Twitter has barred hundreds of accounts for posing as liberal activists • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter has barred hundreds of accounts for posing as liberal activists

#121

Post by jessaustin » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 2:29 PM UTC

Nasrudith wrote: post #101

jessaustin wrote: post #46

The Right used to abhor postmodernism, and were properly mocked by the Left whenever they whinged about it. Now the Right have embraced postmodernism, and the Left have no idea how to respond.

That happened back with George W. Bush ironically and really ended it for the postmodernist side. There was one interesting article about it. http://clubtroppo.com.au/2012/02/22/george-bush-bruno-latour... Being disengaged with reality because it doesn't say what you want it to isn't a good thing but some delusions are more harmful than others.

Great link, with great links! I'll be avidly reading those over the next few days. "...Latour can actually write well when he wants to." Golden!

The PoMo "side" is not exactly the Leftist side, however. If reformed PoMo enthusiasts expect all this to go away now that they've seen the error of their ways, they will be disappointed. The discourse from 4chan etc is not only a reaction to a particular political circumstance, but also to the experience of real people in economic, advertising, media, social, etc arenas. The channers have found something that empowers them to speak back to dominant narratives that exclude them, and they're not going to give it up just because e.g. Latour has changed his mind.

Re: Twitter has barred hundreds of accounts for posing as liberal activists

#122

Post by michaelflux » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 2:29 PM UTC

atq2119 wrote: post #113

jf- wrote: post #80

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I’d prefer if this culture war crap were kept off HN. There are plenty of other places to discuss this, just because Twitter is involved doesn’t mean it’s related to tech.

Yeah, this thread has degraded extremely rapidly in terms of comments. And luckily it just disappeared off the front page :)

> this thread has degraded extremely rapidly

The internet in a nutshell.

Re: Twitter has barred hundreds of accounts for posing as liberal activists

#123

Post by fenwick67 » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 2:29 PM UTC

"let's show how unthinking this other group is with a snowclone meme"

Re: Twitter has barred hundreds of accounts for posing as liberal activists

#124

Post by raxxorrax » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 2:30 PM UTC

rtkwe wrote: post #48

WillPostForFood wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically satire banned on Twitter, if it comes from the right. These accounts were in no way misleading; one would never confuse them for actual liberal activists.

There's plenty of satire left out there. What isn't satire or useful is misleading information about how/when to vote etc.

While your answer is reducible to "yes" in this case, I think the NPC meme is just the inverted Russian bot meme. If one qualifies as misleading information, the other should be scrutinized as well.

Although the NPC case is probably about some random people on twitter that like to make fun of some targets, the story about Russians seems to have more involved actors.

Re: Twitter has barred hundreds of accounts for posing as liberal activists

#125

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 2:31 PM UTC

mikeatlas wrote: post #40

The appropriate title should have included: "The accounts violated Twitter’s rules against “intentionally misleading election-related content."

[deleted]

Re: Twitter has barred hundreds of accounts for posing as liberal activists

#126

Post by ericdykstra » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 2:32 PM UTC

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #118

ericdykstra wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Gamers" and "Gamergate" is a generic boogeyman that media outlets can use to direct their anger at. See "Why Young Men of Color Are Joining White-Supremacist Groups" [1] for another example. The obvious answer to "Why are non-whites joining white supremacist groups" might be "They're not white supremacist groups, they're just mislabeled by people who call everyone they disagree with nazis." The article explains that…

To me, the real explanation for a lot of this bizarre nonsense is because journalists are spending all day on Twitter which in reality isn't the real world it's technically just a very popular internet forum with a few famous users and they've begun to not understand that what happens on the internet forum Twitter does not represent what's actually happening in the real world. This is how internet forum drama gets mi…

Indeed. When ~journalists~ spend their whole day on Twitter, it means their resolution of the world is incredibly minute.

Think about the most significant events from 2005. If you're looking back at that resolution, the small day-to-day stuff gets filtered out. The signal to noise ratio of what's actually significant is pretty good.

These journalists are literally involved in the minute to minute. They wouldn't even notice the signal if it kicked them in the head, because they live in the noise.

Re: Twitter has barred hundreds of accounts for posing as liberal activists

#127

Post by Nasrudith » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 2:32 PM UTC

fromthestart wrote: post #19

This meme is originally based on the idea that not all people have an inner voice, and the supposition that people without an inner voice may be less likely to introspect and think critically. I think the ban is a little ridiculous and likely has more to do with it's origin on a so called "far right" website than anything else.

I suspect the ban is based off of all of the post World War 2 scholarship on fascism and the list of signs and symptoms - when you have literal nazis not facing immediate ejection but being condoned, pushing every all while engaged in such a political shift such that George W Bush would be now considered leftist it is reasonable to be worried. Implying your foes lack even the sapience of a goldfish is /way/ more worrying in that context than the juvenile unself reflective solipsism.

Re: Twitter has barred hundreds of accounts for posing as liberal activists

#128

Post by pcbro141 » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 2:32 PM UTC

ericdykstra wrote: post #116

pcbro141 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my view, there's a difference between letting people say stupid things, and letting people deliberately say misleading things that are clearly for the purpose of influencing an election (spreading the wrong election date.) I don't see anything wrong with Twitter not tolerating people spreading the wrong election date because 'free speech, don't be so offended'.

Where do you draw the line? Do you think an account with... username: NPC #15253823 id: npc_15253823 avatar: generic gray NPC avatar with sunglasses posting #LetHerDecide memes is "clearly for the purpose of influencing an election," or is it satire? If that level of satire won't be tolerated, what will?

Twitter decided trying to get people to not vote by spreading the wrong election date crosses the line. There's not much satire in spreading the wrong election date. I don't think it's ridiculous at all.

Re: Twitter has barred hundreds of accounts for posing as liberal activists

#129

Post by yorwba » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 2:34 PM UTC

kazagistar wrote: post #68

ds0 wrote: post #41

Evan James has a good writeup on the sort of anxieties around society that sprung up the NPC meme [0]. There's a portion which I think has a kernel of truth, although it is definitely generous to the kind of people that immaturely lashed out and made very low-effort twitter accounts which wound up propagating the meme: >The far right can be profoundly intuitive creatures, who feel more deeply than cursory glances sug…

It confuses me, because "don't take things at face value" and "don't just follow a script" is, well, postmodernism. It's also anticapitalism. It's also a commentary about peoples reverence of traditional gender roles and religions. Actually, I totally fail to see why it's a conservative meme at all, unless it's being repeated without any attempt to consider broader implications.

> I totally fail to see why it's a conservative meme at all

It's not a conservative meme. 4chan trolls != conservatives != The Right != Republicans != ... Almost nothing fits neatly into a bipolar spectrum of "us vs them" and 4chan culture is mostly about being where the normal people don't want to go.

On /b/ you can find posts complaining about Jews controlling the economy, trans people swapping pictures, memes about niggers cucking white bois, incest fantasies, celebrations of school shootings, people claiming their favorite anime characters as waifu/husbando, complaints about how this is all cancer and needs to stop ...

There is no unified message that would fit into mainstream politics.

Re: Twitter has barred hundreds of accounts for posing as liberal activists

#130

Post by rtkwe » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 2:35 PM UTC

raxxorrax wrote: post #124

rtkwe wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's plenty of satire left out there. What isn't satire or useful is misleading information about how/when to vote etc.

While your answer is reducible to "yes" in this case, I think the NPC meme is just the inverted Russian bot meme. If one qualifies as misleading information, the other should be scrutinized as well. Although the NPC case is probably about some random people on twitter that like to make fun of some targets, the story about Russians seems to have more involved actors.

It's not the satire/joke that's getting banned, we know this because there's still NPC account doing the same joke so it's not just the joke that brought down the hammer.

What got those 1500 banned were tweets like "Get out and vote November 7th!" 1 day after the actual date of Nov 6th and the boosting and retweeting among all the accounts.