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Twitter locked my account for a nine year old tweet
- protomyth 7y agoI started using Twitter back in 2008. Before the age of smart phones Talk about erasing the past. I dearly hope knowledge of what came before iPhone and Android isn't washed over like all the non-Apple 8-bit computers.
- thedanbob 7y agoI think most people would interpret it in this context to mean "the time when smartphones were huge". Smartphones existed before 2008, yes, but they were insignificant compared to what they are today.
- onion2k 7y agoExactly. That should really read "I started using Twitter back in 2008. A decade after Windows CE phones became quite common, and 5 years after the launch of Windows Mobile."
- pjc50 7y agoWindows CE phones were significantly worse than simply trying to use a Nokia 3210. They were very much a false start.
- onion2k 7y agoI had an HTC TyTn II back in about 2006. It was flawed but ultimately it was a pretty good device given the limitations of the time. Trying to cram Windows on to a phone without changing things was a mistake obviously, but for some things (email..) it was awesome.
- goatinaboat 7y agoEverything useful I do with a smartphone now, I was already doing in 2008 on a BlackBerry.
- hoseja 7y agoWhat would you say is the "age of mammals"?
- paulpauper 7y agosmart phones existed back then. they aren't as good but it was possible to access the internet using a phone . The iphone launched in jan 2007
- dragonwriter 7y ago2008 wasn't even before the iPhone, so even if that (wrong) cutoff for “smartphone” is used, the claim doesn't make sense.
- Ensorceled 7y agoThis is silly. The age of the internet started when my uncle asked me if I had "electronic mail" yet, not when it was invented and not several years later when my high tech company went from modems and Usenet to fully connected. Similarly, the "age of the smartphone" started when they became ubiquitous, not when people figured out how to get email on their Blackberry.
- lm28469 7y agoIt truly was before the _age_ of smart phones though. Today virtually everyone who's 14+ years old has a one, it wasn't like that at all in 2008. And the definition of "smart" definitely changed too. Just like the age of tablets started when the average 40yo mom started using ipads, not when Microsoft showed their prototype in 2000. Or the age of electric cars didn't start at the end of the 19th century, but a few years ago.
- Chazprime 7y agoTLDR: don’t act like a c@&t online. And if you did, delete it.
- pixl97 7y agoThough that said, most law enforcement has a statute of limitations on crimes except the very worst of them like killing another human being. If you're going to go after a fossilized tweet, just remove it, locking accounts after that long seems rather silly unless they are posting new content against the rules.
- m-p-3 7y agoEven with law enforcement, there is something called statute of limitations for most minor crimes.
- daybreak 7y agoTwitter isn't law enforcement though, and it would be a tough sell to hold them up to the same standard. According to the screenshot, the author is free to have his account unlocked after the tweet is removed.
- ejefz 7y agoGetting banned for calling someone (a high rank politician!!!) a whore is the state of the internet in 2019. Thing is, he's suggesting Mastodon as an alternative... there you would not only get banned for calling a woman a whore, you'd probably get doxxed and then swatted too.
- nailer 7y ago> Getting banned for calling someone (a high rank politician!!!) a whore Also calling them a 'cunt'. Attitudes like the above are why ordinary men and women don't want to become politicians - it's assumed to be OK to insult them in any way. Why not just call Palin a hypocrite? You should be able to criticise politicians. However if you want better politicians, screaming that they're cunts and whores instead of communicating like an adult won't make that happen. Edit: replying to below due to rate limit > If someone cant handle a verbal insult over the internet, I don't think they are fit for office But it's not 'a verbal insult'. It's thousands. Most humans can't handle a thousand insults a week. It wears at you - SEAL training involves simulating humiliating experiences because most people don't have the mental strength to not crumble. I'd take a bet that includes both me and you. Edit 2: replying to Iamthirsty OK. You don't think being constantly insulted would have a chilling effect on someone becoming a representative because ... people can insult people in other professions? It seems like you believe I think it's hard to work a job where you may be insulted. This isn't correct. I think it's hard to work a job where you may be insulted a thousand times a day.
- tdxgx 7y agoIf someone cant handle a verbal insult over the internet, I don't think they are fit for office
- brokensegue 7y agoDoes that justify toxic behavior?
- jacquesm 7y ago
- moksly 7y agoSeems more like twitter banned the author 9 years too late.
- chrisan 7y agoIt is definitely an immature tweet, however I think 9 years can change a person a lot. Maybe twitter could have given him a warning about his tweet and ask if he would like to delete it before the instaban algorithm hit
- onion90 7y agoTwitter could, of course, have just given a warning. But I also don't see any problem treating the tweet as if it were current. The age of the tweet does not change whether it is acceptable or not, does it?
- whafro 7y agoWell, he was banned for violating the Twitter rules, and those rules didn't exist at the time. Getting a message saying something like "this message violates the rules today, so we're going to delete it" or "delete this message within a week or we'll have to ban your account" would seem more reasonable to me than immediate ex post facto enforcement.
- onion90 7y agoI assumed that the comment had already violated rules at that time and simply was not recognized or discovered as such a violation earlier.
- thedanbob 7y agoIf someone calls you a racial slur, is it ok to wait nine years and then punch him in the face?
- mipmap04 7y ago
- cabaalis 7y agoSame argument as normal: they don't want to platform that kind of speech, and it truly was horrible speech. Learn from it, remove the post, and move on. Not sure why this is news. It's a little bit of a narcissistic post, I think (A sentiment of "How dare you call me out, I'm an atheist who calls right-wingers names online") and I'm not sure why this is news except some people feel that more right-wing hatred is being suspended than left.
- McTossOut 7y agoHere dude, https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2017/12/update-on-the-twitter-archive-at-the-library-of-congress-2/ https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2017/12/update-on-the-twitter-arch..., it's cool. Your comically inflammatory tweet is stuck somewhere up the US Government.
- romaaeterna 7y agoUnaccountable censorship of expression by our main communication providers is incompatible with Democracy. Communication is often a natural monopoly, and you can't just "start a competitor" to Twitter and have the market fix the problem (see gab.ai). If we're going to have censorship on the big platforms (Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc.) and backbone providers (ISPs, Cloudfront), us normal human beings need the right to appeal, public auditing, bright line rules, and due process rights. It's not wrong for Twitter to have rules to protect the weak from the strong, and individuals from the mob, but it needs to be accountable and above board about all of it or it will make the problem far worse. EDIT: Just to provide an example, here are a few ways this notification could have been so much better. 1) List the specific rules violated. Link to the public process for rule review and adoption. 2) Link to ids and contact information for any human beings who made the decision. 3) Link to code and data sets for any algorithm behind the decision. 4) Provide and link to an appeal procedure instead of just a compliance procedure. Imagine how much better that openness would be for Twitter's users. (While somewhat onerous for Twitter the company.)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- andy_ppp 7y agoI would also argue that unfettered access to incorrect information is also a massive problem for democracy.
- ohithereyou 7y agoI don't want a Ministry of Truth filtering what I'm allowed to hear. In a functional democracy, education and robust debate are supposed to be the defenses against misinformation. Most western democracies long since scrapped proper education because it's easier to win the support of the population with propaganda^H public relations than it is to make a reasoned argument.
- beefield 7y agoUnfortunately looks to me that if you do not have a Ministry of Truth, you end up with a society where private actors pump people with soma[1]. Personally, I am willing to accept a restricted version of Ministry of Truth to avoid that outcome. [1]See Huxley, Brave new world.
- johnday 7y agoIt seems like the simplest approach for Twitter to make would be to remove specific posts, rather than accounts, for tweets made over a year ago (say). It's not fair to hold someone to account for the actions of a very different person, even if they happen to be a continuation of that person. (Edit: And to be clear, I would have been a-okay with Twitter having banned the user at the time, for the content in question!)
- mabbo 7y agoHonest question: is the source of the problem the hateful intent of the message, or the use of "bad words"? My reading on culture these days is that one can usually get away with spouting horrendous, hateful ideas so long as they do so without using a short list of offensive words. If the truly are trying to scrub hate from their platform, I applaud their effort, but they'll never succeed. Hate is too hard to define and so subtle you can't actually remove it all. If they just want to remove bad words, why not use literal black-text censoring in situations like this, like TV has done for years? Give this user the option of preserving their moronic comment, hate and all, without the bad words that I'm sure advertisers are asking to be removed.
- Nasrudith 7y agoThe bad words certainly - it is the banality of "moralistic enforcers" where you can teach young men to drop fire from above but they can't write "fuck" on their bombs because it is obscene. That sort of mindless focus on bad words that might make people uncomfortable instead of you know - actual problems has been with us for centuriea unfortunately and has gotten better compared to regularly enforced obscenity laws - which are fucking obscene to anyone who stops to use their fucking brain for once. So we were spending all of this money and oppressing with violence because a bunch of people are offended because they were told to be offended? That said use of resources could be used on /anything fucking else/ like patroling, doing reviews of random ceiminal sentences is actual fucking obscenity.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- nilkn 7y agoThere are plenty of recent tweets from active accounts that use the same language and display the same hate towards present-day politicians. It's hard to imagine that Twitter is only selecting tweets like this based on language.
- danso 7y agoTwitter uses third-party contractors for human moderation. If the tweet was reported/flagged and made its way into manual review for a human, whoever looked at it probably didn't take more than 30 seconds to decide. Even if Twitter's moderator workforce is U.S. based (and thus, attune to cultural norms), they probably are optimized to issue suspensions for low-hanging fruit. Vulgarity is going to be more of an obvious signal to the average person, than obfuscated hateful messages.
- gurkendoktor 7y agoI am mostly amazed that Twitter's rule is not simply, "don't harass people". I guess this tweet is an offense specifically because it uses gendered harassment? Is there a list of gender-neutral insults that we can refer to for compliance reasons?
- mosselman 7y agoThe thing is that this was 9 years ago. The landscape of what was acceptable back then is completely different from what it is now. Going back in time and banning people for this sort of thing is essentially the same as banning movies from the 60's because they don't show enough women driving cars or men helping out in the kitchen.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- benwad 7y agoI don't think that tweet was ever acceptable - calling someone a "cunt", "whore", "idiot" and telling her to "go fuck yourself" all in 140 characters is really going out of your way to be unpleasant.
- mosselman 7y agoI agree, was referring to the following more than the original tweet: > Is there a list of gender-neutral insults that we can refer to for compliance reasons? The thing is that even if there is a list like this now, in 9 years saying 'woman' might not even be acceptable because it has 'man' in it. If 'woman' isn't something we say in 9 years, I don't think twitter, in 9 years, should start banning everyone who every tweeted it now.
- nilkn 7y agoIt's always been acceptable so long as it's directed at the right person. What's changed in the last 9 years is simply who can be targeted with such language. Twitter supports and publishes language like this on a mass scale today.
- bitcurious 7y agoGiven today’s culture I would think Twitter is doing you a favor. It’s better that you silently delete the post than have it be dug up by angry X and get you fired and ostracized.
- cat199 7y ago“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” ― George Orwell, 1984
- Vaslo 7y agoComing here to say just this. We had a college senior intern who had talked about drinking and drugs during his freshman year and left them up. Someone who didn't like him dug it up and sent to HR, and his full time offer got rescinded.
- njloof 7y agoSure wish I could delete the stuff I said on Usenet back in the day.
- wsc981 7y agoI am still puzzled why my Twitter account was locked a few years ago. I tried to ask the people at Twitter to show me the problematic Tweet for 2 times, but never got a response. I did post some kind-of right wing stuff regarding immigration and such, but none of it offensive. And certainly not using rude language as the person in the link did in his nine year old Tweet. In the end I just gave up on Twitter. Sad, cause I liked to use it mainly for myself, to follow some people that interest me and to keep a kind of "bookmarks on my thoughts".
- ryanmercer 7y agofacepalm I have blog posts from 2001 that make me cringe that I keep up purely to show that I've changed considerably in 18 years. When James Gunn was fired from Guardians for something he said in a tweet years before I was dumbfounded. Now Twitter is actively policing old posts?! People change, nations change. Violent criminals can become bastions of peace and philanthropy. Why is society, or a company, persecuting people for tweets that are years old. If someone says something awful today, deal with it, but 9 years ago?! If there's an offensive 9 year old tweet, delete it and send the user an email saying their tweet was deleted for violating such and such policy but locking an account 9 years after the fact?!
- wincy 7y agoBoy I’m glad my Xanga is long gone. I recall reading what I wrote at 16 at 22 and being mortified. I imagine today I’d die of embarrassment if I so much as glanced at it.
- hoistbypetard 7y agoI think Twitter should delete everything older than XX days old, where XX is a number on the order of 15 or 30. The kind of heavily context-dependent short form throwaway expression the site is built for and actively encourages does not age well, and an auto-delete policy that emphasizes that would make the site better and cheaper to operate.
- ralfd 7y agoImmediately a twitter archive would pop up though.
- LocalPCGuy 7y agoAs posted elsewhere in these comments: “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” ― George Orwell, 1984 I'm not justifying what Twitter did in this case, but I significantly disagree with the idea of removing old posts.
- crankylinuxuser 7y agoThe big issue, which I have received significant consternation of "ownership", is that these mega-corps are creating their own dictatorships online. And they are how "speech" is conducted, given their monopoly on where the people are. The obvious and most consistent counterclaim is that these are "private entities who can choose whom to deal with". That statement is predicated on the facetious assertion that a corporation is a human, and should be treated as such and provided latitude as one. It obviously is not. And with their clout in personnel, money, lawyers, and more - they are a uberhuman. The path forward seems clear. Corporations should not be treated the same as real humans. And their powers should be limited to prevent these formations of super-countries with draconian and arbitrary laws, just because technology allows them so.
- abc126589 7y agoShameless plug: you can use services like Twitter Archive Eraser (https://martani.github.io/Twitter-Archive-Eraser/ https://martani.github.io/Twitter-Archive-Eraser/) to selectively delete old tweets and in bulk. Many of us identify with the author and most content created on social media years ago have no reason to stay around.
- jayess 7y agoI use a similar service to delete my old tweets, older than 30 days. No way I want some public archive of my thoughts out there forever.
- motohagiography 7y agoI have a problem with this whole concept that you don't get to have ideas and test them, but that the ideation and words themselves make you something or means you are or have become something. It's dishonest, lacks any legitimacy, and it is the root of the culture war. Words only have the consequences the reader or listener gives them, they do not have intrinsic consequences in themselves. The fantasy that mere belief is transformative or redeeming is a seductive deception. Platforms should demonstrate they are principled before merely driving certain interests, even (especially) if they are convinced those interests are the right ones.
- chippy 7y agoInteresting idea it reminds me of a religious debate about belief and faith versus good works.
- motohagiography 7y agoKey insight. Very closely related. In the secularized instance of it we're encountering now, people could be said to be substituting demonstrations of belief for mercy, etc. I'd argue the particular choice of symbols in a religious war is really secondary and not meaningful to how predictable its progress is, sadly.
- paulpauper 7y agoThis is why so many people are deleting old posts, whether it;s Facebook, Instagram , YouTube, or Twitter. Users are at the mercy of algorithms and content moderators, and appeal is often impossible for violating these arbitrary rules.
- not_a_cop75 7y agoIt seems that the answer is not simply to switch to other corporate website that does twitter like things, but rather change to a federated tool that people can run themselves. This would by it's nature prevent censorship.
- heavenlyblue 7y agoOn the other hand, it seems like someone was interested enough in the OPs Twitter that they went all the way to 9 years ago to report it.
- nutcracker46 7y agoTwitter is a pain in the neck in multiple ways. Glad I nixed my account years ago. They have you in three ways: 1) It is a private service with with broader discretion to censor than non-private services. 2) They consider all of your tweets as one body of current content, without grandfathering old posts. 3) Twitter fears tighter regulation if they don't self-police their content.
- fortran77 7y agoIt was vulgar, but there were no threats made, and this was to a public figure who enjoys controversy. I'm very surprised this is called "hateful conduct". It's merely vulgar.
- provolone 7y agoMeanwhile twitter is promoting sponsored tweets from Xinhua. Travel to Xinjiang - Everything is great! Come visit the temples in Lhasa, but be sure to make your reservation in advance!
- krelian 7y agoNot on twitter by about 8 or 9 years go my Adwords account was banned. I ran ads that were against the TOS (I admit, I didn't read it but since the ads were approved - not sure it's still the case but at the time each ad was manually approved - I thought it was OK). The ads run for a total of about 30 - 40 minutes then I stopped them (I was playing with affiliate marketing links). Next day my adwords account was banned and there was no way of getting it reinstated. I tried contacting the Adwords support again about a year ago, but to no avail. The bad thing is that the infringing ads are still in my account, I can't delete them, so even if some soul reviews my account (and I'm sorry for my prejudice against the average support person, it's just experience) they'll probably think I'm still at it. One of the dangers about doing business with these behemoths.
- mattnumbers 7y agoIANAL. One of the reasons that this feels so novel is that this is an example of ex post facto enforcement. In this case, Twitter is punishing the user for an action performed at a point in time before such an action was punishable. (In fact, I haven't checked - it may have been punishable, but the punishment was not usually enforced, which is a separate issue of selective enforcement.) The US Constitution prevents both Congress and the individual States from passing ex post facto laws that punish individuals for actions committed before such action was illegal. Obviously, private corporations are not bound by the same laws as the government. So, as platforms like Twitter continue to update their policies and enforcement mechanisms in response to issues such as hate, and as these definitions are broadened, cases such as this are likely to become more common.
- goatinaboat 7y agoIt’s novel because Twitter doesn’t normally take any action on hate-speech directed at right-wingers, or whites. No wonder this guy is so surprised!
- floatrock 7y agoThanks for this description -- yes the tweet was stupid, yes the person could eventually get fired after someone digs it up so twitter was doing them a favor, blahblah none of those other threads are why this is an interesting post this morning. "Ex post facto" is a bit jargoney, but you explained the issue right: the interesting question is how should we feel about retroactive punishments for something that wasn't illegal/against private ToS at the time. A lot of people my age love The Office, but some of the earlier episodes... well, they haven't really aged well. The show was great at the time, but the first few seasons today would be a giant #MeToo fiasco. Culture changes and moves on, and what was acceptable then probably isn't acceptable now, but that doesn't (shouldn't?) mean Steve Carrel gets blackballed for the comedy he did at the time. Early Disney cartoons were flat-out racist, but they're still available with a historical context disclaimer that basically says "We disavow everything in here, but it's a greater shame to pretend that this never happened so here it is for the historical record." One of the most interesting conversations about social media right now I think is how does someone apologize for what they've done, and do it in a genuine and authentic way that can be accepted. When you serve prison time, the idea is you pay your debt to society and move on. With social media, I don't think we've yet figured out how to say "yes, I was a stupid angry person back then but that's not who I am now". Part of the reason is it's really difficult to figure out who's being authentic and who's trying to half-heartedly weasel themselves out of something. And I don't think you CAN do that on social media because the only way to really make that decision is to know someone in more depth than some multiple of 140 characters. It's a decision that can't be made with the small bite-sized serotonin pings that we've started to define our relationships and judgements around. We've become jacks of all relationships, masters of none.
- perspective1 7y agoTheir notification was fine. The tweet was vile and full of expletives. You'll have trouble finding any business or institution that tolerates speech like that. This isn't the censorship hill anyone should want to die on.
- TheOperator 7y agoI don't agree. Wartime cartoons are vile yet we rarely censor them because of the historical value. I do think that going back a decade with an algorithm and getting people to clean up tweets that likely match a regex filter is whitewashing and it does make twitter a less valuable historical resource. It's a totally different argument from the normal you should be able to say what you want - because I would support censorship of such tweets in the present.
- defertoreptar 7y agoThe problem is that Twitter probably sees a lot of complaints to the tune of "but the other guy said the same kind of thing and he didn't get banned!" If they want to enforce a policy consistently and not have to face constant complaints, then I don't think grandfathering in old violations after some arbitrary date is going to work.
- SuoDuanDao 7y agoIndeed. Into the memory hole it goes.
- mipmap04 7y agoFrom a self-interested standpoint, I don’t think Twitter cares that much about being a historical resource and this sort of curating / censorship is really about improving Twitter’s bottom line - not some grander notion of creating a totally comprehensive historical archive of every tweet.
- pcunite 7y agoThis is what happens when we allow computers to decide what is fair, decent, and open to discussion, I think it is called ML Fairness, or something like that.
- circa 7y agoTime to pull a Radiohead and delete all your tweets overnight.
- rileyriley 7y agoIs the point of this article supposed to be "Humans grow, so leave the vile stuff I said when I hadn't grown as much around for more and more people can see that I said it?" IMHO the fact that the biggest font in this article is used to reprint the reprehensible statement is a clue that this author is actually resisting growth by implying what he said isn't actually that bad, and twitter should keep showing it to more strangers. Real growth would look like deleting the tweet yourself and looking for traces of it in your current language!
- Kuraj 7y agoDeleting the tweet would be like pretending they never said that in the first place, which is arguably worse.
- apo 7y ago> In recent years I’ve been using an open source, federated alternative to Twitter that uses a protocol called ActivityPub. I run my own server for myself and my friends. People on my server can communicate with other servers that support ActivityPub, similar to e-mail. If people on my server don’t like the way I manage it, they can always export their content and start their own, or transfer to someone else’s server. Twitter is a for-profit company offering a product (its customers) to advertisers. As such, they get to delete any content whatsoever, regardless of the reason. They happen to be using a policy that will cause some accounts to be locked. This is going to get a lot worse because advertisers loath anything that doesn't conform. Twitter and Facebook aren't the problem - they're symptoms of the terrible, low-hanging monetization fruit on today's web. There are solutions. One is to stop criticizing Twitter for being beholden to its advertisers and instead build/participate in censorship-resistant platforms. That's going to result in loss of reach, at least for a time. Then again, so does getting blocked.
- tortasaur 7y agoCan't you both criticize Twitter and use open platforms? They aren't mutually exclusive.
- maeln 7y agoMy account has been locked because I ... used Twitter. I was rarely Tweeting, almost only RT/liking other Tweet. But one day, I started to have a discussion with another user regarding a subject that I was a bit knowledgeable about, and after something like 10 tweets in maybe 20+ minutes my account just got locked for "suspicious activity". Twitter was asking for a phone number to unlock the account. And since I never gave them my phone number, any number could have work. Which mean that if somebody really hijacked my account to spam, they could have just definitely take it for themselves ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . I saw this as what it was: just a attempt at taking even more personal data from me. I never unlocked the account and I don't use Twitter anymore. And honestly, it has been great. Twitter is just full of people talking about thinks they don't have any knowledge about, overly emotional reaction and everybody trying to be more extreme than the other. Even when being very careful about who you follow, you are not protected since Twitter started to display Tweet from the people followed by the people you followed randomly.
- wincy 7y agoThey were worried you’re a “Russian Bot”. Gotta watch out for those since Silicon Valley believes they’re literally the only reason Donald Trump won.
- danso 7y agoPutting aside the surrounding argument of whether Twitter is right to have this content policy, and accepting for the sake of argument that this is the kind of tweet that Twitter’s policy does censor (if haphazardly applied), I guess I don’t see the age of the tweet being necessarily relevant. All twitter content has long-tail reach, if Twitter has decided that they don’t want their service to ever have that content, then grandfathering old content doesn’t make much sense. The question of whether the content flagging was automatic is an interesting one. In other instances, such as James Woods (who is still in Twitter purgatory) [0], the message he received doesn't have any language that indicates that it was manually reported and flagged, which it most certainly was. Given how slow Twitter has been to roll out features in general, and Jack Dorsey's continued insistence on avoiding heavy handed moderation and policies, I have to doubt that Twitter rolled out an automated content system with such high potential of being an embarrassment. I don't know the author, but just because he isn't a frequent/recent Twitter user doesn't mean that an angry Internet mob from some other community hasn't decided to target his Internet accounts in general. [0] https://twitter.com/Millerita/status/1119655394899415040?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1119655394899415040&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailywire.com%2Fnews%2F46558%2Fjames-woods-twitter-jail-heres-tweet-got-him-amanda-prestigiacomo https://twitter.com/Millerita/status/1119655394899415040?ref...
- joestr 7y agoI'm not weighing in on whether these kinds of tweets should or shouldn't be allowed, but genuine question: how does this violate rule #1? Is it the use of the word 'cunt'? I don't see how the harassment was based on race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orietntation, gender identity, relgiious affiliation, age, disability or serious disease. Potentially that Palin is a woman, they've decided that 'cunt' could be based on gender, however I received the same email from Twitter for a (heat of the moment) tweet about Ajit Pai where I called him a cunt, and he is not a woman, so I don't understand their policy. They wouldn't unblock my account until I deleted the tweet.
- dingo_bat 7y agoIt's called decency in public discourse. Read up about it.
- alfiedotwtf 7y agoI (@alfiedotwtf) got suspended. I asked support for clarification as to why I got suspended, but only to get a reply saying "we can't tell you why you were suspended, and don't ask again because we won't respond". Wtf Jack. Edit: It was one week before the Australian federal election, which does make me suspicious as to the reasoning of my suspension Edit 2: Since there's a slim chance that someone from Twitter will see this message, if you're able to see why I got suspended, could you Signal me the reasoning (+61-400-777-227)
- dingo_bat 7y agoDo you remember sending a horrifically foul tweet like in the linked story? If yes, that's probably it.
- whamlastxmas 7y agoSomehow I would guess tweeting trump is an "old fuck" wouldn't have Twitter enforcing the same rules.
- tarsinge 7y agoLocking the account post facto without warning is debatable, but I don’t follow the argument of how the author has grown up since this tweet. Insulting people is not acceptable in a public space, no matter the date or the age of the aurhor, it’s basic education. Freedom of expression is not freedom to publish insulting messages. I’m glad Twitter is enforcing this.
- partlysean 7y ago> It’s honestly a very immature tweet. It’s something I wouldn’t say today. I have personally grown past the hate of the two party system. I feel like I have a clearer and more mature view on American elections… Congrats on your new political maturity, but no mention or reflection on the deeply sexist language you used makes me think that you haven’t grown at all.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 7y agoHonestly... Way to give a non-apology and twist the narrative. 'I have personally grown past the hate of the two party system'. No, your 'hate of the two party system' was not what the problem was and I am pretty sure you are smart enough to figure that out. You were not locked for tweeting against the two party system. Let's not pretend this ban had anything to do with politics. If anything Twitter is full of left-leaning folks many of whom would celebrate such juvenile and crass language.
- tonyjstark 7y agoThe tweet in question is a good reason to be banned. Now if they would apply those rules to other users too, that would be nice. Twitter is full of abuse, hate, harassment, racism, sexism but then some of the high-profile users are allowed to do this without getting banned, others a banned for 9yr old tweets. Not saying it's easy to always find the right line on what should be banned and what not but for clear hate-speech you don't have to provide a platform and if you do, you should be measured in that context.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- tablethnuser 7y agoThe rule of thumb I use is to ask: if someone had shouted this in a supermarket or bank line, what would happen? Internet communities should aspire to be more like local communities. If you're a jerk in real life, people will show you the door. Making this about grand abstract concepts like free speech or censorship is internet fun for people who like to debate. But it's overcomplicating the situation. Twitter is just showing a jerk the door. They can rejoin the community after an act of contrition. The nine year thing is misdirection. Twitter's search algorithm in 2019 will still gladly show that tweet if your search term is just so. If tweets are the inventory on Twitter's store shelves, why would any business want to display the tweet in question at any time? Academic institutions and governments have already hooked themselves up to the Twitter fire hose. All tweets are saved for archival purposes. Twitter itself doesn't have to muddy its product to provide an archival experience. This is curatorship; not censorship. Unfortunately reality isn't ~~outrageous~~ _engagement-inducing_ enough to make the front page news.
- koheripbal 7y agoThere's another aspect to this... the user in question lives in New Zealand. Should their foul-mouthed tweet to a US Senator during a US election have the same protections as an American's tweets? It's not immediately apparent that he's from and lives in New Zealand unless you really dig through his content, something most readers won't do. In aggregate, this might influence American voters into thinking there's some substance to anti-Palin rhetoric. Isn't that a form of foreign influence?
- stronglikedan 7y ago> what would happen? Nothing. It's not a bad tweet. It's not threatening violence. It's not racist. It's not hateful towards a particular group. It's just a criticism wrapped in an insult, and frankly, not even a comparatively harsh insult. It's sad that some people think it should be removed.
- jmull 7y agoI think the person would be kicked out of the store, possibly permanently. I don’t think you’re going to convince too many people it’s perfectly OK to shout profanities and insults at people.
- jblakey 7y agoI realize I may be out of touch (pushing 50) with the current state of things, but I keep asking myself "What right do I have to expect a Company (that I pay no money to) to provide me with access to their service?"
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mark-r 7y agoI don't understand why the action was to disable the account, rather than deleting the offending tweet.
- tedunangst 7y agoTwitters approach is that of teaching a pet not to pee on the rug. You rub their nose in it first. "Bad, bad!"
- mark-r 7y agoAnybody who's ever had a dog will know that rubbing their face in it 9 years later won't do any good.
- beeschlenker 7y agoChild rapist Jack Dorsey, a founder of Twitter, is also trying to censor his crimes. Please read and listen for yourself: Previously unprocessed footage now available [Soros, obama child rapes 15Jan 4-6am], ,See pages 18-23, 8, 11, 12, 35, 45, 61, 62, and update list at end of doc |] Having trouble getting traction. Getting censored/banned. Billions in bribes paid to Trump, Pelosi, Schumer, Harris to enable a Soros funded child raping ring to operate in the USA. Please listen to the links below. Turn up the volume and put headphones on. You will hear these people, and many other high profile peo`ple, incriminate themselves in unbelievable fashion. Full 74 page document [update 10Aug] filled with red handed evidence like this at the bottom. \@Go to pages 18-=23 of this document and you will hear Dorsey and Thiel raping children. You will hear their screams. They both rape and kill three. Also at the "rape party" of note: Bill DeBlasio, Andrew Cuomo, Bill Murray, Peter Buttgieg, George Soros, Barack Obama. Please copy and paste this post and repost it. I keep getting censored by these people. Peter Thiel a1nd Jack Dorsey raping and killing three boys each. Turn the volume all the way up and put head phones on. https://s3.wasabisys.com/conv1/Overnight_14-17Jan/15JanCh3_100-200.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mzZrjobxhNIEf38M3xk-IeA5SeF4aUtB/view?usp=sharing Obama admits to raping and killing boys he{re, with commentary from Peter Thiel, George Soros, Matt Porter: https://s3.wasabisys.com/out2/Out2/15JanCh3_0545.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LCDoc1kT7cfSeKQ1vniP_sx32_bRsHau/view?usp=sharing Trump demands $4 billion to "take a blind eye" at 1015++ (link missing from report, unsure how). Here's pieces of dialogue: 1015 The President requests four billion and henry Porter agrees to it. Some dialogue below. 1017 Donald Trump: Why don't you think about it. 1017 Henry Porter: I don't need to think about it. I'm ready for you to find out what we're really about. 1017 Gigi Hadid: I don't think it's a good idea Henry. 1017 Henry Porter: ...no shit. Jelena just stop talking about it. 1018 Gigi Hadid: About what? 1018 Henry Porter: The child raping. 1018 Donald Trump: What the fuck are you talking about? 1018 Gigi Hadid: Mr. President we are child rapists. 1018 Donald Trump: You cannot be serious. 1018 Donald Trump: You're gonna need $4 billion for me to take a blind eye. 1019 ?: People are laughing because they think four billion is too much. I think it's not a problem when you have $35 billion. 1022 Donald Trump: You better have that $4 billion or you can kiss this shit goodbye. https://s3.wasabisys.com/conv2/3Jan/3JanCh3_900-1100.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Grdr8xF2psKNsuYlEnl9dIRV-77YG0Vr/view?usp=sharing Trump wants $138 million to ensure smooth outcome for false judgment for a court case: https://s3.wasabisys.com/conv1/10JanCh3/10JanCh3_951-1033.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iSeGHDToFRoRdIht50Wii0i30mlw9INp/view?usp=sharing Obama explains the Illuminati with Jack Dorsey: https://s3.wasabisys.com/conv1/Overnight_14-17Jan/15JanCh3_200-347.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ok1-9IvANULzKBOwADFgaiYCFi6yszfj/view?usp=sharing At 230 a conversation is occurring on the embedded Porter camera system with Jack Dorsey, Peter Thiel, Barack Obama, Bill Murray, and the Porter's. Jack Dorsey provides a statement defining who their group is: "The Illuminati is an underground organization of child rapists and homosexuals." Matthew Porter: "We have to thin the herd, so Barack is going to explain a few things." At 232 Barack Obama says the following: "You people have to realize we are child rapists. The Illuminati are child rapists. As soon as you figure that out, you can decide what to do. Everybody is freaking out about what just happened [child raping event still going on]. This is who we are." Full 74 page document [updated 10Aug]: https://s3.wasabisys.com/aviewmefirst/FBI_FinalDraft_26Jul2019_BSchlenker.pdf https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dXNjPQdQ8c-hFFLt9LT0GiSY5Vud0TzL/view?usp=sharing Please post this anywhere you can! Each google drive link is a backup to the wasabi link just in case one is "down". A word about the "f@\&&ot" usage: it was a necessary tool. It showed three things: they were not in control, if they were the usage would have be stopped. Everyone out there needed to see t%his. Two, it made it unpleasant for them to be in the headspace, which has obvious advantages. Three, it pointed out impersonators of BS because they would not call each other f@%%ot, thus helping to mitigate the spread of false information. Apologies for those unintentionally offended. Of special interest to the LGBT community, I give you Barack Obama in a foursome with Peter Thiel, Jack Dorsey, and Matthew Porter. It is on page 12 of the document where you can download the video containing audio footage of the "event". Link is just above under "Full 74 page document".
- word-reader 7y agoIt really is shocking how much has changed in the past 10 years. This post could have been mainstream late-night comedy, but it's not just that the targets have shifted: it's still OK, good even, to attack Sarah Palin, you just can't do it using certain words. The bigger change seems to be this obsession with words having some kind of incantatory, emanating power (even 9 year old words on a Twitter account), along with the associated fiending about the private thoughts of whoever posted.
- petercooper 7y agoPro-tip: Use Twitter search for "from:yourusername word" where you replace yourusername with your Twitter name and 'word' with things like the f word, c word, r'tarded, and so forth. Delete any tweets that do not stand up to modern standards. I did this a while back and am thankful I did. I seemed to say a lot of things that were passable on Twitter 10 years ago but I would not dare to say now :-D (Nothing extreme, but things like "$some_technology f'in sucks" and such.)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- daybreak 7y agoIf we replaced Sarah Palin with some left-wing politician, I'm not sure this article would get any traction. People would be saying "their platform, their rules", "freedom of speech only applies to the government" and calling out author for his sexist slurs and throwing around the "hate speech" label. I'm not sure what the solution is, even recent articles on proposed social media legislation[1] led to comments that Trump is trying to "censor the internet". [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20669477 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20669477
- dingo_bat 7y agoOf course. Just look at how leniently reddit deals with left wing hate subs like late stage capitalism. They advocate murder and genocide all day long and reddit doesn't do shit. On the other hand the_donald is one of the most tightly moderated subs, they don't allow any sort of "hate" speech. But still they keep putting restrictions on it and threatening bs actions. Same deal with Twitter.
- wanderfowl 7y agoThis just underscores one of the main things I desire from social media these days: Ephemerality. I wish that social media services, Snapchat aside, started treating content as transient. Services like TweetDelete help, but I can't think of anything I'd say on a Microblogging service that I want to exist in 9 years. Yes, yes, "everything on the internet is permanent". But every one of my social media streams could benefit from a "Automatically delete after one month" setting. We grow, we learn. Why not let our social media represent who we are, not who we were?
- la_barba 7y agoI wonder if Google will start banning accounts if you sent an email with offensive words..
- sarah180 7y agoCounterpoint: you used Twitter to publish aggressively misogynist language, and by leaving it up, you continued to distribute hateful material. If Twitter is going to police hate speech, this the right kind of content, and "it was a while ago" is not really a defense when you're still distributing that content. People often play the "it's not misogynist speech" game, but the first thing you did was to dismiss her based on her gender. Your fault here is more than "two party hate," and you still haven't owned up to your misogynist behavior in my opinion.
- metalliqaz 7y ago> "it was a while ago" is not really a defense when you're still distributing that content. I think you're missing the point here. It was published 9 years ago. He didn't continue "distributing" it, he published it once and Twitter distributed it for 9 years. The point, as I understand it, is that Twitter passively agreed that the tweet was just fine for their platform for 9 years. Then, after doing so, their standards changed. Fine, standards are supposed to change. However rather than simply delete the tweet, they suspended the account. So, in effect, "your account did something that is against the rules, before it was against the rules." I won't wade into the politics here, but I'm curious how you know that he dismissed her ideas because of her gender? Is there any reason to think that he would have embraced her ideas if she was a he?
- penagwin 7y agoThe other issue with it being published 9 years ago is that they may not even remember it existed (until they got their account locked). Who remembers what they tweeted 9 years ago? Are we all expected to constantly prune our tweets to conform to new rules? Can we even navigate through 9 years of tweets easily?
- Grue3 7y ago>how you know that he dismissed her ideas because of her gender? If Sarah Palin was a "he", he wouldn't have called her a "cunt" and a "whore".
- txsoftwaredev 7y agoTwitter has banned / restricted accounts for merely stating "Learn to Code" in a Tweet. Nothing they do at this point should be surprising.
- rurban 7y agoI'm not having a problem with twitter finally finding it out, and asking the user to remove it. But isn't there a catch-22? > As a result we've locked your account. > What you can do: > To unlock your account, you must do the following: > Remove Tweets that violate our rules. Can you actually remove tweets when your account is locked? E.g When Google locks your account you lost everything. You certainly cannot talk to them, remove any violating content or fix things. As it looks (unable and unwilling to test), Twitter implemented locking by just prohibiting to post new stuff, but allows you to fix stuff. Which is very fine to me, compared to Google.