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Twitter bans 7k QAnon accounts, limits 150k others as part of broad crackdown

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Re: Twitter bans 7k QAnon accounts, limits 150k others as part of broad crackdown

#231

Post by Apocryphon »

viklove wrote: post #230
Apocryphon wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to understand why they're acting like they woke up yesterday when "Free Speech on the Internet" has been a hotly-debated issue that's existed for as long as the Internet. Why wasn't there mass anger in the AOL days, at least among the web-surfing public? Facebook has existed for over a decade and a half. Why did it take until now for this issue to peak?

You really can't figure it out? It's because today, and not a decade ago, the internet is the primary place for discourse. If you're banned from FB or Twitter, you're effectively banned from having a conversation. 10 years ago this wasn't the case -- only a minority of the population was using the internet as the primary place of discourse, and even then there was far greater stratification over various discussion bo…

It's strange to me because it feels like I've been seen articles about the topic for at least a decade, and people just shrugged their shoulders until the polarization from the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the subsequent culture wars, and deplatforming becoming a major tactic used in the culture wars, kicked it into overdrive.

Pieces like this one [0] read so very quaint now.

I suppose, just like social media's detrimental effects on mental health [1], these advance warnings were just collectively ignored by society- and the tech companies themselves- until very recently. Odd, that.

[0] http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/12/facebook-...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=664351

Re: Twitter bans 7k QAnon accounts, limits 150k others as part of broad crackdown

#232

Post by pvg »

prepend wrote: post #226
pvg wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can add levels of meta to disarm any analogy and excuse any statement but that's silly. Yelling 'white power' is goatfucking and that guy is a goatfucker.

Is Ed Norton a goatfucker for American History X? Are we both goatfuckers for having “white power” in our comments? I think the context and intent of a statement is really necessary for answering the question. I don’t think the guy in the video was yelling white power to mean he supports white power. But perhaps you think differently.

Yes but you're trying to make the trivial context and intent complicated and it isn't. Ed Norton plays a goatfucker. We are talking about goatfuckery. Dude yelling 'white power' in public? Actual goatfucking. But no, you say, he was commenting on the absurdity of the goatfucker accusation by fucking some goats. This is precisely the sort of thing the Rule of Goats is about.

Re: Twitter bans 7k QAnon accounts, limits 150k others as part of broad crackdown

#233

Post by Fjolsvith »

shadowgovt wrote: post #223
Fjolsvith wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Especially when Q controls the level of the aggressive hate in the nonsense. I'm not so sure that the level of aggressive hate from the populace is attributable to Q. I believe he's just tapping into it.

So, to give a concrete example: one way Q could ratchet back on the aggressive hate in the nonsense is to just stop posting. Stop posting anything. That would ratchet it down.

If it is just nonsense hate, what's the big deal?

Re: Twitter bans 7k QAnon accounts, limits 150k others as part of broad crackdown

#234

Post by bluedispatcher »

djur wrote: post #193
throwaway829 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been following "Q" out of curiosity since when it started posting. Not sure if it's a pied piper op, as Wikileaks said, or something else. However I've not seen any of the things you listed as examples of hateful content. You can search all the posts yourself. "Chrissy Teigen" and "Hanks" show no results. Clinton is mentioned but none of the "cutting off her face" stuff. Where did you get these ideas? https://qp…

"QAnon" is the community of people who subscribe to the idea that "Q" is leading them to some hidden truth. I got these ideas by seeing thousands of people identifying as QAnon followers express every one of the ideas I listed above. You just have to look at any one of those famous people's tweets to see QAnon replies baselessly accusing them of horrible things. The codeword used for the supposed Clinton video in QAn…

By this logic Twitter should also ban all Muslims because there are extremists who call for the death of infidels. Instead it's far more reasonable to just crack down on hate speech and harassment in general, which I would have assumed they already did.

Re: Twitter bans 7k QAnon accounts, limits 150k others as part of broad crackdown

#235

Post by bluedispatcher »

exogeny wrote: post #43
skindoe wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds Orwellian

Good thing many alternatives exist!

This is a disingenuous argument. When all mainstream platforms decide that your opinion is not welcome, your only real alternative becomes either silence or small echo chambers where you're more likely to enter into radical feedback loops. This is not healthy for our societies.

Historically, public spaces have been used to confront ideas. Free speech isn't a luxury, it's a necessity that ensures our societies don't devolve into radicalized micro bubbles that are more likely to resort to violence. The issue that we're facing is that the public space is being replaced by the virtual private space, which doesn't have such guarantees. We're already seeing the effect of such divisiveness already, and it's only going to get worse. So should we just accept that free speech is dead? I don't think that's the right direction.

Re: Twitter bans 7k QAnon accounts, limits 150k others as part of broad crackdown

#236

Post by dang »

joshuamorton wrote: post #82
alienhuman wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Please don't compare banning people from twitter and exterminating Jews. The two aren't comparable.

Would you please stop feeding egregious comments by replying, a.k.a. feeding the trolls? The site guidelines explicitly ask you not to do this, but to flag the comments instead: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

I've banned that account but the damage is caused just as much by the users who perpetuate the flamewar.

Re: Twitter bans 7k QAnon accounts, limits 150k others as part of broad crackdown

#237

Post by dang »

allarm wrote: post #200
joshuamorton wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell if you're being needlessly pedantic, but to clarify: no there are no similarities between the holocaust and getting banned from twitter. The two situations aren't similar, and comparing them is disgusting and shows a lack of empathy for people who have faced actual persecution. Sure, you can write the words that compare them. No, you should not.

[flagged]

Please don't do ideological flamewar on HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Twitter bans 7k QAnon accounts, limits 150k others as part of broad crackdown

#238

Post by joshuamorton »

dang wrote: post #236
joshuamorton wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't compare banning people from twitter and exterminating Jews. The two aren't comparable.

Would you please stop feeding egregious comments by replying, a.k.a. feeding the trolls? The site guidelines explicitly ask you not to do this, but to flag the comments instead: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html . I've banned that account but the damage is caused just as much by the users who perpetuate the flamewar.

[Ah I'm entirely rewriting this, sorry].

Comments like this one are...tricky. While I can see why this one should be flagged (and I'm glad that it was), there's similar enough things that aren't flag-worthy posted all the time.

Arguments about speech and censorship are really common on HN, and I doubt you're saying they're all off limits, for example I don't think the subthread with TearsInTheRain was bad. I certainly think that user is wrong, but I don't see why their comment was flagged (unless the answer is "the whole subthread is flag-y).

Re: Twitter bans 7k QAnon accounts, limits 150k others as part of broad crackdown

#239

Post by dwd »

Hitton wrote: post #219
dwd wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could start with the guy who charged into the pizza shop back when this all began. Fortunately he didn't kill anyone but he's now in jail after sincerely believed children were being abused and that it was being covered up. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/police-man-with-assault-rifle-d...

So you are claiming that QAnon, "a thing" that started in October 2017 is somehow responsible for attack in 2016? Could you explain your reasoning? I don't think you believe in some time travel conspiracy, that would be more of QAnon thing.

I would think it fairly disingenuous to claim QAnon as a distinct thing with no history or causality and that it appeared fully formed and unchanging.

It should have by rights have disappeared into obscurity after the imminent mass arrests of HRC and other prominent Dems didn't occur; much like the lone gunman inadvertently showed Pizzagate as a hoax.

Rather it has morphed into a moment of sorts that channels people frustrations with anything and everything, with a weird idolisation of Trump the celebrity and now encompasses any alt/far-right fringe idea that is big on conspiracy but generally lacking in theory.

Re: Twitter bans 7k QAnon accounts, limits 150k others as part of broad crackdown

#240

Post by Fjolsvith »

shadowgovt wrote: post #223
Fjolsvith wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Especially when Q controls the level of the aggressive hate in the nonsense. I'm not so sure that the level of aggressive hate from the populace is attributable to Q. I believe he's just tapping into it.

So, to give a concrete example: one way Q could ratchet back on the aggressive hate in the nonsense is to just stop posting. Stop posting anything. That would ratchet it down.

They tried once to silence Q by taking down 8chan. Like Obi-Wan, he just came back stronger.
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