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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

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Unfettered access to information requires unfettered access to incorrect information. The power to decide what's "correct" will be abused to block correct information that damages someone powerful.

Nobody is well informed on all issues. You just can't be. You can't fact check everything.

We live in a world where the authority we defer judgement to has split up, into less balanced partisan entities. Not saying pre-internet news were unbiased, but public sources tended to be better curated. (At least where I live, I'm sure Fox has always been this horrid)

This is why filter bubbles and building psychological profiles for everyone to target them with political messages and free access to all information, correct and incorrect, does not work. It's a net negative to democracy and this neo-greek ideal of the marketplace of ideas is a sham.

I have no idea how to fix this, but it needs fixing.

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

#132
post #98

I have a problem with this whole concept that you don't get to have ideas and test them, but that the ideation and words themselves make you something or means you are or have become something. It's dishonest, lacks any legitimacy, and it is the root of the culture war. Words only have the consequences the reader or listener gives them, they do not have intrinsic consequences in themselves. The fantasy that mere beli…

Interesting idea it reminds me of a religious debate about belief and faith versus good works.

Key insight. Very closely related. In the secularized instance of it we're encountering now, people could be said to be substituting demonstrations of belief for mercy, etc. I'd argue the particular choice of symbols in a religious war is really secondary and not meaningful to how predictable its progress is, sadly.

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

#133

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’m confused. What technology did twitter replace? Oh it didn’t? This is completely new, the ability to communicate to this many people at once? Okay so what ancient rights are being trampled exactly? If anything we probably need to be censoring people on Twitter right now as it doesn’t seem to convince anyone of anything other than that the people on the other-side of their argument are sub-human. Edit: Also, it alw…

In Q1 of this year, twitter had 68 million monthly active users in the US [0]. Hard to tell how many of them follow political discourse. But that’s 20% of the population (give or take) and it’s a substantial fraction.

I’m not sure how but I want that fraction to get before appropriate rights are defined and adopted.

The US common carrier rules were only enacted in 1934 [1] so it took a while before phone companies were forced to respect some US rights. Twitter is only 15 years old so it’s likely that this private company (and others) will be regulated just like the private telephone companies were regulated.

I had hoped that technology had advanced enough so respecting human rights would be embedded into the design. But now I think it will take laws and regulations which will inevitably, and sadly I think, also squelch innovation.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/274564/monthly-active-tw...

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/201

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

#134

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’m confused. What technology did twitter replace? Oh it didn’t? This is completely new, the ability to communicate to this many people at once? Okay so what ancient rights are being trampled exactly? If anything we probably need to be censoring people on Twitter right now as it doesn’t seem to convince anyone of anything other than that the people on the other-side of their argument are sub-human. Edit: Also, it alw…

The president of the United States.

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

#135
I'm not weighing in on whether these kinds of tweets should or shouldn't be allowed, but genuine question: how does this violate rule #1? Is it the use of the word 'cunt'? I don't see how the harassment was based on race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orietntation, gender identity, relgiious affiliation, age, disability or serious disease.

Potentially that Palin is a woman, they've decided that 'cunt' could be based on gender, however I received the same email from Twitter for a (heat of the moment) tweet about Ajit Pai where I called him a cunt, and he is not a woman, so I don't understand their policy. They wouldn't unblock my account until I deleted the tweet.

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

#136

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’m confused. What technology did twitter replace? Oh it didn’t? This is completely new, the ability to communicate to this many people at once? Okay so what ancient rights are being trampled exactly? If anything we probably need to be censoring people on Twitter right now as it doesn’t seem to convince anyone of anything other than that the people on the other-side of their argument are sub-human. Edit: Also, it alw…

[flagged]

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

#137
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we look at some differences between Twitter (or insert your favorite social media platform here) and email: * Email providers have zero responsibility for filtering information * Email users form their own networks dynamically through actual relationships rather than some artificial structure of "followers"/"friends" * Email users never get banned from sending email (although maybe in some cases an individual serv…

The answer is much simpler than you are making this appear. Sending an email is a private communication. Sending a tweet is a public communication. Your email provider is not a publishing platform any more than the paper store or the USPS is a publishing platform. Twitter is a publisher, although as an Internet publisher disseminating user generated content, they are protected by law from the typical liability that p…

A publishing tool that can mimic private communication tools. Not for well thought out letters but for words spoken in a conversation. Which makes it so powerful. Which makes it so problematic.

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

#138
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is that this was 9 years ago. The landscape of what was acceptable back then is completely different from what it is now. Going back in time and banning people for this sort of thing is essentially the same as banning movies from the 60's because they don't show enough women driving cars or men helping out in the kitchen.

I don't think that tweet was ever acceptable - calling someone a "cunt", "whore", "idiot" and telling her to "go fuck yourself" all in 140 characters is really going out of your way to be unpleasant.

It's always been acceptable so long as it's directed at the right person. What's changed in the last 9 years is simply who can be targeted with such language. Twitter supports and publishes language like this on a mass scale today.

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

#139
I (@alfiedotwtf) got suspended. I asked support for clarification as to why I got suspended, but only to get a reply saying "we can't tell you why you were suspended, and don't ask again because we won't respond". Wtf Jack.

Edit: It was one week before the Australian federal election, which does make me suspicious as to the reasoning of my suspension

Edit 2: Since there's a slim chance that someone from Twitter will see this message, if you're able to see why I got suspended, could you Signal me the reasoning (+61-400-777-227)

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

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, so the hypothesis is that we can’t have unfettered access to information.

So who do you propose gets to spoonfeed the masses with their okayed content? That is a terrifying argument.

pre internet weren't the masses spoonfed okayed information by network tv and newspapers?
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