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Yeah I agree that Elon is full of shit, but there's a little lie in here that needs to be addressed: > normal company operation in good faith But it wasn't "n

Yeah I agree that Elon is full of shit, but there's a little lie in here that needs to be addressed: > normal company operation in good faith But it wasn't "normal company operation" because they completely disregarded preexisting company policy for dealing with political figures. Here are political figures that they didn't ban (who were inciting violence) > 20. In June 2018, Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei tweeted, “#Israel is a malignant cancerous tumor in the West Asian region that has to be removed and eradicated: it is possible and it will happen.” > 21. In October 2020, the former Malaysian Prime Minister said it was “a right” for Muslims to “kill millions of French people.” But they banned the former president. What they were doing wasn't "normal company operation", it was a bunch of power tripping people in upper management (like Roth) who "took it upon themselves" to disregard preexisting company policies for some odd reason You can dislike Trump/Elon/et al, but the "normal company operation" bit is an outright distortion of what actually happened source: https://nitter.net/bariweiss/status/1602370518585221120#m https://nitter.net/bariweiss/status/1602370518585221120#m

bobmaxup 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_suspensions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_suspensions
threeseed 4y ago
> because they completely disregarded preexisting company policy for dealing with political figures That was the company policy. Public figures were largely exempt from the rules except when their tweet was egregious. Not sure why you think this is some conspiracy when it was blatantly obvious.
- spritefs 4y ago
  > Public figures were largely exempt from the rules except when their tweet was egregious. So are you saying that the two tweets I posted above aren't egregious? > Not sure why you think this is some conspiracy when it was blatantly obvious. I can't find that allegation anywhere in my comment. What was there was the obvious inconsistency between not banning e.g. the Ayatollah for the above comment, but banning the former president Can you find any tweets from the former president that were even comparable to the two tweets I posted?
  - threeseed 4y ago
    > but banning the former president Trump was banned for inciting an insurrection which is illegal.
    - spritefs 4y ago
      > Trump was banned for inciting an insurrection which is illegal. So we should ban everyone who's suspected of doing something illegal then? They don't even have to be charged with any crimes, we just have to be convinced that they did something illegal in order to have grounds for banning them
      - dale_glass 4y ago
        A ban on a social media site is something done by a private party, not a function of the justice system. So yes, bans can be done without any legal action. And really that's how it should be for the sake of proper function. Otherwise I could just spam HN over and over, until HN actually managed to sue me and win the lawsuit. Can you imagine how long that would take? Mind you, spam is very much free speech, so it'd be interesting to see which law that would be breaking.
      - rnk 4y ago
        It was pretty far past suspected. If I was a person of influence and I was sending mobs to break into govt buildings I would have been arrested, especially if it went on for months leading up to it and I said I love what you are doing, you are beautiful. We've tried to keep presidents out of actual criminal implications, we probably made a big mistake as a country when ford pardoned nixon. I do doubt trump's attempt to overturn the election, encourage sedition etc will lead to him facing actual criminal sanctions.
      - nitwit005 4y ago
        Multiple countries have passed laws forcing social media companies to remove content seen as inciting violence. They don't have a choice but to remove that sort of content.
      - deleted 4y ago
smoldesu 4y ago
The larger problem isn't the lack of uniform enforcement. Our actual problem was trusting Twitter to remain impartial in the first place. It's crazy how many people bought into the "global town hall" bullshit Elon Musk pedaled, and now it's unsurprising to watch him backpedal now that the reigns are in his hands. Hopefully people realize that trusting $COMPANY will never deliver you anything good. We either regulate the things we care about, or let stuff like this happen. Either way, the world keeps spinning.
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
  This is why we need regulation surrounding these things. It's a balancing act between individual and social rights (individual in this case being twitter), but these companies very explicitly build to scale to be a sort of "town hall" and in doing so start having very large social influence the likes of which no one in history has ever had. When they get to this scale there has to be extra responsibility here for the good of society as a whole.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    Well, yes and no. Yes, we need regulation if we want to hold people accountable for what they say online. No, in the sense that discriminating between large and small services is a bad idea. Scale has nothing to do with it, smaller services don't deserve to get off scott-free just because they didn't hit 'Twitter-scale' yet. Again, the biggest issue here is the public misconception that Twitter (or any of the internet) is a benevolent platform. Legislation cannot change that.
    - ipaddr 4y ago
      Small platforms need to be held to a different standard. If you are the global village square platform worth 44 billion you get different rules compared to a wordpress blog with no traffic where you can make comments. Scale matters.
      - smoldesu 4y ago
mathlover2 4y ago
Have you considered that many people here actually work in companies and know how they work, meaning they don't need a media source to know that the Twitter files are bogus? In fact, most people here have brains and can think for themselves, and we actually don't rely on a media outlet for all our takes. Have you also considered that there is a huge difference between Khamenei and PMs saber rattling online against other countries (which was actually consistent with Twitter's then current policy of treating world leaders, Trump included, with a lenient hand) vs. a president not condemning and (very likely encouraging) an attempt by his own supporters seeking to overturn an election as said attempt was going on?
- spritefs 4y ago
  > a president not condemning and (very likely encouraging) So not condemning something (that is to say, choosing not to speak) and "very likely encouraging" (as opposed to actually encouraging) is somehow worse than calling for outright genocide? Your comment isn't really clear here. Are denying that the two comments I posted aren't contributing to violence that was actively going on at the time of their posting? And with regard to this: > Have you considered that many people here actually work in companies and know how they work, meaning they don't need a media source to know that the Twitter files are bogus? In fact, most people here have brains and can think for themselves, and we actually don't rely on a media outlet for all our takes. thanks for the copypasta :)
absentmoon 4y ago
Playing devil's advocate in Twitter's defense: Is there any public information about how twitter handled the two examples you provided at the end there? Do we know for sure they actively chose not to take any actions? If not, I'm not sure it is fair to claim they completely ignored them. They may have limited their reach via some kind of shadow banning. Action like that is harder to notice than an account ban. Also, since your examples predate the particular ban we are discussing, do we know for sure there weren't policy changes in between. Perhaps even because of examples like the ones you list. Personally, I wonder if Twitter might have a more American-centric view of the world and a higher sense of urgency for "events at home", so to speak. That could go some way to explaining what seems to be selective enforcement of their terms of service.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

bobmaxup 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_suspensions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_suspensions

threeseed 4y ago

> because they completely disregarded preexisting company policy for dealing with political figures That was the company policy. Public figures were largely exempt from the rules except when their tweet was egregious. Not sure why you think this is some conspiracy when it was blatantly obvious.

spritefs 4y ago
> Public figures were largely exempt from the rules except when their tweet was egregious. So are you saying that the two tweets I posted above aren't egregious? > Not sure why you think this is some conspiracy when it was blatantly obvious. I can't find that allegation anywhere in my comment. What was there was the obvious inconsistency between not banning e.g. the Ayatollah for the above comment, but banning the former president Can you find any tweets from the former president that were even comparable to the two tweets I posted?
- threeseed 4y ago
  > but banning the former president Trump was banned for inciting an insurrection which is illegal.
  - spritefs 4y ago
    > Trump was banned for inciting an insurrection which is illegal. So we should ban everyone who's suspected of doing something illegal then? They don't even have to be charged with any crimes, we just have to be convinced that they did something illegal in order to have grounds for banning them
    - dale_glass 4y ago
      A ban on a social media site is something done by a private party, not a function of the justice system. So yes, bans can be done without any legal action. And really that's how it should be for the sake of proper function. Otherwise I could just spam HN over and over, until HN actually managed to sue me and win the lawsuit. Can you imagine how long that would take? Mind you, spam is very much free speech, so it'd be interesting to see which law that would be breaking.
    - rnk 4y ago
      It was pretty far past suspected. If I was a person of influence and I was sending mobs to break into govt buildings I would have been arrested, especially if it went on for months leading up to it and I said I love what you are doing, you are beautiful. We've tried to keep presidents out of actual criminal implications, we probably made a big mistake as a country when ford pardoned nixon. I do doubt trump's attempt to overturn the election, encourage sedition etc will lead to him facing actual criminal sanctions.
    - nitwit005 4y ago
      Multiple countries have passed laws forcing social media companies to remove content seen as inciting violence. They don't have a choice but to remove that sort of content.
    - deleted 4y ago

smoldesu 4y ago

The larger problem isn't the lack of uniform enforcement. Our actual problem was trusting Twitter to remain impartial in the first place. It's crazy how many people bought into the "global town hall" bullshit Elon Musk pedaled, and now it's unsurprising to watch him backpedal now that the reigns are in his hands. Hopefully people realize that trusting $COMPANY will never deliver you anything good. We either regulate the things we care about, or let stuff like this happen. Either way, the world keeps spinning.

P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
This is why we need regulation surrounding these things. It's a balancing act between individual and social rights (individual in this case being twitter), but these companies very explicitly build to scale to be a sort of "town hall" and in doing so start having very large social influence the likes of which no one in history has ever had. When they get to this scale there has to be extra responsibility here for the good of society as a whole.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  Well, yes and no. Yes, we need regulation if we want to hold people accountable for what they say online. No, in the sense that discriminating between large and small services is a bad idea. Scale has nothing to do with it, smaller services don't deserve to get off scott-free just because they didn't hit 'Twitter-scale' yet. Again, the biggest issue here is the public misconception that Twitter (or any of the internet) is a benevolent platform. Legislation cannot change that.
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    Small platforms need to be held to a different standard. If you are the global village square platform worth 44 billion you get different rules compared to a wordpress blog with no traffic where you can make comments. Scale matters.
    - smoldesu 4y ago

mathlover2 4y ago

Have you considered that many people here actually work in companies and know how they work, meaning they don't need a media source to know that the Twitter files are bogus? In fact, most people here have brains and can think for themselves, and we actually don't rely on a media outlet for all our takes. Have you also considered that there is a huge difference between Khamenei and PMs saber rattling online against other countries (which was actually consistent with Twitter's then current policy of treating world leaders, Trump included, with a lenient hand) vs. a president not condemning and (very likely encouraging) an attempt by his own supporters seeking to overturn an election as said attempt was going on?

spritefs 4y ago
> a president not condemning and (very likely encouraging) So not condemning something (that is to say, choosing not to speak) and "very likely encouraging" (as opposed to actually encouraging) is somehow worse than calling for outright genocide? Your comment isn't really clear here. Are denying that the two comments I posted aren't contributing to violence that was actively going on at the time of their posting? And with regard to this: > Have you considered that many people here actually work in companies and know how they work, meaning they don't need a media source to know that the Twitter files are bogus? In fact, most people here have brains and can think for themselves, and we actually don't rely on a media outlet for all our takes. thanks for the copypasta :)

absentmoon 4y ago

Playing devil's advocate in Twitter's defense: Is there any public information about how twitter handled the two examples you provided at the end there? Do we know for sure they actively chose not to take any actions? If not, I'm not sure it is fair to claim they completely ignored them. They may have limited their reach via some kind of shadow banning. Action like that is harder to notice than an account ban. Also, since your examples predate the particular ban we are discussing, do we know for sure there weren't policy changes in between. Perhaps even because of examples like the ones you list. Personally, I wonder if Twitter might have a more American-centric view of the world and a higher sense of urgency for "events at home", so to speak. That could go some way to explaining what seems to be selective enforcement of their terms of service.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]