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

waqas.xyz

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

#91

Post by micromacrofoot »

karaterobot wrote: post #79
DoreenMichele wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What should Twitter do in this case? You say "their damn job", but their job is to apply their content policies, which they say they are doing. Given only the tweets linked in the article, I can see how a moderator would look at them and not find that they are obviously breaking any rules. They may be false accusations, but Twitter has not agreed to do independent investigations of every report by a user, or take on…

they need to understand the politics of the places they operate in, if they can’t then they shouldn’t operate there - we already saw what happened with facebook in myanmar

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

#92

Post by bell-cot »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #77
bell-cot wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Morally? Yes, a very reasonable request. OTOH - is there any large real-world corporation which has ever gotten itself into a sustained info-war conflict with a well-armed and angry nation state, for the purpose of protecting one "ordinary" person from that nation state? I'm guessing "no".

He says he's a journalist. That used to mean something. So it's rather dismissive and disrespectful to characterize him as an ordinary person with scare quotes no less. If these platforms feel unable to moderate fairly due to fear of foreign governments, perhaps they should tuck tail and keep their pussy selves out of the conflict entirely. I'm not impressed with an argument of "We want the money involved but we can'…

Okay - replace '"ordinary" person' with some polite phrase of your choice, which still makes it clear that the victim is not a head of state, ambassador, top military officer, Speaker of the House, Fortune 50 CEO, etc., etc.

No, I am not arguing that your idealism is morally wrong. I am arguing that the real world very often functions in ways which bear little resemblance to your ideals. No amount of idealism about "the gutter should have been stronger, and the ladder more stable, and..." will change the fact that my brother fell off a roof when young. Nor erase the injuries which he sustained. When I or people I care about are interacting with gutters and ladders, I stay very alert, and strive for "zero idealistic thoughts".

And - this sad state of affairs is nothing new. Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, The Brass Check, and other works (about the deep and systematic moral failings of corporations, journalists, etc.) over a century ago.

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

#94

Post by bckr »

Interesting that he believes the regime change is a coup. Khan, the now-ousted former prime minister, appears to be a Trump-style strong man who is whipping up his supporters with claims that the vote of no confidence which removed him is actually a U.S.-led conspiratorial regime change.

Might be right, and it's absolutely awful if these folks are being unjustly detained and tortured.

Yet, I think it's more complicated than the author would lead us to believe. It's also fascinating how this kind of unrest is unfolding all around the world.

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

#95

Post by waqasx »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #30

I am sorry for the responses I am seeing on HN. People with cushy lives who've likely never faced similar danger seem to just not really get it. I will say that your framing is one that most Westerners will have trouble taking seriously. It might go over better to document known cases where this pattern occurred and show the similarities. Walk people through it like they are five, so to speak. I know it's hard to do…

thank you so much! your support means a lot.

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

#96

Post by fluoridation »

didibus wrote: post #55
MichaelCollins wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a very low opinion of twitter and certainly wish they'd do a better job. But the premise of twitter as a shield against state-sponsored kidnapping or murder seems flimsy at best.

The premise seems more about how easily Twitter can be used to support a coup, suppress journalistic voice, oppress people, and push propaganda. I don't know if without Twitter all this would be just as easy, through state controlled media, but what I do know is that Twitter could actually be a tool against this, but is failing to be. Having a popular media outlet that cannot be coopted for propaganda and used for op…

I dispute that Twitter could be a tool against those things, because that implies that it's within Twitter's capabilities to know everything that is going on in the world in order to distinguish between true and untrue tweets.

Given that limitation, I would argue that the ideal communication medium simply conveys the messages it's given without regard for their contents. What people do with those messages is something that the medium has no power over.

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

#97

Post by DoreenMichele »

bell-cot wrote: post #92
DoreenMichele wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He says he's a journalist. That used to mean something. So it's rather dismissive and disrespectful to characterize him as an ordinary person with scare quotes no less. If these platforms feel unable to moderate fairly due to fear of foreign governments, perhaps they should tuck tail and keep their pussy selves out of the conflict entirely. I'm not impressed with an argument of "We want the money involved but we can'…

Okay - replace '"ordinary" person' with some polite phrase of your choice, which still makes it clear that the victim is not a head of state, ambassador, top military officer, Speaker of the House, Fortune 50 CEO, etc., etc. No, I am not arguing that your idealism is morally wrong. I am arguing that the real world very often functions in ways which bear little resemblance to your ideals. No amount of idealism about "…

Idealism?

I'm not an idealist. I'm a pragmatist.

But the internet allows businesses to operate virtually in de facto war zones. This is getting people killed when the business tries to act like they don't need to account for that fact.

If they physically went into a war zone to sell products and it was getting people killed, would that merit a "Too bad, so sad. Gotta make money, doncha know. Can't be worried about niggling details like not getting our customers cavalierly killed."

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

#100

Post by ebcode »

waqasx wrote: post #19
Canada wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't trying to remain anonymous as a journalist be rather ineffective?

yes, i would lose my audience too that i have built over ten years.

As a US Citizen who has had their twitter posts censored, I consider myself to be a critic of the US Government who has been effectively silenced. At a certain point you have to decide whether you are willing to die for your cause, or live with your shame.

> I feel Twitter should have protected me, instead of protecting the henchmen of a facist regime bent upon silencing critics.

The West no longer deserves its reputation for fighting fascists. Quite the opposite, in fact.

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