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Twitter, It’s Time to End Your Anything-Goes Paradise

nytimes.com

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Re: Twitter, It’s Time to End Your Anything-Goes Paradise

#61

Post by latch »

dominotw wrote: post #15
staticassertion wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can say and think whatever you like. Companies giving platforms to hate is not something that democracy requires. It's less "that idea is popular" and more "these people are inciting hatred against other people". I'm baffled that people still repeat this "free speech is important" thing when we're talking about a private service giving an audience to white supremacists.

hate cannot be precisely defined though. Thats the crux of the argument.

Plenty of countries have legal definitions which are well enforced (1) and which often rely on internationally agreed upon standards (2).

Slippery slopes is usually a fallacious argument, decidedly so in this case where plenty of successful examples exists.

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Keegstra

(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Covenant_on_Civi...

Re: Twitter, It’s Time to End Your Anything-Goes Paradise

#62

Post by pjc50 »

tomp wrote: post #49

I don't understand why Twitter doesn't generate some general "white/blacklist" feature that people could opt in/out of? Things like, a "porn" filter, a "n-word" filter, a "faminist"/"mysogynist" filter, etc. Some of these could be automatic (e.g. porn and spam and virus links), some manual (e.g. "all people who this particular user disagrees with"), they could be curated by Twitter itself or by any other entity/user,…

Per-country filters already exist.

https://support.twitter.com/articles/20169222#

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/3kz57j/this-is-ho...

User-curated blocklists were tool deployed by both sides in Gamergate. https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/a/2015/sharing-block...

Re: Twitter, It’s Time to End Your Anything-Goes Paradise

#63

Post by pjc50 »

nxsynonym wrote: post #38
nathanaldensr wrote: post #3

Can this be summarized as "Twitter, implement censorship because people are saying things we don't like?" I fully understand that Twitter is a company offering a service and they are intrinsically allowed to police content being posted on their platform. The whole point of democratic society in the United States is to allow people freedom of speech and thought. If we limit the discussion of ideas to only popular/acce…

I agree with you. The only thing that censorship brings in this particular case is a safe space for advertisers. I see exactly 0 harm in sharing a platform with people with alternate views than me. If you don't like the way a social platform is heading, then leave it. You are not entitled to a safe space. At the end of the day twitter is going to cater to its biggest and most influential users. It costs you nothing t…

> I see exactly 0 harm in sharing a platform with people with alternate views than me.

Spoken like someone who's never been the victim of a targeted harassment campaign. It's a little hard to take that view when people are posting pictures of your children's school along with their death threats.

Re: Twitter, It’s Time to End Your Anything-Goes Paradise

#64

Post by GVIrish »

chmod775 wrote: post #30
staticassertion wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can say and think whatever you like. Companies giving platforms to hate is not something that democracy requires. It's less "that idea is popular" and more "these people are inciting hatred against other people". I'm baffled that people still repeat this "free speech is important" thing when we're talking about a private service giving an audience to white supremacists.

Yes. They are not legally required to provide service to anyone. But indiscriminately providing services to everyone (within the laws of your country), without booting people based on a personal agenda, is the ABC of gaining the trust of your users.

It depends on what you mean by 'personal agenda'. If someone is directing hate speech at other users, would it be pursuing a personal agenda to ban or otherwise sanction that user?

It's not always easy to draw a line on conduct, but I think there is plenty of behavior on Twitter that 99% of people could easily identify as toxic.

Re: Twitter, It’s Time to End Your Anything-Goes Paradise

#65

Post by hanbura »

staticassertion wrote: post #8
curtisblaine wrote: post #2

> Is someone making a positive contribution to the service, for example by posting well-liked content and engaging in meaningful conversations? Yep, because these are easily verifiable parameters that don't depend in any way on the ethical beliefs and political alignment of whoever rates users.

"Does this user have a racial slur in their username?" would knock out like a really good chunk of the problem, tbh. Or like "Is the user saying they are a nazi" would cover a lot too. Pretty basic stuff would go a long way.

Those people wouldn't vanish from Twitter, they would just choose a slightly more subtle username.

Re: Twitter, It’s Time to End Your Anything-Goes Paradise

#66

Post by croon »

daxorid wrote: post #25
staticassertion wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Does this user have a racial slur in their username?" would knock out like a really good chunk of the problem, tbh. Or like "Is the user saying they are a nazi" would cover a lot too. Pretty basic stuff would go a long way.

> "Is the user saying they are a nazi" This would only be a fair standard if also applied to Communists. In terms of sheer historical body count, there is no rival. And then, if you did draw ideological lines in the sand, who sets that line? Whom does it emcompass? Does it apply to religions? Do we exclude Christians and Muslims? Do we exclude anybody who ever said anything nice about Genghis Khan or the Achaemenid I…

> This would only be a fair standard if also applied to Communists. In terms of sheer historical body count, there is no rival.

Depending on how I was born, nazis want to get rid of me.

Who exactly are these "communists" wanting to get rid of? And how can I spot those people?

A lot of people has died in the name of Christianity. Would you call Christianity violent in terms of ideals?

I don't disagree that communist regimes have killed innumerable people, and even if I disagree with communism and think it's a terrible idea, there is literally nothing in the tenets against groups of people or violence.

Re: Twitter, It’s Time to End Your Anything-Goes Paradise

#67

Post by pjc50 »

blfr wrote: post #17
nathanaldensr wrote: post #3

Can this be summarized as "Twitter, implement censorship because people are saying things we don't like?" I fully understand that Twitter is a company offering a service and they are intrinsically allowed to police content being posted on their platform. The whole point of democratic society in the United States is to allow people freedom of speech and thought. If we limit the discussion of ideas to only popular/acce…

Can this be summarized as "Twitter, implement censorship because people are saying things we don't like?" Yes, basically. OP apparently also thinks that what constitutes community is a central authority handing out badges. the company should issue badges of status or of shame based on signals about how people actually use, or abuse, Twitter. In other words, Twitter should begin to think of itself, and its users, as a…

There was an entire startup built around social media profile reputation, called Klout. It's possible for some people to earn decent lifestyle incomes from social media, although this usually means Instagram.

> Aside, which online communities has Anil Dash created?

Stackoverflow? https://stackoverflow.com/company/management

Re: Twitter, It’s Time to End Your Anything-Goes Paradise

#68

Post by croon »

nileshtrivedi wrote: post #57
croon wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it can. It means "intense dislike". If that is directed at an intrinsic property of a group of people, that's hate speech. Example: black people as opposed to smokers.

Very soon that leads to any speech criticizing, say, the capitalists or the politicians in power.

> Very soon that leads to any speech criticizing, say, the capitalists or the politicians in power.

No, because that's not an intrinsic property.

Hating people who take too long at the register isn't the same as viewing all redheads as inferior.

Re: Twitter, It’s Time to End Your Anything-Goes Paradise

#69

Post by blfr »

jkestner wrote: post #43
nathanaldensr wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly my point. I myself am not racist, nor do I believe in segregation, but does that mean I or others should actively work to prevent the discussion of those ideas? Wouldn't we become just as bad as the people we decry if we tried to suppress their viewpoints?

No, because we'd still be, you know, not racist. But I think suppressing a viewpoint is counterproductive. Instead, the holders of those viewpoints should be held to the light, and it's a Twitter problem in that such people can be completely anonymous or even fake. Hard to have a public debate when some of the participating citizens are fictional.

The arguments for the US constitution in the Federalists Papers were presented pseudonymously. Debate doesn't require some silly real names policy.

Re: Twitter, It’s Time to End Your Anything-Goes Paradise

#70

Post by rayiner »

mozumder wrote: post #34
chmod775 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. They are not legally required to provide service to anyone. But indiscriminately providing services to everyone (within the laws of your country), without booting people based on a personal agenda, is the ABC of gaining the trust of your users.

Wrong. A respected editorial standard allows for even more trust. Example: Do you trust Washington Post or Twitter more?

Twitter and it’s not even close. A journalists synthesis of what he thinks the evidence is carries no weight. Twitter is like a mini trial. You hear the testimony from the horse’s mouth, people cite documentary evidence, and you weigh credibility to reach a conclusion.
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