alt-left Twitter purges many alt-right accounts

[jim bell]

 From: Ben Tasker <ben at bentasker.co.uk>

>> As opposed to that old concept of actually letting people engage in FREE SPEECH?!?
>Except as I tried to make clear in the rest of the email, it's not the speech that's the issue, but the actions.
Oh, really?  Have you ever heard of something called "selective enforcement"?  You didn't identify the "actions" involved.  Somehow, I suspect that these "actions" are not going to be enforced against the PC crowd, only those opposed to them.  Go ahead, surprise me.

>Want to post how much you hate (to pick an example) mexicans on twitter? Go for it, it's unlikely you'll be banned.
Are people who post how much they hate Trump, or hate people who support him, going to be banned?  Somehow, I don't think so.  It's PC nonsense.  Selective enforcement.

"Encourage hundreds, if not thousands, of others to tweet racist shit at a single user?"
"Free speech" means allowing people to say things you hate. If you haven't learned that yet, you don't know what free speech is.
" Its your action there that gets you banned. It's not what you've said so much as the fact you've led a charge. Twitter'll deny you the tools to take those actions."
Oh, I see!  Posting such statements are "actions", not "speech".Well, if that trick were used, people could be prosecuted for uttering sounds that happen to sound like "hate speech".  See the problem?  Of course you don't.

>My comment was in the context of a commercial decision, and yes, the sane commercial decision is to remove those that are causing issues, if >they're in the minority. They're a corporation and can't let a small chunk of revenue drive away large chunks. It's that simple."
If the speech involved was objected to by 99% of the population, or even 95%, you might have a point.  but I suspect you are really only referring to the opinions objected to by (at most) 51% of the population, or in fact far less.  (Say, speech objected to by 75% of the PC crowd, or maybe 10% of the population.)

"Reddit had to"
HAD TO?  Really?  Are you absolutely sure about that?  Like, somehow, their computer servers would melt down, or something, if HTML data with certain data patterns were stored in it?
" go through a similar thing a while back, and shuttered coontown (amongst other subs). Many predicted the demise of reddit, but in reality, whilst some users left for Voat and probably never came back, most of the remaining subs continue to thrive. Admittedly, that was more about getting money to come onboard in the first place, so it was as much about the investors sensibilities as the userbase."
If the existence of alternate forums was a justification for censorship, the state of California (for example) could negate the U.S. Constitution's 1st Amendment, with the explanation:  "If you don't like it, you can move to another state".   See the problem?   Of course you don't!

>> A lot of speech will bother _somebody_.  If a service removes speech that _somebody_ claims to object to, fairly soon there will be little or no speech to see.  
>I agree. And booting someone for saying something offensive isn't right. Encouraging others to descend, en masse, on someone else though >isn't just speech, it's incitement - an action. Or at least as much as an action as the average user can actually take online
"descend, en masse, on someone else"???   You mean, like, physically attack them?   Or do you merely mean using speech that offends them?  If the former, I don't see much of a problem.  If it is the latter, I see a huge problem.

>>I suspect these people are merely trying to justify PC censorship
>I suspect you dropped "PC" in there because it's one of your trigger words. This isn't about political correctness, this is about people getting >targeted, en masse, because their skin's the wrong colour, or because they lack a penis (or in some cases, have one). Not about protecting >peoples sensibilities, but about outright, deliberate victimisation.
Again, you say, "targeted".   You mean, like being shot at?  Struck with a baseball bat?   Or merely criticized?  Do these people need their "safe spaces", or "trigger warnings", etc?

>FTR, There's fuckload wrong with world of Political Correctness, especially once you get people arguing that we should use so-called "positive >iscrimination".
Yes, but that's far from its only problem.

>Leaving actions aside, and going back to the original reason I mailed the list, Mirimir noted that ACLU supported the KKK's right to rally. IOW >they defend the KKK's right to free speech.
Yes, but "rallying" is "actions", right?  Or is it "speech"?

"ACLU don't however, let the KKK hold those rallies in their carpark, or provide them with megaphones etc. There's a big difference in defending the right to speech and actively helping someone make that speech."
Private property is different.  Twitter MIGHT justify discrimination based on the fact it's privately-owned.  However, that's a very imperfect defense.  First, Twitter hasn't previously claimed that it has an institutional bias.  This is new.  Further, imagine a different service, one that presents itself as being Twitter-like, but which openly engages in what we'd agree is hateful, racist speech, and discriminates in employment.  If a person could use the court system to try to shut them down, then it isn't purely a "private" operation, is it?   It's subject to government regulation and control.  In that case, I think that Twitter itself (following arguendo, the same logic) should be subject to legal attack.  Is that how you want things?

>I see this as much the same, you've got the right to say what you like, and I'll gladly defend that, but I'm not going to help you say it. 
>Why would Twitter be any different? Hell, the world in general is no different. You don't see Breitbart hosting guest columns from lefties, just as >you don't tend to see liberal publications inviting the alt-right to put their views forward. Each have to find their own, accommodating, venues to >push their agendas from.
Except you forget:  Up to now, Twitter hasn't identified itself as a "left-wing" organization.  Now, apparently, it has.    It can no longer hide behind the illusion that it is an unbiased organization.  Its censorship is selective, and biased.  Just as we now know,.
            Jim Bell

On Sat, Nov 19, 2016 at 12:14 AM, jim bell <jdb10987 at yahoo.com> wrote:



From: Ben Tasker <ben at bentasker.co.uk>
On Fri, Nov 18, 2016 at 11:30 PM, juan <juan.g71 at gmail.com> wrote:

        'Their' service exists only thanks to the users and the fascist
        government they work for.



>Twitter is entirely dependant on it's userbase, yes. If they feel that allowing that kind of speech is going to lead to users not feeling comfortable >using the service (leading to a reduction of the userbase) the only sane commercial decision is to remove the problematic speech, no?
As opposed to that old concept of actually letting people engage in FREE SPEECH?!?Sorry, but I have to laugh!   A lot of speech will bother _somebody_.  If a service removes speech that _somebody_ claims to object to, fairly soon there will be little or no speech to see.  I suspect these people are merely trying to justify PC censorship.   Stop it.       Jim Bell
   



-- 
Ben Tasker
https://www.bentasker.co.uk



   
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