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Twitter suspends alt-right figureheads

bbc.com

171–180 of 389 posts

Re: Twitter suspends alt-right figureheads

#171

I'm going to sell my Twitter stock. They are making one mistake after the other. Do they understand how free speech works? Can they enable that on Twitter?

> I'm going to sell my Twitter stock

You've left that a bit late, haven't you?

Re: Twitter suspends alt-right figureheads

#172
As much as I disagree with the views of the "alt-right" (why not call them far right by the way?), I can't help but be astounded that we've opened that can of worms? Who got to decide who should be banned? Isn't Twitter basically free speech? Why are we even drawing lines to begin with? As soon as you do that, someone else with a different world view will start banning the accounts of transgenders, community organizers, since we're now basing our judgment of Twitter accounts on subjective criteria.

People have a right to follow/unfollow accounts and we should leave it at that.

Re: Twitter suspends alt-right figureheads

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with your statement, I think it's important to protect the concept of free speech in many places and to disrespect companies who don't. Twitter has failed to do so here and is showing a blatant political statement (unless there were specific cases of harassment with these people or something, in which case I may be overstepping). I think generally views like this are better left in the spotlight of the…

>Twitter has failed to do so here and is showing a blatant political statement (unless there were specific cases of harassment with these people or something, in which case I may be overstepping). Everyone keeps making comments like this. "This is a massive injustice! Unless Twitter was justified idk." Maybe we should wait for a statement from Twitter before passing judgment.

Twitter was asked for a statement, and has declined to comment.

Which is a shame, because if they're banning a bunch of abusive harassing arseholes that's a good thing and I want to know about it.

Re: Twitter suspends alt-right figureheads

#174
post #19

How about suspending people who openly advocate genocide? #killallmen

As an able bodied straight male working in tech, I don't understand how any man can be offended by the killallmen hashtag. I don't feel threatened. They can't even hurt my feelings. Offended men must be very soft and have small dongles.

Here's a simple test. Take someone's rhetoric, like "killallmen". And replace the target with "Jews". If the updated statement feels racist and evil, then the original is also racist and evil.

There's an entire subreddit devoted to this idea: https://www.reddit.com/r/menkampf/

It's eye-opening just how racist many "mainstream" comments are.

Re: Twitter suspends alt-right figureheads

#175

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.

An opinion sits in your head. Twitter cannot observe an opinion on its own.

An opinion translated to action, though -- here in the form of Tweets -- is not merely an opinion.

Twitter has a thing called "The Twitter Rules" which includes a section on "Abusive Behavior". https://support.twitter.com/articles/18311

Here's some of Twitter's relevant rules:

Harassment: You may not incite or engage in the targeted abuse or harassment of others. Some of the factors that we may consider when evaluating abusive behavior include:

- if a primary purpose of the reported account is to harass or send abusive messages to others;

- if the reported behavior is one-sided or includes threats;

- if the reported account is inciting others to harass another account; and

- if the reported account is sending harassing messages to an account from multiple accounts.

Hateful conduct: You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease. We also do not allow accounts whose primary purpose is inciting harm towards others on the basis of these categories.

Re: Twitter suspends alt-right figureheads

#176
post #6

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.

There are plain facts about the world which are often considered "hate speech". FBI crime statistics, for example. They gotta be banned to maintain the narrative.

Re: Twitter suspends alt-right figureheads

#177
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's a podcast about how Pepe became a symbol for the alt-right

https://gimletmedia.com/episode/77-the-grand-tapestry-of-pep...

and some article about the original artist trying to put a stop to that

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/its-not-...

Re: Twitter suspends alt-right figureheads

#178
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you not heard of the Nation of Islam? You know that the 7/7 Dallas shooter (Micah Johnson) was inspired by black supremacist hate speech, right?

The nation of Islam is a horribly depressing group also standing on a platform kf misogyny and anti semitism. They are an extremist group that luckily has been waning in recent years. Also, unlike white people, they have never held a monopoly on power, instated discriminatory laws, stopped white people from securing proper jobs or housing, or became police offers that then killed white people with impunity.

Micah Johnson's online history shows he followed dozens of sites that focused on injustices committed on the black community. He visited and liked several websites dedicated to Black Lives Matter and the New Black Panthers, along with the Nation of Islam and the Black Riders Liberation Party, two groups the Southern Poverty Law Center considers hate groups.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/10/us/micah-johnson-dallas-radica...

Re: Twitter suspends alt-right figureheads

#179
>A cartoon of Pepe the frog is a commonly used symbol of the alt right

So basically a witch hunt where they're finding "problematic" people and removing their opinions. On the first screenshot two of the "leaders" of the alt right have MAGA hats on, twitter could have just came out openly and said it didn't want Trump supporters on their platform.

Re: Twitter suspends alt-right figureheads

#180
How has the media STILL not realized that the "alt-right" is primarily composed of self-proclaimed "shit posters" and forum trolls who enjoy posting provocative things to get a rise out of the over-sensitive PC police and social justice warriors? They refer to this election as The Great Meme War, and their "leader" (aside from Trump himself) is a poorly drawn cartoon frog.

Those weren't red flags to whatever gullible stooge wrote this story? This is "The Hacker Known as 4Chan" all over again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVhn_tdF3eo

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