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Inside Twitter's Long, Slow Struggle To Police Bad Actors (wsj.com)
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has personally weighed in on high-profile decisions, frustrating some employees. An anonymous reader shares a report: When Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey testifies before Congress this week, he'll likely be asked about an issue that has been hovering over the company: Just who decides whether a user gets kicked off the site? To some Twitter users -- and even some employees -- it is a mystery. In policing content on the site and punishing bad actors, Twitter relies primarily on its users to report abuses and has a consistent set of policies so that decisions aren't made by just one person, its executives say. Yet, in some cases, Mr. Dorsey has weighed in on content decisions at the last minute or after they were made, sometimes resulting in changes and frustrating other executives and employees [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], according to people familiar with the matter. Understanding Mr. Dorsey's role in making content decisions is crucial, as Twitter tries to become more transparent to its 335 million users, as well as lawmakers about how it polices toxic content on its site.
Last month, after Twitter's controversial decision to allow far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to remain on its platform, Mr. Dorsey told one person that he had overruled a decision by his staff to kick Mr. Jones off, according to a person familiar with the discussion. Twitter disputes that account and says Mr. Dorsey wasn't involved in those discussions. Twitter's initial inaction on Mr. Jones, after several other major tech companies banned or limited his content, drew fierce backlash from the public and Twitter's own employees, some of whom tweeted in protest. [...] "Any suggestion that Jack made or overruled any of these decisions is completely and totally false," Twitter's chief legal officer, Vijaya Gadde, said in a statement. "Our service can only operate fairly if it's run through consistent application of our rules, rather than the personal views of any executive, including our CEO."
Last month, after Twitter's controversial decision to allow far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to remain on its platform, Mr. Dorsey told one person that he had overruled a decision by his staff to kick Mr. Jones off, according to a person familiar with the discussion. Twitter disputes that account and says Mr. Dorsey wasn't involved in those discussions. Twitter's initial inaction on Mr. Jones, after several other major tech companies banned or limited his content, drew fierce backlash from the public and Twitter's own employees, some of whom tweeted in protest. [...] "Any suggestion that Jack made or overruled any of these decisions is completely and totally false," Twitter's chief legal officer, Vijaya Gadde, said in a statement. "Our service can only operate fairly if it's run through consistent application of our rules, rather than the personal views of any executive, including our CEO."
you mean "everybody who hurt my feelings and whom i don't like"
Then when questioned on the application twitter spokespersons seem to offer this as a explanation, "its the algorithm that decides". If this banning / not banning continues then sooner or later, twitter (and others) may soon learn the hard way what "Common Carrier" means.
Passionately Indifferent
Socialists and Nazi fascists were and are today mortal enemies, read more retard nazi apologist lol. No wonder they're kicking you off social media, you faggots are too dumb to continue to exist lol.
Dorsey didn't deliver on the Alex Jones ban. He chickened out and went for probation. That's breaking ranks.
He pays the price now. Pressure is going to get ramped up until Dorsey is ousted from Twitter. Media hitpieces week in week out until he crumbles or the stock implodes or both.
Because this isn't tech anymore. It's not even business. It's politics.
Freedom is a high price to pay to get rid of "jerks".
If you aren't anonymous, then you are far less likely to be a jerk.
But Facebook has already demonstrated that this is not true.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
To some Twitter users -- and even some employees -- it is a mystery
LOL. No it's fucking not. It's really fucking obvious who gets kicked off the platform.
Are you a prominent conservative political figure that is currently in the focus of a lot of angry liberal people who like to mash the "report" button (for frivolous or false reasons) and aren't too big/connected that there will be business/corporate/financial retaliation if you get kicked off the site?
Congratulations, have a boot to the head! You're banned!
I'm still waiting for publicly known harassers and perpetrators of violent hate speach to get banned from Twitter like: Randi Harper, Zoe Quinn, Manveer Heir, Sarah Jeong, Robbi Rodriguez and all those antifa goons. They are guilty of actions that are at the least worse than conservative entities on twitter are accused of doing and yet they get to spew things like "murder all white people" or send pictures of their hairy assholes to other people, or use twitter to orchestrate a network of followers to harass both online and in real life people whom merely disagree with their ideology.
I wouldn't call Alex Jones a 'far right wing' player. I'd call him a nutcase cultist. Back when I used to read the Drudge Report page (I quit frequenting it awhile back) if a link from Drudge took me to infowars.com I had a habit of instantly closing the page, because that site is a loony nest. This was particularly the case during the 2016 election, because you're not doing yourself a favor by hanging out in a loony echo chamber if you have sincere beliefs in a thought out political philosophy. There are similar fever swamps on the left, of course.
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This is an aside, but I was trawling around on the left political sites this weekend and noticed that the main Trotskyite newspaper in the US is now apparently defending Trump of all things.
The problem is that anyone to the political right of Bernie Sanders is often labeled as a Nazi. We have sitting Congresspeople wanting to impeach a President that they readily admit has not broken any laws, let alone high crimes and misdemeanors, because they believe he is a Nazi. So I guess you kick at least half the US population into the retard bin...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Candace Owens was banned from Twitter for simply retweeting what racist NY Times editor/writer Sarah Jeong posted, but changing all racial references from white to black. And Candace Owens is black. Why was she banned? She's a conservative. And that's not allowed.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Challenging someone to a boxing match or saying you want a political duel is hardly inciting others to violence. If those are the best examples you can find, your argument is pretty weak.
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Iâ(TM)m sure Chinese dissidents would 100% agree with you.
DMCA is for copyright. This isn't about copyright, this is about negligence. Jones' listeners already have a history of going off half cocked. My guess is google, Twitter, etc are worried about a negligence lawsuit the next time one of them fires a gun if it hits something.
They could hide behind common carrier, but that's a very high bar to meet. It means being a dumb pipe, like the telephone company. It wouldn't be worth it. They couldn't even ban trolls from flood posting and the like. No social network could survive that.
Instead they're policing their network as best the can. Make no mistake, they didn't want to kick Jones & his ilk off. His viewer's money spends the same as everyone else's and they'd be happy with the advertising dollars. The final straw was when he mimed shooting Bob Mueller.
If you want a sci-fi take on what they're afraid of go read this. I'm not saying Jones is trying to get somebody killed, but I'm saying words have power (as that Pizzagate business proved) and Jones is using them recklessly.
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I was around back in the old days, when the university required my real name be on all of my usenet posts.
I made the mistake of correcting a popular figure who was repeating some debunked bullshit. A few months later, I gave in. I moved house, changed my phone number, and have been very careful of my identity ever since. Neither of us was anonymous. Several of the people who called me to threaten me called from their home phones, and since it wasn't a repeated pattern of behaviour by them, the police said it wasn't legally harassment. My phone still rang off the hook with dozens of them every day.
What you're advocating leads to mob rule, where the popular people get to say whatever they like and the little people have to suck it up. I mean, do you really think nobody ever knew what Harvey Weinstein was up to? Was he anonymous? He was just careful to choose victims well down the social ladder from himself. Anonymity is freedom for those of us living at the bottom of the social ladder, that's why it's so popular on sites full of bullying victims, like slashdot. Those of you living privileged lives higher up wouldn't understand.
Yes, there's nazi's and whatever other bogeymen live under your bed down here, but there's a hell of a lot of decent people who just aren't quite as good at playing the social climber game as you. And though you don't want to acknowledge it, there's a lot of socially adept jerks strutting about under their real names because they know their victims will never be able to call them out on it.
So first I searched for "reputation". Nothing. Maybe 60+ comments is too soon? Then I searched for "funny", but that's just the normal disappointment. Then I actually looked at the posts modded "insightful". That's just sad. Final searches for "solution" as in "constructive". Sadder.
Anyway, I'm still fixated on seeking constructive solutions. The approach that most probably applies to Twitter is MEPR (Multidimensional Earned Public Reputation), though it would need some tweaking for that application.
In brief, trolls with earned bad reputations should be helped in rendering themselves less visible, and the more they like to act badly, the less visible they should become. I'm not saying it should be difficult to earn a good reputation, but there's no hurry, and if it's a slower process then the penalty of losing your reputation becomes more serious and worth avoiding.
ADSAuPR, atAJG.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Fascism and socialism or social-democratic-ism are not the same thing in any respect nor did the Nazis practice socialism.
Fascism, Socialism, and Communism are all top-down, command-and-control, redistributionist, collectivist, authoritarian ideologies that place little value on individual freedom over the interests of the collective. "Everything within the State, nothing outside the State." applies equally to all three. In none of them does the individual have "rights", only privileges allowed by the State that can be revoked anytime for any reason.
It's like Catholics, Protestants, and Methodists each accusing the others of not being Christian. They are all Christians that differ only on relatively minor points of doctrine. It's the same with Fascism, Socialism (and it's sub-variants like "Democratic Socialism" which is an oxymoron) and Communism.
Rather than "Left" and "Right" we should be discussing an "Up" and "Down", "Up" being larger government with the commensurate loss of individual liberty, and "Down" which is smaller, less powerful government with a commensurately larger amount of individual liberty.
With a less powerful government "Left" and "Right" would not matter as much nor affect individual liberty as drastically.
Get "Down" baby, and get free!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Twitter said that I have to verify my telephone number so I can continue using the Twitter service. Did not give any plausible argument why they kicked me off.
I simply stopped using twitter and will not come back. F*ck it.
Signature deleted by lameness filter.
If your "facts" are demonstrably false and any reasonable person can conclude that you're committing libel, and it happens repeatedly, I don't really see why banning would be an issue.
Jones is trying to say he's posting his opinion. That's bs. Saying someone is an actor in a faked school shooting is a factual statement. It is true or it is not. It's not an opinion. If he was doing musical reviews, he'd be giving opinions. In this case, he is repeatedly spreading false information that is impacting the lives of other people.
I don't care if he's right-wing, left-wing, whatever. He peddles huge lies that are demonstrably false.
Socialism is an economic distribution model, not a government.
So there are no Socialist governments? Venezuela would like a word with you.
You're engaging in Post-Modernism. Why do you want to regress to something the West abandoned long ago for logic and reason during the Enlightenment which propelled humanity thousands of years forward in the space of a little more than a century?
Read about this stuff, Strat.
Back at you AC, and at least I have the confidence in my knowledge, principles, opinions, and facts to not post AC.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
I heard Mastadon is actually worse: http://wilwheaton.net/2018/08/...
Just switch off all of those social apps. They are making the world a horrible place.
Signature deleted by lameness filter.
Don't you mean "Nazis were not true socialists"?
"Mr. Dorsey told one person that he had overruled a decision by his staff to kick Mr. Jones off, according to a person familiar with the discussion."
Ah, here we see another common tactic of the outrage industry: if we can't get X organisation to do what we want, then we'll just make up a rumour implicating one of the senior members, in order to personally pressure them into giving in.
"Inciting Violence" isn't what conservative people are being banned for.
Are you seriously arguing that making a "finger gun" at someone and going "bang" is inciting violence? Really?
"Hate Speech" and "Harassment" (for disagreeing with someone) are what they are being banned for. In other words, "wrong think".
The platforms are worked one of his listeners is going to go off and shoot somebody. This isn't idle speculation either.
By that standard, MSNBC is guilty of incitement and should be taken off the air: "The next month, he cited the MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show as one of his favorite television programs, adding that a recent show had highlighted the contributions of 17 wealthy donors to the Republican Party."
TL;DR: The Left isn't getting banned because they don't lean on violence.
Bullshit. Funny how you excuse Antifa, who practice actual violence. Why were the Proud Boys banned, when the only violence they commit is to defend themselves when attacked by the likes of Antifa?
Twitter has policies against promoting violence and racism, yet leftists accounts get away with it all the time. Say you hate black people, and you'll be banned in a nanosecond. Speak out in favor of white genocide, not only will Twitter let you keep your blue checkmark, they suspend the guy pointing you out.
Socialist. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
If content is not illegal, Twitter should not be restricting it in any way.
Name one business that uses "not illegal" as its required standard of behaviour for patrons.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
A better system would be some kind of karma, attached to a pseudonymous user name, like here on Slashdot. As you build up karma, it becomes something that's worthy of accountability. Providing a verified real name could be used to provide initial karma, but it wouldn't be required.
Once you censor, than you are legally liable for not censoring. Choose and perish ;P.
Allow the courts to censor and you have no problem, all entirely the law makers and the courts problem.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I find it cathartic to use Twitter to yell at Trump and tell him what a douche bag he is. I know he never reads it ... because it involves reading ... but it's fun anyway.
For the 100th time, nazional-sozialists were socialists !! (bignannystate-mother-knows-best-social-engineers-stateruneconomy-true-socialists kind).
If you say "socialism" and "Venezuela" in the mirror three times a socialist account will appear behind you to tell you Venezuela isn't actually socialist and anyway it was done wrong. (just like all of the others)
LOL! Noice! Agreed, the socialists always trot-out that old, tired, "No true Scotsman" logical fallacy every time. People have gotten tired of hearing that BS to the point that even folks who aren't very politically-minded roll their eyes at those types anymore.
Strat is exactly right. Fascism was an attempt to avoid the economic collapse of Leninism while retaining the authoritarian control.
Thank you. Yes, Lenin even congratulated Mussolini when he took Italy Fascist, as Socialism and Fascism are both based on Marxist ideology.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
True, false or otherwise, they were not socialists. Nazis killed socialists.
So if I will you, i'm not a slashdotter ? Or a homo sapiens ? Typical neomarxist thinking....
So my conspiracy theory is that Alex still has access because otherwise Trump wouldn't.
Twitter has de-twitted others for inciting violence while ignoring Trump's regular incitement of violence. The simple fact is that their ToS means absolutely nothing. They'll carry any tweets that produce more ad revenue than they take away, period.
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