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Twitter locked my account (again) for an obvious joke
- throwawaylinux 5y agoI wonder if the "well they're a private company" brigade of mostly-newfound libertarians will ever concede that lots of private companies are heavily regulated for the good of society. My guess is yes, the second they are on the receiving side of discrimination and unfairness.
- roenxi 5y agoThe pure libertarian position here is "they have a right to do this, but it is a bad idea". Twitter is working in one of the purest free-markets imaginable. There is simply no barrier to entry around the market of serving 140 character strings on the internet. If they aren't a good steward of their niche they will be replaced and no government regulation is needed.
- throwawaylinux 5y ago> The pure libertarian position here What do you mean by "here"? That you are a pure libertarian and have this position? > is "they have a right to do this, but it is a bad idea". What does "it's a bad idea" mean? That it is detrimental to twitter, or that it's detrimental to others? > Twitter is working in one of the purest free-markets imaginable. There is simply no barrier to entry around the market of serving 140 character strings on the internet. If they aren't a good steward of their niche they will be replaced and no government regulation is needed. That's not true at all. User base and network effects give huge advantages to incumbents.
- roenxi 5y agoHere as in "here, in this comment thread". If you want to argue that it is a good idea for Twitter to censor jokes in the public square then go ahead. But that argument just is not sustainable. The future will have jokes in it, no matter how humourless Twitter tries to be.
- throwawaylinux 5y agoOkay so if that is the pure libertarian position here, what does "it's a bad idea" mean exactly? The pure libertarian definition of that is that it is detrimental to twitter. I'm wondering how that is.
- roenxi 5y agoWho do you think is benefiting from banning this tweet? It is completely mundane, harmless and disinteresting. Threatens nobody. Deleting it just riles people up and upset Mr. Johnson to nobody's gain. Compare it with a good moderation system, like HN, where a comment gets greyed out by mass opinion, then everyone moves on. Twitter already has a great mechanism to achieve that called "ignoring the stupid tweet". Banning it was a bad idea. The moderator wasted their time, Mr. Johnson was upset and nobody has come away better off.
- throwawaylinux 5y agoI don't know who benefits and I don't purport to know. Maybe he said other things they disliked (e.g., was critical of China or Saudi or Nike) and they were looking for an excuse to ban him. Maybe their moderation system is crap. I don't know. You were the one who said it was a bad idea. I actually don't think you actually know enough to make that statement, but if it such bad things continue on there, why haven't they been out-competed?
- roenxi 5y agoAh, I see. I didn't actually think it was a bad idea, I personally think it is not an important enough tweet to matter. I said the pure libertarian position is that it is a bad idea. Libertarianism prizes freedom of speech and unnecessarily blocking someone from expressing themselves (unless there is a really good reason!) is deviating form the pure position. I've made some arguments but you're right; I can't actually know.
- 5y ago
- josephcsible 5y ago> There is simply no barrier to entry There's an incredibly high barrier to entry: a powerful network effect.
- roenxi 5y agoA network effect won't protect them when they eventually screw up and start banning their own star content creators. If they haven't already. Their power of moderation can only be exercised if thought leaders agrees they are good moderators. Network effects aren't magic. If an opinion is banned on Twitter then the network that supports it will have to form somewhere else.
- throwawaylinux 5y agoBut if they have been and are doing what is already considered a "bad idea" and the market is totally free with no significant barrier to entry, why haven't they long ago been out-competed by others who do not engage in this bad idea behavior?
- roenxi 5y agoBecause they've historically been doing a pretty good job? Because most Twitter users really like Twitter's moderation? Competitors are already growing at breakneck pace and we just haven't seen it come through into conventional wisdom? How am I meant to know I'm not an oracle. But displaying tweets is literally the easiest thing that is done on the modern web after displaying a small static site. There is absolutely no libertarian argument that everyone deserves to have their tweet put up with a "Twitter" logo next to it. There is no need at all for regulation here. You can argue that forcing Twitter to host tweets is a good idea, but that is going to be damn tricky to square with libertarianism. If this market is an example of high barriers to entry then there is no such thing as low barriers to entry. I could probably put up a mastodon instance over a weekend, all the technical work has already been done.
- throwawaylinux 5y ago
- MisterBastahrd 5y agoThey permanently suspended my account because I made a joke about a chocolate fountain to a parody account of Biden's dog due to the insensitive nature of the account's tweet (something about the Texas ice storm DURING the statewide outage that left my family without power for a week). So much fun sleeping in your car because there are no hotel rooms and it's 42 degrees inside your house. Is it a free speech issue? No, it's an asshole issue, and I guess there's enough assholery to go around for everybody.
- perihelions 5y ago>"Orwellian power of the big tech companies" If we're debating which dystopian fiction [0] is the metaphor for the abuse Twitter ML is inflicting on you, I suggest With Folded Hands (1947) [1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_takeovers_in_popular_culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_takeovers_in_popular_cultur... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_Folded_Hands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_Folded_Hands
- lmilcin 5y agoI can recommend With Folded Hands. I think I listened to it on Audible, there is a bunch of anthologies of short SF stories. It is not long, but it is for sure scary. Scary when you look outside and you start seeing similarities.
- baybal2 5y ago> abuse Twitter ML This is not ML doing it, but legions of underpaid Indians, and North Africans. The later are mostly needed, and recruited because of EU antiterrorism censorship. (Do terrorists never speak anything other than Arabic?)
- donkeybeer 5y agoThese days, usually also English or various European languages, and they wave this flag https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Flag_of_Germany_%281935%E2%80%931945%29.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Flag_of_...
- didibus 5y agoI have no real point to the article itself, but since the OP says it's the 4th time they had their account locked. I wonder if people who get their account locked are more likely to get it locked more than once? I'm curious if there is a tendency some people have in their style of humor or topics that leads to a much higher likelihood of being flagged?
- distrill 5y agoI suppose I'm not presenting any data here, but of course? I mean anyone who publishes anything approaching dark humor is going to be closer to the line than something like a children's cartoon twitter account.
- pram 5y agoThe “delete tweet” dialogue has always struck me as hilariously dystopian. They could do it themselves, but it has to be a voluntary act of self censorship. You may be welcomed back to civilization and our good graces if you delete the wrongthink, brother.
- ekianjo 5y ago> but it has to be a voluntary act of self censorship Probably the next step will be to ask you to whip yourself ten times for a bad tweet, just for good measure.
- dudul 5y agoRepeat after me: 2+2=5
- roenxi 5y agoPsychologically, it'll probably get the response Twitter is looking for. It will make people behave. It does look like an abuse tactic to me though. It is completely rejecting the idea that your opinion of what you said could have merits that Twitter doesn't see - the dynamics that that is calling on are pretty gross. In a relationship; such behaviour is a red flag.
- lavabiopsy 5y agoAs usual with these posts, I don't really find this convincing, that joke is not obvious to someone who doesn't know this person. The tweet can very easily be misinterpreted by someone who does not get the joke. Please keep in mind that this is not just a Twitter thing, many decentralized communities may also not want to host jokes about self-harm or suicide.
- catillac 5y agoI think it’s obvious to an everyday English speaking person, this is a take on a regular saying, like “costing an arm and a leg” or “sell my firstborn” or something. Though if I were this Twitter person, I would definitely avoid any metaphors involving things like this if they’ve been banned or whatever so many times. Still, as an average person, it isn’t taken as anything but a riff on a saying.
- lavabiopsy 5y agoYes, the thing is that Twitter is also accessible to people who are not everyday English speakers.
- ameister14 5y agoInteresting - so from the perspective of a non-english speaker, would you say that a phrase like 'that cost an arm and a leg!' is likely to offend you?
- lavabiopsy 5y agoI can't answer that question because I am a native English speaker, but I can say, I would probably not use that phrase around non-native English speakers. It's confusing and could be misinterpreted. Generally one would want to avoid using idioms like that when trying to cross a language barrier.
- ameister14 5y ago
- new_guy 5y agoAt some point when you get 'mistakenly' kicked off Twitter for the nth time, there has to be a point where you just go fuck this and either throw up your own site or move to mastodon.
- rufus_foreman 5y agoIf Twitter blocks your account in the morning, Twitter is an asshole. If Twitter blocks your account all day...yeah Twitter is still an asshole.
- networkid 5y ago"To have an account in a social network is not a human right"
- Nextgrid 5y agoThere's an argument for it to become a right if the social network intentionally tries to displace other channels of communication and forbids interoperability.
- ipaddr 5y agoOr a computer or a job or clothes. But they are a requirement for society.
- networkid 5y agoAnd yeah, "It is not a human right to be an internet user" in general.
- Brian_K_White 5y agoThe human right to basic fairness and reason is generic and applies to everything. There is nothing magical about social media web services that means it's ok to abuse and discriminate there vs anywhere else. It also doesn't require a "human right" to say "hey this sucks". That is a valid thing to observe and discuss regardless if the complainer has any special legal rights being violated.
- Ekaros 5y agoActually I wonder if that would not fall under Article 27 of UN's Universal declaration of Human Rights: "Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits."
- smitty1e 5y agoThe passing of Norm MacDonald (may he rest in peace) means that such dark humor no longer has a leg to stand on.
- 93po 5y agoclearly not if you follow the author's advice
- networkid 5y agoInstall your own mastodon instance or join an existing one. That would be much more better than naive complains on centralized social networks driven by venture capitals.
- Digory 5y agoI spent a dozen hours looking at Mastodon, trying to find a quick-spin-up solution. It ain't easy to toot. Finally went with Jekyll and github page, just to get down short bits here and there.
- baybal2 5y agoI personally knew a man who got Facebook permaban for 1. Having a long beard, 2. Simply speaking Arabic while in company of armed men in camo going on a hunting trip No amount of appeals helped him
- dudul 5y agoIs there any study showing that twitter following or like count or whatever translates into more sales for businesses? The way I see it, Twitter is just a super loud minority that doesn't represent at all the general population.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ekianjo 5y ago> Individually, you can take steps to own your content, like I've done here by publishing my own blog on my own domain and a publicly accessible RSS feed. Let's not forget Mastodon exists. It has a much smaller reach than Twitter, but the more Twitter does this kind of things, the more it will become attractive.
- sydthrowaway 5y agoFor a social network, that's a horrible name. Sounds more like a Heavy Metal band.
- lostmsu 5y agoYou're not wrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(band) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(band)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- loop22 5y agoThe first submission of this post in July only has a single comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27921133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27921133
- paulpauper 5y agoSoon the only safe thing to tweet will be cat pics. Unless you have a decent sized following getting the attention of a large company is impossible.
- bitwize 5y agoSever your leg, please. It's the greatest day. (Can't wait for the Homestar Runner fans to be sent to Twitter jail for quoting that.)
- bradleyankrom 5y agoMy account was locked a few months ago for saying that a US Senator had “strong Gargamel energy.” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- skinkestek 5y agoI keep reporting comments across the web that says someone or whole groups of people should be killed. Response sadly varies a bit with who said it and who they wanted dead.
- cirrus3 5y ago> I appeal to the internet to publicly shame Twitter and get my account unlocked. Nah dude, GLWT.
- bArray 5y agoThis appears to be the slippery slope of freedom of speech we spoke about when people on Twitter were clapping when various people got banned. Enjoy the bed you made for yourselves. > Individually, you can take steps to own your content, like I've done here by publishing my own blog on my own domain and a publicly accessible RSS feed. If you have something to say - anything at all - then please setup alternative ways to say it. The number of things being censored is only increasing, we are yet to see any relaxation in free speech. Something you say jokingly today is almost guaranteed to get you banned in 10 years time when political feelings change and context is removed. > Yet in the end it doesn't matter, because RSS readership is very low nowadays compared to social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. You can try to be decentralized, but if your decentralized content isn't linked on the big centralized networks, it might as well not exist. This is very true. I think we need to do more to make RSS accessible to the average person (read: non-tech people). Obviously big-social media giants are diametrically opposed to this idea, as RSS is somewhat decentralized and they make their money by being a centralized platform. For a while now I have been thinking about an RSS-based social media platform with opt-in personalized censorship... The idea being to re-use existing (and well supported) technologies, rather than re-design everything. One thing I can't really think of how to handle elegantly is comments/replies between multiple platforms - every solution I can think of involves inventing something new. If anybody has ideas on this I would definitely be interested to hear them.
- lavabiopsy 5y ago>This appears to be the slippery slope of freedom of speech we spoke about when people on Twitter were clapping when various people got banned. Enjoy the bed you made for yourselves. I don't know which people you are talking about specifically or who was clapping, but the slippery slope also goes the other way -- when moderators are afraid to ban people for potentially abusive language then it's very easy for the discourse to start slipping and become toxic. Even if you disagree with twitter's stance, please do your part to ensure that doesn't happen, we all deserve a place where we can be treated respectfully and have intellectually stimulating conversations. >Something you say jokingly today is almost guaranteed to get you banned in 10 years time when political feelings change and context is removed. I don't understand what the issue is here, if this is talking about twitter, you can just delete an old tweet if it's upsetting people later. The article even shows how twitter has a process to let you delete the tweet and restore your account.
- BrandoElFollito 5y agoIs free speech in the US absolute? I am wondering if a site can say "only praise of politician X allowed, what is praising is at our discretion" Or "no women allowed"? If so, cannot Twitter have their own rules about what is correct and what is incorrect?
- nradov 5y agoFree speech in the US isn't absolute, but the Constitution prevents the government from banning most types of speech. By contrast private companies are free to ban anything they want on their platforms, for any reason or no reason at all. Whether it's morally right for powerful tech companies to use that power is another question entirely.
- rastafang 5y agoMost companies including Twitter, Reddit, HN, etc want to control speech and ban an increasingly large number of accounts (or shadowban when they don't have a spine).