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

  "Assume you can hire 100,000 people. How would you maintain consistency among all those 100,000 people. You'll get huge variance in the kind of decision making from each of those people."

I'm not assuming that they are. They may very well in fact not be, but they are an American-based company with a mostly functional legal system so that is the rules they go by. I for one thing it would be much more dangerous for Twitter to play judge, jury and executioner but it seems like that is almost what you're advocating for here.

> 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.

I don't see how Twitter encourages mobbing. They have privacy controls and you can also block people. If someone is making threats those can be reported to Twitter. Evidenced-base coordinated campaigns can be considered conspiracy and reported as such. Saying things you don't like isn't a conspiracy. Telling people where you live so they can harm you is strictly against their ToS.

Sometimes standing up for and defending yourself takes utilizing the rights given to you by law the best you can. The more you practice it the better you get at it. It isn't on a company to have to get involved in disputes on a public forum that are civil in nature unless they feel that there is a sign of physical danger to the individuals by letting it continue, and even then in there yes rightfully so there are legal remedies to report these types of violations.

No. The Nirvana fallacy would be "since moderating imperfectly doesn't completely eliminate the problem of Twitter being used to oppress or propagandize, no moderation should be applied". Actually I'm saying that a) moderating imperfectly doesn't completely eliminate the problem, and b) no moderation should be applied because inconsistent moderation is worse than no moderation (without this being related to the previous point, but just in general).

>You think you can just shine a light on bad ideas and they'll go away

Actually I'm disputing the idea of "good and bad ideas" in this context. Neither Islamism nor any of the examples you gave are good or bad in an objective sense. The most we can say is that they're more or less successful in perpetuating themselves in time, or that they cause more or less of some specific phenomenon. I described Islamism as backwards and stupid but that's my opinion, not an objective measure. If when given sufficient exposure it would win ideologically then I think it should be allowed to win. I see no reason to prevent this.

>If you want to form a worldview based on social psychology

When did I say that?

It is a binary distinction. Something that's almost completely consistent is not completely consistent, therefore it's inconsistent. I'm not saying it's equally as inconsistent as something that's totally inconsistent, but it is inconsistent. Maybe you're interested in measuring the degree to which things are consistent, but I only care about whether they're consistent.

>the only alternative is "inconsistent" which is categorically worse than than no moderation by sheer virtue of the binary category that it's assigned to. This is the perfect solution fallacy.

It's not, and I will tell you why: in my opinion, an okayish criterion that's applied consistently is better than a good criterion that's applied inconsistently. The best compromise is the one where all the parties are left equally dissatisfied. And why is that? It's because it's easier to convince everyone that one is being fair than that one is taking the optimal course of action.

>Right, so if literal authoritarian Islamists became the dominant paradigm and Sharia was imposed on you by force you have no problem with it simply because that's what won in the marketplace of ideas.

That depends on what you mean by "have no problem". Would I think everyone is completely stupid and possibly seek to move to some place else? Yes. Would I take any steps at all to prevent that, beyond possibly arguing against such ideas? No.

>this is nihilistic moral relativism

I'm a moral nihilist, yes. That is to say, I reject that idea that morality exists, at least by some interpretations of the word.

>I know you conservative types don't really believe in moral relativism, it's probably just disingenuous posturing because you know right-leaning opinions tend to be banned more often in social media in the current moment, so it's helpful to adopt a stance on censorship that seems more principled and logically consistent. The left did this in the 1960s. If it was just ISIS propaganda being banned and nothing else I know I wouldn't be hearing any of these nihilistic relativistic arguments.

1. I have no idea where you got that I'm conservative, but of all the labels I would apply to myself, that's not one of them.

2. There's no point in continuing if you're going to unilaterally ascribe beliefs to me and assume ulterior motives. You can just imagine how it's going to go and pretend that you're correct.

I mostly agree. You have a very good point and make it well.

Especially the part about how a better set of Twitter policies and enforcement against this kind of targeting could help to provide cover for hard hitting journalism and thereby contribute to positive impact by that journalism, helping change things for the better.

Fair enough, although then they could also ban Twitter as some countries do.

My main point was that aside from anything Twitter should do, he should also protect himself. The same point is valid in any of the other examples you listed. I won’t fly on a 737 MAX. I’m not going to work in a coal mine. Etc. Of course I will take some worthwhile risks, each one decided in context. All of us do.

Yes it would be good and helpful not just to this guy but to all journalism and to the general public who benefit from light being shone on stuff, for journalists, or anyone for that matter, to be shielded from this kind of nonsense. Even though it may be easier said than done, Twitter should try to do it to the extent that is workable.

They have lots of rules preventing an individual from harassing others. They don’t seem to have rules preventing an entire system of ideologically corrupt people from targeting a person who wants to call out corruption. Again it’s hard though, algorithmically and at scale.

In the meantime he should take steps to get free from that place.

> 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.

Absolutely. Of course if an unreasonable danger is intentionally or irresponsibly created by people, then those people are at fault, but the general situation in life is you don’t go around walking off buildings and wondering why there is no safety net. Yeah safety nets are great but they are not always practical. At scale, this safety net on Twitter is tremendously hard to do, although maybe they should make a special effort for problematic situations like zealotry and corruption.