zlacker

Damaging property is not violence.

>>august+(OP)
By pretty much every definition it is violence.

>>august+(OP)
This is not quite true, losing property can cause real material harm to someone. If my house burns down and I'm on the streets, there is a real chance of harm to my person. Also now apparently words can be violence and cause the cancellation of someone..pretty sure it's all up for grabs now.

>>august+(OP)
It literally is part of the definition https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/violence

>>august+(OP)
I am pretty sure you would disagree if someone started smashing your front door or car. It is at best technically true in a deeply misleading way like calling a surgeon "a professional cutter and organ remover from the helpless".

>>Nasrud+k6
I wouldn't be too happy, but to me violence is damaging a living thing. Not property.

>>august+g8
There is an implied threat and cohersion to it of "do it or else" or "I can break you too". That is the violence against the person. Smashing your own car in front of somebody's house wouldn't include that threat as it is their property to what they wish although it would make you look crazy.

>>august+g8
I have a cane that I need to use to walk. Somebody breaks my cane. What is that?

>>Nikola+T5
In this case, doesn't Twitter's definition of violence matter more than the dictionary's definition? Here it is:

> Glorification of violence policy

...

> You may not threaten violence against an individual or a group of people. We also prohibit the glorification of violence.

(https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/glorification...)

>>Nikola+jb
Such a scenario would be unfortunate. The lack of context makes it impossible to determine with any certainty.

>>adrian+df
What if a person said it as opinion: Looting has the potential to initiate shootings. Are we looking at an opinion, an observation, or glorying violence.

>>Nikola+jb
It's something similar to buying up the rights for, and increasing the price of a life-necessarry drug by 2000%. Is that also violence?

>>vkou+7k
I can see an argument that it is.

>>Simula+Dj
If I said that, it's an observation. If the chief of police said that, it's an implied threat. This is because I don't have the power to initiate shootings, while the chief of police does. There is a power differential, and statements can be viewed in the context of the person making them.

This is why phrases like "we should nuke them from orbit", which might be calls to violence if made by a head of state, are generally seen as satire, because there's no chance of me actually nuking someone from orbit. Context matters.

>>Nikola+jb
Was the cane broken intentionally or unintentionally?

>>Simula+Dj
If some hypothetical person said it as an opinion or an observation, you'd have to look at Twitter's policy and try to understand the spirit of the law. Threats are a direct form of pro-violence speech, and glorifying violence is an indirect form of pro-violence speech, so it seem to cover a spectrum to me.

But whichever way they interpret it, all that really matters when it comes to fairness is that they are consistent.

If we look at a very non-hypothetical person named Donald Trump, he wrote "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" immediately after "I won't let that happen" and "the Military" and "we will assume control". Without context, the words could be just an opinion or observation, but in the context he used them, that's not a reasonable interpretation. You don't mention sending in the military (who have guns, obviously) and then mention shooting as a total non sequitur in the next sentence.

If somehow improbably he meant it to be an opinion or observation, he phrased it terribly, and Twitter is within their rights to interpret it how he wrote it.