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Updating our rules against hateful conduct

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Re: Updating our rules against hateful conduct

#71

Post by elliekelly »

loudtieblahblah wrote: post #64
elliekelly wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the important point everyone seems to be missing. If you look at the example tweets they all have some aspect of making the [Religious Group] out to be less than human: rats, virus, maggots, etc. People can still freely express their distaste for any and all religion on twitter so long as they don’t dehumanize the people who follow that religion.

Application will be different from stated intent. How much you want to bet ? haven't we all seen this in practice long enough now to know how this little routine goes?

This kind of attitude with respect to rules and regulations drives me nuts. Guess what? Every time you have a human applying a rule you’re going to get results that aren’t entirely consistent. Have you ever managed a team and given the exact same task with the exact same instructions to two people? Did you get the exact same work product in return? I very much doubt it.

Rules & regulations should be written, evaluated, and revised the same way code is. Code doesn’t always run as we intended but we (usually) don’t crucify the developer. We learn from the misunderstanding, fix it, and then re-evaluate when the next inevitable misunderstanding comes up. We get feedback and we iterate. That’s exactly what Twitter is doing. Their first policy didn’t work out as planned and this is their next iteration based on the feedback they received on policy v1.0.0

And will Twitter update this policy yet again once they’ve had time to work out some of the kinks? You can bet on it.

Re: Updating our rules against hateful conduct

#72

Post by jbattle »

rsj_hn wrote: post #57
rubidium wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. It's only if it dehumanizes the other. Criticism of the thoughts, ideas, practices are perfectly fine. Dehumanizing the practicers of any particular religion is what's not fine. You're over-reacting to what the linked post from twitter actually says.

Define "de-humanizing". If you look at how previous twitter anti-dehumanizing policies were enforced, this was used to ban NPC memes -- which were not memes against a person but against ideas. It was used to ban people who said things like "men can't get pregnant" -- which is an idea/belief.

I really can't follow you. I spent a few minutes googling and it looks like 1) Twitter punishes 'dehumanizing tweets' 2) One author on kotaku argued that the NPC meme could be considered 'dehumanizing' 3 ???

Re: Updating our rules against hateful conduct

#74

Post by tptacek »

whatshisface wrote: post #61
duskwuff wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It means precisely what it sounds like -- using language which describes the targeted group as something other than (and lesser than) human. The article gives examples where religious groups are described as "rats", "viruses", "filthy animals", or "maggots".

Many cultures use animal analogies to describe nuanced and complicated personality trait combinations. Some of them are more negative than others, referring to combinations of positive and negative traits in varying proportions. Reductively, calling someone a lion is just as dehumanizing as calling them a shark. In the Bible, people are both complemented and insulted with comparisons to lions. Calling someone a shark…

Welp, you don't get to do that on Twitter now.

Re: Updating our rules against hateful conduct

#76

Post by pvg »

whatshisface wrote: post #61
duskwuff wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It means precisely what it sounds like -- using language which describes the targeted group as something other than (and lesser than) human. The article gives examples where religious groups are described as "rats", "viruses", "filthy animals", or "maggots".

Many cultures use animal analogies to describe nuanced and complicated personality trait combinations. Some of them are more negative than others, referring to combinations of positive and negative traits in varying proportions. Reductively, calling someone a lion is just as dehumanizing as calling them a shark. In the Bible, people are both complemented and insulted with comparisons to lions. Calling someone a shark…

It's like that time Twitter banned Bob Marley for calling people iron like a lion in Zion.

Re: Updating our rules against hateful conduct

#77

Post by childintime »

tptacek wrote: post #75
childintime wrote: post #35

Excommunication isn't the solution. Isn't it enough to hide these comments by default, as on HN?

Comments like those in the examples Twitter provided will reliably get you excommunicated from HN.

HN has dead posters. They are still readable for those that want to. That's the type of solution I promote.

Digital media, like Twitter, can't be a megaphone to spread hate speech. That means their algorithms should be smarter, and accept input.

On the other hand, with these media effectively being monopolies, that doesn't mean they can excommunicate (which is what this is about). That should be against the law.

Just like when there is just one shop in town: everybody should be allowed to buy. That doesn't mean the shopkeeper has to smile to every customer. A good shopkeeper may even be able to get this customer some help.

Re: Updating our rules against hateful conduct

#78

Post by whatshisface »

tptacek wrote: post #74
whatshisface wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many cultures use animal analogies to describe nuanced and complicated personality trait combinations. Some of them are more negative than others, referring to combinations of positive and negative traits in varying proportions. Reductively, calling someone a lion is just as dehumanizing as calling them a shark. In the Bible, people are both complemented and insulted with comparisons to lions. Calling someone a shark…

Welp, you don't get to do that on Twitter now.

So, I understand the attitude that, "twitter is just a platform, they don't have to be just, why wring your hands so much about what their rules are?" This makes sense if their rules don't matter, so in that case why should they even have rules? That's a position I can understand, where you can post anything on Twitter that's legal under US law.

Re: Updating our rules against hateful conduct

#79

Post by iamnothere »

sverhagen wrote: post #30
dragonwriter wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What if someone's holy book contains text that dehumanizes people on the basis of religion? Then they probably aren't allowed to tweet their holy book.

What if, as part of a developing story, a journalist quotes a government official making such statements?

My guess is it will depend on whether or not the journalist is considered part of the mainstream media.

Re: Updating our rules against hateful conduct

#80

Post by rsj_hn »

jbattle wrote: post #72
rsj_hn wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define "de-humanizing". If you look at how previous twitter anti-dehumanizing policies were enforced, this was used to ban NPC memes -- which were not memes against a person but against ideas. It was used to ban people who said things like "men can't get pregnant" -- which is an idea/belief.

I really can't follow you. I spent a few minutes googling and it looks like 1) Twitter punishes 'dehumanizing tweets' 2) One author on kotaku argued that the NPC meme could be considered 'dehumanizing' 3 ???

The ban on 'dehumanization' was in response to NPC memes. It was introduced in mid October 2018 after the NPC memes became popular. They banned over 1500 accounts -- for a while they were banning every account with a NPC face in the avatar. Recall that the NPC meme originates from the (joke) that some people are robotic in their thinking, and the NPC memes are faces running a program. As this was not a violation of any twitter rules, twitter made up a rule as an excuse to block these memes.

But if you think about it, the NPC memes were not arguing that some specific individual was not human, but rather than certain types of reasoning was robotic -- e.g. atavistic, primitive, and automatic. So this was an idea that was being blocked.

Going back to religion, the whole point of religious arguments is that they offend people and challenge the core of their identity. So of course this is going to be used as a weapon against religious views. Especially if your religion includes beliefs that some people are followers of false prophets, children of the devil, etc. Religion is used in many ways as a dividing line over who is favored and who is not.

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