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Twitter employee deactivates Trump account

bbc.co.uk

161–170 of 185 posts

Re: Twitter employee deactivates Trump account

#161

This article shines light on the power bestowed upon Twitter employees. They can randomly deactivate one's account, and unless you're the president, you might not have any recourse. Particularly worrisome is the general left leaning political and social affiliation of such employees. We are an era of systemic censorship of right leaning speech by popular internet platforms. I'm personally center left, but in no way d…

I'll give a very personal account. I was in the past harassed on Twitter. I received death threats and users were giving out my phone number and address to other Twitter users via DM. I filed an official complaint, and Twitter's response was this is not harassment, we won't do anything. I am pretty sure because of my political views the Twitter support representative decided they didn't like me. The hypocrisy, bias,…

Some 16 year old saying “SILENCE I KEEL YOU’ isn’t a death threat. Get a hold of yourself. I think you should just block trolls on twitter and get on with your life.

The more you cry about it the more the trolls will keep hopping over you. I know this is news to you but you enable this toxic culture.

Re: Twitter employee deactivates Trump account

#162
post #45

This article shines light on the power bestowed upon Twitter employees. They can randomly deactivate one's account, and unless you're the president, you might not have any recourse. Particularly worrisome is the general left leaning political and social affiliation of such employees. We are an era of systemic censorship of right leaning speech by popular internet platforms. I'm personally center left, but in no way d…

"I'm personally center left" ... Hopefully I don't get dang'd by observing how common a meme this is. Companies, public and private, have the legal right to take on whatever political position they have, and beyond having the power to control dialogue, there is no way they can abdicate exercising that power; it's unavoidably emergent from their technology that someone's tweet has to show up top when you log in. This…

"I'm personally center left" ...

They said "center left." That, by definition, means they're not going to be in lockstep.

So you're taking someone that effectively said: "I generally agree with Foo but some of their actions are not to my taste" and responded by finding them guilty of association with the enemy.

--

For the sake of argument, I'm ignoring the fact that the "reactionary" label is thrown around to mean a "contrarian" to the left's memes rather than a bonda fide political "reactionary" (which means something more specific than "contrarian" + "right wing").

Re: Twitter employee deactivates Trump account

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a series of articles a few years ago about closet GOP supporters in the tech industry fearing being "outed" for the damage it would cause to their careers. In your experience do you feel that this concern is justified? (I think there was at least one startup CEO who declared that if he found out that anyone at his company had voted for Trump, that he would fire him/her)

Absolutely. I've been lucky enough to be self-employed for a bit, but if you walk into any bay area startup nearly everybody will be a vitriol against Trump and conservatives very publicly. It is not even subtle. I'm the kind of person who actually enjoys a debate, and my lack of PC offends some. If I were an employee, probably would be problematic.

[deleted]

Re: Twitter employee deactivates Trump account

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without sources for any of your claims (GOP supporters fearing an outing, CEO that would fire Trump voters) your comment comes over as a way to incite a heated discussion here, AKA trolling.

For the former, a sibling commenter has provided a HN discussion regarding a CNN article with a 10+ minute interview with people who are being interviewed with a voice changer for fear of being outed. Regarding the latter, here's Grubhub's CEO calling for Trump voters to resign: The CEO of Grubhub, an online food delivery service, sent a company wide email Wednesday suggesting employees who agree with President-elect…

Not to Godwin the thread, but where does a company need to draw the line? On the extreme end of the spectrum, I would assume that no company would want someone with Nazi-supporting political beliefs on their staff, and that most people would find it acceptable to fire a Nazi. That means there's some point on the line at which, on one side it's acceptable to fire someone for their political beliefs, and on the other side, it's not. So, where along the line from socialist, to liberal, to conservative, to Trump-supporter, to Nazi should that point be established? Who decides?

Re: Twitter employee deactivates Trump account

#165

I frequently come across tweets by neo-nazis promoting their hateful ideas. We can't let this go on in the name of free speech.

Let's see how your logic extrapolates.... I frequently come across Socialists and Communists promoting their violent, hateful ideas. We can't let this go on in the name of free speech. After all, Communism murdered over a hundred million people in the 20th century. All Socialist and Communist propaganda - including all images of Mao, Che Guevara and the hammer & sickle - must be banned from all platforms, to avoid th…

This is feeding the trolls, and then getting the idea to open up shop and start trolling on your own. Doubly-bad for Hacker News and in obvious violation of the guidelines.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Twitter employee deactivates Trump account

#166
post #8

This article shines light on the power bestowed upon Twitter employees. They can randomly deactivate one's account, and unless you're the president, you might not have any recourse. Particularly worrisome is the general left leaning political and social affiliation of such employees. We are an era of systemic censorship of right leaning speech by popular internet platforms. I'm personally center left, but in no way d…

There are literally nazis promoting themselves on twitter without censorship, so I disagree with your claim.

Could you please not take us straight into ideological hell? These inescapably repetitive flamewars aren't a real discussion, they're just teeth-gnashing.

> Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Twitter employee deactivates Trump account

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the former, a sibling commenter has provided a HN discussion regarding a CNN article with a 10+ minute interview with people who are being interviewed with a voice changer for fear of being outed. Regarding the latter, here's Grubhub's CEO calling for Trump voters to resign: The CEO of Grubhub, an online food delivery service, sent a company wide email Wednesday suggesting employees who agree with President-elect…

Not to Godwin the thread, but where does a company need to draw the line? On the extreme end of the spectrum, I would assume that no company would want someone with Nazi-supporting political beliefs on their staff, and that most people would find it acceptable to fire a Nazi. That means there's some point on the line at which, on one side it's acceptable to fire someone for their political beliefs, and on the other s…

The debate they were having was whether or not it is true that Trump supporters and people who are merely conservatives, are correct in their fear of being "outed".

Whether or not it is "moral" to fire people for being a Republican is a separate issue, that you can decide for yourself on.

We are merely stating that these fears are legitimate fears.

Re: Twitter employee deactivates Trump account

#168
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll give a very personal account. I was in the past harassed on Twitter. I received death threats and users were giving out my phone number and address to other Twitter users via DM. I filed an official complaint, and Twitter's response was this is not harassment, we won't do anything. I am pretty sure because of my political views the Twitter support representative decided they didn't like me. The hypocrisy, bias,…

It turns out that humans have memories and reputation is important. Not to invoke Godwin, but Hitler’s opinions on mundane things will always be filtered through the lens of what he did and said otherwise. It is the same for all people. If you don’t want to damage your reputation, either publish your unpopular opinions anonymously, keep them to yourself, or figure out why your views result in others wanting to threat…

Is firing people for which party they vote for REALLY a war that you want to get into?

Do you really believe that only Republicans would be targeted?

If this stuff becomes normalized the Left needs to understand that there are a whole lot of powerful conservatives in the world, and that left leaning people will be hurt just as much as right leaning people.

Attacks on open discourse, and freedom of thought hurt EVERYONE. And you should be careful what you wish for.

Re: Twitter employee deactivates Trump account

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to Godwin the thread, but where does a company need to draw the line? On the extreme end of the spectrum, I would assume that no company would want someone with Nazi-supporting political beliefs on their staff, and that most people would find it acceptable to fire a Nazi. That means there's some point on the line at which, on one side it's acceptable to fire someone for their political beliefs, and on the other s…

The debate they were having was whether or not it is true that Trump supporters and people who are merely conservatives, are correct in their fear of being "outed". Whether or not it is "moral" to fire people for being a Republican is a separate issue, that you can decide for yourself on. We are merely stating that these fears are legitimate fears.

It seems reasonable to fear any activity that could damage your career. If I know companies will fire me (or not hire me) because I'm a Dodgers fan, I'd be right to be afraid of being outed as a Dodgers fan.

Re: Twitter employee deactivates Trump account

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eminem isn’t a good example. He hates politicians and Hollywood “elites”, and Trump is both

The quote I used from Eminem was about sexually assaulting Ann Coulter. Does he routinely talk that way about political pundits?

Umm listen to the Marshall Mathers LP and then get back to me
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