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

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

#181

Post by dnissley » Sun, Aug 28, 2022, 10:42 PM UTC

ljw1001 wrote: post #155

dnissley wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really reasonable? Twitter fails regularly to take such context into consideration when making moderation decisions in their home country. How could it be reasonable to expect them to get it right when it comes to the context of a foreign country?

That they fail regularly is not much of a defense. If they want to make money in Pakistan they should understand the place well enough to avoid facilitating crime.

I doubt they make very much money off of Pakistani users. It might even be a small net loss. I don't think twitter publishes ARPU per country though, so this is speculation to some degree.

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

#182

Post by watwut » Sun, Aug 28, 2022, 10:44 PM UTC

natch wrote: post #36

waqasx wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont want political asylum because of many reasons, i have my parents and my family back home. I am not asking Twitter to side with me, you have read my post, you can clearly see that misinfo is being spread about me. These are verifiable lies. They are verifiably dangerous after basic scrutiny, i am asking Twitter to do their job that they already claim that they do. That is provide a space that is safer from hara…

Making Twitter safe will not make you safe. It would absolutely be great if Twitter could do more, but the true issue lies elsewhere. Unless you recognize this, and accept that you don’t always get everything you want, then you may be living in a dangerous delusion. You don’t want to leave Pakistan, and you also presumably don’t want to compromise your principles, and you also want to not be killed for your journalis…

The ask here is not for twitter on itself be some kind of safe place. It is for twitter as a company or platform to stop enabling this sort of thing. Or at least, enable it less.

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

#183

Post by watwut » Sun, Aug 28, 2022, 10:46 PM UTC

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

The threats against lgbtq and especially trans run WILD on twitter. There are whole accounts dedicated to harassing them and outing them to huge amounts of followers. It takes super log for twitter to even delete a tweet.

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

#184

Post by lstodd » Sun, Aug 28, 2022, 10:50 PM UTC

Manfred wrote: post #13

bell-cot wrote: post #12

Sad to say, but people often [want|need|expect] a corporation to act as a [competent|reliable|trustworthy] [government|law-enforcement agency|court]. Corporations are very clearly none of those things, and generally have lots of disincentive against attempting to fake being any of those things.

So a liquor store should not be responsible for age restrictions and sell alcohol to minors? I think there is always a sliding point between where the government or companies police the rules. It's an interesting conversation where that point should be.

Of course they absolutely should be. It's how I learned to build rectification columns from cookware after all. Education is a responsibility of the entire society after all.

It's just the stated goal - minimising alcohol consumption - is phony and misleading.

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

#185

Post by a1369209993 » Sun, Aug 28, 2022, 10:51 PM UTC

waqasx wrote: post #90

notch656a wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article reads like an asylum claim. Hopefully they already have permanent legal permanent residence somewhere else, if not they will likely by applying for asylum. It could be the whole thing was written expressly for the purpose of asylum. Going back to Pakistan at this point would mean basically picking how you want to go out. Either by defending your life in one last moment before a corrupt government takes y…

i am not. i find this accusation disgusting. i do not have a problem, legally, in staying here. my problem is exactly because i WANT to go back and not face any violence.

> i WANT to go back and not face any violence.

In that case you need to arrange for the violent overthrow of the current (ie since ~5 months ago) Pakistani government. The absence/removal of malicious libel from twitter, even if twitter were non-evil enough to bother doing that, will not prevent you from being kidnapped and tortured.

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

#186

Post by snickerbockers » Sun, Aug 28, 2022, 11:00 PM UTC

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…

> Maybe Twitter was never about being arbiters of facts and instead just pandering to the popular political narrative of the time?

To some extent they do see themselves as arbiters of truth, you can get auto-banned if you make a tweet and their AI thinks you're spreading falsehoods about COVID or the 2020 US presidential election. It actually happened to me last year over a completely benign joke and i had to wait about six weeks for a mod to get around to reviewing my appeal before i was allowed back on.

If they really cared about protecting middle-eastern activists they could add "israeli spy" to their list of phrases that get you auto-banned.

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

#187

Post by lstodd » Sun, Aug 28, 2022, 11:02 PM UTC

waqasx wrote: post #90

notch656a wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article reads like an asylum claim. Hopefully they already have permanent legal permanent residence somewhere else, if not they will likely by applying for asylum. It could be the whole thing was written expressly for the purpose of asylum. Going back to Pakistan at this point would mean basically picking how you want to go out. Either by defending your life in one last moment before a corrupt government takes y…

i am not. i find this accusation disgusting. i do not have a problem, legally, in staying here. my problem is exactly because i WANT to go back and not face any violence.

What bullshit, man. Where were you living last 15 years?

You want to go back to your country and not be killed on the spot, you organize a coup there, not whine on Twitter or to it. Whines don't do shit, it's that simple.

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

#188

Post by kbelder » Sun, Aug 28, 2022, 11:09 PM UTC

PoignardAzur wrote: post #120

DoreenMichele wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He says he's a journalist. That used to mean something. So it's rather dismissive and disrespectful to characterize him as an ordinary person with scare quotes no less. If these platforms feel unable to moderate fairly due to fear of foreign governments, perhaps they should tuck tail and keep their pussy selves out of the conflict entirely. I'm not impressed with an argument of "We want the money involved but we can'…

> He says he's a journalist. That used to mean something. That's a broad and unsupported claim. I'm not aware of any evidence being a journalist previously gave you some sort of immunity / corporate protection against totalitarian states that has now gone away.

Nor should it.

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

#189

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Aug 28, 2022, 11:24 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

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

#190

Post by sangnoir » Sun, Aug 28, 2022, 11:31 PM UTC

oarabbus_ wrote: post #175

root_axis wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not strange. Twitter is a U.S. company, of course it takes a deeper interest in matters of U.S. politics than it does about every other country on the planet.

They said nothing about Twitter's behavior being strange. They said the strange part is people applauding Twitter's content moderation for certain topics, while justifying their inaction on others.

> They said the strange part is people applauding Twitter's content moderation for certain topics, while justifying their inaction on others.

There's nothing strange about that either - Twitter only acts to moderate when it has context and/or gets bad press. It's no surprise that American hot-button issues are the most moderated[1] by Twitter, and less sor for heinous, explicit threats to life in a language spoken by 1. This is a result of resource constraints, and Twitter's own sense of self-preservation. There is only one jurisdiction that can dissolve Twitter, and is also likely its largest revenue source; naturally, that gets an outsized fraction of Twitter's limited engineer-hours and moderator-hours.