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The harassment from Twitter is everywhere on both sides of the political spectrum though. You're painting a very one sided picture. I'm not attacking you here I

The harassment from Twitter is everywhere on both sides of the political spectrum though. You're painting a very one sided picture. I'm not attacking you here I'm just saying there is a narrative about the "alt-right" harassing the innocent leftists and it's not the whole picture. I'm a (democrat) mixed race woman, and I get more harassment and vitriol from "tolerant liberals" when I post anything remotely in support of the president than I ever do from "white supremacists or anti feminists". I have noticed if I don't go right down the party line on an issue, I'm attacked violently. The "N" word I get called frequently is Nazi, not the other. I'm not trying to say your experiences are invalid, I believe you're experiencing it, but I think assigning it to one political party or movement is inaccurate. It's really just the culture of Twitter, and maybe society in general.

eropple 10y ago
If Twitter wants to show the alt-left tools the door too, I'm certainly not gonna cape up for them. But there is a difference of orders of magnitude in both size and cohesiveness to wrestle with here, and it's not towards the burned Bernie bros. That alt-left doesn't have members of state-blessed media outlets (well, until recently, when cheering on pedophilia became a little too much for them) on campus tours where he'd out trans people with a pack of jackals ready to pounce. There's a difference of kind here.
- dotnetisnotdead 10y ago
  You're kidding right? The right says a lot of stupid things...ok TONS of stupid things, but "left leaning media" isn't one of them. These media outlets may not be state blessed, but we have the media on our side, and we have our Jackals for sure. 99% of the media is leaning hard to the left on everything. The Milo incident is a fine example. While was repugnant and deserved it, that was an absolute media witch hunt, and he was targeted and destroyed by the jackals of the left. Bill Maher was the arguable catalyst of it, and he said the exact same thing Milo did, and WORSE things in support of pedophilia and we didn't call him out for it. No media blitz, not cancelled events/shows/etc. Nope, Maher is a hero! All that does is show the "values" we exited Milo with were not true because we don't apply those values to our own people.
  - eropple 10y ago
    Bill Maher isn't a hero and is largely considered in the circles I run in to be the trashfire alt-left sort who I'd be happy to see the back of. He is emphatically not "my people" and never has been. So I'm not really sure what you're getting at there. Yiannopoulos got a little more attention, which he wanted, because he decided to spend a lot of time being a scumbag to get people to look at him. And it bit him because that attention unearthed some real bad stuff. Your garden-variety possibly-a-war-criminal conservative (hi, John Yoo) gets op-eds in the New York Times, not "witch hunts".
    - remarkEon 10y ago
      >Bill Maher isn't a hero and is largely considered in the circles I run in to be the trashfire alt-left sort who I'd be happy to see the back of. Curious. Looks like there's a lack of clear definitions here, because when I hear "alt-left" (or "control-left" as Maajid Nawaz likes to say) to me that means the SJW types who are quick to accuse anyone they disagree with as being a "bigot" or whatever. Maher seems pretty firmly against that. >Your garden-variety possibly-a-war-criminal conservative (hi, John Yoo) gets op-eds in the New York Times, not "witch hunts". Not really worth curating all the questionable left-wing folks major outlets have on staff or let write editorials, but it does seem odd to cite Yoo, here, since arguably that would be an example of the NYT trying to be objective and let you hear the otherside instead of just telling you what to think (FWIW he seems to be a Trump critic, so that aligns well with the NYT editoral board right now). I prefer the former.
  - sidlls 10y ago
    The media does not have a "hard left" bias. They have a "hard profit" bias. The most recent example is the 2016 election, in which they used an orange haired fascist and a right-leaning, conservative "new Democrat" to amplify their entertainment driven ratings (and ad revenue).
    - dotnetisnotdead 10y ago
      likely a more accurate description of the situation.
- Karunamon 10y ago
  But there is a difference of orders of magnitude in both size and cohesiveness to wrestle with here The most non-snarky way I can put this is: "Citation needed". Something that is a left leaning/liberal phenomenon almost exclusively from my experiences is the propensity for shouting a statement into public, and then claiming that anyone who has the temerity to reply to their tweet with anything other than wholehearted agreement is "harassing them", and then immediately blocking them. The right leaning/conservative types tend to argue back with you, perhaps using strong language. Conservatives tend to call you an idiot libtard sheep, liberals tend to call you a racist sexist bigot. (This is one of the benefits of being centrist: both sides don't like you.) This happens when replying to liberal leaning commenters with such regularity that I have taken to mentally rewriting "harass" to "disagree" in the context of Twitter. I've been blocked and called a harasser on Twitter for calling shenanigans on a comment in a much more gentle way than I did above. Have I just harassed you? Twitter's community, and increasingly, their management, would say yes.
  - dotnetisnotdead 10y ago
    I relate to this 100%. I'm a lifelong Democrat, but in the last 2 years the culture has changed so drastically, I am being pushed to the center. I'm not alone in this, and it's bad for democrats. They don't realize it just yet. The over use of "Bigot", "Racist", "Nazi", etc completely devalue the words. They take away their power. 10 years ago nobody wanted to be called a Nazi but now people laugh it off. That's dangerous. We want to be be afraid of being called a racist. We want to discourage it. When Suzy soccer mom says she wants some stricter vetting for refugees she's not the same as Billy Bob sitting in his cabin planning out the burning of black churches. But the left has gone full throttle in that direction. They take the easy path of calling someone a name rather than defend their position, even if it's perfectly defensible. These loud voices are drowning out the moderate, reasonable people on the left, and pushing them away. This is a bad long term strategy.
    - nikdaheratik 10y ago
      IMO, it's not what the left is doing that's the problem, though I'm not a fan of it. The problem boils down to: The repeal of campaign finance-> Lots of state legislatures going hard Republican-> New laws to limit voting rights and more gerrymandering You can argue that one side needs to stop tone policing all you want, but the reality is that candidates are losing in states they used to win because the people who were voting for them aren't allowed to vote anymore. [edit] Most people who vote aren't listening to most liberals or whoever in their day-to-day conversations about this stuff anyway.
makomk 10y ago
Yeah, the thing that's probably ultimately going to limit the life of Twitter's latest automated anti-abuse measures is that left-wingers who fire nasty, vitrolic, vulgarity-filled tweets and invitations to kill themselves at users on the right are also getting their accounts automatically put in time out or even suspended for it, and they're getting really pissed off about it. Sooner or later the press is going to get hold of a sufficiently sympathetic example and that'll be it.

eropple 10y ago

If Twitter wants to show the alt-left tools the door too, I'm certainly not gonna cape up for them. But there is a difference of orders of magnitude in both size and cohesiveness to wrestle with here, and it's not towards the burned Bernie bros. That alt-left doesn't have members of state-blessed media outlets (well, until recently, when cheering on pedophilia became a little too much for them) on campus tours where he'd out trans people with a pack of jackals ready to pounce. There's a difference of kind here.

dotnetisnotdead 10y ago
You're kidding right? The right says a lot of stupid things...ok TONS of stupid things, but "left leaning media" isn't one of them. These media outlets may not be state blessed, but we have the media on our side, and we have our Jackals for sure. 99% of the media is leaning hard to the left on everything. The Milo incident is a fine example. While was repugnant and deserved it, that was an absolute media witch hunt, and he was targeted and destroyed by the jackals of the left. Bill Maher was the arguable catalyst of it, and he said the exact same thing Milo did, and WORSE things in support of pedophilia and we didn't call him out for it. No media blitz, not cancelled events/shows/etc. Nope, Maher is a hero! All that does is show the "values" we exited Milo with were not true because we don't apply those values to our own people.
- eropple 10y ago
  Bill Maher isn't a hero and is largely considered in the circles I run in to be the trashfire alt-left sort who I'd be happy to see the back of. He is emphatically not "my people" and never has been. So I'm not really sure what you're getting at there. Yiannopoulos got a little more attention, which he wanted, because he decided to spend a lot of time being a scumbag to get people to look at him. And it bit him because that attention unearthed some real bad stuff. Your garden-variety possibly-a-war-criminal conservative (hi, John Yoo) gets op-eds in the New York Times, not "witch hunts".
  - remarkEon 10y ago
    >Bill Maher isn't a hero and is largely considered in the circles I run in to be the trashfire alt-left sort who I'd be happy to see the back of. Curious. Looks like there's a lack of clear definitions here, because when I hear "alt-left" (or "control-left" as Maajid Nawaz likes to say) to me that means the SJW types who are quick to accuse anyone they disagree with as being a "bigot" or whatever. Maher seems pretty firmly against that. >Your garden-variety possibly-a-war-criminal conservative (hi, John Yoo) gets op-eds in the New York Times, not "witch hunts". Not really worth curating all the questionable left-wing folks major outlets have on staff or let write editorials, but it does seem odd to cite Yoo, here, since arguably that would be an example of the NYT trying to be objective and let you hear the otherside instead of just telling you what to think (FWIW he seems to be a Trump critic, so that aligns well with the NYT editoral board right now). I prefer the former.
- sidlls 10y ago
  The media does not have a "hard left" bias. They have a "hard profit" bias. The most recent example is the 2016 election, in which they used an orange haired fascist and a right-leaning, conservative "new Democrat" to amplify their entertainment driven ratings (and ad revenue).
  - dotnetisnotdead 10y ago
    likely a more accurate description of the situation.
Karunamon 10y ago
But there is a difference of orders of magnitude in both size and cohesiveness to wrestle with here The most non-snarky way I can put this is: "Citation needed". Something that is a left leaning/liberal phenomenon almost exclusively from my experiences is the propensity for shouting a statement into public, and then claiming that anyone who has the temerity to reply to their tweet with anything other than wholehearted agreement is "harassing them", and then immediately blocking them. The right leaning/conservative types tend to argue back with you, perhaps using strong language. Conservatives tend to call you an idiot libtard sheep, liberals tend to call you a racist sexist bigot. (This is one of the benefits of being centrist: both sides don't like you.) This happens when replying to liberal leaning commenters with such regularity that I have taken to mentally rewriting "harass" to "disagree" in the context of Twitter. I've been blocked and called a harasser on Twitter for calling shenanigans on a comment in a much more gentle way than I did above. Have I just harassed you? Twitter's community, and increasingly, their management, would say yes.
- dotnetisnotdead 10y ago
  I relate to this 100%. I'm a lifelong Democrat, but in the last 2 years the culture has changed so drastically, I am being pushed to the center. I'm not alone in this, and it's bad for democrats. They don't realize it just yet. The over use of "Bigot", "Racist", "Nazi", etc completely devalue the words. They take away their power. 10 years ago nobody wanted to be called a Nazi but now people laugh it off. That's dangerous. We want to be be afraid of being called a racist. We want to discourage it. When Suzy soccer mom says she wants some stricter vetting for refugees she's not the same as Billy Bob sitting in his cabin planning out the burning of black churches. But the left has gone full throttle in that direction. They take the easy path of calling someone a name rather than defend their position, even if it's perfectly defensible. These loud voices are drowning out the moderate, reasonable people on the left, and pushing them away. This is a bad long term strategy.
  - nikdaheratik 10y ago
    IMO, it's not what the left is doing that's the problem, though I'm not a fan of it. The problem boils down to: The repeal of campaign finance-> Lots of state legislatures going hard Republican-> New laws to limit voting rights and more gerrymandering You can argue that one side needs to stop tone policing all you want, but the reality is that candidates are losing in states they used to win because the people who were voting for them aren't allowed to vote anymore. [edit] Most people who vote aren't listening to most liberals or whoever in their day-to-day conversations about this stuff anyway.

makomk 10y ago

Yeah, the thing that's probably ultimately going to limit the life of Twitter's latest automated anti-abuse measures is that left-wingers who fire nasty, vitrolic, vulgarity-filled tweets and invitations to kill themselves at users on the right are also getting their accounts automatically put in time out or even suspended for it, and they're getting really pissed off about it. Sooner or later the press is going to get hold of a sufficiently sympathetic example and that'll be it.