They're trying to get me kidnapped and tortured, but Twitter doesn't care
221–230 of 258 posts
Re: They're trying to get me kidnapped and tortured, but Twitter doesn't care
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 f…
This is why this perspective is so privileged. You're assuming people have access to a functioning legal system through which to correct the issue. In some rich countries, that'd cost a lot of time and money, which many people don't have. And in some poor countries without a functioning state, that's not even an option at all.
It's also an inversion of morality. You're putting 100% of the onus onto the small time individual to correct the issue, and 0% of the onus onto the large corporation that actively facilitated the harassment in the first place by engineering viral mechanics that encourage mobbing. You're also placing the cost burden onto the taxpayers by burdening the judiciary, and allowing the corporation to internalize all of the gains. The victims and society pay the cost, and the corporation makes money off the victimization that it actively facilitated. It's perverse.
> Twitter is a US company and therefore it makes sense that they would approach diplomacy from a US-worldview.
This is just a made up excuse as to why social media companies should be allowed to actively facilitate a spectrum of outcomes ranging from harassment to populism to outright genocide. I don't care if they are a US company or not. What they're doing is wrong.
Re: They're trying to get me kidnapped and tortured, but Twitter doesn't care
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
#224Earlier 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…
"Making Twitter safe will not make you safe. It would absolutely be great if Twitter could do more, but the true issue lies elsewhere."
Along with the rest of the reply, this is some 100% GRADE A cynicism right here.
To this cynicism - clearly there's a danger to a named journalist just from the 'offended' party reading the product of their journalism (in this case Twitter posts or posts they distribute via Twitter posts), but if as the OP suggests, the government is using Twitter to produce an erroneous record and public justification for extra-judicial violence against journalists and political foes, and that without this ability to use Twitter to manipulate the narrative surrounding an individual target, they would not be as emboldened to perpetrate the violence against that individual, then the use of Twitter by the harassing party here is clearly enabling violence, moving the risk from a general threat to a political journalist's safety to a clear and present danger to the individual.
Waving proverbial hands at this by noting that journalism can be dangerous if the party that doesn't like it can see your journalism, and therefore, promoting, distributing, or publishing it via Twitter isn't Twitter's problem because the threat arises from the the distribution in general, not the medium, ignores the role the author suggests Twitter plays in the manipulation of the public sentiment towards targeted individuals for the purpose of eliminating a critical level of moral outrage that exists as potential blowback and might otherwise provide some degree of safe cover and prevent the extra-judicial violence the 'aggrieved' wish to subject the target to.
Aslo: I'm surprised Twitter doesn't have rules that restrict the use of "parody" accounts against non-verified (or non-verfiable) accounts. I can't imagine that Twitter in the US hasn't previously been confronted with this issue by high-schoolers bullying and or cyber-stalking peers on Twitter with anonymous "parody" accounts.
Back to the cynicism: "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 journalism… perhaps it is wise to consider whether you can realistically have all of these things you want, when the truth is you probably can’t.
All that being said, I don’t fault you for wanting Twitter to do more. But for your own well being you should not consider that the only angle you need to work on here."
What couldn't this be applied to? Think you're child's school bus operator is being negligent by not installing seat belts? Sure, you complaining might help, but the real fault lies with you for letting her get on the bus.
Think the coal mine you work for is shirking their safety responsibilities? Sure, you can complain, but the real problem is you bring willing to go down that mine.
Think too many 737-Maxes are falling out of the sky? Go ahead and complain, but the real fault is yours for flying.
Danger is just standing over here swinging it's arms (and maybe moving around when you aren't looking), it's not dangers' fault of you get in it's way.
Re: They're trying to get me kidnapped and tortured, but Twitter doesn't care
#225Earlier 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.
And why does it matter if the total number of messages exceeds our ability to read them? People don't sue over an aggregate of messages but for individual messages. If there are too many people suing then the courts will simply take longer and longer until an equilibrium point is reached.
Re: They're trying to get me kidnapped and tortured, but Twitter doesn't care
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
Twitter's response was so soulless, it's unclear if it's a bot. This is what i find most unacceptable. Others have expanded on the censorship problem in this thread.
A response should be delivered quickly and efficiently, and in no uncertain terms. Filling it with heart and soul just gives false hope that some kind of appeal to emotion can be achieved. But it cannot.
I'm not talking about "some kind of appeal to emotion". This is about human rights in a fascist regime. At some point you have to take a stance. There is so much twitter could have done better. The first step would be to take this serious.
The likes of twitter, facebook, uber, amazon, ... have made the world worse for the sake of their shareholders and you are complicit. I'm sure your salary is fine though.
Re: They're trying to get me kidnapped and tortured, but Twitter doesn't care
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 t…
No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying perfect knowledge and perfect filtering are necessary for Twitter to avoid being used to oppress and propagandize.
>Twitter will become an 8chan sewer if your ideology is adopted by them.
The way you're saying it assumes that this is obviously a bad thing, while in fact it's a matter of opinion. I personally think the optimal level of moderation in any discussion forum is that which only prevents disruption of the forum's functioning.
Re: They're trying to get me kidnapped and tortured, but Twitter doesn't care
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 don't think Twitter needs to assess what is true or not, but it can try to find ways to know the source and make sure they're not bad actors, paid agents, state sponsors, etc. For example, OP mentions how they never allowed him to have a verified badge even though he tried. This very much seems like something Twitter could have done. Now to anyone else, his account seems just as fake as any other impersonating him.…
Why would that be relevant? The truth and importance of a message can't be entirely determined by its source.
>OP mentions how they never allowed him to have a verified badge even though he tried. This very much seems like something Twitter could have done. Now to anyone else, his account seems just as fake as any other impersonating him.
I fail to see how that would help. OP says they're accusing him of being an agent. That's something that could be done even without a parody account.
>It could also put more effort behind investigating reports like the OP did. Accusation of criminal acts, labeling of people, mention of violence, arrest, etc.
So, no more news on Twitter? No more whistle-blowing? I mean, what if OP actually is an Israeli agent? Or perhaps you would like Twitter to actually investigate whether he is an agent, in which case you're agreeing with me, that Twitter would need to know everything that's going on in the world.
>The issue I have with what you say is the ideal communication medium ignores the issues with Twitter, such that it doesn't just simply convey content without regard. It selectively prioritizes, automatically suggests, and promotes certain tweets over others.
I agree, Twitter is already not the ideal communication medium. I'm saying that adding censoring to the problems you've already listed takes it farther from the ideal, not closer. It's also unreasonable, because it asks Twitter to be the arbiter of truth.
>You could imagine a relatively simple feature, any Tweet that mentions someone else by name or Twitter alias, that person should be able to attach a response to them that is shown under those tweets automatically.
I don't think it's a bad idea per se, but it seems like it would be easy to thwart it. And I doubt it would have helped OP if it already existed. He's not complaining that he can't reply to those tweets, he's complaining that the tweets exist at all.
Re: They're trying to get me kidnapped and tortured, but Twitter doesn't care
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would understand if the rhetoric was centered around "it's very hard for Twitter to do that" but the detraction in the comments reads more "Twitter shouldn't do that".
For me it’s more of a: “this is what happens when you are ideologically inconsistent”. I don't feel like people are saying “Twitter shouldn’t”. I think the correct interpretation is “Twitter can’t”. I thoroughly despise Twitter because they bless some issues and not others. Even though I support the end game of what they are trying to do (e.g. in the case of LGBTQ agenda topics), I vehemently disagree with the idea t…
Re: They're trying to get me kidnapped and tortured, but Twitter doesn't care
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
A response should be delivered quickly and efficiently, and in no uncertain terms. Filling it with heart and soul just gives false hope that some kind of appeal to emotion can be achieved. But it cannot.
Exactly, quickly and efficiently, cause we have to scale to the heavens to please the investors. No time for human decency. I'm not talking about "some kind of appeal to emotion". This is about human rights in a fascist regime. At some point you have to take a stance. There is so much twitter could have done better. The first step would be to take this serious. The likes of twitter, facebook, uber, amazon, ... have m…