11 ms·

Twitter discloses 10k accounts suspended for fomenting political discord

40 points by melenaboija 7y ago

newsreview1 7y ago
Sounds a bit Orwellian to me, trying to control/disallow what others may or may not think or voice
- ipython 7y ago
  But if you would think of the activity instead as a DDoS attack on your mental attention span would you come to a different conclusion? I was downvoted before for suggesting that DDoS protection would constitute a limit on free speech, so clearly this community feels that DDoS protection is a "good" thing. I think we can all agree that human attention span is a limited resource, much like network bandwidth. If we make a simple analogy between network bandwidth and human attention span, then how is an automated bot (or army of humans) sending out mass propaganda to overload your attention any different than an automated bot transmitting junk data to overload your network bandwidth? Why would you control one but not the other?
mastazi 7y ago
I’ve been wondering for a while whether I should delete my Twitter account and this piece of news suggests to me that perhaps I should. The sentence “Fomenting political discord” sounds a lot like 1984.
- nbst 7y ago
  In the article, the accounts were "actively spreading misinformation and encouraging unrest in politically sensitive climates." Sounds fine to me. Overreaction much?
  - mastazi 7y ago
    > "actively spreading misinformation and encouraging unrest" Isn't this the way many dictators describe democracy movements? How do we know if it's one or the other? Twitter is not a government, you can't submit a freedom of information request, we don't know what methodology they've used.
  - michalu 7y ago
    Sounds fine to me too. When NSDAP executed "Night of the Long Knives" they also provided a reason that sounded fine. In fact it wasn't even called Night of the Long Knives, it was called "Hummingbird" ... Nobody is going to provide a reason that doesn't "sound fine" ... or did you verify those accounts? Besides "encouraging unrest in politically sensitive climates" is BS statement in itself. They kicked out 200k Chinese accounts, 5k from UAE, 4k from Russia ... so these are "politically sensitive climates" according tho whose political narrative and objectives? I'm sure Chinese definition of "sensitive climates" fits different countries. Bottom line is, Twitter is a private business and now they play geopolitics (or aid their player of choice, choose whichever you like)
  - rbritton 7y ago
    Do you trust their judgment on this? Will you always? Like other similar happenings, the side you agree with may not always be the side making the choices. No one can objectively make that call in 100% of circumstances, and the risk of deplatforming a valid counter voice should not be dismissed.
    - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
      > Do you trust their judgment on this? More or less. > Will you always? Hard to say. I can at least see the possibility that the answer is no. > Like other similar happenings, the side you agree with may not always be the side making the choices. The side that's in favor of keeping foreign agitprop off of the site is a side that I'm likely to continue to agree with. It's not like the actors being blocked are good-faith "valid counter voices". They are illegitimate because of their methodology, not because of their viewpoint. (An organized campaign of people lying about who they're working for, trying to advocate positions that they don't actually believe, in order to mess with the minds of voters of another country... yeah, let's block that, no matter which viewpoint they've chosen to "advocate".) Could Twitter move on to viewpoint blocking? Yes, they could. Would I have a problem with it if they did? Absolutely. Disclaimer: I don't actually use Twitter, and I may not know what I'm talking about.
  - Kaiyou 7y ago
    Inconvenient truths often get mislabeled as misinformation.
    - dymk 7y ago
      What truths are being labeled as misinformation here?
      - Kaiyou 7y ago
        If I knew and told you that for this very site I'd get banned. If the truths weren't inconvenient, no one would bother mislabeling them.
  - makomk 7y ago
    Isn't that exactly how China justifies all its online crackdowns?
  - tempest345 7y ago
    "misinformation" - as defined by whom? "encouraging unrest in politically sensitive climates" - La Résistance in Vichy France would fall under this. In some countries asking for fair and democratic elections would fall under this.
  - sweeneyrod 7y ago
    Without any context, if you said "a spokesman justified the censorship by claiming those involved were 'actively spreading misinformation and encouraging unrest in politically sensitive climates'" and asked me to guess who the spokesman was representing, I would say the Chinese government not Twitter. You might object that that statement is true when made by Twitter but would be a lie coming from China, but I don't think that's right. The protestors in Hong Kong are certainly "encouraging unrest" and probably some of them have made untrue claims at some point. This kind of surface-level similarity doesn't necessarily mean much, but I still think it's a bit disturbing. Twitter have a lot of power to censor, and I'm not sure why anyone would trust them to reliably use it wisely.
- panarky 7y ago
  Not the first time I've heard someone argue that state-sponsored agitprop is free speech, while suppressing it on a private platform is somehow dystopian. Ignorance is strength?
  - mastazi 7y ago
    > state-sponsored agitprop as defined by the board of Twitter, Inc.? I stand by my "ignorance" then.
  - vkou 7y ago
    State-sponsored agitprop bad, private, corporate-sponsored agitprop good. Am I understanding the implications of your post correctly?
    - WhatIsDukkha 7y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism I think is pretty directly relevant to your "question"? So unless we deal with the problem of Coca Cola being on twitter we can't deal with state sponsored bots? Your question seems insincere and merely aimed at morally confusing the issue to no useful purpose.
      - vkou 7y ago
        How on Earth is pointing out the hypocrisy of censoring paid propaganda by a state actor, but not by a corporate actor whataboutism? This is an incredibly relevant issue. And we're not even trying to 'deal with the problem of Coca Cola being on Twitter'. The whole raison d'etre for Twitter's existence is dissemination of paid propaganda by corporate actors. It's what keeps the lights on at Twitter! Ads, promoted tweets, and other forms of paid speech.
        WhatIsDukkha 7y ago
        If the difference between a State and a Corporation is that muddled in your mind it's your issue not the rest of ours. It's a critical part of being a discerning person to be able to BOTH say how things are similar and how they differ. You seem to have no test for discerning how Coca Cola and the Russian government differ.
kanox 7y ago
State-sponsored misinformation should be protected by freedom of speech.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  Why? False advertising isn't.
- jakelazaroff 7y ago
  Twitter is a private entity which has no obligation to host said speech.
  - sp332 7y ago
    The first amendment doesn't apply to twitter, but we can still hold them accountable for their content policies.
    - jakelazaroff 7y ago
      Insofar as "hold them accountable" means organizing a boycott or something, sure (although I don't know why you'd be against them not allowing state-sponsored misinformation). Parent said "protected by freedom of speech", though, which in this context sounds like they're suggesting that Twitter should be compelled by law to host it.
      - decasteve 7y ago
        Governments have chosen to use Twitter as a medium for communication. It’s an open form platform to post by anyone but government officials do communicate via Twitter in an official capacity. Some agencies post things to Twitter (and Facebook) but nowhere else — not even on their own government websites. I’ve had government officials ignore emails but respond to tweets (as someone who no longer uses Twitter, this is now quite frustrating). At some point Twitter can no longer hide behind the “private entity” flag. A line gets crossed and even if there’s not technically a legal standing for freedom of speech on a platform like Twitter, there’s a ideological debate to be had whether it now should be. Certainly a decade ago much of the idealism sold to us around social media was that it was an equalizing force for free speech and communication.
mc32 7y ago
If they are bots which get paid or are under control of a government, sure, suspend. If these are individuals voicing opinions and not inciting violence, I think they are wrong. People should be able to have disagreeable opinions, even illegal opinions (“pot should be legal”), “the minister in an asshole”. People should not be guilty of wrongthink.
- ergothus 7y ago
  The current divisive political comment in the US has caused me to rethink my previous position on free speech, (Re-think as in think over, not just decide I was wrong) and I have ed found a lot less certainty. On the one hand, speech is a fundamental of any kind of improvement. Without speech that challenges the status quo, the status quo is all you get. Sure, you avoid lies and discomfort, but you are stuck with the discomfort you have. (and, importantly, the discomfort others suffer out of proportion with yourself). Heck, how can one even speak out against free speech without relying on it? It seems like the ultimate winning argument. On the other hand, the idea that we are all active, rational beings that are well positioned to understand when we are being deceived is actively false. Not only is this NOT true for most everyone, it is also basically impossible - there is far too much to learn if we try to verify even "simple" assertions. We must end up trusting other parties to do some evaluation (and we can only do cursory evaluations of trustworthiness for the exact same reasons). Any effort to be well informed and rational must be built on a foundation of trusting the well informed and rational behavior of others, and that's before even considering whether any behavior is HONEST. The concept of the First Amendment in the US constitution is about barring govt interference in speech. I dont believe that is the same as supporting uninhibited speech - the system breaks down if all speech is treated equally. We rely on social pressures to silence (Or reduce the volume of) bad voices. "Fine", the observer says "being considered an asshole unworthy of listening to is a perfectly fine result. Free speech doesnt mean freedom from consequences". Yet we have propped up the idea that speech should NOT be silenced. The above comment is talking about the actions of a private company, not the govt. It is saying "people should support the voices of others at at least a minimum level (refusing to silence), and if they do not do so our voices should speak up against THEM". Where is our ability, be that as individuals that might be part of companies, or as members theoretically responsible for the govt and definitely living in the society that the govt supports, to silence poisonous voices? How can we recognize that speech, even uncomfortable speech, is a vital need for progress, without giving power to those elements that will happily and dishonestly abuse the system we create in ways that harm that system (and a lot of people?) Must we continue to empower the sociopaths and those utterly without empathy because we fear anything less is harmful? I don't know the answer, but I'm a lot less confident that pegging the gauge at "all speech without limit" is truly the best answer. A test I like to give to any theoretical solution is "would this have been used against what I consider GOOD dislikes speech?" (abolitionism, womens suffrage, civil rights, marriage equality, etc). A lot fails this test...yet I find that historically those efforts faced a lot of problems. Hell, we dont have gender or racial equality today despite all the time we've talked about it, and a lot of people have suffered, at varying levels of misfortune, trauma, mutilation, and death. To point at this "progress" and say "yes, this is the best way to achieve improvement" seems short-sighted. We should be wary of inducing an oppressive society, but not every slope HAS to be a slippery slope.
jstewartmobile 7y ago
about damn time! this "internet" thing--letting ordinary dummies all over the world (even the ones in shithole countries) talk to each other--is, was, and always will be bad news. only way to protect these fools from "fake news" is to filter everything through the pure and blameless mouths of demographically-targeted, perfect-haired multimillionaires reading teleprompters. it is the only way! in light of this glorious victory--thank you Lord Jesus!--we are only a few years away from setting things right.
- Porthos9K 7y ago
  Nice sarcasm. Too bad hardly anybody seems to get it.
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    People could be understanding the sarcasm, but instead down-voting as that's not what this site is meant for.
    - jstewartmobile 7y ago
      literature and history be damned, we should all stand in obedient awe of some lisp nerd's rules for meaningful conversation
      - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
        You know, on that lisp nerd's site, yes, you kind of do have to follow their rules.
        Porthos9K 7y ago
        Strictly speaking, you don't have to follow any rules. You can be punished for breaking the rules after the fact, but that isn't the same as being obligated to obey them.
        jstewartmobile 7y ago
Porthos9K 7y ago
If you really cared about preserving your right to freedom of speech, you'd have your own website. You check your rights at the door the second you log in to a platform you don't own or control. Twitter isn't a government agency, but a private corporation protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. They have the right to reject any content you contribute without being liable for any user-generated content they publish. That means they don't owe you a platform. Likewise, you owe them nothing, so why tolerate Twitter's continued existence? Just open up /etc/hosts and set twitter.com's IP to "0.0.0.0". Problem solved.
- belorn 7y ago
  A company is located in a physical place and has to follow the laws in that place. I am 100% sure that if youtube started to reject all content from Muslims then they would get hit by a discrimination law suit and end up in court over it. The argument would be that google, youtube server, or the user is located in a physical place with anti-discrimination laws, and based on that users has rights.
  - Porthos9K 7y ago
    As I mentioned earlier, my understanding is that as a corporation based in the US, Twitter is governed in part by Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act of 1996[1], which consists of the following: "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." How a conflict between Section 230 and hypothetical anti-discrimination laws barring a social networking from imposing a blanket ban on right-wing content should be adjudicated is way above my pay grade since I'm not a judge, let alone a lawyer. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...
    - belorn 7y ago
      To give an example of how the law sometimes work, Sweden has a similar law to section 230 called "The law regarding electronic billboards", which gives the provider legal space to operate as a intermediate without legal liability in regard to the message. During the Pirate Bay trial the founders argue that this gave them protection. The prosecutor and later the court judgment cited a different law, one which was created in order to give the police the power to seize biker bars from organized crime. They argued that the website, just like a biker bar, allowed for "primarily" illegal activity and thus made the founder liable for operating it and gives the police the power to seize it in order to stop further crime. Even if twitter, google or any other private operated website is not treated as the publisher or speaker, the operators can still be charged under any law that do not distinguish on the accused being the publisher or speaker.
diveanon 7y ago
So they finally banned Trump's account?
- PorterDuff 7y ago
  Trump's account is a beautiful example of how useless Twitter is. Typically it goes... Trump: CONGRATULATIONS ON FIREFIGHTERS FOR MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. THIS ADMINISTRATION IS FOR FIREFIGHTERS! Followed by 1k responses of YAY TRUMP! and 50k responses of people vomiting up any old thing that's just as insulting as they can cook up. Why on Earth do people waste their time on this sort of thing? It has evolved from keyboard warriorhood to some sort of internet Tourette's. /end old man rant.
  - krapp 7y ago
    >Why on Earth do people waste their time on this sort of thing? It has evolved from keyboard warriorhood to some sort of internet Tourette's. Because the President of the United States has decided that shitposting on Twitter shall be his primary means of communicating with the people, and the courts have decided this means he's not allowed to block anyone from his feed, because the people have a right to hear their governments' words and to petition it with grievances. What's happening on Twitter is the platform being used as intended by everyone but Trump - it's not supposed to be used for deep, nuanced, complex discussion. It's for posting links and blogging about your food - nonsense that can fit into a couple of sentences. But thanks to him elevating it to a higher status than it deserves, it's now become the nexus for American political communication and debate with this administration.
GrassFedAltCoin 7y ago
I'm amazed at how certain people seem on either side of this debate. This seems to me like an incredibly difficult problem, and I can't see a solution that doesn't involve significant trade offs. On one hand, silencing people for "inciting unrest" does sound like something a dystopian judge would say before passing sentence. On the other, there is a philosophical argument—and economic incentive—for Twitter to protect its users from harassment and targeted manipulation, especially when it is state-sponsored. Where the line gets drawn for these definitions seems to be the hardest part.
- dymk 7y ago
  A single individual or organized group possessing thousands of accounts used to astroturf a platform is abusive of the platform, regardless of what the message is - banning that sort of activity doesn't seem dystopian.
  - GrassFedAltCoin 7y ago
    I don't disagree at all — but in your hypothetical situation, they're clearly not being banned for causing "unrest." They're being banned for creating fake accounts to spam the platform en masse, "regardless of what the message is" as you say.
    - dymk 7y ago
      FTA: > Saudi Arabia’s state-run media apparatus were found to be “engaged in coordinated efforts to amplify messaging that was beneficial to the Saudi government.”
  - voxic11 7y ago
    That sounds different and a lot more specific than simply "inciting unrest". Facebook calls it "coordinated inauthentic behavior" which while still very broad at least seems to be more specifically directed at the behavior you describe.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
ganzuul 7y ago
Perhaps a special tag such as "suspected troll" would suffice.

40 points by melenaboija 7y ago

newsreview1 7y ago

Sounds a bit Orwellian to me, trying to control/disallow what others may or may not think or voice

ipython 7y ago
But if you would think of the activity instead as a DDoS attack on your mental attention span would you come to a different conclusion? I was downvoted before for suggesting that DDoS protection would constitute a limit on free speech, so clearly this community feels that DDoS protection is a "good" thing. I think we can all agree that human attention span is a limited resource, much like network bandwidth. If we make a simple analogy between network bandwidth and human attention span, then how is an automated bot (or army of humans) sending out mass propaganda to overload your attention any different than an automated bot transmitting junk data to overload your network bandwidth? Why would you control one but not the other?

mastazi 7y ago

I’ve been wondering for a while whether I should delete my Twitter account and this piece of news suggests to me that perhaps I should. The sentence “Fomenting political discord” sounds a lot like 1984.

nbst 7y ago
In the article, the accounts were "actively spreading misinformation and encouraging unrest in politically sensitive climates." Sounds fine to me. Overreaction much?
- mastazi 7y ago
  > "actively spreading misinformation and encouraging unrest" Isn't this the way many dictators describe democracy movements? How do we know if it's one or the other? Twitter is not a government, you can't submit a freedom of information request, we don't know what methodology they've used.
- michalu 7y ago
  Sounds fine to me too. When NSDAP executed "Night of the Long Knives" they also provided a reason that sounded fine. In fact it wasn't even called Night of the Long Knives, it was called "Hummingbird" ... Nobody is going to provide a reason that doesn't "sound fine" ... or did you verify those accounts? Besides "encouraging unrest in politically sensitive climates" is BS statement in itself. They kicked out 200k Chinese accounts, 5k from UAE, 4k from Russia ... so these are "politically sensitive climates" according tho whose political narrative and objectives? I'm sure Chinese definition of "sensitive climates" fits different countries. Bottom line is, Twitter is a private business and now they play geopolitics (or aid their player of choice, choose whichever you like)
- rbritton 7y ago
  Do you trust their judgment on this? Will you always? Like other similar happenings, the side you agree with may not always be the side making the choices. No one can objectively make that call in 100% of circumstances, and the risk of deplatforming a valid counter voice should not be dismissed.
  - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    > Do you trust their judgment on this? More or less. > Will you always? Hard to say. I can at least see the possibility that the answer is no. > Like other similar happenings, the side you agree with may not always be the side making the choices. The side that's in favor of keeping foreign agitprop off of the site is a side that I'm likely to continue to agree with. It's not like the actors being blocked are good-faith "valid counter voices". They are illegitimate because of their methodology, not because of their viewpoint. (An organized campaign of people lying about who they're working for, trying to advocate positions that they don't actually believe, in order to mess with the minds of voters of another country... yeah, let's block that, no matter which viewpoint they've chosen to "advocate".) Could Twitter move on to viewpoint blocking? Yes, they could. Would I have a problem with it if they did? Absolutely. Disclaimer: I don't actually use Twitter, and I may not know what I'm talking about.
- Kaiyou 7y ago
  Inconvenient truths often get mislabeled as misinformation.
  - dymk 7y ago
    What truths are being labeled as misinformation here?
    - Kaiyou 7y ago
      If I knew and told you that for this very site I'd get banned. If the truths weren't inconvenient, no one would bother mislabeling them.
- makomk 7y ago
  Isn't that exactly how China justifies all its online crackdowns?
- tempest345 7y ago
  "misinformation" - as defined by whom? "encouraging unrest in politically sensitive climates" - La Résistance in Vichy France would fall under this. In some countries asking for fair and democratic elections would fall under this.
- sweeneyrod 7y ago
  Without any context, if you said "a spokesman justified the censorship by claiming those involved were 'actively spreading misinformation and encouraging unrest in politically sensitive climates'" and asked me to guess who the spokesman was representing, I would say the Chinese government not Twitter. You might object that that statement is true when made by Twitter but would be a lie coming from China, but I don't think that's right. The protestors in Hong Kong are certainly "encouraging unrest" and probably some of them have made untrue claims at some point. This kind of surface-level similarity doesn't necessarily mean much, but I still think it's a bit disturbing. Twitter have a lot of power to censor, and I'm not sure why anyone would trust them to reliably use it wisely.
panarky 7y ago
Not the first time I've heard someone argue that state-sponsored agitprop is free speech, while suppressing it on a private platform is somehow dystopian. Ignorance is strength?
- mastazi 7y ago
  > state-sponsored agitprop as defined by the board of Twitter, Inc.? I stand by my "ignorance" then.
- vkou 7y ago
  State-sponsored agitprop bad, private, corporate-sponsored agitprop good. Am I understanding the implications of your post correctly?
  - WhatIsDukkha 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism I think is pretty directly relevant to your "question"? So unless we deal with the problem of Coca Cola being on twitter we can't deal with state sponsored bots? Your question seems insincere and merely aimed at morally confusing the issue to no useful purpose.
    - vkou 7y ago
      How on Earth is pointing out the hypocrisy of censoring paid propaganda by a state actor, but not by a corporate actor whataboutism? This is an incredibly relevant issue. And we're not even trying to 'deal with the problem of Coca Cola being on Twitter'. The whole raison d'etre for Twitter's existence is dissemination of paid propaganda by corporate actors. It's what keeps the lights on at Twitter! Ads, promoted tweets, and other forms of paid speech.
      - WhatIsDukkha 7y ago
        If the difference between a State and a Corporation is that muddled in your mind it's your issue not the rest of ours. It's a critical part of being a discerning person to be able to BOTH say how things are similar and how they differ. You seem to have no test for discerning how Coca Cola and the Russian government differ.

kanox 7y ago

State-sponsored misinformation should be protected by freedom of speech.

AnimalMuppet 7y ago
Why? False advertising isn't.
jakelazaroff 7y ago
Twitter is a private entity which has no obligation to host said speech.
- sp332 7y ago
  The first amendment doesn't apply to twitter, but we can still hold them accountable for their content policies.
  - jakelazaroff 7y ago
    Insofar as "hold them accountable" means organizing a boycott or something, sure (although I don't know why you'd be against them not allowing state-sponsored misinformation). Parent said "protected by freedom of speech", though, which in this context sounds like they're suggesting that Twitter should be compelled by law to host it.
    - decasteve 7y ago
      Governments have chosen to use Twitter as a medium for communication. It’s an open form platform to post by anyone but government officials do communicate via Twitter in an official capacity. Some agencies post things to Twitter (and Facebook) but nowhere else — not even on their own government websites. I’ve had government officials ignore emails but respond to tweets (as someone who no longer uses Twitter, this is now quite frustrating). At some point Twitter can no longer hide behind the “private entity” flag. A line gets crossed and even if there’s not technically a legal standing for freedom of speech on a platform like Twitter, there’s a ideological debate to be had whether it now should be. Certainly a decade ago much of the idealism sold to us around social media was that it was an equalizing force for free speech and communication.

mc32 7y ago

If they are bots which get paid or are under control of a government, sure, suspend. If these are individuals voicing opinions and not inciting violence, I think they are wrong. People should be able to have disagreeable opinions, even illegal opinions (“pot should be legal”), “the minister in an asshole”. People should not be guilty of wrongthink.

ergothus 7y ago
The current divisive political comment in the US has caused me to rethink my previous position on free speech, (Re-think as in think over, not just decide I was wrong) and I have ed found a lot less certainty. On the one hand, speech is a fundamental of any kind of improvement. Without speech that challenges the status quo, the status quo is all you get. Sure, you avoid lies and discomfort, but you are stuck with the discomfort you have. (and, importantly, the discomfort others suffer out of proportion with yourself). Heck, how can one even speak out against free speech without relying on it? It seems like the ultimate winning argument. On the other hand, the idea that we are all active, rational beings that are well positioned to understand when we are being deceived is actively false. Not only is this NOT true for most everyone, it is also basically impossible - there is far too much to learn if we try to verify even "simple" assertions. We must end up trusting other parties to do some evaluation (and we can only do cursory evaluations of trustworthiness for the exact same reasons). Any effort to be well informed and rational must be built on a foundation of trusting the well informed and rational behavior of others, and that's before even considering whether any behavior is HONEST. The concept of the First Amendment in the US constitution is about barring govt interference in speech. I dont believe that is the same as supporting uninhibited speech - the system breaks down if all speech is treated equally. We rely on social pressures to silence (Or reduce the volume of) bad voices. "Fine", the observer says "being considered an asshole unworthy of listening to is a perfectly fine result. Free speech doesnt mean freedom from consequences". Yet we have propped up the idea that speech should NOT be silenced. The above comment is talking about the actions of a private company, not the govt. It is saying "people should support the voices of others at at least a minimum level (refusing to silence), and if they do not do so our voices should speak up against THEM". Where is our ability, be that as individuals that might be part of companies, or as members theoretically responsible for the govt and definitely living in the society that the govt supports, to silence poisonous voices? How can we recognize that speech, even uncomfortable speech, is a vital need for progress, without giving power to those elements that will happily and dishonestly abuse the system we create in ways that harm that system (and a lot of people?) Must we continue to empower the sociopaths and those utterly without empathy because we fear anything less is harmful? I don't know the answer, but I'm a lot less confident that pegging the gauge at "all speech without limit" is truly the best answer. A test I like to give to any theoretical solution is "would this have been used against what I consider GOOD dislikes speech?" (abolitionism, womens suffrage, civil rights, marriage equality, etc). A lot fails this test...yet I find that historically those efforts faced a lot of problems. Hell, we dont have gender or racial equality today despite all the time we've talked about it, and a lot of people have suffered, at varying levels of misfortune, trauma, mutilation, and death. To point at this "progress" and say "yes, this is the best way to achieve improvement" seems short-sighted. We should be wary of inducing an oppressive society, but not every slope HAS to be a slippery slope.

jstewartmobile 7y ago

about damn time! this "internet" thing--letting ordinary dummies all over the world (even the ones in shithole countries) talk to each other--is, was, and always will be bad news. only way to protect these fools from "fake news" is to filter everything through the pure and blameless mouths of demographically-targeted, perfect-haired multimillionaires reading teleprompters. it is the only way! in light of this glorious victory--thank you Lord Jesus!--we are only a few years away from setting things right.

Porthos9K 7y ago
Nice sarcasm. Too bad hardly anybody seems to get it.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  People could be understanding the sarcasm, but instead down-voting as that's not what this site is meant for.
  - jstewartmobile 7y ago
    literature and history be damned, we should all stand in obedient awe of some lisp nerd's rules for meaningful conversation
    - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
      You know, on that lisp nerd's site, yes, you kind of do have to follow their rules.
      - Porthos9K 7y ago
        Strictly speaking, you don't have to follow any rules. You can be punished for breaking the rules after the fact, but that isn't the same as being obligated to obey them.
      - jstewartmobile 7y ago

Porthos9K 7y ago

If you really cared about preserving your right to freedom of speech, you'd have your own website. You check your rights at the door the second you log in to a platform you don't own or control. Twitter isn't a government agency, but a private corporation protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. They have the right to reject any content you contribute without being liable for any user-generated content they publish. That means they don't owe you a platform. Likewise, you owe them nothing, so why tolerate Twitter's continued existence? Just open up /etc/hosts and set twitter.com's IP to "0.0.0.0". Problem solved.

belorn 7y ago
A company is located in a physical place and has to follow the laws in that place. I am 100% sure that if youtube started to reject all content from Muslims then they would get hit by a discrimination law suit and end up in court over it. The argument would be that google, youtube server, or the user is located in a physical place with anti-discrimination laws, and based on that users has rights.
- Porthos9K 7y ago
  As I mentioned earlier, my understanding is that as a corporation based in the US, Twitter is governed in part by Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act of 1996[1], which consists of the following: "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." How a conflict between Section 230 and hypothetical anti-discrimination laws barring a social networking from imposing a blanket ban on right-wing content should be adjudicated is way above my pay grade since I'm not a judge, let alone a lawyer. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...
  - belorn 7y ago
    To give an example of how the law sometimes work, Sweden has a similar law to section 230 called "The law regarding electronic billboards", which gives the provider legal space to operate as a intermediate without legal liability in regard to the message. During the Pirate Bay trial the founders argue that this gave them protection. The prosecutor and later the court judgment cited a different law, one which was created in order to give the police the power to seize biker bars from organized crime. They argued that the website, just like a biker bar, allowed for "primarily" illegal activity and thus made the founder liable for operating it and gives the police the power to seize it in order to stop further crime. Even if twitter, google or any other private operated website is not treated as the publisher or speaker, the operators can still be charged under any law that do not distinguish on the accused being the publisher or speaker.

diveanon 7y ago

So they finally banned Trump's account?

PorterDuff 7y ago
Trump's account is a beautiful example of how useless Twitter is. Typically it goes... Trump: CONGRATULATIONS ON FIREFIGHTERS FOR MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. THIS ADMINISTRATION IS FOR FIREFIGHTERS! Followed by 1k responses of YAY TRUMP! and 50k responses of people vomiting up any old thing that's just as insulting as they can cook up. Why on Earth do people waste their time on this sort of thing? It has evolved from keyboard warriorhood to some sort of internet Tourette's. /end old man rant.
- krapp 7y ago
  >Why on Earth do people waste their time on this sort of thing? It has evolved from keyboard warriorhood to some sort of internet Tourette's. Because the President of the United States has decided that shitposting on Twitter shall be his primary means of communicating with the people, and the courts have decided this means he's not allowed to block anyone from his feed, because the people have a right to hear their governments' words and to petition it with grievances. What's happening on Twitter is the platform being used as intended by everyone but Trump - it's not supposed to be used for deep, nuanced, complex discussion. It's for posting links and blogging about your food - nonsense that can fit into a couple of sentences. But thanks to him elevating it to a higher status than it deserves, it's now become the nexus for American political communication and debate with this administration.

GrassFedAltCoin 7y ago

I'm amazed at how certain people seem on either side of this debate. This seems to me like an incredibly difficult problem, and I can't see a solution that doesn't involve significant trade offs. On one hand, silencing people for "inciting unrest" does sound like something a dystopian judge would say before passing sentence. On the other, there is a philosophical argument—and economic incentive—for Twitter to protect its users from harassment and targeted manipulation, especially when it is state-sponsored. Where the line gets drawn for these definitions seems to be the hardest part.

dymk 7y ago
A single individual or organized group possessing thousands of accounts used to astroturf a platform is abusive of the platform, regardless of what the message is - banning that sort of activity doesn't seem dystopian.
- GrassFedAltCoin 7y ago
  I don't disagree at all — but in your hypothetical situation, they're clearly not being banned for causing "unrest." They're being banned for creating fake accounts to spam the platform en masse, "regardless of what the message is" as you say.
  - dymk 7y ago
    FTA: > Saudi Arabia’s state-run media apparatus were found to be “engaged in coordinated efforts to amplify messaging that was beneficial to the Saudi government.”
- voxic11 7y ago
  That sounds different and a lot more specific than simply "inciting unrest". Facebook calls it "coordinated inauthentic behavior" which while still very broad at least seems to be more specifically directed at the behavior you describe.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

ganzuul 7y ago

Perhaps a special tag such as "suspected troll" would suffice.