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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."

23 of 418 comments (clear)

  1. 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 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.
    6. 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?

    7. 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.

  2. 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.
  3. 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'...

  4. 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...

  5. 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.

  6. 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!

  7. 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.

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

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

  9. 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.

  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. 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!
  12. 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.

  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: 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)