).
In the real world, in a political system that's a little less fucked up, I'm a marxist (with some classical liberal leanings).
Eat the rich.
Anti-gov? Everyone on here are liberals.
I find the strongest political thread here is the libertarians. Or possibly just the loudest.
Liberalism takes a lot of abuse here on /.
Don't forget that leftwingers are burning down Milwaukee because a black cop shot an armed and dangerous criminal.
So he makes comments that can be inferred to be racist. Ban him.
She makes comments that are clearly racists and antisemitic. Comments that specifically make fun of white people, Jews, and black republicans. No problem.
Got it.
>the mary sue
No thanks, I like not being mentally retarded.
>Start your own right-winger competitor.
So exercising one's freedom of speech is "right wing" now ???
Twitter needs to be treated like the phone system -- common carrier status. The phone company doesn't terminate's account when they talk smack or "hate speech" (sic.) to another person. Twitter should be no different.
Censoring someone just because they have an unpopular view is shitty state of affairs ripe for abuse.
According to the US government money is speech. So unlimited free speech makes it legal to pay someone to kill someone else.
Sorry, non-sequitur. Paying somebody to commit a crime is still a crime. Nothing has changed that.
And, although nobody seems to care about details, the Supreme Court decision in the "Citizens United" case at no point stated "money is speech." That's a popular simplification that is, in fact, a glib overgeneralization. A good summary of what the decision actually concluded is here: https://www.cga.ct.gov/2010/rp...
>the mary sue
"Here guys, a smeary article by hysterical fainting couch feminists who have a reputation for lying!"
I don't. =)
Buzzfeed is geek stuff? Since when?
So BLM activists can post as much racist stuff as they want without consequence, but when a white conservative says a woman who looks like a gorilla and also happens to be black looks like a gorilla he gets banned? And that sounds totally fair to you?
Hahaha...he got banned for posting and organizing targeted hate speech on a corporate business's website. This isn't how free speech works, you dumbass. This is why the right/alt-right fails at every turn for not understanding simple concepts.
And, don't exacerbate the mental illness of a young fool that claims to be gay while wearing multiple Christian crucifixes around his neck. The amount of cognitive dissonance is mind-boggling.
I really haven't seen any compelling evidence that Twitter is targeting conservatives for their ideology. What is apparently is that some conservatives like to martyr themselves by continually pushing the boundaries until they are banned, often just for the publicity.
Professional victims, you might call them.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Wow, you're a dick. No, I'm not some thin skinned little baby, just merely stating you are a properly unpleasant individual. Are you like this in person? Because if so you must be a sad pathetic individual. If not, then why do you feel it's appropriate online? Seriously, I just kind of want to meet you in person for no other purpose then to slap you.
if you shout "fire!" in a theatre
"shout fire," eh? 2011 wants its trope back:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/
> if you shout "fire!" in a theatre you will get banned regardless of your rights.
Uh, if ACTUALLY is on fire alerting others isn't a problem.
Context, people.
Please stop with this over-used-often-wrong analogy.
Here's the thing about Twitter assholes: you can block them. This absolutely solve the problem. If there's a mob of them, you might spend alot of time blocking. This is tedious, at worst. If it starts taking up too much of your time, you may start to consider not using Twitter anymore, which we all know damn well means that the assholes are doing you a huge favor. The whole goddamn thing is a social validation Skinner box. That's the kind of medicine you should only take if your disease is a malignant political tumor. (Won't work in the US. That shit metastasized years ago.)
Now, the other bad thing about a mob of them is that, even after they block you, they can attempt to ruin your reputation. By using precisely the same methods as people have always done. If there is a problem, it's that there are people who apparently consider Some Guy on Twitter to be more credible than a British tabloid cover. Hell, until recently, that was the same fucking guy sometimes. Who is listening to such silly-ass shitrats?
Meanwhile: you can be suspended for telling a spambot to kill itself. The actual problem with Twitter moderation is that it does exactly what all mass media moderation does: it aggressively hunts down whatever isn't polite, regardless of context or content. Hence, the title of this post. They haven't had any concern for free speech for quite some time. From what I've heard, you can be shadowbanned now, which is definitely something I expect from a platform devoted to free speech. The floor is wide open to crybullies who start shit with an unpopular group by telling polite lies about them, often in a hashtag they're using, and then act just shocked when a bunch of the rabble doesn't respond in a perfectly polite manner. Or, even if they do, because if lots of people are upset with you, that's considered to inherently be an attack, now.
They play this game because they get more power if everyone is convinced there's a huge abuse problem on Twitter. These people have managed to get Twitter's ear, and convince them that they'll lose all relevance and never get shareholders ever if they don't crack down on this whole "free speech" thing. Perhaps they're right about the latter; most people in charge of large piles of money are not particularly comfortable with the idea of a platform that makes it so easy for the commoners to attack the advertising base of companies and people they feel wronged by.
Of course, the real joke here is that for all this hand-wringing about Twitter being full of horrible, scary assholes, you basically have to see them on purpose. Even in a hashtag, much more often than not, the way The Algorithm decides which tweets to actually serve you means that you will generally only see people on your "side" of the "culture war." (I need to wash my fucking hands after typing that.) Most people these days don't keep heterodox friends, especially not if they habitually retweet stuff their besties are going to take issue with. So, the only way you're going to get in a fight is if you go out and pick one.
Though I've had seen my Karma drop into "Negative" from coordinated attacks a couple of times, my account was also generally in the "Excellent" area. I too am a fan of /.'s moderation system — as far as the non-sentient systems go, it is the best I've encountered. (And, as Facebook and Twitter fiascos show, sentience-based systems can be worse.)
Unfortunately, Slashdot has given the haters a new tool — by marking a submission (such as this one) as "Spam", you disable the user's access for good — and you only need a few accounts to do that, they don't even have to have Mod-points...
There is no appeal, no judge and no jury... I have written several e-mails to Slashdot editors, but my account remains suspended — I can not offer new submissions, start new threads, or even reply.
Why is my real account disabled?
"organizing troll mobs" was just an excuse [...] she on the other hand is a free to do what ever she wants
The definition of an SJW is basically "someone who incites troll mobs." Of course, theirs are "good" troll mobs because of their goals or beliefs.
It's not a free speech position, nor one that can be balanced with free speech. Either you think taking control of platforms to selectively suppress speech is an acceptable way to promote your beliefs in public or you don't. History is full of functioning societies that believed one thing or the other. If you believe in free speech, you will constantly have to defend awful speech you don't like. This has always been so. As Chomsky says, "Even Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked."
A twitter that resisted troll mobs in a neutral way might be interesting to see. It would probably look like Blogger or Livejournal: nobody cares enough to mob it. The real problem is that twitter's engagement and stock price feed on outrage, so they can't solve the problem of mobbing. Instead they have to direct the badness at a small number of disposable, low-status people. Why do you think Milo lasted as long as he did? There's your answer.
*Posting AC for obvious reasons.
I was banned on twitter when I responded to a tweet with a link to an article explaining how men can't be raped by women. I was raped by a dorm rep at a mid-sized U.S. university. Being the rep she had a single room, she called me in to her room to "talk" and proceeded to push me on to her bed, hold me down (she was much larger than me) and force me to pleasure her while nearly suffocating me. She then proceeded to pull down my shorts and rode me while she covered my mouth with her hand and pressed her arm over my neck and chest. Almost 20 years later I still have terrifying dreams about being suffocated.
When I tweeted at the publisher of the article, a very prominent editorial site and YouTube channel, about how distressing the article was to me and retelling the the account above I started getting a lot of comments saying I was ignorant and a liar. Maybe 20 minutes later I got a message that my account had been banned.
Twitter does not believe in free speech. They are very much aligned with the "SJW" 3rd wave feminists. At the time I was banned I had psychologically progressed past any trauma (other than the occasional suffocating dream) and honestly felt stronger; but being banned in the way I was was emotionally distressing. Please note it was not people tweeting at me calling me a liar or saying "Men can't be raped" that was emotionally distressing - it was aggravating but it gave me a chance to reply (which usually resulted in them banning me). It was being banned; being silenced for being honest about a traumatic event that was emotionally distressful.
I'm going to echo what an AC wrote suggesting an algorithm. Apparently Twitter has an algorithm to block abusive responses and used it "to filter out abusive and hateful replies to President Barack Obama during a Q&A session."
Twitter's algorithm isn't perfect, but it's not bad. From the Buzzfeed article: "According to a former senior Twitter employee, Costolo ordered employees to deploy an algorithm (which was built in-house by feeding it thousands of examples of abuse and harassing tweets) that would filter out abusive language directed at Obama. Another source said the media partnerships team also manually censored tweets, noting that Twitter’s public quality-filtering algorithms were inconsistent."
So maybe the algorithm isn't a perfect way to detect hate speech, but it can probably be used to indicate how likely a tweet is abusive. And users can use that to make their own decisions. From the AC:
What if Twitter had the algorithm set a score 0-5 of how likely it thought a tweet is offensive/hate speech, then Twitter let users set a threshold. So maybe someone could set their own threshold at 3 and not see tweets at 4 or 5 (highly likely to be abusive tweets) and someone else can set their threshold to 5 and see everything. People getting abused on Twitter would have a way to automatically block offensive tweets without anyone crying "censorship!"
I think that would get us pretty far down the road to helping people block abusive tweets without limiting anyone to what they can say (the "free speech" mentioned in the article).
In the real world, in a political system that's a little less fucked up, I'm a marxist
Parody account of the year.
Because Twitter does actually try to allow as much free speech as possible, even if that speech is racist and homophobic. It only bans people who don't just say that stuff, they repeatedly harass an individual and encourage others to do so.
Milo went as far as (badly) faking a tweet his victim was supposed to have written, to encourage his followers to send more abusive messages. That's not free speech or legitimate criticism or an opposing view, that's harassment.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
In case you don't realize why depicting a black person as a gorilla is racist, here is a little history:
That tweet is not from him, it is from a random 4chan/twitter troll. There were several threads about Leslie on 4chan at the time because they realized she would continuously react and tweet screencaps of the tweets insulting her. And they know it's racist, that's why they tweeted it.
The examples of Milo's racism are very easy to find:
I'm sure it's easy to find examples of anyone's racism if you hold them responsible for what random trolls on the internet say. Which is effectively what twitter did as well, since he didn't seem to say anything banworthy by their normal standards. They can't effectively ban 4chan trolls using burner accounts to spam monkey images, but they want to be seen as "doing something".
Spitting on his shoes would be more appropriate.
Force a twitter account to cost something relatively trivial (5$?) and then punishments like being unable to tweet for X hours or a ban actually have some weight to them. Sure people can still troll all day if they want, but it'll cost them money, which will be a decent wall against the dumb teenagers at least. If a dedicated troll wants to spend 500$ on creating a bunch of accounts then at least that money would (presumably) go to the maintenance/upgrading of the service.
This might also solve twitter's money problems too, although convincing people this late int he game to pay is probably impossible. So maybe an idea for whatever comes after twitter.
Why did they remove Milo's verified status?
"the American Left and American Right, who are both completely bonkers"
then
"I'm a marxist"
You're like the Ebola infected patient calling someone with common flu "sick". Truly mind boggling.
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
How exactly would you implement a moderation system like Slashdot's given how Twitter works? I suppose you could continuously compute a moderation score for each tweet, but that would become unwieldy pretty fast.
Twitter encourages what is basically a reflection attack. A user sends out one tweet and sometimes receives an order or two in magnitude (or more) of replies. Users like it when the replies affirm their tweet and don't like it when the replies are abusive (whatever that means to the person in question). How do you allow one without also allowing the other?
I suppose you could allow people to block direct replies when the replying user is not followed by the person who sent the tweet. That would probably cut down on the amount of abuse making it back to the user's feed at the cost of hiding some content. Have a second feed for viewing unfiltered replies.
At the end of the day, Twitter as a service is a firehose of short public messages.
But in order to be offended, you have to make some effort to be offended -- searching for specific hashtags and actually reading the messages or going so far as to follow people who either directly offend you or make sure you see offensive tweets you might be offended by.
Maybe Twitter users so worked up about being trolled or offended could just put less work into finding something to be offended by? Stop following vulgar boors like Donald Trump. Stop following ideological firebrands looking to stir up legions of offended people.
I've got news for you -- no amount of speech suppression is going to make unpopular ideas go away. You can't curate intelligence and sensibility into being among the unwashed masses, despite this being the goal of progressives since the turn of the last century.
Not in the article you linked to or any IT linked to.
From your link: "Twitter didn't say exactly why it banned Yiannopoulos".
Could you perhaps try a little harder to demonstrate where MILO made racist statements and not simply someone who follows him?
Don't forget that leftwingers are burning down Milwaukee because a black cop shot an armed and dangerous criminal.
Shall we take your word for it? Shall we just condemn the left and think no more about it? Or is it that there is more to the story? Perhaps there are some who are looting under cover of a protest for their own gain, with no political agenda. And perhaps there are a few wayward souls with nothing but resentment and anger, and the despair of having nothing else to express?
If so, that should tell you how badly the police, the city government, the county government, and the state government, have lost the trust and respect of the public in large segments of Milwaukee.
The Paris mob that stormed the Bastille attacked it as much for their resentment of the French government as anything else, when they stormed it, a mere seven prisoners were found within, and the majority of them were forgers, two others being insane and the last a sexual offender whose own family wanted him there.
Hardly a fortress full of misery and oppression.
Even the vaunted Boston Tea Party was the destruction of a load of tea from a private party, over a not particularly despicable tax, and the Boston Massacre? Resulted in the acquittal of the threatened soldiers.
Of course, you COULD read the stories about the folks cleaning up the mess, the ones who called for calm, who have worked tirelessly to improve the lot of those around them, and you could attribute them to the left. But you'd rather not. Especially since all of that would mean you'd have to face the mistreatment that is in the city and state. Much easier to just demonize and shut your ears, isn't it?
Why maybe you should just riot yourself. Is that not what you want? For the left, and their icky racial minority friends who don't embrace your wisdom and beneficence, to be suppressed and broken, until in their suffering, they come to realize how right you are, for your might is beyond them? Or is there something else?
you simply can't say that Slashdot doesn't matter anymore because it doesn't destroy >80% of the sites it links to.
True but there are plenty of reasons I can say Slashdot doesn't matter so much any more. The volume of comments is way down. 200-400 comments per story used to be the norm. Now it's often less than half that and sometimes doesn't even get to 100. There are far fewer well known geeks frequenting Slashdot. It used to be a premier destination and a place to hear what the best and brightest had to say. But years of neglect and bad management have slowly driven away a substantial portion of then user base that once set Slashdot apart from other news/discussion sites. I won't say it doesn't matter at all but it's not the place it once was. Perhaps the new management can fix that though I'm not holding my breath...
Just 5 days ago comedy twitter account @TheBardockObama tweeted this:
PLANS FOR A GHOSTBUSTERS SEQUEL ARE SQUASHED.
WE DID IT EVERYONE
Paul Feig retweeted him and soon afterward he was locked out of his account and forced to delete that tweet or be suspended. So in case you were wondering what speech is so extreme and beyond the pale that this supposedly overly "free speech" company censors it, now you know.
https://heatst.com/tech/twitter-allegedly-forces-comedian-to-delete-ghostbusters-joke-because-it-triggered-paul-feig/
I'm sure you'll feel the same way when your family feels the misery of warfare. That's what happens when political disputes are unresolved.
Okay, yes, it's implied that the theatre isn't on fire in this hypothetical example. You are missing the point though, the important part is that there is no such thing as unlimited free speech without consequences.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Congratulations, you've checked the box for "the most famous and pervasive lazy cheat in American dialogue about free speech."
Nevermind dropping the whole "falsely" thing. Banning someone for yelling "fire" when there is a fire, however small, is the height of idiocy.
On the other hand, I imagine one will also get thrown out for yelling "movie" in a crowed fire station, if, for no other reason, than not being funny or original.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Culture is malleable, skin color is not (yet). Consequently, cultural behaviors/attitudes are absolutely fair game for criticism. Calling this distinction "meaningless semantics", baselessly accusing the speaker of racism, as well as wishing them dead, suggests you aren't quite ready for adult conversation.
A large corporation backed by millionaires and billionaires pre-exists Citizens United.....Large corporations like the New York Times! NYT Company has an annual revenue of $1.5B! The NYT Company SHOUTS support for its political position. Why can't opposing point of view also get published with the same intensity? Clinton's position against Citizen United is self-serving. You are a patsy.
I've yet to see any evidence that Milo organized anybody; that's just the common refrain of people who advocate his banning. What I saw was this:
People were being assholes about Ghost Busters
Milo added his own assholeness
More people started being assholes
In short, what happened with Milo was bandwagon jumping, which happens when pretty much anybody of any celebrity status does anything. That's very different than actually organizing people, but that's kind of inconvenient to admit, isn't it?
We will never be the change to the weather and the sea
Sure, there are a lot of twits on Twitter, but I am not sure you could call it a honeypot for them...
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
The problem isn't so much that they banned Milo it's all the people on the left side of the spectrum who commit far worse offenses and suffer no consequences.
Twitter doesn't give a shit about harassment so long as you're harassing the right people.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Here is the tweet he faked: https://i0.wp.com/fusion.net/w...
Full story here: http://fusion.net/story/327103...
Faking tweets to enrage your followers and get them to continue attacking her with their racist tripe is what got him banned.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
How did you dare to say that twitter is politically motivated.
You're like the Ebola infected patient calling someone with common flu "sick". Truly mind boggling.
Ebola is actually less infectious than the flu.
Depends on your perspective, really. Yes, Ebola is very dangerous to get, but it's hard to get, arguably it's the media that has stirred up a hysteria, while the flu kills without people noticing except on rare occasion.
Of course, when it comes to political identification, it's even worse, since one person's definition can be entirley contradictory to another's, and even at best, they often diverge significantly.
So to you, "Marxist" may be a term of "bonkers" while to another, it may be a different matter, and in fact, it may be that your definition is "bonkers" to them.
Your first link tells us nothing other than he had a public spat with an actress. I see nothing in there where he claimed her race in any way came into it.
You do realize that the racist tweet with the gorilla wasn't posted by @nero? Or is he responsible for every racist asshat that sends abuse to someone he's fallen out with?
Blah, blah, blah I be like nah to the ah to the no, no, no.
a hairy bear den full of assholes? That's pretty harsh, Twitter - even for you. Perhaps if you just went ahead and put a giant H -> on the front page (like you would if you didn't have to answer to Wall St?) - then you would attract more of the types of assholes that you prefer to hang out with?
Free Speech is the way of life in a free society. If those at twitter don't like it, then close your doors and get the hell out of our country.
Any company that tries to infringe on free speech, including by identifying those doing the talking, and said company will be subject to retaliations by many people that are willing to fight. I don't recommend angering your customers.
Personally, I don't have a twitter account and will never have one.
In case you don't realize why depicting a black person as a gorilla is racist ...
We all are descendants of some apes. So what?
inciting looting / violence is okay in Twitter's book but calling people out for it isn't okay. While I respect your argument it's not point in fact, there's too many getting banned and filtered along with trending hashtags that disappear for no reason other than they may seem unpopular with Liberals. There's already been known left-leaning abuse in other social media platforms, it's documented and even good old Google being involved in it as well, I just think it's time for Twitter to come out and say "We support violence and rioting but we don't support conservative ideals." Sure there's hyperbole on both sides of it but if you're going to advocate free speech without hate at least you should proclaim your biases.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
What you're talking about is incitement, which may be bad, but is not organization. Organization would involve actively calling on people to engage Leslie. That did not happen here, no matter how much you wish it to have happened.
Twitter banned Milo because they didn't approve of his rhetoric, plain and simple. The whole Ghost Busters thing was just the (very weak) justification they could use to sell the banishment to people like you.
We will never be the change to the weather and the sea
I'm a marxist (with some classical liberal leanings).
Sorry broham, don't believe you, not on either point.
Depressing. On more and more topics, 'News for Nerds' reads more like the fevered rantings of Bundy's 'Patriots'.
So, your argument is that Milo is a complete arsehole that Twitter clearly would never want to use their service, but he's the wrong kind of arsehole to get banned.
By the way, are you Phil Mason or just someone who shares the same handle?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Oh, so now you want to fight?
What a big man you are, tough guy :-)
And yes, I am this honest and straightforward in real life, it's been pretty good to me so far.
Eat the rich.
My argument is that you're overstating the reason for his ban: what you claimed didn't happen, and, yes, that matters.
I opened with noting that Milo is an asshole. This article, however, is about free speech as it pertains to Twitter, and that applies to assholes like Milo as well. If you claim a free and open platform, you have to apply that standard to everybody. If you claim that specific individuals should be banned for the things they say on that platform, then, if you're Twitter, that's your prerogative, but you don't support free speech. If you can sell that authoritative stance to other users, then good for you, I guess.
They clearly succeeded with you.
We will never be the change to the weather and the sea
No problem, then :-D
Eat the rich.
No, insisting that people have to listen to your bullshit is being a total shitlord. It's called freedom of speech, not freedom to force people to listen.
And no, Twitter should not be regulated as a common carrier. They're a short form blogging service, nothing more. They are not a vital line of communications.
Eat the rich.
A lot of dumbasses seem to think that everything bad in the world must be on the opposite side of the spectrum from them. And since most of the idiots are rightwingers, they think everything bad in the world is a leftist plot.
Putting islamic terror on the left is only one example. There are a bunch of people running around seriously claiming that the nazis were socialists and leftists, solely because it was called "national socialism". Because obviously the labels that countries and groups apply to themselves are 100% correct and never wrong. Like for instance the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, which as we all know is extremely democratic and serves the people first and foremost, right?
Eat the rich.
That just supports my point. The political climate in the US is so extremely fucked up that the word "socialist" is thrown around as an insult. You've been indoctrinated to hate a political ideology, without even bothering to understand it.
Eat the rich.
You're just supporting my point, the US political climate is severely fucked up.
"Socialist" is thrown around as an insult, because you can't even be bothered to understand what it means. Your political debates are dominated by idiotic catchphrases, that are just mindlessly repeated over every single media outlet ad nauseam ("flip-flopper" was particularly bad).
It needs to be cleaned up, in a bad way.
Eat the rich.
Too bad for you, then.
If you actually knew what those terms meant, you wouldn't be so confused.
Eat the rich.
> No, insisting that people have to listen to ...
You keep using this have to. It doesn't mean what you think it means.
/sarcasm But I guess this "follow just happens automagically.
They might say mean words on the twatter, but it's the left wings SJWs that organize hate campaigns to get people fired for daring to say things that they don't like
You mean exactly like what rightwing gun-nuts do to anyone who dares to suggest even the mildest form of gun control? Just ask Belinda Padilla. Belinda Padilla works for a manufacturer of smart-guns. She dared to suggest that the guns made by her employer could reduce accidental firearm deaths.
Apparently smart-guns are heresy according to the gun-nut orthodoxy. Her comment triggered gun-nuts to crucify her as a heretic for stating an opinion that was slightly less pro-gun than theirs:
For that "crime" gun nuts have stalked, harassed, privacy invaded, and threatened her life by phone and email.
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/14/05/01/152243/smart-gun-seller-gets-the-wrong-kind-of-online-attention
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/28/us/politics/smart-firearm-draws-wrath-of-the-gun-lobby.html
You could argue that he was being a troll, but there is no evidence that he was "organizing" anything much less a mob.
That's what happens when a descriptive term is redefined to mean it's opposite.
First, all words change their meanings over time. "Human", for example, is from a root word meaning "dirt". "Black" is from the same root as "blank" as well as "blanc," which means "white".
Second: "it's" means "it is." Pronouns don't take a posessive apostrophe. You write "his", not "hi's", "hers", not "her's", and "its", not "it's."
Liberal once meant 'in favor of liberty'.
Stating that "liberal" is the opposite of "liberty" is an opinion, not particularly a fact. Liberalism is in favor of liberties for all people, not just upper-class white males. It's just that white males don't happen to think that being subjected to death threats when you post opinions on the internet is a limit on somebody's liberties.
Ok then, let's say "force them to tolerate your hateful bullshit" instead.
Eat the rich.
I'm sure they'll be happy to refund all the money you've paid them.
Oh wait.
LOL @ "false advertising".
Wow doge. Such Slashdot. So FBI tech news.
Twitter employees eh? The same Twitter FBI employees that you faggots at Slashdot bust nuts with?
The old left of a century ago was against the establishment; it's not anymore.
The left embraced Marx, whose ideals cannot ever be achieved in the absence of massive tyrannical governments that can monitor every person and take from some to give to others, BY FORCE.
As a natural consequence, the modern left has become the party of the massive super-state. It supports government intervention into every aspect of human existence, government manipulation of every niche of the economy, and government supervision of the very thoughts of individuals. The modern left has become fanboys for the bad guys in Orwell's "1984", and are rooting for speech codes, "safe zones", etc.
You are, however, sort of right about one thing: without the left relentlessly propagandizing for government-run this and government-run that, while attacking anybody opposed to these things as a [racist|sexist|homophobe|islamophobe|bigot|...] the right would win by default. People would awaken forom their mental slumber and remember that humans have human rights and that governments have very limited rights to screw with them. In short: without the left yammering away, people would remember "freedom" and "liberty" and might even begin to consider small government that interferes so little in their lives that they rarely even think about it.
True freedom is something Europe has rarely known. Most countries of Europe went from monarchies (where hereditory leaders told the public how to live) to forms of big government socialism (where burueacrats told the public how to live), which is why the extreme left people of Europe think that the slightly less extreme left National Socialists are "far right". The solution is to ACTUALLY go right - far past the National Socialists (out of lefty land altogether) and into the actual right of individual freedom and liberty with small government that mostly just manages national defense and leaves the rest to the people.
Score -1 Flamebait,
I love it. KozmoStevnNaut has been censored by the self-proclaimed "defenders of unlimited freespeech"(TM) for expressing an unpopular opinion!
It proves what I have always suspected: The loudest "defenders" of freespeech are hypocrites that love censorship (as long as it is "the other guy" getting censored).
A sincere opponent of censorship would have chosen to ignore KozmoStevnNaut's comment.
Ever heard of "the pentagon papers"?
Short summary: Guy gets documents showing government has no real plans to win war and is just throwing young men into the meat grinder, government goes to court to blockpapers being published arguing that docs are classified. Court rules that there is no such thing as "prior restraint". In other words: you can punish the guy for publishing the classified docs AFTER he actually violates the law by publishing, but cannot punish him before he does the act.
You CAN in fact yell "Fire!" in a theater - there's no government-imposed muzzle put onto the head of each person as he enters a theater. It's also true however that it is very ill-advised to do it, as you can cause a stampede of panicked patrons leading to deaths and injuries and you will then be prosecuted AFTER ACTUALLY DOING IT.
You see: in the theater example, there is no prior restraint - people CAN do it, but it is probably illegal (depending on the local laws) and you will likely suffer consequences.
This is VERY different from the Twitter banning thing. In the Twitter banning, people are not being prosecuted for violating laws after actually violating those laws. What's happening is that people are being banned from saying things out of fear of what they MIGHT say in the future, based of prior violations of arbitrary, politically-aligned and ever-changing guidelines on SPEECH.
The bans are not because somebody has engaged in some particular ACT, hell, there are MURDERERS and TERRORISTS using the platform. These bans are entirely about WORDS and IDEAS!
"Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views." - William F Buckley jr
or, as Nat Hentoff famously put it: "free speech for me but not for thee"
There are very few things in the world I hate more than hypocrites.
Eat the rich.
The examples of Milo's racism are very easy to find:
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
In case you don't realize why depicting a black person as a gorilla is racist, here is a little history:
http://www.authentichistory.co...
Washington Post? Really... They're almost as bad as Huffington Post. Please post some other credible links on Milo's racism, that aren't "liberal" leaning.
Twitter's harassment problem is inevitable and has no solution. It's possible to harass people because the site has persistent accounts, thus allowing individuals to be harassed in the first place. Removing persistent accounts is not possible because the site would not work without them. Harassers must create accounts in order to harass, but account creation is simple and easy thus defeating the purpose of any kind of blocking or banning mechanism. Introducing more barriers to entry to make account creation less easy does not solve this problem, as it will always be circumvented. This action will harm legitimate users. Twitter will show a user a tweet if another user tweets at them. Messages from other users showing up on a twitter feed with no action by that feed owner is by design. Any kind of filtering will harm legitimate users. Automatic detection is simple to circumvent and will result in false positives. Manual filtering is time-consuming and expensive. Even with such filtering, reporting is subjective on both the reporter's end and the moderator's end. Even if moderation was perfect (impossible) and reports were not subject to abuse (inevitable), there is absolutely nothing Twitter can do about it except ban the user. Then the harasser is back to making a new account. Any kind of ban is easily circumvented. No problem has been solved, legitimate users are inconvenienced, and you've made your platform more difficult to use because some are affected by false positives.
I'm fully expecting this comment to go unseen, but my experience comes from 4chan which has a terrible reputation. However, it does not have a harassment problem because there are no persistent accounts. Users can only be harassed (still punishable by bans) if they allow themselves to be targeted. 4chan uses the most strict type of ban possible (IP) to deal to deal out bans, but circumventing an IP ban is trivial. Hell, it's trivial even if your site has been up for 13 years and has accumulated a mountainous list of banned proxy IPs. Even then, legitimate users can occasionally be banned from posting through no fault of their own. I completely understand where Twitter is coming from (even though they may be overstating their commitment a bit). It is impossible to police tone and content at the volume of Twitter, and in some cases content shouldn't be removed even if it offends someone. Is there a line? Where do you draw it? If you're just removing illegal content, what jurisdiction's laws do you use? That last one is a bit easier to implement, but just because something is almost universally objectionable does not mean it is necessarily illegal, so do you further and create your own definitions?
Moderating a communications platform is extremely difficult. There's no way to do anything without making your platform worse or potentially kicking out the wrong person. Anything you do will not actually stop dedicated harassment because there is nothing you can do. Of course Twitter is going to want to allow almost anything on their platform. There's no other alternative.
The Leftist hatred for Citizen's United is pretty embarrassing for someone that normally supports that side. When even the ACLU comes out in favor of the Citizen's United group and supports their free speech, you would think the rest of the Left would realize their mistake... but somehow, my own side never fails to disappoint me.
I kinda sound like certain anti-spam lists which basically worked thus:
a) You don't really know that you're on the list
b) You don't know who uses the list
c) It's almost impossible to get off the list
Having worked in situations where a somebody either inherited IP's on the list, was mistakenly added, or did something bad (e.g. mis-configured mailserver/proxy allowing spam) that was fixed but could NEVER get off... yeah that's not so great.
It's not that everyone is using WW's list, it's that his list is being used to populate a bigger list which could block you for things you're actively interested in.
Several people have been banned from Twitter for doing nothing more than repeating, word for word, tweets by Leslie Jones. Nothing happened to her, of course, for her racist rants, her abusive tweets, or her threats and mobs incited against others, though.
Racism. Race-ism. Literally, caring about race.
The word you're looking for is "bigot." You're welcome.
Not arguing your (solid) original point, but since we're caring about the details, I'll point out that Buckley v. Valeo (1976) ruled that spending money to influence elections is a form of constitutionally protected free speech.
Citizens United may not have stated it, but I'd say that money as speech is well established, precedent-wise. Though, sure, money spent with no intent to influence elections is probably not going to clear that bar.
Also, if anything, I'd say the popular simplification of Citizens United is that it ruled that businesses are people (meaning have personhood, rather than made up of people in the Romney sense).
I'll leave it to others to argue how correct that simplification is.
It's good that you care so much about the racist shit people spew on twitter, I'm looking forward to you complaining about the fact that Leslie Jones and DeRay haven't been banned for racism yet.
I love it when someone posts to a PDF on the Internet and saying "look, here is proof"! It would be comical if it wasn't so pathetic.
Free speech my ass
Dude the Nazis expropriated whole industries. They were much more than socialist in name only.
You have bought the post WWII Soviet propaganda that the Nazis were right wing. In fact the Communists and Nazis were fighting over the same ideological ground and started as allies.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
How many millions more have to die before we flush marxism?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Most of the things which are called abuse are people unwilling to press the ignore button, because they do not want to stop being annoyed, but they want to other one to be punished. For stuff which does not qualify as real abuse, but as free speech against their own opinion. But of course there is haressement, but everything what's only online can be managed by the correct filters, and twitter provides these tools. You only need to use them.
That are not the people, you want as followers.
When there were ggautoblocker and sjwautoblocker from the two parties, both available at github, i made a pullrequest with my nickname for both. Who thinks (s)he should block people (s)he doesn't even know does not deserve my tweets.
You're only missing out the most troublesome people. On the one side the SJW driven by their usual motives, on the other side the part of gamer gate people, which are really haressing someone. Who just wrote about gamergate but harassed nobody is on the ggautoblocklist, but doesn't participate by blocking people via sjwautoblocker.
So, why care? Because they mark you as spam via the twitterapi? I didn't even notice and their bot got banned from twitter for reporting people as spam, who weren't spamming.
Uh no, nazism is a form of fascism, not socialism.
Learn2ideology.
Eat the rich.
Oh, you're talking about the blatantly faked tweets that Milo put out there, because he is a gigantic pile of fecal matter?
Eat the rich.
Let's start with you, and see where it leads.
Have you actually, seriously studied marxism? Because you seem to believe that the tyrannical dictatorships of the USSR etc. were actually marxists. Which they weren't, by any standard.
Eat the rich.
The Italians and Spaniards were Fascists. The Germans were National Socialists. It means exactly what it sounds like, a combination of nationalism and socialism. Don't believe me? Get off the internet and go read some history books. I'll be here waiting.
Here's a dirty little secret: socialism and fascism aren't that far apart. When fascists talked about corporatism, they were thinking of the whole of society as a body, as a corpus. They did NOT have in mind rule by business corporations. Italian-style fascism isn't all that bad - certainly it serves the interests of the common people better than many forms of capitalism.
You may be making the mistake of conflating socialism with communism. Yes, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was, derrrrp, socialist. But it was also, again derrrrp, soviet - i.e. based on the power of worker's councils. The USSR was ruled by a Communist Party that, at least in theory, saw socialism as an inherently flawed half-way point on the road to real communism.
True, the reality of life in the Soviet Union fell far short of the dream of communism. But let's not forget, the Old Bolsheviks were dreaming of a better world.
Gotta admit, that's a good joke. Is this the same company that buries posts and hashtags of ANYTHING even remotely right wing?
To add to what the AC typed above, I would be surprised if the old Slashdot could crash a modern server, after all,
Missing the point. The point is that slashdot used to be a significant place for geeks to hang out and talk. But several years of bad management have caused a lot of the people that made slashdot a special place have moved on. Comment volume has dropped and the quality of the discussion arguably has diminished as well. Slashdot failed to evolve as the rest of the internet grew substantially.
I don't like the way you said that one thing, so I'm going to shun you for life.
Have a nice day!
I've found that the right is now where near as nasty as the left. The right has tolerance. The left has absolutely none at all. If they don't get their way, the box of labels come out - all the phobic, racist, whatever they think it will take to shut you up because they have nothing else because they're wrong and they know it. Otherwise, they'd use facts, things like that. If they are there in person they often resort to violence, like a little spoiled child that never grew up. Just look at the crazy leftists and Trump supporters. Physical violence towards the Trump people, even vandalism of property such as houses, cars, etc. Not that I support Trump, however beating people has been shown to not work either way. It just makes you look a lot worse, crazy in fact. Some people will never change their mind, even in the presence of overwhelming mind blowing proof they are wrong.
No idea about this Milo user. Unfortunately there are assholes out there. Some assholes are equal opportunity as well. They'll troll either way. One guy I know really enjoys just being contra to other people. Push those buttons. I think they really get a rise out of it, almost like an orgasm. I remember him saying let's argue the existence of God, take whichever side you like.
I remember the 1960s through today. Have tolerance for fill in the blank. They aren't hurting you.... and so on. Good example is abortion, which I happen to support. Let's set some minimum standards for a clinic. Nope, total war against any kind of standards, even a standard for a vet clinic. If you are reading this and are thinking of an abortion, inspect the clinic as if your life depends on it because it does. There are no minimum standard for an abortion clinic the Supreme Court ruled recently. How about Kermit Gosnell - just about NO coverage of that one and he was a monster. He could go down as one of the worst mass murderers of the 21st century. Well except they were sort of related to abortions, though not really. Look him up, it's disgusting the news blackout on it. His abortion clinic was really a shop of horrors. I wouldn't even take a dying dog there to be put down. Just being in the clinic was a big risk. The details are disgusting. Yet, that's legal right now.
I understand that Twitter panders to the left a lot. I've never used it. I see no need to.
Wondering if you are intentionally lying or if you are just extremely dense. Hard to tell these days.
That asshat Milo didn't post the "gorilla" picture. Not defending him, just defending the obvious facts.
Sad that responsibility has fallen to me. There are so many people better qualified. But damn, if I can figure it out everyone else should be able to as well.
The right has tolerance
LOL yeah right.
Tell that to the homosexuals, black people, expecting single mothers, anyone suspected of supporting communism in the bad old days, transsexuals, muslims, native Americans and hundreds of other minorities that have been trampled by bigoted laws and witch hunts.
Eat the rich.
There is a difference between free speech and careless speech.
The government cannot (technically) put you in prison or kill you for what you say. But if your neighbors don't bother to tell you a tornado is coming, maybe that is free speech, too.
Note that the internet is not really anonymous ... 8-o
Will they also be happy to refund to me all the money they've made by selling my personal data to their customers?