alt-left Twitter purges many alt-right accounts

[Ben Tasker]

> 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.

Want to post how much you hate (to pick an example) mexicans on twitter? Go
for it, it's unlikely you'll be banned.

Encourage hundreds, if not thousands, of others to tweet racist shit at a
single user? 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.

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.

Reddit had to 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.


> 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


>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.

FTR, There's fuckload wrong with world of Political Correctness, especially
once you get people arguing that we should use so-called "positive
discrimination".


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.

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.

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.


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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