Slashdot Mirror
Twitter Suspends American Far-Right Activists' Accounts (theguardian.com)
Twitter has suspended the accounts of a number of American "alt-right" activists hours after announcing a renewed push to crack down on hate speech. From a report on The Guardian:Among the accounts removed were those of the self-described white-nationalist National Policy Institute, its magazine, Radix, and its head Richard Spencer, as well as other prominent alt-right figures including Pax Dickinson and Paul Town. Spencer, who according to anti-hate group SPLC "calls for 'peaceful ethnic cleansing' to halt the 'deconstruction' of European culture", decried the bans as "corporate Stalinism" to right-wing news outlet Daily Caller. "Twitter is trying to airbrush the alt right out of existence," Spencer said. "They're clearly afraid. They will fail!"
It's so hard being a Nazi now a days, for some reason everyone seems to think your a vile repugnant monster.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I've seen news articles about a lot of hate and violent threats towards Trump and others by people, but they aren't banned. Twitter really is as biased as I see in articles, even the ones posted to Slashdot.
One account suspended merely replaced the word "black" with "white" to show the double standard Twitter has with race. For instance, someone would tweet "Can't wait for white people to go extinct" and the account would replace white with black. The person using the "white" tweet was never suspended.
I don't understand. It is the left that is engaging in hate speech, and even physical violence. They are rioting, advocating the assassination of the President-elect, and denouncing democracy in this country. And they are blaming others for their own faults and criminal actions. Sounds like Twitter is going after the wrong people.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Whatever you think of alt-right (hopefully, not too well), this move by Twitter establishes itself as an arbiter of norms and values.
As a nation we value our freedom of speech. We tolerate even the likes of Westboro Church. We tolerate this because unless deplorable people have the right to speak freely, there could be no freedom of speech. It must be that absolute. Unfortunately, it was made clear that Twitter doesn't share our national values.
So, I see an echo chamber that the far right creates their OWN version of twitter, kind of like how the right created their own "news" organization.
And so begins the true divide in the country, where the fox news people feed their own echo chamber via alt-twitter, and the liberals have msnbc and twitter.
And the two sides never speak to each other.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
It's so charming to watch the Liberal Left endorse censorship without the slightest trace of irony.
You guys really DON'T get it, do you? Or do you think the various actors and their sympathies today will /forever/ agree with your personal morality?
-Styopa
As a progressive, for quite some time I watched in horror as Left turned deeply Regressive. They have no idea that censorship apparatus that they are building will be quickly turned on them.
The SPLC is nothing of the kind. They are a left-wing propaganda outlet.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I will not defend your right to actively attempt to make people feel unsafe using threats of violence. I will not defend your right to attempt to incite riots. I will not defend your right to shout "fire!" in a crowded building. The concept of non-protected speech exists for good reason.
Headline falsely implies that the accounts were deleted because they were alt-right or far-right, when they were deleted because they used hate speech. Not a bias in viewpoint, but a cap on hate speech.
Actually, the left wing equivalent of the "Alt-Right" is the "Ctrl-Left".
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
A bit of hyperbole is to be expected in the face of what's coming (hope you're health, you're about to lose pre-existing condition coverage unless you're rich enough to pay for COBRA).
Oh you mean one of the two parts of the ACA that Trump just agreed with and said he would keep on 60 minutes. I am not even a Trump supporter but the spread of misinformation and bullshit from the left at this point is absolutely horrendous. It went from sites on the right doing it to switching to the left. The man isn't even in office yet. By all means though don't let facts get in the way of your fear-mongering.
I'm sorry but tolerating hate is not tolerance, it's cowardice
It doesn't matter, the USA has enshrined freedom of speech in its Constitution. Or is this freedom only good when liberal elites use it to their advantage ?
Freedom of speech doesn't mean that a particular non-government platform has to tolerate your speech on their site.
here it is explained by Randall Munroe: xkcd
(don't forget to read the mouseover text).
Your link doesn't relate. It cites one incident with one individual and some various minor events like church fires. Meanwhile, you look to the west coast where mobs of people are marching down the street smashing every window on every shopfront they can find, destroying vehicles, attacking passers-by. They don't compare. They are not at all alike. A church fire is not a riot. One individual assaulted by another in an isolated setting is not a riot. Worse, if the right were truly as violent and revolutionary as many suggest, there would have been mass shootings during riots the likes of which the country hasn't seen since the civil war. That didn't happen, not even remotely close. Some people carried some protest signs suggesting it, but it was protest. Unlike now, with mass destruction of property and violent assaults perpetrated by the angry mobs of protesters.
That didn't just "happen" to them. They got regulated in exchange for access to a market in which they would exercise a near- or complete-monopoly.
If you want to make an argument that Twitter has a near-monoply on... um, tweeting, or that Facebook has a near-monopoly on communicating among people in general, and you are able to reasonably contend that these things are important to society then you might want to make an argument for regulation and see if you can make it fly.
Both companies use their terms of service to say "you over here can participate, but you over there can't" one way or another, and in a fairly arbitrary manner. They also restrict what you can do if they do let you use their service. And they are both pretty much the only real serious game in town for their respective functions in society. So you might have an argument. But that's the way you have to present it if you want it to even have a chance of flying. Seems to me your chances are overall better with Facebook, as they really do have a stranglehold on general interaction and friendly-to-the-general-public networking, which does indeed affect society in general in a very broad and powerful sense. Tweeting... I don't know. Maybe. I can't see it, personally. If you take my 140 characters away from me, I will just laugh at you. I think I would take being cut off from the vast majority of the people I have met over my lifetime and my extended family much more seriously. If I used Facebook and cared, which I don't, either one. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.