Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

waqas.xyz

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 258 posts

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

#81

Post by [deleted] »

MichaelCollins wrote: post #50
natch wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> You don’t want to leave Pakistan My read is that he's in New York, but has family still in Pakistan.

[deleted]

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

#83

Post by logicalmonster »

waqasx wrote: post #17
dcow wrote: post #14

This really sucks to hear. What’s unclear to me is whether Twitter is being negligent or abnormal here or whether this is just shitty world politics unfolding partly on Twitter. Twitter is being used by both sides to fight over a narrative. Nothing new in that respect. The author doesn't really propose a solution other than Twitter essentially siding with him and take (what appears to me to be) a political stance. Of…

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…

Like many people here, I don't know enough about Pakistani politics to weigh in on the objective truth of this situation one way or the other. I would only make 4 small comments.

1) You claim these are verifiable lies. From your perspective that is the case as (unless you're a programmed sleeper agent) you're in position to know the truth about whether you're an agent of some foreign government or not. However, from a neutral or 3rd party perspective, this seems a bit like a he-said/she-said kind of case. And from your perspective, disproving this would be hard as you'd seem to have to prove a negative "I'm not an agent" claim, which is kind of hard to do.

2) A personal opinion, but it would probably be very helpful to your case if you can make a clear, bullet-point list of the alleged verifiable lies, who told them and their position in the Pakistani government, and your rebuttal to their claim. I read your piece and checked out your links, but these are all buried under a wall of text that many people won't have the attention span to process given the format.

3) One of the problems with Twitter is that they try and involve themselves in really tough subjective cases of truthiness. I'm not sure that Twitter trying to fact-check and remove what you believe are lies would be the best outcome here. If I were to give a suggestion to Twitter on how to handle this, the best thing Twitter could probably do would be to either temporarily verify him, or create some kind of temporary "At Risk" badge given to a limited number of people in dicy situations like this to bring attention to their cause so they can't be summarily disappeared without a trial.

4) To any journalists reading this, I hope Waqas' story gives you a renewed appreciation for not trusting government claims at face value. Whether his story is true or not, many journalists seem to too often rush to print government claims about anything and everything as gospel. A journalists' job isn't to be a tape recorder for government officials and merely print their quotes, you've got to dive into the background of their claims and consider the other side. If government officials claim X is a foreign agent, you should consider every angle and claim.

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

#84

Post by mypalmike »

ricardobeat wrote: post #28
Asooka wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter has already booted former president of the USA Donald Trump due to similar conduct. As they say, with great power, comes great responsibility. Twitter have shown themselves willing to wield their power for the good of the USA, thus they should also accept their responsibility for the good of all mankind.

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.

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

#85

Post by notch656a »

MichaelCollins wrote: post #60
CoastalCoder wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being realistic: if your life hangs by the thread of twitter moderation, you should either run and hide, or get your affairs in order. Perhaps a 3rd option is to go on the attack, and find some angle from which to sue Twitter?

That won't solve the problem of people wanting him dead.

Yeah. Change my mind: if people want you dead violently, police are likely to be 15 minutes to an hour too late, and the courts a couple years late behind that. Unfortunately violence is often either solved by running away, hiding, or meeting violence with direct self defense.

Maybe after you're lucky, you can win a suit against twitter, after their massive legal team drags it out for years with N number of hurdles. You'd be lucky to sue a nobody in podunk small claims court in time to effect meaningful change for something that needed done in days to weeks.

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

#86

Post by mypalmike »

waqasx wrote: post #11
thatguy0900 wrote: post #5

He complains that Twitter doesn't know local Pakistani politics, but what would be the answer in this case? Set up national moderation offices? In this very case, they would just say yeah he's a spy... Unless you want random unaccountable expats making judgment calls about your government

least Twitter can do is sensitize their moderators, or at least a subset of them, about local issues, maybe not to the level of making them regional experts, but enough so that they can tell a truth from a lie, a dangerous maligning campaign vs a fair critique. I dont think that is a hard problem.

It's not just a hard problem. It's an intractable problem.

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

#87

Post by frank_nitti »

notch656a wrote: post #73
pseudo0 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The focus on Twitter seems a bit strange. Per the author's post, the government of Pakistan is arresting journalists and activists, manufacturing a pretext after the fact: > In Pakistan, activists and journalists are routinely picked up (abducted) and tortured by the country's police and secret services. Same happened this time, some of the top journalists and anchors were picked up - some without warrants with fake…

This article reads like an asylum claim. Hopefully they already have permanent legal permanent residence somewhere else, if not they will likely by applying for asylum. It could be the whole thing was written expressly for the purpose of asylum. Going back to Pakistan at this point would mean basically picking how you want to go out. Either by defending your life in one last moment before a corrupt government takes y…

The US government may be complicit in the dynamics of Pakistan’s government, so I’m not sure they are working under any directives to help asylum seeking muckrakers:

https://youtu.be/3jFNJtjm-wI

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

#88

Post by xwdv »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #42
MichaelCollins wrote: post #29

Being realistic: if your life hangs by the thread of twitter moderation, you should either run and hide, or get your affairs in order. If they really want you dead, even the best possible twitter moderation won't keep you safe. This whole circumstance of people wanting you dead is not twitters fault and there is very little twitter could do to protect you even if their moderation was perfect.

He's not asking Twitter to protect him from murder. He's asking them to do their damn job so the platform cannot be used to facilitate a smear campaign that makes it easy to get away with murder. It's a very reasonable request.

No, this is not Twitter’s problem, and if they fulfill this request it just goes down a rabbit hole that eventually creates more liability for the company than what they want to take on.

Twitter has taken the correct action here.

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

#89

Post by ubukhary »

oa335 wrote: post #51
ubukhary wrote: post #23

its interesting to see supporter of the previous govt who silenced most of the journalists and activists from twitter with heavy handed law enforcement tactics, now claiming to be a freedom of speech proponent For those who do not know, PTI owned and operated largest bots and trolls network who habitually abused people who ever would disagree with them. Consider them TRUMP supporters like mentality people in Pakistan

I don't think thats a fair characterization of PTI supporters. PML-N and PPP have literally created cults of personality around their families, in many ways their followers can be described as cult-like also.

question is who misused the twitter the most, its not who is the cult or not.

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

#90

Post by waqasx »

notch656a wrote: post #73
pseudo0 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The focus on Twitter seems a bit strange. Per the author's post, the government of Pakistan is arresting journalists and activists, manufacturing a pretext after the fact: > In Pakistan, activists and journalists are routinely picked up (abducted) and tortured by the country's police and secret services. Same happened this time, some of the top journalists and anchors were picked up - some without warrants with fake…

This article reads like an asylum claim. Hopefully they already have permanent legal permanent residence somewhere else, if not they will likely by applying for asylum. It could be the whole thing was written expressly for the purpose of asylum. Going back to Pakistan at this point would mean basically picking how you want to go out. Either by defending your life in one last moment before a corrupt government takes y…

i am not. i find this accusation disgusting. i do not have a problem, legally, in staying here. my problem is exactly because i WANT to go back and not face any violence.
Post reply on HN