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Twitter locked my account for a nine year old tweet

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Re: Twitter locked my account for a nine year old tweet

#81

Post by navigatesol »

beefield wrote: post #59
ohithereyou wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want a Ministry of Truth filtering what I'm allowed to hear. In a functional democracy, education and robust debate are supposed to be the defenses against misinformation. Most western democracies long since scrapped proper education because it's easier to win the support of the population with propaganda^H public relations than it is to make a reasoned argument.

Unfortunately looks to me that if you do not have a Ministry of Truth, you end up with a society where private actors pump people with soma[1]. Personally, I am willing to accept a restricted version of Ministry of Truth to avoid that outcome. [1]See Huxley, Brave new world.

>Personally, I am willing to accept a restricted version of Ministry of Truth to avoid that outcome.

Every loves this idea right up until the point they realize that their own and the Ministry's opinions do not align.

Re: Twitter locked my account for a nine year old tweet

#82

Post by matwood »

andy_ppp wrote: post #30
romaaeterna wrote: post #15

Unaccountable censorship of expression by our main communication providers is incompatible with Democracy. Communication is often a natural monopoly, and you can't just "start a competitor" to Twitter and have the market fix the problem (see gab.ai). If we're going to have censorship on the big platforms (Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc.) and backbone providers (ISPs, Cloudfront), us normal human beings need…

I would also argue that unfettered access to incorrect information is also a massive problem for democracy.

Which in part stems back to anonymity. Information becomes easier to filter and fact check when the purveyors and the sources are not anonymous. People also tend to act more civil when not anonymous.

But, a lack of anonymity brings a whole host of other problems.

Re: Twitter locked my account for a nine year old tweet

#83

Post by andy_ppp »

leereeves wrote: post #67
andy_ppp wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think the education level is adequate enough to protect against people constantly propagating lies?

If you want someone to decide what's true because you believe the people aren't capable of doing so for themselves, you've already given up on democracy.

I would like there to be better education and yes, some kind of authority that we can warn people that the information has been reviewed and is likely to be incorrect or lies. Objective reality does exist as does scientific concensus on for example climate change.

Re: Twitter locked my account for a nine year old tweet

#85

Post by tomp »

beefield wrote: post #59
ohithereyou wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want a Ministry of Truth filtering what I'm allowed to hear. In a functional democracy, education and robust debate are supposed to be the defenses against misinformation. Most western democracies long since scrapped proper education because it's easier to win the support of the population with propaganda^H public relations than it is to make a reasoned argument.

Unfortunately looks to me that if you do not have a Ministry of Truth, you end up with a society where private actors pump people with soma[1]. Personally, I am willing to accept a restricted version of Ministry of Truth to avoid that outcome. [1]See Huxley, Brave new world.

How would that work in practice? The Mainstream Media is obviously partisan and serves to protect the strong (e.g. Iraq WMD, Epstein). The government (and associated institutions, e.g. jails, court, FBI, NSA.) as well (e.g. Epstein, Snowden, Assange). Who would you "trust" to pick and choose the information you're allowed to see?

Re: Twitter locked my account for a nine year old tweet

#86

Post by krelian »

Not on twitter by about 8 or 9 years go my Adwords account was banned. I ran ads that were against the TOS (I admit, I didn't read it but since the ads were approved - not sure it's still the case but at the time each ad was manually approved - I thought it was OK). The ads run for a total of about 30 - 40 minutes then I stopped them (I was playing with affiliate marketing links). Next day my adwords account was banned and there was no way of getting it reinstated. I tried contacting the Adwords support again about a year ago, but to no avail. The bad thing is that the infringing ads are still in my account, I can't delete them, so even if some soul reviews my account (and I'm sorry for my prejudice against the average support person, it's just experience) they'll probably think I'm still at it.

One of the dangers about doing business with these behemoths.

Re: Twitter locked my account for a nine year old tweet

#87

Post by nilkn »

mabbo wrote: post #21

Honest question: is the source of the problem the hateful intent of the message, or the use of "bad words"? My reading on culture these days is that one can usually get away with spouting horrendous, hateful ideas so long as they do so without using a short list of offensive words. If the truly are trying to scrub hate from their platform, I applaud their effort, but they'll never succeed. Hate is too hard to define…

There are plenty of recent tweets from active accounts that use the same language and display the same hate towards present-day politicians. It's hard to imagine that Twitter is only selecting tweets like this based on language.

Re: Twitter locked my account for a nine year old tweet

#88

Post by tomp »

zelon88 wrote: post #57
romaaeterna wrote: post #15

Unaccountable censorship of expression by our main communication providers is incompatible with Democracy. Communication is often a natural monopoly, and you can't just "start a competitor" to Twitter and have the market fix the problem (see gab.ai). If we're going to have censorship on the big platforms (Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc.) and backbone providers (ISPs, Cloudfront), us normal human beings need…

So how do you feel about blog platforms or other service providers that allow posting user-supplied comments on their platform? Should companies and non-profits all be required be to expend resources to keep your hateful comments available to the world? How do we determine what's spam? What's advertising? What's XSS? You have a first amendment right to type any of these things into an input box. Does that mean the or…

It seems perfectly reasonable to set a (somewhat subjective) threshold and start treating companies that exceed it (in some way - e.g. number of users, % of coverage, revenue) as "public services" and controlling them more tightly. The precedent is well established (e.g. GDPR, breakup of Standard Oil, ...).

Re: Twitter locked my account for a nine year old tweet

#89

Post by Vaslo »

bitcurious wrote: post #28

Given today’s culture I would think Twitter is doing you a favor. It’s better that you silently delete the post than have it be dug up by angry X and get you fired and ostracized.

Coming here to say just this. We had a college senior intern who had talked about drinking and drugs during his freshman year and left them up. Someone who didn't like him dug it up and sent to HR, and his full time offer got rescinded.

Re: Twitter locked my account for a nine year old tweet

#90

Post by moksly »

cat199 wrote: post #54
moksly wrote: post #7

Seems more like twitter banned the author 9 years too late.

So, based on the second paragraph of article: It’s honestly a very immature tweet. It’s something I wouldn’t say today. I have personally grown past the hate of the two party system. I feel like I have a clearer and more mature view on American elections, as well as seeing past the endless media designed to keep most people angry. This tweet was from a different era in my life. I’m not proud of it, yet it is a part o…

You know, when I read that paragraph I was actually on board with the author. We’ve probably all said stupid things on the internet at one point.

Then I read the actual tweet and lost all sympathy. It’s just so horrible, and, I think the author actually shows a lack of growth by dismissing it as this 9 year old “immature” mistake.

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