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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

#331

Post by Izkata »

jeanvalmarc wrote: post #317
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…

If there were no alternatives to twitbooktubeit perhaps you would have a point. However, if you don't like the policies of twitter, go to reddit. If you don't like the policies of reddit go to voat. If you don't like all the terrible people on voat, host a forum on a VPC instance. Your position is basically "I think platforms should be compelled to host every bit of nonsense emitted by every user." The freedom is pro…

Gab is trying that, and keeps getting shut down by hosting providers and payment processors that are believing outright lies.

The most recent one I'm aware of was Apple removing them from the app store, which here was a worthless virtue signal because Gab is now entirely on the Fediverse - the app was a clone of a common github repo, of which there are dozens not being removed.

So it really does seem like any real competition is not allowed anymore.

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

#332

Post by mmcnl »

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…

This is a great comment, I never could've worded it so perfectly as you did.

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

#333

Post by Izkata »

onion2k wrote: post #41
chrisan wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is definitely an immature tweet, however I think 9 years can change a person a lot. Maybe twitter could have given him a warning about his tweet and ask if he would like to delete it before the instaban algorithm hit

They blocked the account but as you can see from the bottom of the screenshot in the article the account could be reinstated by deleting the tweet in question. If the author is honestly saying they no longer stand by what they posted 9 years ago they could easily just delete it and move on. That raises a bunch of different questions about what Twitter are doing to change history, and the way they represent their plat…

I'll go one step further: by forcing them to act upon it, instead of deleting/hiding it and notifying the user, Twitter is engaging in behavioral training, like you would train a dog.

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

#334

Post by zerocrates »

coldtea wrote: post #325
zelon88 wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And some if it is plain hateful. Distasteful, and inflammatory. [1] Not all words need to be respected. Sometimes people need help, and sometimes they ask for it in subliminal ways. And of course it's a provincial US issue. The entire internet as we know it cannot exist without provincial US law holding it together, and a provincial US economy to keep it online. We own the internet. We own Microsoft. We own Android.…

> And some if it is plain hateful. Distasteful, and inflammatory. [1] Saying what's "distasteful" is about arbiters of taste, and we shouldn't allow that. John Waters was "distateful" at some point, Rock music was, famous painters were, Henry Miller was, tons of movies, and tons of other things besides. Inflammatory stuff, doxing, etc, should be punishable under common law (libel, privacy laws, etc). Hate on the othe…

> You say that as if it's a good thing.

From just a practical perspective, if your goal is an increase in unfettered speech on these platforms, or the Internet in general, where would you want them to be besides the United States? Since you're talking about what would and would not, (or should and should not) be allowed, I assume some form of government is enacting and enforcing this as law.

I'm not aware of any nation that takes as close to absolutist of an approach to free speech other than the US. Even in the US we're currently in a relatively anomalous period of expansive free speech protection, historically speaking.

Relevant to this conversation, "hate speech" itself is a particularly common subject of bans in other nations otherwise generally considered equal to or greater than the US where "freedom" is concerned.

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

#335

Post by thatoneuser »

sarah180 wrote: post #283

Counterpoint: you used Twitter to publish aggressively misogynist language, and by leaving it up, you continued to distribute hateful material. If Twitter is going to police hate speech, this the right kind of content, and "it was a while ago" is not really a defense when you're still distributing that content. People often play the "it's not misogynist speech" game, but the first thing you did was to dismiss her bas…

If you think that comment is misogynist I'd love to see you defend all the misandrist comments that are commonplace - even by mainstream politicians. Nothing about that is intrinsically misogynist, but sure the case could be made. But apply whatever logic you are to what's said about trump every minute of every day and ban those users the same. I bet you wouldn't.

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

#336

Post by [deleted] »

petercooper wrote: post #267

Pro-tip: Use Twitter search for "from:yourusername word" where you replace yourusername with your Twitter name and 'word' with things like the f word, c word, r'tarded, and so forth. Delete any tweets that do not stand up to modern standards. I did this a while back and am thankful I did. I seemed to say a lot of things that were passable on Twitter 10 years ago but I would not dare to say now :-D (Nothing extreme, b…

[deleted]

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

#337

Post by RestlessMind »

notyourwork wrote: post #237
RestlessMind wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not a company operating in a vacuum but a public company in a democracy and is subject to the laws (and in general, political will) of the society. If companies were free to "censor, modify, change anything they want at any point in time", then we would not have anti-trust laws or close scrutiny of dominant companies. Ultimately, companies don't exist in a vacuum. If they don't adhere to the political will of t…

Vacuum has nothing to do with it. Twitter is a platform, you are not compelled to use it. Don’t like it that is fine but popularity doesn’t imply it requires to operate any way other than the way it decides as a company. Why do we expect companies to act like a government we have control over?

> Why do we expect companies to act like a government we have control over?

Because people always have control over the companies serving them, as it should be. Without people exerting control, we won't have - antitrust regulations, civil rights legislations, ADA, EPA regulations, Clean Water Act, Financial regulations etc. And I believe those regulations were essential towards making a better society.

Mind you, I am not advocating for a communism-style abolishing of private property. But neither do I want to see a libertarian wild west of no government control. That is just other extreme. What we have currently seems to be a good trade-off, where companies have a lot of freedoms but political will can step in occasionally to demand changes to the way they operate.

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

#338

Post by moate »

LocalH wrote: post #313
moate wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

But who gets to decide who gets a platform? What happens when those deciders abuse their power? The danger in deplatforming is the inevitability of changing social mores. What happens if the pendulum swings the other way and the ones you consider to be on the "right side" of history start getting deplatformed? If your answer to that is, "oh that won't happen", then you're oh so naive.

>>But who gets to decide who gets a platform? What happens when those deciders abuse their power?

The owners of the platform. As things have always been. Like magazine editors or tv producers. Everyone having a platform is a mixed bag. I don't feel it's needed. If the socialists get McCarthy'd off twitter, they'll survive. If the Alt-right pisses off their web hosts, there's always some lovely libertarian ISP out there who feels that loud anarchy is the best way to support the first amendment.

>>What happens if the pendulum swings the other way and the ones you consider to be on the "right side" of history start getting deplatformed?

They'll find new platforms? Like they always have? I mean, maybe not the best example but as unpopular as Nazis and the KKK are, they still somehow find a way to exist and keep coming back. If your cause is sticky enough, you'll attract people. Also, maybe some ideas should just be allowed to quietly die in private. We don't need "both sides" on every issue.

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

#339

Post by coldtea »

zerocrates wrote: post #334
coldtea wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And some if it is plain hateful. Distasteful, and inflammatory. [1] Saying what's "distasteful" is about arbiters of taste, and we shouldn't allow that. John Waters was "distateful" at some point, Rock music was, famous painters were, Henry Miller was, tons of movies, and tons of other things besides. Inflammatory stuff, doxing, etc, should be punishable under common law (libel, privacy laws, etc). Hate on the othe…

> You say that as if it's a good thing. From just a practical perspective, if your goal is an increase in unfettered speech on these platforms, or the Internet in general, where would you want them to be besides the United States? Since you're talking about what would and would not, (or should and should not) be allowed, I assume some form of government is enacting and enforcing this as law. I'm not aware of any nati…

That's a good point.

I think such platforms should be publicly run, perhaps something like a UN-project, and follow absolutist rules of free speech.

To me, something as crucial as a 2 billion strong method of communication (like FB), or the primary platform for web search for 8 billion people (Google, that is) shouldn't be run from a single country, nor be run for profit, nor be subject to private interests.

Especially regarding e.g. Google search, the global political, economic, public opinion shaping, etc power this gives a single private company, and to the country where it resides, is absurd.

Such services should be more like a "total archive" than a reflection of seasonal/regional/private interests, ideologies, and wills.

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

#340

Post by bassman9000 »

tablethnuser wrote: post #172

The rule of thumb I use is to ask: if someone had shouted this in a supermarket or bank line, what would happen? Internet communities should aspire to be more like local communities. If you're a jerk in real life, people will show you the door. Making this about grand abstract concepts like free speech or censorship is internet fun for people who like to debate. But it's overcomplicating the situation. Twitter is jus…

The nine year thing is misdirection

I guarantee you you have said something in the past worth banning you from multiple forums by today's standards.

This cumulative outrage recorder doesn't make any sense.

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