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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
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)
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.