On Sat, Nov 19, 2016 at 11:25:19AM +0000, Ben Tasker wrote:

But I can still include you in mentions which'll end up in your
notification area. As an added "bonus" those mentions are visible to anyone
who is following you, so they can reply to them (which'll also ping me). A
DM would, at least, be hidden from your followers

If you look at Razers tweet earlier, you'll probably find he's not
following any of those

His ability to create such "non-following" is perhaps above the ability
of "the average Twitter user"?

I don't understand what you mean by non-following. I simply block people who troll me and take a look at new follows and Rt'ers Favoriters etc I've never seen before (especially if the profile pic's a 'twitter egg' or a girl taking a selfie (the same selfie girl pics get used over and over and over again by various trollbot accounts) or a cute cat (et al)

I spot marketers by taking a look at their timeline to see what they post. Take a quick look at the other people they follow and who follows them to see if they're just middlemen collecting handles for others to market with (Why you'll see in many account's sidebar descriptions "No Lists"). I simply don't want certain accounts to have access to viewing my followers (persec for them and minimizing the potential for spamming or marketing at them b/c they follow me etc), or as I said disabusing the intent of my tweets which should be pretty clear. 

No magic. I just do a quick check and use common sense and compare some things... Like you can tell something about accounts by their tweet activity. How many followers they have in relation to following (Twitter also uses that as a spammer flag if someone follows way more people than follow them Twitter will cap the #). Is everything a retweet or favorite but they never actually have an original thought? She looks like a nice intelligent girl but all her followers are prongirlz... Then once a year or so I go over accounts I don't remember and see if they're dead wood inactive or have changed their tenor.

some hashtags attract bots. Mention ANYTHING regarding the stock market and you'll be swarmed by investment advisorbots. Tweet anything to do with social media and you get all kinds of SEObot accounts retweeting favoriting and following. It's a hashtag jungle oot deh folks

Regarding 'replies'... If I put your handle at the beginning of a tweet it's directed at you (not a direct message, public and visible in my replies tab). If I put your nick at the end it's the equivalent of a Cc:.

If any character appears before a tweet directed at you (at the beginning), typically a period, one doesn't have to go to my replies tab to see it. It appears on my main time-line. 

Twitter has been 'threatening' to make all direct replies visible on the main timeline but I haven't seen that yet albeit I have noted that when I tweet a direct reply (without the period in front) it does initially appear on my timeline but disappears to the replies tab on page refresh. 

I'm not aware of what happens at another user's end if they view my timeline immediately on posting that direct reply but I suspect it's only visible to me until page refresh to allow for ease of access if I'm writing a series of nested replies Such as using up all 140 in text in the reply and leaving it visible temporarily to addend or add a link or somesuch.

On Sat, Nov 19, 2016 at 6:43 AM, Zenaan Harkness <zen@freedbms.net> wrote:

At what userbase level would you consider a communication platform to
have crossed the line into "service provider"?

100 million? More? Less?

I think, to an extent, it depends as much on how the provider behaves as it
does on userbase level. Although actual function would need to come into it
too.

The platform that twitter provides is one that lets you "reach" millions of
people. In some ways, it's almost unrivalled, in the sense that it's (IMO)
far easier to stumble across someone new on Twitter than it is on FB etc.

Whether that's an essential service, obviously, is up for debate.

Please try to avoid shifting ground, or further twisting my words.
I don't mind genuine efforts to explain a corporation's position to the
world in a functional way, but massaging the questions is fundamentally
deceptive, and ought be avoided.

"Essential service" would be something like water, or electricity (for
cooking). Internet access is not an 'essential service', yet ISPs are
"service providers", Internet Service Providers to be precise. Like a
telephone.

I'm sure it called be argued that Twittering on Twitter makes one a
Twit, but it's also easy to say that once any communication platform
reaches a 100,000,000 user base, it has become a utility, a service
provider, albeit not an essential utility.

Arguing otherwise is arguing -for- a feudal corporatist world,
ESPECIALLY given that these corporations (in particular in this instance
the one you're spruiking for) build themselves to such heights with
statutory corporate and monopolistic protections, defended by government
and the courts. Zuckerberg is protected from personal legal attack by
the corporate veil of protection(ism) provided by the 100% artificial
corporation entity. "Twitter" in the "communications domain" at least
but possibly "all domains" is (presumably) a "protected" (for exclusive
use of Twitter Inc) trademark.

Do you agree that "Twitter" has become a communication platform/
conduit?

To some extent, yes.

Would be difficult to argue otherwise.

And do you agree that no one is obliged to "follow" anyone else?

Yes. But, not following you doesn't mean that you can't dump stuff into my
notifications by simply including an @. If you've got many hundreds of
people doing that, are you going to sit and block all of them?

OK, so Twitter does have an "email" type of targetting function. I didn't
know that.

Sounds like the technology is flawed - it's centralised, and a walled
garden - at least you can set up your own email server.

Don't forget these guys weren't banned for being right-wing, or for
expressing "alt-right" views. Most (if not all) had a habit of directly
harassing people for race, gender, whatever.

So you say. This is Twitter we're talking about - where the only way you
can be "attacked" (you should at least be saying 'verbally' attacked)

Yes, I should have been saying verbally, you're right


is

if you "follow" the person "attacking" you.

Untrue. Depending on your settings, you'd need to be following me to for me
to send you a direct message.

Ok. Didn't know that (as above).

But I can still include you in mentions which'll end up in your
notification area. As an added "bonus" those mentions are visible to anyone
who is following you, so they can reply to them (which'll also ping me). A
DM would, at least, be hidden from your followers

If you look at Razers tweet earlier, you'll probably find he's not
following any of those

His ability to create such "non-following" is perhaps above the ability
of "the average Twitter user"?

The TL:DR is, there isn't a good answer that works in the world we
currently live in. Those that were banned (or at least those I've
bothered to look up) were assholes. Not because of their speech, but
of their actions.

So now "speech == actions".

At what point, in the online world, would you consider something becomes
analogous to a real-world action?

When either:
 a) it has criminal consequences
 b) it falls subject to civil claim of damages

Other than that, Rayzer's (personal) approach seems reasonable.

ISTM that Twitter Inc perhaps ought make it easy for "common folk" to
ban individuals or groups algorithmicly, sort of how Razer does this.

But for Twitter Inc to get into the business of completely banning
individuals for using a communications platform, when that platform is
essentially a walled garden, is not acceptable.

This could also expose Twitter Inc to a class action lawsuit if there
are some motivated bunnies around - as others have been saying, the
"statutory privileges" that corporations have, give rise to certain
obligations to the rest of society, in particular when those
corporations become large and dominant, or extremely dominant, in their
particular "market" (and yes, even if they are the original creator of
that market) - you cannot ethically have the protectionist benefits of
being "a corporation", with no consequential obligations and duties to
the wider society commensurate to those protections.

Thus, class action lawsuit against Twitter Inc.

Their action was that they verbally attacked someone (and encouraged others
to do so) - obviously doing that requires speech but the two are not the
same thing.

The same can happen with email. Or telephone. Or text messages. Or
Facebook "friends".

The Ministry of Truth congratulates you; take notice that
the Ministry's cheques take up to 48 hours to arrive.

Please ensure it's made out to CASH ;)

What? Twitter Inc's HR/accounts department not paid you last month?
Shoddy...