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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

#91

Post by dmitryminkovsky »

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…

> Why does it matter if the flagging is automatic? Does that somehow make it more acceptable?

Neil Postman discusses this at length in Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992):

> Naturally, bureaucrats can be expected to embrace a technology that helps to create the illusion that decisions are not under their control. Because of its seeming intelligence and impartiality, a computer has an almost magical tendency to direct attention away from the people in charge of bureaucratic functions and toward itself, as if the computer were the true source of authority. A bureaucrat armed with a computer is the unacknowledged legislator of our age, and a terrible burden to bear.

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#92

Post by qwerty456127 »

Although I support all the progressive ides I will never support banning (or shit-storming) people for having and expressing the opposite (or any) opinion (even if I really feel sure they are wrong). Today social network companies enjoy and exercise too much power. And this might be less of a problem if they didn't employ outdated algorithms to make ultimate decisions too quickly.

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#93

Post by Tarq0n »

_qulr wrote: post #57

A couple weeks ago Twitter inexplicably suspended @AppsExposed, an account that has repeatedly exposed scams in Apple's App Store and was recently featured in Forbes. The account is still suspended. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2021/02/02/porn-ap... This has nothing to do with euthanasia, but that's the point. It could be anything, or nothing. Twitter doesn't even have to give a reason for suspending acc…

Forbes is a blogging platform nowadays, something being published there should be given about as much weight as a medium article.

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#94

Post by wombatmobile »

chrisseaton wrote: post #70
holistio wrote: post #59

I live in Europe, in a country where black population is statistically insignificant, I only see black people about once every fortnight, and I live in a city of close to 2 million people. A lot of my acquaintances and friends have practically zero exposure to what caused the BLM movement and during last summer there was a significant number of people posting stuff along the lines of "all lives matter". To illustrate…

> And I have since then always arrived to the conclusion that Facebook cannot interpret irony, satire, sarcasm and reflection. Sarcasm has to be the least effective possible way to communicate anything, anywhere. You are absolutely begging to be misinterpreted or misunderstood, either legitimately or even deliberately. And you can't really defend yourself because 'it was sarcasm' won't cut it as a defence with many p…

> Why would anyone choose to communicate about a complex issue this way?

Same reason other people make bad communications. They assume everybody else thinks the same as they think, and know what they know, and know nothing else and think nothing else.

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#95

Post by onion2k »

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…

Why does it matter if the flagging is automatic? Does that somehow make it more acceptable?

The problem is very simple. Unless social media companies either stop moderating content, which will kill their profits because advertisers will run away, or pay people to moderate everything, which will kill their profit because it'd be wildly expensive, they'll continue to do the half-assed version of moderating they do now using AI and actually make a profit but also make stupid mistakes like this.

Computers and people don't need to operate perfectly. Expecting that is silly. So long as companies deal with errors reasonably it's all good.

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#96

Post by marcus_holmes »

jka wrote: post #66
marcus_holmes wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a long and interesting conversation with my father about this. He's retired now, but was a family lawyer (solicitor in the UK). He is vehemently opposed to euthanasia purely on the grounds of his experiences with ailing/aging parents and greedy children - he's had clients tidy up their wills, often with their children looking over their shoulders, and then kill themselves to stop "being a burden" on their famil…

This might not advance the state of the discussion any further, but have you and/or your father had the chance to see the film "Knives Out"? It's a mystery/dark comedy, and explores somewhat-related ideas in a good-natured way.

no, I'll check it out, thanks :)

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#97

Post by fnord123 »

holistio wrote: post #59

I live in Europe, in a country where black population is statistically insignificant, I only see black people about once every fortnight, and I live in a city of close to 2 million people. A lot of my acquaintances and friends have practically zero exposure to what caused the BLM movement and during last summer there was a significant number of people posting stuff along the lines of "all lives matter". To illustrate…

I think it is not appropriate to compare the Holocaust with slavery and disenfranchisement of blacks in the US. The Holocaust was a event spanning under a decade that must not be forgotten. Slavery was reduced in the US but not banned so it is a problem that has been spanning 400 years - and still happening. They are both wicked and evil issues but entirely different in scope and effect.

I'm not sure if it would be offensive to make a comparison, but equating bad thing with bad thing without nuance doesn't make you look clever.

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#98

Post by _qulr »

Tarq0n wrote: post #93
_qulr wrote: post #57

A couple weeks ago Twitter inexplicably suspended @AppsExposed, an account that has repeatedly exposed scams in Apple's App Store and was recently featured in Forbes. The account is still suspended. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2021/02/02/porn-ap... This has nothing to do with euthanasia, but that's the point. It could be anything, or nothing. Twitter doesn't even have to give a reason for suspending acc…

Forbes is a blogging platform nowadays, something being published there should be given about as much weight as a medium article.

> Forbes is a blogging platform nowadays

What isn't? A lot of "hard news" stories nowadays are just republishing tweets. So-and-so famous person tweeted this, so-and-so other famous person tweeted a response, yadda yadda. [James Earl Jones voice] This is CNN.

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#99

Post by aestetix »

chrisseaton wrote: post #70
holistio wrote: post #59

I live in Europe, in a country where black population is statistically insignificant, I only see black people about once every fortnight, and I live in a city of close to 2 million people. A lot of my acquaintances and friends have practically zero exposure to what caused the BLM movement and during last summer there was a significant number of people posting stuff along the lines of "all lives matter". To illustrate…

> And I have since then always arrived to the conclusion that Facebook cannot interpret irony, satire, sarcasm and reflection. Sarcasm has to be the least effective possible way to communicate anything, anywhere. You are absolutely begging to be misinterpreted or misunderstood, either legitimately or even deliberately. And you can't really defend yourself because 'it was sarcasm' won't cut it as a defence with many p…

Do you think essays like "A Modest Proposal" are likely to be misunderstood?

Re: Twitter locks out Irish Bishop after he criticized euthanasia

#100

Post by christophilus »

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…

> advocating against it can also be considered advocating for suicide

In the same way that advocating against guns can be considered advocating for switchblades.

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