> Twitter doesn't have perfect execution of their moderation across all of their tweets, obviously, but they are at least making a good faith effort to remove content that has explicit calls to violence.
Isn't that mainly due to their amount of revenue? Are newer services supposed to be shut down because they can't(yet?) compete with Twitter on budget for moderation?
> This just in, he just defined it and says he will rely on the law.
Twitter operates in many places with different laws, does it apply the law of the jurisdiction in which the reader is currently located, the law of the jurisdiction of the readers nationality, the law of the jurisdiction the sender is located in when the tweet is sent, the law of the jurisdiction of the senders nationality, the law of the jurisdiction in which the particular server handling a particular API request is located, does it just apply the law of, say the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to all content?
And, once a law is chosen, what is the mechanism of ensuring and providing transparency that all and only those cases where content is prohibited by the identified law are blocked?
(I mean, while some have a problem with what Twitter says it prohibits, IME a lot more people have a problem that what Twitter actually does has no identifiable relationship to it's stated policies, with things clearly not in violation receiving sanctions and things clearly and flagrantly in violation being tolerated.)
> Is there a reason you can't turn all of the bans (of legal stuff) into filters?
Among other reasons, because Twitter is a brand with an image to maintain. They don't want to be known as a safe hangout for Nazis and other unsavory content.
> Somehow this does not register well with free speech enthusiasts
It registers fine. What you may be glossing over is that Twitter itself has free speech - so it is free to do this, unless you have something akin to a fairness doctrine.
> If one believes Twitter has a free speech problem
Twitter HAS a free speech problem. This is not controversial. Now you may not agree that Twitter SHOULD allow free speech, but you can not deny that censorship exists on Twitter and it is serving the political agenda of some people.
Twitter does content moderation. That's your primary product when you're a billion dollar advertising company with a content farm of 300M people - your product is that the Ford ad you just sold is not going to sit above or below an (actual no-foolin' not just political-pejorative) neo-nazi.
>They curated feeds specifically trying to find offensive content and then refresh their feeds until they could find an ad placed near offensive content.
You agree, then, that twitter is doing the thing that they said it did. What's your point.
> If Twitter is going to police people, it needs to be across the board.
That assumes that all users on Twitter are equal. By Twitter's own rules [1], there are two classes of users. Elected officials are held to a different standard. That's why this tweet is hidden behind a click, rather than removed. That's why Trump hasn't been banned despite repeatedly violating the TOS that he agreed to when he signed up for his account.
It makes sense to me that if elected officials (a tiny fraction of the population who already have a much bigger voice than the common citizen) are allowed to break the plebeian rules, then social media platforms should be more willing to point out when they're doing so.
> All I'm saying is that to the extent Twitter increased the viewership of some piece of propaganda, they should be allowed to be sued for damages.
With potentially infinite violations and incalculable damages, it’s no wonder why no one who runs any kind of user-submitted content site wants what you suggest here.
> Twitter was compensated for assisting with investigations (e.g. collecting information), which is entirely normal, and has nothing to do with censorship.
Collecting information about random people _is not_ entirely normal.
Now, if you live in a totalitarian state, it might be.
Because Twitter moderates and removes content that breaks the law.
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