> Today, we permanently suspended @RealAlexJones and @infowars from Twitter and Periscope. We took this action based on new reports of Tweets and videos posted yesterday that violate our abusive behavior policy, in addition to the accounts’ past violations. https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/abusive-behav...
Somehow this is just the babiest of baby steps. Infowars has a lot more than one Twitter account, and there's a lot of accounts other than Infowars that need to be thrown off Twitter.
I would agree, but something to think about is Twitter and facebook govern the behaviour of the people around me more than my country's government, probably.
Twitter and Facebook are private companies and they're free to govern their platforms however they see fit provided they don't run afoul of discrimination laws.
Being a racist jackass is not a protected class of individual.
I never watched infowars or read anything Jones said or wrote.
But to think there are people who believe his crazy sh*t is really scary. Like the guy shooting up a pizza shop because of Pizzagate.
I compare him to the World Weekly News (next to the People magazines) from way back where they'd show a picture of space aliens shaking hands with the president.
> If we want to disarm Alex we need to recognize there are real problems in America outside of the coastal areas.
And inside the coastal areas as well.
Still, none of this stress and anxiety condemns a reasonable human being to become a psychotic racist caricature (or a follower of the same). Desperation just turns up the dial on a person's fundamental system of values. It exposes the prejudice; it doesn't create it.
Solving the problems listed would calm their rage to the benefit of all, but let's not kid ourselves that it would change any hearts or minds.
The more people conflate the working class with Trump supporters, the more it feels like a plot to further discredit them. Not all of the rural areas or working class whites care about Alex Jones or even know who he is.
And yet, you seem to have managed to use the internet for years without ever having to read his stuff. So what exactly is the case for banning him? It seems the standard tools (follow/unfollow/mute/block) are sufficient for people being able to avoid him.
Do we really want social media monopolists and search engines to decide on what is truth and what isn't? What makes them the authority?
Obviously Twitter, as a private company, is allowed to ban whoever they want. I just find it sad that people don't find it grounds enough to switch to a more open network.
Maybe in part because such networks don't really exist atm, perhaps in part because of government regulation?
> Do we really want social media monopolists and search engines to decide on what is truth and what isn't?
Judging by HN and reddit threads, this is exactly what people want. In fairness, it's human nature. The vast majority of people are okay with censoring media that they personally find disgusting.
> I just find it sad that people don't find it grounds enough to switch to a more open network.
They don't have many other options, and the ones that are available are likely to follow suit. I don't know if I'd go so far as to call Twitter/Facebook non-competitive, but there really aren't great alternatives. The community is the draw, and that takes time to build. Also, it really isn't much of an exaggeration to say you're not truly a full member of society without social media. A startling number of people I know basically don't recognize that you exist without Facebook.
Can you name me a single government regulation that would prevent a decentralized twitter from forming?
Let's not just hand-wave our blame for the government.
There have been many, many, many attempts to create a more open, decentralized version of Twitter, Facebook, and various Blogs. But they've all failed because there just simply wasn't enough incentive for people to leave these popular sites to go to a random site, for a value proposition that most don't really care to understand (open and federated vs run by one company)
I live in Germany. Here, for example, the government threatens to fine companies who don't censor "hate speech" - with no way to appeal and no exact definitions. So even if you just operate your own node, you might be liable for fines if you don't censor at the whim of the government.
Maybe a decentralized Twitter, with some kind of magic anonymization that is usable for normal people, could work around that. But then I guess decentralized approaches never achieved a good performance so far?
A decentralized alternative seems like the only hope, but it might be very difficult or impossible to implement.
You can easily familiarise yourself with his history of abusive behavior towards innocent and undeserving people as well as his chronic incitements of violence.
One of the most difficult issues with the style of bans that large tech companies perform is that there is no hope for them to have strong consistency. For them to be consistent they would have to ban anyone that has been an equal or worse offender, while not banning anyone that is a lesser offender. This is obviously far-fetched, especially with decisions that are made by humans on a case-by-case basis.
Regardless of what actions they take, many parties will feel slighted, and rightfully so, as anyone will be able to cherry-pick correct examples about why various platforms are not fair with their bans, because complete fairness is impossible. So we can have many equally valid "They banned X but not Y, this is unfair" from one side, but also "They banned A but not B, this is unfair" from an opposing side, with both complaints being valid examples that demonstrate some type of bias or inconsistency.
It's OK to be inconsistent, because tech companies aren't governments and their rules aren't laws. They are allowed to control their platform however they want.
Everyone is welcome to create their own "free-er" Twitter, Facebook, or Reddit.
We all know tech companies can do what they want, they've been doing it from day one. But consistency is a desirable trait for a lot of reasons, not just for fairness or equality but also because it allows one to make predictions about what content will or will not be allowed.
Twitter may be their own company but we all know how large of an influence they are for public discourse, including important public and private conversations such as that between politicians and the citizens of their country, so suggesting that there cannot be an issue because there are no laws being violated is shotrt-sighted. As a thought experiment, imagine if Twitter decided to post fake tweets with any content they want from any Twitter account they wanted to. Is that 'okay'? After all, it's Twitter's platform, they can do whatever they want. I would argue it is not. You could easily construct much worse versions of this thought experiment if this one wasn't sufficient.
Although it's nice that with a free economy one is allowed to create alternative platforms, in practice this has been shown to be much more difficult than in theory, with many attempts being denied service at every level of their operations (banned from their cdn, ___domain proivder, payment provider, banks, all social media paltforms, etc). A lot of people hate Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, Google, etc, but there are many reasons why these companies are still in complete control.
The problem with this approach is it inevitably results in one of two broad possibilities:
1) Someone creates a "truly free" social media platform, and it is invaded by people who wish to mold it to reduce freedom for "toxicity"
2) Someone creates a "truly free" social media platform, and the only people to use it are those disallowed from using the mainstream platforms, creating a feedback cycle that eventually results in the free platform either shutting down or being branded "toxic" in and of itself, at which point they'll just go after the company that hosts the platform.
We're becoming so worried about "offending" people that we're literally giving away all our freedom of speech in the process. And yet, if we create such a restricted environment, and political sensibilities change dramatically, suddenly those in control become authoritarian dictators.
There's also the argument of "perhaps it's not a good idea to drive these people underground, where they can ultimately do far more long-term damage, than leaving their content available for all to mock"
I'm curious what you think about the cake shop denying service to a gay couple? Is that ok since they are free to create their own non-bigoted cake shop?
Whoa, I definitely think you’re over-rotating on this. No, I don’t think the cake shop was right to discriminate. This example is more like: Do I think it’s okay for a cake shop to refuse baking a cake for someone who comes into the shop every day and call the owners jewish pedophile lizard people?
Yes, I believe it’s okay for any business to refuse service to people who desire to damage that business.
Discrimination is fine and dandy for any business as long as it isn't part of a protected class (Whether it makes business sense to do so is another argument). The cake shop argument is whether LGBT people fall under a protected class, and the courts have continued to sidestep that issue.
I firmly believe LGBT people should be a protected class like race, and sex, but ultimately we need to have a ruling on that.
LGBT being a protected class or not was not at issue in the cake shop decision, since they were not denied service in general (they had been regular customers of that shop, and were always served). The issue was whether designing a custom cake for their wedding was considered artistic expression, and as such he had a right to refuse under the 1st amendment since you cannot compel speech.
I simply cannot agree with this logic. I'd compare this to saying, if you don't like TV censorship create your own channel. Don't like censorship in Hollywood? Simply open a major studio. I've been extremely critical of industry censorship elsewhere, so at least there's consistency. I don't like the MPAA telling me that female pleasure and homosexuality is worse than brutal gore and murder.
I'm glad to see Alex John's go, but I'm shocked by the lack of concern many people have on this issue. More and more communication relies on social media, and I'm terrified by the implications of ceding public discorse to any large organization. Yes there technically are other options, but we're talking about mainstream channels with sizeable audiences, which tend towards oligarchies. People are just happy that speach they find deplorable will be censored; conservatives were happy to have homosexuality censored. Obviously, in this case Twitter is being much more reasonable.
Alex Jones, every day, talks about how he wants to personally kill and mutilate the elite global cabal of Jewish child-raping Democrat subhumans. Alex Jones is a violent, abhorrent, slanderous racist and peddler of distorted, hurtful propaganda.
Censorship, in small doses, can be good for society. You act like banning Alex Jones from Twitter is going to bring in Fahrenheit 451.
Like I said above: Alex Jones is bad for Twitters business. Bottom line. If you owned a business, and man routinely came into that business, every day, and shouted through his megaphone that he has video evidence that Michelle Obama is a transvestite hooker, would you not ban him from your property as well?
The Twitter founder addressed concerns about Jones’ conspiracy-mongering, and tasked journalists with refuting his bogus claims.
“Accounts like Jones' can often sensationalize issues and spread unsubstantiated rumors, so it’s critical journalists document, validate, and refute such information directly so people can form their own opinions,” Dorsey tweeted. “This is what serves the public conversation best.”
Wow. Putting the burden of proof on anyone but the person making a claim is ridiculous.
Any video with John or Joan Q. Qanon will have someone saying something to the effect of, “Well, you don’t have any proof that it’s not true!”
Also, Jack Dorsey is a closet believer in the Tooth Fairy. He’s been known to dress up as the Tooth Fairy and to participate in Tooth Fairy-related rituals.
A magazine would be great, as that's going to be the quickest way to bankruptcy.
Will not shed a tear when Q makes Alex Jones look like a lame mainstream reporter and his audience, seeking the "truth", moves on from him to the latest, greatest purveyor of utter nonsense.
For the past few years, whenever a company demonstrates that it is actively working against a culture of free speech, I block its URL in /etc/hosts. In this case, I already added Twitter long ago, so no change necessary.
Not only do I have less time wasters around, but I noticed that the internet is far less angry of a place as a result.
> I would think it would be quite the opposite: the likelihood of being censored creates inhibition.
I suspect that it's due to general interest social media sites being unhappy places. For example, I was definitely exposed to a constant stream of negativity when actively using Twitter. That might be because both sides see them as the front lines in culture and political wars.
Hacker news, like basically anything, is trivial in size compared to Twitter.
Despite that hacker news, like MANY other sites, moderate the content it gets posted in an attempt to maintain some level of decorum/sanity/functioning community.
Why would a larger site need LESS of that? I think would be the other way around. In smaller sites very basic social norms seem to be strong enough to prevent problematic behavior. Once a site gets big enough that other users are seen as “other people” as opposed to “one of us” things go downhill fast if you don’t start doing something.
Because I don't equate moderation with "actively working against a culture of free speech". If HN was an enemy of it as a cultural norm, then I could not in good conscious support it with my traffic/content/etc.
Honestly, "Those are the eyes of a rat" is a fairly tame insult compared to the kind of toxic drivel Jones usually says, and seems like weak grounds for termination.
He should've been kicked off long ago, but I fear that having this particular example be the "final straw" is only going to strengthen the alt-right's persecution complex.
Some insults are simply worse depending on who they are targeting. It is the difference between calling GW Bush a monkey because he occasionally looked like a monkey and Obama being called a monkey as a racial slur. The former is a childish insult that is easy to ignore. The latter is a form of bigotry that shouldn't be tolerated.
> Some insults are simply worse depending on who they are targeting.
That's just an ideological step that is unwise to adopt. Taking that as a philosophy, anything you say is an intolerable statement because of who might get offended by it. This is antithetical to free speech as prior restraint. I don't know why anyone would subscribe to such a viewpoint. Every philosophy has boons and banes, but that doesn't mean the philosophy is absolute nor moral.
> anything you say is an intolerable statement because of who might get offended by it.
That isn't what OP said though. I believe they were commenting that all words are not the same to every group of people and cultural and historical context matters.
Exactly. It has nothing to do with who might be offended. It has to do with a history of racial oppression. No one is going to complain if you compare a individual black person to a rat or an individual Jewish person to a monkey because there is no historical precedent of those insults being used as blanket attacks against those groups. It is when you flip those two that you will get in trouble.
I think the position you're addressing is actually a practical one. Context is huge in communication, and who is being addressed is a big part of that context. It's hard for me to believe that you actually think that taking that specific context into account leads to the conclusion that all statements are intolerable.
The person calling a black person a monkey or a Jewish person a rat is either ignorant of the history of those slurs or they aren't.
If they are ignorant of that history, they can easily be excused. The ignorance is usually obvious based on their history of behavior because the accusation would likely be an isolated incident. Considering the history of accusations against Jones and Roseanne, I am pretty confident in saying they are both aware of how their words could be interpreted.
If that person is aware of the history of using those comparisons and isn't racist, what is the reasoning is still using that specific language? You can call Obama any number of insults and not be called a racist. Why would you choose an insult that you know will draw racial comparisons?
Power dynamics are real, and the legal system deals with context all the time. So do humans, they handle it quite well in fact (hence why our languages are not context-free).
I know computer people want consistency in rules. However, do you want to have a simple-minded consistency (with full invocation of Emerson intended here), or do you value full inclusion and reparative actions to restore full humanity to everyone who shares your DNA, yet were considered non-human in the past? (and still are by many people, who are actively attempting to return the past to the future.)
Slavery is ugly and MOST people don't love thinking about that era. Some people DO love thinking about it, and are actively attempting to bring it back. To quote a choose your own adventure:
- If you want to turn your back on historical realities, turn to page 55
- If you embrace the uncomfortable and pledge to work for the betterment of all, turn to page 100
Much of the point of a dog whistle (as I understand it) is plausible deniability. The parent comment stands: shutting it down over something that "may mean something" -- even though with context you may be quite sure -- is a bad look.
The next step is simply to point at the myriad of other times anyone called someone a rat on Twitter and Twitter is left to defend a position of shutting people down over what they were thinking when they wrote something.
They should have used one of the many better reasons they had for this this case.
Or we should just be willing to call dog whistles what they are and stop feeling the need to respond when people cry 'but that person used the word rat over there!'.
It's possible I've been living under a rock, but while I'm aware of rat being pejorative, I'm finding out in this thread for the first time about the anti-semitic undertones.
It's pretty clear that the difference is context, but I also don't think there can be clear guidelines if Twitter is expected to delve into the context for each tweet its users make.
In fairness, context typically doesn't provide smoking guns as pungent as this one. I'd still say it's not beyond reasonable doubt (and I'd guess most would be ok with that for a Twitter ban -- it's not prison or death).
So, sure, everyone should call it a dog whistle on the preponderance of evidence, but there were almost certainly better grounds for the ban. I doubt there will ever be a good ban target whose only giveaway is dog whistles.
I was aware of it, but I couldn’t have told you about it without prompting. I didn’t remember it that well. As soon as someone mentioned what it was it made perfect sense to me.
Yeah, that’s the complex part of all of this. As you said context is king here, and Jones is very well known for making implicit or explicit derogatory remarks about Jewish people. There really isn’t room for him to claim “I didn’t know that“.
> there were almost certainly better grounds for the ban
I think you’re right that this was sort of a cherry pick.
He’s done way more than enough stuff in the past to earn him a ban but they never acted on it.
After the hearing and his behavior immediately after I’m guessing they were tired of defending him and having to answer these questions AGAIN.
But it would seem especially strange/capricious just say “that thing you did three months ago that we gave you a pass on? Now you’re out.“
So I think they just chose the latest thing as their “instigating” incident and said that plus the totality of his previous behavior meant a total ban.
Even though the most recent thing is not as bad (relative to his previous ‘highs’).
I know with the hearing was about. And I know they’re desperately trying to say that they are not silencomg conservatives. Jones has been a very obvious case of someone who has stayed on the platform despite violating the TOS multiple times.
And then after the hearing: Jones went up to a reporter from CNN, screamed in his face, made anti-Semitic remarks about him, AND POSTED IT TO TWITTER.
They was supposed to continue to let the TOS violations go? He probably chose the worst possible time/place to misbehave.
The only thing that would make any sense is that he PURPOSEFULLY did this to get kicked off as “proof” he’s being censored. I’m sure that’s the narrative he’s pushing.
Did he know the end was coming anyway and decided to make the best of it? Did he think they were “losing“ the hearing and he needed to provide “proof”?
Or is he just that incapable of controlling himself/behaving?
Doesn’t matter. He explicitly chose to shoot himself in the foot. I don’t see how Twitter had a choice.
“Do we want all the Democrats mad at us over Jones plus all the Republicans over ‘censorship’... or do we want to enforce our TOS, say he didn’t give us a choice, and be no worse off than yesterday (slightly better with Ds)?“
> I know they’re desperately trying to say that they are not silencomg conservatives.
And then they go and silence Alex Jones the very next day...
> Jones went up to a reporter from CNN, screamed in his face, made anti-Semitic remarks about him, AND POSTED IT TO TWITTER.
He confronted one of the key people responsible for deplatforming him.
He wasn’t screaming and he didn’t make anti-Semitic remarks.
He did get in the guys face and was making a lot of offensive comments.
> The only thing that would make any sense is that he PURPOSEFULLY did this to get kicked off as “proof” he’s being censored
Of course he did.
Now all conservatives have to do is document all the offensive left-leaning tweets over the next few weeks and Congress will drag Jack right back to explain his clear bias against conservatives.
Or alternatively Twitter will be forced to start applying its rules equally to the left (fat chance). I’ve reported 3 significantly more offensive tweets already today.
If Jones did nothing then smaller less popular conservative voices would continue to be unfairly silenced and in the long term he would surely be banned as well.
Quite. See, for example, the 1940 Nazi propaganda film "The Eternal Jew." Quoting Wikipedia: "The film utilizes a montage that juxtaposes these images of ghetto Jews with images of rats to draw an analogy between the migration of Jews from Eastern Europe with the migration of rats. For example, one of the shots shows a pack of rats emerging from a sewer, followed by a shot of a crowd of Jews in a bustling street of the Łódź Ghetto. Close-ups of those in the crowd reveal sickly, malformed facial features. The narrator states that, as rats are the vermin of the animal kingdom, Jews are the vermin of the human race and similarly spread disease and corruption."
If this kind of behavior is against the platform rules, should the rules only apply if someone can prove that the person didn’t make a mistake in who they were targeting?
I am not a fan of Alex Jones but he is not an anti-semite.
In fact I suspect you have it backward. Jones will be intimately aware of (some of) the far left and (some of) far right anti-semite culture - it takes some character to see the big picture and in my personal exhaustive experience with that world most people exposed to those cultures would become anti-semites fast.
Jone's nemesis is altogether more abstract - he sees himself as crusader against a modern meme similar to communism or fascism.
I've seen clips of Alex Jones deriding Brian Stelter, zooming into his face, calling him a "devil" and a "demon" of all things. It was rather surreal. What could Alex Jones possibly getting at with that?
I think it's possible many people don't have much experience with anti-semitism so it seems unrelated (as for me) but given Jones' track record and other clips I've seen of him, it's pretty clear he plays with anti-semitism.
I have a lot of experience with anti-semitism - I've followed many extreme forums over the years and it's one of the most consistent patterns - even in oppositional ideologies.
Alex Jones is influential enough that he could, to use the parlance 'name the jew' and most of his followers would follow along with it or he would get new ones. If you think that he would find himself marginalized you are absolutely wrong - that would only occur at one level of society and the polite part isn't close to being meaningful - there is a huge market for this.
Throwing all people you find objectionable into one bucket is an error.
That’s kind of the point. It’s a message intended to be “heard” by a certain audience but not everyone the same way dogs hear a dog whistle but most humans do not.
I'm confident that people tend to extrapolate anecdotal negative experiences about groups of people in bad faith, and that, as the group size increases, this tendency increases relative to the availability of more objective observations. If that's true, the broader the group subjected to a negative generalization, the more likely it is that the observation is as I described. Combined with intuition about the nature of the negativity, I can sometimes feel confident expressing an opinion about the observation one way or the other (e.g. "I think X people are less conversational" vs "I think X people are mostly violent thugs").
He was put on notice by Twitter with a week ban. That's the exact circumstance where someone like him would start using coded language to try and avoid a ban while still promoting his ideas. That's the purpose of coded language.
At least the grandparent comment had the decency to generalize about a smaller, more ideologically narrow group of people than "the right" or "the left".
> He should've been kicked off long ago, but I fear that having this particular example be the "final straw" is only going to strengthen the alt-right's persecution complex.
He is quite correct in the assessment that he's being persecuted on ideological grounds, unless he says "by the government". Why would you deny that ?
And let's face facts here. If you held an alt-right viewpoint in San Francisco ... would you tell your employer ? Would you tell your friends ? Would you tell a police agent ? Would you tell city hall ?
Because I'd sure be afraid as hell to tell anyone. Neither Damore nor Eich deserved what happened to them, and it's disgraceful (and, of course, discriminatory/racist) that such things happened. They, of course, will not change their opinion or their vote, and will give more power if this movement does grow to the point they can get enough politicians elected.
The really sad part is that it really looks to me like neither Damore nor Eich had an alt-right worldview when they got screwed, but ... let me ask you ... if they held one now, because of what happened to them, would you find that surprising ? Would you blame them ? I wouldn't.
So let's just say that I REALLY think this is the wrong tactic. Engaging with them is the only way things might happen. That's difficult, takes constant effort, and will require people to sustain insults. Yep. Absolutely. Censorship, aside from being an act of desperation, mostly strengthens the hand of the people being censored, and convinces new people that what is being censored is true. I mean, just the act of censorship by itself does that. Plus, it won't stop them, Breitbart and Infowars are more than big enough to grow their audience organically.
This act of censorship is doubly counterproductive even. Before we had very concrete things to point at to show how despicable he sometimes is ... and now we don't. Or at least, he has a lot more arguments against those.
Let's face facts here. These bans, takedowns, ... they make most of us feel better. They make the situation worse, but they make us feel better. That by itself is dangerous as hell.
"Neither Damore nor Eich deserved what happened to them, and it's disgraceful (and, of course, discriminatory/racist) that such things happened."
I find it incredible how many people are more upset that those two got called out for their crappy views, and don't care at all what the actions of those two meant to the groups they targeted. Suppose you were a gay person working at Mozilla. How would you feel if you found out that your boss thought that you were not deserving of basic human rights?
"Would you blame them ?"
Yes, I absolutely would. Because they're adults, fully capable of taking responsibility for their own actions.
"Engaging with them is the only way things might happen."
No, it isn't. Because they do not engage in good faith. They do not debate in good faith.
"That's difficult, takes constant effort, and will require people to sustain insults"
The fact that you refer to what they're saying as merely "insults" says a lot. They are questioning the very right of these people to exist. They are questioning the ability of these people to be in public. They are questioning the idea that these people are entitled to basic human dignity. That is not just an insult to be sustained.
"Breitbart and Infowars are more than big enough to grow their audience organically."
Then they don't need the megaphone of Twitter.
"This act of censorship is doubly counterproductive even. Before we had very concrete things to point at to show how despicable he sometimes is ... and now we don't. "
This is directly contrary to your previous point, which was that they still have their own websites to get their message out.
I would like to reply that both your assumptions are wrong.
1) a state has the right to deny marriage on any grounds other than religion, race or nationality. So a state has the right to impose conditions on marriage that have to do with gender. Hell, the treaty almost says that a state has to impose some limits (without specifying what those limits are)
Article 16 UDHR (paragraph 3)
2) You DO NOT have the right to treat either adult different because of their political opinion EVEN IF IT DID VIOLATE HUMAN RIGHTS.
Article 1 and 2 UDHR
So not only did both of these individuals not violate human rights, you did.
It is no good appealing to human rights - because human rights are the subject of great controversy and debate between Enlightenment scholars themselves.
I am tired of people using 'human rights' as a flag for moral uprightness.
There are good arguments against human rights from all parts of the political spectrum.
The thing about persecution complexes is that those who have them will find persecution in anything, so it's kind of a waste of energy to worry about what might trigger those prone to thinking in such a way.
If you're on the right, then I'd say look at the Presidency, look at the Congress, look at the Supreme Court, look at most of state and local governments and stop crying.
If you aren't on the right, why do you care how they feel? Do they spend time worrying about the suppressed people they victimize? Or do they mock them and deride them?
I was really thinking that your crazies on the right simply make up that "intellectual left that looks down on them", but boyyy, HN discussions have convinced me that the US left is quite rotten too (I assume people here are actually friendlier and more likely to try to convince the other side than general population).
The thing about persecution complexes is that those who have them will find persecution in anything, so it's kind of a waste of energy to worry about what might trigger those prone to thinking in such a way.
Interestingly enough, that’s probably why Twitter feels comfortable ignoring the screams of outrage from the “this is censorship, and the internet is now dooooomed” crowd. When the only thing a group has to stand on is a slippery slope of their own invention, ignoring them is a safe option. People who can only accept their own rigid interpretations at the direct expense of everyone else are impossible to engage with, and a global megacorporation simply doesn’t have the luxury to try.
The banning of Alex Jones from one platform doesn’t spell the end of freedom, or the rise of unfettered censorship, it’s just the application of the most bedrock, basic standards of both intellectual honesty and human decency. The idea that freedom can only exist if we require something like Twitter to lend their platform to the likes of Jones is intellectually bankrupt. It’s also ironic on Hacker News, which explicitly exists as the result of strong curation and moderation. Having standards isn’t censorship, and just as a newspaper doesn’t owe you and everyone else their own page, no other outlet does either.
So as seems likely - suppose a schism opens up that pushes 'those people' off some platforms.
The next step is to prevent DNS resolution working.
I assume that like myself you would see that as a step too far. The problem is that the average millennial will not see a meaningful distinction between being blocked on plaform X and being prevented from using a protocol.
There is a good chance of that happening I think - it's a matter of time before somebody develops a 'fake news' list and the wrongthinkers are effectively not part of the web for nearly everybody.
What will happen then is a big expansion of that other portion of the internet, and eventually citizens will go there to 'find out what really happened' on event x.
When the only thing a group has to stand on is a slippery slope of their own invention, ignoring them is a safe option.
Then you open with a slippery slope, “Suppose a schism opens... the next step...”
If that next step ever begins to materialize that would be the time to worry. Paralysis of decency and standards out of fear of a possible slippery slope is the miserable status quo, and not desirable. If this... then maybe that... and possibly later... isn’t an argument, it’s a fallacy.
I reiterate: the average millennial does not make a distinction between a website service and a protocol.
If you make ban lists (the Silicon Valley companies are operating in near sync with each other) - then the public expectation won't just be that level of moderation/censorship within the walled garden - but also outside of it.
We're already at the point of materialization, Stormfront and a socialist organization I can't recall (World Socialist something) are prevented from using ___domain names and other services like turning up in Google Search, Cloudfront or GoDaddy - effectively banning them from the web. They have then migrated to more censorship resistant networks. Legitimacy to the political persecution (by liberals) narrative has solidified in far right and far left circles - even the ones who aren't affiliated with the two organizations - it is now taken for granted in parts of mainstream web, parts of Reddit that organizations like DW are outright lying.
The trend is consistent, and I don't believe either of those two organizations were accused of being law breakers - and next to go down it will be Alex Jones - a watershed moment and advertising for censorship resistant networks because Jones is more famous than either. In the case of Jones his brand will be bolstered by this. China and Russia will say he is a ideological refugee, a political dissident and they will be able to make a great argument for that.
This is how censorship looks like from the inside perspective - it's just that you're on the inside. The Chinese feel the same way when being told off by the West on the subject of reeducation camps. You'll scoff at that I expect - but at least the Chinese are able to say these people needed handling because of real terrorism and illegal activity - where you've nothing to stand on.
No matter what you think of Jones: Silicon Valley is digging their own grave with their blatantly obvious double standards towards "hate speech" and other forms of harassment.
I’d say no matter what you think of Jones you should be celebrating this as it means Twitter is holding to their own published policies.
The nonsense of banning people for X, unless they famous, unless they’re the wrong KIND of famous, or are being attacked by someone and asking “Why do they get to say X to me” stuff is a mess.
How can anyone run a platform if the rules are in constant flux on a per day/user/reason/moon phase basis?
Half the problem over the last few years is the quicksand of rules. Punishments applied unevenly start to look an awful lot favoritism even when there isn’t any there.
We already know certain people get special treatment. They were explicitly said it for the president. Jones certainly got it.
I’m not sure who you’re talking about or what they did but I’ve always gotten the feeling that Twitter is very careful about messing with people who have any amount of power/fame.
My position? Apply the rules to everyone who violates them no matter what.
Twitter has shown that won’t do that. But I’ll take 40% enforcement over 5% enforcement.
They’re talking about Sarah Jeong, who’s been the subject of one of the more recent made-up controversies various right-wingers are using as an chance to bond over their shared identity as self-perceived victims:
The usual differences apply: she was making obvious jokes in the style of right-wing rhetoric (e.g. joking about how white people can’t handle the sun and need to live underground) about a group which has never been seriously threatened rather than repeating slurs which have serious history behind them, there was no sign of capacity or intent to do real harm, etc. Twitter doesn’t do nuance well but it’s about as accurate as thinking Swift made a serious proposal to eat poor children.
So making dozens of anti-white comments over a sustained period of time is just a joke?
Yet Alex Jones calling a specific person a rat without any generalization when that person has been targeting him for harassment and deplatforming is anti-Semitic?
This is why the right and center have a growing distrust for the left.
> making obvious jokes in the style of right-wing rhetoric
> Alex Jones calling a specific person a rat without any generalization when that person has been targeting him for harassment and deplatforming is anti-Semitic?
Please don’t waste time assuming you’re talking to people who are completely unaware of his history and unable to check Wikipedia. If you want to defend Alex Jones, justify pizzagate, harassing the parents of massacre victims, or calling for armed uprising — i.e. the things which actually got him banned.
I know why you aren’t, of course, because it would make the false equivalence of trying to compare him to Jeong a complete farce, not to mention raising some uncomfortable questions about your shared values. You clearly like to present yourself as speaking for some relatively mainstream group but that’s incompatible with defending extremists like Jones.
> Except right wing people don’t talk like that.
You seriously expect everyone to have forgotten the blood and soil guys? The birthers and other racists — like the figurehead of your party?
It's a NYT journalist that stated multiple times she hates white people. Like, really vile stuff. No ban, no 7 day suspension. Nothing. The NYT even defended her (Sarah Jong).
Now, the crazy annoying right-winger Candance Owens just copied the same tweets and replaced white with black. What followed? Banned.
Twitter does not uphold their now standard independent from political affiliation. They can do that, it's a private company, but they should not LIE about it.
It’s even worse than simply defending her - the NYT admitted they knew about the tweets when they hired her!
So in a competitive market like journalism where dozens of qualified candidates would have applied for the job the NYT deliberately chose the candidate who openly hates white people.
And shortly before hiring her they ran an article stating it was good that Roseanne Barr was driven from the workplace because of a single racist joke she made.
Alex Jones seems seriously unwell. That being said, apart from acting like a complete jackass and harassing that man it was not exactly a racist rant and not 'as bad' as some of his other comments.
Not sure why he got banned specifically for this to be honest.
Edit: not sure how that link got mixed up with another video...
Just the continuous directed stream of invective. For 1 minute you can keep watching, but it keeps on going as Alex Jones invents new insult after new insult. I actually started to feel nauseated.
In previous centuries, one could have credibly challenged him to a duel after just a few seconds of this. I wonder if we can find some other similar escape valve in the modern age.
There's no way they can ban him for saying that yet still claim to enforce the rules equally for all political affiliations.
There have been thousands (maybe more) tweets by people with blue verification checkmarks calling Trump an orange oompa loopa and much worse. No one has been banned for that (rightfully so imo).
There's been a ton of pressure on Twitter to ban Jones but using this tweet as an excuse shows they are in no way politically neutral.
This comes one day after Dorsey stood in front of congress and said they don't have a political agenda and previous examples of right wing censorship were "a mistake".
Ironically, one of the only places you can see actual footage of Dorsey saying this is on Infowars:
There's no way they can ban him for saying that yet still claim to enforce the rules equally for all political affiliations.
It's not the government, they absolutely can ban people for anything they want and they don't have to be consistent about it. There's nothing you can do about this it than deleting your account, complaining about them on the internet, and/or acquiring a seat on their board of directors and effecting change from within. I suppose a hostile takeover of the entire company should be mentioned, too.
Furthermore, "neutrality" is a figment of your imagination.
This seems to be a common trope lately. The claim seems to be that because censorship by private parties is not banned by the constitution, it is therefore a good idea.
It is entirely fair to criticize private parties for censorship even though there may be no legal recourse. It is in turn almost never a good idea to demand the censorship of ideas you don't like.
That's because it has only become self-evident lately. It has become much harder to believe that reason and truth will prevail on the internet. Back in the 1990s, it was easier to be idealistic.
Sure Twitter and other tech platforms are well within their rights to act in an explicitly partisan manner, but their reputations will suffer and the government will be even more keen on breaking them up and putting them on a tight regulatory leash.
They didn't ban him for saying only that.
Here's a part of their official statement on the matter.
>Today, we permanently suspended @realalexjones and @infowars from Twitter and Periscope. We took this action based on new reports of Tweets and videos posted yesterday that violate our abusive behavior policy, in addition to the accounts’ past violations.
The problem I have is how subjective all of this is, and while they say they are trying to increase transparency I don't see it.
This action suggests they keep tabs on accounts and there's some threshold they can reach over a period of time that will flip a ban on even if the actual action that causes the ban wouldn't be bannable in isolation.
I've not seen this policy discussed around any of their other bans.
The timing is also very suspicious as all the other big social media platforms banned Jones recently. That suggests that there's some level of coordination and/or Twitter is caving to outside pressure and not actually acting on their own internal policy in a consistent manner.
They have rules. Before they were enforced randomly.
Was that fovoritism? Who was at the button for that particular complaint? Who knows!
It doesn’t really matter what their rules or definitions of the terms they use are. Or how subjective people claim they are.
People will choose to use the service or not based on what they see happening.
But for the past few years, it want a question of what the terms meant exactly. People could say things that were blatant violations under the most charitable readings of the rules and nothing would happen.
Or it would.
Or they would show that someone else said thing X the rules forbid and the complainer would get banned and person who actually said it would be fine.
Now we may get some consistency (I’m not holding my breath though). That can only be a good thing.
I agree with everything you've said except for the second to the last sentence :)
This looks like just another arbitrary (and possibly politically motivated) ban to me. If they start removing other accounts of their "friends" who engage in behavior such as commenting on other's appearance, then I'd say we're starting to see consistency.
That hasn't happened yet though, and banning Jones for such a mild tweet seems to suggest it's unlikely we'll see the same scrutiny applied to others as many people would get kicked off the platform for this level of vitriol.
No it doesn't. Twitter has a reporting function and whenever content offends a bunch of people then a wave of reports is a predictable outcome. Keeping a record of previous actions on an account is not the same as monitoring it.
> There have been thousands (maybe more) tweets by people with blue verification checkmarks calling Trump an orange oompa loopa and much worse. No one has been banned for that (rightfully so imo).
Maybe because those kinds of tweets about Trump aren't anti-Semitic.
"Weapons not food, not homes, not shoes,
not need, just feed the war cannibal animal. I
walk the corner to the rubble that used be a library
line up to the mind cemetery now.
What we don't know keeps the contracts alive and movin'.
They don't gotta burn the books, they just remove 'em
while arms warehouses fill as quick as the cells."
https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1037804427992686593 says they "permanently suspended" his accounts. Merriam Webster defines "suspend" as "to debar temporarily". So what it is, twitter? Permanently or Temporarily? It may be just sloppy writing or they are leaving a way for themselves to restore the accounts?
> Today, we permanently suspended @RealAlexJones and @infowars from Twitter and Periscope. We took this action based on new reports of Tweets and videos posted yesterday that violate our abusive behavior policy, in addition to the accounts’ past violations. https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/abusive-behav...