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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

#161

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.

That point of view works in a perfect world, but there are some ideas that don't deserve a seat at the table. Drinking bleach will not cure autism, but their are desperate parents out there ready to walk into that bear trap and opportunistic people are ready to spring it.

> there are some ideas that don't deserve a seat at the table.

If you don't like an idea you're free to ignore it. Freedom of speech is really about the freedom for each of us to hear. What you're really advocating is that you don't want other people to have access to ideas with which you personally disapprove. This is such an authoritarian notion that I don't understand how it has become a socially acceptable idea to espouse.

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

#162
The tweet in question is a good reason to be banned. Now if they would apply those rules to other users too, that would be nice. Twitter is full of abuse, hate, harassment, racism, sexism but then some of the high-profile users are allowed to do this without getting banned, others a banned for 9yr old tweets.

Not saying it's easy to always find the right line on what should be banned and what not but for clear hate-speech you don't have to provide a platform and if you do, you should be measured in that context.

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

#163

Their notification was fine. The tweet was vile and full of expletives. You'll have trouble finding any business or institution that tolerates speech like that. This isn't the censorship hill anyone should want to die on.

I don't agree. Wartime cartoons are vile yet we rarely censor them because of the historical value. I do think that going back a decade with an algorithm and getting people to clean up tweets that likely match a regex filter is whitewashing and it does make twitter a less valuable historical resource. It's a totally different argument from the normal you should be able to say what you want - because I would support c…

Indeed. Into the memory hole it goes.

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

#165

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…

Expression is not public communication. Are you not conflating freedom of speech with freedom to be heard/reach an audience? Even 2 centuries ago, the US government wouldn't intervene to force newspapers to publish the op-eds of hateful people looking to grow their followers. Why would Youtube or Twitter have to?

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

#166
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Is Mastercard required to do business with the Bernie Sanders campaign, even though his stated policy goals might harm their business?

Funny. Yeah, they're not. Political ideology is not a protected class in US law.

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

#167

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.

Absolutely correct. Incorrect information is a huge problem for democracy.

The best technology that we have right now to fight incorrect information is an educated citizenry of people free to decide the facts for themselves and debate them openly.

We can invest in this proven technology by improving that education, freedom, and open debate.

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

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That point of view works in a perfect world, but there are some ideas that don't deserve a seat at the table. Drinking bleach will not cure autism, but their are desperate parents out there ready to walk into that bear trap and opportunistic people are ready to spring it.

> there are some ideas that don't deserve a seat at the table. If you don't like an idea you're free to ignore it. Freedom of speech is really about the freedom for each of us to hear. What you're really advocating is that you don't want other people to have access to ideas with which you personally disapprove. This is such an authoritarian notion that I don't understand how it has become a socially acceptable idea t…

> I don't understand how it has become a socially acceptable idea to espouse.

We got fed up of people being murdered because they're black, Jewish, gay, trans, female, etc etc.

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

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 we…

I don't buy those numbers for a second, and I certainly don't buy that everyone on Twitter is following political discourse. I have a Twitter account, but I only follow a very narrow slice of systems programming news.

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

#170

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…

Expression is not public communication. Are you not conflating freedom of speech with freedom to be heard/reach an audience? Even 2 centuries ago, the US government wouldn't intervene to force newspapers to publish the op-eds of hateful people looking to grow their followers. Why would Youtube or Twitter have to?

>Why would Youtube or Twitter have to?

Because combined, Google, Twitter, and Facebook have an effective monopoly on modern public discourse.

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