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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 tha

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
  90 days ago Milo + ISIS came up, and Twitter banned 235,000 ISIS accounts. I wrote a similar comment then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12314841 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12314841 It's unfair and highly inaccurate to say that Twitter is turning a blind eye to terrorists on the platform. However, I'd be interested to know what radical leftist organizers are doing to use the Twitter platform and how many of them have ended up banned as well.
  - Karunamon 10y ago
    Hamas' official account had been around since 2010 [1]. 235k accounts is nothing. Absolutely nothing. Twitter accounts are like email addresses, cheap and disposable. It took proliferation of articles like that one (and probably more importantly, a lawsuit) for them to get off their rears and do something about it. And this is after multiple reports over months, against unambiguously hateful accounts, some of which I personally participated in. For some reason, it takes no such media shaming or legal action to ban, limit, or otherwise mess with the speech of the political right. Milo can just mention someone, someone else will say it's brigading, and off we go to the races. A celebrity can talk about getting hate tweets, and the CEO will drop what he's doing and personally reach out to them, while ISIS propaganda goes completely unchecked. Feelings are less important than terrorist propaganda, full stop, end of story. No matter what you think of the political right, this is a disgusting inversion of priorities. [1]: http://www.jpost.com/Business-and-Innovation/Why-are-terrorist-groups-allowed-on-Twitter-security-experts-wonder-456379 http://www.jpost.com/Business-and-Innovation/Why-are-terrori...
panic 10y ago
Unfortunately, the nature of Twitter makes debate unlikely to end in agreement. Twitter is just trying to improve the environment for its users so more people will join and stick around. Most people find the "ideas that powered the NSDAP" quite disgusting.
- micaksica 10y ago
  > Most people find the "ideas that powered the NSDAP" quite disgusting. If we are truly building a society of tolerance, whether or not one has a visceral reaction to an idea should not stop whether or not one can discuss and debate it. I'm not a neo-Nazi, but I've talked at length with them about their views. I will give anyone a few minutes to explain what they are about, try to listen to it neutrally, and form my own opinion. My personal conclusion of neo-Nazism is that it is a way for white men that feel they have no economic opportunity to blame a convenient target, and they try to rationalize Nazi Germany's domestic infrastructural successes as a reason why the country was doing what was right. I think it is a prime example of scapegoating, and I find it violent and hateful. If we are paying lip service to tolerance and acceptance of alternative worldviews to make ourselves feel like better progressives, we are doing our views a disservice and acting more hypocritical than those that blatantly wear radical views of censorship and discrimination.
  - panic 10y ago
    Sure, but not everyone enjoys spending their time engaging with Nazi rhetoric. There are plenty of places outside of Twitter where you can actually choose whether or not to have a discussion.
    - mreiland 10y ago
      He didn't say debating, he said listening.
    - sparky_z 10y ago
      > Sure, but not everyone enjoys spending their time engaging with Nazi rhetoric. There are plenty of places outside of Twitter where you can actually choose whether or not to have a discussion. You could say the exact same thing about literally any view and it would be equally true.
nostromo 10y ago
I don't see "alt-right" as being so similar to "far-right" based on my limited exposure. I've watched some debates with Milo as well as Gavin Mcinnes. They are definitely not what most Americans would call "far-right" -- in that they aren't anti-gay, aren't anti-drugs, aren't socially conservative, and aren't particularly hawkish. They seem to dislike Republicans like Paul Ryan almost as much as Nancy Pelosi. Milo recently did a profanity-laden pro-Trump rally dressed in drag. That's the "alt" -- it's quite different than what a person would typically call Republican.
- MichaelBurge 10y ago
  "alt-right" is mostly just a term used by the Clinton campaign to label their political opponents as weirdos. I don't think I heard anyone using it before Clinton did. I suppose Richard Spencer used it. Before the 2016 election, the term was "classical liberal". I don't know about Milo, but at least Alex Jones has described himself as a liberal.
  - pfisch 10y ago
    This is the "alt-right" and it didn't come from Clinton. http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/11/16/translator-migrants-hate-christians/ http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/11/16/translator-migran... frontpage of breitbart today. This article is racist af, and the comments are even worse. This article basically has no source, and is a bunch of anecdotal race war bullshit. The only "facts" are so lacking in context that they are meaningless. Like number of total attacks for example....
    - briandon 10y ago
      I'm not a Breitbart reader but, after reading your comment, clicked through your link to see what was what. To claim that it has "basically no source" is not true. The Breitbart piece links to the German-language article on which it is based. I'll link it here again for you: http://kath.net/news/57457 http://kath.net/news/57457 The translator whose statements are featured in both the Brietbart piece and the original German article is allegedly a Christian Eritrean woman who has requested anonymity because she fears reprisals from the Islamic asylum claimants with whom her work requires that she interact. Other people quoted in the German article are indeed identified by name. Disclaimer: I am not vouching for the veracity of their statements, the integrity of the original German-language publication, or of Brietbart.
xaa 10y ago
Agree. The first thing I thought upon reading this was: would Twitter ban an account with the following description: "dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of people of African descent in the United States, and around the world." Undoubtedly not. The only difference, of course, is s/African/European/g. I'm a liberal, but I feel that if this election has taught us anything, it should be that suppression of "undesirable" views only makes them stronger. It's almost as if the Founders foresaw this somehow, and having done so, created some kind of First Alteration of the Constitution to protect this kind of speech, realizing that attempting to suppress it would cause more harm than good. I do realize that Twitter is not the government, but the same principle applies.
- leereeves 10y ago
  I feel like the left seriously damaged their ability to fight racist ideas when they abandoned the idea of equality. Now, the left calls colorblindness and "all lives matter" racist. (Remember when Martin O'Malley was destroyed for saying that?) They create advantageous standards based on race, and even exclusive positions for non-white applicants. (For example, at the BBC.) And I too doubt they would object to "dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of people of African descent in the United States, and around the world." MLK's dream that one day people would not be judged by the color of their skin was abandoned by the left before the alt-right rose to power, and I believe that helped the alt-right rise to power.
  - glenda 10y ago
    This is a very forgiving point of view. Institutional racism is real and because of that it can't be undone by just pretending everyone is equal all of the sudden. It is much more nuanced than you make it out to be. That being said, many of the people that twitter banned are just straight up racist and xenophoic/intolerant speech should not be protected.
    - jsf666 10y ago
      >Institutional racism is real Any evidence of this claim? Cause as an outsider to the US I see a black president and a lot of reversed-racism (affirmite action I think you ppl call it)
dmritard96 10y ago
While I think your point about needing a place to have conversations that can rectify the backwardness of Hate As A Platform (HAAP?) make sense, there are two points I would make. The first would be that some proof that Twitter was providing that exchange point would help, it seems like instead its a place for trolls and bots to roam free at the moment and Two, and perhaps this is the more important one - we should be hesitant to look to private companies as rights providers. Its not that private companies shouldn't have a conscience, but that we should be cognizant of where we are getting our rights from...
- an_account_name 10y ago
  I would be more worried about a DNS provider or a registrar with terms about the kinds of speech allowed.
pekk 10y ago
"Against the status quo"? Do you know who Steve Bannon is and what post he is going to take in the white house? Come on. Nazis didn't start deciding to post on Twitter because liberals were reading an insufficient amount of Nazi propaganda.
nilkn 10y ago
The alt-right feeds off this. They want to be called racist, xenophobic, etc., because they believe that society has applied these terms too aggressively to folks who weren't actually racist or xenophobic ("the boy who called wolf"). There's a lot of anger stemming from that, which leads to behavior that's hard to understand for many people. They're not trolls, but there is an element of trolling in what they do.
matt4077 10y ago
If you were, say, an excellent PR consultant. Some "alt"-right group comes along and wants to hire you, willing to pay your standard rate and demanding relatively standard work. Would you be willing to? Almost all would probably decline. Not just because we wouldn't enjoy the work, but also because it is something that, by definition, would help them and support their goals (according to their judgement – otherwise they wouldn't hire you). Should people working at twitter not be allowed to make similar decisions? It's not hyperbole – look at reddit, and how it has devolved to something like a lowest common denominator. I'd leave as fast as I could instead of lending support to the toxic community. Do they have a right that overrides mine? No. Private entities are more or less free to decline any customers, exceptions only where they have monopoly power (telecom, water). Is fighting them out in the open the more valiant thing to do? No – I don't argue about chemtrails, or religion, or flat earth or evolution. Because it doesn't work. The chance of them convincing me that evolution isn't real is 0. Unfortunately, even though I'm right, my chance to convince them is about the same. Because none of this has anything to do with facts – it's red tribe vs blue tribe, and the right's search for a sense of belonging that Reagan sold to the highest bidder. Is it going to empower the extremists to ignore them? Considering the ideas aren't new, I can only conclude that the internet has given them increased visibility and therefore helped their rise. If reasonable people decide to curtail their options for propaganda – by hiding them from Facebook, Twitter, Google the way conspiracy theories were ignored by reasonable people in the past, they may just shrink back to their appropriate size of plus or minus 0.
orcdork 10y ago
I guess this comment is what people said "normalizing hate speech" is all about. The "alt" right isn't a subculture sharing unpopular information against the status quo, this is a group of people spreading hate speech against other, vulnerable groups.
- yolesaber 10y ago
  Thank you for this. People don't seem to get that the alt-right on twitter thrive on harassment, death threats, and all sorts of nastiness. Personally, I'm okay with kicking Nazis to the curb. Their ideas are regressive, harmful, and absolutely counterproductive to the future of the nation. And to those crying out "oh but civic discourse, let's build bridges"...have you ever talked to these people? They aren't trying to talk, they are trying to put a boot in your face if you're not white.
dreta 10y ago
Milo never called raids on Leslie, and Leslie stated on national TV, she’ll send mobs after people who are mean to her, and posted tweets like these https://twitter.com/Lesdoggg/status/755218642674020352 https://twitter.com/Lesdoggg/status/755218642674020352 Twitter has a history of banning right-wing accounts for petty tweets, and leaving alone left-wing accounts that spread hashtags like #KillAllMen, and post sexist tweets against men, or racist tweets against white people. Twitter also is notorious for banning anti-muslim tweets, or even accounts ran by activists fighting for women rights in islamic countries. It’s in their right to do this, but don’t talk about this like Twitter’s doing something warranting a discussion.

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
90 days ago Milo + ISIS came up, and Twitter banned 235,000 ISIS accounts. I wrote a similar comment then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12314841 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12314841 It's unfair and highly inaccurate to say that Twitter is turning a blind eye to terrorists on the platform. However, I'd be interested to know what radical leftist organizers are doing to use the Twitter platform and how many of them have ended up banned as well.
- Karunamon 10y ago
  Hamas' official account had been around since 2010 [1]. 235k accounts is nothing. Absolutely nothing. Twitter accounts are like email addresses, cheap and disposable. It took proliferation of articles like that one (and probably more importantly, a lawsuit) for them to get off their rears and do something about it. And this is after multiple reports over months, against unambiguously hateful accounts, some of which I personally participated in. For some reason, it takes no such media shaming or legal action to ban, limit, or otherwise mess with the speech of the political right. Milo can just mention someone, someone else will say it's brigading, and off we go to the races. A celebrity can talk about getting hate tweets, and the CEO will drop what he's doing and personally reach out to them, while ISIS propaganda goes completely unchecked. Feelings are less important than terrorist propaganda, full stop, end of story. No matter what you think of the political right, this is a disgusting inversion of priorities. [1]: http://www.jpost.com/Business-and-Innovation/Why-are-terrorist-groups-allowed-on-Twitter-security-experts-wonder-456379 http://www.jpost.com/Business-and-Innovation/Why-are-terrori...

panic 10y ago

Unfortunately, the nature of Twitter makes debate unlikely to end in agreement. Twitter is just trying to improve the environment for its users so more people will join and stick around. Most people find the "ideas that powered the NSDAP" quite disgusting.

micaksica 10y ago
> Most people find the "ideas that powered the NSDAP" quite disgusting. If we are truly building a society of tolerance, whether or not one has a visceral reaction to an idea should not stop whether or not one can discuss and debate it. I'm not a neo-Nazi, but I've talked at length with them about their views. I will give anyone a few minutes to explain what they are about, try to listen to it neutrally, and form my own opinion. My personal conclusion of neo-Nazism is that it is a way for white men that feel they have no economic opportunity to blame a convenient target, and they try to rationalize Nazi Germany's domestic infrastructural successes as a reason why the country was doing what was right. I think it is a prime example of scapegoating, and I find it violent and hateful. If we are paying lip service to tolerance and acceptance of alternative worldviews to make ourselves feel like better progressives, we are doing our views a disservice and acting more hypocritical than those that blatantly wear radical views of censorship and discrimination.
- panic 10y ago
  Sure, but not everyone enjoys spending their time engaging with Nazi rhetoric. There are plenty of places outside of Twitter where you can actually choose whether or not to have a discussion.
  - mreiland 10y ago
    He didn't say debating, he said listening.
  - sparky_z 10y ago
    > Sure, but not everyone enjoys spending their time engaging with Nazi rhetoric. There are plenty of places outside of Twitter where you can actually choose whether or not to have a discussion. You could say the exact same thing about literally any view and it would be equally true.

nostromo 10y ago

I don't see "alt-right" as being so similar to "far-right" based on my limited exposure. I've watched some debates with Milo as well as Gavin Mcinnes. They are definitely not what most Americans would call "far-right" -- in that they aren't anti-gay, aren't anti-drugs, aren't socially conservative, and aren't particularly hawkish. They seem to dislike Republicans like Paul Ryan almost as much as Nancy Pelosi. Milo recently did a profanity-laden pro-Trump rally dressed in drag. That's the "alt" -- it's quite different than what a person would typically call Republican.

MichaelBurge 10y ago
"alt-right" is mostly just a term used by the Clinton campaign to label their political opponents as weirdos. I don't think I heard anyone using it before Clinton did. I suppose Richard Spencer used it. Before the 2016 election, the term was "classical liberal". I don't know about Milo, but at least Alex Jones has described himself as a liberal.
- pfisch 10y ago
  This is the "alt-right" and it didn't come from Clinton. http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/11/16/translator-migrants-hate-christians/ http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/11/16/translator-migran... frontpage of breitbart today. This article is racist af, and the comments are even worse. This article basically has no source, and is a bunch of anecdotal race war bullshit. The only "facts" are so lacking in context that they are meaningless. Like number of total attacks for example....
  - briandon 10y ago
    I'm not a Breitbart reader but, after reading your comment, clicked through your link to see what was what. To claim that it has "basically no source" is not true. The Breitbart piece links to the German-language article on which it is based. I'll link it here again for you: http://kath.net/news/57457 http://kath.net/news/57457 The translator whose statements are featured in both the Brietbart piece and the original German article is allegedly a Christian Eritrean woman who has requested anonymity because she fears reprisals from the Islamic asylum claimants with whom her work requires that she interact. Other people quoted in the German article are indeed identified by name. Disclaimer: I am not vouching for the veracity of their statements, the integrity of the original German-language publication, or of Brietbart.

xaa 10y ago

Agree. The first thing I thought upon reading this was: would Twitter ban an account with the following description: "dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of people of African descent in the United States, and around the world." Undoubtedly not. The only difference, of course, is s/African/European/g. I'm a liberal, but I feel that if this election has taught us anything, it should be that suppression of "undesirable" views only makes them stronger. It's almost as if the Founders foresaw this somehow, and having done so, created some kind of First Alteration of the Constitution to protect this kind of speech, realizing that attempting to suppress it would cause more harm than good. I do realize that Twitter is not the government, but the same principle applies.

leereeves 10y ago
I feel like the left seriously damaged their ability to fight racist ideas when they abandoned the idea of equality. Now, the left calls colorblindness and "all lives matter" racist. (Remember when Martin O'Malley was destroyed for saying that?) They create advantageous standards based on race, and even exclusive positions for non-white applicants. (For example, at the BBC.) And I too doubt they would object to "dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of people of African descent in the United States, and around the world." MLK's dream that one day people would not be judged by the color of their skin was abandoned by the left before the alt-right rose to power, and I believe that helped the alt-right rise to power.
- glenda 10y ago
  This is a very forgiving point of view. Institutional racism is real and because of that it can't be undone by just pretending everyone is equal all of the sudden. It is much more nuanced than you make it out to be. That being said, many of the people that twitter banned are just straight up racist and xenophoic/intolerant speech should not be protected.
  - jsf666 10y ago
    >Institutional racism is real Any evidence of this claim? Cause as an outsider to the US I see a black president and a lot of reversed-racism (affirmite action I think you ppl call it)

dmritard96 10y ago

While I think your point about needing a place to have conversations that can rectify the backwardness of Hate As A Platform (HAAP?) make sense, there are two points I would make. The first would be that some proof that Twitter was providing that exchange point would help, it seems like instead its a place for trolls and bots to roam free at the moment and Two, and perhaps this is the more important one - we should be hesitant to look to private companies as rights providers. Its not that private companies shouldn't have a conscience, but that we should be cognizant of where we are getting our rights from...

an_account_name 10y ago
I would be more worried about a DNS provider or a registrar with terms about the kinds of speech allowed.

pekk 10y ago

"Against the status quo"? Do you know who Steve Bannon is and what post he is going to take in the white house? Come on. Nazis didn't start deciding to post on Twitter because liberals were reading an insufficient amount of Nazi propaganda.

nilkn 10y ago

The alt-right feeds off this. They want to be called racist, xenophobic, etc., because they believe that society has applied these terms too aggressively to folks who weren't actually racist or xenophobic ("the boy who called wolf"). There's a lot of anger stemming from that, which leads to behavior that's hard to understand for many people. They're not trolls, but there is an element of trolling in what they do.

matt4077 10y ago

If you were, say, an excellent PR consultant. Some "alt"-right group comes along and wants to hire you, willing to pay your standard rate and demanding relatively standard work. Would you be willing to? Almost all would probably decline. Not just because we wouldn't enjoy the work, but also because it is something that, by definition, would help them and support their goals (according to their judgement – otherwise they wouldn't hire you). Should people working at twitter not be allowed to make similar decisions? It's not hyperbole – look at reddit, and how it has devolved to something like a lowest common denominator. I'd leave as fast as I could instead of lending support to the toxic community. Do they have a right that overrides mine? No. Private entities are more or less free to decline any customers, exceptions only where they have monopoly power (telecom, water). Is fighting them out in the open the more valiant thing to do? No – I don't argue about chemtrails, or religion, or flat earth or evolution. Because it doesn't work. The chance of them convincing me that evolution isn't real is 0. Unfortunately, even though I'm right, my chance to convince them is about the same. Because none of this has anything to do with facts – it's red tribe vs blue tribe, and the right's search for a sense of belonging that Reagan sold to the highest bidder. Is it going to empower the extremists to ignore them? Considering the ideas aren't new, I can only conclude that the internet has given them increased visibility and therefore helped their rise. If reasonable people decide to curtail their options for propaganda – by hiding them from Facebook, Twitter, Google the way conspiracy theories were ignored by reasonable people in the past, they may just shrink back to their appropriate size of plus or minus 0.

orcdork 10y ago

I guess this comment is what people said "normalizing hate speech" is all about. The "alt" right isn't a subculture sharing unpopular information against the status quo, this is a group of people spreading hate speech against other, vulnerable groups.

yolesaber 10y ago
Thank you for this. People don't seem to get that the alt-right on twitter thrive on harassment, death threats, and all sorts of nastiness. Personally, I'm okay with kicking Nazis to the curb. Their ideas are regressive, harmful, and absolutely counterproductive to the future of the nation. And to those crying out "oh but civic discourse, let's build bridges"...have you ever talked to these people? They aren't trying to talk, they are trying to put a boot in your face if you're not white.

dreta 10y ago

Milo never called raids on Leslie, and Leslie stated on national TV, she’ll send mobs after people who are mean to her, and posted tweets like these https://twitter.com/Lesdoggg/status/755218642674020352 https://twitter.com/Lesdoggg/status/755218642674020352 Twitter has a history of banning right-wing accounts for petty tweets, and leaving alone left-wing accounts that spread hashtags like #KillAllMen, and post sexist tweets against men, or racist tweets against white people. Twitter also is notorious for banning anti-muslim tweets, or even accounts ran by activists fighting for women rights in islamic countries. It’s in their right to do this, but don’t talk about this like Twitter’s doing something warranting a discussion.