" I am sure he must wish Twitter had blocked his "Pedo" tweet about the divers who saved the Thai children."
Regardless of the current culture, you may reject the worldview in which a few mean Tweets are a reason to destroy/forever despise a person, regardless what that person has achieved otherwise.
In fact, the more people reject this judgmental, fire-and-brimstone attitude, the better place the social networks will be.
The current standard where gangs of people try to make other people permanent social outcasts based on one or several short quips somewhere on Twitter is psychotic, North Korea style. You do not have to accept it as normal.
Come on, if you didn't notice the unfounded insinuation that a former high-ranking corporate officer at Twitter was really a pedophile and the resultant fallout over the last 72 hours, then you are really not paying attention.
I completely agree, and we as a society need to learn how to live in a world where a single tweet by an semi-influential figure can cause such a shit storm. How liable are people for actions resulting from a tweet? If someone famous snaps a photo of you, calls you a pedofile, and throws it on Twitter, what are the consequences?
Twitter has actually vowed to support pedos, as long as they don't talk about plans to hurt actual, particular children.
But the community of "MAPs" is protected by social media these days. Repeat the 13-50 statistic, though, and you're out (though the likes of "kill all white people" appears to be ok).
Did you really just call out a solider for his post-9/11 service? Wow. Good thing HN isn't twitter. A tweet like that could come back to haunt a person. Save some hate for the firefighters and kindergarten teachers.
This is coming perilously close to victim blaming.
When these horrible tweets are made, there's always a contingent who says that the target should ignore them. You probably should if they are completely anonymous. But if they aren't - have at 'em!
Always keep in mind Twitter takes away check marks as a form of punishment. It’s bizarre to think of validating someone then invalidating them when they say something naughty, makes it seem like children are in charge.
I agree, but then the issue is child abuse and should be clearly stated as such. Making vague remarks about someone's personal twitter account isn't that.
"Nasty" seems like an understatement, and it wasn't like they were hiding behind anonymity. So I have little sympathy in that case. You say terrible things on a twitter account in your name, directed at someone else, it might come back to bite you.
This is one of the reasons I will never get a personal Twitter unless it was for a project or other business. I've read too many times of a person harassed and suffered real-life consequences for a fairly innocuous comment.
The rest of the posted article is excellent. Going to re-read it from time to time to see if I'm falling into the ruts described there.
You people sure take Twitter block lists seriously. There are people I like who I have blocked on Twitter, just to keep me from getting engaged in vituperative bullshit in the middle of my workdays.
I should apologize to them for poisoning them with fire (is I think the metaphor you're using, right?).
Tim Pool and JRE are obnoxious. Twitter lets people call each other pedos with no evidence all day long and you think that they enforce calling someone a he/she when they go by the opposite gender? Get real.
> Twitter makes it so hard not to accidentally be an asshole.
Give me a break. These guys were acting all superior and they got busted. These attempts at justifying what they said just make them seem like double ass-holes. Just admit you were being horrible or stand by your comment and tell everyone to get lost.
This isn't a new phenomenon. You raise literally anyone's hackles on twitter and you can potentially get swatted and harassed off the internet.
Dong Nguyen was run off the internet for a fun little mobile game that some people on Twitter got frustrated by. Scott Cawthorne was unpersoned when he gave money to the GOP. Lindsay Ellis made a single wrong step and was bullied and harassed by the type of people upset about Kiwifarms now. Hell, there's a fresh 2 minutes hate every day on Twitter that leads to someone completely irrelevant having their life ruined because they didn't like something popular.
This wouldn't be a problem if people removed their identity from the internet and just started doing everything anonymously, but apparently ego is a monetisable commodity now.
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