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He's not asking Twitter to protect him from murder. He's asking them to do their damn job so the platform cannot be used to facilitate a smear campaign that mak

He's not asking Twitter to protect him from murder. He's asking them to do their damn job so the platform cannot be used to facilitate a smear campaign that makes it easy to get away with murder. It's a very reasonable request.

xwdv 4y ago
No, this is not Twitter’s problem, and if they fulfill this request it just goes down a rabbit hole that eventually creates more liability for the company than what they want to take on. Twitter has taken the correct action here.
- jona-f 4y ago
  Wow, you're morally bankrupt. It's nice to see a well written article like that on the frontpage of this site, but unfortunately the venture capital fueled business model proposed by ycombinator is at the heart of the problem. Liability my ass. This is some disgusting dystopian bullshit. Also if you talk about liability, heard about the Streisand effect? Public opinion about these corporations is low and i think twitter itself isn't doing so well lately. Good riddance.
  - sroussey 4y ago
    There is a long history of liability in the USA when you take on editorializing roles. This was broken by the Communication Decency Act (CDA section 230) but case law has is slowly moving back. It is a valid concern. If CDA 230 were taken away, I wouldn’t be surprised if common carrier laws fell as well. The telephone companies can listen to all phone calls, so they may need to editorialize (mute, disconnect, report to police) on various illegal calls.
    - jona-f 4y ago
      Twitter's response was so soulless, it's unclear if it's a bot. This is what i find most unacceptable. Others have expanded on the censorship problem in this thread.
      - xwdv 4y ago
        A response should be delivered quickly and efficiently, and in no uncertain terms. Filling it with heart and soul just gives false hope that some kind of appeal to emotion can be achieved. But it cannot.
        jona-f 4y ago
        Exactly, quickly and efficiently, cause we have to scale to the heavens to please the investors. No time for human decency. I'm not talking about "some kind of appeal to emotion". This is about human rights in a fascist regime. At some point you have to take a stance. There is so much twitter could have done better. The first step would be to take this serious. The likes of twitter, facebook, uber, amazon, ... have made the world worse for the sake of their shareholders and you are complicit. I'm sure your salary is fine though.
        xwdv 4y ago
        A company does not have to take a stance, it is not an individual. Members of the company are free to take whatever stance they wish personally.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
MichaelCollins 4y ago
I have a very low opinion of twitter and certainly wish they'd do a better job. But the premise of twitter as a shield against state-sponsored kidnapping or murder seems flimsy at best.
- DoreenMichele 4y ago
  That's not the premise. This kind of bullshit is exactly how disempowered groups get painted into a corner. Sexual assault doesn't typically begin with violent rape. It ends there. It begins with a million small forms of disrespect. Political crap follows the same pattern. If you think it doesn't fucking matter, what the hell do you care how this goes? It matters to him. If you don't care, what's wrong with saying "Twitter should simply do its job, man!"
  - dcow 4y ago
    I think you're applying too much nuance to this. Reading all the comments, I think everyone generally wants good for the author. There are just a few different ways to communicating that. Roughly they seem to be: 1. epmathy and twitter do better 2. empathy and this is what you get with twitter 3. empath and practical advice You seem to be railing against (2). Personally I find the bone you're picking to really be besides the point. Most everyone is empathizing with the author's struggle. Nobody here is telling the author to go fuck themselves. Nobody is condoning what Twitter is doing. And certainly nobody is disrespecting the author or supporting the misinformation. So your comment really feels like a non sequitur.
  - Bakary 4y ago
    The premise is that the guy lacks power. Twitter has very little incentive to help him, and a strong disincentive to piss off the Pakistani government. Wallowing in outrage is pointless as they have to cynically maneuver until they have results. Part of that strategy might involve stirring up people emotionally towards action, but internalizing the martyrdom doesn't achieve anything on its own. Ironically, this is precisely the type of martyrdom that helps these tech companies strategically in the long term. From their POV, all they have to do is throw a performative bone once in a while and wait for people's outrage rush to ebb away.
bell-cot 4y ago
Morally? Yes, a very reasonable request. OTOH - is there any large real-world corporation which has ever gotten itself into a sustained info-war conflict with a well-armed and angry nation state, for the purpose of protecting one "ordinary" person from that nation state? I'm guessing "no".
- DoreenMichele 4y ago
  He says he's a journalist. That used to mean something. So it's rather dismissive and disrespectful to characterize him as an ordinary person with scare quotes no less. If these platforms feel unable to moderate fairly due to fear of foreign governments, perhaps they should tuck tail and keep their pussy selves out of the conflict entirely. I'm not impressed with an argument of "We want the money involved but we can't make any meaningful effort to actually enforce the rules we claim we have. Your country is too tough for my sissy self to man up in. I still want the money though."
  - bell-cot 4y ago
    Okay - replace '"ordinary" person' with some polite phrase of your choice, which still makes it clear that the victim is not a head of state, ambassador, top military officer, Speaker of the House, Fortune 50 CEO, etc., etc. No, I am not arguing that your idealism is morally wrong. I am arguing that the real world very often functions in ways which bear little resemblance to your ideals. No amount of idealism about "the gutter should have been stronger, and the ladder more stable, and..." will change the fact that my brother fell off a roof when young. Nor erase the injuries which he sustained. When I or people I care about are interacting with gutters and ladders, I stay very alert, and strive for "zero idealistic thoughts". And - this sad state of affairs is nothing new. Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, The Brass Check, and other works (about the deep and systematic moral failings of corporations, journalists, etc.) over a century ago.
    - DoreenMichele 4y ago
      Idealism? I'm not an idealist. I'm a pragmatist. But the internet allows businesses to operate virtually in de facto war zones. This is getting people killed when the business tries to act like they don't need to account for that fact. If they physically went into a war zone to sell products and it was getting people killed, would that merit a "Too bad, so sad. Gotta make money, doncha know. Can't be worried about niggling details like not getting our customers cavalierly killed."
karaterobot 4y ago
What should Twitter do in this case? You say "their damn job", but their job is to apply their content policies, which they say they are doing. Given only the tweets linked in the article, I can see how a moderator would look at them and not find that they are obviously breaking any rules. They may be false accusations, but Twitter has not agreed to do independent investigations of every report by a user, or take on the responsibility of trying to guess hidden motives of the accused. Twitter moderation is not a sanctuary, or a refuge, or a crusader for justice, it's a pro forma box-checking policy and never claimed to be more than that.
- DoreenMichele 4y ago
  I've been a moderator. Decisions are made contextually. One of his complaints is they clearly don't know what the hell is going on in Pakistan and this is a root cause of their mishandling of things. It is a completely reasonable criticism.
  - dnissley 4y ago
    Is it really reasonable? Twitter fails regularly to take such context into consideration when making moderation decisions in their home country. How could it be reasonable to expect them to get it right when it comes to the context of a foreign country?
    - satellite2 4y ago
      Assuming Twitter is serving the Pakistani market, making revenue and paying taxes there, it seems reasonable to ask for the same quality controls as elsewhere. In particular hiring Pakistanis for moderation shouldn't be economically devastating for their operations in this country. So on top of being a very reasonable request it should be a minimum requirement of their operating model.
      - tsimionescu 4y ago
        And why do you think Pakistani Twitter moderators would feel empowered to take down tweets by government officials willing to torture and murder? The request for Twitter to help in this case only makes sense if it assumed it will be taken by moderators living outside of Pakistan, who don't have to fear government reprisal for their actions.
yibg 4y ago
Problem is who determines if it’s a smear campaign? The author claims it was, and I tend to believe him but I haven’t investigated. Have you? And then, how determines if it’s extreme enough to warrant some action? In the ideal world sure there would be an army of people investigating every case in detail. But then 1) Twitter becomes the arbiter of truth and 2) definitely can’t scale.
- DoreenMichele 4y ago
  138 journalists killed in Pakistan since 1990 https://www.dawn.com/news/1595257 https://www.dawn.com/news/1595257 At least 39 journalists killed in US due to their work...since 1937 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_i... These risk levels are not alike.
- Uehreka 4y ago
  Oh come the fuck on. People on HN need to get over this: At a certain point people and organizations need to stop pretending that “both sides could in theory have a point” and actually take a stand. “But what if the stand they take is opposite the one you think they should take? How would you like that?” I wouldn’t, I’d badger them to take my position. Hopefully I’d succeed, and if I didn’t, I’d join a long line of people who were right but unsuccessful. So it goes, life sucks sometimes.
  - dcow 4y ago
    I don’t want communication platform organizations taking any stands anywhere ever. That sounds dystopian and horrible. Deleting these Tweets won’t change a damn thing and might even be more harmful (what if the author didn't know they were being targeted because Twitter deleted everything, then they hopped back home because Twitter made them feel safe and fuzzy, and the got detained and tortured, for instance). What will change things is people getting off their keyboards and taking stands. You cannot pwn the responsibility off on Twitter moderators. Only the truth can hide the lies.

xwdv 4y ago

No, this is not Twitter’s problem, and if they fulfill this request it just goes down a rabbit hole that eventually creates more liability for the company than what they want to take on. Twitter has taken the correct action here.

jona-f 4y ago
Wow, you're morally bankrupt. It's nice to see a well written article like that on the frontpage of this site, but unfortunately the venture capital fueled business model proposed by ycombinator is at the heart of the problem. Liability my ass. This is some disgusting dystopian bullshit. Also if you talk about liability, heard about the Streisand effect? Public opinion about these corporations is low and i think twitter itself isn't doing so well lately. Good riddance.
- sroussey 4y ago
  There is a long history of liability in the USA when you take on editorializing roles. This was broken by the Communication Decency Act (CDA section 230) but case law has is slowly moving back. It is a valid concern. If CDA 230 were taken away, I wouldn’t be surprised if common carrier laws fell as well. The telephone companies can listen to all phone calls, so they may need to editorialize (mute, disconnect, report to police) on various illegal calls.
  - jona-f 4y ago
    Twitter's response was so soulless, it's unclear if it's a bot. This is what i find most unacceptable. Others have expanded on the censorship problem in this thread.
    - xwdv 4y ago
      A response should be delivered quickly and efficiently, and in no uncertain terms. Filling it with heart and soul just gives false hope that some kind of appeal to emotion can be achieved. But it cannot.
      - jona-f 4y ago
        Exactly, quickly and efficiently, cause we have to scale to the heavens to please the investors. No time for human decency. I'm not talking about "some kind of appeal to emotion". This is about human rights in a fascist regime. At some point you have to take a stance. There is so much twitter could have done better. The first step would be to take this serious. The likes of twitter, facebook, uber, amazon, ... have made the world worse for the sake of their shareholders and you are complicit. I'm sure your salary is fine though.
        xwdv 4y ago
        A company does not have to take a stance, it is not an individual. Members of the company are free to take whatever stance they wish personally.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

MichaelCollins 4y ago

I have a very low opinion of twitter and certainly wish they'd do a better job. But the premise of twitter as a shield against state-sponsored kidnapping or murder seems flimsy at best.

DoreenMichele 4y ago
That's not the premise. This kind of bullshit is exactly how disempowered groups get painted into a corner. Sexual assault doesn't typically begin with violent rape. It ends there. It begins with a million small forms of disrespect. Political crap follows the same pattern. If you think it doesn't fucking matter, what the hell do you care how this goes? It matters to him. If you don't care, what's wrong with saying "Twitter should simply do its job, man!"
- dcow 4y ago
  I think you're applying too much nuance to this. Reading all the comments, I think everyone generally wants good for the author. There are just a few different ways to communicating that. Roughly they seem to be: 1. epmathy and twitter do better 2. empathy and this is what you get with twitter 3. empath and practical advice You seem to be railing against (2). Personally I find the bone you're picking to really be besides the point. Most everyone is empathizing with the author's struggle. Nobody here is telling the author to go fuck themselves. Nobody is condoning what Twitter is doing. And certainly nobody is disrespecting the author or supporting the misinformation. So your comment really feels like a non sequitur.
- Bakary 4y ago
  The premise is that the guy lacks power. Twitter has very little incentive to help him, and a strong disincentive to piss off the Pakistani government. Wallowing in outrage is pointless as they have to cynically maneuver until they have results. Part of that strategy might involve stirring up people emotionally towards action, but internalizing the martyrdom doesn't achieve anything on its own. Ironically, this is precisely the type of martyrdom that helps these tech companies strategically in the long term. From their POV, all they have to do is throw a performative bone once in a while and wait for people's outrage rush to ebb away.

bell-cot 4y ago

Morally? Yes, a very reasonable request. OTOH - is there any large real-world corporation which has ever gotten itself into a sustained info-war conflict with a well-armed and angry nation state, for the purpose of protecting one "ordinary" person from that nation state? I'm guessing "no".

DoreenMichele 4y ago
He says he's a journalist. That used to mean something. So it's rather dismissive and disrespectful to characterize him as an ordinary person with scare quotes no less. If these platforms feel unable to moderate fairly due to fear of foreign governments, perhaps they should tuck tail and keep their pussy selves out of the conflict entirely. I'm not impressed with an argument of "We want the money involved but we can't make any meaningful effort to actually enforce the rules we claim we have. Your country is too tough for my sissy self to man up in. I still want the money though."
- bell-cot 4y ago
  Okay - replace '"ordinary" person' with some polite phrase of your choice, which still makes it clear that the victim is not a head of state, ambassador, top military officer, Speaker of the House, Fortune 50 CEO, etc., etc. No, I am not arguing that your idealism is morally wrong. I am arguing that the real world very often functions in ways which bear little resemblance to your ideals. No amount of idealism about "the gutter should have been stronger, and the ladder more stable, and..." will change the fact that my brother fell off a roof when young. Nor erase the injuries which he sustained. When I or people I care about are interacting with gutters and ladders, I stay very alert, and strive for "zero idealistic thoughts". And - this sad state of affairs is nothing new. Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, The Brass Check, and other works (about the deep and systematic moral failings of corporations, journalists, etc.) over a century ago.
  - DoreenMichele 4y ago
    Idealism? I'm not an idealist. I'm a pragmatist. But the internet allows businesses to operate virtually in de facto war zones. This is getting people killed when the business tries to act like they don't need to account for that fact. If they physically went into a war zone to sell products and it was getting people killed, would that merit a "Too bad, so sad. Gotta make money, doncha know. Can't be worried about niggling details like not getting our customers cavalierly killed."

karaterobot 4y ago

What should Twitter do in this case? You say "their damn job", but their job is to apply their content policies, which they say they are doing. Given only the tweets linked in the article, I can see how a moderator would look at them and not find that they are obviously breaking any rules. They may be false accusations, but Twitter has not agreed to do independent investigations of every report by a user, or take on the responsibility of trying to guess hidden motives of the accused. Twitter moderation is not a sanctuary, or a refuge, or a crusader for justice, it's a pro forma box-checking policy and never claimed to be more than that.

DoreenMichele 4y ago
I've been a moderator. Decisions are made contextually. One of his complaints is they clearly don't know what the hell is going on in Pakistan and this is a root cause of their mishandling of things. It is a completely reasonable criticism.
- dnissley 4y ago
  Is it really reasonable? Twitter fails regularly to take such context into consideration when making moderation decisions in their home country. How could it be reasonable to expect them to get it right when it comes to the context of a foreign country?
  - satellite2 4y ago
    Assuming Twitter is serving the Pakistani market, making revenue and paying taxes there, it seems reasonable to ask for the same quality controls as elsewhere. In particular hiring Pakistanis for moderation shouldn't be economically devastating for their operations in this country. So on top of being a very reasonable request it should be a minimum requirement of their operating model.
    - tsimionescu 4y ago
      And why do you think Pakistani Twitter moderators would feel empowered to take down tweets by government officials willing to torture and murder? The request for Twitter to help in this case only makes sense if it assumed it will be taken by moderators living outside of Pakistan, who don't have to fear government reprisal for their actions.

yibg 4y ago

Problem is who determines if it’s a smear campaign? The author claims it was, and I tend to believe him but I haven’t investigated. Have you? And then, how determines if it’s extreme enough to warrant some action? In the ideal world sure there would be an army of people investigating every case in detail. But then 1) Twitter becomes the arbiter of truth and 2) definitely can’t scale.

DoreenMichele 4y ago
138 journalists killed in Pakistan since 1990 https://www.dawn.com/news/1595257 https://www.dawn.com/news/1595257 At least 39 journalists killed in US due to their work...since 1937 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_i... These risk levels are not alike.
Uehreka 4y ago
Oh come the fuck on. People on HN need to get over this: At a certain point people and organizations need to stop pretending that “both sides could in theory have a point” and actually take a stand. “But what if the stand they take is opposite the one you think they should take? How would you like that?” I wouldn’t, I’d badger them to take my position. Hopefully I’d succeed, and if I didn’t, I’d join a long line of people who were right but unsuccessful. So it goes, life sucks sometimes.
- dcow 4y ago
  I don’t want communication platform organizations taking any stands anywhere ever. That sounds dystopian and horrible. Deleting these Tweets won’t change a damn thing and might even be more harmful (what if the author didn't know they were being targeted because Twitter deleted everything, then they hopped back home because Twitter made them feel safe and fuzzy, and the got detained and tortured, for instance). What will change things is people getting off their keyboards and taking stands. You cannot pwn the responsibility off on Twitter moderators. Only the truth can hide the lies.