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

Posted by msmash on from the taking-a-stand dept.

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.

5 of 202 comments (clear)

  1. What's the plan, Stan? by tietokone-olmi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.)

    1. Re:What's the plan, Stan? by vvaduva · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:What's the plan, Stan? by nine-times · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:What's the plan, Stan? by vvaduva · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    4. Re:What's the plan, Stan? by stdarg · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.