37 ms·

Twitter Suspends Prominent Alt-Right Accounts

220 points by unreal37 10y ago

SyneRyder 10y ago
Previously discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12966699 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12966699 (343 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12971779 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12971779 (21 comments)
- leereeves 10y ago
  But buried quickly. That first link with 343 comments and over 100 points in an hour was on the third page before it was two hours old.
  - wallace_f 10y ago
    That doesn't seem right. Maybe it would be better for mods to allow a democratic process of discussion
    - eoirs 10y ago
      LOL expecting that from HN is stupid.
    - panic 10y ago
      When articles drop off the front page like that, it's because of user flags (and sometimes automatic flamewar detection, IIRC), not anything the mods are doing.
    - grzm 10y ago
      There's been plenty of discussion over the past month or so on why this might happen. IIRC, check some of the Peter Thiel-related submissions from around the time he donated to the Trump campaign. Sometimes it's a function of user flags (which affect the ranking even if [flagged] isn't visible) which is a more democratic process, and sometimes it's a function of what whether the mods determine that the discussion is constructive and valuable to the overall health and purpose of the HN community. I don't know if the mods always comment when this is the case, but they have in the past done so.
      - RickS 10y ago
        My understanding is that there are also algos at work, for example posts that are very young but have many comments fall faster, as a way to negate flame wars.
        grzm 10y ago
        You're right. Forgot about those when I initially commented, and noticed a sibling had already mentioned them so I thought it was gratuitous to update mine.
        wallace_f 10y ago
        Didn't realize this. The information is not readily available here. It should be more transparent at least.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - dhimes 10y ago
    Yeah I've noticed some submission get strongly Higgs-coupled.
bougiefever 10y ago
This is probably a good move. They should also suppress fake news sites that are obviously not satire, but are meant to mislead. I can't believe I actually support preventing people from sharing things, but somehow this propaganda has to be exposed. This is a sad state we are in now.
- leereeves 10y ago
  This is a corporation enforcing its world view. Would you say the same if Twitter were owned by the right-wing and was banning left wing users?
  - antidaily 10y ago
    No its really not.
    - grzm 10y ago
      Do you mean it's really not a corporation enforcing its worldview? Or it's really not the same if the wings were reversed?
  - spamizbad 10y ago
    There are several major "right wing" corporations that do just that. As a consumer you can make your choices accordingly (Hobby Lobby and Chick-Fil-A come to mind) You might be inclined to grant someone permission to stand on your lawn, but chances are if they stood on your lawn and then held up a sign that said "Send Jews to the gas chambers!" you'd likely ask them to leave. And if they refused, you'd eventually force them to leave. And calling that expulsion "enforcing your world view" would be a very extreme way of explaining what you did.
    - BurningFrog 10y ago
      Are you saying Hobby Lobby and Chick-Fil-A have banned leftist from shopping there?
micaksica 10y ago
I'm not a fan of the "alt-right" or a lot of its subculture. I also don't find it particularly "alt", as much as it is "far" right. It is a lot of the ideas that powered the NSDAP enveloped in the language of the Internet and memes, with the targets broadened from Jewry to non-whites in general. However, I'm also not a fan of suspending these accounts for controversial views if they are not harassing people on the Twitter platform with the Twitter platform; it is crossing into a murky area that feels remarkably like political censorship. I know Milo et al were calling to brigade/raid users like Leslie Jones, and that's crossing the line, and it's clear he was banned for a reason. But let's scope this out for a second, neutrally: if the subculture is sharing information that is against the political status quo to its own adherents, and it is organizing for its beliefs, should it be censored because its belief is fundamentally unpopular, especially when it is so far maligned from the political views of Silicon Valley? If Twitter aims to be a neutral platform, dissent takes more forms than just those that we agree with. It's being able to express, share, and debate those views that we can come to agreements on things. The alt-right movement is in the crosshairs because a lot of people are still reeling from the election, myself included, and people are trying to find any and every excuse as to why Clinton didn't wrap this one up like it seemed to be happening in the exit polls and on the coastal cities. The alt right is popular, full of rage, and more than a little scary to some of us, but I don't think that means they should be instantly suppressed. Only hearing what politics are agreeable to you is how these types of movements rise in the first place.
- Karunamon 10y ago
  It feels like political censorship because it is political censorship. Those with the "correct" political views can basically tell people to kill themselves, or worse, while Twitter turns a blind eye to literal terrorists (of the blowing themselves up with bombs variety) using their platform to spread their message. You can say whatever you want about how terrible the people being banned supposedly were, but Twitter's priorities here are crystal clear. This was an ideological purge first and a (terribly subjective) ToS enforcement action second.
  - micaksica 10y ago
fiblye 10y ago
I think, in a way, the media is kind of empowering the "alt-right" by constantly referring to them as the "alt-right". It presents it as the little guy vs The Man, and I think that makes it much more palatable than "far right." Influential people who think the government is intentionally making gay frogs, that media needs to be under strict control, that climate change is a Chinese hoax, and that everything is us vs (((Them))) just got a candidate that represents their views into the White House. There's nothing alt about it. It's just straight up mainstream now. Referring to it as such takes away from the rebel factor and reveals that this is, in fact, just the new system, as bad as the old one.
- TillE 10y ago
  It's a little odd, since 99% of the time it's really just a euphemism for a particular kind of neo-nazi.
  - dpc59 10y ago
    alternative is pretty much a synonym of neo
    - jgrowl 10y ago
      I was thinking about this earlier. It's so silly. Neo Conservative was already taken so lets make up a new term to label people with. "I know, how about alt-right..."
      - waterphone 10y ago
        Alt-right people came up with the name for themselves, it wasn't a term others created to label them.
        htns 10y ago
        Either way it's a navel-gazing orwellism.
      - 10y ago
stevebmark 10y ago
Finally, Twitter is growing up and moving past its cowardly, childish "free speech" dogma. It's taken them way too long to get here though.
- jjawssd 10y ago
  I see what you did there
  - stevebmark 10y ago
    I'm not sure you did.
- japanese_donald 10y ago
  ...except the people that want to hurt the president elect, call for all white men to be killed, and rape the president elect's wife. I've seen all of this and more on Twitter and these accounts have not been touched. It's childish for Twitter to use its power to silence political opponents. Some of these alt-right accounts deserved to get banned. Others were just people expressing their political beliefs and not directly attack anyone. This election has really opened my eyes to the amount of childish, immature, and mentally unstable people we have in the United States.
  - sctb 10y ago
    You've continued to create multiple accounts to post primarily political and ideological rants. This is an abuse of the site, so we've banned these accounts.
- leurfete 10y ago
  Good trolling sir. You had me going for a moment. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zT09Dy13slc/T3CInkRWjRI/AAAAAAAABIM/u0ONBtTxNYI/s1600/salute.jpg http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zT09Dy13slc/T3CInkRWjRI/AAAAAAAABI...
  - geomark 10y ago
kchoudhu 10y ago
I guess the cost of allowing these accounts is greater than the ad revenue they bring in now that election season is over.
dmritard96 10y ago
Seems like there is a case to be made that Trump should be suspended. Would certainly be a loud statement but also would put twitter in an interesting position.
- cwilson 10y ago
  I'd never thought of that before. Trump values his Twitter account quite a bit. What could he do if Twitter decided to suspend him as a protest? I don't think this will ever happen, but it's an interesting hypothetical.
  - striking 10y ago
    Whatever social network he would then move to would gain many, many followers. That would be Twitter shooting itself in the foot.
    - pekk 10y ago
      There are already Breitbart, FOX News, etc. which work on this principle even without anyone being banned.
  - return0 10y ago
    I think Trump has power of law over twitter now, no?
MichaelBurge 10y ago
Twitter doesn't turn a profit, do they? If they get a couple months of losing users, that could easily pop their inflated stock. I'm not sure this is a good move for them.
- delecti 10y ago
  Twitter probably recognizes that their prior approach of growth at all costs hasn't been working because of their large abuse problem.
- pekk 10y ago
  IF they don't turn a profit, doesn't that suggest they're doing something wrong and should change, rather than that they should conservatively refuse to change anything and hope that they will suddenly start turning a profit that way?
  - MichaelBurge 10y ago
    Your conclusion appears to be "Twitter should change something". There are a lot of things businesses can do to increase profits: They can get more users, they can cut employees, they can move their offices to cheaper areas, they can pursue important business deals, and more. If a plane is off-course, you wouldn't go to the cockpit and start flipping levers and pressing buttons at random. But you could make the same arguments you've made against a person opposing that idea.
- qadevleadgrunt 10y ago
  Personally I have stopped using Twitter all together - along with Facebook news; as both channels are dominated by people that are into racist and misogynist behavior - all in order to spread their hate speech. Something I simply do not subscribe to. If they don't curb the hate speech and racism they are even closer to being cut entirely out of my life - I would think this is what they as a company has to balance vs people that are into those things and appreciate having a platform for such behavior. As of right now - I personally - would never work for a Twitter/Facebook, due to the online presences that they actively support, albeit I'm sure that talent pool is not #1 priority. It's definitely not an easy position, and I guess it kinda shows that touting yourself as a tech company when you are really a platform for good/bad/medium ideas comes with its own set of challenges.
drawkbox 10y ago
Not a good idea at all, I am never for censorship and I think we are losing sight of why freedom of speech is important which is insane to me. It is good all these ideas are out there even if you don't agree with them. Shrouding them will only encourage it. Strict absolutist and authoritative law/parenting almost always leads to acting out, while passive law/parenting let's knowledge decide individual choice. Putting a stranglehold on knowledge that is bad will give people more desire to find confirmation biases in it. Let them naturally learn it is bad themselves. This is just the Streisand effect and way too similar to what they do in China, like the censoring of Kim Jong Un fat memes[1]. Twitter just got political and that is not wise in business. [1] http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/11/16/502312268/kim-fatty-the-third-no-more-china-reportedly-censors-mockery-of-kim-jong-un http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/11/16/502312268/...
- commenting 10y ago
  There are plenty of other websites that host neo-Nazi hate speech though, it's not like the "alt-right" have no outlet for their ideas. Twitter is under no obligation to partake in this too.
- masondixon 10y ago
  > we are losing sight of why freedom of speech is important which is insane to me. I'm with you. Its very difficult to find people like you who think practically and consider side-effects, etc. I'm curious as to whether this has changed over time. And how could the founding fathers have such foresight. Where have all the thinkers gone?
  - trump2016 10y ago
    > Where have all the thinkers gone? Isn't it obvious? They've been censored. Matt Lauer can't even ask legitimate questions about Clinton's private email server without being publicly censured for being a "bad" journalist. What a joke.
  - tnone 10y ago
    They learned to self censor, lest they be shouted down and branded for heresy by the left wing ideologues with an axe to grind.
commenting 10y ago
Good riddance. Twitter shouldn't let itself be a recruiting platform for neo-Nazis and their ilk. This is consistent with the ban on ISIS propaganda accounts, which was also a positive step towards combatting online extremism.
- hnsucks2 10y ago
  Are the banned "alt-right" commentators commensurate with ISIS propagandists? If so, how much else ought to be banned? Black power groups? Anti-fascist groups? Many "social justice" accounts post anti-white, anti-male messages with impunity. Should we then paint all people concerned with social justice with the same brush?
  - pekk 10y ago
    Were the literal 1930s Nazis comparable to ISIS propagandists? If not, then why not? What about modern Neo-Nazis, are they really better? Why?
    - stale2002 10y ago
      The people that the left calls neo nazis would likely reject that label. Just because you call a group you don't like a Nazi, doesn't make it true.
      - commenting 10y ago
        Doesn't make it false either. There is significant overlap between established neo-Nazi movements and the "alt-right", both in membership and rhetoric.
        hnsucks2 10y ago
        Where else are they going to go? There is a "significant overlap" between social justice and anti-white, anti-male, anti-cis propaganda. There's no convenient label to stick on that one just yet, but if you want to be consistent you're going to have to paint all social justice people with that brush.
colemickens 10y ago
> Those with the "correct" political views can basically tell people to kill themselves That's just simply untrue. Hyperbole and lies don't help in these conversations. (And I say this as someone who thinks that Facebook and Twitter have no place being arbiters of "truth"). Downvoted to -4 on HN for saying that Twitter doesn't allow liberals special privileges to threaten violence on Twitter. Gotta just love this place sometimes, and by love, I mean that it's full of shit.
- Karunamon 10y ago
  https://twitter.com/hipsterocracy/status/796353512208625666 https://twitter.com/hipsterocracy/status/796353512208625666 https://twitter.com/_g3orgia/status/796263284282454017 https://twitter.com/_g3orgia/status/796263284282454017 https://twitter.com/cervines/status/795679114673852416 https://twitter.com/cervines/status/795679114673852416 https://twitter.com/_mr_parker25/status/796521044492349440 https://twitter.com/_mr_parker25/status/796521044492349440 "If you voted third party in a swing state you should kill yourself." "Kill yourself" "Kill yourself. Honestly kill yourself. You wouldn't be missed" "To everyone who voted for trump as a joke kys. To everyone who voted for Harambe kys. To everyone who voted for Hennessy kys." 10 seconds with this search: https://twitter.com/search?q=kill%20yourself& https://twitter.com/search?q=kill%20yourself& or variations. Untrue, huh?
  - colemickens 10y ago
    And the same thing from the other side is trivially easy to find too. Your comment implied that Twitter looks the other way, but only for liberals, and that claim is laughable at best and it's a trivial task to find counter-evidence. Besides, the first three pages of that search have zero tweets that involve someone telling someone else to kill themselves. They're all mock conversations, or memes, or literally a discussion of the fact that the punishment for attempted suicide is death. Or people encouraging others to call suicide hotlines, or a joke about killing yourself to get insurance money. I'm literally looking for a threatening tweet in that search and can't find one.
    - 10y ago
grandalf 10y ago
Why does everyone think censorship is the answer? The idea that "evil" ideas pollute minds is the same reasoning that neocons have for why Islam must be stopped. It's bizarre and farfetched. Our values of free speech and free expression are far more important than the cringeworthy and extremely stupid things some people choose to say. Twitter should not ban these accounts, or should it ban ISIS accounts or anything else. Twitter is a platform, not a curation service or thoughtcrime police force.
- joggery 10y ago
  Indeed. Turn the spotlight of publicity onto what people, be they good or bad, have to say. Turn a platform into a "safe space" and pretty soon any kind of criticism will be interpreted as harassment. This will deny users a powerful means of making progress. So ultimately it becomes an unsafe space.
- commenting 10y ago
  Twitter doesn't have to be a neo-Nazi propaganda platform if it deems that unacceptable. They should (and do) have the freedom and liberty to choose who uses their service.
  - masondixon 10y ago
    > neo-Nazi propaganda Can you give me a definition of this that can be consistently applied to all tweets? The issue is that you can say something is "neo-Nazi propaganda" and it will shut down the discussion and publicly shame the person because the phrase is so powerful.
    - jsf666 10y ago
      > because the phrase is so powerful Less day by day, thanks to the liberals
- whybroke 10y ago
  Evil ideas need to be analyzed and refuted absolutely. Their adherents should write them up in depth and place them on the web so that they can be discussed widely and in depth and, if erroneous, be refuted. It's hard to see how 140 character snipes, provocations and occasional calls to hostility fall into that category. But maybe. Is it censorship to remove random stickers from telephone poles? To erase graffiti?
noonespecial 10y ago
Looks like the time has come for Twitter to choose to be either a community or a platform. Really either is fine for a business to be but the choice does need to be made decisively. Freedom of speech runs headlong into freedom of association.
treebog 10y ago
Twitter has a huge harassment problem. This has serious implications for their business; as we saw the other week, Disney passed on acquiring them in part because of the harassment situation. This seems like a good and necessary move to strengthen their business by making their platform a more tolerable place to visit.
- masondixon 10y ago
  Why can't they just provide better filtering tools. You choose who you can follow. They should pull some of their ad-targeting tech to focus on filtering harassment.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
peterkshultz 10y ago
I'd imagine at least part of Twitter's rationale for doing this was to make users contrast their proactivity with Facebook's stalling on labeling or removing fake news. Twitter looks more on top of things as a result.
superkuh 10y ago
I don't care about the politics of this move but this is why I have never, and will never, use third party platforms to communicate. Centralization always leads to abuse.
cft 10y ago
Regardless of the alt-right point of view, I can only hope that https://gab.ai https://gab.ai takes off and does not get shut down or sabotaged. We need a neutral social media.
- pekk 10y ago
  Is it the same thing to be permissive and to be neutral?
  - return0 10y ago
    Yes. Would you say your power outlets are political?
- comex 10y ago
  What we need is decentralized social media without any one entity running it who can impose anything from censorship to advertising to going out of business.
- norea-armozel 10y ago
  No thanks. I don't like gab either since they're basically a hive of crackpots. I've seen everything from the Illuminati to "cultural marxists" blamed for people being transgender. Sorry if I'm not keen to interact with those folks, but I don't think me being trans is a disease or a problem. If it's a problem for them then they can solve it by staying out of my way just as I've been staying out of theirs.
Animats 10y ago
Right-wing competitors to Twitter are already on line. See "https://gab.ai/" https://gab.ai/" “We need a conservative Facebook, a conservative Google, a conservative Twitter” - Steve Malzberg
- ignoramceisblis 10y ago
  What do they do with their data? Make a list?
BurningFrog 10y ago
Being headquartered in the most leftist city in the country may be risky for Twitter when trying to navigate these issues. I wonder if any uncloseted conservatives or republicans are in the room, or even the building, when these things are decided?
yAnonymous 10y ago
Always entertaining when supposedly leftist organizations like Twitter out themselves as fascists. You're not better than the people you're suspending. In fact, you're a lot like them.
JulianMorrison 10y ago
From Twitter's perspective, I'm figuring they see these people not as a political movement, but simply as a nest of trolls, who go around harassing people and inciting mobs and are thus poison to the network.
icu 10y ago
The right to free speech is fundamental to a better society. Ideally we have a free market of ideas fostered by tolerance and respect for different points views. Not being willing to expose yourself to different points of view creates ignorance. Corporate censorship like this sends a signal that Twitter is not willing to be that communication platform for free speech.
jbmorgado 10y ago
I can't really see how the answer for what just happened in these elections, is even more "socially acceptable" censorship. Clearly a lot of people were faking their world views on the social media in order to appear "politically correct" and avoid being shunned and attacked from people that see themselves as politically correct and informed. And then, on the ballot without anyone looking, they, of course, voted against that and we got Trump, Brexit, etc... And now, people are expecting that the answer to on how to actually get these people back, inform them, make them more open and try to show them a better view of the world, is to censor their thoughts even more?
lujim 10y ago
Something tells me the term Alt-Right is becoming one of those worn out labels thrown around with the same amount of precision as a sawed off 12 gauge.
chippy 10y ago
Typing this regardless of the thread being flagged and disappearing - but I've a comment on Twitter generally. This, to me, seems the result of a Western tech company meeting the world. It's a result of growing and enlarging the people using it. It's an indication of different cultures, societies and ways of looking at the world. To get more people, Twitter has been forced to appeal to a wider range of people. When it started it was just people like us, techies, using it. It was good, remember? So we are seeing what happens when cultures and people clash. If anything, Twitter needs to make the bubble better, not reduce the bubble. Facebook does this really well - things can be shared from outside the circle but its not usually some internal comment thread. Twitter makes it too easy for different people to talk to each other. As humans, the best way is to have more empathy for others, to understand that other people you encounter may have different world views. Most online conflict occurs not due to ideas but to lack of empathy of others. Twitter as it is does not encourage empathy between people.
EJTH 10y ago
So freedom of speech is now only for religious extremists like ISIS, Al-Nusra etc. whos supporters are free to express themselves on twitter. The more the establishement tries to fight the alt-right, the more free (and valid?) publicity it recieves. I didn't really believe in the so called "anti-white" agenda, but the more I see these guys getting censored for simply expressing their (somewhat legitimate) concerns and their views while ISIS supporters are free to express their hate towards the general western population, the more I am beginning to accept the fact that there is a clear anti-european sentiment deeply rooted in international politics. In other words: It really does seem like there is an "anti-white" agenda, especially considering how islamist extremists are free to share their decapitation pictures on facebook and twitter while raising concerns for some official stats gets you banned and labelled as racist. BLM acitivists are free to call for the killing of all "white cis males" on twitter, that is apparently not hate speech at all - Sometimes I just get the feeling that the entire world is FUBAR.
- speeder 10y ago
  If you want to see anti-white agenda, pay attention to instances of GamerGate interacting with politics... First, Hillary campaign and pro-Hillary journalists keep lumping GG with altright and Trump, ignoringt surveys that show that most GG people are more in the Bernie camp instead. This basically forced GG into politics, and then you got outright anti-white racism on the mix... for example one of the biggest opponents of GG is Bioware, they even made a tweet comparing trump to Reapers (mass effect antagonists, they are a species of racist robots that use mass brainwashing as basic weapon), but the same people in Bioware made blatant racist tweets, for example tweeting photo of a cup with words about white tears, making a feminist conference and writing in one of the slides that white women are against the cause and should be ignored, defending hiring decisions based on race (ie: hire everyone that ins't white) and so on. GG also had spats with a guy that literally wrote that he wanted white people dead, twitter banned his critics instead. Or the infamous Leslie Jones vs Milo incident, GG people dug up lots of racist tweets from Leslie, and then tried to defend Milo, and were banned instead. someone then copied Leslie tweets, made a new account, and tweeted the same tweets but changing whites for other races, and got insta banned. GG also has lots of devs, that of course noticed GitHub controversies, including that GitHub refused to fix their official code of conduct that explicitly writes that anti-racism protections don't apply to whites. GitHub also hired people that were already infamous on Tweeter for making explicitly anti-white racist tweets.
return0 10y ago
You can't keep suspending heretics forever and expect not to be called the Spanish Inquisition.
ebbv 10y ago
Good. Twitter, Reddit and other sites have a delusion that they have to allow hate on their sites in the name of free speech. That is false. These sites are not the only means of expression. Storm front has existed longer than those sites. They can go there to spout their hate. I truly believe that by playing host to hateful views over the last 6+ years, sites like Reddit and Twitter have helped to mainstream them and make the "alt right" (Neo-Nazi) movement what it is.
Kenji 10y ago
It seems like the alt-right fascist-leaning people are more dedicated to free speech than the left-leaning liberals. Oh, the irony. I'm surprised how the liberals still didn't learn the lesson after Trump was elected. Trump would have never been elected if it wasn't for the silencing and ridiculing campaigns of the liberal media. Turns out people don't like being patronised, what a surprise.
- Burritamos 10y ago
  I don't think most people have the desire or awareness to come to any conclusion about what the 'liberal media' was doing. I think it's more about believing what they were told by someone who spoke on the matter with an air of authority. If you ask the average person on the street about the improprieties of the media leading up to the election, they're not going to go into the details of the DNC emails and explain the cozy relationship between them and the media. They never read them. They're going to say the media is 'rigged' because that's what they were told over and over until the notion stuck with them.
badthingfactory 10y ago
Does anyone have screenshots or examples of hate speech from these accounts? I would like to make an informed decision about whether I should continue using Twitter. I use Twitter every day, but if they're banning accounts because they don't agree with certain views, I am absolutely closing my account.
icu 10y ago
You cannot have a conversation with someone who doesn't acknowledge your right to have a divergent view. This sows the seeds of fascism and this is an existential threat to West. All other political and bulling noise aside, this to me is the core of what Twitter is doing. As soon as the market understands that Twitter is betting against freedom of speech I believe the market will adjust accordingly and it will have a stock sell off and loss of users.
glenndebacker 10y ago
The problem is that it's a counterproductive move. In Belgium / Flanders we had an extreme far right political party called the Flemish Block. Af first the media gave them no air time, they weren't invited to political debates, they filtered them out like they didn't exist. The political parties created a cordon sanitaire, somekind of agreement to never create a government with that party involved. The result? The biggest win ever for a far right party. To this day that particular moment in history is called black sunday. They were the underdog, the ideal party to give a protest vote and their idea's for a lot didn't seem that ridiculous as they got no confrontations. Later they tried to outlaw the party but it just resurfaced as a new party called the Flemish importance (Vlaams Belang). Then something changed and they got more airtime, they were invited to political debates or debates too court. The result ? People saw how ridiculous some of their arguments were or how they lost debates when confronted with just sane arguments.... Today they are a marginally sized party at best and nobody is scared from them anymore. The only way you can defeat those ideas is not by taking away their voice, but to let them speak.
- RileyKyeden 10y ago
  We tried that. Now we have President-elect Donald Trump and a wave of hate crimes.
- wu-ikkyu 10y ago
  >The only way you can defeat those ideas is not by taking away their voice, but to let them speak. >We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured. -Dr. King, Letter From a Birmingham Jail
norea-armozel 10y ago
Personally, I'm glad Twitter is cleaning up these jerks but they seem to be focusing on the most visible aspects of Twitter and ignoring the rest. It's easy to nuke an account like Milo's but it's another to nuke an account of a small time user (200 followers and the like). It's these folks who pose the biggest problem IMO because they're the ones most likely to act in a manner that is abusive on the site (barring Milo himself who seems to think he's above the ToS of any site). So, it's basically a whitewashing act to ensure they look like they're solving a problem of abuse but in practice they ignore the 99% of abuse that actually goes on. They think if they hit that 1% the 99% will get in line. But I think the Twitter devs don't understand that they don't care. It's not as if their lives depend on Twitter. They'll just laugh and make alt accounts to continue the cycle over and over. Twitter needs a complete redesign for the abuse to be minimized or otherwise eliminated. And it wouldn't even need banning involved at least in my opinion. In some ways, I think Google had it right with G+ because it was easier to filter out people on circles than anything else. Too bad Twitter is so popular.

220 points by unreal37 10y ago

Previously discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12966699 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12966699 (343 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12971779 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12971779 (21 comments)

leereeves 10y ago
But buried quickly. That first link with 343 comments and over 100 points in an hour was on the third page before it was two hours old.
- wallace_f 10y ago
  That doesn't seem right. Maybe it would be better for mods to allow a democratic process of discussion
  - eoirs 10y ago
    LOL expecting that from HN is stupid.
  - panic 10y ago
    When articles drop off the front page like that, it's because of user flags (and sometimes automatic flamewar detection, IIRC), not anything the mods are doing.
  - grzm 10y ago
    There's been plenty of discussion over the past month or so on why this might happen. IIRC, check some of the Peter Thiel-related submissions from around the time he donated to the Trump campaign. Sometimes it's a function of user flags (which affect the ranking even if [flagged] isn't visible) which is a more democratic process, and sometimes it's a function of what whether the mods determine that the discussion is constructive and valuable to the overall health and purpose of the HN community. I don't know if the mods always comment when this is the case, but they have in the past done so.
    - RickS 10y ago
      My understanding is that there are also algos at work, for example posts that are very young but have many comments fall faster, as a way to negate flame wars.
      - grzm 10y ago
        You're right. Forgot about those when I initially commented, and noticed a sibling had already mentioned them so I thought it was gratuitous to update mine.
      - wallace_f 10y ago
        Didn't realize this. The information is not readily available here. It should be more transparent at least.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- dhimes 10y ago
  Yeah I've noticed some submission get strongly Higgs-coupled.

bougiefever 10y ago

This is probably a good move. They should also suppress fake news sites that are obviously not satire, but are meant to mislead. I can't believe I actually support preventing people from sharing things, but somehow this propaganda has to be exposed. This is a sad state we are in now.

leereeves 10y ago
This is a corporation enforcing its world view. Would you say the same if Twitter were owned by the right-wing and was banning left wing users?
- antidaily 10y ago
  No its really not.
  - grzm 10y ago
    Do you mean it's really not a corporation enforcing its worldview? Or it's really not the same if the wings were reversed?
- spamizbad 10y ago
  There are several major "right wing" corporations that do just that. As a consumer you can make your choices accordingly (Hobby Lobby and Chick-Fil-A come to mind) You might be inclined to grant someone permission to stand on your lawn, but chances are if they stood on your lawn and then held up a sign that said "Send Jews to the gas chambers!" you'd likely ask them to leave. And if they refused, you'd eventually force them to leave. And calling that expulsion "enforcing your world view" would be a very extreme way of explaining what you did.
  - BurningFrog 10y ago
    Are you saying Hobby Lobby and Chick-Fil-A have banned leftist from shopping there?

micaksica 10y ago

I'm not a fan of the "alt-right" or a lot of its subculture. I also don't find it particularly "alt", as much as it is "far" right. It is a lot of the ideas that powered the NSDAP enveloped in the language of the Internet and memes, with the targets broadened from Jewry to non-whites in general. However, I'm also not a fan of suspending these accounts for controversial views if they are not harassing people on the Twitter platform with the Twitter platform; it is crossing into a murky area that feels remarkably like political censorship. I know Milo et al were calling to brigade/raid users like Leslie Jones, and that's crossing the line, and it's clear he was banned for a reason. But let's scope this out for a second, neutrally: if the subculture is sharing information that is against the political status quo to its own adherents, and it is organizing for its beliefs, should it be censored because its belief is fundamentally unpopular, especially when it is so far maligned from the political views of Silicon Valley? If Twitter aims to be a neutral platform, dissent takes more forms than just those that we agree with. It's being able to express, share, and debate those views that we can come to agreements on things. The alt-right movement is in the crosshairs because a lot of people are still reeling from the election, myself included, and people are trying to find any and every excuse as to why Clinton didn't wrap this one up like it seemed to be happening in the exit polls and on the coastal cities. The alt right is popular, full of rage, and more than a little scary to some of us, but I don't think that means they should be instantly suppressed. Only hearing what politics are agreeable to you is how these types of movements rise in the first place.

Karunamon 10y ago
It feels like political censorship because it is political censorship. Those with the "correct" political views can basically tell people to kill themselves, or worse, while Twitter turns a blind eye to literal terrorists (of the blowing themselves up with bombs variety) using their platform to spread their message. You can say whatever you want about how terrible the people being banned supposedly were, but Twitter's priorities here are crystal clear. This was an ideological purge first and a (terribly subjective) ToS enforcement action second.
- micaksica 10y ago

fiblye 10y ago

I think, in a way, the media is kind of empowering the "alt-right" by constantly referring to them as the "alt-right". It presents it as the little guy vs The Man, and I think that makes it much more palatable than "far right." Influential people who think the government is intentionally making gay frogs, that media needs to be under strict control, that climate change is a Chinese hoax, and that everything is us vs (((Them))) just got a candidate that represents their views into the White House. There's nothing alt about it. It's just straight up mainstream now. Referring to it as such takes away from the rebel factor and reveals that this is, in fact, just the new system, as bad as the old one.

TillE 10y ago
It's a little odd, since 99% of the time it's really just a euphemism for a particular kind of neo-nazi.
- dpc59 10y ago
  alternative is pretty much a synonym of neo
  - jgrowl 10y ago
    I was thinking about this earlier. It's so silly. Neo Conservative was already taken so lets make up a new term to label people with. "I know, how about alt-right..."
    - waterphone 10y ago
      Alt-right people came up with the name for themselves, it wasn't a term others created to label them.
      - htns 10y ago
        Either way it's a navel-gazing orwellism.
    - 10y ago

stevebmark 10y ago

Finally, Twitter is growing up and moving past its cowardly, childish "free speech" dogma. It's taken them way too long to get here though.

jjawssd 10y ago
I see what you did there
- stevebmark 10y ago
  I'm not sure you did.
japanese_donald 10y ago
...except the people that want to hurt the president elect, call for all white men to be killed, and rape the president elect's wife. I've seen all of this and more on Twitter and these accounts have not been touched. It's childish for Twitter to use its power to silence political opponents. Some of these alt-right accounts deserved to get banned. Others were just people expressing their political beliefs and not directly attack anyone. This election has really opened my eyes to the amount of childish, immature, and mentally unstable people we have in the United States.
- sctb 10y ago
  You've continued to create multiple accounts to post primarily political and ideological rants. This is an abuse of the site, so we've banned these accounts.
leurfete 10y ago
Good trolling sir. You had me going for a moment. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zT09Dy13slc/T3CInkRWjRI/AAAAAAAABIM/u0ONBtTxNYI/s1600/salute.jpg http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zT09Dy13slc/T3CInkRWjRI/AAAAAAAABI...
- geomark 10y ago

kchoudhu 10y ago

I guess the cost of allowing these accounts is greater than the ad revenue they bring in now that election season is over.

dmritard96 10y ago

Seems like there is a case to be made that Trump should be suspended. Would certainly be a loud statement but also would put twitter in an interesting position.

cwilson 10y ago
I'd never thought of that before. Trump values his Twitter account quite a bit. What could he do if Twitter decided to suspend him as a protest? I don't think this will ever happen, but it's an interesting hypothetical.
- striking 10y ago
  Whatever social network he would then move to would gain many, many followers. That would be Twitter shooting itself in the foot.
  - pekk 10y ago
    There are already Breitbart, FOX News, etc. which work on this principle even without anyone being banned.
- return0 10y ago
  I think Trump has power of law over twitter now, no?

MichaelBurge 10y ago

Twitter doesn't turn a profit, do they? If they get a couple months of losing users, that could easily pop their inflated stock. I'm not sure this is a good move for them.

delecti 10y ago
Twitter probably recognizes that their prior approach of growth at all costs hasn't been working because of their large abuse problem.
pekk 10y ago
IF they don't turn a profit, doesn't that suggest they're doing something wrong and should change, rather than that they should conservatively refuse to change anything and hope that they will suddenly start turning a profit that way?
- MichaelBurge 10y ago
  Your conclusion appears to be "Twitter should change something". There are a lot of things businesses can do to increase profits: They can get more users, they can cut employees, they can move their offices to cheaper areas, they can pursue important business deals, and more. If a plane is off-course, you wouldn't go to the cockpit and start flipping levers and pressing buttons at random. But you could make the same arguments you've made against a person opposing that idea.
qadevleadgrunt 10y ago
Personally I have stopped using Twitter all together - along with Facebook news; as both channels are dominated by people that are into racist and misogynist behavior - all in order to spread their hate speech. Something I simply do not subscribe to. If they don't curb the hate speech and racism they are even closer to being cut entirely out of my life - I would think this is what they as a company has to balance vs people that are into those things and appreciate having a platform for such behavior. As of right now - I personally - would never work for a Twitter/Facebook, due to the online presences that they actively support, albeit I'm sure that talent pool is not #1 priority. It's definitely not an easy position, and I guess it kinda shows that touting yourself as a tech company when you are really a platform for good/bad/medium ideas comes with its own set of challenges.

drawkbox 10y ago

Not a good idea at all, I am never for censorship and I think we are losing sight of why freedom of speech is important which is insane to me. It is good all these ideas are out there even if you don't agree with them. Shrouding them will only encourage it. Strict absolutist and authoritative law/parenting almost always leads to acting out, while passive law/parenting let's knowledge decide individual choice. Putting a stranglehold on knowledge that is bad will give people more desire to find confirmation biases in it. Let them naturally learn it is bad themselves. This is just the Streisand effect and way too similar to what they do in China, like the censoring of Kim Jong Un fat memes[1]. Twitter just got political and that is not wise in business. [1] http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/11/16/502312268/kim-fatty-the-third-no-more-china-reportedly-censors-mockery-of-kim-jong-un http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/11/16/502312268/...

commenting 10y ago
There are plenty of other websites that host neo-Nazi hate speech though, it's not like the "alt-right" have no outlet for their ideas. Twitter is under no obligation to partake in this too.
masondixon 10y ago
> we are losing sight of why freedom of speech is important which is insane to me. I'm with you. Its very difficult to find people like you who think practically and consider side-effects, etc. I'm curious as to whether this has changed over time. And how could the founding fathers have such foresight. Where have all the thinkers gone?
- trump2016 10y ago
  > Where have all the thinkers gone? Isn't it obvious? They've been censored. Matt Lauer can't even ask legitimate questions about Clinton's private email server without being publicly censured for being a "bad" journalist. What a joke.
- tnone 10y ago
  They learned to self censor, lest they be shouted down and branded for heresy by the left wing ideologues with an axe to grind.

commenting 10y ago

Good riddance. Twitter shouldn't let itself be a recruiting platform for neo-Nazis and their ilk. This is consistent with the ban on ISIS propaganda accounts, which was also a positive step towards combatting online extremism.

hnsucks2 10y ago
Are the banned "alt-right" commentators commensurate with ISIS propagandists? If so, how much else ought to be banned? Black power groups? Anti-fascist groups? Many "social justice" accounts post anti-white, anti-male messages with impunity. Should we then paint all people concerned with social justice with the same brush?
- pekk 10y ago
  Were the literal 1930s Nazis comparable to ISIS propagandists? If not, then why not? What about modern Neo-Nazis, are they really better? Why?
  - stale2002 10y ago
    The people that the left calls neo nazis would likely reject that label. Just because you call a group you don't like a Nazi, doesn't make it true.
    - commenting 10y ago
      Doesn't make it false either. There is significant overlap between established neo-Nazi movements and the "alt-right", both in membership and rhetoric.
      - hnsucks2 10y ago
        Where else are they going to go? There is a "significant overlap" between social justice and anti-white, anti-male, anti-cis propaganda. There's no convenient label to stick on that one just yet, but if you want to be consistent you're going to have to paint all social justice people with that brush.

colemickens 10y ago

> Those with the "correct" political views can basically tell people to kill themselves That's just simply untrue. Hyperbole and lies don't help in these conversations. (And I say this as someone who thinks that Facebook and Twitter have no place being arbiters of "truth"). Downvoted to -4 on HN for saying that Twitter doesn't allow liberals special privileges to threaten violence on Twitter. Gotta just love this place sometimes, and by love, I mean that it's full of shit.

Karunamon 10y ago
https://twitter.com/hipsterocracy/status/796353512208625666 https://twitter.com/hipsterocracy/status/796353512208625666 https://twitter.com/_g3orgia/status/796263284282454017 https://twitter.com/_g3orgia/status/796263284282454017 https://twitter.com/cervines/status/795679114673852416 https://twitter.com/cervines/status/795679114673852416 https://twitter.com/_mr_parker25/status/796521044492349440 https://twitter.com/_mr_parker25/status/796521044492349440 "If you voted third party in a swing state you should kill yourself." "Kill yourself" "Kill yourself. Honestly kill yourself. You wouldn't be missed" "To everyone who voted for trump as a joke kys. To everyone who voted for Harambe kys. To everyone who voted for Hennessy kys." 10 seconds with this search: https://twitter.com/search?q=kill%20yourself& https://twitter.com/search?q=kill%20yourself& or variations. Untrue, huh?
- colemickens 10y ago
  And the same thing from the other side is trivially easy to find too. Your comment implied that Twitter looks the other way, but only for liberals, and that claim is laughable at best and it's a trivial task to find counter-evidence. Besides, the first three pages of that search have zero tweets that involve someone telling someone else to kill themselves. They're all mock conversations, or memes, or literally a discussion of the fact that the punishment for attempted suicide is death. Or people encouraging others to call suicide hotlines, or a joke about killing yourself to get insurance money. I'm literally looking for a threatening tweet in that search and can't find one.
  - 10y ago

grandalf 10y ago

Why does everyone think censorship is the answer? The idea that "evil" ideas pollute minds is the same reasoning that neocons have for why Islam must be stopped. It's bizarre and farfetched. Our values of free speech and free expression are far more important than the cringeworthy and extremely stupid things some people choose to say. Twitter should not ban these accounts, or should it ban ISIS accounts or anything else. Twitter is a platform, not a curation service or thoughtcrime police force.

joggery 10y ago
Indeed. Turn the spotlight of publicity onto what people, be they good or bad, have to say. Turn a platform into a "safe space" and pretty soon any kind of criticism will be interpreted as harassment. This will deny users a powerful means of making progress. So ultimately it becomes an unsafe space.
commenting 10y ago
Twitter doesn't have to be a neo-Nazi propaganda platform if it deems that unacceptable. They should (and do) have the freedom and liberty to choose who uses their service.
- masondixon 10y ago
  > neo-Nazi propaganda Can you give me a definition of this that can be consistently applied to all tweets? The issue is that you can say something is "neo-Nazi propaganda" and it will shut down the discussion and publicly shame the person because the phrase is so powerful.
  - jsf666 10y ago
    > because the phrase is so powerful Less day by day, thanks to the liberals
whybroke 10y ago
Evil ideas need to be analyzed and refuted absolutely. Their adherents should write them up in depth and place them on the web so that they can be discussed widely and in depth and, if erroneous, be refuted. It's hard to see how 140 character snipes, provocations and occasional calls to hostility fall into that category. But maybe. Is it censorship to remove random stickers from telephone poles? To erase graffiti?

noonespecial 10y ago

Looks like the time has come for Twitter to choose to be either a community or a platform. Really either is fine for a business to be but the choice does need to be made decisively. Freedom of speech runs headlong into freedom of association.

treebog 10y ago

Twitter has a huge harassment problem. This has serious implications for their business; as we saw the other week, Disney passed on acquiring them in part because of the harassment situation. This seems like a good and necessary move to strengthen their business by making their platform a more tolerable place to visit.

masondixon 10y ago
Why can't they just provide better filtering tools. You choose who you can follow. They should pull some of their ad-targeting tech to focus on filtering harassment.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

peterkshultz 10y ago

I'd imagine at least part of Twitter's rationale for doing this was to make users contrast their proactivity with Facebook's stalling on labeling or removing fake news. Twitter looks more on top of things as a result.

superkuh 10y ago

I don't care about the politics of this move but this is why I have never, and will never, use third party platforms to communicate. Centralization always leads to abuse.

cft 10y ago

Regardless of the alt-right point of view, I can only hope that https://gab.ai https://gab.ai takes off and does not get shut down or sabotaged. We need a neutral social media.

pekk 10y ago
Is it the same thing to be permissive and to be neutral?
- return0 10y ago
  Yes. Would you say your power outlets are political?
comex 10y ago
What we need is decentralized social media without any one entity running it who can impose anything from censorship to advertising to going out of business.
norea-armozel 10y ago
No thanks. I don't like gab either since they're basically a hive of crackpots. I've seen everything from the Illuminati to "cultural marxists" blamed for people being transgender. Sorry if I'm not keen to interact with those folks, but I don't think me being trans is a disease or a problem. If it's a problem for them then they can solve it by staying out of my way just as I've been staying out of theirs.

Animats 10y ago

Right-wing competitors to Twitter are already on line. See "https://gab.ai/" https://gab.ai/" “We need a conservative Facebook, a conservative Google, a conservative Twitter” - Steve Malzberg

ignoramceisblis 10y ago
What do they do with their data? Make a list?

BurningFrog 10y ago

Being headquartered in the most leftist city in the country may be risky for Twitter when trying to navigate these issues. I wonder if any uncloseted conservatives or republicans are in the room, or even the building, when these things are decided?

yAnonymous 10y ago

Always entertaining when supposedly leftist organizations like Twitter out themselves as fascists. You're not better than the people you're suspending. In fact, you're a lot like them.

JulianMorrison 10y ago

From Twitter's perspective, I'm figuring they see these people not as a political movement, but simply as a nest of trolls, who go around harassing people and inciting mobs and are thus poison to the network.

icu 10y ago

The right to free speech is fundamental to a better society. Ideally we have a free market of ideas fostered by tolerance and respect for different points views. Not being willing to expose yourself to different points of view creates ignorance. Corporate censorship like this sends a signal that Twitter is not willing to be that communication platform for free speech.

jbmorgado 10y ago

I can't really see how the answer for what just happened in these elections, is even more "socially acceptable" censorship. Clearly a lot of people were faking their world views on the social media in order to appear "politically correct" and avoid being shunned and attacked from people that see themselves as politically correct and informed. And then, on the ballot without anyone looking, they, of course, voted against that and we got Trump, Brexit, etc... And now, people are expecting that the answer to on how to actually get these people back, inform them, make them more open and try to show them a better view of the world, is to censor their thoughts even more?

lujim 10y ago

Something tells me the term Alt-Right is becoming one of those worn out labels thrown around with the same amount of precision as a sawed off 12 gauge.

chippy 10y ago

Typing this regardless of the thread being flagged and disappearing - but I've a comment on Twitter generally. This, to me, seems the result of a Western tech company meeting the world. It's a result of growing and enlarging the people using it. It's an indication of different cultures, societies and ways of looking at the world. To get more people, Twitter has been forced to appeal to a wider range of people. When it started it was just people like us, techies, using it. It was good, remember? So we are seeing what happens when cultures and people clash. If anything, Twitter needs to make the bubble better, not reduce the bubble. Facebook does this really well - things can be shared from outside the circle but its not usually some internal comment thread. Twitter makes it too easy for different people to talk to each other. As humans, the best way is to have more empathy for others, to understand that other people you encounter may have different world views. Most online conflict occurs not due to ideas but to lack of empathy of others. Twitter as it is does not encourage empathy between people.

EJTH 10y ago

So freedom of speech is now only for religious extremists like ISIS, Al-Nusra etc. whos supporters are free to express themselves on twitter. The more the establishement tries to fight the alt-right, the more free (and valid?) publicity it recieves. I didn't really believe in the so called "anti-white" agenda, but the more I see these guys getting censored for simply expressing their (somewhat legitimate) concerns and their views while ISIS supporters are free to express their hate towards the general western population, the more I am beginning to accept the fact that there is a clear anti-european sentiment deeply rooted in international politics. In other words: It really does seem like there is an "anti-white" agenda, especially considering how islamist extremists are free to share their decapitation pictures on facebook and twitter while raising concerns for some official stats gets you banned and labelled as racist. BLM acitivists are free to call for the killing of all "white cis males" on twitter, that is apparently not hate speech at all - Sometimes I just get the feeling that the entire world is FUBAR.

speeder 10y ago
If you want to see anti-white agenda, pay attention to instances of GamerGate interacting with politics... First, Hillary campaign and pro-Hillary journalists keep lumping GG with altright and Trump, ignoringt surveys that show that most GG people are more in the Bernie camp instead. This basically forced GG into politics, and then you got outright anti-white racism on the mix... for example one of the biggest opponents of GG is Bioware, they even made a tweet comparing trump to Reapers (mass effect antagonists, they are a species of racist robots that use mass brainwashing as basic weapon), but the same people in Bioware made blatant racist tweets, for example tweeting photo of a cup with words about white tears, making a feminist conference and writing in one of the slides that white women are against the cause and should be ignored, defending hiring decisions based on race (ie: hire everyone that ins't white) and so on. GG also had spats with a guy that literally wrote that he wanted white people dead, twitter banned his critics instead. Or the infamous Leslie Jones vs Milo incident, GG people dug up lots of racist tweets from Leslie, and then tried to defend Milo, and were banned instead. someone then copied Leslie tweets, made a new account, and tweeted the same tweets but changing whites for other races, and got insta banned. GG also has lots of devs, that of course noticed GitHub controversies, including that GitHub refused to fix their official code of conduct that explicitly writes that anti-racism protections don't apply to whites. GitHub also hired people that were already infamous on Tweeter for making explicitly anti-white racist tweets.

return0 10y ago

You can't keep suspending heretics forever and expect not to be called the Spanish Inquisition.

ebbv 10y ago

Good. Twitter, Reddit and other sites have a delusion that they have to allow hate on their sites in the name of free speech. That is false. These sites are not the only means of expression. Storm front has existed longer than those sites. They can go there to spout their hate. I truly believe that by playing host to hateful views over the last 6+ years, sites like Reddit and Twitter have helped to mainstream them and make the "alt right" (Neo-Nazi) movement what it is.

Kenji 10y ago

It seems like the alt-right fascist-leaning people are more dedicated to free speech than the left-leaning liberals. Oh, the irony. I'm surprised how the liberals still didn't learn the lesson after Trump was elected. Trump would have never been elected if it wasn't for the silencing and ridiculing campaigns of the liberal media. Turns out people don't like being patronised, what a surprise.

Burritamos 10y ago
I don't think most people have the desire or awareness to come to any conclusion about what the 'liberal media' was doing. I think it's more about believing what they were told by someone who spoke on the matter with an air of authority. If you ask the average person on the street about the improprieties of the media leading up to the election, they're not going to go into the details of the DNC emails and explain the cozy relationship between them and the media. They never read them. They're going to say the media is 'rigged' because that's what they were told over and over until the notion stuck with them.

badthingfactory 10y ago

Does anyone have screenshots or examples of hate speech from these accounts? I would like to make an informed decision about whether I should continue using Twitter. I use Twitter every day, but if they're banning accounts because they don't agree with certain views, I am absolutely closing my account.

icu 10y ago

You cannot have a conversation with someone who doesn't acknowledge your right to have a divergent view. This sows the seeds of fascism and this is an existential threat to West. All other political and bulling noise aside, this to me is the core of what Twitter is doing. As soon as the market understands that Twitter is betting against freedom of speech I believe the market will adjust accordingly and it will have a stock sell off and loss of users.

glenndebacker 10y ago

The problem is that it's a counterproductive move. In Belgium / Flanders we had an extreme far right political party called the Flemish Block. Af first the media gave them no air time, they weren't invited to political debates, they filtered them out like they didn't exist. The political parties created a cordon sanitaire, somekind of agreement to never create a government with that party involved. The result? The biggest win ever for a far right party. To this day that particular moment in history is called black sunday. They were the underdog, the ideal party to give a protest vote and their idea's for a lot didn't seem that ridiculous as they got no confrontations. Later they tried to outlaw the party but it just resurfaced as a new party called the Flemish importance (Vlaams Belang). Then something changed and they got more airtime, they were invited to political debates or debates too court. The result ? People saw how ridiculous some of their arguments were or how they lost debates when confronted with just sane arguments.... Today they are a marginally sized party at best and nobody is scared from them anymore. The only way you can defeat those ideas is not by taking away their voice, but to let them speak.

RileyKyeden 10y ago
We tried that. Now we have President-elect Donald Trump and a wave of hate crimes.
wu-ikkyu 10y ago
>The only way you can defeat those ideas is not by taking away their voice, but to let them speak. >We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured. -Dr. King, Letter From a Birmingham Jail

norea-armozel 10y ago

Personally, I'm glad Twitter is cleaning up these jerks but they seem to be focusing on the most visible aspects of Twitter and ignoring the rest. It's easy to nuke an account like Milo's but it's another to nuke an account of a small time user (200 followers and the like). It's these folks who pose the biggest problem IMO because they're the ones most likely to act in a manner that is abusive on the site (barring Milo himself who seems to think he's above the ToS of any site). So, it's basically a whitewashing act to ensure they look like they're solving a problem of abuse but in practice they ignore the 99% of abuse that actually goes on. They think if they hit that 1% the 99% will get in line. But I think the Twitter devs don't understand that they don't care. It's not as if their lives depend on Twitter. They'll just laugh and make alt accounts to continue the cycle over and over. Twitter needs a complete redesign for the abuse to be minimized or otherwise eliminated. And it wouldn't even need banning involved at least in my opinion. In some ways, I think Google had it right with G+ because it was easier to filter out people on circles than anything else. Too bad Twitter is so popular.