alt-left Twitter purges many alt-right accounts

Razer rayzer at riseup.net
Fri Nov 18 18:15:37 PST 2016



On 11/18/2016 06:07 PM, jim bell wrote:

>     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.


Surprise! I think you're out to lunch if you believe the people who
operate twitter or Fb or any of them care about "PC" as you see it. THEY
get to decide what's PC and they're Young Republican 'libertarian'
closet racists and gentrifiers (again, racists)

Any questions? Talk to the hand.

Rr


> *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
> <mailto:jdb10987 at yahoo.com>> wrote:
>
>
>
>     *From:* Ben Tasker <ben at bentasker.co.uk <mailto:ben at bentasker.co.uk>>
>     On Fri, Nov 18, 2016 at 11:30 PM, juan <juan.g71 at gmail.com
>     <mailto: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 <https://www.bentasker.co.uk/>
>
>
>

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