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“We should restrict immigration to limit labor supply so that the native born can earn better wages” is not the same type of message as “immigrants are cockroac

“We should restrict immigration to limit labor supply so that the native born can earn better wages” is not the same type of message as “immigrants are cockroaches and we should shoot refugees as they cross the border.” “We should reject colonial oppression of our country” is not the same type of message as “we must wage religious war against our oppressors, and it is righteous to for young men to be suicide bombers”. “We should end affirmative action on the basis of race because it isn’t fair to individual members of the majority group” is not the same type of message as “all members of X minority are inherently worthless, and we should purge them”. “Rape accusations should be handled by law enforcement professionals rather than by school administrators, and the evidence should need to meet a high legal standard to be actionable” is not the same type of message as “X person claims they were raped but everyone knows they are a lying slut and were asking for it.” Etc. Why do I even have to try and explain this? > The rules could say absolutely no racism This is not what the rules do say. What they “could say” is not relevant here. The rules say: “Hateful conduct: You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.” This is elaborated here if you want to read about it https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hateful-conduct-policy https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hateful-condu... Specifically disallowed are (1) violent threats, (2) wishing, hoping or calling for serious harm on a person or group of people, (3) references to mass murder, violent events, or specific means of violence where protected groups have been the primary targets or victims, (4) inciting fear about a protected category, (5) repeated and/or non-consensual slurs, epithets, racist and sexist tropes, or other content that degrades someone, (6) hateful imagery

bendbro 7y ago
Pessimistic view follows, but: All of your acceptable examples most definitely fall under "inciting fear about a protected category". Also, wouldn't "references to mass murder, violent events, or specific means of violence where protected groups have been the primary targets or victims" prohibit Jews from speaking about the holocaust?
- mroche 7y ago
  The explainer part of the terms (actually reading then clarified a lot): > We prohibit targeting individuals with content that references forms of violence or violent events where a protected category was the primary target or victims, where the intent is to harass. This includes, but is not limited to sending someone: > media that depicts victims of the Holocaust; > media that depicts lynchings.
  - bendbro 7y ago
    Ah, then my earlier point is not correct. Thanks
whiddershins 7y ago
It’s very hard to see it, but these rules facilitate bias. When I listened to the interview on Joe Rogan with the Trust and Safety officer, one of the examples she gave was the Milo Youannopolis quote “the world would have been better off if your mother banged you on the rock as a baby” or something to that effect. This is gross, and offensive, but not a threat. It’s not a threat to talk hyperbolically about a hypothetical and ridiculous past event. Unless you already find a person scary. In which case it very very much sounds like a threat, or an incitement to violence. Language needs context and if you believe that people with certain characteristics (including political orientation) are more likely to be violently dangerous, it is absolutely natural to view things they say as more threatening than you might otherwise. It’s still bias. It’s bias if a policeman finds “I have a gun in the glove compartment, and a license for it” more threatening based on someone’s race. If it were based on some real or perceived fact about the world, still bias. Actually definitionally bias. Humans use bias (context) to make sense of the world. And that context (bias) is necessary for communication to makes any sense. Which means those rules can only be implemented in a way that reflects the bias of whomever is implementing them.
- igorkraw 7y ago
  So what's the alternative? "The rules aren't perfect, so let's get rid of all of them" is not improving things over "the rules intent is good, but humans implementing them will be biased". The solution would be a way to reduce bias. Ironically, one true solution to the problem of bias is diversity. The thing the groups who most rail against banning of misgendering or racist language despise. Get a a "good conservative" into the group which enforces the rules, as an ombudsman or a watchdog whatever, the same way we'd do for polticically other, and then it can play out. Disclosure: I am an european left of center, so from american perspective I'm basically communist. I use conservatives as an example because the seem to be the largest group complaining about things like enforcing harassment policies. To communicate my view on this debate with an example, insisting on misgendering people when that causes them pain is worse than a mere insult, it's equivalent to walking up to veteran with PTSD, pulling out a toy gun to their face and going "BANG". That shit would not offline, and it should not fly as a performative act online to normalize it either.
zaroth 7y ago
I hope you can see how those rules, exactly how you have stated them, can be--and are--used to clamp down on valid political speech. Go to Twitter or Reddit and try to have a discussion on illegal immigration, border patrol, the illegal immigrant population, asylum claims & processing, detainment, enforcement, catch & release, criminality of legal vs. illegal immigrants, visa policy, wage suppression, ICE, first-safe country, and the USMCA... and if I carefully and precisely represent a right-leaning position, will you pay me a dollar for each time I'm called a racist, white supremacist, xenophobe, etc.? There are countless documented cases of Twitter suppressing valid and non-offensive content, or locking an account where it takes a coordinated outcry to have them reverse course days later. Certified political candidates in particular should live and die by their freedom of speech. The voters ultimately get to decide, and what politicians say can and will be used against them. To say nothing of the fact that the Commander-in-Chief of a nation's army sometimes makes legitimate violent threats against adversaries, and that political discourse during a campaign is arguably universally degrading to your opponent -- it's kind of the point. Do you think, for example, Twitter is going to limit engagement on tweets from political opponents calling Trump a racist?
- input_sh 7y ago
  > will you pay me a dollar for each time I'm called a racist, white supremacist, xenophobe, etc.? I'll pay you a dollar every time your account gets blocked, because I don't give a crap if other users call you mean names for expressing bigoted views. That's not what anything in this thread is about. > Do you think, for example, Twitter is going to limit engagement on tweets from political opponents calling Trump a racist? If they break their terms, sure. But calling someone racist doesn't fall under any of these: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hateful-conduct-policy https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hateful-condu...
  - zaroth 7y ago
    > ... I don't give a crap if other users call you mean names for expressing bigoted views. Are you trying to prove my point here, or was that inadvertent? I listed a set of political and legal discussions around sensitive topics that happen to involve race and national origin. I didn't even express any personal viewpoints at all. But in your mind, a "carefully and precisely represented right-leaning position" is enough to warrant being slandered for bigotry. Which is precisely the problem here.
notzuck 7y ago
You still don't get it. People will claim what you're saying violates some rule if they don't you or your position. Doesn't matter if YOU consider it to be reasonable or not. I don't disagree with your distinctions at all but people are shitty and will not be as benevolent as you.
belorn 7y ago
Have you heard of the StackOverflow CoC controversy where a larger part of the community, possible the majority, disagree on the exact definition of harassment of other people on the basis of gender identity? Did you also hear about the Wikipedia Fram controversy where a large party of the community, including the highest democratically appointed authority (arbcom) disagree with the wikipedia foundation on what harassment is? To take a random sample further from the past, a guild wars 2 developer accused a fan of harassment after criticism of the game story line got posted. The controversy lead to two developers being fired and the company posting a huge apology which said that criticism of the game story line is not harassment and any fan should be free to express constructive views about the art. A rule that forbids harassment only has meaning based on how harassment get defined, and with current cultural environment that definition is all over the place. An even more political loaded area, hateful rhetoric is quite common. Here in Sweden there were a brief suggestion to forbid it on the national broadcast channels, but then the idea had to be basically scrapped as the definition could never really be agreed on. If you have one political party using immigrants as the target demographic for all problems, and an other political party using males as the target demographic for all problems, should we ban both? That is not going to happen. Protected category is interesting but a extremely US centric concept where the federal government specify a list of protected groups and anyone not on it is a free target. It is a list not even all the states agree on, as political views is sometimes added by specific states and others don't. The concept of an "official religion" is also one which is constantly debated, with groups like copyme trying to get included in the protected category. EU has a bit better and broader definition in Article 10, but the enforcement is mostly up to individual nation states.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
Regarding your examples. If you say "We should restrict immigration to limit labor supply so that the native born can earn better wages", you will be read by many people as if you were saying "immigrants are cockroaches". These people will group you with people who say the latter thing, and with people who imply the shooting part. I know that for a fact. I live in Europe. We had a migration crisis recently, and no matter what you believed, how nuanced your position was, you always ended up being called either "a compassionless monster who doesn't care about other people dying", or "a traitor supporting parasites in taking our jobs and destroying our economy". “We should reject colonial oppression of our country” very much implies “we should wage a war against our oppressors” (not sure why you bring religion into this). Suicide bombing didn't enter the western Overton window just yet, but it surely will if things ever get bad enough. For evidence, just skim [0]. > “We should end affirmative action on the basis of race because it isn’t fair to individual members of the majority group” is not the same type of message as “all members of X minority are inherently worthless, and we should purge them”. That tells me you haven't been on the Internet recently. It absolutely means the same thing in the eyes of a certain vocal minority that currently dominates all social media, and has an uncanny ability to summon Internet mobs in order to ruin people's lives. > “Rape accusations should be handled by law enforcement professionals rather than by school administrators, and the evidence should need to meet a high legal standard to be actionable” is not the same type of message as “X person claims they were raped but everyone knows they are a lying slut and were asking for it.” Except in practice the former is understood by many as the latter, and can end up with you in the news headlines and having your life's work taken away from you. -- Point being, rules like Terms of Service or Codes of Conduct are easily weaponized and used as tools of oppression if they're not backed by impartiality, rationality, a firm commitment to uphold the spirit of those rules and to nip all attempts at rule lawyering in the bud. Otherwise, either the service itself will abuse the rules, or the users that are best at escalating minor disagreements will. I have zero trust in Twitter on this matter. -- [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_attack#History,_pre-1980 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_attack#History,_pre-19... One of the interesting things I've learned here today is that apparently, the US trained people to perform suicide bombings with nuclear weapons. The Cold War was an insane time.
- jacobolus 7y ago

bendbro 7y ago

Pessimistic view follows, but: All of your acceptable examples most definitely fall under "inciting fear about a protected category". Also, wouldn't "references to mass murder, violent events, or specific means of violence where protected groups have been the primary targets or victims" prohibit Jews from speaking about the holocaust?

mroche 7y ago
The explainer part of the terms (actually reading then clarified a lot): > We prohibit targeting individuals with content that references forms of violence or violent events where a protected category was the primary target or victims, where the intent is to harass. This includes, but is not limited to sending someone: > media that depicts victims of the Holocaust; > media that depicts lynchings.
- bendbro 7y ago
  Ah, then my earlier point is not correct. Thanks

whiddershins 7y ago

It’s very hard to see it, but these rules facilitate bias. When I listened to the interview on Joe Rogan with the Trust and Safety officer, one of the examples she gave was the Milo Youannopolis quote “the world would have been better off if your mother banged you on the rock as a baby” or something to that effect. This is gross, and offensive, but not a threat. It’s not a threat to talk hyperbolically about a hypothetical and ridiculous past event. Unless you already find a person scary. In which case it very very much sounds like a threat, or an incitement to violence. Language needs context and if you believe that people with certain characteristics (including political orientation) are more likely to be violently dangerous, it is absolutely natural to view things they say as more threatening than you might otherwise. It’s still bias. It’s bias if a policeman finds “I have a gun in the glove compartment, and a license for it” more threatening based on someone’s race. If it were based on some real or perceived fact about the world, still bias. Actually definitionally bias. Humans use bias (context) to make sense of the world. And that context (bias) is necessary for communication to makes any sense. Which means those rules can only be implemented in a way that reflects the bias of whomever is implementing them.

igorkraw 7y ago
So what's the alternative? "The rules aren't perfect, so let's get rid of all of them" is not improving things over "the rules intent is good, but humans implementing them will be biased". The solution would be a way to reduce bias. Ironically, one true solution to the problem of bias is diversity. The thing the groups who most rail against banning of misgendering or racist language despise. Get a a "good conservative" into the group which enforces the rules, as an ombudsman or a watchdog whatever, the same way we'd do for polticically other, and then it can play out. Disclosure: I am an european left of center, so from american perspective I'm basically communist. I use conservatives as an example because the seem to be the largest group complaining about things like enforcing harassment policies. To communicate my view on this debate with an example, insisting on misgendering people when that causes them pain is worse than a mere insult, it's equivalent to walking up to veteran with PTSD, pulling out a toy gun to their face and going "BANG". That shit would not offline, and it should not fly as a performative act online to normalize it either.

zaroth 7y ago

I hope you can see how those rules, exactly how you have stated them, can be--and are--used to clamp down on valid political speech. Go to Twitter or Reddit and try to have a discussion on illegal immigration, border patrol, the illegal immigrant population, asylum claims & processing, detainment, enforcement, catch & release, criminality of legal vs. illegal immigrants, visa policy, wage suppression, ICE, first-safe country, and the USMCA... and if I carefully and precisely represent a right-leaning position, will you pay me a dollar for each time I'm called a racist, white supremacist, xenophobe, etc.? There are countless documented cases of Twitter suppressing valid and non-offensive content, or locking an account where it takes a coordinated outcry to have them reverse course days later. Certified political candidates in particular should live and die by their freedom of speech. The voters ultimately get to decide, and what politicians say can and will be used against them. To say nothing of the fact that the Commander-in-Chief of a nation's army sometimes makes legitimate violent threats against adversaries, and that political discourse during a campaign is arguably universally degrading to your opponent -- it's kind of the point. Do you think, for example, Twitter is going to limit engagement on tweets from political opponents calling Trump a racist?

input_sh 7y ago
> will you pay me a dollar for each time I'm called a racist, white supremacist, xenophobe, etc.? I'll pay you a dollar every time your account gets blocked, because I don't give a crap if other users call you mean names for expressing bigoted views. That's not what anything in this thread is about. > Do you think, for example, Twitter is going to limit engagement on tweets from political opponents calling Trump a racist? If they break their terms, sure. But calling someone racist doesn't fall under any of these: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hateful-conduct-policy https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hateful-condu...
- zaroth 7y ago
  > ... I don't give a crap if other users call you mean names for expressing bigoted views. Are you trying to prove my point here, or was that inadvertent? I listed a set of political and legal discussions around sensitive topics that happen to involve race and national origin. I didn't even express any personal viewpoints at all. But in your mind, a "carefully and precisely represented right-leaning position" is enough to warrant being slandered for bigotry. Which is precisely the problem here.

notzuck 7y ago

You still don't get it. People will claim what you're saying violates some rule if they don't you or your position. Doesn't matter if YOU consider it to be reasonable or not. I don't disagree with your distinctions at all but people are shitty and will not be as benevolent as you.

belorn 7y ago

Have you heard of the StackOverflow CoC controversy where a larger part of the community, possible the majority, disagree on the exact definition of harassment of other people on the basis of gender identity? Did you also hear about the Wikipedia Fram controversy where a large party of the community, including the highest democratically appointed authority (arbcom) disagree with the wikipedia foundation on what harassment is? To take a random sample further from the past, a guild wars 2 developer accused a fan of harassment after criticism of the game story line got posted. The controversy lead to two developers being fired and the company posting a huge apology which said that criticism of the game story line is not harassment and any fan should be free to express constructive views about the art. A rule that forbids harassment only has meaning based on how harassment get defined, and with current cultural environment that definition is all over the place. An even more political loaded area, hateful rhetoric is quite common. Here in Sweden there were a brief suggestion to forbid it on the national broadcast channels, but then the idea had to be basically scrapped as the definition could never really be agreed on. If you have one political party using immigrants as the target demographic for all problems, and an other political party using males as the target demographic for all problems, should we ban both? That is not going to happen. Protected category is interesting but a extremely US centric concept where the federal government specify a list of protected groups and anyone not on it is a free target. It is a list not even all the states agree on, as political views is sometimes added by specific states and others don't. The concept of an "official religion" is also one which is constantly debated, with groups like copyme trying to get included in the protected category. EU has a bit better and broader definition in Article 10, but the enforcement is mostly up to individual nation states.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

Regarding your examples. If you say "We should restrict immigration to limit labor supply so that the native born can earn better wages", you will be read by many people as if you were saying "immigrants are cockroaches". These people will group you with people who say the latter thing, and with people who imply the shooting part. I know that for a fact. I live in Europe. We had a migration crisis recently, and no matter what you believed, how nuanced your position was, you always ended up being called either "a compassionless monster who doesn't care about other people dying", or "a traitor supporting parasites in taking our jobs and destroying our economy". “We should reject colonial oppression of our country” very much implies “we should wage a war against our oppressors” (not sure why you bring religion into this). Suicide bombing didn't enter the western Overton window just yet, but it surely will if things ever get bad enough. For evidence, just skim [0]. > “We should end affirmative action on the basis of race because it isn’t fair to individual members of the majority group” is not the same type of message as “all members of X minority are inherently worthless, and we should purge them”. That tells me you haven't been on the Internet recently. It absolutely means the same thing in the eyes of a certain vocal minority that currently dominates all social media, and has an uncanny ability to summon Internet mobs in order to ruin people's lives. > “Rape accusations should be handled by law enforcement professionals rather than by school administrators, and the evidence should need to meet a high legal standard to be actionable” is not the same type of message as “X person claims they were raped but everyone knows they are a lying slut and were asking for it.” Except in practice the former is understood by many as the latter, and can end up with you in the news headlines and having your life's work taken away from you. -- Point being, rules like Terms of Service or Codes of Conduct are easily weaponized and used as tools of oppression if they're not backed by impartiality, rationality, a firm commitment to uphold the spirit of those rules and to nip all attempts at rule lawyering in the bud. Otherwise, either the service itself will abuse the rules, or the users that are best at escalating minor disagreements will. I have zero trust in Twitter on this matter. -- [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_attack#History,_pre-1980 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_attack#History,_pre-19... One of the interesting things I've learned here today is that apparently, the US trained people to perform suicide bombings with nuclear weapons. The Cold War was an insane time.

jacobolus 7y ago