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Adventures in Twitter Censorship [pdf]

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Re: Adventures in Twitter Censorship [pdf]

#41
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are in essence saying there shouldn't be social consequences for speech.

Is there a difference between social consequences for speech and harassment? I'm reminded of the old freedom fighter vs. terrorist debate.

Yes. The first can simply be a reaction someone has to speech and the other is a criminal offense.

Re: Adventures in Twitter Censorship [pdf]

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are in essence saying there shouldn't be social consequences for speech.

The consequences for speech should resemble an asymptote, always approaching zero.

Consequences of speech are people's thoughts or reactions to speech.

Where does someone's right to say what they want without consequence end and my right to have a thought or reaction to what I heard begin?

Your right to speak your opinion coexists with people's right to have a reaction. This might be socially inconvenient, but that has always been the reality. Nothing has changed because the avenue expression is online, just the audience and availability of your speech.

Re: Adventures in Twitter Censorship [pdf]

#43
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has always been repercussions for socially unacceptable speech. What the internet has affected is who can hear or read your speech. If I go into a supermarket and shout, "I hate black people and they shouldn't even be in America!" I am going to suffer the consequences, but probably only from the people who heard me. Everyone else will have heard it second-hand and may due to social circle pressure decide to sev…

Part of the problem that I see, is that in modern America, everyone is a victim. Anything can be considered offensive. And when that happens, we find it acceptable to utterly destroy people's lives over 140 characters...in the name of "social justice". It's ok to call Justine Sacco a fucking bitch and wish brutal rape upon her, so long as you do so in defense of social justice, right? It's ok to shame her, cause her…

I agree there is a lot of mob mentality going on. But I feel like you are only viewing this when you perceive it to be started by the "left". Mob mentality is not a left or right problem. "Progressives" are not the one's doing this. Mob mentality is a human thing.

Is your reasoning that only people attacking Justine Sacco were "progressives" and "liberals?" Does that mean everybody, to put for a lack of a better term, "on the right" understood the context of Justine Sacco's tweet and did not join in and pile on?

I mean in the context of just those tweets, what she said was pretty racist and offensive. So the implication that only liberals attacked her means that either conservatives didn't attack her because they already understood what she meant by those tweets (hard to imagine anyone could in that moment since one of the biggest things about it was that she was on a plane and couldn't defend herself) or they didn't believe those tweets were racist (which they were when taken without context).

Dividing people by framing this as a left/right issue is not the way to go if you really want to stop the internet mob.

Re: Adventures in Twitter Censorship [pdf]

#44
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't use networks that don't share their code. Don't use networks that hold your data and don't give you raw access to it. Share directly with your friends instead of a large corporation. Edit: Instead of downmods, please post reasons why you should use networks run with secret codes and which suck your data into their proprietary databases.

I didn't downvote you, but I'm not aware of any "network" (by which I assume you mean website or application) that matches the requirements you set. Open source websites simply don't exist - as it's impossible to actually validate that the code running on a server matches whatever source code a company might distribute, and every site and application attempts to limit or control access to your data in some way. Hacke…

There are plenty of networks that fit this requirement!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10408968

Re: Adventures in Twitter Censorship [pdf]

#45
post #2

One of my main concerns with mainstream social networks is this kind of subtle censorship/filtering. Some people think their Facebook stream is an accurate representation of their friends and surrounding reality, they are ignorant of the algoritms that decide what they will see and what not.

This so true and a major concern. The next wave of highly effective propaganda and thought control could very easily manifest itself through this. Today, people know better than to blindly believe the news media. If information is coming from a single entity, it could be pushing an agenda, so take it with a grain of salt. We all know that. But when it appears to come from a community, that's entirely different. It se…

Germany does not intend to silence anti-refugee posts. Germany wants to stop illegal incitement of hatred. Such as promoting or even threatening to burn down asylum centers, to hurt or even kill refugees and those that help them.

Those are not just words, asylum centers are being burned to the ground, refugees are attacked, just recently some were killed on the border the EU, just yesterday someone tried and almost suceeded in killing a politician who helped refugees.

You have to be insane to support this as free speech unless you support these nazis.

Re: Adventures in Twitter Censorship [pdf]

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are in essence saying that ad hominem is a valid debating technique.

Go on

Expressing a dissenting opinion against the mainstream shouldn't have to the extent of threatening ones livelihood because it suppresses honest discussion. That is the point 0x49 is trying to make. You are inferring with your comment that dissenting from mainstream opinion should be allowed to have the equivalent social consequences of e.g. advocating genocide. But with that line of reasoning you are allowing people with unpopular opinions to argued by the character of the people making them.

Re: Adventures in Twitter Censorship [pdf]

#47
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a difference between social consequences for speech and harassment? I'm reminded of the old freedom fighter vs. terrorist debate.

Yes. The first can simply be a reaction someone has to speech and the other is a criminal offense.

Online harassment is almost always a reaction to speech. If ten thousand people send hateful messages to someone because they tweeted something they found offensive, is that harassment or social consequence?

How about some concrete examples: did Justine Sacco suffer social consequences for speech, or was she harassed by an online mob? How about Anita Sarkeesian?

Re: Adventures in Twitter Censorship [pdf]

#48
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had a guy fired basically because he was an islamophobe. He was annoying people with his "opinion" all the time. That did not work out pretty well with all the other colleges so he did not get jobs. Nobody wanted to work with him. His chargeability was messed up and then he was gone. I'm pretty OK with that. Generalizations never work.

That sounds like a pretty standard HR situation. Can't do that shit at work. But your personal life should be different (no matter how inconvenient that is in some cases), and the social justice movement is looking to change that. They're causing people to lose their jobs over something that they did in their personal life; on their own time, separate from work. That's fundamentally different and it isn't justice. It…

I'm not sure it's that they're looking to change it, vs. take advantage of something for their own political ends that already exists (and has for a long time). The traditional "rule" in the US is that you can do whatever you want on your own time, unless it's something that your employer finds out about, and finds sufficiently offensive, embarrassing, or inconvenient. Then, since employment is at-will, they can fire you for it, as long as it isn't from a specific list of things that would constitute unlawful termination. The main change, as I see it, is that using it as an organized tactic (compiling lists, contacting employers, etc.) has mainly been done by conservatives in the past, directed at communists, the LGBT movement, flag-burners, etc. Those more on the left using it (or at least, using it with any success) is a somewhat newer development in the US.

To me the fundamental place to tackle this would be at the mechanism: the problem is that employers can and do fire people who have opinions they either dislike or find embarrassing. That will continue to be true, unless labor laws are changed to make it more difficult.

Re: Adventures in Twitter Censorship [pdf]

#49
post #22
post #5

Im more concerned with social censorship and the mob mentality that seems to be determining justice. If you say something that is not politically correct or against the current narrative, you will get fired/bullied/harrassed/silenced/all three. Without honesty, there will be no progress. I shouldnt be afraid of posting my opinions and expressing my freedom of speech because i might lose my livelihood. But its the sad…

It is incomprehensible to me that someone would be more concerned about being able to, for example, make fun of fat people without being treated as an asshole, than censorship of our mass media on issues of national security. Sorry but that's like first world dumb teenager problems to me.

You just arent thinking long-term. It starts with things like fat-shaming.

Its also not just being treated like an 'asshole'. Its a complete destruction of ones personal life, abusive behavior such as harassment, and many times the mob moves to the persons place of employment and the business doesnt want the negative publicity, and fires the employee.

Does a person deserve this sort of treatment? Arent we trying to stop online bullying?

Mobs are fickle. While today, you are on the side of the mob...tomorrow the mob might be against you. At that point, it will be too late to protest because it is already an acceptable practice in our society.

The government doesnt even really need to pass laws to control the people. The mobs will take care of it for them.

Its the wet dream of the nsa and should scate you as much as it does me.

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