alt-left Twitter purges many alt-right accounts

Ben Tasker ben at bentasker.co.uk
Sat Nov 19 03:25:19 PST 2016


Jim:

>>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.

Well, no. Just like you're not going to be for posting that you hate
mexicans, which is kind of my point.

> 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.

I think you're being intentionally dense here.

This isn't people tweeting "build a wall", it's throwing abuse at a
specific individual.

> 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.)

There's no way we can objectively measure this, but I think your figures
are wrong.

49% may not object to you tweeting "build a wall", but I think a much
smaller percentage would be happy with you (and others) racially abusing an
individual user (to pick an example). That's not "being PC", that's
thinking you're a prick for continually tweeting coon at a single user just
to see how they'll respond


>> "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?

Well, yes. They had to, in that they felt they couldn't attract the revenue
they wanted to in the current state. Businesses, funnily enough, want to
make money.


> "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.

It *is* a little tricky to physically attack someone whilst on the
internet. But there are situations online that we consider worthy of the
term "attack". A DDoS Attack, for example, doesn't do any physical harm and
yet is still considered an attack. Why? Because it's a targeted and
deliberate attempt to interfere with operations.

If you're receiving thousands of abusive tweets sent specifically at you,
and/or those same people are filling your mailbox with the same, I'd call
that an attack. YMMV


> 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.

You don't need to have previously expressed a public opinion on something
to suddenly find you don't agree with it.

Corporations (and media) aren't required to explicitly state whether
they're left or right leaning (which in some ways is a shame)

In the case of Twitter though, it's not like they haven't stated their
objections before -
http://fusion.net/story/327536/milo-yiannopoulos-nero-permanently-banned-from-twitter/
- you'll have to forgive the somewhat PC tone of parts of that, I'm sure
google will find you examples closer to your tastes if needed


>  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.

Now that's a complex area of law, and varies between countries. But, those
who were banned would (AFAIK) be perfectly at liberty to try and sue
Twitter.

Strange though, whenever something like this comes up, you sometimes hear
threats of legal action, but they're never followed through. It's almost as
if the complainers haven't got a case under law. Admittedly, it might well
be, of course, that the cards are unfairly stacked against them.


> Except you forget:  Up to now, Twitter hasn't identified itself as a
"left-wing" organization.  Now, apparently, it has.

See earlier comment - there's no requirement for them to have done so.

And just to be a little picky. In the rest of the world, Twitter are not a
left-wing organisation, nor are most of the US's "lefty" politicians much
further left than centre-right. But I take your point



Juan:

>  The difference between your previous scenarios and the twitter thing is
that if there were any threats, I doubt they were credible at all.

That's a valid point (though I did say analogies were flawed). Receiving
those kind of threats is undoubtedly unpleasant, but you're right, they
shouldn't lead to quite the same fear for safety as in my scenario.

On the other hand, I could understand someone fearing that they were just
the beginning. The person sending them might not, physically, be able to
reach you themselves, but the next step might be swatting. But, to be fair,
at that point we're away from speech and well into real-world actions.


>  I mean, what kind of threat is an anonymous idiot with a fake account
half accross the world saying he'll kill you? Your own account probably not
giving any real info about you either.

It's scary the amount of information people do put online, though most at
least have the sense to not publicly post their address. That's often not
enough, though. Both corporations and governments seem to take a laid back
approach to protecting the data they're given (and in the case of govt, the
data they compel us to give them), so with various leaks floating about
there's always the possibility that information can be gathered. Again,
though, I'll conceded that that's a seperate issue


> Of course for those people tha ability to block anybody who called them
out was essential.

There's definitely groups of people (some of those Jim would probably
correctly identify as "PC") who seem to revel in the ability to block
dissenting views. An individual blocking someone else, at most, is only
harming their ability to learn something about the opposing view. But
others do try to take it further by trying to have "it" blocked at a wider
level by coercing government (or private orgs) to act.




On Sat, Nov 19, 2016 at 6:43 AM, Zenaan Harkness <zen at 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.



> Do you agree that "Twitter" has become a communication platform/
> conduit?
>
>
To some extent, yes.



> 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?



>
> > 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.

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


>
> > 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?

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 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 ;)


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