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Twitter is considering telling journalists to learn to code as hate speech now - we have already slipped down that slope even on the simple things.

acdha 8y ago
Do you have a citation for that? All of the reports which I saw were that specific people harassing specific users were flagged as violating the abusiveness clause of the terms of service. Nobody said anything about hate speech or even non-targeted rude remarks before the usual right-wing grievance machine started whining about a private company enforcing its contractual terms.
rhcom2 8y ago
Twitter said that was part of a "targeted harassment campaign", not hate speech.
- smsm42 8y ago
  Does it matter what section they use to classify it? The fact is that they ban it. And many more. When important topics are debated, even the most respectfully formulated argument can be deeply hurtful to the side that is on the opposing end. For example, if you respectfully tell a religious person that their religion is bunk and they are wasting their time on a bunch of fairy tales - it could be deeply hurtful. Should we ban all atheists from social media? Banning such discussion very soon precludes any disagreement with increasingly narrow set of orthodox doctrines. Of course, Twitter has fully legal right to do exactly that - but what's the use of such platform? And if all major platforms do that - what happens to the society where important questions can not be publicly discussed?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - rhcom2 8y ago
    Yes it matters, because it isn't banned based on the content, but on the context. The context being the repeated harassment of a single person by many. In your example no one is going to get banned for that, but they will get banned if after getting blocked they create a harassment campaign of hundreds of people to repeatedly tell the person their religion is bunk. There is no "discussion" there, it is purely for harassment reasons.
    - SamReidHughes 8y ago
      In the case of "learn to code" the context was the content, not harassment.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]

acdha 8y ago

Do you have a citation for that? All of the reports which I saw were that specific people harassing specific users were flagged as violating the abusiveness clause of the terms of service. Nobody said anything about hate speech or even non-targeted rude remarks before the usual right-wing grievance machine started whining about a private company enforcing its contractual terms.

rhcom2 8y ago

Twitter said that was part of a "targeted harassment campaign", not hate speech.

smsm42 8y ago
Does it matter what section they use to classify it? The fact is that they ban it. And many more. When important topics are debated, even the most respectfully formulated argument can be deeply hurtful to the side that is on the opposing end. For example, if you respectfully tell a religious person that their religion is bunk and they are wasting their time on a bunch of fairy tales - it could be deeply hurtful. Should we ban all atheists from social media? Banning such discussion very soon precludes any disagreement with increasingly narrow set of orthodox doctrines. Of course, Twitter has fully legal right to do exactly that - but what's the use of such platform? And if all major platforms do that - what happens to the society where important questions can not be publicly discussed?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- rhcom2 8y ago
  Yes it matters, because it isn't banned based on the content, but on the context. The context being the repeated harassment of a single person by many. In your example no one is going to get banned for that, but they will get banned if after getting blocked they create a harassment campaign of hundreds of people to repeatedly tell the person their religion is bunk. There is no "discussion" there, it is purely for harassment reasons.
  - SamReidHughes 8y ago
    In the case of "learn to code" the context was the content, not harassment.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]