15 ms·

Twitter is well within the rights to do this, but I have seen tweets from blue check marks essentially calling for violence and Twitter didn't remove them. So,

Twitter is well within the rights to do this, but I have seen tweets from blue check marks essentially calling for violence and Twitter didn't remove them. So, does that mean Twitter actually -supports- those view points now? If Twitter is going to police people, it needs to be across the board. Otherwise it's just a weird censorship that is targeting one person and can easily be seen as political. Everyone is applauding this because they hate Trump, but take a step back and see the bigger picture. This could backfire in serious ways, and it plays to Trump's base's narrative that the mainstream media and tech giants are colluding to silence conservatives (and maybe there could even be some truth to that.) I know the Valley is an echo chamber, so obviously no one is going to ever realize this.

youeseh 6y ago
Instead of being the police, Twitter should do what Rotten Tomatoes does. There are plenty of people - journalists and researchers analyzing the facts behind what celebrities say. They should analyze what the analysts say and display a score.
- tantalor 6y ago
  [insert black mirror joke reference]
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  Even better, directly link the research on the topic, from both sides. Instead of drawing a conclusion on behalf of everybody, give people what they need to draw their own.
  - 12elephant 6y ago
    That's what already happens. Look at the comments on any prominent person's tweet and you'll see people going back and forth about what's right and what's false. No one needs to do anything here. People can research and find stuff out for themselves, and come to their own conclusions.
    - gurkendoktor 6y ago
      Absolutely, I am someone who always reads comments (yes, even on YouTube) because they often serve as a poor man's fact check. However, Twitter apparently has plans to sabotage that: https://9to5mac.com/2020/01/08/twitter-limit-replies-feature/ https://9to5mac.com/2020/01/08/twitter-limit-replies-feature...
- gurkendoktor 6y ago
  The problem then becomes, who decides which tweets to fact-check? If most politicians at the higher levels are liars, singling out a few of them is unfair even if Trump is notorious for it. Twitter can clearly not fact-check every single tweet on its platform. But what if they did it for every tweet (maybe from a verified account) that X people report for being untruthful? Trump would look bad even if Twitter held everyone to the same standard, and the blue checkmark would come with some responsibility not to lie, so why not?
  - youeseh 6y ago
    Who decides which Tweats to fact-check: If someone is famous enough, you can bet that there will be at least one reporter frothing for the opportunity to be counted among trusted fact-checkers. Twitter might have to figure out a balance among reviewers but thats a lot less work than fact-checking each message.
kingnight 6y ago
The valley being an echo chamber doesn’t necessarily mean those implementing this have their heads in the sand. It can’t be all perfectly achieved, but to do nothing, as they were before, could be now determined to be a worse case than providing these annotations to flagrant misuse by the highest impact profile that they can’t do away with entirely.
- sevenf0ur 6y ago
  The issue is that the rules are being enforced selectively. Just this week Twitter fact checked Trump's opinion on mail voter fraud by linking to other experts' opinions. It seems more like a move to influence the election rather than enforcing the rules.
  - ecf 6y ago
    Let’s entertain the possibility that Twitter is doing this to influence the election. So what? There’s no law prohibiting these types of businesses from supporting a political candidate. They could plaster a huge “Vote For X” banner at the top of every person’s profile. Don’t like it? Don’t use it. It’s not like Twitter is tax-exempt which would prohibit it from endorsing candidates like Churches.
    - quantummkv 6y ago
      > It’s not like Twitter is tax-exempt which would prohibit it from endorsing candidates like Churches. Twitter is not tax-exempt but is certainly lawsuit-exempt to a large degree. The entire reason twitter has not be sued into oblivion for the actions of it's users is because of the protections Section 230[1] grants them. But here is the pinch. Section 230 protection applies only as long as you act as platforms for 3rd party speech. But when they start plastering "Vote for X" banners on their websites of their own violations, they go from being platforms for 3rd party speech to 1st party publishers. That effectively removes the Section 230 protections twitter enjoys. I much as I hate to say it, Trump might be right this once. Twitter has stopped being a neutral platform enforcing consistent policies for quite some time now. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...
atomi 6y ago
It's important context to note that Trump's tweets are the most widely publicized. As such it should be self evident as to why they would focus their limited resources to policing tweets such as his.
paulgb 6y ago
> If Twitter is going to police people, it needs to be across the board. One way to look at this is that that's exactly what Twitter has started doing. The president violated the TOS, and got the treatment prescribed under the TOS. His EO yesterday essentially asked for everyone to be treated in accordance with the TOS, so he's (ironically) getting exactly what he asked for. It remains to be seen whether, in compliance with the EO, they apply this to everyone in a transparent and uniform way from now on. I hope they do.
- dfxm12 6y ago
  Wait, Trump, the guy who had a platform plank complaining about his predecessors' use of executive orders as "power grabs" [0], actually issued an executive order about Twitter's TOS? 0 - https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-10-19/trump-presidential-executive-orders https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-10-19/trump-...
  - bcrosby95 6y ago
    It's nothing new. Politics is a team based sport. My brother calls Obama "King Obama" but is still a huge fan of Trump. I've discussed some of this stuff with him: in his eyes, Obama did stuff he shouldn't have, so Trump can do stuff he shouldn't.
    - dfxm12 6y ago
      I can understand how people can rationalize some of his failures, but, the second time around, how can someone vote for a guy who has failed on delivering on a very simple and basic campaign promise, one that he can do that unilaterally? “The country wasn’t based on executive orders,” Trump said at a South Carolina campaign stop in February 2016. “Right now, Obama goes around signing executive orders. He can’t even get along with the Democrats, and he goes around signing all these executive orders. It’s a basic disaster. You can’t do it.” I know I'm probably pissing in the wind here, but I was looking forward to a president ceding some of his power back to congress, so this one really sticks in my craw. Oh well.
hpoe 6y ago
There is a worse side effect that comes from conservatives feeling that they have been silenced, as people feel like they have less and less say in a political process they are more and more likely to start employing means outside of it. The real risk here is that if more and more outlets for conservative voices are silenced, whether for good cause or not, this will reinforce the narrative that many of them have that they are the defenders of the truth and right and there is a vast conspiracy operating to seize their guns, deprive them of their rights, and whatever else they can imagine. As that happens there becomes more and more moral justification and greater and greater need there is seen to employ violence in end of their goals. Ultimately the more and more "dangerous" opinions and people who share those opinions are silenced the more and more dangerous they become in reality. EDIT: The nature of this comment is intended to be observational not advocational.
- luckydata 6y ago
  you're saying it like it's not already happening, and it's completely divorce from any actual reality or perception. When they say "I'm being silenced" they are simply pushing buttons they know work with more reasonable people, they are just using the "system" to their advantage. Conservatives in the USA are not a good faith actor and should never be taken at face value.
  - hpoe 6y ago
    The problem with your response if you've fundementally divided the world into the fearless, social justice serving left and the corrupt, evil, fascist, right. It can be assumed that the far right is not going to change their mind at any point; however the majority of the world isn't far right or far left. Many people are moderates that could go one way or the other. By designating everyone who doesn't agree with you as "the right" that can't every act in good faith and is irredeemable you galvanize the more moderates. This incident won't have a substantive impact on the far right, but it may cause a change in opinion in more moderate voices. Essentially be advocating this black and white extremism you hurt your cause and play into the very narrative that those on the other side are saying.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
phailhaus 6y ago
Eh? Do you have any examples? This is nothing new, Twitter has been applying this standard to tweets for a very long time (it's part of their ToS!). It usually results in deleting your tweet or an outright ban. The only difference here is that they've kept the tweet up since they deem it to be in the public's interest.
- formalsystem 6y ago
  https://twitter.com/RaheemKassam/status/1266340243134963712 https://twitter.com/RaheemKassam/status/1266340243134963712 EDIT: Scroll down a bit, the original poster made their account private a few moments ago
  - geofft 6y ago
    It's been a couple of hours - in general, saying stuff like that actually does in fact get Twitter's content moderation to kick in and force you to delete the tweet, and I regularly see folks who aren't conservative get temporary suspensions for it.
    - dunkelheit 6y ago
      > It's been a couple of hours She posted that tweet more like 11 hours ago. Since that time it has become somewhat infamous - I've seen it in my deliberately not-politicized timeline and separately here on HN. What is the chance their content moderation team hasn't seen it?
  - augustt 6y ago
    Damaging property is not violence.
    - dnissley 6y ago
      By pretty much every definition it is violence.
    - Avicebron 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
modwest 6y ago
it's almost like the president of the united states is held to a higher standard than some random jackanapes with a "blue check" next to their name.
geofft 6y ago
There is absolutely some truth that the mainstream media and tech giants are colluding to silence conservatives - the truth is that the mainstream "conservative" position in the US happens to involve behavior that runs afoul of neutral content norms (don't threaten people with violence, don't call them racial slurs, don't dox people, etc.) disproportionately more often than people with other political beliefs. Sure, there are some people of other political persuasions who are "essentially" calling for violence, but there's a large gap between "as MLK said, a riot is the language of the unheard, so I can't condemn it" (and even that is hardly a universal position among non-conservatives) and "I, the actual commander-in-chief of an actual military, am telling that military to use violence against my own people" + "We all think this is good and proper, do it." This is an uncomfortable, rude, politically incorrect truth - but we're not going to have a productive discussion about "silencing conservatives" if we can't admit it. It is absolutely possible to advocate for the political positions of conservatives (looking through the 2016 GOP platform, for instance - limited government, federalism, avoiding trade deficits, repeal of Dodd-Frank, auditing the Fed, right-to-work, opposition to abortion, support for the electoral college, removing gray wolves from the endangered species list, etc., etc.) without behavior that runs afoul of the norms. If there's a case where Twitter suspends someone for opposing Dodd-Frank, then we should absolutely criticize Twitter. (And I think there's a legitimate discussion to be had about where the line is about criticizing the government's pandemic response vs. spreading misinformation, for instance.) But saying "Conservatives really like to advocate for shooting people without due process, Twitter doesn't permit the advocacy of shooting people without due process, therefore Twitter is biased against conservatives" is more of a statement about conservatives than about Twitter.
- cryptica 6y ago
  I think this is actually a balanced argument. HN should have a setting so that the most downvoted posts show up at the top of the page... That would save me a lot of scrolling to get to the unpleasant but accurate content.
jrockway 6y ago
I don't think any reasonable person would think that Twitter supports violence simply because they aren't removing posts from people who don't matter. When you have limited resources, you have to apply them in a way that has the most impact. Making sure the President of the United States is adhering to their ToS seems like a good place to start. Remember that Twitter gets something like 500 million tweets per day. If it took someone working minimum wage 15 seconds to decide whether or not a tweet violates their ToS, Twitter would spend 30 million dollars a day on this, and the results probably wouldn't even be that good. So they don't do that, instead focusing resources where they will have the most impact. I am also pretty sure they are not trying to censor conservative viewpoints. If Joe Biden starts telling people to go shoot looters or that Mitch McConnell murdered one of his aides, I am sure they will add a little note to those tweets.
- pfkurtz 6y ago
  This is correct.
jtbayly 6y ago
I'm just going to say again that I can't for the life of me understand why people are in agreement that this tweet glorifies violence. It is a call to stop being violent lest violence increase. Looting always leads to shooting. This is a simple fact. I'm horrified that so many people think me saying that is glorifying violence. I don't understand it in the slightest. Seeing this tweet by Trump get silenced absolutely convinces me that there is a conspiracy. Not so much against the right, but against truth.
- dmode 6y ago
  You should read up on the history of the phrase "when looting starts, shooting starts"
  - koheripbal 6y ago
    I read up on it's use in 1967. ...and it didn't really add anything. Looting leads to police/national guard having to restore order through violence. There's no hidden meaning here.
    - thethethethe 6y ago
      It was used by a racist police chief in reference to black protesters during the _civil rights movement_, which I think we can all agree is on the right side of history. The parallels are pretty clear to me, I’m not sure what you are missing here
      - will4274 6y ago
        The fact that the police chief was racist doesn't make him wrong. He can be both racist and correct that looting generally leads to shooting.
        thethethethe 6y ago
        > He can be both racist and correct that looting generally leads to shooting. It appears as though you are deliberately misinterpreting this statement to confirm your biases. This statement is obviously intended to be interpreted as “the state will shoot looters (and possibly other protesters) when there is looting during a political protest”. If you genuinely don’t see it this way after considering all of contextual history of racial violence and injustice, it must benefit you to have your head in the sand
dmode 6y ago
Twitter regularly hides violent tweets. It is just algo based and nothing to do with conservatives. I mean, it may seem biased if conservatives are posting a lot of violent tweets
kube-system 6y ago
The enforcement of rules in rarely applied with 100% accuracy in any realm. Not because the rule enforcers support some infractions, but because they have limited manpower and must prioritize their tasks.
fullshark 6y ago
It will absolutely backfire. Twitter is now going to editorialize re: their users' content. It's impossible to do this without being perceived as being biased, and twitter is already a partisan hellscape, it will only exacerbate the situation.
throwaway894345 6y ago
> I have seen tweets from blue check marks essentially calling for violence and Twitter didn't remove them As a Twitter user, I've been concerned with this as well. Clicking on the Minneapolis riots "trend", roughly 1/3 of the top tweets were promoting violence while the overwhelming majority of the remainder were merely sympathetic toward the violence, with only a small sliver denouncing the violence. Note that I don't follow violent or far-left accounts (generally a-political tech accounts, and I'll unfollow people who have especially authoritarian or hateful views in either direction), yet these are overwhelmingly promoted to me (in general, not just in the particular case of the MN riots) either in trends or in the random "here, have this extreme, toxic Tweet from another follower of someone you follow" Tweets that Twitter tosses into my feed. I'm not sure that Twitter is actively promoting extreme left-wing views (it could be that Twitter's user base is really just so far left that its algorithms just can't find any moderate content for me or something), but I don't blame anyone for thinking it does. EDIT: I'm aware this is a controversial topic, but I'm curious if I'm being downvoted because people don't believe my characterization of my timeline/trends or because my tone was less than thrilled with the volume of left-wing tweets I'm shown or something else. I'm a heretic and I don't deserve my Internet Points, so take them away, but indulge my curiosity about your specific objections! :)
- arminiusreturns 6y ago
  It's because lots of people don't want to admit the issues with the current state of affairs with big-tech social media, such as lopsided and selective enforcement of the rules...
ken 6y ago
> If Twitter is going to police people, it needs to be across the board. That assumes that all users on Twitter are equal. By Twitter's own rules [1], there are two classes of users. Elected officials are held to a different standard. That's why this tweet is hidden behind a click, rather than removed. That's why Trump hasn't been banned despite repeatedly violating the TOS that he agreed to when he signed up for his account. It makes sense to me that if elected officials (a tiny fraction of the population who already have a much bigger voice than the common citizen) are allowed to break the plebeian rules, then social media platforms should be more willing to point out when they're doing so. [1]: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/public-interest https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/public-intere...
- koheripbal 6y ago
  Can you cite other politicians that have been subject to these rules?
  - vharuck 6y ago
    A Chinese official, for one https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/28/technology/trump-twitter-fact-check.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/28/technology/trump-twitter-...
- thejynxed 6y ago
  To be fair, in regard's to Trump's Twitter account, a Federal judge has already ruled that Twitter absolutely may not remove his account, and likewise, he may not block people who insult his spray tan, because it's a de facto public forum for interacting with the POTUS.
  - joshuamorton 6y ago
    > ruled that Twitter absolutely may not remove his account I just skimmed through that ruling, and couldn't find this. Could you cite where she ruled that twitter couldn't remove his account?
rhegart 6y ago
I’ve seen hundreds of extreme violence towards cops including death and worse. I’ve reported many and nothing happens. Some have many likes and retweets including by blue check marks. The justification of violence and racism towards a certain race and to cops is Alex Jones conspiracy level stupid. The bias is insane to any regular person
- theaino 6y ago
  It's going to be interesting when you come to the end and are reviewing your life, realizing that you decided to spend what little time you have on this planet being the volunteer gestapo misguidedly trying to defend militarized police from the words of civilians who are upset that they are killing unarmed citizens.
  - dang 6y ago
    Personal attacks will get you banned here. No more of this on HN, please. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.
dmode 6y ago
Twitter has literally bend over backwards for Trump. They have said that they will not remove him not matter how much he violates their ToS. If even after that it is seen as "silencing their voice", you know it is a bad faith argument. Just the other day he retweeted something heinous about "dead Democrats" and Twitter let that tweet stand. At some point, don't you have to live up to some principles instead of always be scared of bad faith arguments ?
goldenManatee 6y ago
I imagine other factors have to do with the technicalities of executing on this, and the user’s visibility and “viral-ity”. On the technical, you can automate the job and have awkward success sometimes if you don’t get a human to intervene and verify what the algo’s flag as potential violation tweets. Now considering the user, the user’s number of followers, whether they are public figures (so because elected, celebrity, activist, etc. reasons) or whether the tweet has gone viral (regardless of the user’s pre-existing popularity). These kinds of things influence because someone with visibility and audience making calls to violence or some other questionable act is distinct in how actionable others around the world are to react to such a figure making questionable statements. So it’s not a matter of policing everyone, because there’s a lot of nuance and challenges. And the answer isn’t to give up because that’s just cowardice in the face of a big social challenge. We’ve got to carefully experiment and wisely assess these cases.
sagichmal 6y ago
> If Twitter is going to police people, it needs to be across the board. Otherwise it's just a weird censorship that is targeting one person and can easily be seen as political. There is no such requirement. Twitter is well within its rights and ethically totally clear to "police" a sentiment from the President of the United States, while letting much more severe sentiments from egg accounts go un-policed. Moderation isn't an algorithm, a binary condition, applied perfectly to an input set to get a deterministic output. It's subjective, and that's both OK and correct.
- dependenttypes 6y ago
  > ethically totally clear to "police" a sentiment from the President of the United States, while letting much more severe sentiments from egg accounts go un-policed Debatable
Jestar342 6y ago
Erm, what? This is just not true, and is a false dichotomy. Moderation is hard. Always has been. Stuff will slip through the cracks. POTUS has the most popular (and currently most controversial - note, that's _controversial_ not _extreme_ or some other morph) so it's easy to see why Twitter are on top of it. Other blue-checked accounts, whilst more "important" than unverified, just simply don't compare to the importance and prevalance of POTUS' account.
- efitz 6y ago
  If most of the mistakes happen in one direction, then I would argue that there's some other mechanism at work than just "mistakes". Update: data https://quillette.com/2019/02/12/it-isnt-your-imagination-twitter-treats-conservatives-more-harshly-than-liberals/ https://quillette.com/2019/02/12/it-isnt-your-imagination-tw... Update: admission https://www.vox.com/2018/9/14/17857622/twitter-liberal-employees-conservative-trump-politics https://www.vox.com/2018/9/14/17857622/twitter-liberal-emplo...
  - gameswithgo 6y ago
    Maybe conservative america needs to appeal to people smart enough to start their own tech companies, so they can compete in the free market to do things the way they like.
    - zarkov99 6y ago
      Maybe companies should be idelogical neutral instead? Or do you also think liberal America should start to appeal to conscientious and patriotical people so they can have their own armed forces and police?
      - techntoke 6y ago
        Ideological neutral by whose standards? If conservatives tend to violate TOS more frequently and get blocked/banned, then that is neutral. They are simply enforcing their TOS based on the content.
ta1234567890 6y ago
You are technically correct, however the same logic applies to every type of enforcement. Ideally the enforcement of every rule should apply to everyone equally, but in practice we see the police behave differently towards different people, we see tax audits and penalties applied mostly to people without the means to defend themselves and we see how apparently the law and government rules don't even apply to Trump. The world still goes on and we somehow deal with all of this. Twitter enforcing their own rules is just going to be more of the same.
riffic 6y ago
> I have seen tweets from blue check marks essentially calling for violence and Twitter didn't remove them Moderation, at scale, is a very tough problem to solve.
jds375 6y ago
I think many people aren't taking into account the visibility of Trump's twitter. Trump making violence-glorifying or factually incorrect or medically dangerous tweets is far different from other twitter user's or even other blue-check-mark users because his reach is far wider than the vast majority of those users. Further, Trump has an established track record of doing this repeatedly. Those two facts establish a clear and rational basis for targeting his tweets specifically. Completely agree with your second point though (not that there is any collusion to silence conservatives - but that this whole situation will be taken that way and used to energize that base).
- 12elephant 6y ago
  There is video of Twitter employees admitting there are on-going efforts to silence "shitty people" on the platform. It's quite clear who these "deplorables" or "shitty people" are. What is the most annoying about this, though, is the tweet they chose to "Fact Check". (I use quotation marks because "fact checking" by linking to CNN and WaPo is not fact-checking at all, rather an appeal to a different authority.) The tweet they chose to police is speculation about the future. If I say the boiling point of water is 50 degrees, you can fact-check that. Its an objective truth that water boils at 100c. If I say mail-in votes will cause election fraud, you cannot prove or disprove that statement. All you can do is show me someone else's statements, opinions, and predictions on the matter. Given that Trump says so much objectively false stuff, it annoys me they didn't go after one of those tweets instead. You catch the most flak when you're over the target...
  - gknoy 6y ago
    > If I say mail-in votes will cause election fraud, you cannot prove or disprove that statement I'm not sure I believe that claim. I think that looking at past history of voting fraud shows pretty conclusively that _vote by mail_ fraud has always been a very low percentage. Sure, it's possible that _some_ fraud might happen, but looking at data from Oregon, it's happened two times in twenty years (_from my reading of the conservative database that was linked somewhere yesterday -- sorry :) -- I might be off by an order of magnitude, but it's still small_). That seems like an _extremely_ low incidence rate, and seems a small price to may for the idea that maybe more people will be likely to vote, due to not having to stand in line at polling places, deal with vote suppression efforts, or even just because it's more convenient to fill it out on your own schedule ahead of time. Now, many will say that states like CA and other large states, who haven't had a large-scale rollout of vote-by-mail with the history and planning that Oregon had, will face more fraud than Oregon did. I think that's actually a very believable point -- we are not going to have a perfect rollout. However, I'd also like to point out that we've had two decades of electronic voting machines that have been proven to be absolutely insecure, as well as numerous cases in other states of voters who have been unable to vote because their polling places were under-staffed or closed too early. Voting by mail is a proven method that scales well to ensure that larger portions of the populace have the opportunity to vote. It's being considered in light of wanting to limit in-person gatherings. It very unlikely that it's some conspiracy to promote fraud.
fulldecent2 6y ago
China is the leader here, let's briefly study how they do social media -- this will show where US is going. They review everything after an account gets so many likes. The platform is responsible. One day I was doing something dangerous on a live stream -- immediately banned for 48 hours and got a human message. Posts with factual errors about current events -- immediately removed, on pain of platform liability. Human reply. No AI. The platform is liable for what is published on the platform in the same way a newspaper is liable for what is published in the newspaper. The liability is changing and so yes Twitter is going to police people. I welcome this change in liability.
- daseiner1 6y ago
  China is a leader in nothing but theft and herd mentality
jpadkins 6y ago
> essentially calling for violence Ironic that a microblogging service leads to lack of nuance. who would of thought? My first read of trump's tweet was explaining the national guard has to move in because 'looting leads to shooting'. As in, we have to restore order to avoid more people getting shot. At the time Trump tweeted this, there was already one death from a pawn store owner shooting a looter. So depending on your priors, your PoV, Trump was either promoting violence or trying to quell violence. culture of 140 characters = more confusion, more division, more tribalism. If we valued well written, long form writing from our leaders we wouldn't be in this mess. Instead, we value twitter and leaders who make great slogans and can push people's buttons in 140 characters.
- apcragg 6y ago
  Don't be so disingenuous. The phrase is famous and it obviously is obviously not intent on trying to quell violence. I know to be contrarian and radically 'rational' is popular among tech types but it doesn't mean you have to bury your head in the sand when what is being said is so clear.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    "The phrase is famous"? I don't recall ever hearing it before. Could you stop assuming that we all know what it is intended to mean, and that we are therefore burying our heads in the sand, and actually explain what you think it means and why it means that? [Edit: Reading further down the discussion gives some context. That's... disturbing. Still, you are also assuming bad faith on the part of others, and that's not how things are supposed to be done on HN.]
  - jpadkins 6y ago
    yes the phrase is famous, but the tweet was not clear at all. Trump was talking about bringing in the national guard, and who is doing the shooting is totally up to interpretation. You can reasonably read that tweet as "we need to establish order before the shooting starts" That does not imply the national guard will be doing the shooting.
rayiner 6y ago
Seriously. Twitter and Facebook are full of liberals talking about "bringing back the guillotine" but I don't see any of that getting censored.
- harryh 6y ago
  I'm pretty conflicted on this issue overall, but I don't think it's entirely nuts to hold the President of the US to a higher standard than many other accounts.
- matwood 6y ago
  When someone is high profile they will be treated differently. That's just the nature of being high profile. Trump has said a lot of things that would have gotten you or I banned if Twitter noticed. Twitter let Trump slide for a long time, and is finally moderating some of the most egregious examples. And to be clear, anyone calling for violence should also have similar actions taken against them. But, me shouting get out the guillotine to my 10 followers is different than POTUS saying the same thing.
- originalvichy 6y ago
  Be completely honest to a stranger: When you see content like you are talking about, do you report it using the websites’ tools? Please be honest.
  - thejynxed 6y ago
    I don't report anything except kiddie diddlers, cuz, in general, reporting is totally lame.
- exclusiv 6y ago
  I know what you mean, but that's an insult to actual liberals. You're referring to leftists. They hijacked "liberal" some time ago.
Simulacra 6y ago
Only so much as the media and government lets twitter have this within their rights. If it was Peter Theil running Twitter, I don't believe we would see the same reaction from the media.
vmh1928 6y ago
There's also the question of who it is that is predicting violence (or giving a dog whistle signal to his followers that violence is OK.) This is not a blue check mark living in his mom's basement predicting (or asking) for violence, it's the chief executive of the United States.
giarc 6y ago
I think you also have to know if the tweet was reported. Obiviously twitter isn't going to read all tweets so only ones that are reported can they act upon.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
so they must police across the board or police none? Well since it's impossible to police everything what should they do? In my view at the end of the day Twitter can police whoever they want and users can leave if they don't like it.
GordonS 6y ago
As much as I hate Trump, this isn't a "Trump thing". This was someone with a large following who was very clearly and overtly threatening to turn a situation into a bloodbath.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

youeseh 6y ago

Instead of being the police, Twitter should do what Rotten Tomatoes does. There are plenty of people - journalists and researchers analyzing the facts behind what celebrities say. They should analyze what the analysts say and display a score.

tantalor 6y ago
[insert black mirror joke reference]
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
Even better, directly link the research on the topic, from both sides. Instead of drawing a conclusion on behalf of everybody, give people what they need to draw their own.
- 12elephant 6y ago
  That's what already happens. Look at the comments on any prominent person's tweet and you'll see people going back and forth about what's right and what's false. No one needs to do anything here. People can research and find stuff out for themselves, and come to their own conclusions.
  - gurkendoktor 6y ago
    Absolutely, I am someone who always reads comments (yes, even on YouTube) because they often serve as a poor man's fact check. However, Twitter apparently has plans to sabotage that: https://9to5mac.com/2020/01/08/twitter-limit-replies-feature/ https://9to5mac.com/2020/01/08/twitter-limit-replies-feature...
gurkendoktor 6y ago
The problem then becomes, who decides which tweets to fact-check? If most politicians at the higher levels are liars, singling out a few of them is unfair even if Trump is notorious for it. Twitter can clearly not fact-check every single tweet on its platform. But what if they did it for every tweet (maybe from a verified account) that X people report for being untruthful? Trump would look bad even if Twitter held everyone to the same standard, and the blue checkmark would come with some responsibility not to lie, so why not?
- youeseh 6y ago
  Who decides which Tweats to fact-check: If someone is famous enough, you can bet that there will be at least one reporter frothing for the opportunity to be counted among trusted fact-checkers. Twitter might have to figure out a balance among reviewers but thats a lot less work than fact-checking each message.

kingnight 6y ago

The valley being an echo chamber doesn’t necessarily mean those implementing this have their heads in the sand. It can’t be all perfectly achieved, but to do nothing, as they were before, could be now determined to be a worse case than providing these annotations to flagrant misuse by the highest impact profile that they can’t do away with entirely.

sevenf0ur 6y ago
The issue is that the rules are being enforced selectively. Just this week Twitter fact checked Trump's opinion on mail voter fraud by linking to other experts' opinions. It seems more like a move to influence the election rather than enforcing the rules.
- ecf 6y ago
  Let’s entertain the possibility that Twitter is doing this to influence the election. So what? There’s no law prohibiting these types of businesses from supporting a political candidate. They could plaster a huge “Vote For X” banner at the top of every person’s profile. Don’t like it? Don’t use it. It’s not like Twitter is tax-exempt which would prohibit it from endorsing candidates like Churches.
  - quantummkv 6y ago
    > It’s not like Twitter is tax-exempt which would prohibit it from endorsing candidates like Churches. Twitter is not tax-exempt but is certainly lawsuit-exempt to a large degree. The entire reason twitter has not be sued into oblivion for the actions of it's users is because of the protections Section 230[1] grants them. But here is the pinch. Section 230 protection applies only as long as you act as platforms for 3rd party speech. But when they start plastering "Vote for X" banners on their websites of their own violations, they go from being platforms for 3rd party speech to 1st party publishers. That effectively removes the Section 230 protections twitter enjoys. I much as I hate to say it, Trump might be right this once. Twitter has stopped being a neutral platform enforcing consistent policies for quite some time now. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...

atomi 6y ago

It's important context to note that Trump's tweets are the most widely publicized. As such it should be self evident as to why they would focus their limited resources to policing tweets such as his.

paulgb 6y ago

> If Twitter is going to police people, it needs to be across the board. One way to look at this is that that's exactly what Twitter has started doing. The president violated the TOS, and got the treatment prescribed under the TOS. His EO yesterday essentially asked for everyone to be treated in accordance with the TOS, so he's (ironically) getting exactly what he asked for. It remains to be seen whether, in compliance with the EO, they apply this to everyone in a transparent and uniform way from now on. I hope they do.

dfxm12 6y ago
Wait, Trump, the guy who had a platform plank complaining about his predecessors' use of executive orders as "power grabs" [0], actually issued an executive order about Twitter's TOS? 0 - https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-10-19/trump-presidential-executive-orders https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-10-19/trump-...
- bcrosby95 6y ago
  It's nothing new. Politics is a team based sport. My brother calls Obama "King Obama" but is still a huge fan of Trump. I've discussed some of this stuff with him: in his eyes, Obama did stuff he shouldn't have, so Trump can do stuff he shouldn't.
  - dfxm12 6y ago
    I can understand how people can rationalize some of his failures, but, the second time around, how can someone vote for a guy who has failed on delivering on a very simple and basic campaign promise, one that he can do that unilaterally? “The country wasn’t based on executive orders,” Trump said at a South Carolina campaign stop in February 2016. “Right now, Obama goes around signing executive orders. He can’t even get along with the Democrats, and he goes around signing all these executive orders. It’s a basic disaster. You can’t do it.” I know I'm probably pissing in the wind here, but I was looking forward to a president ceding some of his power back to congress, so this one really sticks in my craw. Oh well.

hpoe 6y ago

There is a worse side effect that comes from conservatives feeling that they have been silenced, as people feel like they have less and less say in a political process they are more and more likely to start employing means outside of it. The real risk here is that if more and more outlets for conservative voices are silenced, whether for good cause or not, this will reinforce the narrative that many of them have that they are the defenders of the truth and right and there is a vast conspiracy operating to seize their guns, deprive them of their rights, and whatever else they can imagine. As that happens there becomes more and more moral justification and greater and greater need there is seen to employ violence in end of their goals. Ultimately the more and more "dangerous" opinions and people who share those opinions are silenced the more and more dangerous they become in reality. EDIT: The nature of this comment is intended to be observational not advocational.

luckydata 6y ago
you're saying it like it's not already happening, and it's completely divorce from any actual reality or perception. When they say "I'm being silenced" they are simply pushing buttons they know work with more reasonable people, they are just using the "system" to their advantage. Conservatives in the USA are not a good faith actor and should never be taken at face value.
- hpoe 6y ago
  The problem with your response if you've fundementally divided the world into the fearless, social justice serving left and the corrupt, evil, fascist, right. It can be assumed that the far right is not going to change their mind at any point; however the majority of the world isn't far right or far left. Many people are moderates that could go one way or the other. By designating everyone who doesn't agree with you as "the right" that can't every act in good faith and is irredeemable you galvanize the more moderates. This incident won't have a substantive impact on the far right, but it may cause a change in opinion in more moderate voices. Essentially be advocating this black and white extremism you hurt your cause and play into the very narrative that those on the other side are saying.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

phailhaus 6y ago

Eh? Do you have any examples? This is nothing new, Twitter has been applying this standard to tweets for a very long time (it's part of their ToS!). It usually results in deleting your tweet or an outright ban. The only difference here is that they've kept the tweet up since they deem it to be in the public's interest.

formalsystem 6y ago
https://twitter.com/RaheemKassam/status/1266340243134963712 https://twitter.com/RaheemKassam/status/1266340243134963712 EDIT: Scroll down a bit, the original poster made their account private a few moments ago
- geofft 6y ago
  It's been a couple of hours - in general, saying stuff like that actually does in fact get Twitter's content moderation to kick in and force you to delete the tweet, and I regularly see folks who aren't conservative get temporary suspensions for it.
  - dunkelheit 6y ago
    > It's been a couple of hours She posted that tweet more like 11 hours ago. Since that time it has become somewhat infamous - I've seen it in my deliberately not-politicized timeline and separately here on HN. What is the chance their content moderation team hasn't seen it?
- augustt 6y ago
  Damaging property is not violence.
  - dnissley 6y ago
    By pretty much every definition it is violence.
  - Avicebron 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

modwest 6y ago

it's almost like the president of the united states is held to a higher standard than some random jackanapes with a "blue check" next to their name.

geofft 6y ago

There is absolutely some truth that the mainstream media and tech giants are colluding to silence conservatives - the truth is that the mainstream "conservative" position in the US happens to involve behavior that runs afoul of neutral content norms (don't threaten people with violence, don't call them racial slurs, don't dox people, etc.) disproportionately more often than people with other political beliefs. Sure, there are some people of other political persuasions who are "essentially" calling for violence, but there's a large gap between "as MLK said, a riot is the language of the unheard, so I can't condemn it" (and even that is hardly a universal position among non-conservatives) and "I, the actual commander-in-chief of an actual military, am telling that military to use violence against my own people" + "We all think this is good and proper, do it." This is an uncomfortable, rude, politically incorrect truth - but we're not going to have a productive discussion about "silencing conservatives" if we can't admit it. It is absolutely possible to advocate for the political positions of conservatives (looking through the 2016 GOP platform, for instance - limited government, federalism, avoiding trade deficits, repeal of Dodd-Frank, auditing the Fed, right-to-work, opposition to abortion, support for the electoral college, removing gray wolves from the endangered species list, etc., etc.) without behavior that runs afoul of the norms. If there's a case where Twitter suspends someone for opposing Dodd-Frank, then we should absolutely criticize Twitter. (And I think there's a legitimate discussion to be had about where the line is about criticizing the government's pandemic response vs. spreading misinformation, for instance.) But saying "Conservatives really like to advocate for shooting people without due process, Twitter doesn't permit the advocacy of shooting people without due process, therefore Twitter is biased against conservatives" is more of a statement about conservatives than about Twitter.

cryptica 6y ago
I think this is actually a balanced argument. HN should have a setting so that the most downvoted posts show up at the top of the page... That would save me a lot of scrolling to get to the unpleasant but accurate content.

jrockway 6y ago

I don't think any reasonable person would think that Twitter supports violence simply because they aren't removing posts from people who don't matter. When you have limited resources, you have to apply them in a way that has the most impact. Making sure the President of the United States is adhering to their ToS seems like a good place to start. Remember that Twitter gets something like 500 million tweets per day. If it took someone working minimum wage 15 seconds to decide whether or not a tweet violates their ToS, Twitter would spend 30 million dollars a day on this, and the results probably wouldn't even be that good. So they don't do that, instead focusing resources where they will have the most impact. I am also pretty sure they are not trying to censor conservative viewpoints. If Joe Biden starts telling people to go shoot looters or that Mitch McConnell murdered one of his aides, I am sure they will add a little note to those tweets.

pfkurtz 6y ago
This is correct.

jtbayly 6y ago

I'm just going to say again that I can't for the life of me understand why people are in agreement that this tweet glorifies violence. It is a call to stop being violent lest violence increase. Looting always leads to shooting. This is a simple fact. I'm horrified that so many people think me saying that is glorifying violence. I don't understand it in the slightest. Seeing this tweet by Trump get silenced absolutely convinces me that there is a conspiracy. Not so much against the right, but against truth.

dmode 6y ago
You should read up on the history of the phrase "when looting starts, shooting starts"
- koheripbal 6y ago
  I read up on it's use in 1967. ...and it didn't really add anything. Looting leads to police/national guard having to restore order through violence. There's no hidden meaning here.
  - thethethethe 6y ago
    It was used by a racist police chief in reference to black protesters during the _civil rights movement_, which I think we can all agree is on the right side of history. The parallels are pretty clear to me, I’m not sure what you are missing here
    - will4274 6y ago
      The fact that the police chief was racist doesn't make him wrong. He can be both racist and correct that looting generally leads to shooting.
      - thethethethe 6y ago
        > He can be both racist and correct that looting generally leads to shooting. It appears as though you are deliberately misinterpreting this statement to confirm your biases. This statement is obviously intended to be interpreted as “the state will shoot looters (and possibly other protesters) when there is looting during a political protest”. If you genuinely don’t see it this way after considering all of contextual history of racial violence and injustice, it must benefit you to have your head in the sand

dmode 6y ago

Twitter regularly hides violent tweets. It is just algo based and nothing to do with conservatives. I mean, it may seem biased if conservatives are posting a lot of violent tweets

kube-system 6y ago

The enforcement of rules in rarely applied with 100% accuracy in any realm. Not because the rule enforcers support some infractions, but because they have limited manpower and must prioritize their tasks.

fullshark 6y ago

It will absolutely backfire. Twitter is now going to editorialize re: their users' content. It's impossible to do this without being perceived as being biased, and twitter is already a partisan hellscape, it will only exacerbate the situation.

throwaway894345 6y ago

> I have seen tweets from blue check marks essentially calling for violence and Twitter didn't remove them As a Twitter user, I've been concerned with this as well. Clicking on the Minneapolis riots "trend", roughly 1/3 of the top tweets were promoting violence while the overwhelming majority of the remainder were merely sympathetic toward the violence, with only a small sliver denouncing the violence. Note that I don't follow violent or far-left accounts (generally a-political tech accounts, and I'll unfollow people who have especially authoritarian or hateful views in either direction), yet these are overwhelmingly promoted to me (in general, not just in the particular case of the MN riots) either in trends or in the random "here, have this extreme, toxic Tweet from another follower of someone you follow" Tweets that Twitter tosses into my feed. I'm not sure that Twitter is actively promoting extreme left-wing views (it could be that Twitter's user base is really just so far left that its algorithms just can't find any moderate content for me or something), but I don't blame anyone for thinking it does. EDIT: I'm aware this is a controversial topic, but I'm curious if I'm being downvoted because people don't believe my characterization of my timeline/trends or because my tone was less than thrilled with the volume of left-wing tweets I'm shown or something else. I'm a heretic and I don't deserve my Internet Points, so take them away, but indulge my curiosity about your specific objections! :)

arminiusreturns 6y ago
It's because lots of people don't want to admit the issues with the current state of affairs with big-tech social media, such as lopsided and selective enforcement of the rules...

ken 6y ago

> If Twitter is going to police people, it needs to be across the board. That assumes that all users on Twitter are equal. By Twitter's own rules [1], there are two classes of users. Elected officials are held to a different standard. That's why this tweet is hidden behind a click, rather than removed. That's why Trump hasn't been banned despite repeatedly violating the TOS that he agreed to when he signed up for his account. It makes sense to me that if elected officials (a tiny fraction of the population who already have a much bigger voice than the common citizen) are allowed to break the plebeian rules, then social media platforms should be more willing to point out when they're doing so. [1]: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/public-interest https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/public-intere...

koheripbal 6y ago
Can you cite other politicians that have been subject to these rules?
- vharuck 6y ago
  A Chinese official, for one https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/28/technology/trump-twitter-fact-check.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/28/technology/trump-twitter-...
thejynxed 6y ago
To be fair, in regard's to Trump's Twitter account, a Federal judge has already ruled that Twitter absolutely may not remove his account, and likewise, he may not block people who insult his spray tan, because it's a de facto public forum for interacting with the POTUS.
- joshuamorton 6y ago
  > ruled that Twitter absolutely may not remove his account I just skimmed through that ruling, and couldn't find this. Could you cite where she ruled that twitter couldn't remove his account?

rhegart 6y ago

I’ve seen hundreds of extreme violence towards cops including death and worse. I’ve reported many and nothing happens. Some have many likes and retweets including by blue check marks. The justification of violence and racism towards a certain race and to cops is Alex Jones conspiracy level stupid. The bias is insane to any regular person

theaino 6y ago
It's going to be interesting when you come to the end and are reviewing your life, realizing that you decided to spend what little time you have on this planet being the volunteer gestapo misguidedly trying to defend militarized police from the words of civilians who are upset that they are killing unarmed citizens.
- dang 6y ago
  Personal attacks will get you banned here. No more of this on HN, please. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.

dmode 6y ago

Twitter has literally bend over backwards for Trump. They have said that they will not remove him not matter how much he violates their ToS. If even after that it is seen as "silencing their voice", you know it is a bad faith argument. Just the other day he retweeted something heinous about "dead Democrats" and Twitter let that tweet stand. At some point, don't you have to live up to some principles instead of always be scared of bad faith arguments ?

goldenManatee 6y ago

I imagine other factors have to do with the technicalities of executing on this, and the user’s visibility and “viral-ity”. On the technical, you can automate the job and have awkward success sometimes if you don’t get a human to intervene and verify what the algo’s flag as potential violation tweets. Now considering the user, the user’s number of followers, whether they are public figures (so because elected, celebrity, activist, etc. reasons) or whether the tweet has gone viral (regardless of the user’s pre-existing popularity). These kinds of things influence because someone with visibility and audience making calls to violence or some other questionable act is distinct in how actionable others around the world are to react to such a figure making questionable statements. So it’s not a matter of policing everyone, because there’s a lot of nuance and challenges. And the answer isn’t to give up because that’s just cowardice in the face of a big social challenge. We’ve got to carefully experiment and wisely assess these cases.

sagichmal 6y ago

> If Twitter is going to police people, it needs to be across the board. Otherwise it's just a weird censorship that is targeting one person and can easily be seen as political. There is no such requirement. Twitter is well within its rights and ethically totally clear to "police" a sentiment from the President of the United States, while letting much more severe sentiments from egg accounts go un-policed. Moderation isn't an algorithm, a binary condition, applied perfectly to an input set to get a deterministic output. It's subjective, and that's both OK and correct.

dependenttypes 6y ago
> ethically totally clear to "police" a sentiment from the President of the United States, while letting much more severe sentiments from egg accounts go un-policed Debatable

Jestar342 6y ago

Erm, what? This is just not true, and is a false dichotomy. Moderation is hard. Always has been. Stuff will slip through the cracks. POTUS has the most popular (and currently most controversial - note, that's _controversial_ not _extreme_ or some other morph) so it's easy to see why Twitter are on top of it. Other blue-checked accounts, whilst more "important" than unverified, just simply don't compare to the importance and prevalance of POTUS' account.

efitz 6y ago
If most of the mistakes happen in one direction, then I would argue that there's some other mechanism at work than just "mistakes". Update: data https://quillette.com/2019/02/12/it-isnt-your-imagination-twitter-treats-conservatives-more-harshly-than-liberals/ https://quillette.com/2019/02/12/it-isnt-your-imagination-tw... Update: admission https://www.vox.com/2018/9/14/17857622/twitter-liberal-employees-conservative-trump-politics https://www.vox.com/2018/9/14/17857622/twitter-liberal-emplo...
- gameswithgo 6y ago
  Maybe conservative america needs to appeal to people smart enough to start their own tech companies, so they can compete in the free market to do things the way they like.
  - zarkov99 6y ago
    Maybe companies should be idelogical neutral instead? Or do you also think liberal America should start to appeal to conscientious and patriotical people so they can have their own armed forces and police?
    - techntoke 6y ago
      Ideological neutral by whose standards? If conservatives tend to violate TOS more frequently and get blocked/banned, then that is neutral. They are simply enforcing their TOS based on the content.

ta1234567890 6y ago

You are technically correct, however the same logic applies to every type of enforcement. Ideally the enforcement of every rule should apply to everyone equally, but in practice we see the police behave differently towards different people, we see tax audits and penalties applied mostly to people without the means to defend themselves and we see how apparently the law and government rules don't even apply to Trump. The world still goes on and we somehow deal with all of this. Twitter enforcing their own rules is just going to be more of the same.

riffic 6y ago

> I have seen tweets from blue check marks essentially calling for violence and Twitter didn't remove them Moderation, at scale, is a very tough problem to solve.

jds375 6y ago

I think many people aren't taking into account the visibility of Trump's twitter. Trump making violence-glorifying or factually incorrect or medically dangerous tweets is far different from other twitter user's or even other blue-check-mark users because his reach is far wider than the vast majority of those users. Further, Trump has an established track record of doing this repeatedly. Those two facts establish a clear and rational basis for targeting his tweets specifically. Completely agree with your second point though (not that there is any collusion to silence conservatives - but that this whole situation will be taken that way and used to energize that base).

12elephant 6y ago
There is video of Twitter employees admitting there are on-going efforts to silence "shitty people" on the platform. It's quite clear who these "deplorables" or "shitty people" are. What is the most annoying about this, though, is the tweet they chose to "Fact Check". (I use quotation marks because "fact checking" by linking to CNN and WaPo is not fact-checking at all, rather an appeal to a different authority.) The tweet they chose to police is speculation about the future. If I say the boiling point of water is 50 degrees, you can fact-check that. Its an objective truth that water boils at 100c. If I say mail-in votes will cause election fraud, you cannot prove or disprove that statement. All you can do is show me someone else's statements, opinions, and predictions on the matter. Given that Trump says so much objectively false stuff, it annoys me they didn't go after one of those tweets instead. You catch the most flak when you're over the target...
- gknoy 6y ago
  > If I say mail-in votes will cause election fraud, you cannot prove or disprove that statement I'm not sure I believe that claim. I think that looking at past history of voting fraud shows pretty conclusively that _vote by mail_ fraud has always been a very low percentage. Sure, it's possible that _some_ fraud might happen, but looking at data from Oregon, it's happened two times in twenty years (_from my reading of the conservative database that was linked somewhere yesterday -- sorry :) -- I might be off by an order of magnitude, but it's still small_). That seems like an _extremely_ low incidence rate, and seems a small price to may for the idea that maybe more people will be likely to vote, due to not having to stand in line at polling places, deal with vote suppression efforts, or even just because it's more convenient to fill it out on your own schedule ahead of time. Now, many will say that states like CA and other large states, who haven't had a large-scale rollout of vote-by-mail with the history and planning that Oregon had, will face more fraud than Oregon did. I think that's actually a very believable point -- we are not going to have a perfect rollout. However, I'd also like to point out that we've had two decades of electronic voting machines that have been proven to be absolutely insecure, as well as numerous cases in other states of voters who have been unable to vote because their polling places were under-staffed or closed too early. Voting by mail is a proven method that scales well to ensure that larger portions of the populace have the opportunity to vote. It's being considered in light of wanting to limit in-person gatherings. It very unlikely that it's some conspiracy to promote fraud.

fulldecent2 6y ago

China is the leader here, let's briefly study how they do social media -- this will show where US is going. They review everything after an account gets so many likes. The platform is responsible. One day I was doing something dangerous on a live stream -- immediately banned for 48 hours and got a human message. Posts with factual errors about current events -- immediately removed, on pain of platform liability. Human reply. No AI. The platform is liable for what is published on the platform in the same way a newspaper is liable for what is published in the newspaper. The liability is changing and so yes Twitter is going to police people. I welcome this change in liability.

daseiner1 6y ago
China is a leader in nothing but theft and herd mentality

jpadkins 6y ago

> essentially calling for violence Ironic that a microblogging service leads to lack of nuance. who would of thought? My first read of trump's tweet was explaining the national guard has to move in because 'looting leads to shooting'. As in, we have to restore order to avoid more people getting shot. At the time Trump tweeted this, there was already one death from a pawn store owner shooting a looter. So depending on your priors, your PoV, Trump was either promoting violence or trying to quell violence. culture of 140 characters = more confusion, more division, more tribalism. If we valued well written, long form writing from our leaders we wouldn't be in this mess. Instead, we value twitter and leaders who make great slogans and can push people's buttons in 140 characters.

apcragg 6y ago
Don't be so disingenuous. The phrase is famous and it obviously is obviously not intent on trying to quell violence. I know to be contrarian and radically 'rational' is popular among tech types but it doesn't mean you have to bury your head in the sand when what is being said is so clear.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  "The phrase is famous"? I don't recall ever hearing it before. Could you stop assuming that we all know what it is intended to mean, and that we are therefore burying our heads in the sand, and actually explain what you think it means and why it means that? [Edit: Reading further down the discussion gives some context. That's... disturbing. Still, you are also assuming bad faith on the part of others, and that's not how things are supposed to be done on HN.]
- jpadkins 6y ago
  yes the phrase is famous, but the tweet was not clear at all. Trump was talking about bringing in the national guard, and who is doing the shooting is totally up to interpretation. You can reasonably read that tweet as "we need to establish order before the shooting starts" That does not imply the national guard will be doing the shooting.

rayiner 6y ago

Seriously. Twitter and Facebook are full of liberals talking about "bringing back the guillotine" but I don't see any of that getting censored.

harryh 6y ago
I'm pretty conflicted on this issue overall, but I don't think it's entirely nuts to hold the President of the US to a higher standard than many other accounts.
matwood 6y ago
When someone is high profile they will be treated differently. That's just the nature of being high profile. Trump has said a lot of things that would have gotten you or I banned if Twitter noticed. Twitter let Trump slide for a long time, and is finally moderating some of the most egregious examples. And to be clear, anyone calling for violence should also have similar actions taken against them. But, me shouting get out the guillotine to my 10 followers is different than POTUS saying the same thing.
originalvichy 6y ago
Be completely honest to a stranger: When you see content like you are talking about, do you report it using the websites’ tools? Please be honest.
- thejynxed 6y ago
  I don't report anything except kiddie diddlers, cuz, in general, reporting is totally lame.
exclusiv 6y ago
I know what you mean, but that's an insult to actual liberals. You're referring to leftists. They hijacked "liberal" some time ago.

Simulacra 6y ago

Only so much as the media and government lets twitter have this within their rights. If it was Peter Theil running Twitter, I don't believe we would see the same reaction from the media.

vmh1928 6y ago

There's also the question of who it is that is predicting violence (or giving a dog whistle signal to his followers that violence is OK.) This is not a blue check mark living in his mom's basement predicting (or asking) for violence, it's the chief executive of the United States.

giarc 6y ago

I think you also have to know if the tweet was reported. Obiviously twitter isn't going to read all tweets so only ones that are reported can they act upon.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago

so they must police across the board or police none? Well since it's impossible to police everything what should they do? In my view at the end of the day Twitter can police whoever they want and users can leave if they don't like it.

GordonS 6y ago

As much as I hate Trump, this isn't a "Trump thing". This was someone with a large following who was very clearly and overtly threatening to turn a situation into a bloodbath.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]