Twitter Says It's Cracking Down on Hate Speech (usatoday.com)

With public backlash growing, Twitter says it's taking steps to crack down on hate speech, from making it easier to report alleged incidents on the social media service to educating moderators on what kind of conduct violates the rules. From a report on USA Today: Twitter users will also gain more control over their experience on Twitter with the ability to mute words and phrases, even entire conversations, if they don't want to receive notifications about them, said Del Harvey, Twitter's head of safety. The effort comes as an uptick in biased graffiti, assaults and other incidents have been reported in the news and on social media since Election Day, prompting president-elect Donald Trump to call for people to "stop it" during a 60 Minutes interview on Sunday night. The FBI reports that hate crimes rose 7% in 2015, led by attacks on Muslim Americans.

Comments

Dun dun dun

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a slippery slope.

You don't have the right to not be offended.

The echo chamber is the reason Trump got elected. It made the American left complacent.

Re:Dun dun dun

[serviscope_minor]

You can keep banging that drum if you like but it gets no less silly.

While people have no right to not be offended, you also don't have a right to offend people: you cannot force them to listen to you and if they leave then there is nothing you can do about it, legally. Whine all you like but if people leave Twitter because they don't want to listen to blatontly bigoted shit all day, that's their perogative. Twitter has decided it would rather keep those people around.

So tough luck buttercup.

Re:Dun dun dun

[spire3661]

And we are saying that maybe its time we revisit that stance and start applying common carrier rules to these services once they reach a certain threshold of users. AT&T was once a 'private' entity too, but We The People determined that their service was so necessary that common ground rules had to be put in place for the good of all.

Re:Dun dun dun

[penandpaper]

Does that mean a baker should not forced to bake a cake for a gay couple? I am confused, both are private services offered yet one cannot decide on their policy for the use of their service.

So cracking down on freedom of speech

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering that those on the left consider support Trump to be "hate speech" I assume what this really means is cracking down on the freedom of speech.

People have been investigating those so called "Trump-caused hate incidents" and a lot of them turn out to be faked. There is no "hate backlash" brought on by Trump. What you're seeing are the people who lost the election trying to smear the winner to take away from the fact that THEY LOST and that America does not want to go down the path they've been pushing.

The new era of censorship

[sinij]

So the technocrats didn't like the outcome of the past election and are now determined to ensure it won't happen again. Lets not pretend this has anything to do with hate speech.

The only thing that would push me to vote for a despicable candidate like Trump if the other side is attempting censorship.

Doubling down

[s.petry]

Obviously certain tech companies hate that their censorship and propaganda failed, so they are doubling down. Time for competing products to rise up, assuming you don't get sued out of business for the next couple months at any rate.

Cool!

[MikeRT]

So when BLM activists agitate for felonies to be committed against teenage girls that disagree with them, Twitter will finally block their accounts, right?

Right?

Re:Cool!

[Attila Dimedici]

No, no, you don't understand. That's not hate speech because BLM activists support the same political agenda as Twitter. Hate speech is opposing their agenda.

Re:I am not ashamed of being white.

[sinij]

I am.

Feel-free to hate yourself, but at least do it for the right reasons - because you are an idiot. You have no control over your race, and your race on the whole, despite what SJWs will get you to believe, isn't any more racists than Hispanic, Asian, Black, or Arab.

Good

[DogDude]

I'm glad. I'm tired of the trolls and racists and assholes trying to ruin every single Internet discussion. Fuck them. Not that Twitter is a good place for a discussion, but the assholes have run rampant in every place on the Internet where people (try to) communicate. I would never spend time in a real life place that had these same idiots saying these same kind of things, and I don't online, either. I'm sick of it. I don't need it.

Re:Twitter's format is a big part of the problem

[Fire_Wraith]

While the 140 character limit certainly does hinder nuance and full expression, the coarsening of civil discourse in open space is much more far reaching than that. Look at just about any unmoderated comments section on the web for a prime example. I'd bring up Penny Arcade's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, but anonymity seems to be only part of the equation. I would argue rather that it is the increased degree of removal from immediate social consequence that enables and encourages people to be flaming shitbags to each other on the internet.

We have certain expectations of polite behavior in person, and someone who violates those norms gets punished by the way everyone around reacts to them. This doesn't carry over to the internet though - worse, you can probably find people who will support you in your asshole-ish behavior.