I agree that it is and I'm not arguing it isn't made up of people. It isn't the only thing it is made up of though. Its also made up of news coverage, editorial, opinions, bias, and agendas/direction as some examples. I'm sure there are more examples makes up media but these are just some I can think of. These things of course are created by people but there is a difference between attacking the people and attacking a platform/object or ideas. I can't speak for him (nor would I want to), but I think that is the question of what he means. It looks like Twitter decided it was inciting violence toward people and/or violated their rules and suspended him.
Could you be more specific? Who's? If we're talking about an online context, barring the kind of censorship we're talking about here, that's strictly false. A tweet is a tweet is a tweet.
"Your platform has been co-opted and manipulated, turned into a megaphone for hate and propaganda."
Yet here you are using it.....
Why do people really think that x or y company is to blame for minority opinions getting so much traction on the internet. The very definition of public speaking/communication is that it gives small individuals big voices, no matter how big or small of a following they have. They cannot be stopped from expressing their opinions unless a. The platform they use is tyrannical (picks and chooses the ideas it likes or doesn't like) or b. Is actively committing a crime ( excessive cyber harassment and doxing).
If Twitter wanted to actually fight "hate and propeganda" you would grow to hate the platform! How long untill your ideas are silenced?? I get that the Nazi and white supremacist propaganda is right at the line, but make no mistake, untill they commit acts of violence ( which of course, they have. These instances should be punished) _it is merely an opinion and does no more damage than your opinion._ If you wine about how they shouldn't have a voice, you are wasting your breath (although you have the right to do so). With the internet there are so many ways to propagate information that the Nazis and white supremacists will find a way to get their message out. Fight ideas with ideas, not censorship.
Why are people still arguing like twitter has something to do with free speech. It’s the personal shitshow of a propaganda apparatus by a maniac with way to much power by means of aggressive marketing.
There isn't much people can do when some Twitter mob starts harassing them either. They openly coordinate capaigns to ruin people's lives, dump personal information and pictures, call companies to demand that people be fired, apply pressure on sponsors and advertisers. Coordinated efforts to hurt some enemy as much as possible without actually resorting to physical violence.
If you have examples of such people getting banned or arrested, feel free to post them. I've seen numerous examples to the contrary over the years to the point it turned into a neat little collection.
Twitter didn’t just make a simple communication platform, they made a platform and wrote algorithms that (intended or not) elevate extremist and divisive voices.
If they just made a simple chat app your metaphor would hold but they are directly responsible because they choose which content is shown and which isn’t.
Twitter is a company with lots of employees and each of those employees are going to have varying views. I'm certain that there are people at twitter who are genuinely concerned about being an enabler of this violence. I'm sure lots of them also personally dislike Trump. I'm sure lots of them desparately want the platform to be as relevant as possible. I'm also sur ethat they desparately don't want to be the arbiters of free speech despite what concervatives claim.
There are going to be a million dynamics in these situations and it's impossible to disaggregate them.
> twitter dog-piling can arguably be considered an anologous form of political mob violence.
I would argue with that. :-)
In general, the rhetoric over "cancel culture" feels very over the top to me. There's a level of fearmongering and victimhood that's not warranted by the empirical facts, much like whenever it's claimed that there's a "crime wave". I'm not saying there's no crime, or no cancellation, just that I don't see totalitarianism as a natural next step from Twitter.
How is this not a false dichotomy? The author presents it as "We can either have IRC communities and Facebook groups where everyone agrees with each other all the time or gets banned or we can have an uncontrolled twitter where people might disagree with me in ways I can't control" Both have existed very comfortably for a significant amount of time.
I think (along with hundreds of millions of other users) that there's a lot of value behind a broadcast platform like twitter, and I've made some really important connections on it. It seems arrogant to dismiss that because it doesn't enable the exact types of communication the author wants to have (that are addressed by the other platforms he explicitly mentions).
This is a clickbait article headline for the author's blog to get more attention, if he felt this strongly about communities, conversations, and against twitter he wouldn't disable comments, and tweet about the article.
"This screwdriver is so bad at putting nails in the wall!! We should get rid of screwdrivers!"
I know that the fake news narrative is popular right now, and maybe it's just me, but do you think maybe you might be a little biased here?
How is it not censorship when somebody actively monitors what is posted on Twitter and makes a judgement on whether or not that post is appropriate? What is appropriate and how does free speech equate to that in your mind?
Nnnnnno, it's not "just words". It's threatening to kill and rape people, directly attacking their safety and their right to a peaceable life. It's giving a platform to people who are putting the idea in others' heads that they should hurt and kill people. I don't have to follow the "race realist" assholes among us to have the fact that they are given a platform by a company under no obligation to do so--and that they use that platform to gather followers under the direct purpose of separating the white race from the blacks or the Jews or whoever the hate-object-of-the-week is. Their followers do. They are strengthened by being given their platform with which to attract more soft-headed followers. Words have consequences that cannot be waved away so cavalierly. Those consequences may not impact you, but they impact a whole lot of people and they can't be dismissed.
The government should, for reasons that make a lot of sense, be reticent (but not wholly unwilling, because the real world doesn't work in absolutes) to intercede here, because freedom of speech with regard to the state is a different thing from respecting and accepting speech by society--but Twitter isn't the government.
You can't judge a man's principles by how he acts when he's in a position of strength, only when he's afraid and in a position of weakness.
I remember Twitter claiming it was a supporter of free speech. Oh how quickly that principle was flushed away the moment enough people started equating "opinions I don't like" with "abuse".
Does Twitter stand for anything at all any more? I don't think so.
I understood that it was created because twitter was far too heavy handed with their censorship. (See Tim Pool's discussion on Joe Rogan if you don't think that is the case).
But the white supremacist bogeyman is everywhere, isn't it.
That's not the case. Literally everyone who's dealt in inflammatory content (talking about a violent event, say, the recent Ukraine war has been filled with this) has had run-ins with the moderation process at twitter. They issue suspensions for false positives all the time, and everyone thinks it's targetted censorship. It's not.
Where it starts to look biased is that they've drawn two lines in the sand in recent years: 1. No disinformation about a global pandemic, and 2. No using lies about an election to justify violence against the government. And they banned a bunch of people that did that. And yes: it was one side that made those issues "partisan".
I really don't know what you want Twitter to do here. In any other society, those would seem like reasonable rules.
His gripe is that Twitter is not a neutral platform and has a lot of ideological issues that have massive impact on society. What you're saying just goes full circle into that point.
> I'm arguing that a platform like Twitter that operates under the pretense of accessibility to all and freedom
They don't operate under that pretense at all. They explicitly reserve the right to delete content from their site that they find to be harmful or offensive, and permanently ban anyone they deem a bad actor, and they always have done so.
You can try to paint them as commie totalitarians, but the fact remains that they're not censoring debates on which is the better political philosophy, they're making good faith efforts to keep people from getting killed by health misinformation or harassed by hateful conduct. They don't have to do a perfect job at that, either, just as long as they're genuinely making good faith efforts.
> Taking down shitty content works...a place for meaningful conversation
Right now you'll find (or won't, rather) people on Twitter banned for sharing factual but 'problematic' news articles or for referencing crime statistics.
A good number of users might find such views 'shitty' and not 'meaningful' and that's where the problem lies - people are being deplatformed, not for the red herrings of doxxing and celeb nudes, but simply for having opposing and uncomfortable opinions.
Again, from the article:
> I still need to use Twitter for work, but my personal view is that any content I contribute is promoting white supremacy
Madness. Anyone with such a bizarre personal view ought not to be taken seriously.
reply