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They're trying to get me kidnapped and tortured, but Twitter doesn't care

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Re: They're trying to get me kidnapped and tortured, but Twitter doesn't care

#131

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

tsol wrote: post #121
DoreenMichele wrote: post #30

I am sorry for the responses I am seeing on HN. People with cushy lives who've likely never faced similar danger seem to just not really get it. I will say that your framing is one that most Westerners will have trouble taking seriously. It might go over better to document known cases where this pattern occurred and show the similarities. Walk people through it like they are five, so to speak. I know it's hard to do…

It's strange though, when it involves lgbtq or politics they suddenly understand why Twitter may need to police certain kinds of conversations. But when the actors involved are foreign, suddenly those high minded ideals turn into ambiguity and 'Twitter understandably doesn't want to take a side'. Yet last month I was hearing on this very forum that inaction is indeed pushing a side

I've never seen even the most censorious Americans argue that Twitter should investigate every accusation that person A is paid by group B. That scenario has actually been playing out over the past few days on American politics twitter, with a couple high profile journalists being falsely accused of taking out PPP loans, but Twitter didn't moderate those accusations and as far as I can tell nobody thinks they should have.

I don't mean this as an insult against the author, because of course Americans don't have to fear being kidnapped or tortured over it! But I don't think it's right to see this as some kind of hypocrisy.

Re: They're trying to get me kidnapped and tortured, but Twitter doesn't care

#132

Post by plankers »

dcow wrote: post #14

This really sucks to hear. What’s unclear to me is whether Twitter is being negligent or abnormal here or whether this is just shitty world politics unfolding partly on Twitter. Twitter is being used by both sides to fight over a narrative. Nothing new in that respect. The author doesn't really propose a solution other than Twitter essentially siding with him and take (what appears to me to be) a political stance. Of…

twitter is interested in making money. there's far more money to be made pandering to governments than in pandering to dissidents. the content moderation policies are just extra steps in justifying that stance.

Re: They're trying to get me kidnapped and tortured, but Twitter doesn't care

#133

Post by pessimizer »

root_axis wrote: post #63

> Twitter, despite millions of Pakistani users, it seems has no moderation system that understands local dynamics. Many would argue they don't even understand the local dynamics of the U.S. It's impossible for twitter to be an arbiter of the truth around the world, and you shouldn't expect them to be. However, I understand that's cold comfort for someone facing the threat of torture, death, or exile from their home,…

> It's impossible for twitter to be an arbiter of the truth around the world

Twitter only seems interested in this job in the countries and on the side of the factions who are politically helpful to Twitter. Twitter wouldn't care about Pakistan unless the State Department told them to care about Pakistan, and they could just as easily enter the fray by labeling the OPs tweets as deceptive and connected to foreign misinformation as they could enter it on the side of preventing his harassment.

Re: They're trying to get me kidnapped and tortured, but Twitter doesn't care

#134

Post by PeterisP »

computerfriend wrote: post #48
PeterisP wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the parent post seems to be saying is that it's quite plausible that localised moderation might follow the 'new regime' and instead of the current ignorance, they would strongly side against the OP - there's no reason to presume that 'some basic regional knowledge' would lead moderators to support the OPs political position instead of the position according to which he should be silenced and arrested - it might…

OP claims that synthetic commentators are making claims about them that are demonstrably untrue. This can be (and in other locales is) moderated in a politically neutral way.

I'm fairly sure that in other locales it is moderated in a politically neutral way that does not even attempt to evaluate whether the claims are untrue - the moderators verify if the claims are directly threatening or crude insults, but otherwise moderators don't attempt to determine what is true or not and correct people who say something untrue either intentionally or accidentally.

Re: They're trying to get me kidnapped and tortured, but Twitter doesn't care

#135

Post by pessimizer »

cmeacham98 wrote: post #6

I'm not saying Twitter is in the right here, but I'm not convinced by the article that Twitter is meaningfully increasing the danger to the OP. Is a corrupt government really going to avoid kidnapping/torturing someone because they're popular on Twitter?

> Is a corrupt government really going to avoid kidnapping/torturing someone because they're popular on Twitter?

Is your assumption that corrupt governments must be omnipotent, and don't have to make excuses for their behavior in order to maintain support, or at least to prevent riots?

Re: They're trying to get me kidnapped and tortured, but Twitter doesn't care

#136

Post by pessimizer »

fluoridation wrote: post #114
indymike wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They are not directly responsible for anyone’s safety and have no reason to take down content that isn’t a direct threat or clear defamation. From the article: the author is asking to have false, defamatory content removed. > That’s the police or justice system’s job. That is not an available option to the author of this article. The author is alleging that false posts are being made to lay the groundwork for the au…

>the author is asking to have false, defamatory content removed. The author is asking to have content that he says is false removed. >The author is alleging that false posts are being made to lay the groundwork for the author being detained and tortured by the local justice system. Since the tweets may be used as an excuse to have him detained, removing them will do nothing, because the government could just as easil…

> Since the tweets may be used as an excuse to have him detained, removing them will do nothing, because the government could just as easily use a different medium for the same purpose.

This is nonsense. That's like letting someone use your gun to shoot someone because they'd be able to find a gun somewhere.

Re: They're trying to get me kidnapped and tortured, but Twitter doesn't care

#137

Post by pessimizer »

mypalmike wrote: post #84
ricardobeat wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump was inciting civil unrest often, but I believe they set a terrible precedent by banning his account for the “I’m not attending the inauguration” tweet, based on a ton of very subtle inferences. One cannot reasonably expect them to act as a fact checker & censor for the entire world, nor would that be desirable from a private corporation. What we need is better, regulated moderation systems, and a justice system…

The pace of social media is insurmountable. More information is generated per second on social media than any justice system could process in a year.

More information is generated in the material world per second than is generated on social media per year, but we haven't seen that as a reason to dismantle the justice system.

Re: They're trying to get me kidnapped and tortured, but Twitter doesn't care

#138

Post by jona-f »

xwdv wrote: post #88
DoreenMichele wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not asking Twitter to protect him from murder. He's asking them to do their damn job so the platform cannot be used to facilitate a smear campaign that makes it easy to get away with murder. It's a very reasonable request.

No, this is not Twitter’s problem, and if they fulfill this request it just goes down a rabbit hole that eventually creates more liability for the company than what they want to take on. Twitter has taken the correct action here.

Wow, you're morally bankrupt. It's nice to see a well written article like that on the frontpage of this site, but unfortunately the venture capital fueled business model proposed by ycombinator is at the heart of the problem. Liability my ass. This is some disgusting dystopian bullshit. Also if you talk about liability, heard about the Streisand effect? Public opinion about these corporations is low and i think twitter itself isn't doing so well lately. Good riddance.

Re: They're trying to get me kidnapped and tortured, but Twitter doesn't care

#139

Post by umrashrf »

tsimionescu wrote: post #113
DoreenMichele wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been a moderator. Decisions are made contextually. One of his complaints is they clearly don't know what the hell is going on in Pakistan and this is a root cause of their mishandling of things. It is a completely reasonable criticism.

Would you also expect Google Search to take down links to local media outlets publishing similar stories? I don't personally think Twitter should be expected to go against the official government narrative of any country they operate in, for what it shows inside that country. Not that it would be immoral to do so, but I find it an entirely unrealistic expectation - Twitter is not the BBC.

As far as I know Facebook is actively taking measures to delete fake news and bring awareness about it. Also watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFLv9ozEZeM

Re: They're trying to get me kidnapped and tortured, but Twitter doesn't care

#140

Post by pbasista »

zionic wrote: post #64
MichaelCollins wrote: post #29

Being realistic: if your life hangs by the thread of twitter moderation, you should either run and hide, or get your affairs in order. If they really want you dead, even the best possible twitter moderation won't keep you safe. This whole circumstance of people wanting you dead is not twitters fault and there is very little twitter could do to protect you even if their moderation was perfect.

This is why I prefer “protocols over platforms”. This entire thing isn’t twitters fault any more than it is WiFi’s, DNS, or TCP’s.

> This entire thing isn’t twitters fault any more than it is WiFi’s, DNS, or TCP’s.

I respectfully disagree. TCP or DNS or WiFi or other technologies are merely means to achieve some result. A tool.

Twitter, like most services, is also built using various technologies and tools. But its main distinguishing property is that it has a large number of users who, for various reasons, are interested in what some other users have to say. Creating such social connections is its main goal.

Now, one might use e.g TCP to spread hate speech all over the internet. But apart from computers dropping these packets, almost no real person will be listening.

Contrast that with a Twitter account that has ~10k followers. If the hate speech is spread from there, it can get a lot of audience very quickly.

Twitter is one of many enablers and hosts of large online communities of people. As such, it should have, in my opinion, some responsibility regarding what goes on within these communities. At a minimum, it should disallow the dissemination of hate speech, actively seek and remove it and block the users who repeatedly spread it.

That being said, it might be difficult to precisely define what constitutes a hate speech and what not. But Twitter should at least be trying.

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