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My point is that regardless of where someone sits on the political spectrum (even if I agree with them), they shouldn't have input on what should be an open pla

My point is that regardless of where someone sits on the political spectrum (even if I agree with them), they shouldn't have input on what should be an open platform for free speech. Twitter is most obviously not that at this point, but the language in this announcement claims that they are making these changes to help grassroots activism. What they really mean is grassroots activism that they agree with.

ultramancool 11y ago
Yeah, that's definitely my biggest concern - that this will basically be used as a partisan political tool for head bashing. Hopefully they've got some civil libertarian type organizations in the mix that can add some balance to this.
- protomyth 11y ago
  > Hopefully they've got some civil libertarian type organizations in the mix that can add some balance to this. I don't see one in the mix. I do see some suicide organizations that would be helpful in a different context[1]. I am still thinking what I should think of this: http://dangerousspeech.org/guidelines http://dangerousspeech.org/guidelines 1) I cannot help but think of the lost opportunity in social media of addressing people who feel "outside". Things like this won't help at all (and will probably hurt), but it seems the greater reach in media and data collection could actually help find people to engage with so they don't slip into suicidal spirals. I guess there is no profit in it, and history does show some scary chapters when such things are done by people with poor intentions / power motives.
comex 11y ago
> My point is that regardless of where someone sits on the political spectrum (even if I agree with them), they shouldn't have input on what should be an open platform for free speech. In other words, you're saying no one should have input on it? There should be no rules at all? Twitter is fairly unusual even among social networks, and different from most "normal" websites, in that it makes it relatively easy for random strangers to contact semi-famous people. Most of the time this is a great thing. But if you're annoyed by speech on, say, stormfront dot org, you can avoid it by not going there. If people are saying horrible things to you on Twitter, you can avoid it by blocking them - which works up until the point you become infamous enough among a specific subcommunity that a constant stream of random people show up in your mentions, most of them relatively innocuous (but annoying), some of them nastier than that. (And it's not like only misguided people have large numbers of haters - regardless of what you believe about Sarkeesian in particular, a look at mainstream politics is enough to refute that.) Personally, I would prefer a decentralized social network where different subcommunities could use software to define their own interaction policies, much like the Internet as a whole. But Twitter is a centralized service; most users use the official apps (as is required to get the full feature list) and must rely on Twitter's centralized management to filter out both spam and abuse. There's no way around it short of a radical overhaul of the service. I would support adding civil libertarian organizations to the mix of advisors, as a sibling comment mentions, for a variety of reasons. One reason is similar to why we have an adversarial system in law - if most people support an idea, such as free speech, in principle, but nobody is really dedicated to defending it and the easiest way to accomplish other goals is to compromise it, the slippery slope can easily become steep without people really noticing. Another is just that it's easy for these issues to be overpoliticized, especially when you have a physical presence in Silicon Valley. But all that said, there must be rules. If you don't like that, go somewhere else. Who knows, maybe GNU Social will take off.
- exstudent2 11y ago
  > In other words, you're saying no one should have input on it? There should be no rules at all? I don't think any political organizations should have input. There are rules though, they're the local laws of Twitter's users. If a user posts illegal content then Twitter is obligated to take it down. The potential beauty of Twitter is that you could in theory see the full scope of an argument, good, bad and ugly. What we have instead is a platform where people with controversial ideas can leverage agreement from within Twitter to censor opponents. > I would support adding civil libertarian organizations to the mix of advisors, as a sibling comment mentions, for a variety of reasons. One reason is similar to why we have an adversarial system in law - if most people support an idea, such as free speech, in principle, but nobody is really dedicated to defending it and the easiest way to accomplish other goals is to compromise it, the slippery slope can easily become steep without people really noticing. Another is just that it's easy for these issues to be overpoliticized, especially when you have a physical presence in Silicon Valley. You hit the nail on the head with this. > But all that said, there must be rules. If you don't like that, go somewhere else. Twitter must still adhere to at least US law. It seems like a good idea to not try to duplicate the legal system (minus checks and balances) internally.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    US law has virtually nothing to say about how Twitter chooses to run its service.
    - exstudent2 11y ago
      I'm pretty sure if I posted copyrighted material on Twitter and the rights holder issued a DMCA takedown, that Twitter would have to comply. Any illegal content can and should be taken down. Twitter is trying to add another layer of judgement beyond that. That's what we're debating.
      - tptacek 11y ago
        Revenge porn, where ex-lovers post intimate pictures of their former partners along with contact information, is also not currently against US law. Are you suggesting that Twitter is in the wrong to censor it?
klausa 11y ago
>what should be an open platform for free speech I absolutely disagree with the notion that Twitter "should be an open platform for free speech", at least in the "i should be allowed to say whatever I want without any consequences" meaning of "free speech".
- exstudent2 11y ago
  Free speech means that there is no censorship, not that there are no consequences.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    Just no consequences that Twitter is allowed to impose.
    - exstudent2 11y ago
      Twitter can do whatever they want (and they are) but it ceases to be free speech when they start censoring.
      - tptacek 11y ago
        I think we're all at this point pretty clear that Twitter is not a "free speech" platform by your definition. I'm fine with stipulating that.

ultramancool 11y ago

Yeah, that's definitely my biggest concern - that this will basically be used as a partisan political tool for head bashing. Hopefully they've got some civil libertarian type organizations in the mix that can add some balance to this.

protomyth 11y ago
> Hopefully they've got some civil libertarian type organizations in the mix that can add some balance to this. I don't see one in the mix. I do see some suicide organizations that would be helpful in a different context[1]. I am still thinking what I should think of this: http://dangerousspeech.org/guidelines http://dangerousspeech.org/guidelines 1) I cannot help but think of the lost opportunity in social media of addressing people who feel "outside". Things like this won't help at all (and will probably hurt), but it seems the greater reach in media and data collection could actually help find people to engage with so they don't slip into suicidal spirals. I guess there is no profit in it, and history does show some scary chapters when such things are done by people with poor intentions / power motives.

comex 11y ago

> My point is that regardless of where someone sits on the political spectrum (even if I agree with them), they shouldn't have input on what should be an open platform for free speech. In other words, you're saying no one should have input on it? There should be no rules at all? Twitter is fairly unusual even among social networks, and different from most "normal" websites, in that it makes it relatively easy for random strangers to contact semi-famous people. Most of the time this is a great thing. But if you're annoyed by speech on, say, stormfront dot org, you can avoid it by not going there. If people are saying horrible things to you on Twitter, you can avoid it by blocking them - which works up until the point you become infamous enough among a specific subcommunity that a constant stream of random people show up in your mentions, most of them relatively innocuous (but annoying), some of them nastier than that. (And it's not like only misguided people have large numbers of haters - regardless of what you believe about Sarkeesian in particular, a look at mainstream politics is enough to refute that.) Personally, I would prefer a decentralized social network where different subcommunities could use software to define their own interaction policies, much like the Internet as a whole. But Twitter is a centralized service; most users use the official apps (as is required to get the full feature list) and must rely on Twitter's centralized management to filter out both spam and abuse. There's no way around it short of a radical overhaul of the service. I would support adding civil libertarian organizations to the mix of advisors, as a sibling comment mentions, for a variety of reasons. One reason is similar to why we have an adversarial system in law - if most people support an idea, such as free speech, in principle, but nobody is really dedicated to defending it and the easiest way to accomplish other goals is to compromise it, the slippery slope can easily become steep without people really noticing. Another is just that it's easy for these issues to be overpoliticized, especially when you have a physical presence in Silicon Valley. But all that said, there must be rules. If you don't like that, go somewhere else. Who knows, maybe GNU Social will take off.

exstudent2 11y ago
> In other words, you're saying no one should have input on it? There should be no rules at all? I don't think any political organizations should have input. There are rules though, they're the local laws of Twitter's users. If a user posts illegal content then Twitter is obligated to take it down. The potential beauty of Twitter is that you could in theory see the full scope of an argument, good, bad and ugly. What we have instead is a platform where people with controversial ideas can leverage agreement from within Twitter to censor opponents. > I would support adding civil libertarian organizations to the mix of advisors, as a sibling comment mentions, for a variety of reasons. One reason is similar to why we have an adversarial system in law - if most people support an idea, such as free speech, in principle, but nobody is really dedicated to defending it and the easiest way to accomplish other goals is to compromise it, the slippery slope can easily become steep without people really noticing. Another is just that it's easy for these issues to be overpoliticized, especially when you have a physical presence in Silicon Valley. You hit the nail on the head with this. > But all that said, there must be rules. If you don't like that, go somewhere else. Twitter must still adhere to at least US law. It seems like a good idea to not try to duplicate the legal system (minus checks and balances) internally.
- tptacek 11y ago
  US law has virtually nothing to say about how Twitter chooses to run its service.
  - exstudent2 11y ago
    I'm pretty sure if I posted copyrighted material on Twitter and the rights holder issued a DMCA takedown, that Twitter would have to comply. Any illegal content can and should be taken down. Twitter is trying to add another layer of judgement beyond that. That's what we're debating.
    - tptacek 11y ago
      Revenge porn, where ex-lovers post intimate pictures of their former partners along with contact information, is also not currently against US law. Are you suggesting that Twitter is in the wrong to censor it?

klausa 11y ago

>what should be an open platform for free speech I absolutely disagree with the notion that Twitter "should be an open platform for free speech", at least in the "i should be allowed to say whatever I want without any consequences" meaning of "free speech".

exstudent2 11y ago
Free speech means that there is no censorship, not that there are no consequences.
- tptacek 11y ago
  Just no consequences that Twitter is allowed to impose.
  - exstudent2 11y ago
    Twitter can do whatever they want (and they are) but it ceases to be free speech when they start censoring.
    - tptacek 11y ago
      I think we're all at this point pretty clear that Twitter is not a "free speech" platform by your definition. I'm fine with stipulating that.