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This article shines light on the power bestowed upon Twitter employees. They can randomly deactivate one's account, and unless you're the president, you might n
by mankash666 9y ago
This article shines light on the power bestowed upon Twitter employees. They can randomly deactivate one's account, and unless you're the president, you might not have any recourse.
Particularly worrisome is the general left leaning political and social affiliation of such employees. We are an era of systemic censorship of right leaning speech by popular internet platforms.
I'm personally center left, but in no way do I condone the actions of the new breed of leftists, from SJWs claiming "free speech as torture" to wanting "safe spaces" everywhere
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- tryingagainbro 9y agosomeone has to do it...they can't have a board meeting each time they deactivate any random account. I'm sure for VIP accounts safeguards will be put in place. Why was the employee allowed access after being fired /leaving is the question.
- spondyl 9y agoAs I understand it, it was their last day with the company so they'd still have had their credentials.
- Turing_Machine 9y agoHmm... don't most companies remove access to critical systems as soon as it becomes known that an employee is leaving? For whatever reason? At some companies, turning in your two weeks notice gets you escorted off the premises immediately, with your personal items following you in a box.
- mozumder 9y agoJust treat these companies as media companies with editorial discretion instead of as utilities. Really, the moment you start to take advertising, you're responsible for content. Professional advertisers have specific rules about content they can associate with. I've worked with them and they're strict about that, for example, they can't show a beautiful fashion spread next to a bloody image in a magazine. That's just basic advertising and branding. And once you have editorial discretion, you can do whatever you want with content, and no one can complain. Your policy can be made simpler. "Don't piss off Bob" can be a perfectly valid editorial policy, instead of whatever complication Facebook has to go through in determining policy. I also think this would encourage the creation of more competing social media outlets, which is probably why the dominant ones like to think of themselves as utilities.
- aaronbrethorst 9y agoI’m not sure why you’re being downvoted. You’re absolutely right. Maybe the idea of technology not being a neutral good makes the downvoters uncomfortable. edit: yep, seems it does.
- leereeves 9y ago> the creation of more competing social media outlets Like gab.ai? Not allowed on iPhones. Perhaps Twitter could be considered a media company with editorial discretion, but Apple? Either treat these giant SV companies as utilities, or break them up.
- mozumder 9y agoWhy wouldn't Apple have editorial control over their own private marketplace?
- leereeves 9y agoFor the same reason electricity providers and ISPs shouldn't be allowed to. The companies that make products essential to modern society shouldn't be allowed to decide who can participate in modern society.
- echlebek 9y agoThere are literally nazis promoting themselves on twitter without censorship, so I disagree with your claim.
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y agoSo now we can debate whether they (Nazis, or whoever) should be allowed to use a platform, allowing themselves to be identified and dealt with by the law. In that regard there is no global consensus. And arguments for and against can be quite compelling. We know that attempting to suppress ideas can have unintended consequences.
- bad_user 9y agoI am against censorship, however as an European I agree with our country's constitution that says freedom of speech is granted only as far as hate speech isn't involved. Of course who should have the power to identify hate speech and censor content and what the definition of hate speech is, that's debatable. However a platform like Twitter is also private property, another right protected by the constitution and people don't necessarily have free speech rights on somebody else's property. As for the compelling arguments about letting Nazis speak in order to identify them: 1. read some German newspapers just before 1933 – the same arguments against censorship have been used then as well, nothing new 2. if you want to see actual antisemitism, some literal Nazis, go to https://gab.ai https://gab.ai — nothing on Twitter is as bad as what goes on in there and the moderates that are against censoring such opinions usually don't realize how bad they can get or their reach Again, I'm very much pro free speech. But free speech is not my religion and it needs to be balanced against the other rights that we have as well, like property rights, or the right to feel safe and to be treated fairly and respectfully.
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y agoFor what it's worth, I thoroughly agree with you.
- arca_vorago 9y ago
- tanilama 9y agoReally bad press for twitter.
- arachnids 9y ago> power bestowed upon Twitter employees Customer support agents need to take actions against people's accounts. This is literally their job description. This is true at every company. > you might not have any recourse. Free service. > We are an era of systemic censorship of right leaning speech by popular internet platforms. lol
- product50 9y agoYeah - I am not sure what the expectation is. So, going forward, every account reject needs to go through 3 approvals? Then, we will hear how Twitter is so slow tackling abuse and hate on its platform (and ftr, it is already pretty slow).
- nodesocket 9y agoI'll give a very personal account. I was in the past harassed on Twitter. I received death threats and users were giving out my phone number and address to other Twitter users via DM. I filed an official complaint, and Twitter's response was this is not harassment, we won't do anything. I am pretty sure because of my political views the Twitter support representative decided they didn't like me. The hypocrisy, bias, and subjective filtering is rampant in silicon valley. It also unfortunately is a thing here on HN as well. To this day I still get downvoted not for the content of my comments, but because solely people "recognize" me.
- hkmurakami 9y agoThere was a series of articles a few years ago about closet GOP supporters in the tech industry fearing being "outed" for the damage it would cause to their careers. In your experience do you feel that this concern is justified? (I think there was at least one startup CEO who declared that if he found out that anyone at his company had voted for Trump, that he would fire him/her)
- leereeves 9y agoThere was an article about that a few days ago that got a lot of attention here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15595586 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15595586
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- nodesocket 9y agoAbsolutely. I've been lucky enough to be self-employed for a bit, but if you walk into any bay area startup nearly everybody will be a vitriol against Trump and conservatives very publicly. It is not even subtle. I'm the kind of person who actually enjoys a debate, and my lack of PC offends some. If I were an employee, probably would be problematic.
- lsmarigo 9y agoPlease re-consider your use of the term "SJW" as a derogatory term. I had hoped that garbage would stay on reddit. Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln were 'social justice warriors'. The more accepted definition is of an extreme leftist which in truth is statistically irrelevant % of the population. SJW is a strawman term that's great for dividing us and categorizing those with opposing views as the boogeyman.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- andybak 9y agoViewing US political culture from outside makes this even more entertaining. It appears to many people in Europe to be mostly two center-right/right groups calling each other nasty names. Of course the standard left/right dichotomy is a historical accident and contingent on many local factors. And yet we continue to reify it as if it were some Platonic truth.
- leereeves 9y agoAmerica's extreme leftists (AKA SJWs) aren't center-right. They want socialism, they want to silence everyone who disagrees with them, they are willing to use any tactic (including censorship and even violence) to get what they want, and yet, in a startling lack of self-awareness, they consider the center-right half of the country "Nazis". This attempted act of censorship by an ex-Twitter employee is a fairly tame example of their tactics, though notable for affecting the President.
- oblio 9y agoAll of America's extreme leftists would probably fit in a 200sqm hall, with room to spare. Why worry about a statistical anomaly? Just because they have Tumblr accounts? :) (For the downvoters, prove me wrong, how many votes did a far left party get in US elections in the past 20 years? Does the US even have a far left party? :) )
- chiaro 9y ago"I'm personally center left" ... <Reactionary talking points> Hopefully I don't get dang'd by observing how common a meme this is. Companies, public and private, have the legal right to take on whatever political position they have, and beyond having the power to control dialogue, there is no way they can abdicate exercising that power; it's unavoidably emergent from their technology that someone's tweet has to show up top when you log in. This extends to anyone that writes code connecting a query to some media content. Since asking for Government intervention in this realm is highly illiberal, the exercise of this power is a matter of corporate social responsibility. And how the CSR shakes out around the use of a platform to encourage hate and violence of any stripe is a point of contention.
- stale2002 9y agoWell one solution is to take the reddit approach, where you allow different communities to mostly choose who they want to interact with on their own free will. In twitter's case, one way to do this would be to give users more power over what shows up in their feed, and who they interact with. Perhaps they could allow users to compile their own community block lists. IE, a group of volunteer moderators would compile their own block lists together, and then if you want to subscribe to the "Trump Trolls block list" then you can feel free to do so. And the people who DON'T like your block list, can feel free to NOT subscribe to it, or subscribe to their own "liberal trolls block list". That way everyone wins. The trolls can troll, but you don't have to listen to see them if you don't want to.
- forgottenpass 9y ago"I'm personally center left" ... <Reactionary talking points> They said "center left." That, by definition, means they're not going to be in lockstep. So you're taking someone that effectively said: "I generally agree with Foo but some of their actions are not to my taste" and responded by finding them guilty of association with the enemy. -- For the sake of argument, I'm ignoring the fact that the "reactionary" label is thrown around to mean a "contrarian" to the left's memes rather than a bonda fide political "reactionary" (which means something more specific than "contrarian" + "right wing").
- eganist 9y agoWe see the "I'm a Democrat but don't support this Democrat" (sub with Republican if desired) position all the time in astroturfing campaigns. The giveaway is usually in the choice of language, e.g. "sjw" as opposed to a less charged term like "further left"
- sneak 9y agoNo, this shines the light on the editorial control bestowed upon the owners of the twitter.com domain name (and any other domain name).
- jondubois 9y agoYeah I'm sick of reading crap about employees being made to feel “safe“. It's patronizing. Also, the employees at company X make +$100K per year, they're totally owning the game of capitalism and therefore life in general - They're damn safe and if they don't feel safe then they should see a shrink.