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Twitter Suspends 300k Accounts Tied to Terrorism in 2017

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Re: Twitter Suspends 300k Accounts Tied to Terrorism in 2017

#131

Post by katastic »

neuronexmachina wrote: post #99
katastic wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's conflation to compare coontown with the_donald. Go there right now. You won't find "kill the jews" posts. You won't find "kill the gays/black people" posts. You'll find a ton of supportive people with a particular worldview--and there's nothing wrong with that. If you assume the people you disagree with are "insane" or disregard them as "full of hate" then you'll never understand why they think the way they do a…

I was curious and peeked over to see what's currently popular over at the_donald. Some of the top-voted recent links: * "UN Globalists are on suicide watch after President Trump's speech" * "One of the best quotes of the speech. Socialist cucks BTFO!" * "This tweet from David Brock's cucks is less than 2 weeks old and has already aged terribly." * "Can you imagine a world without Islam?" * "HE TRULY IS A GOD AMONG ME…

Bill Maher, once heralded as an extreme left liberal (who supported gay marriage and marijuana legalization in the early 90's when nobody thought either would ever happen), consistently talks about the "threat of Islam to democracy". Is he a neocon now? And should we remove his speech to "reduce hate" the same way you're suggesting the_donald be removed?

Re: Twitter Suspends 300k Accounts Tied to Terrorism in 2017

#133

Post by phjesusthatguy3 »

i_cant_speel wrote: post #23
chrissnell wrote: post #10

I understand why Twitter might not want ISIS accounts on their service but from a national security standpoint, it seems better to have the communication happening on a U.S.-based service like Twitter than some darknet or crypto-centric app.

I think it's more trying to stop people from finding those darknet sites in the first place. I'd imagine they are using Twitter to bring people to the sites where the real conversations go on.

I think it's probably more about CYA at twitter than twitter trying to "do the right thing" (whatever that thing may be).

Re: Twitter Suspends 300k Accounts Tied to Terrorism in 2017

#134

Post by alexanderstears »

lightbyte wrote: post #96
alexanderstears wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

terrorism describes the infliction of civilian casualties meant to create a disproportionate climate of fear. By this definition, drones used in warfare are a form of terrorism. Let's address that point. First, that's a convenient definition that erases the distinction between State and non-State violence which is critical to many people's formulations of what is and isn't permissible. E.g I wouldn't tolerate my neig…

>Secondly, drone warfare isn't conducted primarily to kill civilian targets. Sure, bystanders do die in the process but there's never been an account of a US drone strike that was motivated by the desire to instill fear in civilians by maximizing civilian causalities. This isn't a drone strike, but wasn't the goal of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs to kill as many civilians as possible in order to instill so much fe…

The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are imo one of the most ethically/morally challenging situations ever.

I don't think it's terrorism for a few reasons: 1. America took steps to minimize causalities [0] - America dropped pamphlets and warnings prior the attack (although the warnings were dire, they didn't explain exactly how terrible the bombs would be)

2. America didn't exclusively target civilians or the softest targets, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen for their industrial significance and proximity to airbases.

3. America made an attempt to avert the bombing - they told Japan that something terrible would happen if there wasn't unconditional surrender (Japan was okay with conditional surrender but America wasn't). That's probably near enough a threat but also these were warring States so it's different than a street dust-up.

4. America made the utilitarian decision to drop the bomb after considering the alternatives - the reality is that an invasion of Japan would have been more bloody for the Japanese and the Americans. Fun fact: the military commissioned 1 million purple heart medals as preparation for the invasion of Japan [1]

5. I'd say that terrorists have utopian ideologies and they use the goal to sanitize the means. America didn't have any delusions that they'd drop the bomb and then there'd be paradise, they knew it'd be much closer to hell on earth.

I don't think the bombing was defensible, and I'm so incredibly legalistic that I would have preferred that America used the bomb but that America would then have sentenced the aircrews and their commanders to death after a trial at nuremburg. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were crimes against humanity and if we use the nuremburg formulations, they're indefensible and call for capital punishment.

The bombs were critical and effective but indefensible and humanity should wipe the names of the bombers and their military chain of command from the history books (probably including Truman).

[0]: https://www.damninteresting.com/retired/ww2-america-warned-h...

[1]: https://www.stripes.com/blogs-archive/the-rumor-doctor/the-r...

Re: Twitter Suspends 300k Accounts Tied to Terrorism in 2017

#135

Post by chc »

supergreg wrote: post #111
mi100hael wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, it also EXPLICITLY states: > Twitter said about 75 percent of the blocked accounts this year were spotted before a single tweet was sent So the impact to average users is probably not very substantial.

How do they know the account was from an actual terrorist or from a Viagra salesbot if it never made a post?

I get spam follows from bots with no posts all the time. It's generally pretty easy to tell who will turn out to be a real person or not — they'll have random, super botty names (Svetlana Nakamoto with the handle jonesdevin), or their profile pics will be stock art or porn stars, or something like that.

Re: Twitter Suspends 300k Accounts Tied to Terrorism in 2017

#136

Post by notahacker »

grandalf wrote: post #125
notahacker wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A private company concluding that it probably isn't a net positive for either itself or humanity to host broadcasts inciting people to drive trucks into Parisian shoppers or blow up London Tube trains is somewhat orthogonal to the question of whether US foreign policy and individual military strikes often have disastrous results. Ironically, no argument could be more US-centric than arguing the concept of terrorism c…

Well, Twitter is a US company and has an incentive to please US officials. Thus the context of terrorism in modern America and American politics is broadly relevant. It might be terrorists you don't like this time, but what about next time when it's terrorists you support? Who gets to decide what groups deserve that label? Donald Trump? > ... corporations' right to make moral judgements about whether they wish to off…

> Who gets to decide what groups deserve that label? Donald Trump?

Twitter, on Twitter's platform. And yes, people are perfectly free to disagree with Twitter's characterisation of particular groups and comments.

I'm afraid we're going to have to agree to disagree on the notion that platforms which distribute more criticisms of US policy to more people on a daily basis than most revolutionary subversive movements manage in their entire history are going out of their way to be helpful to the US propaganda narrative, or indeed the implicit argument that promotion of ISIS can be judged to be a threat to humanity only in terms of US propaganda narratives.

Re: Twitter Suspends 300k Accounts Tied to Terrorism in 2017

#137

Post by nl »

katastic wrote: post #87
volkk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that the real comms already do happen outside of Twitter, and that Twitter is simply a recruitment platform/loudspeaker

Your guess would be 100% correct. We built huge spy networks only to find out that the terrorists don't even use the internet for their plans. They use burner phones and other non-tech solutions (paper?! omgawdwtf.) because (surprise!) they're harder to track on a systematic level.

There's a big difference between Osama and your average everyday ISIS wannabe, who absolutely do use internet. Eg https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kb7n4a/isis-messa...

Re: Twitter Suspends 300k Accounts Tied to Terrorism in 2017

#138

Post by BartSaM »

volkk wrote: post #19
chrissnell wrote: post #10

I understand why Twitter might not want ISIS accounts on their service but from a national security standpoint, it seems better to have the communication happening on a U.S.-based service like Twitter than some darknet or crypto-centric app.

My guess is that the real comms already do happen outside of Twitter, and that Twitter is simply a recruitment platform/loudspeaker

Then ghosting would make much more sense, in my opinion, to keep the data just in case some information will get shared that could lead to catching terrorists/recruiters.

Re: Twitter Suspends 300k Accounts Tied to Terrorism in 2017

#139

Post by agumonkey »

volkk wrote: post #19
chrissnell wrote: post #10

I understand why Twitter might not want ISIS accounts on their service but from a national security standpoint, it seems better to have the communication happening on a U.S.-based service like Twitter than some darknet or crypto-centric app.

My guess is that the real comms already do happen outside of Twitter, and that Twitter is simply a recruitment platform/loudspeaker

It's already common practice for criminals to use encrypted chat system. You may get noobs and fresh recruits but anything serious would happen elsewhere.

Re: Twitter Suspends 300k Accounts Tied to Terrorism in 2017

#140

Post by agumonkey »

astura wrote: post #94
katastic wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your guess would be 100% correct. We built huge spy networks only to find out that the terrorists don't even use the internet for their plans. They use burner phones and other non-tech solutions (paper?! omgawdwtf.) because (surprise!) they're harder to track on a systematic level.

Before he was killed Bin Laden communicated with his inner circle only by USB drives transported by sneakernet - his bunker lacked Internet connection but his communications were electronic. I think some of his communication was re-transmitted by his couriers over the Internet though but not through locations that were physically near where he was hiding.

Now I'm curious, I wonder how feasible it would be to use acoustic sniffing to hear people like him talking or typing. Some guys infered letters from the sound of keystrokes.
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