Even better would be if there were user-configurable "lists", whereby you could decide upfront what you want / don't want to see (like many sites do right now with NSFW content) - the default filter would be very "protective" (no porn, no violence, no gore, no hate speech) but users could turn off any or all of these "filters". The next step is the addition of user-curated "lists" / "filters" (e.g. "no democrats", "no republicans", "no vegans", "no dog lovers", ...).
They evaluated and rejected hiding "violates Twitter policies" content except in the rare cases where they deem it necessary for the public interest to retain that violating content behind a click barrier.
https://help.twitter.com/en/safety-and-security/offensive-tw... has more details about the current policy, and you can read their blog posts from the past couple years about these policies to gain more context and background.
As an example of how they won't do so, consider that there are people literally organizing violent riots and destruction of property on Twitter right now, and they have not been banned or had their tweets/accounts hidden. Ilhan Omar's daughter was caught doing so herself, amplifying rioting supported by Antifa and DSA (Democratic Socialists of America), as documented in https://thepostmillennial.com/ilhan-omars-daughter-shows-sup.... While hundreds of people are inciting violence and using Twitter to organize violence in Minneapolis, the company has done nothing to stop it, and yet they're willing to block Trump's tweet on the theoretical enforcement of laws against criminal rioting? Clearly this is a discriminatory bias in action.
As for how they can't do so: Twitter is a Silicon Valley company. It mostly employs young, far left liberals. Its internal culture is heavily influenced by where it is located and the people it employs. Their Hateful Conduct Policy (https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hateful-condu...) is also subject to that cultural/political influence. For instance, this policy notes that "misgendering" is not allowed. But if you're on the other side of the transgender debate, and feel that pronouns should be based on biology-derived gender, and don't think trans women and biological women should be lumped into a group, then you might be banned. Put another way, Twitter has encoded political stances into their operating procedures, and there's no escaping that even if they expressed a wish to treat their customers equally across the board.
There are only two ways out. One option is that Twitter admits it is biased, that they do discriminate against certain viewpoints, and that they do exert editorial control over their platform. The other option is that they return to viewpoint neutrality, avoid censorship/blocking, and only do so to the minimal extent explicitly required by law.
Then you follow twitter's rules on its platform. You're free to misgender people elsewhere.
Moderation, even moderation and policies you personally disagree with does not rise to the level of "editorial control" under the law.
> While hundreds of people are inciting violence and using Twitter to organize violence in Minneapolis, the company has done nothing to stop it, and yet they're willing to block Trump's tweet on the theoretical enforcement of laws against criminal rioting?
Are you certain that no tweets from protestors glorifying violence have been removed? Notably, none of the tweets you mention are condoning violence, so you're actually insisting that twitter hold $random_internet_people_on_the_whole to a higher standard than the president.
You want twitter to take "Bring milk to a protest" more seriously than "when the looting starts, the shooting starts". That's not Twitter's bias showing, that's yours. Under this interpretation, I believe twitter would also have needed to remove tweets organizing the recent Hong Kong protests. Is that what you want?
An endless volume of tweets under every charged trending topic violates these rules, which are being surfaced and promoted by the platform. And it enables mob mentality like nothing we've seen before.
Moderation is mostly just theater, especially as long as the platform itself is quite literally encouraging the core behavior.
edit: Adding a bit more, the people being bubbled away will likely tend to just isolate. You might think you like that idea, but having spent some time in isolation, I will attest that it kind of messes with your head. You lose your "phase lock" with society on a lot of different norms, small and large. The stereotype of the "dangerous loner", though not always fair, attests to this reality.
If you want to keep someone as a useful member of society and not a tragedy-of-the-day, you have to keep talking to them.
Hi, I think you're wrong. Here's the proof: I haven't edited your comment, but by replying I have just appended a statement to it without your permission.
Remember trolls wreaking havoc on forums? Didn’t they have the right for free speech too and nobody complained when rules were added to try to contain them?
Your Twitter feed is yours. It's like your home territory. People feel like they're entitled to defend this territory. Twitter assists inflammatory media as it attempts to invade this territory, originally with retweets, but more recently with algorithmically selected tweets coming from people who you didn't follow, selected for "engagement". But it does more than that. When you defend your territory, your defense ends up on someone else's feed as a provocation.
The original model worked, with tweets from your followers only, and no retweet support except copy and paste and the letters RT. The current model is cursed.
All tweets containing muted words will be omitted from your timeline, or if they show up in a thread you're viewing, hidden in-place with a button to reveal. I use this feature liberally. Twitter would be unbearable without it.
> National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, Pub.L. 112–81. This NDAA contains several controversial sections (see article), the chief being §§ 1021–1022, which affirm provisions authorizing the indefinite military detention of civilians, including U.S. citizens, without habeas corpus or due process, contained in the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), Pub.L. 107–40.
Not to mention his failures to uphold the principles that he ran on: gitmo, whistleblower protections (vis a vis Manning, Asange and Snowden), massacres of civilians ("drone strikes"), etc.
Just because you haven't been watching, doesn't mean that this hasn't outraged the people who do. All of that stuff was covered by NPR at the time, so it's not like any of it was a secret.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorizati...
And to my credit, I haven't actually voted or supported the candidate who went on to be president since 2000.
This is what you get when most people do that.
>Ilhan Omar's daughter was caught doing so herself
Apparently, retweeting a list of supplies to help protect yourself from bodily harm from violent police is "literally organizing violent riots and destruction of property"
There is an original painting of a pipe. Under it I append the comment: "This is not a pipe".
Have I edited the painting and created a new painting? Is it a single art, or a separate painting and a comment? Do I need additional copyright permissions to create a derivative work, or can I use a painting licensed under Creative Common no derivative in order to create my own version of the Treachery of Images? When I publish it, who is the information content provider as defined by section 230?
The only way to actually change someone is conversation.
Only those who don't want honest change fight to prevent actual conversation from happening.
Never give "your guy" powers that you don't want the "other guy" to have.
Because the powers you give to Obama... will end up with Trump - and vice versa.
Calling police "violent" for wanting to stop blatant opportunistic theft and terrorist behavior (e.g. deliberately cutting gas lines to create big explosions) is a stretch. I would call the initial policing incident that tipped off the protests violent, and I would call the destructive rioting violent (as opposed to the initial peaceful protesting). Both acts deserve condemnation and consequences in my view.
So like having hashtags in your profile, you could include ban-lists there, and your preferences would be calculated (and people could see what your filters were).
Yes, this wouldn't solve the issue of filter bubbles but the Twitter's algorithms could augment how to weight people's ban-lists with actual mentions/RTs - so I would see someone on only one of my ban-lists but got a lot of RTs/mentions I'd see it. If I find I'm not seeing stuff I should, I could alter my lists
You're wondering off and getting lost in the weeds with your example.
Twitter replied on its platform using a new mechanism that it created. Trying to twist that reply into an "edit" (with the implication that it's some kind of illegitimate corruption of the work replied to) is drifting towards a denial of free speech and other nonsensical implications.
> When I publish it, who is the information content provider as defined by section 230?
On Section 230 more generally:
Correcting a Persistent Myth About the Law that Created the Internet (https://www.theregreview.org/2019/07/15/kosseff-correcting-p...):
> Understanding section 230’s history is essential to informing the current debate about the law. And that history tells us that one of the main reasons for enacting section 230 was to encourage online services to moderate content....
> Section 230’s “findings” states that the internet offers “a forum for a true diversity of political discourse.” Nothing in section 230’s history, however, suggests that this goal requires platforms to be “neutral.” Indeed, section 230 allows platforms to develop different content standards, and customers ultimately can determine whether those standards meet their expectations. [Emphasis mine.]
This is such a cliche, and yet simultaneously someone in this thread is saying we don't have to worry about the current President becoming a dictator because of the zillion times previous Presidents were accused of wanting to seize power.
How do you think these contradictory cliches thrive alongside each other?
So? No one has a "right to the last word," so that when they speak, everyone else has to shut up so their words will be the exclusive influence on their audience.
It's important for free speech that people be able to point out when someone has lied or spread misinformation.
And by freedom of speech and thought, how about for twitter? Arent’t they a private company?
It's a tough call. In some sense, for any global website that doesn't want to impose its own moral code upon the world, it makes the most sense to be hands-off and let users judge for themselves what to see and what not to. On the other hand, doing so would amplify the echochamber effect that's already strongly present on Twitter.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/ok-dude-twitter-susp...
That's certainly wrong. A reply by an ordinary user using the ordinary mechanism is a very different thing than an official editorial note which carries the imprimatur of the platform. And of course they added code to hide it by default, which is an additional level of control which beyond any sort of replying.
They don't have to change the original wording to exercise editorial judgment and power. This seems kind of obvious?
Sorry, no, It's not wrong. Twitter's reply using a new mechanism it created may be different than one made by an ordinary user, but that difference doesn't turn their reply into an edit.
> And of course they added code to hide it by default, which is an additional level of control which beyond any sort of replying.
Yes, and it's their right to do that.
> They don't have to change the original wording to exercise editorial judgment and power. This seems kind of obvious?
I never said they weren't moderating their platform (which they have every right to do in any way they see fit). I was merely disputing the weird conflation of "reply" with "edit."
This sort of double standard, smirked at, and then dismissed with "both sides are bad" type whataboutism, is uncivil. It's a betrayal. It's a violation of the social contract. And it's only made worse because the Obama candidate who was refused even a hearing? Orrin Hatch, a multiple decades Congressional Republican, had previously told Obama that he should pick Merrick Garland. It was expressly not principled, and then they boast about this.
Were this truly an actual rule, it means no judges can be confirmed if the political party of president and senate differ. It is cynical and hyper-partisan, and there is no person from either party who has been more vile in this regard than Mitch McConnell. In all ways that matter he's worse than Trump, not least of which is, he's actually competent. The country has consistently become more partisan while he has been majority leader. It doesn't correlate with presidents, it correlates with him.