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

waqas.xyz

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

#211

Post by hackerlight »

MichaelCollins wrote: post #47
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.

I have a very low opinion of twitter and certainly wish they'd do a better job. But the premise of twitter as a shield against state-sponsored kidnapping or murder seems flimsy at best.

Total strawman. Nobody is saying Twitter should act as a shield. They're saying Twitter shouldn't actively facilitate that outcome by providing a platform for targeted harassment and lies.

Nobody wanted Facebook to stop a genocide in Myanmar. They just wanted Facebook to not serve the role of actively encourage that outcome.

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

#212

Post by hackerlight »

fluoridation wrote: post #96
didibus wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The premise seems more about how easily Twitter can be used to support a coup, suppress journalistic voice, oppress people, and push propaganda. I don't know if without Twitter all this would be just as easy, through state controlled media, but what I do know is that Twitter could actually be a tool against this, but is failing to be. Having a popular media outlet that cannot be coopted for propaganda and used for op…

I dispute that Twitter could be a tool against those things, because that implies that it's within Twitter's capabilities to know everything that is going on in the world in order to distinguish between true and untrue tweets. Given that limitation, I would argue that the ideal communication medium simply conveys the messages it's given without regard for their contents. What people do with those messages is somethin…

> I dispute that Twitter could be a tool against those things, because that implies that it's within Twitter's capabilities to know everything that is going on in the world in order to distinguish between true and untrue tweets.

You're saying that omniscience is a necessary condition before Twitter can start doing good in the world, instead of bad? This is a non-sequitur.

> Given that limitation, I would argue that the ideal communication medium simply conveys the messages it's given without regard for their contents. What people do with those messages is something that the medium has no power over.

I would argue that this is ignorant of social psychology. Sunlight isn't the best disinfectant, and people aren't rational non-tribal agents who will all hold hands and sing Kumbaya only if they could have totally unmoderated discourse. Twitter will become an 8chan sewer if your ideology is adopted by them.

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

#213

Post by hackerlight »

encryptluks2 wrote: post #31
waqasx wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there is clear defamation. they are claiming that i work for intel agencies of foreign countries, which is not true.

Defamation is a civil matter and harassment is civil or criminal depending where you live. You'd have better luck going through the police or courts. People deal with similar harassment or misinformation campaigns all the time. It isn't Twitter's job to step in unless you can point to some clear violation of their ToS.

So Twitter provides a platform that actively facilitates defamation, then the individual and justice system has to spend lots of time and money addressing it, then Twitter gets to pocket all the ad revenue from the entire horrible ordeal? That is not fair or just, even if it is legal. And what about people in countries that don't have a functioning justice system. Twitter assists the defamer in screwing over the individual, making money in the process, and there is actually no path to justice? It's a worldview that's only possible to hold from a position of privilege.

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

#214

Post by hackerlight »

mypalmike wrote: post #86
waqasx wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

least Twitter can do is sensitize their moderators, or at least a subset of them, about local issues, maybe not to the level of making them regional experts, but enough so that they can tell a truth from a lie, a dangerous maligning campaign vs a fair critique. I dont think that is a hard problem.

It's not just a hard problem. It's an intractable problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy

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

#215

Post by hackerlight »

dcow wrote: post #40
hackerlight wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preventing harassment isn't the same as "taking a political stance".

I agree—if only it were that clear and simple.

It is simple in many cases that are currently allowed on Twitter. They aren't making a good faith effort to solve the issue. Evidence: Allowing quote tweets directed to users who disabled replies. This is always used as a vector of further harassment.

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

#216

Post by pygy_ »

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…

> this is what you get as a society when you let arbitrary entities arbitrate speech: ambiguity and unclear expectations.

The platform allows speech amplification. It used to be that lies could run around the world before the truth could get its boots on. Social apps now make this orders of magniture worse...

Rather than moderating content, Twitter could add systems that automatically tame virality (hide a post for n minutes after x retweets/impressions), with bias against new accounts.

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

#217

Post by richardfey »

Suppose we have access to Twitter's metrics and we can see the profit made via Pakistani accounts and the associated cost (moderation is a cost).

I suspect that the balance is negative for most countries and that is why we cannot expect better moderation.

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

#218

Post by dzhiurgis »

Does anyone know how companies like Twitter do moderation in countries like Pakistan. Hiring locals could be dangerous when coup happens. Hiring Pakistani expats (there’s plenty) tricky too as their families are still in danger (I assume their military is sophisticated enough to track whose relative works where). What is the ration of moderators to active user count. Do they specifically hire oppressed groups (i.e. Kurds in Turkey, Tibetans and Uighurs in China, etc) to shed a different opinion?

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

#219

Post by pbasista »

dvdkon wrote: post #151
pbasista wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 user…

What would happen if Twitter was a peer-to-peer FLOSS network? In our current world Twitter is a centralised product backed by a large company, but very little of its user-facing functionality could change and that would no longer be true. Such hypothetical P2P network would definitely have some kind of filtering, but it would likely not be network-wide and might not even be backed by a central entity (think more ema…

In such a situation, the expectation about the content moderation would remain the same. Specifically, such a network should still disallow hate speech, actively seek it, remove it and ban users who repeatedly spread it.

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

#220

Post by encryptluks2 »

hackerlight wrote: post #213
encryptluks2 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Defamation is a civil matter and harassment is civil or criminal depending where you live. You'd have better luck going through the police or courts. People deal with similar harassment or misinformation campaigns all the time. It isn't Twitter's job to step in unless you can point to some clear violation of their ToS.

So Twitter provides a platform that actively facilitates defamation, then the individual and justice system has to spend lots of time and money addressing it, then Twitter gets to pocket all the ad revenue from the entire horrible ordeal? That is not fair or just, even if it is legal. And what about people in countries that don't have a functioning justice system. Twitter assists the defamer in screwing over the indi…

It isn't about privilege. You know in a lot of countries it would be considered harassment/defamation by totalitarian governments to speak out against government officials. Should Twitter be on the offense and ban people speaking out against their government in such countries merely because it may be considered harassment there?

Twitter is a US company and therefore it makes sense that they would approach diplomacy from a US-worldview.

It certainly is a shame that people can makeup lies about someone and create a targeted campaign against that individual, but to people on the outside it can be difficult to play referee. Elon Musk proved you can call someone a pedo without any repercussions. This is the guy that claims he is going to take over Twitter in support of free speech. The proper venue to resolve harassment and defamation campaigns is usually the courts, unless you are getting threats and I think that is a much clearer violation of the ToS that is actionable.

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