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Twitter Might Punish Users Who Tweet 'Learn To Code' At Laid-Off Journalists (reason.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the vague-abusive-behavior-policies dept.

According to a report from Reason magazine, Twitter users who comment the "learn to code" advice at journalists who just lost their jobs might be treated as "abusive behavior," which is a violation of the social media site's terms of service. The rumor comes from Jon Levine, Media Editor at The Wrap. From the report: The Wrap's Jon Levine said representatives for the social media company had backed away from the position they related to him earlier, which was that the phrase "learn to code" itself constituted abusive behavior. The new position seems to be that "learn to code" is not de facto harassment, but could be considered harassment if tweeted aggressively as part of campaign to intimidate a specific user, in accordance with Twitter's somewhat vague abusive behavior policy. In an email to Reason, a Twitter spokesperson said: "Twitter is responding to a targeted harassment campaign against specific individuals -- a policy that's long been against the Twitter Rules."

Last week, journalists from BuzzFeed, HuffPost, Yahoo, AOL, and others, were let go. BuzzFeed founder and CEO, Jonah Peretti, said the company "would reduce headcount by 15%, or about 250 jobs, to around 1,100 employees globally," reports The Guardian. "At the same time, Verizon said it would trim 7% of headcount, about 800 people, from its media unit, which includes HuffPost, Yahoo and AOL. The job losses followed sales or cuts at Mic, Refinery29 and elsewhere."

41 of 418 comments (clear)

  1. hmmm.... by crgrace · · Score: 2, Insightful

    But it lets Trump abuse people all day long...

    1. Re:hmmm.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It also lets people abuse Trump supporters all day long. See: literal death threats and inciting violence against MAGA hat kid just last week.

    2. Re:hmmm.... by Dan667 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      uh, that does not make it ok. And the President of the United States should be setting the standard, not encouraging everyone to behave as shitty as he does.

    3. Re:hmmm.... by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Is this not the nation where "All men are created equal"? Ahem.

      As long as they are not CIS-gender, white men... Or to the right of Mao or Stalin. Or eat meat. Or ever drove a truck. Or made a comment that could ever possibly make anyone feel uncomfortable. Other than that, yes - we're all equal. Especially if you choose to break 18 USC 1924 and are well-connected, politically - that makes you more equal than others!

      --
      Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
    4. Re:hmmm.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Nah we elected a con man. And it sounds like you've bought into completely to the con.

    5. Re:hmmm.... by jeff4747 · · Score: 2, Funny

      I'm sorry, do you need a safe space so you can talk about it?

    6. Re:hmmm.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I voted for Hillary, so you can exclude me, and well, the majority of the people who voted.

      "We" did collectively vote for Trump. Despite your personal vote, in a democracy, the winner is who we as a nation voted for. You may not like the result, but he is your President as the result of the election by the rules of the election. Had Clinton won, you'd surely be saying that "we" voted for her and that she's our President. Your bigoted hatred does not make the hypocrisy of your statements any less.

      In your attempt to show your superiority, you're showing your complete ignorance. You show complete lack of understanding how our Republic works and why. You show no concept of reality by trying to claim illegitimacy by mentioning the popular vote when no one can say how the election would have turned out had the rules been different. Campaigns would have been different. The issues put forth would have been different. Even people in states that heavily lean one way may have voted differently (or actually voted).

    7. Re:hmmm.... by cyberchondriac · · Score: 2

      Hopefully you're just being facetious for a laugh, but it's hard to tell this day and age.

      But to answer anyway: as far as I can tell, he wasn't shaking, crying, screaming at the sky, or seeking literal counseling. He simply stated the modern day situation as he sees it and pointed out some hypocrisies.
      When 'progressives' seriously attempt to equate the two enormously different reactions to 'throw it back in their face' it's just beyond absurd, it's kind of the equivalent to "I'm rubber and you're glue" in maturity as well as effectiveness.

      --

      Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
    8. Re: hmmm.... by kilfarsnar · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Youre confused. Trump isnt the one bowing to foreign dictators.

      No, he only takes their word over the assessment of his own intelligence agencies.

      --
      "What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
    9. Re:hmmm.... by kilfarsnar · · Score: 2

      Funny how you think it's fine to mock oppression when it's happening to white men. I wonder how you would feel if someone started calling women and minorities delicate for complaining about being oppressed too. No, let's not kid ourselves, I don't have to wonder at all. You would be screaming "Racism!" and "Nazi!" so loud you would wake your neighbors.

      But it's okay when YOU do it, right? Cause that's different.

      And yet I bet your delicate sensibilities are triggered by something as mild as someone daring to say "It's okay to be white" in your earshot.

      It's funny because white men have historically, and in the present, had advantages in society purely because of the color of their skin. Now that their dominant position is being encroached upon by women and people of other skin colors, some of them cry oppression. White men are not oppressed in American society; not by a long shot.

      --
      "What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
  2. Covenginton by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Tweeting "Learn to code" is harassment.
    However, giving death threats to high school kids who are attacked by racists is acceptable.

    Got it. Punishing people based on political views is acceptable.
    Thanks liberals for letting us know how "tolerant" you all are.

    1. Re:Covenginton by Obfuscant · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Tweeting "Learn to code" is harassment.

      No, it isn't. The summary itself contradicts the flamebait headline:

      representatives for the social media company had backed away from the position they related to him earlier, which was that the phrase "learn to code" itself constituted abusive behavior.

      So tweeting "learn to code" is not harassment. Tweeting it a thousand times would be. Tweeting "have a nice day" a thousand times would be, too. Whatever else is or is not harassment, this is just /. flamebait describing a complicated circumstance in a trivial way and then claiming a trivial act is being punished unfairly.

    2. Re:Covenginton by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Liberals tend to be more intolerant than conservatives. Those who shout and scream the most for "tolerance" are, in fact, the least tolerant among us...

      --
      Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
    3. Re:Covenginton by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So tweeting "learn to code" is not harassment. Tweeting it a thousand times would be.

      Except they aren't banning people who are tweeting that one thousand times, they are banning people who are tweeting it once, which is a lot less than the number of harassing Covington tweets some people have made.

    4. Re:Covenginton by Jarwulf · · Score: 4, Informative

      They've banned people already for simply tweeting the phrase. They banned people simply for having the NPC meme in their profile. Cutting and pasting the spokeshole talking point doesn't make him wrong.

    5. Re:Covenginton by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      There's actually a lot of evidence of those screaming for tolerance are the least tolerant. Take saying "Merry Christmas" as an example. Those that are offended by it are offended because they're intolerant of Christians. If you move to a community that is 90% Christian, you should expect that those people will be outwardly displaying their culture. Those that are intolerant of the culture they knowingly inserted themselves in, decide to call the majority intolerant for not giving up their own identities to appease the minority. A minority, that doesn't want to be exposed to a different culture than their own. Yet they expect to be able to keep all their own customs and culture. The SJW self pity squad then sides with the real intolerants because they feel better when they belittle themselves. It's a mental illness.

    6. Re:Covenginton by lgw · · Score: 4, Insightful

      People are being banned for tweeting "learn to code" just once. It's just a lot of people have offered the same advice. And not only to journalists.

      And of course this meme didn't come from no where: it's the exact advice these journalists gave to laid-off coal miners a few years ago. So, it's fine when the left dishes it out, but banworthy when the left receives it.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    7. Re:Covenginton by Spamalope · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Haven't journalists been (as at least a rough paraphrase) saying 'learn to code' whenever blue collar jobs are lost, so this is really a 'lets see how you like your own medicine' type of response?

    8. Re:Covenginton by sheramil · · Score: 2

      Tweeting "Learn to code" is harassment.

      How about tweeting "Learn to write"? I swear, if I see another blog entry masquerading as "journalism" that starts with "HAY GUESS WAT?", I will punch someone, not an easy task for an habitual loner.

    9. Re:Covenginton by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      You don't know that, because Twitter doesn't explain the precise reasoning behind the ban.

      When you look at these accounts you inevitably find them flirting with getting banned over and over again until something finally got them booted, at which point they claim it was the most trivial thing they ever did and nothing to do with all the other shitposting.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    10. Re:Covenginton by sinij · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This is bridge too far. You are assuming that Twitter has resources to monitor on-going behavior and make a complex and nuanced "body of work" determinations for a massive amount of people. Do you have any idea how expensive such moderation would be to implement?

      Instead, I propose that simpler explanation is that Twitter bans people arbitrary, based on instances of snowflake meltdowns and reporting backed up by a hasty review by ideologically-driven moderators that results in very clear anti-conservative bias.

    11. Re:Covenginton by penandpaper · · Score: 2, Funny

      *looks left, right, and behind*
      *clears throat*

      HAY GUESS WAT!!!!!

      *Runs*

    12. Re:Covenginton by Mashiki · · Score: 2

      Not from on-going monitoring, from prior user-submitted complaints. Maybe they have been banned or asked to delete tweets before, that kind of thing.

      Why don't you go look through some of the people who threatened/demanded/doxed the Covington kids. Many of them have very long histories of abusive actions(open threats, doxing, harassment, stalking, etc) of other people, that have been reported to twitter and twitter has done nothing. The sad fact is you can without much trouble find user reports against those accounts where twitter "didn't find any ToS violations." All it really says is that the people who investigate these abusive cases are perfectly fine with some types of abuse if they're 'against the right kind ideological enemies.' The current game of TERF vs non-TERF is a good example of this if you want to see it in action.

      But one only has to take a look over the last 4 years to see what's happened. If you don't fall in line with the current progressive groupthink, twitter will come after your account for the smallest infraction. Even if you're directly quoting some progressive threatening, harassing and/or doxing someone. But leave the original tweets up.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    13. Re:Covenginton by sinij · · Score: 2

      I disagree with you fundamentally, and I think that trying to convince you that this is a serious ongoing issue with dire downstream societal consequences is futile as you are too closely ideologically aligned with Twitter to clearly see the issue.

      Consider the following hypothetical situation. In an alternative universe Twitter was invented during Jim Crow period and is controlled by "Southern Strategy" types. These people are using biased moderation, shadow banning and so on to enforce their agenda.
      Two questions: 1) can you identify anything in how Twitter currently governed or operates that would make that scenario impossible 2) What would you change (e.g. laws, ToS) that would mitigate the worst abuses ?

    14. Re:Covenginton by Shotgun · · Score: 2

      Being willfully ignorant about an event that was part of a national discussion for days, and then lying about it on message boards is not okay.

      The kids weren't racist, and they "Native person" attacked them (in the sense that he aggressively moved into their space . . . and getting in someone's face and beating a drum is agressive...as well as weird).

      --
      Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
      Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
  3. Manners, people! by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 4, Funny

    Learn to code!...please?

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  4. Well... by TimMD909 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... If they learned to code, they'd better understand the algorithms they tried to exploit with rage for more views... Jus' sayin'...

  5. Abusive Behaviour by NFN_NLN · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They should just re-label "abusive behaviour" to "whatever we don't like, whenever we don't like it"

    Trash journalists didn't seem to care when blue collar workers were losing their jobs. Besides, everyone should learn how to code, learn how to file their taxes, learn to cook, learn CPR...

  6. Don't want the helpful advice? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Fine, learn to suck cock then.

  7. Meanwhile feeding kids into woodchippers is AOK by Jarwulf · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You can tweet about feeding kids into a woodchipper or giving blowjobs to punch kids in the face or dox kids all day long or do any of the threatening and calls to violence that the antiMAGA crowd almost entirely got away with a few days ago and are still widely and proudly unapologetic for but tweeting 'learn to code' is going too far!

  8. These are the same people by Crashmarik · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That told coal miners "Get a Uhaul and learn to code"

    Seems they really don't like having that thrown in their face.

  9. Well Obama is fucked by alvinrod · · Score: 4, Funny

    Well Obama is fucked. He asked everyone to learn how to code.

  10. Reporter coders? They'll just use stackoverflow by mveloso · · Score: 4, Funny

    Reporters learning to code? Given the state of journalism today they'll just go to stackoverflow and copy the top 8 answers into the file and call it done.

    "I don't understand why I can't use hashtags to search for code snippets!"

  11. "Might"? by Pluvius · · Score: 2

    It already has. There's documented proof of it.

    Rob

  12. Re: funny by unixisc · · Score: 2

    It's funny. This is the advice that these media supporters of woke corporations gave the people they laid off over the years for the last several years. Now that it's being turned on them, it's abusive. It's funny to see those who dish it out being so unable to take it.

    Maybe teach those Lib Arts majors Assembly Language programming for starters, which would avoid getting into concepts like classes, structures and so on, and just deal w/ registers, memories, accumulators and so on

  13. Re:What? by mukinrestak · · Score: 5, Informative

    You probably need the context then. Recently an arseload of mostly left-leaning journalists from left-leaning websites got laid-off (specifically Huffington Post and that bastion of integrity and probity Buzzfeed). Right wing Twitter users thought back to when Obama told laid-off coal miners that they should just learn to code, and decided that what's good for the goose is good for the gander. They then proceeded to start mocking the laid-off journalists with the same advice. The left-leaning journalists got their feefees hurt and started whining to mummy Twitter to make the mean words stop.

  14. Re:What? by h33t+l4x0r · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Did Obama really say that? I can't find a reference to it and it's an uncharacteristically dumb thing to say

  15. Re:What? by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Whether Obama said it or not, the sentiment has been around for a while.

    A lot of people there were really optimistic that the solution to technological unemployment was to teach unemployed West Virginia truck drivers to code so they could participate in the AI revolution. I used to think this was a weird straw man occasionally trotted out by Freddie deBoer, but all these top economists were *super enthusiastic* about old white guys whose mill has fallen on hard times founding the next generation of nimble tech startups.

    http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/06/notes-from-the-asilomar-conference-on-beneficial-ai/

    It's a hard-hearted lack of sympathy. Working class stiffs from Middle America get told to fuck off and learn to code because the coasts are eliminating their jobs with globalism.

    When I was young, most people in the upper half were perfectly willing to respect those in the bottom half, and some people (leftists) practically worshipped them. Today, it is vastly different. Remarks calling working class "deplorables" and worse have become quite common today on the left. Leftists say that working class are racist, misogynistic, intolerant, etc. In reality, they are the bigots and not middle America.

    --
    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  16. Re:What? by lgw · · Score: 2, Informative

    Yes, she was call all Trump supporters, roughly half the country, the Nazi sympathising fringe of the Alt-right. That was very much understood, and won't soon be forgotten.

    --
    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  17. Re:What? by h33t+l4x0r · · Score: 2

    That would be a pretty big basket. I think you are going out of your way to misinterpret a simple sentence.

  18. Re:Drumpf sucks balls. by kilfarsnar · · Score: 2

    There are two good things about Trump: (1) his negotiating strategy appears to be more realistic, i.e. he's very combative and aggressive and (2) he's annoying all the right people.

    LOL, Trump gets rolled in every negotiation he takes part in. How's that denuclearized North Korea thing working out? He is certainly combative and aggressive, I'll give you that.

    And annoying all the right people? The Republicans really have made spite and resentment their political philosophy.

    --
    "What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)