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Twitter hides Donald Trump tweet for “glorifying violence”

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Re: Twitter hides Donald Trump tweet for “glorifying violence”

#901

Post by jariel »

riffic wrote: post #466
lykahb wrote: post #351

The neutral companies, such as utilities, online hosting or financial providers serve nearly everyone with little objections - they defer to the law rather than any internal policies. The more selective companies such as newspapers and TV channels are expected to restrict who can get published. By representing itself both as an open platform and as a company with progressive values, Twitter has put itself into an awk…

Twitter has never been a "Utility" in the way that you may be imagining it to be.

Yes, of course - but - it is becoming so.

Twitter and Facebook are starting to approach the threshold of 'public good' wherein at least, there would need to be rules or regulations.

If TW and FB did not actually regulate their content - we would see this exposed much more quickly. Foreign/Russian interference in elections would immediately force Congress to act, there's just too much power.

Aside from the ambiguities of 'how and what to police' we do have the added complexity of the nature of 'large, ostensibly public platforms' managed by private companies.

Re: Twitter hides Donald Trump tweet for “glorifying violence”

#902

Post by smithza »

Reedx wrote: post #709
tomp wrote: post #171

This is amazing news, and I hope Twitter adopts this policy for all rules violations. Much better than deleting tweet or banning accounts, this lets people decide what they want to see. (Except for obvious spammers etc. which should probably be banned.) Even better would be if there were user-configurable "lists", whereby you could decide upfront what you want / don't want to see (like many sites do right now with NS…

If we're being honest, Twitter is basically a machine that glorifies violence. It rewards it at the platform and algorithmic level. An endless volume of tweets under every charged trending topic violates these rules, which are being surfaced and promoted by the platform. And it enables mob mentality like nothing we've seen before. Moderation is mostly just theater, especially as long as the platform itself is quite l…

It is not so much the platform as the general internet medium. It lends itself to narcissism. Humans are more gratuitous when speaking to another in person. More attentive to inflections, reactions, emotions, etc.

Re: Twitter hides Donald Trump tweet for “glorifying violence”

#903

Post by gabordemooij »

I don't see the problem, just reject the special privs for twitter and treat it like a publisher. It should be fairly simple, either you do not moderate at all (and your not responsible for whatever people say on your platform) or you moderate and therefore you publish. It aint that hard. Twitter clearly moderates, that's fine, so it should be treated as a publisher, not as a public 'facility'. Simple.

Re: Twitter hides Donald Trump tweet for “glorifying violence”

#904

Post by throwawaysea »

LordDragonfang wrote: post #888
throwawaysea wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can hope Twitter adopts and enforces policies equally across the board, but they won't and I don't think they can either. As an example of how they won't do so, consider that there are people literally organizing violent riots and destruction of property on Twitter right now, and they have not been banned or had their tweets/accounts hidden. Ilhan Omar's daughter was caught doing so herself, amplifying rioting sup…

>people literally organizing violent riots and destruction of property on Twitter right now >Ilhan Omar's daughter was caught doing so herself Apparently, retweeting a list of supplies to help protect yourself from bodily harm from violent police is "literally organizing violent riots and destruction of property"

I get what you're saying, but the flip side of it is that such actions are aiding, enabling, and abetting a crime (in this case, a large number of crimes). The "protect yourself from bodily harm" bit is what enables these rioters to avoid dispersing and ceasing violent destruction of property. And it is obvious from numerous tweets from various DSA and antifa handles that these two groups are very much amplifying and glorifying destructive rioting. This is real material violence, not theoretical violence, and therefore Twitter needs to shut it down if they have a problem with theoretical violence that they think Trump's tweet glorifies.

Calling police "violent" for wanting to stop blatant opportunistic theft and terrorist behavior (e.g. deliberately cutting gas lines to create big explosions) is a stretch. I would call the initial policing incident that tipped off the protests violent, and I would call the destructive rioting violent (as opposed to the initial peaceful protesting). Both acts deserve condemnation and consequences in my view.

Re: Twitter hides Donald Trump tweet for “glorifying violence”

#905

Post by Veserv »

carapace wrote: post #750
seph-reed wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They fucked this up so badly. They could have just banned him and said "It's a free country and they felt like it." Instead they're trying to high-road, and it's.. such a mistake.

The high-road leads to where we actually want to be. I was thinking about what you said in the other thread about trolls, and I think you're off-base. Trolls aren't zen master ego busters, they're the self-hating jerks they seem to be. The "zen master ego buster" story is just another layer of the ego trip.

The high-road leads to Trump agreeing with you that we need to prevent the spread of fake news to protect society. Then, as the duly elected leader sworn to protect society, he takes on that solemn duty and tasks the agency he controls, the FCC (the entity usually tasked with controlling media content), to make sure that all fake news and entities peddling fake news are permanently squashed so that they will not interfere in the upcoming election.

Re: Twitter hides Donald Trump tweet for “glorifying violence”

#906

Post by pps43 »

gabordemooij wrote: post #903

I don't see the problem, just reject the special privs for twitter and treat it like a publisher. It should be fairly simple, either you do not moderate at all (and your not responsible for whatever people say on your platform) or you moderate and therefore you publish. It aint that hard. Twitter clearly moderates, that's fine, so it should be treated as a publisher, not as a public 'facility'. Simple.

Twitter does not want to be a publisher, because then lots of people will sue it for libel and other nasty stuff in twits.

Re: Twitter hides Donald Trump tweet for “glorifying violence”

#907

Post by softwaredoug »

One thing that's fascinating about this is how Twitter has become so centered around political discussion (& histrionics). It's become the backbone of the sort of inside-baseball of politics. The lightning rod at the center of both politics and Twitter is Trump. Trump is such a powerful force because he can bend the ridiculousness of the twitter conversation to his will. He's perhaps an outcome of all the incentives of the social network.

So limiting Trump is to me a kind of commentary on Twitter itself. Maybe something like a Trump is the end-game of a Twitter-like network?

Re: Twitter hides Donald Trump tweet for “glorifying violence”

#908

Post by hellomyguys »

gabordemooij wrote: post #903

I don't see the problem, just reject the special privs for twitter and treat it like a publisher. It should be fairly simple, either you do not moderate at all (and your not responsible for whatever people say on your platform) or you moderate and therefore you publish. It aint that hard. Twitter clearly moderates, that's fine, so it should be treated as a publisher, not as a public 'facility'. Simple.

So all platforms that have moderators (reddit, 4chan, FB, etc) are considered publishers now? What would actually be defined as a platform in your model?

Re: Twitter hides Donald Trump tweet for “glorifying violence”

#909

Post by NeverFade »

pps43 wrote: post #906
gabordemooij wrote: post #903

I don't see the problem, just reject the special privs for twitter and treat it like a publisher. It should be fairly simple, either you do not moderate at all (and your not responsible for whatever people say on your platform) or you moderate and therefore you publish. It aint that hard. Twitter clearly moderates, that's fine, so it should be treated as a publisher, not as a public 'facility'. Simple.

Twitter does not want to be a publisher, because then lots of people will sue it for libel and other nasty stuff in twits.

So it should stop editorializing and moderating.

Re: Twitter hides Donald Trump tweet for “glorifying violence”

#910

Post by kshacker »

tomp wrote: post #171

This is amazing news, and I hope Twitter adopts this policy for all rules violations. Much better than deleting tweet or banning accounts, this lets people decide what they want to see. (Except for obvious spammers etc. which should probably be banned.) Even better would be if there were user-configurable "lists", whereby you could decide upfront what you want / don't want to see (like many sites do right now with NS…

Mythic Quest showed us a solution :)
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