Twitter Suspended Hundreds of Thousands of Accounts Amid 'Violent Extremism' (fortune.com)

Twitter said on Tuesday it had suspended more than half a million accounts since the middle of 2015 as the company steps up efforts to tackle "violent extremism" on its microblogging platform. From a report: The company shut down a total of 376,890 accounts in the last six months of 2016, Twitter said in its latest transparency report.

Comments

It's paying off, too!

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:TWTR&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwja9K_rlujSAhWnrlQKHWJ7DCcQ2AEIFTAA

Re:It's paying off, too!

[TWX]

Really? When I look at the data from Sept 22 to March 21, I don't see anything that looks like a correlation. When I expand the graph to a year I see it remaining roughly the same other than an abberation around the 2016 presidential campaign when the Orange One became so prominent, falling back to norms in October when no one gave a damn, and then more recently falling again when Twitter has had news of problems with the company itself.

Re:It's paying off, too!

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? When I look at the data from Sept 22 to March 21, I don't see anything that looks like a correlation. When I expand the graph to a year I see it remaining roughly the same other than an abberation around the 2016 presidential campaign when the Orange One became so prominent, falling back to norms in October when no one gave a damn, and then more recently falling again when Twitter has had news of problems with the company itself.

>I don't see anything that looks like a correlation.

cuz you don't want to see it?

Usually, when a company makes some announcement that is intended to cast some action in a positive light (Twitter is safer because it's cracking down on extremists and harassers!), the expectation is to see a favorable, if temporary, response from the market. Instead, its stock price is taking a dive right now.

Re:It's paying off, too!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I see what you think you're seeing. Or, at least if I think I know what you think you're seeing.

I zoom out and all I see is a giant downward trend.

Twitter is crap. I can't for the life of me figure out why anybody uses it. Well... I can figure out why asshats use it, so it could very well be that their stock price is proportional to the number of asshats spewing vitriol on their platform.

Re:It's paying off, too!

[Marxist Hacker 42]

99% of which were conservative, no doubt. When left wing extremists get violent, they get cheered and let off.

Re:It's paying off, too!

[Pseudonym]

cuz you don't want to see it?

If only there was some way we could mathematically calculate the strength and significance of a purported correlation...

Re:It's paying off, too!

[Anonymous Coward]

That Milo supporter who shot a protestor in the stomach sure got the book thrown at him, that's for damn sure.

Re:It's paying off, too!

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Milo's a libertarian, not a conservative- as evidenced by his support for homosexual pederasty.

Re: It's paying off, too!

[billdale]

"The Orange One"? Hah! Have you no respect for someone who has left his imprint upon an entire NATION?!? People have NAMES, and deserve to be addressed as such! The name is JULIUS, fella! Orange Julius, and don't you forget it! Mmmm... YUMMY!

What's the plan, Stan?

[tietokone-olmi]

Because shutting down extremist accounts ends violent extremism... how exactly? What about the baby, freshly dumped alongside bathwater?

(of course the point was always to dump the baby to begin with.)

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[vvaduva]

Exactly...censoring speech (whatever that speech is) doesn't actually change people's hearts and minds. It just pushes the speech into darker corners of the web. I would much rather know who the hateful and bigoted are so I can avoid them.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I poop in your mouth?

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[tietokone-olmi]

Moreover, I'd like to have all the extremist argumentation slapped the fuck down by intellectuals in public. Given the way things are going however, it's as though transparency and public discussion were anathema to those with power to censor.

I mean, it can't possibly be that some jack-ass white supremacist, trash-ass ISIS goon, or wank-ass Hillary Trumponite, were hard to repudiate -- unless your own wack bullshit depends on similar constructions. Then it's really hard without stabbing yourself in the back.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not what is happening.

Extremists can push their views in darker corners of the web all they want. The important difference is that the mainstream population won't read those posts and won't get incited by it.

It's like playing your video on the superball vs in a local TV station. The loss of viewership hurts them.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[Anonymous Coward]

They can all go to hateful man's Twitter, a.k.a. Gab.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[DogDude]

Who said anything about ending violent extremism? They're trying to attract advertisers who don't want to be associated with a platform used by lots of extremists.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[MightyMartian]

It's not about ending violent extremism, it's about not associating your product with it.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[Anonymous Coward]

People who become incited into violence by propaganda shouldn't be allowed to use a computer. In fact they should simply be locked up. Put 'em all on a garbage barge and tow it out to sea, then sink it.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[MightyMartian]

A business deciding they're not going to allow certain kinds of messages on their public bulletin board is no more censorship than me ordering my racist uncle to stop talking trash or get out of my house. In both cases, a private interest is making space available but making rules about what and cannot appear. Seeing as violent extremists have no lack of other places on the Internet to spread their message, this does constrain them. What it does do, however, is force them back on to their own echo chambers, which sucks for them, because that's where they were previously stuck for decades. Back in ye olden days, about the only way you could see any White Supremacist literature was by ordering one of their xeroxed periodicals in the mail, or on occasion, when one of them got sufficiently motivated to stick some shitty little xeroxed flyer on the windshield.

These groups have a right to their platform, but no one else has any obligation to provide them a pre-existing one. It's been this way for a very long time. Even newspapers won't publish nastier extremist rhetoric.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[Anonymous Coward]

Twitter is for twits. Twits are easily influenced by what they read. And there are quite a lot of them.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[ganjadude]

the problem with pushing it to the dark corners of the web is thats when they go off the deep end

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[nine-times]

Because shutting down extremist accounts ends violent extremism... how exactly?

Maybe I'm missing something, but where does it say that they intended to end violent extremism? It said they're trying to "tackle 'violent extremism' on its microblogging platform," but I think a more reasonable interpretation of that is that they're not trying to deal with violent extremism itself, but with its presence on their platform.

And actually, to deal with your question more directly, denying extremists a platform does help prevent the spread of that extremism. It doesn't really matter if it's ISIS or the KKK, if you help people spread their propaganda, you're deepening the problem. Twitter has simply taken the position that they don't want to assist in spreading that kind of propaganda. And before you start harping on the First Amendment, no, the First Amendment does not require that private parties assist you in spreading your speech. It only disallows the government from making your speech illegal.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[vvaduva]

It's still censorship. It's legitimate and legal, but still censorship. The word censorship doesn't always have to carry a negative connotation. Parents censor the speech of their children often or the TV content their children are exposed to. There is nothing wrong with it.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who said anything about ending violent extremism? They're trying to attract advertisers who don't want to be associated with a platform used by lots of extremists.

That is the same reasoning that Pence used against homosexuals in his home-state advocacy for "religious freedom".

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[MightyMartian]

I've never quite understood this argument how censorship actually makes extremists stronger. In a modest way I can see some legitimacy in saying be an "underground" movement will have a certain romantic appeal, but it's still pretty damned limiting. When White Supremacists had their shady BBSs and later websites, those were places that one had to actually seek out. But Twitter, Facebook and Google have given these groups a kind of free mass distribution they could only have previously dreamed of, and I think these services blocking them will not be doing the extremist types any favors. Quite the opposite, it's going to push them back under their online rocks again, where yes, maybe they regain a sort of mystique, but not what they really crave, which is mass media attention.

And it's coming. Advertisers and potential buyers are making it clear that extremist content on these major services is harmful to their own brands. So, whether you believe Google, Twitter and Facebook should just allow this kind of content on their systems because of simplistic notions about freedom of speech is irrelevant, they won't do it because it will cost them money. If the extremists want to broadcast their message, they're going to have to do it on their own, and without the assistance of the major online portals.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[MightyMartian]

Generally when censorship is brought up here, it's an attempt to conflate First Amendment protections with a private organization's lawful right to moderate content. Yes, in technical terms it is censorship, but since some people seem to believe that the First Amendment protection of speech somehow should be imposed on private companies' Internet-facing content, I think it's useful to draw a distinct line between content moderation and censorship.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[MightyMartian]

It is, how? We're talking here about a private company whose fortunes are materially effected when potential buyers or advertisers walk away because they can't or won't control the extremist content that's appearing on their forum? Are you saying private web portals should have no power to constrain the kind of material that gets posted on their websites? Liberty isn't just for the extremists, you know.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[Anonymous Coward]

This. The key is to get the extremists as few eyeballs as possible. Yes, let them have their own corners of the deep web. However, they should not have a voice on mainstream sites.

But, here is the problem: Where do you draw the line? Daesh recruitment is obvious. However, when it comes to hate groups, where is the point where they get their mic unplugged? Something considered "racist" for one person could be way different for another, and if more than just a criminal/terroristic minority are silenced, it can have unforseen consequences where it might become mainstream to hit the deep web for what was once moderate political topics, where the people talking about a minimum guaranteed income or a single payer healthcare system in the US are on similar sites as the people pushing nazi propaganda.

Another issue is that extremist sites bring eyeballs and thus money. This is why Daesh posts tend to not be eradacated quickly... the amount of views someone getting tortured and killed bring a lot of ad revenue. So, it becomes a conflict of interest often to block terroristic media as it brings income.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[stdarg]

It's virtually impossible in an unmoderated forum. For instance if your opponents vastly outnumber you, your brilliant repudiations will largely go unnoticed due to the noise. Not to mention many people judge arguments based on apparent popularity. If lots of people are acting offended by what you say, regardless of the merit of your argument, there is a huge group of people who simply won't want to believe you because you're a troll/jerk/mean/whatever.

unless your own wack bullshit depends on similar constructions

Your own wack bullshit DOES depend on similar constructions! Unless you're only going to go out and argue the most basic, obvious things that virtually nobody disagrees with.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[meta-monkey]

but since some people seem to believe that the First Amendment protection of speech somehow should be imposed on private companies' Internet-facing content

That's not the argument. No one is saying companies should be forced to comply with the first amendment. "Free speech" as a principle exists outside of the Constitution...it's the shared cultural value that the Constitution seeks to protect. The cultural value came first, then the legal protection. This is how descriptive legal systems like english common law came to be.

The point is that these online platforms like Twitter don't hold this cultural value. That's okay, I guess, you don't have to. But they claim to, while saying they're only denying a platform for "hate speech," but this is bullshit too since they never punish anyone for saying "killing white people." That's pretty damn hateful.

They're not for free speech, they're not against "hate" on principle, they're just partisans.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[dslauson]

Because shutting down extremist accounts ends violent extremism

For Twitter, you can assume that this is not so much about pushing agendas or silencing voices (or ending extremism). This is about making sure Twitter doesn't become an unpleasant place to be. If people stop going there because it sucks because it's full of lulz nazi eggs shouting caps-locked slurs at them, that hurts Twitter right in the pocketbook.

Argue all you want about Twitter's responsibility to defend free speech, but ultimately they're a business, and a business can't be perceived as though they're looking the other way while extremists harass and threaten their user base.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[Anonymous Coward]

Generally when censorship is brought up here, it's an attempt to conflate First Amendment protections with a private organization's lawful right to moderate content.

I don't know how else to say this, other than by example.

Story: X is blocking speech.
Person 1: That's censorship.
Person 2: It's not censorship since it isn't the government doing it. The First Amendment does not apply here.

If what you say is true, occasionally it should be Person 1 who references the First Amendment. But I never see that. It is always Person 2 who is the first to bring up the First Amendment.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what does it do to help spread extremism? I hope twitter keeps it up, 10x more in fact, and includes far-right hate groups which far outnumber far-left hate groups

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[meta-monkey]

Correction: saying "kill white people."

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[Anonymous Coward]

That sounds like you are trying to incite violence against a particular group.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you could be young or just feeling judgmental- either way here's the real reason why such accounts are shut down:
- It lowers the number of radical & negative hate speech, therefore keeping more & more customers from being drawn into the hateful messages.
- It keeps the company in good legally standing from being associated with criminal organizations that use their service, If they continues hosting terror views the company could be held liable for damages done by radical customers or even be held in material support.
- It keeps to their stated brand, look, and service goals. That it is a fun communicating tool and not a riotous, hateful, radical, killing machine.

Well there you go. Not as conspiratorial theory or deep as come may hope- but hey they're just cleaning house & it's business as usual for most any company in the entire world at any time in history, ever & always.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[rickb928]

Time to have the public accommodation debate.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[tietokone-olmi]

That's a silly viewpoint. Certainly we have media even now that's able and willing to pick-and-choose what they publish; given this, it's absolutely necessary to have open fora -- and for platforms like Twitter etc. -- for the presentation of minority views. Such as yours, and mine. As such, basic communication tools shouldn't be subject to a Gestapo-esque gimping. What's more, China's example shows us that the logical endstate of that is private messenger applets that dock your good-citizen points for discussing Scunthorpe, with double penalty for using a computer while doing so.

>Your own wack bullshit DOES depend on similar constructions!

Speak for yourself, fampai.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[tietokone-olmi]

>I've never quite understood this argument how censorship actually makes extremists stronger.

That's not the argument. The argument is that censorship neither removes extremism nor makes it less relevant in a concrete security sense, and that censorship is invariably applied to goals that have nothing to do with anti-extremist programs. See the "baby w/ bathwater" simile in my first post.

Furthermore, censorship is anathema to an open society. To wit: once permitted, you'll find that the censors are never wrong, and that they commit no errors.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. When you have terrorist factions like the muslim brotherhood that are verified there are bigger issues with twitter. @Ikhwanweb

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[tietokone-olmi]

For a concrete example, right-wing bourgeois politicians at the EU level (i.e. NGOs and such) have repeatedly attempted to have communism declared an act of terrorism. Their definition includes such heinous things as striking, unionization, the ability of workers to switch companies as they themselves see fit, and limits on onerous forum clauses. Surely that's on par with truck bombs and gunning children down at a summer camp, for everyone.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[tietokone-olmi]

Commercial pressure to censor is, where effective, equivalent to primary censorship. As seen in Twitter's transparency report.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[religionofpeas]

It's an unpleasant place if your tweets gets censored.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because shutting down extremist accounts ends violent extremism... how exactly?

the company steps up efforts to tackle "violent extremism" on its microblogging platform

Accounts flagged for violent extremism are suspended. Suspended accounts cannot post on Twitter. Unless they repeatedly sign up with new accounts using information that doesn't get them immediately flagged, people using Twitter as a platform for violent extremism are unable (or less able) to do so. Twitter subsequently hosts less violent extremism.

Seriously, what part of this are you not understanding?

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[tietokone-olmi]

It says that their reason for suspending hundreds of thousands of accounts is "violent extremism". Unfortunately no-one can verify if this is true in any given case, since all evidence is hidden behind the mechanism of suspension. Might as well call it wrongthink, not that extremism has any better a definition.

Try this thought experiment out for size: if Twitter's workforce were to try and unionize, do you think Twitter would permit them the use of their own platform?

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[tietokone-olmi]

>If people stop going there because it sucks because it's full of lulz nazi eggs shouting caps-locked slurs at them, that hurts Twitter right in the pocketbook.

That's why Twitter recently rolled out keyword muting. Add slur du jour, problem addressed.

This being said, I've never seen any evidence of this giant mudslide of abuse that wasn't screencaps obviously doctored to maximize internet martyr points. On the contrary, there's quite a bit of maoist peer-pressure stuff and such going on in the moonbat sector; but even that appears to require no suspensions whatsoever.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[MightyMartian]

It's not that much of a cultural thing, as newspapers have always exercised the right to edit letters for content, or in some cases to outright refuse to publish them. As to the claims of equal tolerance of hate speech, that's a legitimate point, though I find that claims that white people are as frequently the objects of out and out hate speech tend to be pretty hyperbolic.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not even legitimate. They aren't banning people for just "violent extremism". They're applying their standards subjectively.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[MightyMartian]

But as we have already established, it is permitted where private individuals or organizations are concerned. The Government cannot restrain freedom of speech, save within very narrow and limited contexts (the "shouting fire in a crowded theater" or libel laws, for instance). But I as an individual am under no obligation to permit someone to stick a racist sign on my lawn, as my property rights override the racist's freedom of speech, and by the same token, Twitter is under no obligation to allow such content on its own property; the screen real-estate it makes available to the world.

This is what irritates me. People keep conflating private organizations' right to censor content they publish (a right that has existed for centuries now) with the sharp constitutional limits on government interference with free expression. The First Amendment does not block a newspaper from refusing to publish a racist letter to the editor, nor does it block Twitter from kicking off extremists. You can feel those sorts of decisions are wrong, and as a member of a free society you're solution is simply to go elsewhere.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[Anonymous Coward]

So they can choose between making it an unpleasant place for the one person whose inflammatory tweet is censored, or leaving the tweet to make it an unpleasant place for the couple of dozen people who see it. Compare this to, for example, a shopping mall with a group of neo-nazis shouting racist things to shoppers passing by. The shopping mall management has to choose between letting them continue to threaten shoppers, which no doubt would make shopping there an unpleasant experience, or kicking them out, which would be unpleasant for the neo-nazis. In both cases, it's clear which option makes the best business sense.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[Anonymous Coward]

Putting down a rabid dog isn't an incitement of violence from said dog. It's a cessation of any further attack by it.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[Anonymous Coward]

The US has been venturing about in the mideast for oil for decades.
OF COURSE groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS sprang up when these sovereign nations got tired of having the POLITICAL resistance to the US intrusions fail.
Murdering the opponent and its people is the natural response of Islam to continued aggression when political means fail to terminate it.
It's what you would call self-defense, or war.
Most people in the US don't get that because the US TOP SECRET's and LIES about what internationally illegal CIA and other devious shit it does overseas to other countries.
Most people in the US are brainwashed by their own government.
And the people let it happen gleefully.
You know, more stupid sitcoms and iWhatevers please.
Instead of solving the problems that cause them to satiate their misery in the first place.
How sad.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, like how if you want to get gay married, that's fine. But you can't force my private business to bake you a fucking cake for it. The government is obligated to respect your rights, but not private businesses.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[nine-times]

Unfortunately no-one can verify if this is true in any given case...

Do their terms of service provide that you have some kind of right of review? Or do those terms specify that they can suspend your account?

Try this thought experiment out for size: if Twitter's workforce were to try and unionize, do you think Twitter would permit them the use of their own platform?

If they were smart they would permit it. I don't know that they have an obligation to. Does NBC have an obligation to run a reality TV show about people who hate NBC?

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[GLMDesigns]

this is a lie that striking has been equated with terrorism.

However take a look at the violence by the left (reminiscent of Maoist Red Guards) over talks by Charles Murray and Milo.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

they're not trying to deal with violent extremism itself, but with its presence on their platform.

Exactly how much violent extremism fits into 140 characters? An IED and half a Kalashnikov?

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[AmiMoJo]

The problem is we don't know enough about the accounts to make an informed judgement.

For example, Twitter has a problem with sockpuppets. It's got a lot better recently, so one might speculate that some proportion of those accounts which were banned are sockpuppets. Is sockpuppetry a form of trolling that the company should try to deal with so that other users are not hounded and harassed off their service, or should the just let it be a free-for-all?

On the one hand we know that 4chan/8chan style forums where free speech is nearly unlimited (even they have rules) don't seem to scale well and are certainly not ever likely to turn a profit, which means they could never operate on the scale Twitter does... So there has to be some debate about what rules and limits a site should have to remain viable and allow maximum free speech.

To address your specific point about "killing white people", actually Twitter do ban accounts that say that.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[nine-times]

Someone could say "I know who you are, and I will kill you." It's a threat of violence, it's extreme, and they still have 100 characters left to elaborate.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[tietokone-olmi]

>But as we have already established, it is permitted where private individuals or organizations are concerned.

As I have pointed out time and again, the issue is not whether it's permitted of Twitter or not. The rest of your comment is you listening to yourself babble.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[tietokone-olmi]

Calling the dog rabid is an excuse for putting it down.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[tietokone-olmi]

>this is a lie that striking has been equated with terrorism.

It is absolutely not a lie. But I also note that you make no comment on the other things.

Re: What's the plan, Stan?

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be if there was a cure for rabies.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[MightyMartian]

I tend to disagree with the cake baking decision, though on that score, the Civil Rights Acts also set something of a precedent.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[MightyMartian]

No, that is the issue. In Common Law, as with Constitutional Law, that which is not forbidden is permitted. Twitter has a right to moderate content just as a newspaper or a store billboard does. Don't like it, don't use their service. The idea that any service should be forced to publish racist or extremist material is beyond absurd, and violates every notion of property rights and personal liberty. No one owes a pack of racists and violent lunatics some sort of platform.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[GLMDesigns]

I've been a union member. I'm also active in Libertarian politics. I read everything from the Reason, AEI, Cato and Heritage Foundation publications, The Economist, Wall Street Journal and have never seen "striking, unionization, the ability of workers to switch companies " associated with terrorism.

All free market people are completely supportive (in concept) with striking and switching companies. There is a problem with public service employees being unionized because there isn't anyone negotiating on behalf of the taxpayers. The politicians want the unions on their side so ... who are the unions negotiating with. (That is the problem).

Please show me quotes equating striking, switching companies with terrorism. Now there have been union goons, but that is not the same as equating unionism with terrorism.

Re: What's the plan, Stan?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, James O'Keefe was caught hiring people to disrupt those events.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not any of twitter's business! This is like a phone company trying to regulate the kind of conversations you're allowed to have and we shouldn't stand for it at all.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not what is happening.

Extremists can push their views in darker corners of the web all they want. The important difference is that the mainstream population won't read those posts and won't get incited by it.

It's like playing your video on the superball vs in a local TV station. The loss of viewership hurts them.

An animal is most dangerous when you've backed it into a corner dark or otherwise.
And humans are by far the most dangerous animals so raising them above baseline is rarely a good plan.

Re: What's the plan, Stan?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for the fact that that isn't true, and you're just making stuff up again.

At least learn a new lie, like Twitter is wiretapping Donald Trump or Donald Trump's golf game is totally all business.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Well that's not violent extremism, though. That's an ordinary personal threat.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[AHuxley]

".. First Amendment protection of speech somehow should be imposed on private companies' Internet-facing content.. "
Thats fine until governments, political leaders use a service at a city, state and federal level.
Then the product becomes more of a public record that needs to allow access, comment and archiving.
Allowing different governments in is not a "private companies" "Internet-facing content".

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[Anonymous Coward]

To address your specific point about "killing white people", actually Twitter do ban accounts that say that.

citation needed

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure whites created modern culture ( post 400 AD ) and any snowflakes who plead against that fact get smashed, dashed and hashed ... by any rational (re)publican racist. Can't say faxxot snowflake cause the 440 BC Greek hoplite was one tough bitch as-well-as Platos tutor. You got more lib.com drool to spew snowflake? Bring it on!

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[stdarg]

it's absolutely necessary to have open fora -- and for platforms like Twitter etc. -- for the presentation of minority views

I agree. What does "open" mean though? For that to be meaningful the platform has to be moderated. The quality of the outcome correlates with the quality of the people involved. The fact that you think it's a silly viewpoint tells me that you lack experience in unmoderated discussions with large groups of hostile people. When you have 20 people all arguing slight variations of the same theme against you, and not reading your replies to other people, it's just a quagmire. If you have no way of "muting" most of the people, the exercise is pointless.

Slashdot is open enough for me and has great moderation because it's mostly great people who mostly value principles like free speech.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is such a naive comment and it's so prevalent on slashdot to see this "censorship is bad, people will just have the bad opinions anyway". SO WHAT?! By censoring hate speech less people are influenced. It protects the people who see it and become convinced, or the people who see it and are threatened. It stops assholes from using a platform like twitter to harass and intimidate people. So fuck off with this borderline autistic "censorship is bad and counterproductive" bullshit.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[interkin3tic]

I don't give a goddamn fuck about changing people's hearts and minds. The MRA sexists, the alt-right nazi fucks, the 4-chan high school trolls, the genuinely unhinged infowars people, and the thousands of people who simply want to threaten people online can continue with their shit forever. Great, more power to them. I think they should bring back 4-chan, and make a bunch of other #-chans for them. Infowars should make it's own twitter. Those idiots weren't realizing they would be doing everyone a service by shooting themselves in the head while they were on twitter.

But on the actual twitter, hateful and bigoted people can turn people worth following away. I dunno, it's just a hypothesis I haven't investigated. But I'm more than willing to risk it. If getting rid of a million Milo and Spencer type alt accounts causes even one educated, rational person to say "Hey, maybe Twitter ISN'T a complete cesspit and I should try it," THEN WELL FUCKING WORTH IT.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[misexistentialist]

newspaper is more like a personal blog, twitter pretends to be communications platform open to the general public

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly...censoring speech (whatever that speech is) doesn't actually change people's hearts and minds.

There purpose isn't to change the mind of the one pushing for violence.
The thing is that one person is normalizing violence by arguing for it and encouraging it and some less sane individual acts out on it.
Something like the Quebec mosque shooting doesn't just happen because a single madman decided to go out and shoot people.
He was spending a lot of time with people who encouraged him to go down that path.
No, they didn't specifically say "Take a gun and go and shoot people there".
Rather it was a long time of vague statements that indicated that they approved of similar actions like "Wouldn't it be a shame if someone were to shoot all the immigrants. ;)"
Now, statements like that are plentiful and I doubt that is what caused the twitter accounts to be suspended.
There are plenty of accounts that pushes more direct and specific encouragement of violence, even against specific individuals.

Unfortunately the article doesn't provide a list of accounts or tweets that led to suspension.
It would be interesting if the tweets in question are in the realm of encouragement of violence that is covered by law or if Twitter is taking their own stand here.
It could be that Twitter feels that since it distributes said messages then they can be liable for the content and in the case of inciting violence jailtime is on the table if you knowingly were involved in it.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Generally when censorship is brought up here, it's an attempt to conflate First Amendment protections with a private organization's lawful right to moderate content.

Perhaps then we should not have permitted private organizations to replace and own high streets (malls), to have a stranglehold over public discourse on new channels.

The public corporation exists as a legal fiction at the public's convenience, to serve a public good. We certainly can constrain it in whatsoever way.

Re: What's the plan, Stan?

[Anonymous Coward]

newspaper is more like a personal blog, twitter pretends to be communications platform open to the general public

Is there a way for them to stop "pretending" then? They seem to be pretty clear about the steps they're taking here for example, so I'm not sure what form the pretence takes. Suppose they say that they reserve the right to remove any comments of which they disapprove - would that do it?

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[goose-incarnated]

This is about making sure Twitter doesn't become an unpleasant place to be.

They don't support killfiles? Any sort of user-determined restrictions on whose tweet a user sees?

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that much of a cultural thing, as newspapers have always exercised the right to edit letters for content, or in some cases to outright refuse to publish them.

The *primary* function of Twitter is two give the *individual* a platform from which to speak. This is not so in the case of newspapers.

"With the first link, the chain is forged..."

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[Anonymous Coward]

Striking means less revenue for the companies, so it is terrorism. Same reason why private companies like the Pinkertons were formed, to handle subversive elements who demanded horrific, extremist things like "weekends", "vacation", "worker's comp", and perhaps even a "pension."

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[tbannist]

Moreover, I'd like to have all the extremist argumentation slapped the fuck down by intellectuals in public. Given the way things are going however, it's as though transparency and public discussion were anathema to those with power to censor.

After all, it's worked so well on Slashdot, right? That's why we never have arguments over whether or not Climate Change is real any more. Once the bous arguments of the climate change denying posters were shown to be based on false claims and conspiracy theories, all of the anti-climate change posters recanted their positions are accepted the truth, right?

I think the problem is that people don't actually behave the way you think they should, when intellectuals slap down extremists in public, people who agree with the extremists tend to become more extreme, not less. Evidence and reason won't work on most people unless the source of the evidence and reason is considered "one of us", and sometimes a position is so fundamental to some people's identity that merely questioning it is enough to make the questioner automatically "one of them" and thus not to be listened to or trusted. Add to that the fact that it may take between 3 and 6 months for someone to change their mind on an important topic and it seems that slapping down arguments on twitter lies somewhere between counter-productive and ineffectual.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[meta-monkey]

I find that claims that white people are as frequently the objects of out and out hate speech tend to be pretty hyperbolic.

I think you just don't notice. One of the critical functions of our brains is making most of the world irrelevant. There's an infinite number of facts in any room, from the patterns of scuff marks on the floor to the discolorations in the paint on the walls etc etc. If you noticed all those things you're probably on drugs or brain damaged and incapable of functioning. So you just don't notice shit that isn't either a tool to help you achieve your objectives or an obstacle in your way. Somebody saying "kill white people" doesn't register as obstacle for you. But you absolutely have leftist celebs like Lena Dunham saying we need to "end white males" or Sarah Silverman going on about how she's glad the Jews killed Jesus and she'd do it again. These are not nice things to say. They do not help me achieve my goal of racial and religious harmony, so I notice them. On the other hand if someone said "fuck Judaism and we need to end Jewish females," boy ears would perk up. If you notice one and not the other it's because you fundamentally don't find the idea of eliminating whites offensive.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[tbannist]

This being said, I've never seen any evidence of this giant mudslide of abuse that wasn't screencaps obviously doctored to maximize internet martyr points.

If you declare all the evidence is bogus, then there won't be any non-bogus evidence.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[nine-times]

Who made you the arbiter of what constitutes "violent extremism"?

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[eaglesrule]

Perhaps the ones doing the debating don't all walk away sharing the same opinion, but that doesn't mean that those observing haven't been swayed. A good intellectual smack down of extremists is useful for those who haven't fully formed an opinion of their own and who may not be well informed on the subject but learn something from the debate.

As for changing the minds of extremists, there's this old expression:

A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Nobody had to, I just used common sense and the usual meaning.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[GLMDesigns]

Striking means less revenue for the companies, so it is terrorism.

You're making that up. Competition also means less revenue therefore competition is terrorism? WTF?

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[michael_wojcik]

censoring speech (whatever that speech is) doesn't actually change people's hearts and minds. It just pushes the speech into darker corners of the web.

I agree with that when we're talking about broad censorship by an effective monopoly, whether it's the government or someone who holds an overwhelming position in a particular medium (like, say, Google with web search).

When it's a single non-dominant publisher, though, I can't really fault them for deciding not to publish things they don't like. I don't think I'd have grounds for complaining if they closed my accounts.[1] Twitter is hardly a monopoly, and "extremist" speech is easy to find on the web regardless of what Twitter does. I wouldn't call being kicked off Twitter "push[ed] ... into darker corners".

As a matter of principle, if I were running a platform such as Twitter, would I hold freedom of expression on my platform up higher than refusing to promote speech I disagree with? I'm not at all sure that I would. Depending on how I presented that platform (is it a place for people to talk about specific topics I've defined, or an open forum?), I'd probably permit material I disagreed with as long as I thought it was well-reasoned, supported, and mature. But I wouldn't allow offensive speech simply to keep it in the light, because there are plenty of other venues for that.

[1] N.B. I have never actually "tweeted", from either my personal or business Twitter accounts. People I respect asked me to create them, so I did. Actually using them would be a step too far, though.

Re:What's the plan, Stan?

[EmptyHead]

So your basically suggesting that we should ban anyone that is espousing ideas that you don't believe in. Your alt-right nazi fk comment is very hypocritical then. When did everyone become political zealots? I don't think it was just Obama and Hillary that brought us this nightmare (Trump has only been a PIA since the election cycle began), something bigger must be happening. That is where the real conversations should be directed.

So Hillary's account got deleted?

[Anonymous Coward]

Her tweets got a crazy man elected President. It's entirely her fault we have Trump as President. She is the greatest ally of violent extremists.

Re:So Hillary's account got deleted?

[__aaclcg7560]

It's entirely her fault we have Trump as President.

As a moderate conservative and former Republican, I put the blame on the RNC nomination process — or lack thereof. They had the responsibility to ensure that they fielded qualified candidates for the nomination. Trump is neither a conservative nor a Republican, and, until a few short years ago, a Clinton Democrat. :/

Re:So Hillary's account got deleted?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can actually blame Hillary shills for that as well. I remember hearing nonstop how they were registering republican during the primaries so they could get Trump to be the front runner because there was NO WAY she could lose to someone like him...

Re:So Hillary's account got deleted?

[DaHat]

As a moderate conservative and former Republican,

That sounds like a shibboleth...

I put the blame on the RNC nomination process — or lack thereof.

Specifically what part of the non-process did you find broken? What should the process/party have done to prevent Trump (or any other candidate)?

They had the responsibility to ensure that they fielded qualified candidates for the nomination.

Except they are sort of limited to who throws their hat into the ring... and unlike the Democrats, worked to not play favorites and let the candidates & their supporters duke it out.

Trump is neither a conservative nor a Republican, and, until a few short years ago, a Clinton Democrat. :/

A Bill Clinton Democrat maybe, but thanks to the wonderful DNC nomination process, they ended up with the worst possible candidate. Of course, I contend that it was actually the election of Obama which moved the Overton window enough to make a Trump run & presidency possible.

Re: So Hillary's account got deleted?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean the election that Hillary lost to Obama and made him out to be perfect when compared to her?

Hillary is to blame for everything.

Re:So Hillary's account got deleted?

[Anonymous Coward]

But Hillary was promoting him as a great candidate. She wanted to face him, because she didn't care about the risk that Hitler would be our President. All Hillary cares about is herself. She needs to be kicked off Twitter, and then out of our country.

Re:So Hillary's account got deleted?

[__aaclcg7560]

That sounds like a shibboleth...

I'm not Jewish. ;)

Specifically what part of the non-process did you find broken?

A slate of 16 candidates in 2016. We went from the Seven Dwarfs in 2012 to the Clown Car in 2016. Strong indicators that the RNC was out of control.

What should the process/party have done to prevent Trump (or any other candidate)?

A citizenship test that immigrants take. The same citizenship test that most Americans would flunk because they don't understand how the country works. A determined candidate would know the answers inside and out. A non-serious candidate like Trump would huff and puff about how "elitist" the test was.

Except they are sort of limited to who throws their hat into the ring...

The job of the party leadership to cultivate potential members to become leaders who run for higher office. It shouldn't be a process by happenstance. Trump is like the fat kid that no one wanted on their team, gets picked last and accidentally hits a home run because everyone thought the game was over.

[...] and unlike the Democrats, worked to not play favorites and let the candidates & their supporters duke it out.

*cough* Jeb Bush *cough*

[...] thanks to the wonderful DNC nomination process, they ended up with the worst possible candidate.

After Super Tuesday, Bernie Sanders had to win every election with at least 60% of the votes to win the nomination. He failed to get the votes. If you removed the super delegates, he still failed to get the votes. The DNC, like the RNC, also failed to cultivate leaders for the nomination and let Hillary get it by default.

Of course, I contend that it was actually the election of Obama which moved the Overton window enough to make a Trump run & presidency possible.

George H.W. Bush's failure to win re-election in 1992 paved the way for the beginning of the end of the Republican Party that I knew.

Re:So Hillary's account got deleted?

[__aaclcg7560]

But Hillary was promoting him as a great candidate.

Because Jeb Bush and his family's fundraising machine was viewed as a greater strategic threat to her chances of winning the presidency.

All Hillary cares about is herself. She needs to be kicked off Twitter, and then out of our country.

This comment clearly demonstrates that you're not an American and don't appreciate American values. Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out of the country.

Re:So Hillary's account got deleted?

[__aaclcg7560]

You can actually blame Hillary shills for that as well. I remember hearing nonstop how they were registering republican during the primaries so they could get Trump to be the front runner because there was NO WAY she could lose to someone like him...

In retrospect, that was stupid. OTOH, The consequences of Trump winning the election will probably be the cleansing fire that both parties need desperately.

Re:So Hillary's account got deleted?

[Anonymous Coward]

I propose a new rule. A person may chose a party when first registering to vote (as long as their date of registering is within one year of becoming eligible to vote), and they will become a member of that party immediately, but any changes to party affiliation (or if they are registering to vote outside of that one year window) do not take place until.. idk, 2 years sounds good.. after the request is made. Should stop things like what you just described.

Re:So Hillary's account got deleted?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lookie its creimer posting a political post again.

Moderate conservative. The same guy that constantly insults and lies about everyone who is not a hard core as left as they come liberal. Let me guess, later on he will be spouting for Clinton... Looking later in this thread he did. Shocking! He lied again.

Doesn't like the GOP nomination. Well, after the whole GOP nomination and Russian hacking and everything else, you know who DID rig an election? The DNC did, that's who. And yet not a SINGLE mention of that.
- Superdelegates, well right there the DNC rigs their nomination process.
- Donna Brazile giving debate questions to Hillary.
- Campaign fund raising that is blatantly unethical, but legal because of strange loop holes put into campaign finance rules by the DNC when they were in power.
- John Podesta literally editing WaPo articles before they are published to help Hillary and hurt Sanders.

Yea, but you don't have a problem with that. Cremier doesn't have a problem with rigged elections at all, he has a problem with legitimate elections having outcomes he doesn't agree with. Your vote should only count if you vote the way he wants. That's right, his REAL problem with the GOP nomination is they didn't rig it like the DNC to prevent Trump. Seeing as he gave a pass to the rigging of the DNC and failed to explain how the GOP did rig it for Trump, that is the ONLY conclusion you can make.

But, I better be careful. cremier has threatened to shoot me before when I said things he didn't like, and since I am calling him a liar once again, I expect more of the same.

Re:So Hillary's account got deleted?

[rickb928]

The RNC isn't supposed to be in control. You don't understand what happened.

Re:So Hillary's account got deleted?

[__aaclcg7560]

The same guy that constantly insults and lies about everyone who is not a hard core as left as they come liberal.

Citation please?

But, I better be careful. cremier has threatened to shoot me before when I said things he didn't like, and since I am calling him a liar once again, I expect more of the same.

You never did explain how I threatened to shoot you. Every time I pointed that out, you scurried back into the shadows like a cockroach.

Re:So Hillary's account got deleted?

[Anonymous Coward]

After Super Tuesday, Bernie Sanders had to win every election with at least 60% of the votes to win the nomination. He failed to get the votes. If you removed the super delegates, he still failed to get the votes.

True. However, if you removed the media blackout against him, would he still have failed to get the nomination? Simply compare coverage of Clinton, Trump and Sanders for the period - heck, even Rubio had more front page coverage than Sanders ('a senator from Vermont,' ha!)

The DNC stacked deck went far beyond the mere superdelegate skew. Makes one wonder, since Clinton had all that superdelegate advantage to begin with, why did they bother to try so hard and sink Sanders? Madame's dislike for any sort of competition? Getting the game on for taking on Trump? Pride going before the fall?

Re:So Hillary's account got deleted?

[__aaclcg7560]

The RNC isn't supposed to be in control. You don't understand what happened.

Somoeone needs to update Wikipedia.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) is responsible for promoting Republican campaign activities. It is responsible for developing and promoting the Republican political platform, as well as coordinating fundraising and election strategy. Its current chairman is Reince Priebus. The chairman of the RNC is chosen by the President when the Republicans have the White House or otherwise by the Party's state committees.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Party_(United_States)#Structure_and_organization

Re:So Hillary's account got deleted?

[T.E.D.]

Except they are sort of limited to who throws their hat into the ring...

You're kidding, right? There were at one point so many Republican candidates that they had to split the field in two and hold the same debate twice to get them all in. There are a ton of things you can say about how the Republican Party got to this point, but lack of better choices is not one of them.

... and unlike the Democrats, worked to not play favorites

*chortle* I couldn't even count how many articles I read about organized Republican efforts to stop Trump. At one point they even tried having all the other candidates to collude on which states they would compete in, in hopes they'd each win their strongest states and throw the nomination into the convention. The only reason you didn't hear Trump supporters screaming "Shenanigans" like Sanders supporters it is because nothing they tried came close to working.

The Republicans had preferred party candidates early on (eg: Bush and Grahm); candidates dropped out due to lack of electoral support roughly in the order of how reasonable they were, which meant the preferred candidates were among the first folks to go. I won't claim to know what their voters were all thinking, but if someone were to argue that Republican primary voters were voting entirely based on who the party leaders DIDN'T want, I'd have trouble arguing against it.

Trump won the nomination because, given a menu of 20+, he's the guy Republican voters wanted. If you think that's a problem, your problem is with that party and its voters, not with its nomination methods.

Re:So Hillary's account got deleted?

[__aaclcg7560]

Makes one wonder, since Clinton had all that superdelegate advantage to begin with, why did they bother to try so hard and sink Sanders?

Because Sanders forced Hillary to go from right-of-center to left-of-center in regards to Wall Street and other issues. The Clinton/Obama strategy has always been about co-opting the Republican agenda. Healthcare is a great example. What started off as a proposal from the Heritage Foundation, implemented as RomneyCare in Massachusetts, and came out half-baked as ObamaCare became Obama's signature achievement. The Republicans spent seven years screaming "repeal and replace" and they don't have the votes to repeal much less replace. Their current proposal will kick 26 million Americans off insurance while giving the rich a $200K tax break.

Re:So Hillary's account got deleted?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes you did, and you know you did. Lying about that doesn't change the fact that you did.

I actually think you SHOULD be banned from /. for threatening me, and with all the absolute crap I see commonly posted here that is the only time I've thought anyone should be banned. But I don't run /. so instead I will opt for calling you a liar every time I see you post and lie (which is just about every post I see from you) and will constantly point out how you threaten to shoot people who say things you don't like.

You don't like it, you have 2 options. Stop posting completely OR Stop lying every time you post, but I doubt you can do that.

Re: So Hillary's account got deleted?

[rickb928]

You still don't understand.

Re:So Hillary's account got deleted?

[__aaclcg7560]

Yes you did, and you know you did. Lying about that doesn't change the fact that you did.

Let me get a box of crayons.... I asserted my rights under the First and Second Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. The First Amendment gives me the right to speak my mind in whatever forum. The Second Amendment gives me the right to bear arms, and, since I don't live in a "stand your grounds" state, I don't have the right to shoot your sorry ass willy-nilly. I personally believe you can't have one without the other and you need both, which pisses off the people who believe you can have one but not the other.

You ASSUMED that I threatened to shoot you because I asserted my Second Amendment right. Ever since then you been making an ASS out of yourself with drive by comments . Sad!

But I don't run /. so instead I will opt for calling you a liar every time I see you post and lie (which is just about every post I see from you) and will constantly point out how you threaten to shoot people who say things you don't like.

Please waste your time.

You don't like it, you have 2 options. Stop posting completely OR Stop lying every time you post, but I doubt you can do that.

Third option: ignore your sorry ass comments.

Re:So Hillary's account got deleted?

[Anonymous Coward]

>I'm not Jewish. ;)

Alhamdulillah!

Re:So Hillary's account got deleted?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm an American, and I think you and her should leave together. But unlike you, I'm not a jerk and won't kick you out.

Re:So Hillary's account got deleted?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's disgusting that Creimer gets away with threatening to shoot people.

Re:So Hillary's account got deleted?

[__aaclcg7560]

I'm an American, and I think you and her should leave together. But unlike you, I'm not a jerk and won't kick you out.

You missed the point. As Americans we don't punish our political adversaries for losing. This is a democracy, not a dictatorship. If you think Hillary and I should be put out of the country for expressing political opinions that you disagree with, you're obviously not an American citizen and you're free to "self-deport" yourself out of the country. But unlike you, I'm not a jerk and won't call ICE on you.

Re: So Hillary's account got deleted?

[Anonymous Coward]

Delete your account.

Re:So Hillary's account got deleted?

[Anonymous Coward]

Delete your account.

Re:So Hillary's account got deleted?

[__aaclcg7560]

Alhamdulillah!

Bless you!

Alhamdulillah [...] is an Arabic phrase meaning "Praise be to God". It is frequently used by Muslims of every background, due to its centrality to the texts of the Quran and the words of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, but also spoken by some Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhamdulillah

Re: So Hillary's account got deleted?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed, he needs to go. He constantly attacks people here.

Re: So Hillary's account got deleted?

[__aaclcg7560]

Agreed, he needs to go. He constantly attacks people here.

Citation please?

Re:So Hillary's account got deleted?

[PrimaryConsult]

That is the rule in New York (though it is closer to 1 year), and locked a lot of Independent and Republican registered folk from voting for Sanders in the primary. It also prevented the Trump family for voting for him in the primary because they were registered Democrat!

Re: So Hillary's account got deleted?

[Anonymous Coward]

"you scurried back into the shadows like a cockroach"

Please stop harassing our members, thank you.

Re: So Hillary's account got deleted?

[__aaclcg7560]

Please stop harassing our members, thank you.

Three times I was accused of threatening to shoot someone. Three times I asked for a specific example that I threatened to shoot someone. Twice I got no responses. Third time I'm called liar. So I broke out the crayons and colored inside the lines. ACs who accused me of threatening to shoot them are liars. Plain and simple. The moderators must be on holiday because none of my comments have gotten modded down today. Then again, I got 20 years of karma to burn threw.

Re:So Hillary's account got deleted?

[Anonymous Coward]

See, you ADMIT you threatened to shoot me. So not only did you threaten me, you knew you did, and then claim you didn't. That threat, a reasonable person (like myself) would take as an actual threat.

You are a LIAR. For threatening to shoot someone your account SHOULD be banned. I hope someone who can do that reads all this.

I will not stop calling out your lies and pointing out every time I do how you threaten to shoot people who say things you don't like. Like your post above where you say you don't like free and fair elections because they come out ways you don't like, but you don't seem to have problems with rigged elections that put Hillary as the winner.

Re:So Hillary's account got deleted?

[Anonymous Coward]

Delete your account.

Re:So Hillary's account got deleted?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you just threaten to shoot people who say things you don't like.

Re:So Hillary's account got deleted?

[__aaclcg7560]

No, you just threaten to shoot people who say things you don't like.

Nope. I wrote a blog post. Enjoy!

https://www.kickingthebitbucket.com/2017/03/21/have-i-threatened-to-shoot-you-today/

Re:So Hillary's account got deleted?

[__aaclcg7560]

See, you ADMIT you threatened to shoot me.

Nope. I wrote a blog post. Enjoy!

https://www.kickingthebitbucket.com/2017/03/21/have-i-threatened-to-shoot-you-today/

Free Mister Metokur!

[Anonymous Coward]

I won't be satisfied until he can shitpost freely!

Scared me there for a second

[Tablizer]

It's a good thing my non-violent extremism is left untouched.

Riiight...

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it hard to believe twitter suspended that many lefty accounts trying to coordinate their Trump protests!

I know an account that is spewing bs and lies.

[da_crusher]

It would be great if they went ahead and suspended the "little hand" cry-baby from causing more damage with his tweets from the edge. This would be a positive step and make someone very very angry.....bigly!

And yet...

[NecroPuppy]

Richard Spencer's account hasn't been shut down yet.

Come on Jack, kick that bum out.

Not true

[hawguy]

I checked twitter and the highest profile extremist account @realDonaldTrump is still there.

Re:Not true

[ganjadude]

-1 Troll

Re:Not true

[hawguy]

-1 Troll

Some people just can't handle the truth.

The death of Twitter

[SuperKendall]

Since Twitter exists primarily to complain about other Twitter users, it seems like banning a lot of controversial accounts will utterly destroy people's use of Twitter since the people they like to complain about will be gone.

Re:The death of Twitter

[bluefoxlucid]

There's actually a girl petitioning to have Twitter ban anyone who says something mean. She's complaining that people say violent things or threaten to rape women... which, of course, we all recognize from third grade when everyone would threaten to blow you up or something. We're pretend-adults now, and that means sometimes someone 5,000 miles starts yammering about how they would rape you, as if he could.

Re: The death of Twitter

[Anonymous Coward]

[citation needed]

Speaking of payoffs

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they should start cancelling troll accounts that consistently spew bullshit. Like that Donald Trump guy.

Congress should "cancel his account" too.

But he serves the 1%, and the 1% run the country (and Twitter), so that's what we're stuck with.

Re:Speaking of payoffs

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite an interesting delusion you are living in there. One where Twitter is on Trump's side, despite only negative responses to his tweets ever being shown.

Re: Speaking of payoffs

[Anonymous Coward]

Twitter is a libtard mouthpiece. Twitter is nothing but bigotry/fascism for the alt-left.

Re:Speaking of payoffs

[Anonymous Coward]

It has nothing to do with Twitter itself, it has to do with the idiocy constantly spewing from the moron-in-chief's account. It's about that specific account. Not about Twitter. Only about an action Twitter could take, if it was looking to improve the quality of the streams, which is what TFS brings to the discussion. You know, the "topic." Get it now? Or should I use crayons for you?

Re: Speaking of payoffs

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. A load of the people kicked off were Pro- Trump supporters to help perpetuate the lie that Trump Is very unpopular, even though he has a massive and loyal fanbase. Indeed many of the Twitter anti-Trump members are NGO spooks. Twitter is dirt - in it with big media and cronyism like CNN. Pity. Its a useful platform but is now forever smeared in the minds of anyone with half or even 1/4 of a brain.

...and journalism?

[XXongo]

But, this is the line of that very short press release that bothers me:

"Twitter (TWTR, -3.18%) also said it had started taking legal requests to remove content posted by verified journalists and media outlets. Twitter said it had received 88 such requests, but had not taken any action on the majority of these requests."

Wait, what? Removing content posted by journalists?

What are these "legal requests" to remove content posted by journalists, who is making them, why are they legal, and what content exactly is being removed?

Re:...and journalism?

[Anonymous Coward]

https://transparency.twitter.com/en/removal-requests.html

It's content from verified journalists' or new organization's tweets that has been removed because Twitter received a legal request usually in the form of a court order.

Data new to this report
Verified journalists and news outlets

Allowing our users to speak truth to power has never been more important as we continue to see an alarming crackdown on free press and freedom of expression across the globe. This backdrop has inspired the creation of this new section. During this reporting period, Twitter received 88 court orders and other legal requests from around the world, 88% of those coming from Turkey, directing us to remove content posted by verified journalists and news outlet accounts. Twitter did not take any action on the great majority of these requests, with limited exceptions in Germany and Turkey.

Specifically, we withheld one Tweet in Germany posted by the verified account of 11freunde.de (a magazine for football culture) for violating an individual's personal rights in response to a court order.

As for Turkey, we withheld 15 Tweets and 14 accounts in response to the 77 requests pertaining to verified journalists and news outlets that we received. For instance, we withheld Tweets sharing gory images following devastating terror attacks as well as content violating a National Security Council decision that was issued after the failed coup attempt in July 2016. All of these withholding actions were taken in response to court orders issued by Turkish courts. In all instances where Twitter withheld content, we have posted copies of the underlying court orders on Lumen. Whenever possible under Turkish Law, Twitter filed legal objections in response to all court orders involving journalists and news outlets, arguing that those decisions may be contrary to protections of freedom of expression. Disappointingly, none of our objections prevailed.

In Other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Trumps Twitter following has suddenly dropped hundreds of thousands of followers.

Why not close the rest, too?

[frank_adrian314159]

Due to this experiment, I believe we can safely say that Twitter's good to society is inversely related to its user-base population. The logical conclusion is that Twitter would provide the most good to society by closing all of their accounts.

Twitter Extremism:

[Anonymous Coward]

"I have differing views to you"
"Check your fucking privilege you scum! You should be hanged!"

[Your account has been deleted, and reported to FBI, NSA, CIA, and NASA]

Trumpeting threats w/o being responsible

[lpq]

Who said it did? However, giving extremists a worldwide platform in which to spread their alternate news is not the responsibility of a social media platform.

It seems, that if you are a social media platform, you might want not want to be a battle ground for extreme points of view. If you were, it might make many users uncomfortable and harm your ability to be an inviting social platform.

Most users don't want to be in the middle of a flamefest. Besides that, governments might have cause to restrict access to the social platform on the basis that it gives a ready platform to idiots blowing their trumpet just to bully others irresponsibly.

Now if they only had the temerity to shut down all those using the platform as a means to trumpet "jibes" without taking official responsibility for, or positions on what is said.

Re:Trumpeting threats w/o being responsible

[tietokone-olmi]

>Who said it did? However, giving extremists a worldwide platform in which to spread their alternate news is not the responsibility of a social media platform.

Weasel words for controlling which views people are allowed exposure to. There's a fundamental distrust in Joe Q. Public in this reasoning, which assumes that seeing a video of ISIS beheading a civilian causes him to turn to the side of medieval murderers in a lickity split.

Meanwhile actual terrorists with high double-digit body counts have managed to radicalize themselves perfectly well without any public forum whatsoever. Take Breivik for example, with his bat-shit insane manifesto calling for non-believers to be rounded up in cities and then executed en mass by nuclear bombing.

Re:Trumpeting threats w/o being responsible

[lpq]

I'm not worried so much about Joe Q. Public, but you obviously have not been through many internet flamewars. Nothing will turn off most of the audience faster than a site permitting their forums to be used for political or hyperbolic trash talking.

I tried to Open a Twitter Account

[sycodon]

...the first tweet I made in response to someone (I forget now) that was critical of the Democrats, the account was suspended and they demanded all kinds of personal information so they could, "decide" if I were a bot or not.

Fuck them. Fuck the SJWs from Silicone Valley. The Big Quake can't come soon enough if you ask me.

Re:I tried to Open a Twitter Account

[amiga3D]

I've made plenty of responses to lefties on twitter. Most of the time I avoid profanity and always avoid obscenities and the F bomb. I'm amazed at people that get on twitter and say horrible things to other people they don't even know. I have had people call me names and just as a social experiment I responded in a reasoned manner ( remembering my 7 habits classes ) and continued to argue my point. At the end I almost always got one of two solutions. Either they called me bad names and then blocked me, or surprisingly, they became calmer and began to debate in a reasoned manner and in the end agreed to disagree. I've trolled on /. a few times but with twitter I've been experimenting and it's an interesting format. Trying to debate with people with 140 characters is a challenge that will sharpen your skills.

Re:I tried to Open a Twitter Account

[nuckfuts]

Fuck them. Fuck the SJWs from Silicone Valley. The Big Quake can't come soon enough if you ask me.

Nothing violent or extreme in that opinion. You know, just the catastrophic demise of a few million people.

If you're not just trolling you ought to calm down a notch.

Re:I tried to Open a Twitter Account

[farble1670]

Fuck them. Fuck the SJWs from Silicone Valley. The Big Quake can't come soon enough if you ask me.

So you think that Twitter making efforts to quell bot posts during an election is a conspiracy by the "left"?
Sigh ...

Re:I tried to Open a Twitter Account

[Anonymous Coward]

Trying to "debate" people with 140 characters is a way to end up a stupid self-aggradizing SJW pinhead.

You love everyone, good for you. Pardon while I roll my eyes.

Re:I tried to Open a Twitter Account

[Anonymous Coward]

HA HA HA fuck you

Re:I tried to Open a Twitter Account

[110010001000]

Thats weird. You seem like such a reasonable person.

Re:I tried to Open a Twitter Account

[sycodon]

Now that's funny. Mod him up.

Re:I tried to Open a Twitter Account

[sycodon]

Are you suggesting that ALL Left live in Silicone Valley?

Sigh....

Re:I tried to Open a Twitter Account

[farble1670]

No, I'm not. I don't even know what you are saying or what's going on inside your paranoid brain. Have fun with that.

Re:I tried to Open a Twitter Account

[amiga3D]

Oh no, I don't love everyone. I just miss the good old days when you could be civil even with people you hated.

Re:I tried to Open a Twitter Account

[amiga3D]

I think I talked with you on twitter recently.

Re: I tried to Open a Twitter Account

[Anonymous Coward]

Sigh ....sigh .....SIGH....sigh.....sigh. Strawman sigh.....strawman strawman sigh....

Re: I tried to Open a Twitter Account

[farble1670]

Good comeback.

Re: I tried to Open a Twitter Account

[Anonymous Coward]

Sigh...

Re: I tried to Open a Twitter Account

[Anonymous Coward]

And then agree to step outside to a polite pistol duel to the darth. ....mmember in the good old days?

Re:I tried to Open a Twitter Account

[michael_wojcik]

I'm amazed at people that get on twitter and say horrible things to other people they don't even know.

Amazed? I can see "disappointed" or "saddened", but we have a vast corpus of evidence from the past few decades demonstrating that sort of behavior is normal in online discourse. I have academic articles discussing it from the mid-1990s,[1] and it was a truism among regulars on Usenet and BBSes and other online forums as far back as at least the early '80s.

It seems that a few factors in particular compound to increase the probability of adversarial communication with strangers online: a low barrier to entry (it takes very little time or money to dash off an angry reply), immediacy (most of these channels are low-latency so there's little "cooling-off" time), narrow feedback (you can't see the person you're arguing with or hear their tone of voice), and a lack of corrective sanctions from the community.

These add up to making the cost of flaming very low, and the psychological reward high. The latter is due to that immediacy plus the evolved inclination to win arguments, as demonstrated extensively by any number of (relatively) sound psychological experiments over the past century.

Arguing rationally is learned behavior and requires an investment mindset - you give up the short-term reward in favor of longer-term ones such as self-actualization ("I am the sort of person who resists the urge to flame and wins arguments on merit") and possibly more-durable reputation in certain social circles. It means doing work in online discussions, and most people treat those as entertainment and want to avoid the additional labor.

So points for you, and it's something we all ought to aspire to; but as long as people are the sort of people we'd recognize, it's going to be a minority behavior.

[1] Hell, I wrote one that touches on it myself, in the "Geographies of Cyberspace" special issue of good ol' Works and Days.

More to Free Speech Than the First Amendment

[Kunedog]

And before you start harping on the First Amendment, no, the First Amendment does not require that private parties assist you in spreading your speech. It only disallows the government from making your speech illegal.

But as usual, it's the pro-censorship side (i.e. you) who's brought up the First Amendment first, as a strawman so you can dismiss it.

The concept of free speech (and censorship) still exists outside of the 1AM (the world is bigger than America and American laws, for starters). The ACLU has a blindspot a whole amendment [aclu.org] wide, but when it comes to free speech even they acknowledge the extent of the threat:

Censorship, the suppression of words, images, or ideas that are "offensive," happens whenever some people succeed in imposing their personal political or moral values on others. Censorship can be carried out by the government as well as private pressure groups. Censorship by the government is unconstitutional.

In contrast, when private individuals or groups organize boycotts against stores that sell magazines of which they disapprove, their actions are protected by the First Amendment, although they can become dangerous in the extreme. Private pressure groups, not the government, promulgated and enforced the infamous Hollywood blacklists during the McCarthy period. But these private censorship campaigns are best countered by groups and individuals speaking out and organizing in defense of the threatened expression.

Re:More to Free Speech Than the First Amendment

[Anonymous Coward]

Talk about false equivalencies. McCarthyism blacklists: "You can't make a living in the same industry I work in because I disagree with your views" != Twitter suspensions: "you can't use my service to promote views I disagree with". Yes, both are censorship. No, not all censorship is equal. No, not all forms of censorship are bad. The world is not black and white. Stop knee-jerk reacting and talking in generalizations and say what EXACTLY you personally find distasteful about this application of censorship.

Re:More to Free Speech Than the First Amendment

[nine-times]

But as usual, it's the pro-censorship side (i.e. you) who's brought up the First Amendment first, as a strawman so you can dismiss it.

This is perhaps the stupidest sentence I've read all day. It doesn't make sense to dismiss whatever statements are made first.

It doesn't get much better after that. From the thing you yourself quoted:

In contrast, when private individuals or groups organize boycotts against stores that sell magazines of which they disapprove, their actions are protected by the First Amendment...

Yes, there are instances where shutting down a conversation can be dangerous, in much the same way that exercising any of your rights can become dangerous. Still, boycotts and protests are protected by the First Amendment. When you say something stupid, your freedom of speech protects your right to say it. My freedom of speech protects my right to say your speech is stupid, an even to tell you to shut up.

But we're not even talking about that. The issue here is not Twitter taking action to try to suppress your speech, but they are only refusing to provide a platform. You probably won't get the difference right away, so I'll attempt a somewhat clumsy metaphor. Let's say you're a musician, and you want to play a show at a local venue. Obviously you have the right to play your music. In the same sense, I have the right to not attend the show. I can even tell you and everyone else that I hate your music, and that no one should go to the show. If I wanted to be a real dick about it, I could even mount a protest to discourage people from going to the show. I have the right to do that, though perhaps that's not a good thing for people to be doing.

However, none of that is what we're talking about with Twitter. In the case that we're talking about, Twitter is the guy who owns the local venue that you want to play in. Twitter is saying, "You can play your music if you want, and I'll do nothing to stop it. But no, I'm not going to let you play here." Twitter owns the place, and has every right to do that. The alternative would be that every venue has to host every musician that wants to play in it, which is ridiculous.

We get to define the extremists

[frovingslosh]

And by violent extremism, we mean Trump supporters and anyone who says anything negative against Muslims. Accuracy will not be accepted as an excuse.

Re:We get to define the extremists

[Anonymous Coward]

Some Trump supporters do support the idea of violent extremism and also have posted unkind and untrue things against certain religious groups. So yes I imagine some of those who did got caught up in the sweep.

But clearly not all Trump supporters and those who say negative things about religion were booted as they are still there.

So you are wrong. Will you come back and admit you were wrong? Of course you won't.

Re:We get to define the extremists

[walterbyrd]

> Some Trump supporters do support the idea of violent extremism

Do they? I do not remember any violent extremism coming from the Trump camp.

Seems to me all the violence has been on the anti-Trump side:

1. Hillary hires violent thugs to disrupt Trump Rallies - as was proved by the Veritas project.

2. Hillary supporters beat down homeless African American woman.

3. Hillary supporters beat down man in Chicago, and steal his car, because they thought he voted for Trump.

4. Hillary supporters abduct and torture mentally ill man because man supported Trump.

5. Violent riots when Trump was elected

6. Violent riots when Trump was inaugurated

Re:We get to define the extremists

[iggymanz]

hey, you can't use the word "thug", that's racist. Because the only ones rioting and looting are not white. twitter SJW confirm.

but they haven't shut off Trump yet

[swschrad]

so it's all bogus.

A disturbance in The Force

[PPH]

As if 376,890 voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.

Re:A disturbance in The Force

[ChoGGi]

Pretty sure you meant 890 voices, it is Twitter after all.

First Amendment a Common Strawman

[Kunedog]

Generally when censorship is brought up here, it's an attempt to conflate First Amendment protections with a private organization's lawful right to moderate content.

That's funny, because the way I usually see it go on /. is that the pro-censorship side (i.e. you) brings up 1AM/government censorship first, as a strawman so they can claim that, because it doesn't apply, we should care about private censorship either. The concept of free speech (and censorship) still exists outside of the 1AM (the world is bigger than America and American laws, for starters). The ACLU has a blindspot a whole amendment [aclu.org] wide, but when it comes to free speech even they acknowledge the extent of the threat:

Censorship, the suppression of words, images, or ideas that are "offensive," happens whenever some people succeed in imposing their personal political or moral values on others. Censorship can be carried out by the government as well as private pressure groups. Censorship by the government is unconstitutional.

In contrast, when private individuals or groups organize boycotts against stores that sell magazines of which they disapprove, their actions are protected by the First Amendment, although they can become dangerous in the extreme. Private pressure groups, not the government, promulgated and enforced the infamous Hollywood blacklists during the McCarthy period. But these private censorship campaigns are best countered by groups and individuals speaking out and organizing in defense of the threatened expression.

Re:First Amendment a Common Strawman

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering you've been looking for every thread with a mention of the first amendment and replying with this exact same post, it was probably prudent to pre-empt the first amendment argument after all. Seriously, why wouldn't you assume you need to address how the first amendment applies when talking about the topic of censorship within the US?

To use your line of arguments, "that's funny, because the way I usually see it go on /. is that the anti-censorship side (i.e. you) either uses the 1AM to refute an application of censorship or latches on to the mention of the pre-emptive reference of the 1AM as proof that the poster is using it as a strawman." See, there's no way to have a discussion when I start by claiming I knew what you were going to do because people like you always think a certain way.

Take the way you feel about the paragraph above and apply it to your own post in the shoes of the person you replied to. If it was ridiculous or unfair to do it to you, why is it fair or not ridiculous to do it to them?

Re:First Amendment a Common Strawman

[AmiMoJo]

You only offer another straw man argument. Outside of the dark web, can you name a single site or organization that really allows absolute, unrestricted free speech with zero censorship?

Even 8chan doesn't go that far. Voat certainly doesn't. Is there a single example, or are we talking entirely hypothetically here?

In practice some limits are necessary for all sites. The limits set are usually based on what the site wants its content to be, and what it needs to do to keep revenue flowing in (ads, users etc.) Trying to ignore this and make it about pure, context-free freedom of speech is meaningless because such a site can't exist in the real world.

typo

[Kunedog]

obviously that was supposed to say "we shouldn't care about private censorship either"

Selectively Banning Racism

[Kunedog]

A business deciding they're not going to allow certain kinds of messages on their public bulletin board is no more censorship than me ordering my racist uncle to stop talking trash or get out of my house.

Which is only to say that "Yes, both situations are examples of censorship."

To make the metaphor more accurate to what Twitter is doing, let's say you had two uncles, each a different color and both racist toward the other. Now let's say you picked sides and only threw out the uncle whose racism you disagreed with.

Even if you are within your rights to do that, the banned uncle (and plenty of other, non-racist folks) are right to call you out for both your hypocrisy and your own racism.

Stop the hate

[Anonymous Coward]

If we could only use community shame and ostricisation to stop the religious fundamentalist who believe in using violence to overthrow lawfully government we would be going a long way to make the world safe.

By religious fundamentalist with guns I of coast mean George Washington and his band on terrorists. We must abolish the USA and return Columbia to her rightfull owner. By rightfull owner I do not mean Great Britain, nor do I mean the Algonquin Indians. I am of coarse referring to the dinosaurs who were in the Americas first before climate change wrecked their habitat. We must therefore ban any twitter user who want to curtail c02 emissions. We need to warm up the planet so that the Americas are safe for the native species and all the invasive species can be droven back to Africa where they belong

Re:Stop the hate

[Chrisq]

If we could only use community shame and ostricisation to stop the religious fundamentalist who believe in using violence to overthrow lawfully government we would be going a long way to make the world safe.

You are naive if you think this would work. With all the Islamic community telling them that hatred of non-muslims (particularly Jews) is good and all their religious books teaching them separateness, hatred and violence, do you think that the fact that you support equality, freedom, democracy and other things they oppose will shame them? Hell, they are shaming (and threatening with violence) moderate Muslims to support extremism

How Fucking Pathetic Are You?

[Anonymous Coward]

How fucking pathetic are you, that Twitter has any meaning or gravitas at all?

Twitter is a festering cesspool of largely illiterate narcissists with all of the importance and value of MySpace or YouTube comments. Why does anyone care what is said there?

TWTR: conservative ideology = "violent extremism"

[sethstorm]

To Twitter, it's only "harassment" or "extremism" if it's against the left. They'll happily defend terrorists, criminals, and child abusers that follow their narrative.

Threats to assassinate Trump are fine

[walterbyrd]

There have been thousands of tweets threatening to assassinate Trump, or offering money for somebody to assassinate Trump.

As long as the tweets are leftist extremism, they are fine.

However, posting something truthful about Islamic extremism can certainly get your account suspended. Tweeting anything the left does not want people to know can get your account suspended.

All the violence has been on the anti-Trump side

[walterbyrd]

Seems to me all the violence has been on the anti-Trump side:

1. Hillary hires violent thugs to disrupt Trump Rallies - as was proved by the Veritas project.

2. Hillary supporters beat down homeless African American woman.

3. Hillary supporters beat down man in Chicago, and steal his car, because they thought he voted for Trump.

4. Hillary supporters abduct and torture mentally ill man because man supported Trump.

5. Violent riots when Trump was elected

6. Violent riots when Trump was inaugurated

Is Twitter's stock price still crashing?

[walterbyrd]

Just wondering.

Re:TWTR: conservative ideology = "violent extremis

[walterbyrd]

There were thousands of tweets threatening to assassinate Trump. Twitter had no problem with those.

Whats next on the SJW ban list?

[AHuxley]

Are we going to see bans on issue that upset Communist China?
Given the investment China makes in US popular culture?
No more Tiananmen square? 1989? No mention of 1950's Communist party policy?
A ban on any negative comments to protect the historical narrative surrounding of the Communist party in China?
A lot of wealthy monarchies and theocracies may not like to be reminded of their faiths or cults teachings?
Ban cartoons that are considered blasphemy and also take an active role to prevent apostasy?
Ban news about the results of illegal immigration?
Discussions on aspects of history? Literature, topics and authors that SJW want to see no discussion of?
Turning any site or brand into a safe space by banning content and reporting users to their respective governments is not going to attract new users looking to comment on events and history. They can be reported on and banned in their own nations.
Freedom of speech and freedom after speech is unique to the USA, sell that unique protection to the world. Any other nation can ban and report its users for free.

Sunk cost fallacy

[Xenographic]

> And actually, to deal with your question more directly, denying extremists a platform does help prevent the spread of that extremism.

So, you're saying that censorship works? Because for decades we've known that it doesn't change anyone's mind. And that it only makes people curious about these ideas you don't want anyone to see. I think more than a few people here have looked at things precisely because the powers that be told them not to look, whether that be an old MIT lock picking guide, 'zine or pornography, so it's odd to hear people suddenly decide it's worth a try.

Twitter is not the only means of communication. The internet still interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. If anything, having the opportunity to engage with them gives everyone the chance to convince them that this is wrong and maybe they shouldn't wander off into the desert to die a violent death.

But maybe you're right. Maybe this time censorship will stop people from thinking bad thoughts. Just because it failed every other time, that's no reason to think it can't work this time... right?

Re:Sunk cost fallacy

[nine-times]

So, you're saying that censorship works?

Depends on what you mean by "censorship". If I don't post your views on my blog, am I censoring you? I suppose you could argue that I'm inhibiting your speech, but it's kind of a stretch.

But me refusing to endorse your views does "work", at least a little tiny bit, in terms of preventing your views from spreading. If enough people, or more specifically enough people who are influential enough, refuse to endorse views, and in fact oppose those views, then yes, it does "work" in terms of preventing those views from being enforced.

Twitter is not the only means of communication.

That's... kind of entirely my point. Twitter is a private company running what is essentially a blogging platform. They aren't responsible for stopping all violence, but they may be responsible (morally, if not legally) for the behavior their site enables. They are totally within their rights to say, "We don't want this kind of thing on our site," and it's not really censorship. It won't stop violence, but if they do a good job at it, it might stop Twitter from being a tool used to incite violence. If you don't like Twitter's terms of service, then use a different means of communication. As you note, it's not the only one.

Re:Sunk cost fallacy

[Xenographic]

I'm not even going down that old rabbit hole. Yes, it's their legal right. Nobody cares. But this is the part that gets me:

>> Twitter is not the only means of communication.
> That's... kind of entirely my point.

How does forcing them to use a different communication medium stop them from spreading ideas you disagree with? It seems to me that giving them the allure of being the 'stuff THEY don't want you to see' only helps promote it, instead.

Re:Sunk cost fallacy

[nine-times]

How does forcing them to use a different communication medium stop them from spreading ideas you disagree with?

If all the newspapers and TV stations in the world refuse to run a news story, then it'll prevent the story from spreading. It doesn't entirely stop it, obviously. Even before the Internet, there would have still been word of mouth. Still, it prevents it from spreading to the extent that it would have otherwise.

It seems to me that giving them the allure of being the 'stuff THEY don't want you to see' only helps promote it, instead.

You're conflating two things. You're talking about something like the Streisand Effect, where trying to hide information paradoxically causes it to spread. That can happen, although if reputable sources of information refuse to acknowledge it, it might still be relegated to the status of rumor. I'm talking about a different thing, which is more about whether credence and credibility are given to speech. Racism, for example, isn't a secret that people are curious about. No one is sitting at home thinking, "I heard something about this white supremacism. No one has ever been willing to advocate lynching, so the idea is so much more alluring now!"

It's more like, there are various people who are racist to varying degrees and in different ways. That's already in their lives. If the people around you who are credible members of the group you perceive as belonging to are all lynching people, talking about lynching, and advocating lynching, then there's a much greater chance that you'll end up lynching someone. If the suggestion of lynching elicits a response of "Hell no. That's fucked up. What's wrong with you?!" then you're less likely to lynch anyone. That's just how people work. If services like Twitter promote and amplify hate-speech, you're going to end up with more people thinking it's a normal and acceptable thing. If Twitter bans it and sends the message that it's unacceptable, then its prevalence lessens.

And yes, I know there will still be some backlash. There are white supremacists who are going to be irate any time you imply that white supremacy is not acceptable. There are some occasional assholes who will say the exact thing that that they think will be most offensive and get them the most attention. However, ultimately most people will generally adopt the social mores of whatever group they perceive themselves to be a part of. A responsible member of society tries to avoid and discourage horrible behavior and speech in order to encourage better social mores.

Re:All the violence has been on the anti-Trump sid

[Anonymous Coward]

Not denying there was violence on the anti-Trump side, although a lot of these examples are pure bullshit. Veritas hasn't "proven" a single fucking thing in the history of its existence, least of all that any thugs were hired by Hillary or her people specifically.

On the other side, there's the attacks on synagogues, that Milo supporter who shot an anti-fascist protestor... look, I don't need to go on because you actually do know all this. Both sides are acting stupidly. All major parties are to blame. Everyone needs to calm the fuck down.

For reference

[s.petry]

The subject for people to review is called Natural Law. Individual Liberty has been an issue since recorded history began. John Locke was one of the main influences for the Founders of the US, but also influenced Law in much/most of the West.

Re:All the violence has been on the anti-Trump sid

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember when that Trump supporter shoots up a mosque?

And of that

[Anonymous Coward]

some 85% of the accounts were bots.