Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Twitter suspends alt-right figureheads

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 389 posts

Re: Twitter suspends alt-right figureheads

#111

Post by cabalamat »

tajen wrote: post #31
mulletbum wrote: post #5

Why does the alt-right have issues with them being banned from systems, but don't see issues with themselves banning others from systems. For example, Twitter bans them from using Twitter, but the /r/The_Donald echo chamber bans anyone with a counter view to their own. If you want freedom to speak on certain platforms, you need to provide the same rights to everyone.

Reddit is in a much less monopolistic situation. Twitter is a mandatory medium for public communication. That's which censorship on Twitter is worse than in a subreddit. Besides, it's a long stretch to imagine that right-wing media convinces people to become right-wing. In my case it's rather the opposite: I've been super-over-surcovered with left-wing pro-women communication until my 30s (whether in media or in prog…

> Twitter is a mandatory medium for public communication.

That's the precise difference.

There are two solutions I envisage for Twitter's behaviour. One is a market solution of people moving away from it (e.g. towards Gab). This might be infeasible due to network effects.

The other is regulation: communication services above a certain size be required to be an open platform. This would still allow twitter to ban people, but anyone would be allowed to re-used Twitter's data feed making it much easier to set up a competitor.

> censorship on Twitter is worse than in a subreddit

Not least because anyone can set up their own subreddit with their own moderation rules.

Re: Twitter suspends alt-right figureheads

#112

Post by aaron-lebo »

legodt wrote: post #82
ve55 wrote: post #28

Although Twitter obviously has the right to do this, legally, I don't think it is good. Twitter is esentially a public infrastructure for real-time communication. We have public officials from countries all over the world that use Twitter to communicate to their citizens. For that (and similar) reasons, I would strongly prefer if Twitter didn't go around policing what types of political opions are okay and aren't. Ev…

The very liberal users aren't inciting hate speech, racist, misogynistic, and often times anti semitic attacks on other users en masse

You really just aren't looking:

https://www.reddit.com/r/UofT/comments/4rr3ga/blm_toronto_wh...

That's Facebook but you can find blatantly racist, sexist, etc stuff from people on the left of the political spectrum on every major social network these days.

Re: Twitter suspends alt-right figureheads

#113

Post by matwood »

croon wrote: post #6
module0000 wrote: post #3

People love having their speech limited, I'm sure this will work out great for twitter.

> People love having their speech limited, I'm sure this will work out great for twitter. I love having hate speech limited, if that's what you mean.

As long as it is applied consistently. Are they also banning those spewing hate for Trump or the police?

It is just like everyone who is rioting with slogans like 'not my President.' These same people were giving Trump a hard time when he said the election system was rigged and didn't enthusiastically say he would support the results of the election. The left is doing a good job reenforcing the exact image many people voted against. The elitist attitude of tolerance unless disagreed with.

EDIT

Thanks for the downvotes and further proving my point. I would never vote for Trump, but simply pointing out hypocrisy and double standards does get people upset.

Re: Twitter suspends alt-right figureheads

#114

Post by DanBC »

monkmartinez wrote: post #93
robbiemitchell wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not getting banned for opinions, they're getting banned for their actions on Twitter.

Eh? Can you please explain the difference... it's 140 characters of text FFS.

Someone can say they hate The Jews on Twitter. What they can't do is say they hate a particular Jewish person, and link to that person's account, and encourage their tens of thousands of followers to post anti Semitic hate to that person.

Re: Twitter suspends alt-right figureheads

#115

Post by tajen »

arkitaip wrote: post #30
mwill wrote: post #14

I can only see this as furthering the echo chamber that caused many to be so blindsided by Trumps victory. I would like to see specifically why these people were suspended. If they're engaged in harassment obviously the suspension should hold up. If it really is just mass reporting for political speech (I've had friends msging 'targets' for reporting purely for them admitting to voting for Trump), I can only see it a…

But these alt-right figureheads aren't your average trump voters. They actually are racist and nasty people and we shouldn't group them together with other conservative/right/trump voters.

"A cartoon of Pepe the Frog is a commonly used symbol of the alt-right" is the subtitle of the image in the BBC article. Look at it, the drawing innocence is really staggering: I'm wondering what is the link, whether the link is warranted, and whether Twitter used posts of Pepe the Frog to recognize alt-right people. Sounds like a badly AI-generated inference to me.

Re: Twitter suspends alt-right figureheads

#116

Post by derrickdirge »

hermiti wrote: post #33
croon wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People love having their speech limited, I'm sure this will work out great for twitter. I love having hate speech limited, if that's what you mean.

The problem with banning hate speech is that it is relative. Next up, books will be banned because they incite alternate opinions.

There's a difference between mere 'alternate opinions' and hateful, prejudiced opinions.

It's seems disingenuous for you to conflate them.

Re: Twitter suspends alt-right figureheads

#117

Post by forgottenpass »

mulletbum wrote: post #5

Why does the alt-right have issues with them being banned from systems, but don't see issues with themselves banning others from systems. For example, Twitter bans them from using Twitter, but the /r/The_Donald echo chamber bans anyone with a counter view to their own. If you want freedom to speak on certain platforms, you need to provide the same rights to everyone.

Twitter bans them from using Twitter, but the /r/The_Donald echo chamber bans anyone with a counter view to their own.

Twitter is effectively the digital commons, run by a professional organization.

A subreddit is a subsection of a reddit, a website that lets any user roll up with a clowncar of mods and claim some land within their namespace.

Re: Twitter suspends alt-right figureheads

#118

Post by mhurron »

mwill wrote: post #14

I can only see this as furthering the echo chamber that caused many to be so blindsided by Trumps victory. I would like to see specifically why these people were suspended. If they're engaged in harassment obviously the suspension should hold up. If it really is just mass reporting for political speech (I've had friends msging 'targets' for reporting purely for them admitting to voting for Trump), I can only see it a…

People were blindsided because the majority didn't vote for Trump, but the US's backwards system meant that didn't matter.

In a democratic system where everyone's vote was equal, we would not have President-Elect Trump.

Re: Twitter suspends alt-right figureheads

#119

Post by leereeves »

13years wrote: post #79
mwill wrote: post #14

I can only see this as furthering the echo chamber that caused many to be so blindsided by Trumps victory. I would like to see specifically why these people were suspended. If they're engaged in harassment obviously the suspension should hold up. If it really is just mass reporting for political speech (I've had friends msging 'targets' for reporting purely for them admitting to voting for Trump), I can only see it a…

Agree, very disturbing trend and it only increases the animosity between groups. The trending method of improving diversity and inclusivity is through exclusivity. This will not work. People and groups who don't talk to each other grow further apart and trust each other less.

> The trending method of improving diversity and inclusivity is through exclusivity.

We should remember the source of this article, the BBC, said not so long ago: Whites Need Not Apply.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/03/bbc-criticised-by...

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/695312/BBC-seeking-research...

Re: Twitter suspends alt-right figureheads

#120

Post by legodt »

The comments here are extremely disheartening. It appears that the HN community values hate speech and harassment over "free speech" on a privately owned platform. I applaud Twitter for making itself a safer space for marginalized groups with this step even if it is very little, very late.

Edit: it is with heavy heart that I must say that I am EXTREMELY depressed by the amount of white racism denial I am seeing in the comments here. The hacker news community is demonstrating to me an extreme aversion to understanding or deconstructing racism in this country and is satisfied with endlessly repeating ancient defenses against racism under the package of feeling oppressed because marginalized groups of people are finally speaking out against their oppression.

Post reply on HN