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The difference is that Twitter didn’t ban conservatives for their political views but for violating their terms of service. In Trump’s case that was continued c

by acdha 2y ago

The difference is that Twitter didn’t ban conservatives for their political views but for violating their terms of service. In Trump’s case that was continued calls for violence and election interference, more than a hypothetical concern after his followers made an unprecedented violent attack on the U.S. electoral process. As you can easily verify, most conservatives were never banned: the people who were banned made repeated, deliberate violations of the legal agreement that they accepted.

zo1 2y ago
And if those "Terms of Service" heavily aligns with left-wing ideology? Do we then finally concede that Twitter did, in fact, target or disproportionately affect non-left-wing users? Is our next point of discussion about whether we can allow such a huge societal discussion/debate tool to be aligned with a pre-defined set of principles that 50% of people don't agree with? Or rather, on a set of principles that we can't find more than 50% consensus on? Either way, this is just like normal government laws. One of the big criticisms that Libertarians have over laws is that they're not universally enforced, so they end up being selectively enforced, which just means that "those with power" wield the laws against those they don't like. Same goes here with platforms like Twitter. The rules are vague, opaque, and their enforcement is seemingly random and at the whims of some faceless entity behind their enforcement process. If we all knew these supposed "terms of service" and they did, in fact, have very clear rules and guidelines then there would be absolutely no room for conservatives or anyone else to cry about being targeted.
- MOARDONGZPLZ 2y ago
  But even if, as you argue, calling for violence against people is part of right wing ideology or culture, it still seems reasonable to prohibit that. We do have to draw a line somewhere even against things that may be ingrained in a particular culture and which may have a disproportionate effect on that culture. But we should examine these choices in a principled way. Still, prohibiting calls for violence doesn’t seem like a gray area…
  - zo1 2y ago
    I will not use calls for violence as an example for this argument I'm making. I specifically left it vague so we could all apply our own minds on it. But if i had to pick one it would be the Trans issue. Misgendering and having some rather "blunt" debates on this topic meant the platforms usually sided with the trans or left-wing party. As for calls of violence: there are many examples where anti-white and anti-right calls for violence and extermination go unpunished and swept under the rug to be memory holed. Let's start by making this a bad thing across the board.
    - acdha 2y ago
      > Misgendering and having some rather "blunt" debates on this topic meant the platforms usually sided with the trans or left-wing party. Do you have an examples?
      - zo1 2y ago
        It's written in their own documents/policies: https://web.archive.org/web/20230407140923/https:/help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hateful-conduct-policy https://web.archive.org/web/20230407140923/https:/help.twitt... The entire doc has an "aura" of being fair, and "protecting" the weak. But it ends up stifling debate and genuine discussion because report-brigades and coordinated attacks by left-wing institutions and left-wing activists (with way too much time on their hands because they are full-time activists) end up targeting right-wing individuals for benign and not-harassing behaviour. I've seen my fair share of anti-white and anti-republican hateful comments and calls for violence, that I don't know why you even need to see examples. Look for them everywhere, even on HN. Look, this is a very diffuse topic. You're not going to get a clear example and we don't know what was happening behind the scenes at Twitter. But it's very telling that most tech companies are predominantly left-wing donors and have left-wing ideologies. Even if they act to be as impartial as they can, their bias will show because they have anti-republican discriminatory hiring practices.
        acdha 2y ago
        So, to be clear, you’re saying that conservatism is synonymous with directly attacking “other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.”? I couldn’t agree with such a broad claim about millions of people.
- acdha 2y ago
  > And if those "Terms of Service" heavily aligns with left-wing ideology? First, they don’t - if they had, you would be able to provide an example rather than confabulating about imaginary scenarios. Second, private companies are generally not obligated to provide you services on your own terms. If a bar kicks you out from screaming threats at other patrons, your rights are not being violated - go find a place which welcomes you. Third, it’s not 50%, although I can understand why you’d make that up, but a fraction of a percent. Almost all conservatives were not banned because they didn’t repeatedly violate the terms of service. The ones who were kicked out were given warnings, chose to ignore them, and had the promised consequences.
gadders 2y ago
[dead]
- acdha 2y ago
  Look, we all know you’re making that up but if we take you at face value, you just defined conservatism as the beliefs bad enough to get Twitter’s famously hands-off moderators to act. Nobody got blocked for advocating for smaller government, business-friendly policies, or talking about their religious or family values – it was threats of violence, slurs, targeted harassment, election misinformation, etc. None of the conservatives I know would claim those as defining their beliefs, and they’d be rather insulted to have you define them that way.
  - labcomputer 2y ago
    > you just defined conservatism as the beliefs bad enough to get Twitter’s famously hands-off moderators to act. This sort of disingenuous reply really isn’t helpful. The GP was clearly accusing Twitter of enforcing their TOS for righty accounts, while not enforcing their TOS when lefty accounts would do similar things. I don’t think they are correct, but your rhetoric is just going to alienate people and makes your argument look weaker.
    - acdha 2y ago
      Can you provide any examples? The poster rather has been rather conspicuously unable to do so, which is hard to reconcile with the broad policy they’re claiming, especially when there are counter examples of accounts which were not blocked because Twitter gave more leeway to political accounts. The reason is simple: the things which got those accounts closed weren’t traditional conservative positions, and there were plenty of lefty/hard to classify accounts which were also suspended or banned for similar reasons but nobody is sticking up for their behavior and claiming it represents their larger political group.
      - gadders 2y ago
        Please stop lying. I gave you an example.
ImJamal 2y ago
They did not ban Trump for "continued calls for violence and election interference". Look at the two Tweets they used as a justification of his ban [1] > The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!! And > To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th. Of course, in the blog post, Twitter claims to have "assessed the two Tweets referenced above under our Glorification of Violence policy" If those two tweets are glorification of violence, then your post is calling for genocide. [1] https://blog.x.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension https://blog.x.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension
- acdha 2y ago
  Again, if those were all he’d posted and his followers hadn’t just responded to his past calls with a violent assault on the election process, he’d never have gotten banned. As you can see by reading the page you linked, this decision was made with that context in mind after years of crossing the boundaries, and they did not want their corporate resources potentially being used for additional political violence.
  - ImJamal 2y ago
    The problem is their claim was those two tweets were violent. If they just said they banned him for behavior outside of Twitter they wouldn't be lying. Instead they claimed two tweets that have literally nothing to do with violence are violent.

by acdha 2y ago

zo1 2y ago

And if those "Terms of Service" heavily aligns with left-wing ideology? Do we then finally concede that Twitter did, in fact, target or disproportionately affect non-left-wing users? Is our next point of discussion about whether we can allow such a huge societal discussion/debate tool to be aligned with a pre-defined set of principles that 50% of people don't agree with? Or rather, on a set of principles that we can't find more than 50% consensus on? Either way, this is just like normal government laws. One of the big criticisms that Libertarians have over laws is that they're not universally enforced, so they end up being selectively enforced, which just means that "those with power" wield the laws against those they don't like. Same goes here with platforms like Twitter. The rules are vague, opaque, and their enforcement is seemingly random and at the whims of some faceless entity behind their enforcement process. If we all knew these supposed "terms of service" and they did, in fact, have very clear rules and guidelines then there would be absolutely no room for conservatives or anyone else to cry about being targeted.

MOARDONGZPLZ 2y ago
But even if, as you argue, calling for violence against people is part of right wing ideology or culture, it still seems reasonable to prohibit that. We do have to draw a line somewhere even against things that may be ingrained in a particular culture and which may have a disproportionate effect on that culture. But we should examine these choices in a principled way. Still, prohibiting calls for violence doesn’t seem like a gray area…
- zo1 2y ago
  I will not use calls for violence as an example for this argument I'm making. I specifically left it vague so we could all apply our own minds on it. But if i had to pick one it would be the Trans issue. Misgendering and having some rather "blunt" debates on this topic meant the platforms usually sided with the trans or left-wing party. As for calls of violence: there are many examples where anti-white and anti-right calls for violence and extermination go unpunished and swept under the rug to be memory holed. Let's start by making this a bad thing across the board.
  - acdha 2y ago
    > Misgendering and having some rather "blunt" debates on this topic meant the platforms usually sided with the trans or left-wing party. Do you have an examples?
    - zo1 2y ago
      It's written in their own documents/policies: https://web.archive.org/web/20230407140923/https:/help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hateful-conduct-policy https://web.archive.org/web/20230407140923/https:/help.twitt... The entire doc has an "aura" of being fair, and "protecting" the weak. But it ends up stifling debate and genuine discussion because report-brigades and coordinated attacks by left-wing institutions and left-wing activists (with way too much time on their hands because they are full-time activists) end up targeting right-wing individuals for benign and not-harassing behaviour. I've seen my fair share of anti-white and anti-republican hateful comments and calls for violence, that I don't know why you even need to see examples. Look for them everywhere, even on HN. Look, this is a very diffuse topic. You're not going to get a clear example and we don't know what was happening behind the scenes at Twitter. But it's very telling that most tech companies are predominantly left-wing donors and have left-wing ideologies. Even if they act to be as impartial as they can, their bias will show because they have anti-republican discriminatory hiring practices.
      - acdha 2y ago
        So, to be clear, you’re saying that conservatism is synonymous with directly attacking “other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.”? I couldn’t agree with such a broad claim about millions of people.
acdha 2y ago
> And if those "Terms of Service" heavily aligns with left-wing ideology? First, they don’t - if they had, you would be able to provide an example rather than confabulating about imaginary scenarios. Second, private companies are generally not obligated to provide you services on your own terms. If a bar kicks you out from screaming threats at other patrons, your rights are not being violated - go find a place which welcomes you. Third, it’s not 50%, although I can understand why you’d make that up, but a fraction of a percent. Almost all conservatives were not banned because they didn’t repeatedly violate the terms of service. The ones who were kicked out were given warnings, chose to ignore them, and had the promised consequences.

gadders 2y ago

[dead]

acdha 2y ago
Look, we all know you’re making that up but if we take you at face value, you just defined conservatism as the beliefs bad enough to get Twitter’s famously hands-off moderators to act. Nobody got blocked for advocating for smaller government, business-friendly policies, or talking about their religious or family values – it was threats of violence, slurs, targeted harassment, election misinformation, etc. None of the conservatives I know would claim those as defining their beliefs, and they’d be rather insulted to have you define them that way.
- labcomputer 2y ago
  > you just defined conservatism as the beliefs bad enough to get Twitter’s famously hands-off moderators to act. This sort of disingenuous reply really isn’t helpful. The GP was clearly accusing Twitter of enforcing their TOS for righty accounts, while not enforcing their TOS when lefty accounts would do similar things. I don’t think they are correct, but your rhetoric is just going to alienate people and makes your argument look weaker.
  - acdha 2y ago
    Can you provide any examples? The poster rather has been rather conspicuously unable to do so, which is hard to reconcile with the broad policy they’re claiming, especially when there are counter examples of accounts which were not blocked because Twitter gave more leeway to political accounts. The reason is simple: the things which got those accounts closed weren’t traditional conservative positions, and there were plenty of lefty/hard to classify accounts which were also suspended or banned for similar reasons but nobody is sticking up for their behavior and claiming it represents their larger political group.
    - gadders 2y ago
      Please stop lying. I gave you an example.

ImJamal 2y ago

They did not ban Trump for "continued calls for violence and election interference". Look at the two Tweets they used as a justification of his ban [1] > The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!! And > To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th. Of course, in the blog post, Twitter claims to have "assessed the two Tweets referenced above under our Glorification of Violence policy" If those two tweets are glorification of violence, then your post is calling for genocide. [1] https://blog.x.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension https://blog.x.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension

acdha 2y ago
Again, if those were all he’d posted and his followers hadn’t just responded to his past calls with a violent assault on the election process, he’d never have gotten banned. As you can see by reading the page you linked, this decision was made with that context in mind after years of crossing the boundaries, and they did not want their corporate resources potentially being used for additional political violence.
- ImJamal 2y ago
  The problem is their claim was those two tweets were violent. If they just said they banned him for behavior outside of Twitter they wouldn't be lying. Instead they claimed two tweets that have literally nothing to do with violence are violent.