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> “Those are the eyes of a rat,” There's no way they can ban him for saying that yet still claim to enforce the rules equally for all political affiliations.

> “Those are the eyes of a rat,” There's no way they can ban him for saying that yet still claim to enforce the rules equally for all political affiliations. There have been thousands (maybe more) tweets by people with blue verification checkmarks calling Trump an orange oompa loopa and much worse. No one has been banned for that (rightfully so imo). There's been a ton of pressure on Twitter to ban Jones but using this tweet as an excuse shows they are in no way politically neutral. This comes one day after Dorsey stood in front of congress and said they don't have a political agenda and previous examples of right wing censorship were "a mistake". Ironically, one of the only places you can see actual footage of Dorsey saying this is on Infowars: https://www.infowars.com/watch-rep-markwayne-mullin-reads-sarah-jeongs-bigoted-tweets-to-jack-dorsey/ https://www.infowars.com/watch-rep-markwayne-mullin-reads-sa... This is not an Infowars endorsement, it's seriously the only place I can find this video aside from Breitbart.

achompas 8y ago
I did not downvote you, but the official statement claims this was the last straw, and not a response to a single offense: https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1037804427992686593 https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1037804427992686593
- malvosenior 8y ago
  Thank you for replying instead of downvoting. The problem I have is how subjective all of this is, and while they say they are trying to increase transparency I don't see it. This action suggests they keep tabs on accounts and there's some threshold they can reach over a period of time that will flip a ban on even if the actual action that causes the ban wouldn't be bannable in isolation. I've not seen this policy discussed around any of their other bans. The timing is also very suspicious as all the other big social media platforms banned Jones recently. That suggests that there's some level of coordination and/or Twitter is caving to outside pressure and not actually acting on their own internal policy in a consistent manner.
  - MBCook 8y ago
    But this is LESS subjective. They have rules. Before they were enforced randomly. Was that fovoritism? Who was at the button for that particular complaint? Who knows! It doesn’t really matter what their rules or definitions of the terms they use are. Or how subjective people claim they are. People will choose to use the service or not based on what they see happening. But for the past few years, it want a question of what the terms meant exactly. People could say things that were blatant violations under the most charitable readings of the rules and nothing would happen. Or it would. Or they would show that someone else said thing X the rules forbid and the complainer would get banned and person who actually said it would be fine. Now we may get some consistency (I’m not holding my breath though). That can only be a good thing.
    - malvosenior 8y ago
      I agree with everything you've said except for the second to the last sentence :) This looks like just another arbitrary (and possibly politically motivated) ban to me. If they start removing other accounts of their "friends" who engage in behavior such as commenting on other's appearance, then I'd say we're starting to see consistency. That hasn't happened yet though, and banning Jones for such a mild tweet seems to suggest it's unlikely we'll see the same scrutiny applied to others as many people would get kicked off the platform for this level of vitriol.
  - anigbrowl 8y ago
    This action suggests they keep tabs on accounts No it doesn't. Twitter has a reporting function and whenever content offends a bunch of people then a wave of reports is a predictable outcome. Keeping a record of previous actions on an account is not the same as monitoring it.
DavidVoid 8y ago
>There's no way they can ban him for saying that They didn't ban him for saying only that. Here's a part of their official statement on the matter. >Today, we permanently suspended @realalexjones and @infowars from Twitter and Periscope. We took this action based on new reports of Tweets and videos posted yesterday that violate our abusive behavior policy, in addition to the accounts’ past violations. https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1037804427992686593 https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1037804427992686593
lozaning 8y ago
C-SPAN my man! https://www.c-span.org/video/?450990-1/foreign-influence-social-media https://www.c-span.org/video/?450990-1/foreign-influence-soc... They've got the whole thing.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> There have been thousands (maybe more) tweets by people with blue verification checkmarks calling Trump an orange oompa loopa Comparing facial features, particularly eyes, to those of a rat is a well-known anti-Semitic smear. Commenting on Trump's horrible spray tan is not the same kind of thing. > There's been a ton of pressure on Twitter to ban Jones but using this tweet as an excuse shows they are in no way politically neutral. Well, yeah, targeting racist harassment isn't politically neutral: institutionalized racism is very much a political position.
- bdcravens 8y ago
  >Comparing facial features, particularly eyes, to those of a rat is a well-known anti-Semitic smear. >Commenting on Trump's horrible spray tan is not the same kind of thing. Definitely not the same thing, but still potentially in violation of Twitter's rules against harassment. https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/abusive-behavior https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/abusive-behav...
rhizome 8y ago
There's no way they can ban him for saying that yet still claim to enforce the rules equally for all political affiliations. It's not the government, they absolutely can ban people for anything they want and they don't have to be consistent about it. There's nothing you can do about this it than deleting your account, complaining about them on the internet, and/or acquiring a seat on their board of directors and effecting change from within. I suppose a hostile takeover of the entire company should be mentioned, too. Furthermore, "neutrality" is a figment of your imagination.
- SilasX 8y ago
  The argument was against their claim to enforce the rules neutrally, not that it's illegal.
  - rhizome 8y ago
    And part of my argument is that the lie is in the word "neutrality," not their enforcement policies, which by all accounts are evenly uneven.
- malvosenior 8y ago
  > Furthermore, "neutrality" is a figment of your imagination. Neutral is what Dorsey claimed in the video I linked to. I'm saying here is direct evidence, the next day, that they are not actually neutral.
  - rhizome 8y ago
    "Shitty for everybody" indicates a kind of neutrality.
- manfredo 8y ago
  Sure Twitter and other tech platforms are well within their rights to act in an explicitly partisan manner, but their reputations will suffer and the government will be even more keen on breaking them up and putting them on a tight regulatory leash.
pcwalton 8y ago
> There have been thousands (maybe more) tweets by people with blue verification checkmarks calling Trump an orange oompa loopa and much worse. No one has been banned for that (rightfully so imo). Maybe because those kinds of tweets about Trump aren't anti-Semitic.
- bdcravens 8y ago
  The problem with that is that anti-Semitism is one of many types of violations according to Twitter's published guidelines. https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/abusive-behavior https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/abusive-behav...

achompas 8y ago

I did not downvote you, but the official statement claims this was the last straw, and not a response to a single offense: https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1037804427992686593 https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1037804427992686593

malvosenior 8y ago
Thank you for replying instead of downvoting. The problem I have is how subjective all of this is, and while they say they are trying to increase transparency I don't see it. This action suggests they keep tabs on accounts and there's some threshold they can reach over a period of time that will flip a ban on even if the actual action that causes the ban wouldn't be bannable in isolation. I've not seen this policy discussed around any of their other bans. The timing is also very suspicious as all the other big social media platforms banned Jones recently. That suggests that there's some level of coordination and/or Twitter is caving to outside pressure and not actually acting on their own internal policy in a consistent manner.
- MBCook 8y ago
  But this is LESS subjective. They have rules. Before they were enforced randomly. Was that fovoritism? Who was at the button for that particular complaint? Who knows! It doesn’t really matter what their rules or definitions of the terms they use are. Or how subjective people claim they are. People will choose to use the service or not based on what they see happening. But for the past few years, it want a question of what the terms meant exactly. People could say things that were blatant violations under the most charitable readings of the rules and nothing would happen. Or it would. Or they would show that someone else said thing X the rules forbid and the complainer would get banned and person who actually said it would be fine. Now we may get some consistency (I’m not holding my breath though). That can only be a good thing.
  - malvosenior 8y ago
    I agree with everything you've said except for the second to the last sentence :) This looks like just another arbitrary (and possibly politically motivated) ban to me. If they start removing other accounts of their "friends" who engage in behavior such as commenting on other's appearance, then I'd say we're starting to see consistency. That hasn't happened yet though, and banning Jones for such a mild tweet seems to suggest it's unlikely we'll see the same scrutiny applied to others as many people would get kicked off the platform for this level of vitriol.
- anigbrowl 8y ago
  This action suggests they keep tabs on accounts No it doesn't. Twitter has a reporting function and whenever content offends a bunch of people then a wave of reports is a predictable outcome. Keeping a record of previous actions on an account is not the same as monitoring it.

DavidVoid 8y ago

>There's no way they can ban him for saying that They didn't ban him for saying only that. Here's a part of their official statement on the matter. >Today, we permanently suspended @realalexjones and @infowars from Twitter and Periscope. We took this action based on new reports of Tweets and videos posted yesterday that violate our abusive behavior policy, in addition to the accounts’ past violations. https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1037804427992686593 https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1037804427992686593

lozaning 8y ago

C-SPAN my man! https://www.c-span.org/video/?450990-1/foreign-influence-social-media https://www.c-span.org/video/?450990-1/foreign-influence-soc... They've got the whole thing.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> There have been thousands (maybe more) tweets by people with blue verification checkmarks calling Trump an orange oompa loopa Comparing facial features, particularly eyes, to those of a rat is a well-known anti-Semitic smear. Commenting on Trump's horrible spray tan is not the same kind of thing. > There's been a ton of pressure on Twitter to ban Jones but using this tweet as an excuse shows they are in no way politically neutral. Well, yeah, targeting racist harassment isn't politically neutral: institutionalized racism is very much a political position.

bdcravens 8y ago
>Comparing facial features, particularly eyes, to those of a rat is a well-known anti-Semitic smear. >Commenting on Trump's horrible spray tan is not the same kind of thing. Definitely not the same thing, but still potentially in violation of Twitter's rules against harassment. https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/abusive-behavior https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/abusive-behav...

rhizome 8y ago

There's no way they can ban him for saying that yet still claim to enforce the rules equally for all political affiliations. It's not the government, they absolutely can ban people for anything they want and they don't have to be consistent about it. There's nothing you can do about this it than deleting your account, complaining about them on the internet, and/or acquiring a seat on their board of directors and effecting change from within. I suppose a hostile takeover of the entire company should be mentioned, too. Furthermore, "neutrality" is a figment of your imagination.

SilasX 8y ago
The argument was against their claim to enforce the rules neutrally, not that it's illegal.
- rhizome 8y ago
  And part of my argument is that the lie is in the word "neutrality," not their enforcement policies, which by all accounts are evenly uneven.
malvosenior 8y ago
> Furthermore, "neutrality" is a figment of your imagination. Neutral is what Dorsey claimed in the video I linked to. I'm saying here is direct evidence, the next day, that they are not actually neutral.
- rhizome 8y ago
  "Shitty for everybody" indicates a kind of neutrality.
manfredo 8y ago
Sure Twitter and other tech platforms are well within their rights to act in an explicitly partisan manner, but their reputations will suffer and the government will be even more keen on breaking them up and putting them on a tight regulatory leash.

pcwalton 8y ago

> There have been thousands (maybe more) tweets by people with blue verification checkmarks calling Trump an orange oompa loopa and much worse. No one has been banned for that (rightfully so imo). Maybe because those kinds of tweets about Trump aren't anti-Semitic.

bdcravens 8y ago
The problem with that is that anti-Semitism is one of many types of violations according to Twitter's published guidelines. https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/abusive-behavior https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/abusive-behav...