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Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

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Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#31

Post by corty »

keiferski wrote: post #12

Why does it matter if the flagging is automatic? Does that somehow make it more acceptable? The popularity of this view makes me wish more people read Kafka. A future tyranny might end up not being Orwell's 1984 or Huxley's Brave New World, but a kafkesque nightmare where people are lost in a world of AI giving out absurd punishments. [1] Kafka's book The Castle [2] is essentially about this, although I think his aph…

Funnily enough, Das Schloss is often interpreted to be a criticism of the church and organized religion in general. The castle and its workings are seen to be like the clerical teachings, arbitrary, incomprehensible and illogical, but nonetheless highly respected by the plebs.

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#32

Post by DangerousPie »

MikeUt wrote: post #27
DangerousPie wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they deliberately made plans to block statements against issues like these then there would be proof. There would be documents. There would be people who could become whistleblowers. If you can shown me one of those I might be convinced that there's something going. But a single anecdote like this that can easily be explained in a less conspiratorial way is not particularly strong evidence.

> there would be proof. There would be documents. Would there? Or would such blocks simply be the result of strong, shared political leanings at Twitter [1], without any need for central organization? In age when so much is being attributed to unconscious bias and systemic effects, this seems like a strange spot to draw the line that now we need evidence of deliberate organization. [1] Twitter is so liberal that its…

I get what you're saying, and if this was a conservative politician getting banned for saying "I think we should lower taxes and reduce government spending" (or whatever) then I would be much more concerned. But in this case there is a much simpler alternative explanation so in good old Occam's razor fashion I'm going with that one.

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#35

Post by DangerousPie »

alpaca128 wrote: post #11
DangerousPie wrote: post #6

I don't think this is "cancel culture" or being "woke" like the article implies. This is just an AI or inattentive human reviewer seeing the phrase "There is dignity in dying" in the same Tweet as the word "suicide" and misinterpreting it. This just seems like a non-story that will get resolved once the right person at Twitter sees it, that is being pushed by a biased website in their fight against what they perceive…

> resolved once the right person at Twitter sees it that is being pushed by a biased website Which only validates the existence of that "biased website" if Twitter and other giants in the industry decide to ignore such issues otherwise. Except for Google, which just won't care at all.

This is not the only site reporting it, for example there is this article in a more mainstream site: https://extra.ie/2021/02/21/news/irish-news/irish-bishop-twi...

That one also seems to clarify that he didn't actually get "locked out", the Tweet just got removed:

> However, Bishop Doran’s profile remains active, although the tweet in question has been removed.

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#36

Post by teh_klev »

thedanbob wrote: post #23
keiferski wrote: post #12

Why does it matter if the flagging is automatic? Does that somehow make it more acceptable? The popularity of this view makes me wish more people read Kafka. A future tyranny might end up not being Orwell's 1984 or Huxley's Brave New World, but a kafkesque nightmare where people are lost in a world of AI giving out absurd punishments. [1] Kafka's book The Castle [2] is essentially about this, although I think his aph…

Or Gordon Dickson: https://www.atariarchives.org/bcc2/showpage.php?page=133

I remember reading this years ago, and it's still as bonkers as ever.

Slightly related:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_(1985_film)

"One day, shortly before Christmas, a fly becomes jammed in a teleprinter, misprinting a copy of an arrest warrant it was receiving resulting in the arrest and accidental death during interrogation of cobbler Archibald Buttle instead of renegade heating engineer and suspected terrorist Archibald Tuttle."

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#37

Post by tgv »

modo_mario wrote: post #25
franciscop wrote: post #17

> And even if euthanasia is just that – and Twitter is very proud to toot its horn as the sensitive and sensible, woke platform that clamps down on promotion and encouragement of self-harm, including its ultimate form, suicide – the tweet, even though it opposed it, got banned. This is such an interesting topic, because while euthanasia can be considered a way of suicide, advocating against it can also be considered…

In Belgium we were one of the earlies to approve it and I think it depends on ones condition (If you're guaranteed dead due to the likes of cancer it changes i think) but I think generally it needs to be judged by a panel of doctors and the person needs to have some consults with a psychiatrist and all in all there needs to be no alternatives for a good life. You won't get approved if you're just depressed.

In The Netherlands there's the possibility for severe cases of depression, too. "Uitzichtloos lijden" (irremediable suffering ) is the magic phrase, and there is the fear that it could lead to older people deciding to euthanize when living conditions in homes for the elderly would be worsening. Not that that's bound to happen soon, but imagine not being able to tweet about it...

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#38

Post by whiddershins »

chadash wrote: post #14

This is a non-story. Someone on twitter wrote: > There is dignity in dying. As a priest, I am privileged to witness it often. Assisted suicide, where it is practices, it not an expression of freedom or dignity, but of the failure of a society to accompany people on their "way of the cross" Twitter then flagged it for "promoting or encouraging suicide or self-harm". Obviously it is not, but this is a rather complicate…

Except the article also indicates he appealed and the appeal was denied.

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#39

Post by trasz »

garmaine wrote: post #7
codetrotter wrote: post #4

I think being allowed to die on your own terms is a right that every human should have. And I think assisted suicide is a good thing. But I don’t understand why Twitter would block the Bishop for saying what he said. And the reason they gave, that it “promotes self harm”.. that’s straight up Kafkaesque.

The simplest answer is that a bot at twitter initiated the ban, the the low-paid worker who managed the appeal didn't have enough of a grasp of academic English and/or catholic theology to understand that the tweet in question was actually against assisted suicide.

Of course it was against euthanasia, why would anyone get banned for being pro euthanasia?

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#40

Post by ceejayoz »

throw0932439 wrote: post #26
gadders wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend of mine got a warning from Twitter for promoting self-harming last week after he gave someone a link to some documents and said "There you go. Knock yourself out."

I got a similar one for just replying in a joking manner about cutting off a limb (in context this was very clearly a joke). I appealed it, but nope, denied.

Yeah. Twitter's enforcement systems have a) an inability to handle clear sarcasm and b) a corresponding inability to handle coded language that's a clear violation of TOS to a human reviewer.
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