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Twitter sued for allegedly refusing to remove child porn

nypost.com

31–40 of 238 posts

Re: Twitter sued for allegedly refusing to remove child porn

#31
post #14

Even as someone who's glad Biden is now president - it's a bit unnerving to be living in a time where a service bans the sitting united states president without batting an eye but engages in legal battles to defend the distribution of child pornography on their "open platform". I guess people posting spicy takes on government happens to be more of an active risk to society than literal child predators?

I don't really think that's a fair description of the story here. Twitter hasn't yet engaged in any legal battle; this lawsuit was filed just yesterday and they haven't responded.

Re: Twitter sued for allegedly refusing to remove child porn

#33
post #14

Even as someone who's glad Biden is now president - it's a bit unnerving to be living in a time where a service bans the sitting united states president without batting an eye but engages in legal battles to defend the distribution of child pornography on their "open platform". I guess people posting spicy takes on government happens to be more of an active risk to society than literal child predators?

They didn't ban Trump "without batting an eye" they dickered about it for four entire years while he trampled all over their AUP and they didn't bother banning him until he literally tried to incite a civil war, and even then it's clear that the only reason they banned him is that it didn't work. If somehow Trump's ridiculous little revolt had succeeded in installing him as president again, Twitter would have kept him too.

Re: Twitter sued for allegedly refusing to remove child porn

#34
Now then, I expect a swift retribution from other companies to do the "right" thing and banish Twitter from our reach.

Remove them from Google searches, de-platform them from the App Store and cut their access to hosting services.

They have failed to moderate their platform, in fact in this case it seems they did on the contrary, so it is only just they get their part of punishment.

Re: Twitter sued for allegedly refusing to remove child porn

#35
post #16

It's a story that's so completely outside of my personal experience that I cannot evaluate it In 14 years of holding a Twitter account, I've never seen anything even close to such things on Twitter, and wouldn't use the platform if I did. If I were to see child pornography on Twitter, I would immediately report it to law enforcement and close my account Well, I hope that poor child wins justice.

Start reading a single (non porn related) message from one these creeps and your Twitter timeline will be inundated with illegal porn content in no time. Twitter is absolutely rife with that horrible stuff, and Twitter certainly does the minimum to remove any of that, as demonstrated by that article.

Why even give the benefit of the doubt? Someone reports CP, remove it, period. Of course, Twitter makes money off it...

People claim Twitter can't possibly moderate content at scale, except that Twitter makes money at that same scale. Social media can't have it both way, especially when it comes to CP.

Re: Twitter sued for allegedly refusing to remove child porn

#36
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, aside from the civil liability already being pursued in the reported lawsuit, there should also be criminal liability for people making those editorial judgements, as far up the management chain as it goes. This is not some algorithmic failure that no human saw -it was specifically examined by a human with managers setting policy, and deemed to be acceptable to distribute. At that point, they are willfully d…

> This is not some algorithmic failure that no human saw -it was specifically examined by a human with managers setting policy, and deemed to be acceptable to distribute. Or, you know, the claims in the lawsuit are false. This wouldn't be the first time that happened.

Considering that this is NYPost, its quite possible. I don't really consider NYPost to be a very respectable institution.

Re: Twitter sued for allegedly refusing to remove child porn

#37
post #6

I've had this happen to me on Facebook. Found a disgusting video involving children, reported it, got a response that there's nothing wrong with it. It's like the people reviewing this stuff have only a second to decide if the content should be deleted.

OTOH, I've reported posts and had them take them down within the hour...

The issue seems to be that some posts are reviewed by Facebook staff in America, and others by Facebook staff in India. The American staff acts quickly and is very good about taking violations down. The Indian staff seems to be very laissez faire, due to the different cultural standards for content.

Re: Twitter sued for allegedly refusing to remove child porn

#38
post #4

The victim actually took steps to have content removed and Twitter failed to do so (initially). I wonder if payment vendors will give Twitter the "Pornhub treatment" and de-platform their access to financial services. > Finally on Jan. 28, Twitter replied to Doe and said they wouldn’t be taking down the material, which had already racked up over 167,000 views and 2,223 retweets, the suit states. > “Thanks for reachin…

Unfortunately, mainstream media won't pick on it, nor will the story gain traction because it is published in the NY Post. (if it is true) Edit:- to the folks down voting me, please show me some major outlets (NYT, BBC, etc) reporting on this. As far as we are concerned, this kind of stuff should be news.

There's more than one explanation as to why "mainstream media" might not run a story. The NY Post isn't exactly known as a bastion of credible journalism. That's why they ran the Hunter Biden laptop story when everyone else passed because they couldn't verify it.

Re: Twitter sued for allegedly refusing to remove child porn

#39
post #14

Even as someone who's glad Biden is now president - it's a bit unnerving to be living in a time where a service bans the sitting united states president without batting an eye but engages in legal battles to defend the distribution of child pornography on their "open platform". I guess people posting spicy takes on government happens to be more of an active risk to society than literal child predators?

People are banned from HN all the time for being rude. Does the reason even matter though? Twitter can decide who uses its services and who doesn't as long as it doesn't violate existing laws.

You shouldn't compare a small and niche community like HN to a website like Twitter.

Twitter is the web equivalent of a public square, where everyone gets an opportunity at a speakers corner, HN is the web equivalent of a club house, or something private like that. There are laws governing public spaces all around the world, like town squares, where people are guaranteed rights to speak. Laws like these need to be adapted to fit the internet as well, asap IMO.

As much as you might like to think that the Town square analogy is incorret, because the protocol HTTPS is the real Town square, and Twitter is really just another club house. (except very big) I also disagree with that, because of the nature of social media and platform monopoly. There will ever really only be one "youtube", one "facebook" and one "twitter", certainly nowadays when these social media platforms have grown to such an extent, covering the entire globe, let alone nations! This is because _the power of a social media platform lies in it being social_ i.e., the place where you find other people.

The platforms on top, stay on top.

Re: Twitter sued for allegedly refusing to remove child porn

#40
This is critical to Twitter's crappy stance. They want to act like a neutral party to avoid liability (like common carrier status of US telco), yet they also want to censor what and who they feel like (via their ToS and being a private company). Their stance is inconsistent and this type of case may lead to resolution of that. Unfortunately I predict they will just add a few illegal things to their ToS as being twitter offenses.
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