Good “first” step. Thing is in a time of public health crisis misinformation is not something we need to put up with. It’s should be blocked, not just not propagate. Social media has indeed become a public health problem.
Twitter bans 7k QAnon accounts, limits 150k others as part of broad crackdown
171–180 of 281 posts
Re: Twitter bans 7k QAnon accounts, limits 150k others as part of broad crackdown
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, that's what the debate that is coming to. Are the platforms the townsquare for speech and should we hold them to a standard of free speech that doesn't just mean "no interference from government"? Also, a difference of degree can be such that it becomes a difference in kind.
It's just strange to me that the Internet free speech debate is getting so heated after it's been around for as long as the Internet- or at least the Web- has. People are acting like they suddenly realized websites have TOS that include clauses on acceptable content.
You keep skipping over the reason. It's like saying the internet is nothing new because we had radio before. That's how big of a change social media is with the scale and reach.
It all basically happened in a decade, and especially grew in the last few years where even presidents are making news on Twitter first. And when the CEO of Twitter says social media is a right, it further begs the question of what access and moderation really mean.
Re: Twitter bans 7k QAnon accounts, limits 150k others as part of broad crackdown
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
The scale. These major platforms are becoming increasingly dominant forms of communication and mediums of expression. There's a real question about when they cease being just another website or chatroom and become a public utility.
I don't think the scale argument holds water, because back in the days of AOL, AOL had, by percentage, about as much control over what mainstream user saw as Twitter and Facebook.
Internet users were a fraction of the total population, and even then it was still competing with TV, radio and print.
Re: Twitter bans 7k QAnon accounts, limits 150k others as part of broad crackdown
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems to me someone blocked on Twitter for alleged right- wing hate speech could easily demonstrate instances of left- wing hate speech which didn’t result in blocking on the same platform. That would be analogous to the clothes example, right?
Your political beliefs aren’t a protected class wrt interactions with private entities under the Civil Rights Act, and there’s no other relevant right to not be blocked by a private individual or business if they don’t wish to hear or disseminate your speech, so yes, there’s nothing legally actionable there.
That’s not what I meant though.
If I understood your point correctly, a company could get in trouble for refusing to service someone based on some stated reason (e.g. your clothes) if it can be shown that they do serve other people that match that given reason.
It seems to me that the situation with Twitter is the same, if it can be shown that they justify banning some people based on hate speech, while refusing to ban other people performing the same kind of speech.
Re: Twitter bans 7k QAnon accounts, limits 150k others as part of broad crackdown
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was an account on 8chan which would sign posts with "Q" and a unique hash which could be used to prove the identity of a particular person or group posting. Last I looked this account/hash hadn't been heard from in some time though.
All the posts are viewable at Qmap.pub he posted less than 2 days ago. Encourage you to check it out.
You say "he" but for all you really know any number of people could have knowledge of that tripcode.
Re: Twitter bans 7k QAnon accounts, limits 150k others as part of broad crackdown
#176I don't know what is the right answer.
It is like we are stuck between two evils.
One is censorship, that is used by dominant group to silence everyone else.
Another is bunch of minority groups that might have outlandish aims and use free speech platforms to harrass everyone else.
What I don't like that it is left to private company to sort it out and enact their own policies. This questions should be clearly handled on legislative level. In the end of the day a company provides a service, they shouldn't be the judge of how much free speech is allowed/not allowed.
So I would say it is not failure of twitter here, it is just massive failure of our political process, but we all kind of know that already.
Re: Twitter bans 7k QAnon accounts, limits 150k others as part of broad crackdown
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your political beliefs aren’t a protected class wrt interactions with private entities under the Civil Rights Act, and there’s no other relevant right to not be blocked by a private individual or business if they don’t wish to hear or disseminate your speech, so yes, there’s nothing legally actionable there.
That’s not what I meant though. If I understood your point correctly, a company could get in trouble for refusing to service someone based on some stated reason (e.g. your clothes) if it can be shown that they do serve other people that match that given reason. It seems to me that the situation with Twitter is the same, if it can be shown that they justify banning some people based on hate speech, while refusing to b…
They will only get in trouble if first they ban people of a protected class, and secondly it can be shown that their stated reason for banning was a lie covering their desire to actually ban people of a protected class or represents a bias against those members merely via statistical fact.
Merely being arbitrary in enforcement or inconsistent isn’t enough to automatically trigger government protection.
If you say that this isn’t fair, then I agree. However the class protections are pragmatic and serve to reduce social disruption. Like it or not, people are a lot less worked up over being discriminated against due to being democrats, than they are for being Catholics.
Re: Twitter bans 7k QAnon accounts, limits 150k others as part of broad crackdown
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your political beliefs aren’t a protected class wrt interactions with private entities under the Civil Rights Act, and there’s no other relevant right to not be blocked by a private individual or business if they don’t wish to hear or disseminate your speech, so yes, there’s nothing legally actionable there.
That’s not what I meant though. If I understood your point correctly, a company could get in trouble for refusing to service someone based on some stated reason (e.g. your clothes) if it can be shown that they do serve other people that match that given reason. It seems to me that the situation with Twitter is the same, if it can be shown that they justify banning some people based on hate speech, while refusing to b…
> If I understood your point correctly, a company could get in trouble for refusing to service someone based on some stated reason (e.g. your clothes) if it can be shown that they do serve other people that match that given reason.
Ah, no, I didn’t quite spell that out.
They can get in trouble if their stated reason for refusing service doesn’t line up with the way they treat other people who behave the same way, IF that disparity in behaviour can help build an argument that the preponderance of evidence suggests that their real reason for refusing service was related to your membership in a protected class. They’re free to behave inconsistently in general.[1]
So if Twitter says they banned 17k QAnon accounts for coordinated misinformation campaigns but for whatever reason you could show that a bunch of other misinfo networks they knew about weren’t banned, and all the QAnon accounts were also known to twitter to be Unitarians, and this was part of a pattern of behaviour towards Unitarian accounts, that might be legally actionable.
But if there’s no underlying, unifying element to these 17k accounts that’s protected, Twitter is free to ban them from their service even if they’re not very consistent about enforcing their TOS.
[1] Which isn’t to say that behaving inconsistently is smart, precisely because it can open you up to these kinds of arguments if your inconsistency starts to look like a pattern of behaviour towards a protected class.
Re: Twitter bans 7k QAnon accounts, limits 150k others as part of broad crackdown
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, provided they are not deciding on the basis of someone belonging to a protected class. Hence a cake maker can cheerfully refuse your business on the basis of you wanting a cake that says “Jennifer Garner Eats Babies” but not on the basis of you, say, being homosexual, or Black.
That means I can refuse servicing you based on, for example, the clothes you’re wearing, right? Or maybe because I don’t like your hair? As far as I know people with bad hair is not a protected class. I’m trying to figure out how do you know the basis on which some private enterprise decided to refuse to provide their service to someone. Is it based on their stated reason?
Sure, or for not wearing a mask during a pandemic. No, 'rights' being taken away from you, it's just business.
Re: Twitter bans 7k QAnon accounts, limits 150k others as part of broad crackdown
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
What has Qanon ever said that can be remotely considered hateful? Who determines what is hateful?
QAnon is not a person; it's a moral panic. It's a massive group of people LARPing about the most serious crimes anyone can be accused of and it focuses on new people nearly every day. No trials. Weak evidence. No way for the accused to face their accuser. It's as bad as the worst of "cancel culture".
It's more like a salem witch trial, started by little girls who don't really know what they're doing and who are trying to get a bunch of people murdered because, nothing else to do in 1700's Massachusetts.