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Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists

#791

Now that the location of the supposed "attack by stalker" has been geolocated by someone affiliated to Bellingcat[1] and obviously that (if ever happened) had nothing to do with services or bots that share aviation public data; can we move past the, arguably naively made, smokescreen and ask what this supposed to disorient us from? I mean, the hypocrisy of using a jet plane instead of driving for 40 minutes in your "…

Or it may be his huge stock sale earlier that day?!

Re: Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists

#792

> Update: Musk just weighed in on the suspensions, characterizing them as intentional. “Same doxxing rules apply to “journalists” as to everyone else,” he tweeted in a reply. > It’s worth noting that the policy these accounts violated, a prohibition against sharing “live location information,” is only 24 hours old. It seems like a good rule, but in this case the application of the rule seems less impersonal than it c…

What is everyone up in arms for? This is a private company, so he can do whatever he wants. That is what everyone has been saying for years. I mean, it turns out they were wrong and Twitter was actually colluding with government agencies to bypass the first amendment. But censorship and targeted suspensions were defended tooth and nail by internet commenters. Is this a problem now only because people you like are tar…

Is it now genetally agreed upon that Twitter was actually “colluding with government agencies to bypass the first amendment”, or is that still a hotly contested statement?

(My understanding was that the Twitter files did on the end not contain such evidence, but information overload … I may have lost some consensus)

Re: Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists

#793
post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also worth noting that revealing real names and workplaces of anonymous accounts is still allowed. The doxxing that is banned is a specific class of doxxing that isn't often considered to be doxxing.

This. Since when is current location of a well known person doxxing? AFAICT, Elon made that up to suit himself.

That's probably true for everything about how he runs Twitter. It's his personal platform now, and not a public town square anymore. He makes up the rules to suit himself, and he'll enforce them the way he wants.

Re: Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists

#794
this thread sure has a lot of clairvoyants. you cant predict chaos only sit back and enjoy the spectacle. for real though its been pretty funny watching the left now use the same complaints the right did when twitter wasnt owned by elon musk. its a private company and he can allow or disallow who he wants on his platform and honestly everyone on twitter could use a 7 day suspension, preferably a 21 day suspension to help kick the addiction a lot of people seem to have.

Re: Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists

#795
post #764

I don't care whether the Washington Post is right or not on this one; but it is good to see that these people are now getting a taste of their own medicine. Nobody from that camp was lifting a finger when "conspiracy theorists" were being banned from Twitter. People were saying that "Twitter was a private company who could ban whoever it wanted". Here is a past thread of mine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=311…

Fwiw I checked comments of the ones that commented in your past thread and from those whoever has commented on recent Twitter threads has retained their opinion. So based on that cannot imply the people saying "Twitter can do whatever it wants" and people calling out what happens now are the same.

You mean based on 3 people. Ok.

Btw thank you so much for checking. Since you bothered that much, why not kindly share the proof with us?

Because you see I have this little problem: I cannot believe you without seeing the material that allowed to make you this conclusion.

If you don't answer, I'm afraid I might think that you weren't being truthful.

Re: Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists

#796

Musk joined a Twitter Spaces discussion about the bans and was mocked after he left [1]. Notably, suspended accounts were on stage with Elon during the discussion [2]. The space was ended abruptly 30 minutes later and it appears it was killed on Twitter’s side given that the usual metadata does not match what a closed Space has. This Space was being recorded and the replay is not available [3]. Musk now claims that t…

OMG, and thank god he can't run for POTUS.

Re: Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists

#797
post #753

Someone posted yesterday that the beginning of Musk's Twitter buy happened shortly after elonjet refused his $5000 offer to buy the account. The rational part of me says he surely couldn't have spent $45 billion dollars to shut the account down, but it's kinda feeling more and more true as the story continues. It's like this is the 21st century version of the San Francisco story where Yung refused to sell their house…

> The rational part of me says he surely couldn't have spent $45 billion dollars to shut the account down, but it's kinda feeling more and more true as the story continues. He could have banned the account on day 1, but he tweeted in defense of it. I don’t buy the theory that he had to wait to save face, he seems perfectly content to change his mind and make new rules on the spot without worrying about the backlash.…

> I’m sure he thinks the goals are good for everyone, including himself

This is exactly why democracy is so important. Humans are fallible. Power eventually corrupts everyone. Power should be distributed. I am not happy about de facto town squares being owned by powerful people. For this exact reason. Democrats were very happy with the status quo when their opponents were being censored. "It's a private business." I wonder if they will remain so idealistic.

Re: Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists

#799

Echoing David Sacks, he's now tweeting that the journalists in question were tweeting 'assassination coordinates.' https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603587970832793600 Starting to think there might be some national security issues with one guy being the nominal linchpin of the US space program, satellite internet, and global public messaging infrastructure.

Global? Twitter’s barely used in Europe, let alone Asia and Africa.

Couldn’t say anything for Eastern Europe, but it’s rather popular in Western Europe and Japan, which is where the ad dollars are.

Re: Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists

#800

> Update: Musk just weighed in on the suspensions, characterizing them as intentional. “Same doxxing rules apply to “journalists” as to everyone else,” he tweeted in a reply. > It’s worth noting that the policy these accounts violated, a prohibition against sharing “live location information,” is only 24 hours old. It seems like a good rule, but in this case the application of the rule seems less impersonal than it c…

What is everyone up in arms for? This is a private company, so he can do whatever he wants. That is what everyone has been saying for years. I mean, it turns out they were wrong and Twitter was actually colluding with government agencies to bypass the first amendment. But censorship and targeted suspensions were defended tooth and nail by internet commenters. Is this a problem now only because people you like are tar…

> What is everyone up in arms for? This is a private company, so he can do whatever he wants.

Not exactly. At least here in Germany, there is established jurisprudence that Twitter and Facebook are public "town halls" for discussion and as such have to maintain some sort of freedom of speech, with the borders being set by German laws. That means that for example Holocaust denial, which is perfectly fine under US law, has to be regionally blocked for Germany, while some instances of what Twitter/FB consider to be "hate speech" under their rules still has to be made available.

The general judicial consensus in Germany is that while platforms do have a requirement to moderate discourse (e.g. to remove libel and outright Nazi content), they also aren't allowed to moderate too strictly.

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