Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#121

Post by mdpopescu » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 2:07 PM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #56

keiferski wrote: post #12

Why does it matter if the flagging is automatic? Does that somehow make it more acceptable? The popularity of this view makes me wish more people read Kafka. A future tyranny might end up not being Orwell's 1984 or Huxley's Brave New World, but a kafkesque nightmare where people are lost in a world of AI giving out absurd punishments. [1] Kafka's book The Castle [2] is essentially about this, although I think his aph…

Automatic flagging just means their algorithm is crap. Which is bad, but it's a fixable technical problem in the medium term and the post can be restored in the short term. If this were deliberate flagging it would mean they were way outside of any reasonable interpretations of their guidelines and users really could no longer post anything and be confident it wouldn't run afoul of those interpretations. This is much…

Ah... I'm sorry to say, ihsw, but you've been shadowbanned.

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#122

Post by aaron695 » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 2:08 PM UTC

jkingsbery wrote: post #54

franciscop wrote: post #17

> And even if euthanasia is just that – and Twitter is very proud to toot its horn as the sensitive and sensible, woke platform that clamps down on promotion and encouragement of self-harm, including its ultimate form, suicide – the tweet, even though it opposed it, got banned. This is such an interesting topic, because while euthanasia can be considered a way of suicide, advocating against it can also be considered…

The offending tweet was arguing against all forms of suicide, assisted or otherwise. I'm trying to understand your point charitably, but it escapes me how arguing against suicide could be interpreted as arguing for suicide. I understand that there's a consequentialist argument ("it is going to happen anyway"), but that seems to accept something as inevitable which is not.

I think because euthanasia is someone else kills you, not assists with suicide, OP used euthanasia, the Irish Bishop's specific tweet used 'assisted suicide' and the story headline used 'euthanasia'

I have no idea if the church considers euthanasia, suicide or murder or both. A lot of people would not consider euthanasia suicide since someone else is agreeing you can die and doing it for you. If you can't legally get euthanasia you might have to suicide early before incapacitation.

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#123

Post by koonsolo » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 2:08 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #12

Why does it matter if the flagging is automatic? Does that somehow make it more acceptable? The popularity of this view makes me wish more people read Kafka. A future tyranny might end up not being Orwell's 1984 or Huxley's Brave New World, but a kafkesque nightmare where people are lost in a world of AI giving out absurd punishments. [1] Kafka's book The Castle [2] is essentially about this, although I think his aph…

Alright, let's say you get appointed at Twitter to clean up this mess. You get full authority to do whatever needs to be done.

How would you solve this? Your solution will be criticized by the other HN-ers here :D.

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#124

Post by 1234letshaveatw » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 2:09 PM UTC

teh_klev wrote: post #36

thedanbob wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or Gordon Dickson: https://www.atariarchives.org/bcc2/showpage.php?page=133

I remember reading this years ago, and it's still as bonkers as ever. Slightly related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_(1985_film) " One day, shortly before Christmas, a fly becomes jammed in a teleprinter, misprinting a copy of an arrest warrant it was receiving resulting in the arrest and accidental death during interrogation of cobbler Archibald Buttle instead of renegade heating engineer and suspected terro…

how prescient that it was a bug :)

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#125

Post by chrisseaton » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 2:11 PM UTC

holistio wrote: post #116

fnord123 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is not appropriate to compare the Holocaust with slavery and disenfranchisement of blacks in the US. The Holocaust was a event spanning under a decade that must not be forgotten. Slavery was reduced in the US but not banned so it is a problem that has been spanning 400 years - and still happening. They are both wicked and evil issues but entirely different in scope and effect. I'm not sure if it would be o…

I was not equating the two things. I was illustrating how people come up with slogans that sound good for things that destroy lives.

> people come up with slogans that sound good for things that destroy lives

Did you consider writing just this instead? Why use sarcasm for something that can be said plainly and straightforwardly instead?

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#126

Post by holistio » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 2:11 PM UTC

ssully wrote: post #101

holistio wrote: post #59

I live in Europe, in a country where black population is statistically insignificant, I only see black people about once every fortnight, and I live in a city of close to 2 million people. A lot of my acquaintances and friends have practically zero exposure to what caused the BLM movement and during last summer there was a significant number of people posting stuff along the lines of "all lives matter". To illustrate…

Well I will say if we were friends on Facebook and I saw that post come up in my feed, I would have just removed you as a friend. Even with context, I don't see how that can be interpreted as anything but shitty.

I think the shitty thing is how these two slogans were used for dehumanising other people by the same kind of people.

And there was context - a series of long form posts that I have published over the years standing up for all kinds of minorities, from gay people to refugees being dehumanised actively, on huge billboards, by the government.

But you do you.

I'm still confident that the core of the message was on point, even though I accept that the form was chosen in a moment of anger - I saw a locally acclaimed artist post a very well designed "all lives matter" poster and was disgusted by how everyone was cheering on how positive their message was and I couldn't help but imagine how someone applauded the typographer who created the slogan at the gates of Auschwitz.

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#127

Post by mumblemumble » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 2:11 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #90

jkingsbery wrote: post #64

It's a half-joke in Catholic media circles that making comments like this is likely to receive some kind of punishment on social media... I say "half-joke" because it happens extremely frequently and those writers in that world all know it happens and try to laugh about it. As someone in the tech world, I spend most of my time interacting with more "liberal" people. I don't hear about this happening with any frequenc…

When Dorsey was in front of a Senate committee just before election, the discrepancy in the types of questions between Democrats and Republicans was quite stark. Republicans were hammering Dorsey on censoring conservatives, and Democrats were hammering Dorsey for not censoring enough. Tells you all you need to know.

It tells you that politicians are only ever in the game to win elections, and, in that moment, just before the election, this was the way to approach the hearing that seemed most tactically appropriate to both sides.

That's not actually something I want to know; we've already known that that's how politicians behave for centuries. I'd be a lot more interested to know if social media is influencing the public political discussion in meaningful ways, and how, and to what end. But those questions were never going to be answered in any sort of compelling way by a gaggle of politicians trying to score cheap points in front of their constituents.

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#128

Post by somehnrdr14726 » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 2:11 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #87

somehnrdr14726 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One difference is that Twitter, Facebook, Google, are not governments and have no real authority over you. They only have the power you give them by choosing to stay in their ecosystem. Therefore it's a strain to refer to them as officials. If you're worried about them _becoming_ officials, then act now. Leave these platforms and convince others to do the same.

Well, in a literal sense, no. But they certainly have the ability to: - Exclude you from the largest (and nearly monopolizing) media channels. Good luck getting an online business off the ground when an AI filter bans you from YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Google search results. And good luck contacting Google support to contest it, which is notoriously absent for virtually everyone. - Have you socially ostracized…

Sticking to the consumer-side of the discussion, the BigCos aren't going to break the cycle. In fact, it's a capitalist crime to do so. Their flywheel requires a steady cattle population to surveil in the fields. When we choose as individuals to remain in their ecosystem, we choose the hidden fees of surveillance capitalism over more straightforward payment models. This is what gives BigCos the muscle to wield against smaller capitalists.

We in our consumer role, by not participating in these business models, are the only truly free actors in the system at this time. The only other way out is for government to get bigger and step in, as it's doing in Australia now.

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#129

Post by gedy » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 2:14 PM UTC

2ion wrote: post #53

How anybody could treat Twitter as anything but a read-only medium is beyond me. Twitter technically has (even if programmed) editors and what you get to see is what editors did not whitelist, but what they did not blacklist. The latter is only an accommodation of its size. If they could, they would choose a whitelist model.

Ironically you might be flagged by some for using the terms "blacklist" & "whitelist".

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#130

Post by ceejayoz » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 2:14 PM UTC

trasz wrote: post #50

ceejayoz wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why would anyone get banned for being pro euthanasia? Because it's explicitly against the rules. "You may not promote or encourage suicide or self-harm." https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/glorifying-se...

Euthanasia is not self-harm, quite the contrary.

"or"