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."
Slashdot has the best system I've seen so far. Reddit's just leads to bandwagoning. Slashdot is capped at -2:5.
Additionally if I only have 5 points I'll usually not waste them on 0, I normally just browse at +2. Back in the day you would have entire threads of +5s. I'll save them for someone that needs modded up, not waste it on someone that doesn't need to be heard.
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. . .
Slashdot has the best system I've seen so far. Reddit's just leads to bandwagoning. Slashdot is capped at -2:5.
Additionally if I only have 5 points I'll usually not waste them on 0, I normally just browse at +2. Back in the day you would have entire threads of +5s. I'll save them for someone that needs modded up, not waste it on someone that doesn't need to be heard.
Agreed. Slashdot has easily the single best method of moderating out of every major website, changing that would be foolish. Besides, moderators are surprisingly fair - I have gone against the grain plenty of times, and extremely often these reached +4 or +5. If you state your opinion reasonably and rationally, Slashdot is almost always interested in hearing it. Character attacks on unnamed moderators, with no examples or anything of substance at all, are not inside this category.
"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."
It really depends what particular issue you went against the grain on. It's got better since Dice sold the site, but even so there is still a lot of troll block-moderation going on. The Slashdot system makes it harder, but far from impossible.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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 problem are moderators who decide to moderate on topics they feel strongly about. Good moderators make sure the messages stay on topic, and valid discussion is occurring. Because it is too easy for a vocal group to take over the discussion and spam it with like ideas or just poor arguments. But if the moderator has an emotional attachment to a side, a different view is often felt as a personal attack, thus can get censored.
However message trolls can be just a detriment to free speech by spamming a good conversation with hate and nonsense changing the tone of topic from an insightful expression of ideas a bunch of idiotic ranting.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Have you thought about your usage pattern and how it relates to the whole?
You only see things that other people either value or agree with. You don't get the whole conversation (and in fact /. is weird and forces you to move the slider to see more; maybe getting an (undeleteable) account you can have that preference saved). Maybe you're okay with that -- I have no clue -- but if the goal is socializing and conversing, it seems to me that having the whole picture in an unbiased, threaded ranking (be it random, sort by time, whatever) is the best way to get the whole picture without having gatekeepers who control who gets to be heard (read).
A lot of these sites like to compare themselves with democracy, and they forget the fatal flaw: a majority can turn against a minority and tamp them out. That flaw flies in the face of any professed "freedom of speech" they assert.
Free speech means assholes. It means racists, Nazis, birthers, preppers, furries, Joe Normal®, Jane Normal®, feminists, conspiracy theorists, communists, and so on. If we decide they don't get to be heard because "reasons", who gets to decide the dialog for everyone? Why do they deserve that power? Why should that power exist in the first place? Strong ideas can withstand competition.
Some people confuse topicality or spam with free speech abuses. Interfering with the flow of conversation (e.g. posting the same thing dozens of times), or talking about something irrelevant to the conversation (Raging about the moon landing in a mosquito thread) is handled not to silence people, but to maintain the purpose and function of a given system.
The purpose and function of ranking systems like /. and reddit is to distill the submitted content to the ones who were modded up heavily, meaning popularity. People in general have a hard time separating popularity from quality. They rarely, if ever correlate.
Note I'm having to talk about the points instead of the nature of the conversations or the interfaces that may work best for such conversing. We get wrapped up in the irrelevant and taken in by tools that allow us to assist in silencing others. So by following score-based designs, any viewer is getting an incomplete conversation, skewed by what the most number of people like or dislike.
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.
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."
When people suggest what is the best version of a moderation system used on the internet, I usually refer back to Slashdot, but it not perfect.
"Negative" feedback does not work. Take it away. And that's the core problem with Twitter, is that negative feedback loops form instead of being stopped.
Everyone has the right to free speech, which means you can post whatever drivel you want. however the second you start @'ing at someone, that's no longer free speech, that's a conversation. When one person talks to someone else directly, the obvious thing to do if that person is being an asshole is to block them. You can't do that a thousand times per day because Twitter's other end of the abuse problem is that there is no verification mechanism to ensure that people who are blocked don't get around the block short of "winning" the trolling and having their target delete their account or go private. "Private" twitters are the antithesis of the platform, and should only be switched on as a kind of "flood control" rather than a full time private twitter. Because you know what happens when you have a private twitter? you now have a clique of trolls that can be directed without the mastermind being visible.
So the correct way to solve this would be to typically use behavior analysis (Eg who's mutual friends with who, Twitter has that data) and virtually segregate direct messages when one group isn't part of the other group. Like I'm not talking about blocking outright but rather Twitter would give the message a second chance to reconsider. eg "Sending a message to this twitter user may have consequences for you, be civil." If that person is then blocked, then that makes the "firewall" a little bit higher between those groups and the target will have the option of "block all messages like this for the next (24/48/72 hours)" which blocks anyone who follows that person who isn't a mutual follow with the target from messaging or viewing their tweets if retweeted/subtweeted.
Facebook is the "walled garden" approach, and generally is not successful as a way of doing anything except keeping track of personal friends.
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
How often are opposing views labeled as "trolling" on Slashdot? I have submitted a thoughtful post without any inflators words and it was modded down. slashdot is not a community that wants an open mind and discussion. It is a community that only wants views to conform to anti government, Microsoft, etc
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.
Overall, though, it's better than a lot of other websites. Often a comment that would be viewed as say a (+2, Insightful) on Slashdot would be down voted to oblivion on Ars or blown into a top post on Reddit.
Free speech is NOT a problem, and your right to not get offended is imaginary.
I'll give you an example of why I think moderation sucks. Before the Windows 10 upgrade deadline, there were a number of stories about Windows 10, including an Ask Slashdot. The post solicited users to describe their experiences with Windows 10.
There were a lot of journalists who wrote articles about Windows 10, but I thought many were biased and weren't based on significant experience. I thought I'd get a more accurate view from reading Slashdot comments, hoping that the most detailed comments would get modded up highly. I hoped to get a range of experiences and views on Windows 10, positive and negative, that had more depth and technical knowledge than most of the news articles. Instead, it seemed like most of the highly rated articles were anti-Microsoft jabs without a whole lot of substance to them. Because they bashed Microsoft they got modded up, despite lacking the substance I was looking for. They weren't particularly insightful or informative, just sufficiently anti-Microsoft to please the moderators.
I agree that posts should be moderated based on how much substance they actually provide to the discussion. However, that's not really what happens most of the time, as my example describes. There are often quality AC posts that get stuck at 0 because moderators don't read them (and one admitted it in this thread). So I have to read through a bunch of nonsense and even highly rated but poor quality posts to find the worthwhile stuff. That's exactly what moderation is supposed to prevent, but it very often fails in doing so.
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"
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.
Yep the only times I get negative karma are when people don't realize I'm joking. Maybe I'm not being funny enough :|
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
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.
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.
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.
Given the way you apparently choose to express yourself, I'd say moderating downwards is completely justified. Free speech doesn't require equal attention for every piece of vulgar garbage that gets anonymously submitted.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
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
I've been rolling with this same tag for almost 15 years now.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
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.
Don't forget about the cowards who post anonymously too.
I noticed that death and rape wishes were conveniently left out of your comment on topicality. Nobody is leaving twitter because people talk about moon landings when they are trying to talk about mosquitos. They are leaving because entitled brats on twitter are telling them how much they hope they are beaten, raped, or killed just for expressing an opinion that they don't appreciate.
By following a design where people can run others off of twitter by flooding their mentions with graphic depictions of rape, murder, and other forms of violence against them, any viewer is getting an incomplete conversation, skewed by what the most number of people like or dislike.
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're wrong. You're so wrong that your statement "everyone here are liberals" is akin to a Platonic ideal of wrongness.
I'm on my phone, so your UID is not visible, but if you've been here as long as I have you'll know that Slashdot's users represent a myriad schools of political thought. If anything, libertarianism is over-represented. Remember when Ron Paul ran for president?
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Each moderator here is basically a little Hitler, with the power to censor five posts they don't like.
Well lookie here! Some guy gets modded to -1, and here I see it as the very first post. Some censorship!
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
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
The ability to mod down kills dissent. Not saying this is always a bad thing, but it's not always a good thing either.
Imagine if Google allowed people to mod search results the way slashdot does. Now imagine 98% of people who search Google for a HDD formatting problem are Windows users, 2% are Linux users. The Windows users search for their problem (without specifying OS as lazy people are wont to do), and they get a page of search results, one of which happens to address how to solve the problem in Linux.
If just 2% (1 in 49) of the Windows users is a jerk and downvotes that Linux result (even though it was their own fault they got that search result since they didn't specify the OS), that's enough downvotes to cancel out all the upvotes if 100% of the Linux users searching upvote the result. The Linux site gets a negative rating even if it's the most helpful and most useful site on the Internet, because a tiny fraction of the majority Windows users are idiots and jerks.
Or in slashdot terms, because of the modding system a minority viewpoint has to be proportionately better-written in order to rise up to the same +4 or +5 as a majority viewpoint. This is why other sites have resisted adding the ability to downvote. The results aren't necessarily better or worse, just different.
As for which system is most fair, i suspect that falls under Arrow's impossibility theorem, where if you use "common sense" definitions of fairness, you find that it's mathematically impossible to come up with a single system which yields a "fair" result in all situations.
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.
See, I think there needs to be a -1: too stupid to realize how stupid attempts at sarcasm almost always are.
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.
This is true, Slashdot is still far and away the best system of this type on the internet. Simply up/down voting systems like Ars and the BBC use are terrible. Ars tries to fix it by having "controversial" posts pushed up, but it's largely useless.
I wonder if the Slashdot model could be adapted to Twitter somehow. Probably not because Twitter will never get enough people to sensibly moderate and meta-moderate.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You must admit, your posts are often inflammatory and very, very inconsistent.
Fenced in by free speech.
That's some Orwellian shit right there.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
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.
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.
It is not about the name of the moderator, but what are you calling them out on.
Saying that you are right doesn't make you so. Believing that you are right is just that, a belief.
If you have a view point, back it up with arguments, not emotions.
Still, if you're not satisfied, don't use Twitter. No one is forcing you.
Eat the rich.
Agreed. Slashdot has easily the single best method of moderating out of every major website, changing that would be foolish.
And Twitter is finding out what Usenet found out. When you have 0 restraints, you do indeed become a honeypot for assholes. It's called the "Tragedy of the Commons". When completely unfettered, any common era sinks to the bottom, as productive people find out that the assholes have made the place completely unproductive. The term TofC came about from public parks with completely open access that ended up becoming grazing grounds as farmers brought livestock which of course chased out the people using it as a park. But hey! free access for all right?
A good example more akin to online sites is what happened to usenet. A small example is at one time, there was an electronics group called rec.radio.antenna. I was on the group for a number of years. It was a tremendous resource, with some highly respected professional designers, Amateurs who also made contributions to the SoA, and a lot of people there to learn from them.
It also had a few kooks, but not the jackass variety, just guys with strange theories. You could have a rational exchange with them, and often they served as a goad to make you think.
And a few weirdos - but they were manageable.
Then, as the entry requirements to the internet became lower, a new element snuck in. And they were strange to say the least. Some had definite psycho-sexual issues that would make the typical "haiku faggot" AC here in slashdot blush. And of course, they would get into flame wars with each other, and try to draw the rest of us in.
As well, there was the odd equalization issue. Some kid with mom and dad's computer could get in the group, and go after the experts. A group of people carrying on a real conversation, and here's the kid screeching about how the expert likes to fuck pigs, or even physical threats.
And Usenet was so big on allowing the folks with the severe issues to have their say, even if it was turning the group into literary porn, and allowing the expert to be hammered with insult and threats. Their answer? block them with your newsreader.
Then the kooks started opening up dozens, in one case thousands of new accounts to get around the blocks. It was so freaking weird, as they not only wanted their insane range war, they wanted the normal users to have to see it as well.
So one by one, the actual users of the group went away. First it was the experts, then the rest of us. Now? well, a few of the kooks are still there, and precious little else. Group after group went through the same assault. Usenet is dead for all practical purposes.
Tragedy of the commons.
And yeah, Twitter is going the same way. It is a honeypot for assholes, no matter what they might think.
Here in Slashdot, the moderation system is not perfect, but it is about as perfect as you can get in a world with both normal people and assholes.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
If you state your opinion reasonably and rationally, Slashdot is almost always interested in hearing it.
I think "sometimes" is more accurate than "almost always" but it depends on what you're talking about. If you dare to post anything critical of the sacred cows most of the readers hold dear, they'll simply moderate your comments as a "troll".
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.)
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 /.
How often are opposing views labeled as "trolling" on Slashdot? I have submitted a thoughtful post without any inflators words and it was modded down.
So what? I've had posts marked as troll, and I don't get much butthurt about it. If you had the balls to post with even a pseudonym, you might see that sometimes mini range wars erupt over posts. I get email notifications of mods to my posts, and sometimes its a litany of a post getting modded insightful, then troll, then insightful, ant overrated, then informative, then flamebait. I consider that as showing I am onto something.
Then again, I don't have the bitched up idea that everyone has to agree with me. If I end up as Troll in the end, then maybe I was being an asshole. So what.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
>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...
Is there a risk that moderating results in not providing for opportunities for opposing points of view to surface as part of the conversation?
Nope. If a person posts as AC, they just start out at a lower rung on the ladder. If it is really important to have your dissenting voice heard, you can post under a pseudonym, or engage in conversations with people who don't set their browsers to cut off at whatever level. I tend towards no cutoff, but will use it if the AC's get into a "faggot" war, or we get APK involved. That's life in the trenches.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I don't. =)
Well, first you have to consider that anyone can be a moderator. I don't have mod points right now, but I've had them within the last week, and I don't post that much on here any more.
Second, there is such a thing as meta-moderation. (Or at least there was. Not actually sure it's there any more.)
Third, Slashdot doesn't want their moderators harassed. You don't get to see who modded down your post, because they don't want you going to every post that moderator makes and revenge-modding them, or harassing them.
Fourth, if you are consistently being modded down (presumably under your Slashdot handle, rather than as an AC), then the problem isn't the mods, it's you. It is highly unlikely that one or more mods are specifically looking for your posts and going "HaHa! Time to mod him down again!" while twirling their mustaches. If you're being modded down while posting as an AC, how are the mods supposed to know it's you specifically? Not even mods see who is behind a particular AC post.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
It utterly amazes me that no major sites have adopted a slashdot-like meta mod system yet, seriously web-guys! Talk to your bosses. This is a nighties solved problem.
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
> 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?
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).
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
Sure, there is a risk. You can't force others to read at -1 or 0, though. For some reason, I've been getting lots of mod points in the last few months. I've spent a large fraction of those on AC posts that I thought needed to rise above the fold. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
I browse at -1, always. I don't like filters, and don't have much problem skipping past posts I discern as not worth the effort. I do want to give them a chance, though.
"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?
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...
I agree with you that sometimes a moderator will negatively moderate a post they do not agree with. I disagree that this is censorship. A viewer's ability to see your post has not been suppressed. Every viewer of this website can see all the posts no matter the rating on the post. Some viewers will choose to look at all the posts while other viewers will choose to only look at posts which their peers have moderated to a certain level.
As long as users of Google, in your scenario, could continue to view all search results, regardless of moderation, why would it matter? Here on Slashdot we can all view all the posts regardless of the moderation. Negatively moderating the post does not change where it shows up in the list of posts. It's still there for all to see whom choose to see it.
If a user decides to subscribe to the group think of moderation and browse only at +5 they see what they the group wants them to see. If on the other hand a user decides to ignore the group think and browse at -1, they see things as they are. The control and choice is entirely in the hand of the viewer.
to anti government, anti-Microsoft, etc
ftfy. The burden is definitely on you to prove you are not an MS shill, particularly when commenting on stories that are clearly posted by MS shills.
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. . . .
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
Not only that, Reddit's system of limitless scoring leads to people frequently crafting replies or shaping the discussion merely to accumulate upvotes. Plus the idea that any account has unlimited voting on all comments instantly is a recipe for distortion.
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
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.
Some of us curmudgeons are younger than that, thank you very much. Now get off my lawn!
--There are two kinds of people in this world. I don't like either of them.
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
And I think there needs to be a -1: too stupid to realize that a statement overloaded with hyperbole is likely to be sarcasm.
Worse, people are more likely to be negative towards things they dislike than positive about things they like. And zealots are likely to be zealous about their positions. Thus the effect you mention is likely to push towards polar extremes . . . not unlike the current US political debate.
During the 1994 baseball strike rec.sports.baseball generated over a thousand posts per day, many of them much more informative than what you read in newspapers or watched on TV about that situation. Today there are 0 posts per day. It died because the web is much easier to use. I have yet to come across a web comment system that implements the Usenet KILL file properly.
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.
It's healthy to read opposing viewpoints.
You don't know that you're a modern day KKK member, as viewed by future society. They didn't realize it was wrong. They thought they were protecting their community.
Had they access to all viewpoints, no matter how offensive, maybe they would have understood more quickly that what they believed was wrong.
They would have realised that they were dealing with an offensive asshole. Of what particulr use is it for me to read that someone enjoys writing their projecting homosexal haiku about a man getting a penis inserted into his rectum, or has an issue with people with dark pigmentation, in a conversation about say, the Internet of Things? None at all - only that someone has some deep psychosexuall issues, because most of society doesn't particularly care what two guys do to each other. Of what use is it to read yo mamma comments, or rother ridiculous commentary that isn't even related to the conversation?
Because commentary that is relevant, and not completely fucked up or designed to be fucked up and doesn't contribute anything, often gets voted up.
And the Psychosexual fantasies of gay sex or fear of people that don't look like the poster, are all still there. All you have to do is set your filter level low enough to read them in all their sad projection fantasy glory
So when it isn't removed, it isn't censored anyhow. And we don't have to listen to fucked up ranting by unhinged people. But if someone wants to, it's right there for them.
Which is the oddest thing - AC's make a lot of complaints about Slashdot censorship. I know, because I read hundreds of them. If you don't catch the irony and lie in the AC's statements, well, you just want everyone to read the offtopic and trollish shit that you write.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
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.
Oh, so now the big bad rightwingers are coming with guns, because they're not allowed to post on Twitter anymore?
That sounds extremely petty to me.
Eat the rich.
So what?
The discussion is about how much better slashdot's system is over every other. The primary supporting evidence is a lack of bandwaggoning ala reddit. Having posts that contain no inflammatory content being modded troll as if they did, shows that the slashdot moderation system contains the problem it is heralded as rising above.
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.
It's just like people that want anti bully laws, harassment laws already exist, if someone is harassing you go take care of that.
You say that as if it were easy. What do you do when you are getting mobbed by hundreds or thousands of assholes who all insist you be raped and killed? How exactly do you "take care of" something like that? And this doesn't even consider what another poster mentioned, which is that even if you block a user, which is the most simple thing you can do on most comment systems, but that user then proceeds to open dozens of alternative accounts to continue harassing you?
This is like the Streisand Effect's demented evil cousin. If you react at all, that gives fresh incentive for these jerks to harass you all the more.
So what do you do? Throw a harassment suit at each and every poster? I'm not aware of any kind of reverse class-action suit, but IANAL so that doesn't mean much. But even if you do, what's the likelihood that one of those nutjobs goes *really* off the deep end and actually tries to carry out their threat?
You're better off just throwing your hands in the air, saying "fuck this" and just walking away.
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.
Each moderator here is basically a little Hitler, with the power to censor five posts they don't like.
Censor ... Censor. ... Something irks me about that word. Maybe it's the fact that your post is currently scored -1 and I'm still able to read it.
Ok then, let's say "force them to tolerate your hateful bullshit" instead.
Eat the rich.
How often are opposing views labeled as "trolling" on Slashdot?
Just as often as it's labelled (two Ls, it helps if you can do a basic spell check before posting if you want to be taken seriously) informative.
Just because your view is opposing doesn't mean it's worth something. E.g. don't expect a story about Hitler to have an equal level of "Hitler was a monster" and "Hitler was a lovely guy" posts. On truly contentious topics you'll probably find your post modded up and down like a Yoyo.
There are very few things in the world I hate more than hypocrites.
Eat the rich.
+3 Flamebait
(Score: -1, Stupid)
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.
Yeah, but that's kinda like saying DEC was the best computer company - just before it went broke. Slashdot's content is not 20% of what it used to be. Not necessarily blaming the mod system, just saying it doesn't seem to help.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Unfortunately, one man's psycho is often another's spiritual leader... Just saying.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
You must be new here.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
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.
Moderation is a form of censorship, though. You can say it's not, but it is. It reduces the audience that reads a comment, thus suppressing it. That is, by definition, a form of censorship. Claiming that moderation isn't censorship, is being highly disingenuous.
And allowing everyone to post whatever they feel like, whether that be threats, calling the people trying to carry on a legitimate conversation names or spoofing their posts will just kill it in short order. You might not like that, but its how it is. Happened to Usenet, and is happening to Twitter.
People who are actully doing things move on to other places where they don't have to deal with that crap. And you'll have all of teh free speech with no content that you want where they used to be. And if you want to join the fun where they moved to, you'll have ot use an actual name, and get kicked if you don't follow the rules.
And what you are calling censorship, where you just get a lower score, yet the posts remain right there for the world to see, is kind of a special snowflake definition of censorship. It's a big world, and not everyone is going to agree with what you post. As I tols another AC (perhaps it was you i dunno, perhaps the time is right for you to open up a completely open tech site, with no moderation whatsoever.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
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.
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'
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 thing is, moderation is not censorship. This is something the AC above gets very wrong, and you seem to be agreeing with. Downmodding a post does not make it disappear, so it is not being censored in any way, you can still see it by reading at -1, so it is not blocked or censored.
This is censorship:
https://slashdot.org/story/01/...
which Slashdot fought against as much as they could.
Please, don't confuse moderation with censorship, they are entirely different things.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
I'm with you there, I tend to upmod ACs who need it as much as possible, and even when I don't have mod points, I always surf at -1 and read them all.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
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'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.
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