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Twitter discloses 10k accounts suspended for fomenting political discord

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Re: Twitter discloses 10k accounts suspended for fomenting political discord

#61

Post by dymk »

GrassFedAltCoin wrote: post #44
dymk wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A single individual or organized group possessing thousands of accounts used to astroturf a platform is abusive of the platform, regardless of what the message is - banning that sort of activity doesn't seem dystopian.

I don't disagree at all — but in your hypothetical situation, they're clearly not being banned for causing "unrest." They're being banned for creating fake accounts to spam the platform en masse, "regardless of what the message is" as you say.

FTA:

> Saudi Arabia’s state-run media apparatus were found to be “engaged in coordinated efforts to amplify messaging that was beneficial to the Saudi government.”

Re: Twitter discloses 10k accounts suspended for fomenting political discord

#62

Post by jressey »

mc32 wrote: post #35
jressey wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you say about an individual whose behavior has been manipulated by bots that are paid by or under the control of a government?

That’s not a bot. A Bernie supporter who goes all in or a Trump supporter who goes all in, or someone who genuinely believes CCP propaganda they are not bots even if their tweets read like they are bot-ish.

Of course they are not a bot.

What you are saying is basically like saying: "We've sued the companies for polluting the river, but we have no intention of cleaning the pollutants."

Re: Twitter discloses 10k accounts suspended for fomenting political discord

#63

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

Porthos9K wrote: post #48
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's still requiring someone to host you (assuming your not self serving), your ISP to connect to you, and your DNS to continue directing people to you. You're always reliant on someone else's platform to keep you afloat on the internet.

I know, and I think some of that could be eliminated if ISPs were required by law to allow people to self-host Web and gopher sites (and properly secured SMTP) on residential connections and do a full IPV6 rollout so that you can have your server directly accessible without NAT if you want. Then you can just give out your IPV6 address if domain registrars refuse to serve you because they find your site's contents obj…

So instead of forcing Twitter we forces the ISPs? I'm not sure if that's an improvement.

Re: Twitter discloses 10k accounts suspended for fomenting political discord

#64

Post by decasteve »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #15
sp332 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first amendment doesn't apply to twitter, but we can still hold them accountable for their content policies.

Insofar as "hold them accountable" means organizing a boycott or something, sure (although I don't know why you'd be against them not allowing state-sponsored misinformation). Parent said "protected by freedom of speech", though, which in this context sounds like they're suggesting that Twitter should be compelled by law to host it.

Governments have chosen to use Twitter as a medium for communication. It’s an open form platform to post by anyone but government officials do communicate via Twitter in an official capacity. Some agencies post things to Twitter (and Facebook) but nowhere else — not even on their own government websites.

I’ve had government officials ignore emails but respond to tweets (as someone who no longer uses Twitter, this is now quite frustrating).

At some point Twitter can no longer hide behind the “private entity” flag. A line gets crossed and even if there’s not technically a legal standing for freedom of speech on a platform like Twitter, there’s a ideological debate to be had whether it now should be. Certainly a decade ago much of the idealism sold to us around social media was that it was an equalizing force for free speech and communication.

Re: Twitter discloses 10k accounts suspended for fomenting political discord

#65

Post by tantalor »

djsumdog wrote: post #22
tantalor wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter does not constrain your ability to hold/believe your opinion, merely to express it on their platform (which they own and grant you access under the condition you conform to the rules they apply to everybody).

But at what point do those platforms have a monopoly on distribution? I run my own Mastodon server and really enjoy the platform a lot more than Twitter, but the vast majority of people just use the big things that are out there. Facebook and Twitter may own their own platforms, but the collective value given to them by society and their ability to distribute ideas and change opinions globally should be deeply troubl…

> their own States in some ways

Hardly; states have rule of force.

Re: Twitter discloses 10k accounts suspended for fomenting political discord

#66

Post by kanox »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #15
sp332 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first amendment doesn't apply to twitter, but we can still hold them accountable for their content policies.

Insofar as "hold them accountable" means organizing a boycott or something, sure (although I don't know why you'd be against them not allowing state-sponsored misinformation). Parent said "protected by freedom of speech", though, which in this context sounds like they're suggesting that Twitter should be compelled by law to host it.

The distinction between corporate and government censorship is a legalistic workaround.

It would be reasonable to ban companies who act as "platforms" from any sort of editorial discretion. NYT should be able to decide what to publish, but not Twitter.

Re: Twitter discloses 10k accounts suspended for fomenting political discord

#67

Post by [deleted] »

excursionist wrote: post #38
striking wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's clear from the article that these are the former. A sentence from the beginning of the article: > Today’s removals mark nearly one year of Twitter’s efforts to identify and remove accounts that are spreading political misinformation for the purposes of changing public sentiment — something that has wide-ranging impact beyond simply being annoyed on social media, including not least democratic processes like voti…

I don't see anything in the snippet you reference that makes it clear that these are bots being banned.

[deleted]

Re: Twitter discloses 10k accounts suspended for fomenting political discord

#68

Post by dymk »

excursionist wrote: post #38
striking wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's clear from the article that these are the former. A sentence from the beginning of the article: > Today’s removals mark nearly one year of Twitter’s efforts to identify and remove accounts that are spreading political misinformation for the purposes of changing public sentiment — something that has wide-ranging impact beyond simply being annoyed on social media, including not least democratic processes like voti…

I don't see anything in the snippet you reference that makes it clear that these are bots being banned.

FTA:

> Saudi Arabia’s state-run media apparatus were found to be “engaged in coordinated efforts to amplify messaging that was beneficial to the Saudi government.”

The person you're responding to didn't say anything about bots. These are state-funded efforts to manipulate the platform.

Re: Twitter discloses 10k accounts suspended for fomenting political discord

#69

Post by WhatIsDukkha »

vkou wrote: post #60
WhatIsDukkha wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism I think is pretty directly relevant to your "question"? So unless we deal with the problem of Coca Cola being on twitter we can't deal with state sponsored bots? Your question seems insincere and merely aimed at morally confusing the issue to no useful purpose.

How on Earth is pointing out the hypocrisy of censoring paid propaganda by a state actor, but not by a corporate actor whataboutism? This is an incredibly relevant issue. And we're not even trying to 'deal with the problem of Coca Cola being on Twitter'. The whole raison d'etre for Twitter's existence is dissemination of paid propaganda by corporate actors. It's what keeps the lights on at Twitter! Ads, promoted twee…

If the difference between a State and a Corporation is that muddled in your mind it's your issue not the rest of ours.

It's a critical part of being a discerning person to be able to BOTH say how things are similar and how they differ.

You seem to have no test for discerning how Coca Cola and the Russian government differ.

Re: Twitter discloses 10k accounts suspended for fomenting political discord

#70

Post by AnimalMuppet »

rbritton wrote: post #6
nbst wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the article, the accounts were "actively spreading misinformation and encouraging unrest in politically sensitive climates." Sounds fine to me. Overreaction much?

Do you trust their judgment on this? Will you always? Like other similar happenings, the side you agree with may not always be the side making the choices. No one can objectively make that call in 100% of circumstances, and the risk of deplatforming a valid counter voice should not be dismissed.

> Do you trust their judgment on this?

More or less.

> Will you always?

Hard to say. I can at least see the possibility that the answer is no.

> Like other similar happenings, the side you agree with may not always be the side making the choices.

The side that's in favor of keeping foreign agitprop off of the site is a side that I'm likely to continue to agree with. It's not like the actors being blocked are good-faith "valid counter voices". They are illegitimate because of their methodology, not because of their viewpoint. (An organized campaign of people lying about who they're working for, trying to advocate positions that they don't actually believe, in order to mess with the minds of voters of another country... yeah, let's block that, no matter which viewpoint they've chosen to "advocate".)

Could Twitter move on to viewpoint blocking? Yes, they could. Would I have a problem with it if they did? Absolutely.

Disclaimer: I don't actually use Twitter, and I may not know what I'm talking about.

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