"We start from a position of assuming that people do not intend to violate our Rules. Unless a violation is so egregious that we must immediately suspend an account, we first try to educate people about our Rules and give them a chance to correct their behavior. We show the violator the offending Tweet(s), explain which Rule was broken, and require them to remove the content before they can Tweet again. If someone repeatedly violates our Rules then our enforcement actions become stronger. This includes requiring violators to remove the Tweet(s) and taking additional actions like verifying account ownership and/or temporarily limiting their ability to Tweet for a set period of time. If someone continues to violate Rules beyond that point then their account may be permanently suspended."
Somewhere a counter was just incremented. It's going to be amusing if Twitter management simply lets the automated system do its thing. At some point, after warnings, the standard 48-hour suspension will trigger. Twitter management can simply simply say "it is our policy not to comment on enforcement actions".
They've suspended the accounts of prominent people many times before.[1]
I would imagine that accounts of "important" people are handled personally rather than by automated algorithm. As Jack Dorsey points out in this[0] Joe Rogan podcast, the reported tweets by public or algorithm are manually checked at some point.
Approx. 4000 employees of Twitter all around the world. Every day 100k (edit: 100M) tweets are sent. The reports of tweets that violate the platform policy are (reported by public) enter a queue. These are then inspected by personnel hired by Twitter (number varies proportionally to the scale reports in the queue).
The personnel then go through a series of steps to take an action such as making you verify again, delete those tweets, suspending the account, or in the last resort ban the user permanently.
Better leveraging Twitter's reporting feature is probably the most neutral way to solve this.
When a tweet is deemed response-worthy, they should post the report numbers. Value in numbers shields them in many ways and could legitimize their actions as a neutral party. Then, if they miss something, they can simply say there weren't enough reports. This will then empower the feature in the future.
I suggest this as active Reddit moderator with a community of 40,000+ subscribers who regularly has to enforce rules and uses auto-mod to help manage reports and shares that with the community.
-----------------------
You can report tweets for:
(1) Being not interested in it (you just get redirected to a mute or block button)
(2)It's suspicious or spam
---> The account is fake
---> Includes a link to a potentially harmful or phishing site
---> Hashtags are unrelated
---> Uses the reply function to spam
---> Something else
(3) It's abusive or harmful
---> It's disrespectful
---> Includes private information
---> Includes targeted harassment
---> It directs hate against a protected category (eg race, religions, gender, orientation, disability)
---> Threatening violence
---> They're encouraging self-harm or suicide
(4) It's misleading about politics or civic events
---> It has false information about how to vote
---> It intends to suppress or intimidate someone from voting
---> It misrepresents it's affiliation or impersonates an official
(5) It expresses intentions of self-harm or suicide.
-----------------------
It's pretty good but I would suggest the very simple following updates:
- Updating the main issue (It's abusive or harmful) to (It's abusive or encourages violence or destruction of property)
- Adding a sub-issue to (It's misleading about politics or civic events) with (A political official is supporting false or unsubstantiated information as definitive truth.)
- Adding a sub-issue to (It's suspicious, spam, or false) with (It's supporting false or unsubstantiated information as definitive truth.)
- Adding chevron icons (>) as a visual cue that each main reporting issue has many sub-issues
This doesn’t work for political tweets. Look at replies to even Trumps benign tweets and you will see 50% of the population would hate other guy no matter what they tweet. Every single tweet of Joe Biden and Trump will get flagged no matter what they were tweeting.
The article you linked to was over 8 years ago at this point - it was years closer to the founding of Twitter than it is to the present day. I don't think that can be considered relevant to their current enforcement regime.
Because suspending Spike Lee would have required someone at Twitter to make that decision, and they're not going to do that. But will leap at the chance for Trump. It's been a clear double standard for years.
> Somewhere a counter was just incremented. It's going to be amusing if Twitter management simply lets the automated system do its thing. At some point, after warnings, the standard 48-hour suspension will trigger. Twitter management can simply simply say "it is our policy not to comment on enforcement actions".
I wouldn't be surprised if Twitter has exempted Trump's accounts from all automated moderation. However, I'm half expecting them to ban him about twelve seconds after he leaves office.
I would never let a machine automate any decision regarding Trump's account, considering that any action would be scrutinized by the entire world and could have massive repercussions...
So definitely not "a counter incremented somewhere". This is a political decision.
> However, I'm half expecting them to ban him about twelve seconds after he leaves office.
At the top management level, they are probably weighing the possibility that he never leaves office (a plausible scenario at this point), and how that scenario affects their bottom line.
They probably don’t want US institutions to dissolve into full-blown autocracy... But on the other hand, if that were to happen, then it would be better for the stock price if they hadn’t burned all bridges with the new leader for life.
You can bet that Zuckerberg is making the same calculus - except that he seems to have chosen a side. Facebook is no longer pretending to care about preventing autocracy. They are betting on the GOP coup succeeding, and are building bridges accordingly.
Note: no amount of downvoting by the alt-right fringe lurking here will make the facts go away. Downvote away since you don’t have the courage to write down and justify your true beliefs. You are an embarrassment to the technology community. You are the spineless, petty, cowardly foundation upon which all autocracies are built.
The headline is misleading. The "statement" is a Twitter thread, and it doesn't say anything about banning or not banning everybody. The body of the article concedes that it only "heavily implies" they'll never ban him. And that was three years ago. Some stuff has happened since then.
Maybe. But there's probably a business model out there this is simply a Twitter clone that waits for the Trump account to move there, and bang, instant success.
Useful to know that this specific selective application of editorial bias by Twitter, was after Trump's executive order [1] on preventing online censorship of free speech.
>"...
Twitter now selectively decides to place a warning label on certain tweets in a manner that clearly reflects political bias. As has been reported, Twitter seems never to have placed such a label on another politician’s tweet.
.."
When a car manufacture represents their 18-wheeler fleet as a 'passenger cars' -- we understand that this is a lie and demand corrective action.
When twitter manufactures opinions and hides them as 'public forum discourse' -- we are supposed to be ok with that?
I would be ok if their manufactured opinions are displayed to paid subscribers only, who want to care what Jack Dorsey thinks about President Trump, obamagate or Brexit.
Is everything that disagrees with Trump now "political bias"?
I'm not even from the US and I know what "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" means and what outcome it envisions.
> When twitter manufactures opinions and hides them as 'public forum discourse' -- we are supposed to be ok with that?
What are these opinions? Can you speak them out loud? Which opinions are being hidden? Can you write down the message of these opinions in plain words?
Could you write down these opinions as if they were your own, without violating HN's house rules?
This is amazing news, and I hope Twitter adopts this policy for all rules violations. Much better than deleting tweet or banning accounts, this lets people decide what they want to see. (Except for obvious spammers etc. which should probably be banned.)
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", ...).
If we're being honest, Twitter is basically a machine that glorifies violence. It rewards it at the platform and algorithmic level.
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.
Twitter's design is fundamentally broken beyond repair.
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.
I'd be curious to know a little bit more about what exactly you're referencing here. This does not in any way describe my experience with Twitter, though I understand that's a single anecdote.
It is not so much the platform as the general internet medium. It lends itself to narcissism. Humans are more gratuitous when speaking to another in person. More attentive to inflections, reactions, emotions, etc.
They made clear when they introduced this that the “view tweet anyways” approach applies only when the public interest for an account of a public official outweighs the significant harm they consider to be done by allowing what you describe for all users in general. I don’t expect they intend to change their mind on that.
I'm not actually against the idea, but arbitrary blocklists would accelerate bubbling people away from anyone who could possibly think differently from them, which has its own issues.
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.
Youre right. Before twitter took this step I was unable to decide whether to read the president's tweets. Every morning I am forced by twitter to read trumps tweets. Thank goodness this is no longer the case. /s
Dorsey has explicitly stated that because user-defined filters will lead people to remain blissfully unaware of ideas that challenge their own, he does not want Twitter to follow that path.
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.
We can hope Twitter adopts and enforces policies equally across the board, but they won't and I don't think they can either.
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.
>people literally organizing violent riots and destruction of property on Twitter right now
>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"
Rioting, looting, and even torching buildings is not the close to the same level of violence as police killings, driving down protestors, or threatening people with guns. Tweets endorsing or even glorifying the former don’t come close to be as dangerous as tweets excusing the latter. Don’t pretend like these two are equivalent.
It’s possible to have bias without editorialising, as far as I know Twitter only hides, deletes or bans. It doesn’t edit, the fact checking is appending.
> But if you're on the other side of the transgender debate
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?
The neutral companies, such as utilities, online hosting or financial providers serve nearly everyone with little objections - they defer to the law rather than any internal policies. The more selective companies such as newspapers and TV channels are expected to restrict who can get published.
By representing itself both as an open platform and as a company with progressive values, Twitter has put itself into an awkward in-between spot and is bound to create such controversies.
Twitter and Facebook are starting to approach the threshold of 'public good' wherein at least, there would need to be rules or regulations.
If TW and FB did not actually regulate their content - we would see this exposed much more quickly. Foreign/Russian interference in elections would immediately force Congress to act, there's just too much power.
Aside from the ambiguities of 'how and what to police' we do have the added complexity of the nature of 'large, ostensibly public platforms' managed by private companies.
The argument is that it's getting there. It's the leading platform for public debate in the US right now. Journalists spend their days refreshing their Twitter feed, so the effect isn't just in the size of Twitter's platform but its influence.
A number of countries are directly demanding they remove content that is considered "terrorist" or in some way an incitement to violence. Realistically, they have no choice but to have policies that forbid any such content on the platform.
France, for example, recently passed a law demanding that various illegal content be removed in 1 hour or 24 hours, or face enormous fines: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52664609
The high-road leads to where we actually want to be.
I was thinking about what you said in the other thread about trolls, and I think you're off-base. Trolls aren't zen master ego busters, they're the self-hating jerks they seem to be. The "zen master ego buster" story is just another layer of the ego trip.
It's a risk. It's not a mistake. I appreciate they are trying to thread a very difficult needle. I'd argue democracy's continued survival is predicated on being able to both have a flattened playing field where every voice is accessible and like-minded people can find each other easily (what the Internet has enabled so far), and a way of inoculating people against lies intended for malicious manipulation (which the Internet has also enabled). Getting there, if we can, will be messy and ugly. Failing will be fatal to the idea that people can effectively self-govern.
We'll, they're certainly escalating. I don't think that Trump actually wants to shut Twitter down, nor does he want to get banned there. The banning would rile up his base, but it would do so at the expense of his primary channel of communication. This action puts the ball back in Trump's court and asks him how far he wants to actually go.
It has as least as much to do with not fact-checking the claims of people you agree with. Politics is replete with lies. Remember "all 17 intelligence agencies"?
The idea of neutral just-calling-balls-and-strikes fact-checking in politics is a fantasy. The only thing that actually works is debate.
By choosing what to fact-check you can make any agenda. In practical terms there really isn't an "objective truth discoverable by journalism".
I'm pro slander tho, twitter should be able to pin a tweet in every account saying trump has small hands. Americans in general don't see how great chicanery is for a country.
Very few statements are entirely true or entirely false. So let's not pretend like "fact-checking" is an ideal.
Whoever is doing the "fact-checking" wields great power that can very easily be abused or subverted, similar to the ministry of truth in 1984. This is what people are concerned about.
And while that is clearly an extreme, even a small bias in the fact-check is greatly amplified given the number of users on Twitter/Facebook/etc.
Mail-in ballots have been linked to voting fraud in the past. See the 2017 Dallas City Council and the 2018 North Carolina congressional race for example.
Maybe if twitter wants to start fact-checking Trump, don't start with him tweeting that water is wet.
There was several hoster that ban pornography and white supremacist hosting content.
> financial providers
Templeton fired the lady that was choking her dog while calling the police because an African American man was bird watching. He also asked her to leash her dog.
It's a private company. I don't believe Trump is under a protected class to get special perks.
One can also check easily-discoverable recent US military policy https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23347453
to discover that those who think these things through don't condone "looting ⊃ shooting".
Isn't it a long standing thing that the US Military use of force rules in warzones are generally more restrictive than the policies for use on their fellow citizens by police back home?
One obvious example of this is simply ammo. Military bullets don't expand as much as bullets available to cops or civilians. A military bullet is explicitly not allowed to be an expanding hollow point which really messes you up.
There are all sorts of international agreements on not using certain types of things in war - types of bullets are no exception.
Doesn't that mostly have to do with the amount of training, responsibility, leadership etc. that comes with military hierarchy? It can still get pretty bad (coverup and/or violence wise), but it seems that at least they have some sense of the relationship between violent actions and their consequences.
Would you feel the same if Twitter were purchased by Rupert Murdoch and Twitter hid tweets that Fox considered not true?
Remember that it's only a matter of time until ownership changes or another larger platform gains traction, perhaps even one owned by a foreign government with significantly different ideas of what is "true", IE TikTok.
His feed has been getting worse recently, and the publicity of his misbehavior has been escalating. Maybe he's acting out more because it's an election year. Bit of a chicken/egg issue that I wouldn't want to get stuck defending either side.
But the fact of the matter is that the Citizens United ruling grants private corporations the right to free speech. He can continue to use Twitter, but they've literally got the right to campaign against him, editorialize, shadowban, or straight up ban him. He could choose to follow the site's rules, or run off to Gab. But he's doing it for attention and his tantrums and Twitter's non-enforcement actions are getting him a lot of that.
I'd like to see a system like this: if your tweet is blocked for a reason, all you have to do is find a tweet that's worse than it is for that same reason, that is not already blocked. If the moderators agree then yours is unblocked and the other's is. Maybe disputes with the moderators' decision can be public, so people can see which way the wind blows with the particular social media platform.
Lots of people here will propose ways of gaming this system, such as setting up fake accounts where they make worse tweets. I don't want to pre-argue with them by making this post really long though. I think that starting with this design it's probably possible to tweak it to encourage honesty.
Leaving aside the logistical and gamification reasons why this would be a bad idea – you’d also be creating an incentive structure for people espousing marginally offensive content to actively seek out and engage with more extreme positions? It would result in radicalization, not moderation, even if it worked as intended.
Twitter is well within the rights to do this, but I have seen tweets from blue check marks essentially calling for violence and Twitter didn't remove them. So, does that mean Twitter actually -supports- those view points now? If Twitter is going to police people, it needs to be across the board. Otherwise it's just a weird censorship that is targeting one person and can easily be seen as political.
Everyone is applauding this because they hate Trump, but take a step back and see the bigger picture. This could backfire in serious ways, and it plays to Trump's base's narrative that the mainstream media and tech giants are colluding to silence conservatives (and maybe there could even be some truth to that.) I know the Valley is an echo chamber, so obviously no one is going to ever realize this.
Erm, what? This is just not true, and is a false dichotomy. Moderation is hard. Always has been. Stuff will slip through the cracks.
POTUS has the most popular (and currently most controversial - note, that's _controversial_ not _extreme_ or some other morph) so it's easy to see why Twitter are on top of it. Other blue-checked accounts, whilst more "important" than unverified, just simply don't compare to the importance and prevalance of POTUS' account.
>This is just not true, and is a false dichotomy. Moderation is hard.
It's absolutely true, and has absolutely nothing to do with moderation "being hard". As someone who absolutely opposes Trump, but also absolutely opposes our many wars and global bombings, I'm horrified on a daily basis (and have been since 2009 when I joined Twitter) by open calls for violence against a wide variety of countries from Syria to Venezuela to Iran. When has Twitter ever suspended anyone (let alone a public figure, or even Trump himself, who has called for violence against other countries many times) a single time for openly calling for violence against the people of any of the countries? The answer is never. Its beyond absurd, bordering on delusional, to pretend that Twitter's actions here weren't nakedly political and have absolutely nothing to do with a standard against, "fomenting violence".
> If Twitter is going to police people, it needs to be across the board.
One way to look at this is that that's exactly what Twitter has started doing. The president violated the TOS, and got the treatment prescribed under the TOS. His EO yesterday essentially asked for everyone to be treated in accordance with the TOS, so he's (ironically) getting exactly what he asked for.
It remains to be seen whether, in compliance with the EO, they apply this to everyone in a transparent and uniform way from now on. I hope they do.
Wait, Trump, the guy who had a platform plank complaining about his predecessors' use of executive orders as "power grabs" [0], actually issued an executive order about Twitter's TOS?
There is a worse side effect that comes from conservatives feeling that they have been silenced, as people feel like they have less and less say in a political process they are more and more likely to start employing means outside of it. The real risk here is that if more and more outlets for conservative voices are silenced, whether for good cause or not, this will reinforce the narrative that many of them have that they are the defenders of the truth and right and there is a vast conspiracy operating to seize their guns, deprive them of their rights, and whatever else they can imagine. As that happens there becomes more and more moral justification and greater and greater need there is seen to employ violence in end of their goals.
Ultimately the more and more "dangerous" opinions and people who share those opinions are silenced the more and more dangerous they become in reality.
EDIT:
The nature of this comment is intended to be observational not advocational.
Do you believe it’s more dangerous to:
A: Remove a post encouraging violence with the risk it’ll anger a group of people?
Or...
B: Keep it and let it reach 80 million followers?
There’s plenty of evidence that many sites (twitter included) allow violent speech from specific groups because they’re worried of the political backlash. These groups still complain about being silenced just the same, despite blatantly violating the TOS.
It doesn’t work. You’re just giving dangerous and violent people a platform to organize, encourage and enable violence. As a platform owner, you can’t just hope they’ll behave if you treat them nicely.
Alternatively - if those pushing the far-right violent rhetoric don't have as much of an audience, their support may fade because they don't have a platform.
Unless the content is called out for inaccuracy, bigotry, etc the user may not even be aware of the issue they create. Like if someone retweets a claim they believe but it is flagged as misleading and fact checked that might be the first time their views were checked and they might recognize their beliefs are wrong and rethink things. But they often won't and I think that is as much part of the problem. Trump won't rethink his position because a tweet was fact checked, he will attack the fact checker and supporters will do the same thanks to his example. There is no self reflection or awareness when called out and the poster becomes defensive, refusing to accept their comment as fake news or bigotry.
If conservatives feel they are being silenced but cannot recognize that the views 'censored' are often bigoted, racist, or simply unpopular or abhorrent outside their bubble, then what do you to? If you call out blatant racism you are less likely to find the user recognize their racism, apologize, and not use such language again and more likely to be called a snowflake and have that behavior turned up a notch. If the original comment is then downvoted by the community or removed by mods then it will enforce that persons view that they are being attacked. This is incredibly common on Reddit where users often include a 'bring on the downvotes' type edit after stating something intolerant or clearly false.
The solution is not to allow these views and opinions to sit unchecked but to recognize a modern civil society must be intolerant of intolerance and moderate appropriately. Downvote and report racist comments. Apply fact checking to statements, even those you believe or feel to be true as that is a sign of bias. If the user doubles down, move on as there is no value in arguing with someone putting their feelings and beliefs/bias above facts and reality. Perhaps when society or their online community turns their back on their comments they will finally have the time to reflect on why and recognize their behavior was unwarranted and unwanted.
you're saying it like it's not already happening, and it's completely divorce from any actual reality or perception. When they say "I'm being silenced" they are simply pushing buttons they know work with more reasonable people, they are just using the "system" to their advantage. Conservatives in the USA are not a good faith actor and should never be taken at face value.
The valley being an echo chamber doesn’t necessarily mean those implementing this have their heads in the sand.
It can’t be all perfectly achieved, but to do nothing, as they were before, could be now determined to be a worse case than providing these annotations to flagrant misuse by the highest impact profile that they can’t do away with entirely.
The legal issue is that their legal protection from defamation and libel under section 230 requires them to moderate "in good faith". If they only selective moderate accounts, then that protection may not survive in court.
...but I think a greater concern we can all agree on, is that for the type of communications that Twitter does - Twitter is effectively a monopoly. The people being censored here can't even themselves go to any alternative platform, because there's really no other platform at that scale for that content format.
...that's a bigger problem, because it gives Twitter the power to shape global communications unilaterally. Something no corporation should have the power to do.
I think, broadly, that censorship should be regulated by democratically elected bodies - not corporations.
The issue is that the rules are being enforced selectively. Just this week Twitter fact checked Trump's opinion on mail voter fraud by linking to other experts' opinions. It seems more like a move to influence the election rather than enforcing the rules.
Eh? Do you have any examples? This is nothing new, Twitter has been applying this standard to tweets for a very long time (it's part of their ToS!). It usually results in deleting your tweet or an outright ban. The only difference here is that they've kept the tweet up since they deem it to be in the public's interest.
There are tons of examples. Look in almost any thread and there are people calling for public hangings of politicians, assassinations. The "guillotine" crowd. People telling people to burn down the city. Some people saying anti-Semitic stuff...I've reported a lot of this. Twitter usually comes back and say they found it wasn't in violation of anything. There are other politicians, such as Chinese officials, Iranian officials the Twitter has not policed or marked as misleading despite them being outright anti-Semitic or propaganda.
It wasn't explicitly calling for violence but Elon Musk's recent tweet [1] calling for "politicians & unelected bureaucrats" to be "tarred, feathered & thrown out of town" certainly was trending in that direction and could easily have been interpreted as a call for violence, or at least assault, by some sections of Musk's vast (35 million) collection of followers. Especially when the particular 'unelected bureaucrat' that Musk had been most vociferously complaining about and attacking, the Alameda County Health Officer, had been named in numerous news reports.
Would the same happen if Theil owned Twitter, and fact checked, etc. Joe Biden? IMO we would see the opposite, and liberal politicians calling for Twitter to be taken down. One person's soap box is another's tabloid.
> If Twitter is going to police people, it needs to be across the board. Otherwise it's just a weird censorship that is targeting one person and can easily be seen as political.
There is no such requirement.
Twitter is well within its rights and ethically totally clear to "police" a sentiment from the President of the United States, while letting much more severe sentiments from egg accounts go un-policed.
Moderation isn't an algorithm, a binary condition, applied perfectly to an input set to get a deterministic output. It's subjective, and that's both OK and correct.
> ethically totally clear to "police" a sentiment from the President of the United States, while letting much more severe sentiments from egg accounts go un-policed
I'm pretty conflicted on this issue overall, but I don't think it's entirely nuts to hold the President of the US to a higher standard than many other accounts.
When someone is high profile they will be treated differently. That's just the nature of being high profile. Trump has said a lot of things that would have gotten you or I banned if Twitter noticed. Twitter let Trump slide for a long time, and is finally moderating some of the most egregious examples.
And to be clear, anyone calling for violence should also have similar actions taken against them. But, me shouting get out the guillotine to my 10 followers is different than POTUS saying the same thing.
I’ve seen hundreds of extreme violence towards cops including death and worse. I’ve reported many and nothing happens. Some have many likes and retweets including by blue check marks. The justification of violence and racism towards a certain race and to cops is Alex Jones conspiracy level stupid. The bias is insane to any regular person
It's going to be interesting when you come to the end and are reviewing your life, realizing that you decided to spend what little time you have on this planet being the volunteer gestapo misguidedly trying to defend militarized police from the words of civilians who are upset that they are killing unarmed citizens.
It will absolutely backfire. Twitter is now going to editorialize re: their users' content. It's impossible to do this without being perceived as being biased, and twitter is already a partisan hellscape, it will only exacerbate the situation.
Instead of being the police, Twitter should do what Rotten Tomatoes does. There are plenty of people - journalists and researchers analyzing the facts behind what celebrities say. They should analyze what the analysts say and display a score.
Even better, directly link the research on the topic, from both sides. Instead of drawing a conclusion on behalf of everybody, give people what they need to draw their own.
The problem then becomes, who decides which tweets to fact-check? If most politicians at the higher levels are liars, singling out a few of them is unfair even if Trump is notorious for it.
Twitter can clearly not fact-check every single tweet on its platform. But what if they did it for every tweet (maybe from a verified account) that X people report for being untruthful? Trump would look bad even if Twitter held everyone to the same standard, and the blue checkmark would come with some responsibility not to lie, so why not?
There's also the question of who it is that is predicting violence (or giving a dog whistle signal to his followers that violence is OK.) This is not a blue check mark living in his mom's basement predicting (or asking) for violence, it's the chief executive of the United States.
It's important context to note that Trump's tweets are the most widely publicized. As such it should be self evident as to why they would focus their limited resources to policing tweets such as his.
I imagine other factors have to do with the technicalities of executing on this, and the user’s visibility and “viral-ity”. On the technical, you can automate the job and have awkward success sometimes if you don’t get a human to intervene and verify what the algo’s flag as potential violation tweets. Now considering the user, the user’s number of followers, whether they are public figures (so because elected, celebrity, activist, etc. reasons) or whether the tweet has gone viral (regardless of the user’s pre-existing popularity). These kinds of things influence because someone with visibility and audience making calls to violence or some other questionable act is distinct in how actionable others around the world are to react to such a figure making questionable statements. So it’s not a matter of policing everyone, because there’s a lot of nuance and challenges. And the answer isn’t to give up because that’s just cowardice in the face of a big social challenge. We’ve got to carefully experiment and wisely assess these cases.
I think many people aren't taking into account the visibility of Trump's twitter. Trump making violence-glorifying or factually incorrect or medically dangerous tweets is far different from other twitter user's or even other blue-check-mark users because his reach is far wider than the vast majority of those users. Further, Trump has an established track record of doing this repeatedly. Those two facts establish a clear and rational basis for targeting his tweets specifically.
Completely agree with your second point though (not that there is any collusion to silence conservatives - but that this whole situation will be taken that way and used to energize that base).
There is video of Twitter employees admitting there are on-going efforts to silence "shitty people" on the platform. It's quite clear who these "deplorables" or "shitty people" are.
What is the most annoying about this, though, is the tweet they chose to "Fact Check". (I use quotation marks because "fact checking" by linking to CNN and WaPo is not fact-checking at all, rather an appeal to a different authority.)
The tweet they chose to police is speculation about the future. If I say the boiling point of water is 50 degrees, you can fact-check that. Its an objective truth that water boils at 100c.
If I say mail-in votes will cause election fraud, you cannot prove or disprove that statement. All you can do is show me someone else's statements, opinions, and predictions on the matter.
Given that Trump says so much objectively false stuff, it annoys me they didn't go after one of those tweets instead.
You catch the most flak when you're over the target...
Trump should glorify violence. When soldiers achieve their objectives successfully, he should glorify that. When police use a measured and legal amount of violence to enforce law and order he should glorify that.
Liberals will pretend not to understand that to score a quick win.
There is absolutely some truth that the mainstream media and tech giants are colluding to silence conservatives - the truth is that the mainstream "conservative" position in the US happens to involve behavior that runs afoul of neutral content norms (don't threaten people with violence, don't call them racial slurs, don't dox people, etc.) disproportionately more often than people with other political beliefs. Sure, there are some people of other political persuasions who are "essentially" calling for violence, but there's a large gap between "as MLK said, a riot is the language of the unheard, so I can't condemn it" (and even that is hardly a universal position among non-conservatives) and "I, the actual commander-in-chief of an actual military, am telling that military to use violence against my own people" + "We all think this is good and proper, do it."
This is an uncomfortable, rude, politically incorrect truth - but we're not going to have a productive discussion about "silencing conservatives" if we can't admit it.
It is absolutely possible to advocate for the political positions of conservatives (looking through the 2016 GOP platform, for instance - limited government, federalism, avoiding trade deficits, repeal of Dodd-Frank, auditing the Fed, right-to-work, opposition to abortion, support for the electoral college, removing gray wolves from the endangered species list, etc., etc.) without behavior that runs afoul of the norms. If there's a case where Twitter suspends someone for opposing Dodd-Frank, then we should absolutely criticize Twitter. (And I think there's a legitimate discussion to be had about where the line is about criticizing the government's pandemic response vs. spreading misinformation, for instance.) But saying "Conservatives really like to advocate for shooting people without due process, Twitter doesn't permit the advocacy of shooting people without due process, therefore Twitter is biased against conservatives" is more of a statement about conservatives than about Twitter.
HN should have a setting so that the most downvoted posts show up at the top of the page... That would save me a lot of scrolling to get to the unpleasant but accurate content.
> I have seen tweets from blue check marks essentially calling for violence and Twitter didn't remove them
As a Twitter user, I've been concerned with this as well. Clicking on the Minneapolis riots "trend", roughly 1/3 of the top tweets were promoting violence while the overwhelming majority of the remainder were merely sympathetic toward the violence, with only a small sliver denouncing the violence. Note that I don't follow violent or far-left accounts (generally a-political tech accounts, and I'll unfollow people who have especially authoritarian or hateful views in either direction), yet these are overwhelmingly promoted to me (in general, not just in the particular case of the MN riots) either in trends or in the random "here, have this extreme, toxic Tweet from another follower of someone you follow" Tweets that Twitter tosses into my feed. I'm not sure that Twitter is actively promoting extreme left-wing views (it could be that Twitter's user base is really just so far left that its algorithms just can't find any moderate content for me or something), but I don't blame anyone for thinking it does.
EDIT: I'm aware this is a controversial topic, but I'm curious if I'm being downvoted because people don't believe my characterization of my timeline/trends or because my tone was less than thrilled with the volume of left-wing tweets I'm shown or something else. I'm a heretic and I don't deserve my Internet Points, so take them away, but indulge my curiosity about your specific objections! :)
It's because lots of people don't want to admit the issues with the current state of affairs with big-tech social media, such as lopsided and selective enforcement of the rules...
The enforcement of rules in rarely applied with 100% accuracy in any realm. Not because the rule enforcers support some infractions, but because they have limited manpower and must prioritize their tasks.
I think you also have to know if the tweet was reported. Obiviously twitter isn't going to read all tweets so only ones that are reported can they act upon.
I don't think any reasonable person would think that Twitter supports violence simply because they aren't removing posts from people who don't matter. When you have limited resources, you have to apply them in a way that has the most impact. Making sure the President of the United States is adhering to their ToS seems like a good place to start.
Remember that Twitter gets something like 500 million tweets per day. If it took someone working minimum wage 15 seconds to decide whether or not a tweet violates their ToS, Twitter would spend 30 million dollars a day on this, and the results probably wouldn't even be that good. So they don't do that, instead focusing resources where they will have the most impact.
I am also pretty sure they are not trying to censor conservative viewpoints. If Joe Biden starts telling people to go shoot looters or that Mitch McConnell murdered one of his aides, I am sure they will add a little note to those tweets.
You are technically correct, however the same logic applies to every type of enforcement.
Ideally the enforcement of every rule should apply to everyone equally, but in practice we see the police behave differently towards different people, we see tax audits and penalties applied mostly to people without the means to defend themselves and we see how apparently the law and government rules don't even apply to Trump. The world still goes on and we somehow deal with all of this.
Twitter enforcing their own rules is just going to be more of the same.
> 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.
To be fair, in regard's to Trump's Twitter account, a Federal judge has already ruled that Twitter absolutely may not remove his account, and likewise, he may not block people who insult his spray tan, because it's a de facto public forum for interacting with the POTUS.
Ironic that a microblogging service leads to lack of nuance. who would of thought?
My first read of trump's tweet was explaining the national guard has to move in because 'looting leads to shooting'. As in, we have to restore order to avoid more people getting shot. At the time Trump tweeted this, there was already one death from a pawn store owner shooting a looter.
So depending on your priors, your PoV, Trump was either promoting violence or trying to quell violence.
culture of 140 characters = more confusion, more division, more tribalism. If we valued well written, long form writing from our leaders we wouldn't be in this mess. Instead, we value twitter and leaders who make great slogans and can push people's buttons in 140 characters.
Don't be so disingenuous. The phrase is famous and it obviously is obviously not intent on trying to quell violence. I know to be contrarian and radically 'rational' is popular among tech types but it doesn't mean you have to bury your head in the sand when what is being said is so clear.
As much as I hate Trump, this isn't a "Trump thing". This was someone with a large following who was very clearly and overtly threatening to turn a situation into a bloodbath.
Twitter regularly hides violent tweets. It is just algo based and nothing to do with conservatives. I mean, it may seem biased if conservatives are posting a lot of violent tweets
Twitter has literally bend over backwards for Trump. They have said that they will not remove him not matter how much he violates their ToS. If even after that it is seen as "silencing their voice", you know it is a bad faith argument. Just the other day he retweeted something heinous about "dead Democrats" and Twitter let that tweet stand. At some point, don't you have to live up to some principles instead of always be scared of bad faith arguments ?
I'm just going to say again that I can't for the life of me understand why people are in agreement that this tweet glorifies violence. It is a call to stop being violent lest violence increase.
Looting always leads to shooting. This is a simple fact.
I'm horrified that so many people think me saying that is glorifying violence. I don't understand it in the slightest. Seeing this tweet by Trump get silenced absolutely convinces me that there is a conspiracy. Not so much against the right, but against truth.
I think the realistic truth is that Trump doesn't really have a precise idea about what he's saying quite a bit of the time. His defenders rush in, and shape his words into their best possible light, and of course his opponents shape his words into their worst possible light.
Which version did Trump mean? Almost certainly neither: his modus operandi has been to say many vague things, and gauge the reaction to determine his next steps. Part of this process means simply speaking a LOT, and saying things that are vague and inflammatory. What better way to read a reaction than to ensure you create a reaction in the first place? In this sense, his words only have as much power as we keep giving them, and yet no one one seems to have learned this lesson.
You seem intelligent and well-spoken. I believe that when you say "looting always to leads shooting" you mean something like "when people are looting, it's unfortunately almost inevitable that there will be violence." (Please correct me if I've got you wrong.) When Trump says it, he doesn't tend to mean anything in particular. As usual, he's trying to drum up controversy.
And so, there's a difference in context between when you might say it, and when the president says it. It's not simply the case that I believe you hold a genuine belief, and that Trump is pressure testing his next controversy. It's also the case that you're a private citizen, willing to explain and qualify your claims, while Trump is the head of country, intentionally saying inflammatory things during difficult times.
[edit]
Apologies, I actually had no idea there was a particular history to the phrase "when looting starts, shooting starts"
Other people will perceive it as glorifying and advocating violence regardless of how you or I see it. You can rightfully be horrified but it doesn't change the fact that this tweet arguably increases the probability of more violence happening. There is at least one person that read this tweet and interpreted it as a call to violence and that is the problem. Words matter and should be used carefully.
Because the exact phrase has historical context [1] in a sense of: if you loot, we shoot. Clearly it wasn’t said in a sense of: looting inevitably leads to violence.
That makes it sound like Trump used it in a similar fashion.
Fascist language is generally constructed to externalize blame. That doesn't mean its calls for "peace measures" are not calls to harm those people. Trump has been inciting racist violence for years. Take your head out of the sand. Context matters.
Only so much as the media and government lets twitter have this within their rights. If it was Peter Theil running Twitter, I don't believe we would see the same reaction from the media.
China is the leader here, let's briefly study how they do social media -- this will show where US is going.
They review everything after an account gets so many likes. The platform is responsible. One day I was doing something dangerous on a live stream -- immediately banned for 48 hours and got a human message. Posts with factual errors about current events -- immediately removed, on pain of platform liability. Human reply. No AI.
The platform is liable for what is published on the platform in the same way a newspaper is liable for what is published in the newspaper.
The liability is changing and so yes Twitter is going to police people.
I don't quite understand the "if you don't like it leave" theory. Is it really so unreasonable for people to want to influence the way the established platform works rather than switch and be alone on a new platform. Nobody is going to bother coming with you to Gab.
You could make a similar argument about selling on Amazon. They have rules that you must obey if you want to sell products on their marketplace. If they were not allowed to moderate the content and curate it, then the amazon marketplace would be less appealing to customers and sellers.
Twitter should be able to moderate and curate it's content to protect their brand image. If they don't challenge lies on their platform and remove toxic content, Twitter will become less attractive platform for both individuals and advertisers.
Clearly rhetorical, but the reason is that's where the audience is. They will tolerate a lot for that reason but there's presumably some limit. I would not be surprised if whenever Trump leaves office, he announces he's leaving twitter for some twitter clone he's a part owner of geared for conservative audiences. He might be big enough and important enough to his supporters for this exodus to actually be meaningful.
Don't think he'll do it until he loses an election or his 2nd term is up though.
> ....These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!
Disclaimer text:
> This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible. Learn more
"Learn more" links to this page about "public-interest exceptions"
You should investigate the racial history of the phrase “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” and also consider whether property crime deserves loss of life.
When facts/information doesn't align with one's agenda, some people have a terrible habit of trying to have it hidden/banned/removed/etc.
You would think in hackernews of all places, we'd upvote the comment to see exactly what trump wrote so that we can decide for ourselves when it was "glorifying violence". Sadly, many here don't want that to happen.
I think because it just restates what's in the link being discussed, when the link is not inaccessible nor behind a paywall. There are a lot of people who think that's bad form on HN. That's my guess. People trying to force everyone to "read the articles" on HN.
As someone of mixed ethnicity who, if I was there could easily be victimized by a senseless mob to whom I owe nothing and have committed no crime against.. yea I am not happy with how the mainstream media promotes and covers this story, downplaying the victims of the chaos and sympathizing with outpourings of anger even if illegal. To clarify, looters should not be shot, law should prevail, and the policeman involved in the original incident should be investigated.. but the mainstream media is to my mind basically behind the looters, and I know if by chance I or someone like me were to be caught in the crossfire and killed, the mainstream media, posturing as champions of justice, would just implicitly shrug. So yea I can't help but feel disaffected by this coverage, no matter how vile the originating incident.
> The Rodney King verdict and the ensuing riots are often framed as a turning point for law enforcement and the African-American community. But it's also the single most significant modern event for Korean-Americans, says Edward Taehan Chang, professor of ethnic studies and founding director of the Young Oak Kim Center for Korean American Studies at the University of California, Riverside.
> The nearly weeklong, widespread rioting killed more than 50 people, injured more than 1,000 people and caused approximately $1 billion in damage, about half of which was sustained by Korean-owned businesses. Long-simmering cultural clashes between immigrant Korean business owners and predominately African-American customers spilled over with the acquittals.
I'm on the side of the protesters here, don't get me wrong. But the media sweeps under the rug how often the rage from these events gets taken out on Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, etc.-owned small businesses. There is a narrative the media wants to peddle (black versus white), and these complexities don't have any place in the media narratives.
This movement is about centuries of unjustness. To me, it is appropriate that the occasional bystander and business is overlooked. That doesn't mean that if you were my sibling, or friend, or business that I wouldn't be entitled to express personal pain. But the magnitude of my pain is nothing next to the pain that's led up to this, and no it wouldn't be appropriate for it to get remotely equal attention.
Sure, ideally bystanders and local businesses (in particular) would be spared. But nothing about the historical events leading to now is ideal.
Where was this movement when Justine Damond was shot in the gut by a black cop in Minneapolis? I don't recall any protests, let alone riots or burning down the city.
And if your expression of pain includes looting booze from a liquor store or a TV from Target, what exactly are you trying to say? By the way, those bystanders and local businesses owners are people of color too.
It could have all been ended before the rioting started if the police officer was charged for his actions. Obviously looting is wrong but peaceful protests obviously aren't working either.
They were fired and will face the justice system, which while it normally moves slowly, will move a little faster in this case thanks to top down pressure.
I don't see how in a country with independent judiciary anything more can be done.
It could have all been ended when the bystander peacefully asked the police to stop putting the knee on Floyd's neck. Obviously violence is never the answer, but it's hardly surprising in this case.
You are enabling a fascist government. You are complicit.
This is the strategy to vilify any movements from the people: focus on how they are acting violent, when this violence is very well in proportion to the enemy’s first move.
Sure, but ideally the function of the state is prevent the formation of senseless mobs through even-handed treatment and a well-functioning justice system. When it fails to meet those expectations, people turn to other means to defend themselves and enact retribution.
This is human nature and the entire story of our history. Aeschylus even wrote about it:
I think there is an issue where a minority of people live very sheltered lives in the kind embrace of the state, so they have a very difficult time accepting that actually, the experience is shit for a wide swath of other people who have the same right to be protected.
the policeman involved in the original incident should be investigated
Oh give it a rest. We saw him kill the man, he can sit a cell and prepare for his trial like any other killer. If you don't like what people int he media say find different commentators or stop listening to pundits altogether.
I am sick to the back teeth of people complaining about 'the mainstream media', when Fox News and Sinclair broadcasting are two of the biggest companies in TV.
> Oh give it a rest. We saw him kill the man, he can sit a cell and prepare for his trial like any other killer.
He can sit in a cell while being investigated. The fact that it is all on camera just makes it a quick investigation. But everyone gets due process. (also EVERYONE there needs to be investigated, not just the killer)
The investigation lead to an arrest today. That's how the system works. And it worked in this case.
Where was your rage for Justine Damond? Shot by Officer Mohamed Noor from the passenger seat of his police cruiser, across his partner. Where were the riots?
Also, when people complain about MSM they are including Fox and Sinclair. It's all corrupted and meant to drive a narrative instead of presenting objective views from both sides. It's not up to MSM to tell us how to think about events. Their job is to report the facts. Hardly any of them do anymore, if they ever did.
That is literally the law of the land. Read into castle doctrine and duty to retreat. Business owners have the legal right to defend their life on their property with deadly force if left no choice (i.e. a mob has surrounded you)
At any rate his tweet was ambiguous, he could have meant shooting naturally follows looting, not that he was ordering the guard to execute civilians.
This entire event is effectively self-defense from a community that has felt terrorized by the police for decades.
It could've been easily prevented by actually arresting someone that committed abject murder, but the city and the police chose to instead defend a man who has killed multiple people in the past and got away with it scott-free. So when people feel like justice no longer exists, there should be no surprise that they get angry.
It doesn't help that the police also employ agent provocateurs whom help incite riots and looting so that they can use more violent tactics with glee.
Could it have? I don't know. What is encouraging is that in the past they would have put the officers on paid leave and treated them with deference while the investigation took place. In this case they were promptly fired within 48 hours of the incident by the police chief.
There were also a lot of statements from police leadership that this incident wasn't acceptable or normal police procedure which is a drastic change from in the past where you had people staying silent or even defending and rationalizing the perpetrators actions.
The looting and rioting weaken a cause that after many years of being in the spotlight seemed to have reached a tipping point of overwhelming agreement.
> So when people feel like justice no longer exists, there should be no surprise that they get angry.
I think this is the key here. The whole BLM movement has been going on for years and, for the most part, it seems like a lot of people are more aware. It doesn't seem like anybody from the top cares to do anything about it though.
I'd like to say, as well, that this is a statement of fact that can be observed by looking at media coverage, testimonial, historical and fictional books on the topic of the black experience in america. To deny this is a direct attempt to re-write history to justify an accumulation of power amongst the hands of a specific, ever-shrinking elite.
Things are, ultimately, knowable. Its not "political" or up to "opinion".
> This entire event is effectively self-defense from a community that has felt terrorized by the police for decades.
To put it with MLK: A riot is the voice of the unheard.
The systemic issues of the Black (and other foreigner) community across the Western societies, especially with police and laws specifically designed to target them (e.g. almost all drug legislation), have been ignored for way too long. I'm no friend of rioting myself but I will not judge upon those who have deemed it necessary to be finally heard.
> It could've been easily prevented by actually arresting someone that committed abject murder, but the city and the police chose to instead defend a man who has killed multiple people in the past and got away with it scott-free
I don't know if it could have been prevented by arresting just this murderer, as it's far from an isolated incident.
I do however think it could have been prevented by an edict from the top years ago, issuing a zero-tolerance policy for harassment, abuse and murder by police officers, with focus on clearly racially motivated incidents. I'm fom the UK, so don't claim to understand american politics, but I just don't understand why something like that hasn't happened, especially when Obama was president.
Not even close, but keep telling yourself whatevwr you need to to justify violent riots and indiscriminate looting. Never seen an HD TV looted in self defense before, but hey the media owned by God's Chosen People trying to use blacks as violent foot soldiers for marxism is just a conspiracy pushed by bigots and idiots, right?
Yes, one only need to compare the police treatment of predominantly white, armed brigades storming government buildings in Michigan to what happened to the first wave of predominantly black, non-violent protests in Minneapolis to understand there are other forces at play here.
I know it is "never too late" for things like this to happen, but it's definitely late.
One of the main reasons for bad things to happen is the lack of education (which, in turn, leads to resist to change) and, therefore makes people prone to believe to unbelievable things.
Social platforms like Twitter should have long had things like "fact checking" ANY statements and should have restricting not only violence glorifying posts, but also the ones with racial or sexual discrimination and all the others .
It is late, but I like seeing it happen at least for the person with the most "glorifying" record in dividing a society.
Yeah, the whole reason we have public education is that democracy requires a knowledgeable voter base. When social media companies were just starting out, I get why they weren't fretting about societal effects. But even if we go by business metrics, a collapse of democracy would probably be bad for their businesses. It's past time for social media companies to take responsibility for their negative externalities. And that definitely includes all sort of "negative information value" content.
Yeah, there's a difference between educated and knowledgeable. But I don;t agree on the reason of existence of the public education system - its not about the voter base, it's about improving not only yourself, but the society as well (as improving society secures in a way improvement of you and your offspring).
I don't find social media companies responsible for the user generated content, but I do find them responsible for making it damn too easy to spread fear and then doing nothing about it. Or, as in case of some, promoting the division.
> But even if we go by business metrics, a collapse of democracy would probably be bad for their businesses.
But the ride the will be extremely profitable and business have shown to care more about short term than long term. Some examples are Nestle guzzling ground water during droughts, Johnson's baby powder with talc, the entire oil gas and coal industry, Pacific gas and electric company, etc.
and should have restricting not only violence glorifying posts, but also the ones with racial or sexual discrimination and all the others.
Do you think tweets that make derogatory references to Karen's or "tech-bros" should be deleted?
Should a Tweet that says, "There will be no peace as long as there is no justice for the centuries of white supremacy and centuries white people oppressing all other peoples." be banned? What about a Tweet saying, "There will be no peace as long as their is no justice of centuries of Jewish puppet-mastery and Jews oppressing all other peoples"?
I'm OK with restricting racist and sexist posts in the public square -- as long as the censorship is applied equally to all ethnicities and sexes. And if the censorship was applied equally, a lot of Tweets from "anti-racist" activists would need to be censored.
And there is the crux of this argument, at least as it pertains to HackerNews. Which is the palpable fear that white supremacy focused rhetoric will be marginalized and de-platformed.
I'm not saying every single opinion should be redacted (opinions should not be redacted - they are simply statements of who you are and what are your values), but (false) fact statements and clear/open calls for racial and sexual discrimination, etc.
the moment society started to see social media as a source of news, the battle was lost. nobody ever used myspace to stay fresh on the situation in the balkans.
That would make sense if every message were placed on hold before publishing while it got reviewed. But this is a real-time system. And even then, there are often multiple sides to events.
Is it a hard problem? Sure. Can they get everything? No. But that doesn't mean that they can't quickly act to minimize the total impact. As with many things, 80% of the value can be gained with 20% of the work.
I'm not saying it's easy, but effort should be made as it is important. If you see the real-time voice recognition on the new Pixel phone, the technology for this type of action might not be that far away.
I disagree that Twitter has been missing "fact checking". Instead I think the problem was bots.
Take an obviously absurd political viewpoint, which nowadays has to be really absurd. Here's an example: Tom Cruise should be president of the United States. Scientology will make America great again.
Sounds pretty fucking absurd, right? But throw in 50 million bots on Twitter and Instagram pretending to be Americans who think Tom Cruise should be president, and now your once absurd view point simply becomes "the other side of the aisle." It's of course all fake.
Unfortunately this exploits the minds of otherwise kind hearted people that do really want to give you a chance to hear you out. It is how democracy should work after all. But the current reality is this "other side" is basically just white supremacists. Full stop. They're not all rotten people, plenty of them were goaded into embracing the hatred because the internet, and all those fucking bots, makes it look normal
WW2 taught us to shut down Nazis right away. Zuckerberg and Dorsey have utterly failed as Americans.
Snopes is a dumpster fire and the content editors consistently show a weak grasp of logic. Fact checking on a mass scale is a pipe dream and a massive minefield of false positives.
Although I might support this because I despise Twitter and support anything that might quicken it's demise.
Is the POTUS clearly inciting violence or is it another instance of people having a wild interpretation of what he said? I'm so tired of this dynamic that I don't even bother anymore.
> These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!
Worth noting that this is a quote from former Miami Police Chief Walter Headley. In '67, he said the phrase "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" during racially charged protests.
> Is the POTUS clearly inciting violence or is it another instance of people having a wild interpretation of what he said?
The POTUS unambiguously quoted racist Miami police chief Walter Headley who called for violence against African Americans during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. This couldn’t be a more clear example of inciting violence.
really? wild interpretation? it's a weird construction that's widely known to have been used by the police chief during similar circumstances? how big does the donkey have to be before you pin the tail on it? i wager there could be a video of trump composing the tweet with a biography of the police chief in view and open to the page with those words and you'd still claim to doubt the intent.
it's exhausting having to take this kind of bad faith skepticism seriously.
If you truly believe in what they are doing, then buy their stock and prop up the price, because it is plunging right now. Words alone are about as useful as clapping for healthcare workers.
Even nonviolent protest was never intended to be peaceful. Not in they way many people would use the word “peace”, anyway.
“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’”
That’s MLK in his letter from a Birmingham jail. Who was completely devoted to nonviolence. Even he made abundantly clear that nonviolence does not equal a lack of pressure or tension.
For anyone who doesn't want to click, Twitter quarantined (you can click "view" to see it, however engagement is disabled) a Presidential tweet in which he calls on a mayor to "get a city under control", threatened to send in the national guard, said the military is behind the governor, and said that if there is difficulty they will assume control. His specific reference to violence occurred at the end the tweet, which he ended saying "Any difficulty, and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!"
This is very interesting to watch unfold in real-time.
I find it fascinating the President of the United States is ranting about 1st Amendment violations with regards to a private business. Pretty sure there is nothing in the 1st Amendment that says he is guaranteed the right to tweet.
I hope Twitter takes this a step further the next time he violates their ToS and gives his account a 48 hour suspension.
I understand why Trump is picking this fight but I can't help but feel Twitter hold the power. Sure Trump has been a big driving factor in Twitter really hitting mainstream but I would be surprised if he was still adding huge value to the platform. If anything banning Trump would be the biggest thing to ever happen to Twitter as he wouldn't let it go.
However I can't see a way for Trump to win such a fight. It could go all the way to the SCOTUS but if they sided against Twitter it would affect literally every big social media platform in the US which I can't see happening.
Zooming all the way out I don't see why Twitter really care about such a fight as there is no way Google and Facebook (to name just two) would let things go against Twitter as it would be devastating to them as well.
With free speech it gets interesting how you interpret it. One interpretation, which I think Trump is using, is that "laws come last". There is a principle that says free speech should be protected and laws only come to cover the cases where the principle can be infringed. So twitter, in this interpretation, would be correct according to current law, but would stand on the wrong side with regards to a higher value of upholding the principle.
However there is another interpretation which says that ability to remove someone from your private business is also an expression of free speech. And that private companies as well as individuals are free to choose who they do business with. But there is one nuance here - this is better served under another principle which is "freedom of association". Freedom of association states that you can refuse to deal with anyone you don't like. However in USA this principle recently lost its value after certain group of Christians were not allowed to refuse baking a cake for a gay couple. So it seems there are certain protections.
But then there is a third thing which is that in some countries (and I am not sure here about USA) the president has the right to send a message using any media channel he sees fit, and the media channel cannot refuse. Informing and communicating with the public is one of president's duties and refusing to send his message infringes upon it. If USA has such a law and if Twitter could be interpreted as a media platform then it could be against the law for Twitter to do what it is currently doing. Unlikely thou, as twitter has a team of lawers and likely they were consulted beforehand.
> Zooming all the way out I don't see why Twitter really care about such a fight
Companies are ran by people and those people take political sides. Twitter is on the democratic party side, and the election season is coming. I predict we will se a bigger coordinated effort spanning Google, Youtube, and Twitter, and some other big corporations as we get closer to USA president election date.
> But then there is a third thing which is that in some countries (and I am not sure here about USA) the president has the right to send a message using any media channel he sees fit, and the media channel cannot refuse. Informing and communicating with the public is one of president's duties and refusing to send his message infringes upon it. If USA has such a law and if Twitter could be interpreted as a media platform then it could be against the law for Twitter to do what it is currently doing. Unlikely thou, as twitter has a team of lawers and likely they were consulted beforehand.
I looked into what powers the President of the US has in regards to sending a message and from what I found there are only specific rules (not sure if they are laws) for TV and radio to broadcast Presidential messages unaltered when asked.
Even if one was to interpret those rules to include the internet as well surely that would fall onto ISPs in that they must give unrestricted access to government services such as whitehose.gov rather than giving the President unlimited power of literally any US-based website?
I am sure if Twitter bans Trump's account he would push forward that he has unlimited power to communicate via any website he pleases although I have no idea how that would play out in the courts. It certainly goes against the small government position the Republican party talk about for businesses.
> Companies are ran by people and those people take political sides. Twitter is on the democratic party side, and the election season is coming. I predict we will se a bigger coordinated effort spanning Google, Youtube, and Twitter, and some other big corporations as we get closer to USA president election date.
I also think this. Seems Facebook has picked their side with Trump.
Me thinks Twitter has been planning for this outcome for a while now which is why they have held off on banning his account. I wouldn't be surprised if they take the step to ban him sometime in the not too distant future.
As President, or any public figure, you are responsible not only for the intention of your words, but also every feasible interpretation of your words, as well as the impacts of your words, regardless of intention.
I say this not to imply that Trump didn't know that this statement could be taken in multiple ways, but to remind people that even if it can it doesn't matter. It's tragic this has happened, and also tragic to have a leader who reacts to the situation in this way, and that a large swath of the country applauds him for it.
Vague and menacing threats are much more thuggish behavior than emotional reaction to the killing of an unarmed civilian.
As for what Twitter is doing, I'm curious whether they follow this path to it's logical conclusion, which is, eventually Trump being banned from Twitter. He's a huge driver of traffic for them, but perhaps they're thinking about life after Trump at this point, months away from the election.
Every feasible interpretation? No way. That’s not gonna work. No one would be able to say anything. At best people would talk like ex Fed chair Greenspan. Undoable.
Yes, every feasible interpretation. That doesn't mean you can't say anything without multiple interpretations, but it _does_ mean that, if you are called on another interpretation of your words, then you spoke unclearly. You need to clarify your meaning and apologize if it was flagrant.
Yes, that is a lot of overhead for communicating. That's what I believe we should expect of our elected leaders. Sadly, nearly half of voting Americans don't seem to agree with me.
Vague and menacing threats are admittedly thuggish behavior, but I think it's hard to argue that it's more thuggish than burning down a police station.
I believe there’s a suitable MLK speech in which it explains property violence in response to human violence is an attempt to push the majority to action using loss of property when it is clear loss of life means nothing.
Given that it’s clear literal loss of life meant very little to people but property damage gets multiple multiple news coverage and POTUS coverage etc etc. it’s hard to consider burning down a police station when the police killed someone on camera to be completely improper. All attempts to appeal peacefully to the people who are supposed to deliver justice have failed, and in fact, those who are supposed to deliver justice have done the unjust thing...
Well of course it isn't "more thuggish." The use of "thug" was done on purpose. It is a known racist dog whistle. Trump's racist followers know exactly what he means when he says "These THUGS are..." They replace that with the n word. It's just as a society we don't allow them to say the n word any more, so they've replaced it with a myriad of dog whistles.
What I'm saying is that, in their minds, every single person in that mob is a "thug," and everything they're doing is (in your words) "thuggish."
But the mob of white folks in Charlottesville? Nothing thuggish there. That's just white folks protesting against being oppressed by minorities.
When I think of thugs, I think of premeditated stick ups, protection money rackets, and intimidation.
A riot is dangerous, unpredictable, and unwise (imo), but I wouldn't characterize it as thuggish. It's clear to me the reason that word was used was to appeal to his base, who are eager to put a label on these protestors as a way of dehumanizing them.
FWIW, even in the most far-right audiences I know of, I don't recall a single instance of people taking issue with the "rioters'" reactions against the police force.
I see a focus on the looting and destruction of private property that is unaffiliated with the police: a Target and an Autozone in particular. If anything, I'm seeing broad support for what's happening with regard to the MLPD.
This is not a simple partisan issue. Not even close.
One angle I don't see discussed: I wonder if Trump commits to more risky/bombastic/divisive plans as president because he feels confident that he can directly frame them and control the narrative by using his audience on Twitter, and he feels emboldened by how immediately Twitter is able to deliver the reactions. If there's a chance this is true, I can especially understand Twitter wanting to have no part in this. It would be fucked up to force anyone like Twitter to be the ones working to support this if they didn't want to be the ones doing it and associated with it.
I've said in the past that if Twitter had a "dislike" button in addition to the "like" button and only showed the cumulative score (like reddit or HN), Trump would've gotten much less gratification from Twitter due to lower net "likes" and would've given up Twitter entirely, which would almost certainly have altered his behavior.
Trump playbook:
1)cause problem
2)throw a fit, bluster, and lie to get his base riled up
3)gain minor concession from opponent and/or back down
5)claim victory
It's way too late for that, though. I left twitter more than five years ago (can't remember the exact date) when it became clear it had became a gathering place for ordinary fascism and you could not have a reasonable discussion without having extremists harassing you. And this started long before Trump's election (in France, we have a name for that : the fachosphere).
I'm willing to give it an other chance if they implement proper moderation (because in the end, I love talking with people very different than me, especially if they are of different political views, provided they're willing to discuss and don't just want to harm opponents), but I'm afraid the harm is done, and everyone is radicalized, now.
So I have a question about this. Does free speech apply to platforms like Facebook and Twitter? I would have thought that a website owner has a choice about the content of their website, even if that content is user generated. Surely they could remove any tweet they wanted and not be sued?
It depends. And the problem that people have is that social media companies want to be both publishers and platforms.
For example, T-Mobile is a platform. They aren't responsible for anything you say when on the phone, using their network.
CNN is a publisher. They are responsible for anything that gets posted on their website, and can get sued accordingly.
Social media companies want to choose what is posted on their website, but also not be held responsible for anything that is posted on their website. They want the perks of being a publisher, and the perks of being a platform.
Obviously there are arguments made on both sides. But that is the general disagreement, if I understand correctly.
> CNN is a publisher. They are responsible for anything that gets posted on their website, and can get sued accordingly.
This isn't true though. CNN/NYTimes/etc can't be sued for 3rd party comments on their site. CNN is also allowed to filter what comments make it on their site. These are not opposing ideas.
The "publisher" vs "platform" debate is a false dichotomy without any basis in the actual law. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive under Section 230. A newspaper is responsible for the content they "publish" but if I comment on one of their articles they are not responsible for what I've said on their "platform".
> It depends. And the problem that people have is that social media companies want to be both publishers and platforms.
> For example, T-Mobile is a platform. They aren't responsible for anything you say when on the phone, using their network.
> CNN is a publisher. They are responsible for anything that gets posted on their website, and can get sued accordingly.
Also T-Mobile is a point-to-point communications platform, while CNN is a broadcaster.
Social media seems like a new thing that doesn't have directly analogous antecedents. It's a high-impact, wide-reach broadcaster that has little to no editorial control. Before it, broadcasters lacking editorial control were marginal and low-reach.
I still find this to be such a silly comparison, really.
CNN is a publisher.. they pay people to be on TV, they pay people to write articles. Of course CNN (the company) is liable for what it puts out, because they are literally creating 100% of the content and paying people to do it. So if they are slandering someone with no basis, it's logical to say "Uh CNN is literally paying people to write lies to mislead people".
Now let's take a site like HN. People post articles here, people comment on articles. HN isn't "creating" any of the content like CNN. So obviously some random person posting a story or commenting complete bullshit is not HN's goal.
Now what's the argument... that as soon as HN starts to flag something as misleading, remove "spam" (who determines what is a spam article?), then suddenly they are put into a publisher realm and can get sued for what is or is not on there?
I mean.. to me that is LAUGHABLE that someone wants to argue as soon as a site like reddit/twitter/hn starts to do anything to the content they treated like a publisher and are liable for the content. This already happens a billion times a day across all those platforms anyway.
perhaps there aren't two sides.. that there is a genuine third form: the publisher-platform -- one which best describes both how these platforms do operate, and how they should do so.
When you have billions of users wanting to post content you can hardly be a publisher in any traditional sense; nor will the gov./society/users let you be a platform.
This is precisely what Trump's executive order targets. Section 230 of the CDA gave websites and social media networks a little wiggle room in the platform vs publisher stance. They could moderate as they see fit without being liable for the content on their sites. Now that's being weakening, or more precisely becoming more well defined by the FCC. There will be strict requirements to be considered a platform, one example of which is needing to have a well defined terms of service and strictly follow that all across the board.
The 1st Amendment does not apply to private platforms, except perhaps if Twitter was denying access on protected attributes (race, gender, etc).
Anyone can be sued for any reason. It is extremely unlikely a suit against Twitter for moderation will succeed. In theory they have the legal ability to remove all GOP politicians, knitters, or fast food companies from their platform.
The newest Executive Order about Section 230 means the FTC can enforce anytime Twitter doesn’t follow their own stated policies. So Twitter will just adjust their policies to give themselves more latitude. Even this is legally murky and will take years to be resolved in court.
"Freedom Watch's First Amendment claim fails because it does not adequately allege that the Platforms can violate the First Amendment. In general, the First Amendment 'prohibits only governmental abridgment of speech,'" the court wrote, citing a previous opinion issued by the D.C. Court of Appeals. The judges went on to say that "'a private entity who provides a forum for speech is not transformed by that fact alone into a state actor.'"
The service that hosts the accounts of all branches of the US military, all major weapons contractors, all three letter agencies, and many foreign militaries, governments, and world leaders guilty of all manner of war crimes, and this is where they draw the line for violence. Really interesting.
Well, in political science and sociology, one of the most common definitions of the state is that it possesses a monopoly on legitimate/lawful violence.
Violence conducted via the military or police, according to regulation, is lawful.
But violence conducted by citizens, or by members of the government or military that is not according to law/regulation, is not lawful.
I'm not saying Twitter's drawing the line exactly right, but it's somewhere in the right vicinity.
Presidents are also commanders in chief; a civilian that has ultimate control of state’s violence monopoly. Still the distinction between lawful/unlawful applies.
"Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts"
I think Trump's saying that if things get out of control, law enforcement will start shooting. If I understand your post correctly, this would be lawful...
Twitter didn't draw the line at promoting violence (which is a line I can agree with), they drew the line at a prediction of mail-in voting resulting in fraud.
This is using past violence as a threat of imminent violence while the other accounts you mentioned will generally reference violence indirectly or in the past tense. That is an important distinction.
That's a fair point. I'm not defending Trump's tweet, but it seems defining violence glorification is arbitrary. It would be funny if Twitter adds a rule that says you can be an organization whose whole purpose is to make devices that kill people as long as you don't glorify making devices that kill people.
The president is the most visible face of the government. Of all the ones you mentioned, it's the only one people actually vote for. What he says and does has the most impact. So I don't find it "interesting", I find it entirely reasonable.
People in the United States do not vote for a president. They vote for an elector who in turn will vote for the president. This is an important and often left out detail in how the American political system works, in theory it could have protected us from the current dumpster fire.
You can make the case that humans often engage in threats to prevent violence.
Having seen a few people threaten each other, and not get into a physical fight. But to walk way.
I would say it can be preferable to actual fists thrown.
Words are not violence.
'Trump's phrase "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" is an unattributed quote of Walter Headley, Miami's police chief in 1967. It was a threat to citizens who were upset that police had terrorized a black teenager by holding him over a bridge.' (https://twitter.com/mattsheffield/status/1266246092393336838)
The OP means that Trump didn't use quotation marks or mention that it was a quotation. (I myself didn't realize it was a quotation.) There is no attribution or quotation marks in the tweet.
I found the attribution of the quote very informative and am very surprised it is currently downvoted. My own summary of the tweets is also downvoted, not sure what I could/should add to it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23347395
I tried to neutrally summarize the tweets, in case people wanted to know what they said without clicking.
100K people dead and this guys priorities are Twitter and coming up with ways to throw more fuel on a dumpster fire of race relations and police brutality. Bravo.
One thing that's fascinating about this is how Twitter has become so centered around political discussion (& histrionics). It's become the backbone of the sort of inside-baseball of politics. The lightning rod at the center of both politics and Twitter is Trump. Trump is such a powerful force because he can bend the ridiculousness of the twitter conversation to his will. He's perhaps an outcome of all the incentives of the social network.
So limiting Trump is to me a kind of commentary on Twitter itself. Maybe something like a Trump is the end-game of a Twitter-like network?
“ ....These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!”
This* Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence. However, @Twitter has determined that it will allow terrorists, dictators, and foreign propagandists to abuse its platform.
*Referring to an attached picture of a Khamenei tweet about Palestine
Framed it quite well. A good summary should note if there is significant complexity involved in the statement, not take a biased framing of the situation, and give no indication that they have done it.
When the tweet in question also talks about Palestinian independence, it's not talking about "internal jihad". It's talking about violence. And when it talks about "even if death", it's talking about being killed when engaged in violence, not about when engaged in peaceful resistance.
That's amazing. Of all the horrific thing people post to Twitter all day long, a vague statement about Palestinian independence is the "best" whataboutist comparison Trump could find to match his own threat to open fire on the country he is sworn to defend.
I don't think the Khomenni tweet is a valid comparison to Trumps (for other reasons) but lets be honest — This tweet is anything but a "vague statement about Palestinian independence", since it directly references and advocates for Jihad and Martyrdom.
> Of all the horrific thing people post to Twitter all day long, a vague statement about Palestinian independence is the "best" whataboutist comparison Trump could find
You're thinking the best example is the one that should obviously be removed. But that's not what he's after, because then they'd just remove it. What he wants is something it would be maximally contentious for them to remove.
I am so, so tired of everyone apply "conservative" to outright nonsense. We should say "republican" or "trumpian" instead.
There is nothing conservative in many of the far-right ideas, by any definition of the word. If the idea or opinion is:
1) Based on pure hate
2) Based on treating a protected class badly - you know, the whole reason we have class protections
3) Based on NOTHING AT ALL, no facts given, other than sometimes a turtles-all-the-way-down derivation of other crazy opinions, and sometimes with a "make it true" initiative bringing up the rear. Speculation is not a position. Speculation is not a position. SPECULATION IS NOT A POSITION!
those are NOT Conservative. Those are crazy. Especially #3, employed all the time by the current POTUS.
I personally believe the Conservative movement has actually been wildly successful over the last several decades, and the country has shifted significantly to the right.
Now, all that remains is the crazy. That is all the right has to differentiate itself, and they're going all in.
Anyway, TLDR: crazy is not Conservative, please use Trumpian or Republican if that fits. Also, speculation is not a position :)
If I’m reading that correctly, it’s a completely misleading assertion by @WhiteHouse. It appears as though this is in response to the quote of the original that was also reported. Given that the quote is adding a comment on to the original text, their ruling makes sense to me.
That said, it looks like they’ve hidden it as well now. So maybe they see it as an attempt to circumvent the TOS and are treating it the same way.
A plain non-technical reading of the email from Twitter doesn't describe the structure you're suggesting - so it's possible that Twitter's email template is not properly rendering the structure of the tweets.
This seems like an escalation. How would both sides continuing to escalate play out?
Trump would probably get banned at some point, especially if his tweets start to endanger rank-and-file Twitter employees (inspiring death threats, etc.). How likely is he to get injunctive relief if he gets banned?
I don't think Trump has thought this conflict through completely.
Given that this is an election year, I imagine that he is absolutely going to intentionally try to get himself banned - then spin the whole "liberal-bias-censorship" card.
...and it might work. These sorts of stories play riiiight to the centrist/libertarian/independents - whom he's grooming to not be afraid of showing up in person to the election booth in November.
I wrote this on the duplicate topic here, copying as I believe it matters:
I know it is "never too late" for things like this to happen, but it's definitely late.
One of the main reasons for bad things to happen is the lack of education (which, in turn, leads to resist to change) and, therefore makes people prone to believe to unbelievable things.
Social platforms like Twitter should have long had things like "fact checking" ANY statements and should have restricting not only violence glorifying posts, but also the ones with racial or sexual discrimination and all the others .
It is late, but I like seeing it happen at least for the person with the most "glorifying" record in dividing a society.
> Trump is intentionally or inadvertently quoting former Miami Police Chief Walter Headley. In December 1967, months before riots broke out during the (Nixon) Republican National Convention, Headley said “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” at the announcement of a new “get tough” policy for policing black neighborhoods. Headley promised to use shotguns, dogs, and aggressive “stop and frisk” tactics in a bid to reduce crime. “We don’t mind being accused of police brutality,” the New York Times reported him saying at the time. “They haven’t seen anything yet.”
Twitter should maliciously comply with Trump's executive order. Suspend his account, and post a banner saying that it was suspended in compliance with President Trump's Executive Order.
We have laws in the UK that curtail speech like that, "Inciting violence" is a crime.
Which I agree with to some extent, you're not innocent of a crime because you convinced a person to harm another, just because you were too cowardly to get your hands dirty yourself.
But the US is rather famously not British, so I'm not sure if it's a relevant thing to add to the discussion.
I'm also on the other* side of the Atlantic from this circus, but a little googling over lunch led me to the "Brandenburg Test" for when "Inciting violence" is no longer protected by the 1A. (NB: 1A is an entirely different subject than Twitter's TOS, which I addressed in the original thread)
Briefly: speech which both incites imminent lawless action and is likely to produce such action fails to be protected as US "free speech".
In this case, my IANAL analysis would be that the tweet had imminent application, but would be unlikely to produce action,
for reasons given in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23347453 (tl;dr lethal force is the last resort of a well-regulated militia when restoring public order)
There's plenty of "speech" criminalized in the US: many crimes are just matters of conspiring to X, or fradulently X... which may have been conducted entirely in speech.
The relevant kind of speech for "free expression" is that which seeks to express an idea/opinion/belief of the speaker.
That isn't criminalised in the UK as far as I'm aware, and would fall under the EHCR protections in any case which are in UK law as the human rights act.
Part of the issue is if you're hostile to the speaker, you can interpret a call for peace to mean a call for violence. Try to imagine for a moment, that this comment was not made by an evil racist orange man, but someone you like... maybe Ghandi. If Ghandi said: "Looting leads to shooting." Which interpretation would you more likely choose?
1. Please don't loot, it escalates violence and people will get killed
2. Let's kill all the looters
Whether it's Trump or Ghandi, we're imagining we know something about the internal state of the speaker's mind that we don't know.
> The leader of the United States encouraging law enforcement and the military to shoot American citizens for looting
That's an extremely literal interpretation of his words. Most people would interpret that phrase to mean "you better think twice before looting because I'm not going to sit idly by and let you do it" but in the form of a vaguely threatening, yet catchy rhyme.
> The phrase was used by Miami's police chief, Walter Headley, in 1967, when he addressed his department's "crackdown on ... slum hoodlums," according to a United Press International article from the time.
> Headley, who was chief of police in Miami for 20 years, said that law enforcement was going after “young hoodlums, from 15 to 21, who have taken advantage of the civil rights campaign. ... We don't mind being accused of police brutality."
> The National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence found that Headley's remarks and policing policies had been a significant factor in sparking the riots.
> Headley died four months after the riots. The Times in its obituary noted his policies had caused "growing resentment" among black Miami residents.
Our President fully understands the gravity of those words. This is what he wanted to say. This is what he meant. This is what he believes. This is WHO HE IS.
> That's an extremely literal interpretation of his words
Yes, which is better than a reasonable interpretation of his words would show them to be, because going beyond a mere literal reading to consider the deliberate historical reference and the implicit subtext makes the statement worse, not better.
> Most people would interpret that phrase to mean "you better think twice before looting because I'm not going to sit idly by and let you do it"
What do you base the knowledge of how most people will have interpreted this statement on?
The historical experiences of different classes of people can have a profound impact on the perspectives they have in relation to the government. An 80 year old black man might have a very different relationship with governmental authorities than a 30 year old Latino, or a 40 year old Caucasian.
Do you think it is morally wrong for a store owner to protect his store using guns? Do you think it was morally wrong for the Koreans to sit on their rooftops with guns to protect their stores from looters during the LA riots ( https://warisboring.com/the-legacy-of-the-roof-koreans-28-ye...)?
If the "people" you reference are incapable of telling the difference between movies/games and the POTUS threatening violence on his own people (and arguably a majority of the country), than this is exactly why Twitter needs to do what it's doing.
So on the one hand people can tell the difference between presidential tweets and movie violence... but on the other hand they take all his tweets and interpret them in the most literal way?
It is literally the president’s job to command the military. If he gives a warning that looting will lead to shooting, it is not glorifying violence. It is a statement of fact.
And looting always leads to shooting, regardless of who is saying it.
Next, the 4th, 5th, and 6th amendments to the United States constitution. Telling armed forces to shoot unarmed people because they happen to be looting (e.g. when there is no imminent threat to life) is summary execution and unconstitutional.
The national guard does not work like that. Also, no the military cannot just shoot people on the spot for being in the area of looting, it is not a "statement of fact." You just made this up and pulled it out of thin air so don't respond with "well prove it" or some other BS. Quit being a racist troll and reflect on your hateful little life.
> It is literally the president’s job to command the military.
Even if one views the Tweet as a legitimate military command, which it is not, unless the government has seized Twitter with just compensation as required by the 5th Amendment, it is not Twitter's obligation to ignore its own standard sfor the purpose of relaying such orders by the President.
Otherwise, except as to explaining why Twitter opted for the public interest notice rather than simple removal, the President’s job is irrelevant here.
> If he gives a warning that looting will lead to shooting, it is not glorifying violence.
That doesn't follow from the preceding, and the statement as written glorifies violence, both potential future violence and specific historical violence by the government against it's citizens, in much better the same way (though far more proximate historically and thus much worse) that it would if Trump said “Kill them all, and God will know his own.”
> It is a statement of fact.
It is quite possible to state a fact (or make a threat which one has the power to declare execute, which is more the case here than statement of fact) while glorifying the outcome that would be produced and/or the past historical antecedent which is invoked.
Well, so do you censor things like Dr Dre’s 187 because it might be interpreted as inciting violence against (corrupt) police? A public figure of renown among fans.
Media companies have applied censorship or content warnings to rap music and other art forms - voluntarily or otherwise - for decades without a word of protest from those people determined to make the case for the POTUS' immunity to Twitter's rules
Two notes: 1) I am not Jack Dorsey and Twitter is not my product, so I'm not sure why you said "you". 2) Dr Dre is not the president of the United States and does not have the authority to direct law enforcement and the military... surely you see the difference.
> The leader of the United States encouraging law enforcement and the military to shoot American citizens for looting, that's the line.
Is this supposed to be bad? I actually wish that our own PM had done the same. I am sure that the citizens of a lot of countries that live under the rule of criminal syndicates, looters, and highwaymen would agree.
It seems that the US citizens are fine with state mandated violence as long as it does not include them. Nothing happened regarding https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21018041 for example.
It is bad because the value of human life (even people you don't like) is infinitely greater than material goods. A looted store can be repared, restocked, rebuilt. A dead human stays dead forever and yields a mountain of grief around him. They are not comparable at all.
> It seems that the US citizens are fine with state mandated violence as long as it does not include them. Nothing happened regarding https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21018041 for example.
I don't think it's fair to paint this as unique to US citizens. I'd go as far as saying this is generally true across the world, with few people protesting state sanctioned violence abroad, and significantly more people protesting domestic state sanctioned violence.
I don't think that's unusual. I think it's normal that we care more about our own lives than we do others lives, we care more about people dying at home than we do abroad.
I'm not saying this is a good thing, but it is normal human behaviour. A good example of this is watching how peoples perceptions of this latest coronavirus unfolded.
There's too much going on in all of our lives to have time for every bad thing happening elsewhere. You pick your battles. That's ok. You still have to live your life for yourself at the end of the day, nobody else is going to live your life for you.
I am raising this question because many think that looting is the right thing to do and it allows avenge of George Floyd. I personally think that it hurts George Floyd's cause and only creates more divide. Violence is not the answer to society's deep racial issues.
Thanks I guess for citing the definition of a Riot. I think that's a better word for it.
Isn't the US a federated country? Surely it's up to the local police to ask for help from other police if they wish to, and then perhaps ask for help from the national guard, not the other way round?
And isn't it state governors who control the national guard, not the Federal president?
I assume the Waco types will be out there opposing "The Feds" trampling over state rights?
The US has a federal system, but people are guaranteed basic rights within it. If the local government can’t or won’t protect those rights (the police abandoned one of their five precincts to the looters!), the feds have the right and duty to step in.
The cost-benefit is not that clear-cut. Attempting to protect material at the cost of civil unrest, likely wounded protesters and police officers, possibly even more death. Sounds like taking a step back might have been the best of all the bad options.
More importantly though, the government should be more concerned with the cause than the symptom. Arrest the officer and this goes away.
It’s terrible that folks are looting and taking the focus away from the problem, but it’s also shameful to evoke George Floyd’s name to shame them without making mention of the officer who started this mess.
With innocent people being harmed, and at least one killed, I think they should. Letting this get out of control is not the best option, as tensions are already high from covid, and this could be a feedback loop to more unneeded violence, with unintended victims caught in the cross hairs.
With a gas line possibly being cut, and ~170 business burned down, this is spiraling out of control [0]
I mention the gas line (though I don’t know if this a fair comparison) for the potential of chained explosions like the one in Merrimack Valley [1]
Regardless, I think many are using the protests as an excuse to loot, and let off steam from the tensions of lockdown, in addition to its obvious main reason.
I'm sorry, but technology does not exist in a vacuum insulated from the rest of the universe. An implementation of any given application, its code, its infrastructure, and its services may be apolitical, but as a platform that is used for communication it is important that conversations be had about how these platforms are used. Perhaps you can bury your head in the sand and pretend that society is not falling apart at the seams due in large part to the spread of misinformation across any number of internet forums and social media services, but I think the rest of us may have an opinion that is inimical to ignoring the problem.
Twitter is definitely allowed to do this, legally, but seems like a pretty short-sited decision. There's no way that poking the bear like this is going to lead to anything except a more highly regulated platform.
> There's no way that poking the bear like this is going to lead to anything except a more highly regulated platform.
How? Attempts at regulating Twitter's ability to fact-check on their own privately owned platform would almost certainly fail a First Amendment challenge, and the Democratic House isn't gonna go a long with new laws to crack down on it either.
I’m now fully expecting republican mega donors coming together to trying to gain control of Tweeter as strategic asset. At $23B market cap it’s fairly easy target given there are already other major investors wanting to see Dorsey out. There already had been movement to buy off super cheap local radio stations and turn them in to conservative media at scale. Republican think tanks understands the immense value of building media channels and they have ton of money sloshing around. I can imagine Twitter with new CEO banning all tweets from Joe Biden because they are all deemed factually incorrect or misleading.
I hate to have anything even vaguely in common with Trump, but there is some sense in this.
The platforms have been shadow-banning (a particularly egregious policy), censoring, and otherwise shaping the content on their sites for a good while now.
At the same time they claim to be merely a 'pipe', conecting content producers, and consumers.
They can't have it both ways.
This 'executive order' is obviously a spiteful, and frankly, unbelievable-that-it's-legal move by this, man, but there is still a germ of truth to it.
For me, tagging content, but still making it generally available, is far less sinister than disappearing it, or only presenting it to profiled users, etc, etc.
Any modern pipe connecting consumers to producers is going to rely on some sort of matching algorithm to map the two. If they just used some sort of dumb FIFO -- user retention and advertising dollars would disappear.
Like it or not, there are political ramifications in that algorithm no matter how hard it tries to be neutral. Even platforms that stay 'hands off' are shaping content and it's almost impossible for them not to while retaining what we've come to expect from a modern platform.
I find it clever that Twitter is not deleting the tweets, but simply adding their opinions about it.
I don't know if you can call "censure" when your messages are still visible to the public, but the "editor-that-is-not-really-an-editor-but-sort-of" simply adds a banner saying "yeah, sure, right."
I can't wait for Trump to protest the flagging, and Twitter to respond that "flagging tweets while letting them visible" is just expressing their free speech. Surely Trump supporters are all in favor of free speech in a free country, right ?
yes we support free speech but if they are editiorializing then section 230 no longer applies to them. we should prosecute them for all the child exploitation and other crimes such as defamation on their platform
and these are all in the last 5 minutes. Selective enforcement doesn't put Twitter in a good light and doesn't seem like something that is in the best interest of their company. Also it is a bad look that their head of site integrity was saying vile stuff about the other half of America.
I really dislike Trump and will definitely vote against him. I don't get the overwhelming support for actions like this from Twitter.
This particular selective moderation is functionally equivalent to Twitter giving their backing to an actual, real-world riot and associated calls to murder cops whilst hiding behind Section 230 in order to avoid any liability. That seems... inadvisable, though obviously popular with the political faction most of their employees come from.
Twitter has become the example of right vs left. I don't think this tweet "glorifies" violence, but my opinion doesn't matter, only Twitter's. That herein is the problem. It would be interesting if Trump left twitter and made the journalists follow him to some other platform.
It's perfectly okay that you hold the opinion that the tweet didn't glorify violence. Your opinion is objectively wrong, but you're allowed to hold it.
Objectively - how is this advocating for violence? I have not been following this deeply but it seems like there is already serious violence occurring where dozens of people have been charged with probable felonies and buildings have been set on fire? Isn't it the responsibility of the local government to protect private property? It certainly seems like the situation is out of hand when a police station is burned to the ground.
The National guard has been dispatched in similar situations e.g. Rodney King riots. Ostensibly the reason for the deployment is to "ensure peace"
I understand Trump walks a thin line, but in my opinion he is very skilled at never literally advocating for violence or overtly racist actions.
I absolutely do not condone excessive force against anyone, but I fail to understand how this specific tweet is glorifying violence. I'm just trying to understand
The phrase Trump uses is a direct quote from a police chief who was explicitly giving the OK to his police officers to kill protesters.
Much as I hate the over-use of the term "dog whistle" this is the exact thing it means. It has plausible deniability, but to the intended audience it sends a clear message.
This might be helpful for the context. Mark Zuckerburg went to Fox News and Trump tweeted about how Facebook will not do the same. Zuckerburg also had Xi Jinping's book on his desk at some point.
This is great! Now we can have a real conversation about free speach, net neutrality and so on...hopefully Trump will get some some abusive dmca notifications as well. That would be gold!
Hiding the tweet instead of removing it seems like a good compromise to me, but I think this sets a pretty difficult precedent for Twitter. Once you start hiding tweets like this, you are implying that any high profile tweets you don't hide are not classified as glorifying violence. And every time you hide a tweet for glorifying violence, people who supported that tweet will show examples of other tweets which were not hidden to show that it should not have been hidden/removed. Seems like an impossible standard to uphold given the amount of people glorifying violence on their platform.
Too late for that. They have for many years. This is only the most visible form of control.
Corporations spend enormous amounts of money every year on exactly this. I believe lobbying politicians to take their side and the shaping of media coverage has had an even larger impact than hiding a tweet behind a click.
Hopefully they’ll just kick him and his acolytes off the platform. I’ve not met people so drunk on hero worship that they forgo facts and reason as I have when speaking with my trump supporting friends and family. And now he’s trying to sway elections by using misinformation? Openly using the pulpit of the highest office to spread patently false rumors? His fear mongering is harmful and has been violating Twitter’s terms for years but hey I guess it was good for business until recently... still good for them.
I think it's interesting how he's threatening China about HK on one hand, but on the other hand being a lot more literal and aggressive towards his own people.
He seems to be fairly aggressive against other countries:
> Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!
> To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE
He sounds more like a super villain from a comic than a president.
I think he does not know how to handle the moves being made by China to advance its territorial claims in this chaotic moment. That would explain Donald's domestic diversions.
China is pushing outward toward Hong Kong and Taiwan, in simultaneous fashion. In the former, we have the national security law. In the latter, we have new and uncamouflaged threats that China will use military force in Taiwan if it cannot control the island peacefully.
If Trump keeps our attention away from the China problem, it won't affect the stock market and we won't focus on its impacts on the world economy.
The over-reaction here is just completely fucking stupid.
The statement that juxtaposed "looting/shooting" is akin to juxtaposing a combination not unlike "drunk driving/car wrecks" or "where smoke/there's fire" and the like.
But yeah, okay, just fly into apoplexy because you find the man tasteless and rude.
Oh just great. The american left should stop pushing people away by acting like spoiled babies.
The idea that twitter's actions are going to lead to anything good is terribly misguided. The idea that acting out your collective trump derangement syndrome is helping is even more misguided.
Please keep Twitter employees in your prayers, it’s really idiotic of Jack Dorsey to put all the employees at risk.
I used to work at Uber in 1455 on Market St, right beside Twitter and every now and then we had to avoid going to office or come at odd times given the protests.
Nuclear Hot Take: Covid-19 is the first social media virus. We all know what the "facts and science" are now and much of it is from misinformation and lies spread on twitter.
Send all of the middle east into meltdown, as militants foment biblical anarchy, engage in AK-47 raids, snipe tanks with RPG attacks and indirect fire, and oh right, the beheadings, but woah, woah, woah.
Trumpy say pee pee and poo poo, and that's a no no.
It doesn't unequivocally say that at all. It can reasonably be interpreted as: "once people are willing to break the law and start looting, it's not long before there are also people shooting"
Really? "When the looting starts, the shooting starts"... in reference to THUGS (which we all know what he means by that euphemism). Can't tell if you're joking, but either way it's in poor taste.
Well, looting had already started hours before he'd posted this.
That being said - the President of the United States, just stated on one of the largest social media platforms used in the U.S., that citizens of the U.S. are now to be shot. From his words, immediately. It could even be viewed as "they should've already been shot at"
If you don't understand how this is glorifying violence, I don't think you can be made to.
I'm reading the tweet more like 'I will authorize the use of deadly force by the military against the looters'. Although I could see several interpretations
But I think the real thing people aren't able to come to grips with is how Trump uses the media in such a style that gives him all plausible deniability, builds outrage AND builds support. All at once.
Well, it is a private company's site, so I would assume the corporation. If I walked into a Starbucks and started being rude to patrons, I can easily be removed on a whim. Just because it is a place that encourages social interactions does not mean that they have to allow interactions they do not like. I do not see the difference here.
Twitter is used for formal announcements because Trump himself has decided that it is a good place to make them, not because Twitter has placed themselves in that position. Granted, they make like being in that position and it probably benefits them greatly due to the increased ad revenue and engagement, but they can also make the decision that his presence is not worth the vitriol it generates. He can easily choose another avenue (Facebook, Reddit, News media, etc) to make announcements if it is no longer the best choice for him.
After leaked recording with Joe Biden promising 1000000000 USD to Ukraine for helping his son with the criminal investigation, I doubt many people will vote for him.
So many blockbuster movies... no more ads for those. Oh, I see it’s an official. Let’s see what violence means. Is encouraging people to oppose dictators encouraging violence?
So people not liking the head of the country talking about having people shot by the military is "taking themselves way too seriously"? Only one side is bringing death and lethal action into the discussion, not sure why you mentioned "both sides".
The US president threatened to send the military into a state to shoot looters among a huge, out of control protest that started over a police officer murdering an innocent citizen. Who the fuck is taking this "too seriously" at whom we should "laugh"?
The comment was directed at Jack and Donald, two people taking themselves far too seriously.
However, I am willing to extend the scope of the guffaw to the comment bombers on HN who, themselves, might be staring too hard at the bug in the script, rather than stepping back some distance to consider the architecture.
May peace, wisdom, and a great weekend find all, despite the nitwits.
Twitter was 'kind of' dying before Trump. Now its a pretty nice place with people to follow (Some sort of network effect?). But its too far from being open, requires phone number, lacks 'RSS' and etc.
I wish he moved to Mastodon. Decentralized, open source. It only needs users
Imagine all the devs and supporters of Mastodon trying hard to come up with a pretext why it is okay to block him from the network via technical changes.
It's pretty established that individual Mastodon nodes are able to impose the rules they want and network with whichever Mastodon nodes they want. And many popular Mastodon nodes have stricter rules than Twitter, so it would hardly be surprising if they shunned someone who broke rules on Twitter.
This how Donald Trump won in the first place. People just won't learn. They can continue bubbling themselves by losing the next election too and get shocked.
This seems like a dubious foundation for Twitter to start with. If Trump controls the National Guard there is a definite public interest in knowing when he is likely to deploy the National Guard. It'd be headline news after the fact; it should be telegraphed beforehand.
Trump might be bluffing, but Twitter can't possibly know.
It's interesting Twitter finally started taking a stand in Trump's last year as president, I wonder if it's because they hope he'll get ousted and they won't have to deal with the backlash from him for too long. Or it's just a marketing ploy, perhaps customer count was falling.
I'm not trying to valorize Jack, but why is it so hard to believe they just finally feel some level of responsibility? While you should always keep an eye out for more banal motivations, at some point one can only tolerate so much.
I agree that Jack is well-intentioned, but I think he's making a huge mistake by choosing a half measure. Twitter's current policy allows Trump to claim he's being silenced while simultaneously allowing him to get his message out to his Twitter followers. It's the worst of both worlds.
Twitter should either let him tweet whatever he wants or ban him.
At this point I feel like Twitter is _trying_ to push Trump's buttons. 4 years of not censoring Trump's tweets and now all of a sudden they have an ethical obligation? Which straw broke the camel's back?
"Lets spread outrage to lure poor people to go out in the middle of a pandemic and maybe then we could also justify to shoot down some of them also as a bonus. Either the hate, or the virus, will take them."
Is this the plan?
This looks more and more like than if the goal would be moving from saving most people possible to culling people in the undesired groups and focusing in saving people in the correct groups. First targeting the more gullible and vulnerable to make them to try unsafe remedies (that only really ignorant people would fall for), then telling people that masks are useless or harassing people that uses it, and now this.
Communities are dumb by default, but are composed of smart people. I would love to see Spike Lee, or Whoopi Goldberg, or Michelle Obama, or Jay-Z to ask people to be smarter than that and keep themselves chill, cold thinking and safe. Going out in a rioting mass at this moment only does a favor to racist people. Don't fall for that.
Twitter's problem is that Trump wants to pick a fight, and there's no good way to avoid it.
Trump's base is not on Twitter. Fact checking tweets provides more grist for the outrage mill, and the media which his base consumes amplifies the conflict and not the substance. So the tweets will get worse and worse.
It's impossible to give Twitter good advice, it's a horrible position to be in.
They should honestly just cross the rubicon and suspend his account. Playing both sides like they have will only prolong the conflict. Trump and the outrage mill alike will still find things to interpret as fighting until Twitter just pulls the switch.
Trump chose Twitter as his platform; they never chose him. His tweets have been central to his political presence and his ability to immediately alter the country's (and world's) discourse about current events. It would be humiliating for him to lose that platform, because he embraced it voluntarily.
Except it wasn't glorifying violence. Like at all. He was not saying that if looting continues then police would start shooting, that's a twisted and strained interpretation.
He was stating simply that looting begets violence, meaning that the looting must be stopped before things become more violent. It is a call to action to those who appear content to let the looting run rampant as if it's somehow OK or justified.
In such an escalation both protestors and counter protestors would be shooting, so bringing the situation under control quickly is in the best interest of the protestors and the community as a whole.
It is a clear example of the dangers of allowing Twitter to moderate when such an egregiously bad interpretation of Trump's tweet triggers moderation.
Trump seems to think Twitter is a public service within his domain, rather than a private company with its own agenda & governance. I'm glad Twitter is responding to him, I respect them for the position they're taking.
In addition to his executive order [1], Trump has threatened to delete his Twitter account [2].
As an elected official and part of a giant bureaucracy the US president has a right to make proclamations, and the media has the right to criticize, refute and contradict. Where this gets delicate is with a person who holds enormous power and is literally leading the administration. People want to hear what this leader has to say, and censoring/hiding/second guessing what this person says is arguably undemocratic.
Trump is irrelevant here, it could be any elected official or administration leader. Pompeo or the US military could be considered to 'glorify violence' with their statements, does this give Twitter the right to hide their tweets? This is a free speech issue at the heart of democracy, and Twitter keep overstepping their S230 remit.
But twitter is a private business or isn't it? Twitter users must agree to Twitter TOS isn't it?
Your freedom of speech is also Twitter's freedom of speech and if you don't like that someone uses their freedom to calls you on your bullshit - then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .
POTUS has whitehouse.gov if he thinks that private business does not let him say what he want's to say.
Section 230 'hands off' service provision rather than editorializing is the issue here as well as rights to free speech whoever you are.
The fact Trump enrages most people is a separate distraction. This is a downward slope to more censorship by large unelected global corporations and their political proclivities and goals.
I don't think it's fair to call this censorship because of the amount of transparency twitter is showing. Something like shadow banning people is probably inappropriate most of the time, but now that trump signed the eo twitter is responsible for the content on their platform, so they've got to protect themselves from legal liability.
No, a private company putting up a warning the that President of the United States is advocating the execution of protesters for looting is not censorship.
I don't have time to explain to someone for the umpteenth time how this is different, and even within the "well golly Twitter is a big company, maybe it's a public utility" argument, the president is a much more unique position and situation than the average user.
The President could talk about how he thinks we should execute our fellow citizens, or call our political rivals skanks, or tell us that Coronavirus will magically disappear by Easter, or that hydroxychloroquine is a miracle cure, all by standing up his own microblog platform and blast it from S3 or Azure. He could hold his press conferences and bullshit to the whole nation, or set up email distros... all things he has done or could do.
Please, for the love of society and sanity, stop throwing around 1984 references every time someone shuts someone else up. Read the goddamn book.
Exactly. Not to mention that what Trump tweeted about has long been the single workable solution to widespread looting.
Protests are fine. Mayhem and larceny, however, are not. Violence against lawbreakers is absolutely enshrined as acceptable, and that isn't going to change for the foreseeable future. There is nothing whatsoever wrong with Trump's tweet, certainly nothing overriding the First Amendment.
Further, Twitter is absolutely in the wrong to portray itself as passing some kind of absolute judgement on the President's views, and in fact that it is above the Presidency. It is NOT a neutral platform.
Twitter must be a victim of the toilet paper shortage because they just wiped their ass with Trump’s executive order.[0]
Jokes and politics aside, is this a smart business move on Twitter's part? I'm curious how they envision this playing out. I'm really not sure what I expect to happen; Trump may be a fool, but he's stubborn and persistent. There are also politicians on both sides of the fence who are at odds with social media right now--and often Silicon Valley in general. (See: encryption)
I have no doubt Twitter put a lot of thought into this. Does anyone have insight into what Twitter expects to happen? Also, what would they expect to happen if they opted not to label/hide/whatever some of Trump's tweets?
Part of the reason people hate FB and don't use it, is that their leadership is afraid to make risky decisions for the benefit of their users and the quality of their platform.
He's not moving anywhere and any Twitter controversy gets more people to tweet about that controversy... Until he forces a significant part of his followers to leave, it's not a bad situation for Twitter to be in.
> Until he forces a significant part of his followers to leave, it's not a bad situation for Twitter to be in.
That would force them to stop complaining, and there is a lot of value, and money to be made, in whining all the time and playing the victim constantly. So it won't happen.
People on Twitter are mostly not voting for Trump. Trump voter demographics are roughly white male rural middle-income evangelical non-college-educated over-50, and this does not overlap much with Twitter user demographics (80% millennials).
So Trump has nothing to lose on Twitter, so he can't lose. The goal for his tweets is to make a big story, and Twitter intervening makes it an even bigger one.
It does impact the stock, and that's likely a part of the reason it took Twitter so long to take even the smallest action against his violations of their rules. The President is using the threat of allowing social media companies to be held liable for their content, as retaliation against Twitter. The stock was down 4.5% yesterday and is trading lower in the pre-market session.
To be honest I actually think this has a lot more to do with the fact that Dorsey has been an absent CEO. The only person who really has the authority to pick this fight is Dorsey and he hasn't been engaged enough in running twitter to care. This was observed through all sorts of side-effects where Twitter was basically failing to innovate for the past few years. Now the activists got involved and forced Dorsey into actually running the company he's finally in a position to pay attention and act on these things.
Hiding = processing, so Twitter generates new content by filtering parts of the original content. Therefore, Twitter is a publisher and should be held responsible for all of its content. This should have been a no-brainer.
What kind of utterly ridiculous policy is hiding posts for “glorifying violence?” So if I write a post about the Bangladeshi independence war, saying how great it was that we beat those damn Pakistanis, my post would get hidden?
So if I say it was great that India came in with guns blazing in 1971, killing thousands of Pakistani soldiers to liberate Bangladesh, that is a view that should be censored?
Because violence is one of the fundamental political and sociological forces in the world, and preventing people from talking about it in the abstract--as distinguished from targeted threats of violence to specific people--is completely off the reservation. As a Bangladeshi, I have a country because people like my uncle went to war and killed a bunch of Pakistanis. I bet Polish people are glad that Americans gunned down millions of Germans in the 1940s. Steven Spielberg's "Munich" was an amazing account of Operation Wrath of God--glorifying the assassination of terrorists that killed 11 members of Israel's 1972 Olympic team. Violence is often a proper subject of glorification.
In practice, I strongly suspect the Twitter isn't actually applying the policy as written. Instead, they're applying the policy selectively, based on ideological biases.
So is twitter going to hide tweets that have incited and glorified the riots in the first place? I haven’t seen consequences for the antifa and DSA accounts that are responsible for these riots. It certainly seems like Twitter has a double standard.
Oh, but it is. It is when the prominent troll is also POTUS.
You and Twitter may want it to not be politics... But unfortunately both doing nothing and doing something are political moves by Twitter HQ, I'm afraid.
Sounds like maybe you should take the hint. It's not "taking sides" to point out that you're glorifying violence if you as the president are threatening to deploy military force against protestors.
I've done my own share of protesting (living in Eastern Europe forces you to do that sometimes) and we never resorted to looting. If we had done so I would have expected the powers that be to take some counter-measures that would have involved more than strong verbal reprimands, yes.
He attacks people on Twitter and pretends he can literally do what he wants without consequences — whether from the government and rule of law or in this case, a private company.
You’re getting downvoted for a fair call out. There’s a deeper rot in this country where a select group believes freedom and fairness is something they can own and define, screw reality or objective fact. Anything else is biased and a conspiracy paid for by Soros, Obama, Hillary, Muslims, Hispanics, and the “swamp”.
If Twitter sucess to fight for the truth without exposing bias they will be the most remarkable heroes of the 2001 century and could begin a whole change of behavior of websites regarding fake news and hate speech
That's fun. Twitter did shut up foreign presidents a couple of times before, but I guess this is the first time with the president of USA. That's ballsy as fuck. Impertinently, even. Totally not ok to do, but fun to watch.
censoring the commander in chief is an active act of aggression against the american people. not only should we repeal section 230, we should view twitter as a hostile power.
we should study twitters deep ties to the saudis and china. and jack should be investigated. they also should no longer be protected by section 230 and therefore should be prosecuted for the child exploitation they host
Don't you have press conferences in your country? You know, where a leader or political figure can express their policy decisions without having to abide by private website ToS.
section 230 was a special provision that was passed to protect the fledgling internet 25 years ago. i don’t think it’s crazy to think it needs updating or repeal.
I don't see the problem, just reject the special privs for twitter and treat it like a publisher. It should be fairly simple, either you do not moderate at all (and your not responsible for whatever people say on your platform) or you moderate and therefore you publish. It aint that hard. Twitter clearly moderates, that's fine, so it should be treated as a publisher, not as a public 'facility'. Simple.
Or perhaps we should take a step back and design a new set of rules that can allow Twitter and other companies to moderate without having to be responsible for the content. I feel like there’s a false dichotomy being portrayed here that’s unnecessary.
This kind of logic makes life hopelessly complex. It's a very simple rule that does not need 'special adjustments'. Just stick to the rules we agreed upon and face the facts. Twitter is now a publisher. You cannot bend the rules everytime you don't agree with them.
So all platforms that have moderators (reddit, 4chan, FB, etc) are considered publishers now? What would actually be defined as a platform in your model?
4chan hardly moderates. If Twitter wants to cater to people that want some kind of filtering just allow those people to enable a filter. Problem solved.
A platform should not moderate at all. Only remove clearly illegal stuff. For the rest, offer filters for people that want to have them (or better, design a protocol: <content-label type="trump">) so it can be built into browsers.
That way you can have both: free speech and optional filtering. And you can be a platform instead of a publisher.
(edit: I added some elaboration on a possible solution )
In fairness, Trump's tweets are not about actually doing anything, they are more about getting votes. So arguing the feasibility of suggestions outlined in a Trump tweet kind of misses the point.
No. This man holds the office of the POTUS. There are certain responsibilities that come with it. The officeholder cannot make deadly threats publicly and expect everyone to just shrug it off.
It was a message, directly to law enforcement, that he thinks it’s okay for them to shoot protestors so long as there is looting. I can’t see how anyone would see that as anything other than a crime against humanity
No, I don't think it was. A plain reading of the quote does not direct anyone, to do, anything. It is an observation. Just like it was your observation (and opinion) that it said something different.
The questions are this: Who is right? Who decides that?
I don't know why you're getting down voted. Trump's words are a quote of someone who believed that "... it’s okay for them to shoot protestors so long as there is looting."
Trump is very much saying he believes looter should be shot.
I think it’s a threat directed at private gun-owning citizens that would be willing to take the law into their own hands. I’m old enough to remember the L.A. riots, where the police essentially peace’d out and let the resulting storm “work” itself out. It was God-awful for everyone involved, from the looters to the business owners to the innocent bystanders watching idly by.
Trump is warning the looters that they are taking their lives in their own hands, not just against the police, but against other private citizens protecting their property.
That’s a bubble of reality distortion surrounding the public facing messaging of the man. That is not the expectation for the Office of the President. He won. He got to the top office.
This is my comment on the other HN thread about this:
> The phrase was used by Miami's police chief, Walter Headley, in 1967, when he addressed his department's "crackdown on ... slum hoodlums," according to a United Press International article from the time.
> Headley, who was chief of police in Miami for 20 years, said that law enforcement was going after “young hoodlums, from 15 to 21, who have taken advantage of the civil rights campaign. ... We don't mind being accused of police brutality."
> The National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence found that Headley's remarks and policing policies had been a significant factor in sparking the riots.
> Headley died four months after the riots. The Times in its obituary noted his policies had caused "growing resentment" among black Miami residents.
Our President fully understands the gravity of those words. This is what he wanted to say. This is what he meant. This is what he believes. This is WHO HE IS.
I think that you’re right about Trump’s motive. It’s all a PR game to keep him in power, even and especially when he says nasty stuff. If you try to argue with it as if it was reason then it will be like punching a cloud.
Under that mental model, it’s hard to predict how this will play out. I don’t know how this Twitter action will affect the psychology of his supporters. It will be interesting to watch!
Looting is a reasonable form of protest? George Floyd’s death is horrific, and I pray justice is served, but communities cannot be destroyed in pursuit of that justice.
Some of this reminds me of Koreatown during the LA riots. If authorities don’t step in, militia’s will rise up to defend their families and livelihood. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Los_Angeles_riots#Destruc... I think it’s reasonable that a community would defend itself when attacked, but when the National Guard is purposed for that protection, why shouldn’t they be called in?
Using the dog-whistle racist term "thugs" (in all caps, no less) and proclaiming that you are going to shoot people is escalation of violence. Notice not one other public leader is talking about shooting people-- in fact, the mayor and other local officials are expressing empathy for the rioters and pleading with them for peace.
Trump knows this language will only provoke people and make the situation worse (or he ought to, and certainly any competent, relevant advisor would). He absolutely is glorifying violence.
It's long past time to regulate social media like a phone company, natural monopoly, or common carrier. The DOJ needs to break them up for violating the public trust, then limit their ability to refuse service to law abiding citizens moving into the future. Government has every right to force companies to be neutral platforms through regulation. It's time to revoke/enforce section 230, especially the "good faith" clause.
Anyone who says that "Twitter is a private company that can refuse anyone" has never ran an actual company. There are plenty of rules against companies discriminating. That argument is the same argument used by Democrats against the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 which a Republican majority congress passed (82% of republicans voted yes).
Remember when this forum was up in arms about NET NEUTRALITY? Remember when the big bad ISP was going to censor you? Remember when all the sites went black because thats what the ISPs would do? Now the sites that went black are all committing the censoring. All the sites that went black track every movement you make online. Who needs DNS when you have outgoing link tracking and like buttons on every page.
Social media is about to be regulated. Its about time.
Section 230 lets providers like social media companies publish user-generated content without having to review the content first. For example, if you libel someone on Twitter, that is your problem, not Twitter's problem. If you take away Section 230 protections, social media as we know it probably dies. Instead of a real-time pulse on what people are thinking, you'll just get what looks like the letters to the editor section of a newspaper. People who are already celebrities will not be censored, but you will be because you're too small to be worth the risk of being liable for. That means any grassroots political movement, no matter what side of the ideology spectrum it falls on, has no place to start. Be careful what you wish for.
I'll also point out that if Section 230 protections are removed, Donald Trump loses more than anyone. Nobody is going to carry his messages if they can be sued for their content. He'll have to make his own Twitter. His press conferences won't be broadcast live because the liability is too high. It is hilarious to me that Donald Trump is probably the largest beneficiary of Section 230 and he's the one that wants to remove it.
Section 230 is what lets the little guy exercise his or her right to free expression. It gives them a platform where they have an opportunity to let their opinion rise to the top. It saves them from having to buy their own printing press and build their own audience. Nobody is going to buy you a printing press if they're liable for everything you say. So what happens is you don't get to talk anymore.
Twitter policy:
"We start from a position of assuming that people do not intend to violate our Rules. Unless a violation is so egregious that we must immediately suspend an account, we first try to educate people about our Rules and give them a chance to correct their behavior. We show the violator the offending Tweet(s), explain which Rule was broken, and require them to remove the content before they can Tweet again. If someone repeatedly violates our Rules then our enforcement actions become stronger. This includes requiring violators to remove the Tweet(s) and taking additional actions like verifying account ownership and/or temporarily limiting their ability to Tweet for a set period of time. If someone continues to violate Rules beyond that point then their account may be permanently suspended."
Somewhere a counter was just incremented. It's going to be amusing if Twitter management simply lets the automated system do its thing. At some point, after warnings, the standard 48-hour suspension will trigger. Twitter management can simply simply say "it is our policy not to comment on enforcement actions".
They've suspended the accounts of prominent people many times before.[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_suspensions
I would imagine that accounts of "important" people are handled personally rather than by automated algorithm. As Jack Dorsey points out in this[0] Joe Rogan podcast, the reported tweets by public or algorithm are manually checked at some point.
Approx. 4000 employees of Twitter all around the world. Every day 100k (edit: 100M) tweets are sent. The reports of tweets that violate the platform policy are (reported by public) enter a queue. These are then inspected by personnel hired by Twitter (number varies proportionally to the scale reports in the queue).
The personnel then go through a series of steps to take an action such as making you verify again, delete those tweets, suspending the account, or in the last resort ban the user permanently.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZCBRHOg3PQ
> Every day 100k tweets are sent
When I worked there we handled about ~6k tweets/sec all day every day. (~500,000,000 tweets/day)
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Only 100k/day? That sounds quite low.
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Better leveraging Twitter's reporting feature is probably the most neutral way to solve this.
When a tweet is deemed response-worthy, they should post the report numbers. Value in numbers shields them in many ways and could legitimize their actions as a neutral party. Then, if they miss something, they can simply say there weren't enough reports. This will then empower the feature in the future.
I suggest this as active Reddit moderator with a community of 40,000+ subscribers who regularly has to enforce rules and uses auto-mod to help manage reports and shares that with the community.
-----------------------
You can report tweets for:
(1) Being not interested in it (you just get redirected to a mute or block button)
(2)It's suspicious or spam
---> The account is fake
---> Includes a link to a potentially harmful or phishing site
---> Hashtags are unrelated
---> Uses the reply function to spam
---> Something else
(3) It's abusive or harmful
---> It's disrespectful
---> Includes private information
---> Includes targeted harassment
---> It directs hate against a protected category (eg race, religions, gender, orientation, disability)
---> Threatening violence
---> They're encouraging self-harm or suicide
(4) It's misleading about politics or civic events
---> It has false information about how to vote
---> It intends to suppress or intimidate someone from voting
---> It misrepresents it's affiliation or impersonates an official
(5) It expresses intentions of self-harm or suicide.
-----------------------
It's pretty good but I would suggest the very simple following updates:
- Updating the main issue (It's abusive or harmful) to (It's abusive or encourages violence or destruction of property)
- Adding a sub-issue to (It's misleading about politics or civic events) with (A political official is supporting false or unsubstantiated information as definitive truth.)
- Adding a sub-issue to (It's suspicious, spam, or false) with (It's supporting false or unsubstantiated information as definitive truth.)
- Adding chevron icons (>) as a visual cue that each main reporting issue has many sub-issues
This doesn’t work for political tweets. Look at replies to even Trumps benign tweets and you will see 50% of the population would hate other guy no matter what they tweet. Every single tweet of Joe Biden and Trump will get flagged no matter what they were tweeting.
It depends on who and what. And it's the inconsistency that will fuel the critics.
They didn't suspend Spike Lee who caused direct harm to a private individual who happened to share a name with an infamous individual: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/spike-lee-settles-twi...
The article you linked to was over 8 years ago at this point - it was years closer to the founding of Twitter than it is to the present day. I don't think that can be considered relevant to their current enforcement regime.
Because suspending Spike Lee would have required someone at Twitter to make that decision, and they're not going to do that. But will leap at the chance for Trump. It's been a clear double standard for years.
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> Somewhere a counter was just incremented. It's going to be amusing if Twitter management simply lets the automated system do its thing. At some point, after warnings, the standard 48-hour suspension will trigger. Twitter management can simply simply say "it is our policy not to comment on enforcement actions".
I wouldn't be surprised if Twitter has exempted Trump's accounts from all automated moderation. However, I'm half expecting them to ban him about twelve seconds after he leaves office.
I would never let a machine automate any decision regarding Trump's account, considering that any action would be scrutinized by the entire world and could have massive repercussions...
So definitely not "a counter incremented somewhere". This is a political decision.
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> However, I'm half expecting them to ban him about twelve seconds after he leaves office.
At the top management level, they are probably weighing the possibility that he never leaves office (a plausible scenario at this point), and how that scenario affects their bottom line.
They probably don’t want US institutions to dissolve into full-blown autocracy... But on the other hand, if that were to happen, then it would be better for the stock price if they hadn’t burned all bridges with the new leader for life.
You can bet that Zuckerberg is making the same calculus - except that he seems to have chosen a side. Facebook is no longer pretending to care about preventing autocracy. They are betting on the GOP coup succeeding, and are building bridges accordingly.
Note: no amount of downvoting by the alt-right fringe lurking here will make the facts go away. Downvote away since you don’t have the courage to write down and justify your true beliefs. You are an embarrassment to the technology community. You are the spineless, petty, cowardly foundation upon which all autocracies are built.
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> about twelve seconds after he leaves office.
which will be in 18 years
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very naive to think that was a counter flagging POTUS tweet.
following the wikipedia article I found
https://www.avclub.com/twitter-releases-statement-confirming...
"Twitter releases statement confirming it'll never ban Donald Trump"
The headline is misleading. The "statement" is a Twitter thread, and it doesn't say anything about banning or not banning everybody. The body of the article concedes that it only "heavily implies" they'll never ban him. And that was three years ago. Some stuff has happened since then.
Even Jack Dorsey's account was suspended in 2016 mistakenly.
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Maybe. But there's probably a business model out there this is simply a Twitter clone that waits for the Trump account to move there, and bang, instant success.
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Since Twitter and Trump seem intent on getting into a pissing match (Trump a bit more so), what's the worst each side could do?
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Useful to know that this specific selective application of editorial bias by Twitter, was after Trump's executive order [1] on preventing online censorship of free speech.
>"... Twitter now selectively decides to place a warning label on certain tweets in a manner that clearly reflects political bias. As has been reported, Twitter seems never to have placed such a label on another politician’s tweet. .."
When a car manufacture represents their 18-wheeler fleet as a 'passenger cars' -- we understand that this is a lie and demand corrective action.
When twitter manufactures opinions and hides them as 'public forum discourse' -- we are supposed to be ok with that?
I would be ok if their manufactured opinions are displayed to paid subscribers only, who want to care what Jack Dorsey thinks about President Trump, obamagate or Brexit.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-or...
How is this "political bias"?
Is everything that disagrees with Trump now "political bias"?
I'm not even from the US and I know what "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" means and what outcome it envisions.
> When twitter manufactures opinions and hides them as 'public forum discourse' -- we are supposed to be ok with that?
What are these opinions? Can you speak them out loud? Which opinions are being hidden? Can you write down the message of these opinions in plain words?
Could you write down these opinions as if they were your own, without violating HN's house rules?
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This is amazing news, and I hope Twitter adopts this policy for all rules violations. Much better than deleting tweet or banning accounts, this lets people decide what they want to see. (Except for obvious spammers etc. which should probably be banned.)
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", ...).
If we're being honest, Twitter is basically a machine that glorifies violence. It rewards it at the platform and algorithmic level.
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.
Twitter's design is fundamentally broken beyond repair.
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.
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I'd be curious to know a little bit more about what exactly you're referencing here. This does not in any way describe my experience with Twitter, though I understand that's a single anecdote.
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It is not so much the platform as the general internet medium. It lends itself to narcissism. Humans are more gratuitous when speaking to another in person. More attentive to inflections, reactions, emotions, etc.
They made clear when they introduced this that the “view tweet anyways” approach applies only when the public interest for an account of a public official outweighs the significant harm they consider to be done by allowing what you describe for all users in general. I don’t expect they intend to change their mind on that.
Most websites hide NSFW content behind a click. That's good manners. Why shouldn't Twitter?
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I'm not actually against the idea, but arbitrary blocklists would accelerate bubbling people away from anyone who could possibly think differently from them, which has its own issues.
Radicalism and inciting to violence should be bubbled not amplified.
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You can globally mute individual words: https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/19/21144097/twitter-mute-twe...
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.
Youre right. Before twitter took this step I was unable to decide whether to read the president's tweets. Every morning I am forced by twitter to read trumps tweets. Thank goodness this is no longer the case. /s
This is the bit I don't get. I regularly ignore the utterances of all sorts of people I'm not interested in hearing from. Is it really that hard?
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Dorsey has explicitly stated that because user-defined filters will lead people to remain blissfully unaware of ideas that challenge their own, he does not want Twitter to follow that path.
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.
We can hope Twitter adopts and enforces policies equally across the board, but they won't and I don't think they can either.
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.
>people literally organizing violent riots and destruction of property on Twitter right now
>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"
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Rioting, looting, and even torching buildings is not the close to the same level of violence as police killings, driving down protestors, or threatening people with guns. Tweets endorsing or even glorifying the former don’t come close to be as dangerous as tweets excusing the latter. Don’t pretend like these two are equivalent.
It’s possible to have bias without editorialising, as far as I know Twitter only hides, deletes or bans. It doesn’t edit, the fact checking is appending.
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> But if you're on the other side of the transgender debate
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?
Twitter don't ban for mere misgendering; anti trans Twitter has been left alone to harass for years, although I believe Glinner finally got banned.
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I believe twitter already does this through shared block lists
Still waiting for them to tackle the Ayatollah: https://twitter.com/Khamenei_tv/status/1264541220006739968.
Mythic Quest showed us a solution :)
The neutral companies, such as utilities, online hosting or financial providers serve nearly everyone with little objections - they defer to the law rather than any internal policies. The more selective companies such as newspapers and TV channels are expected to restrict who can get published.
By representing itself both as an open platform and as a company with progressive values, Twitter has put itself into an awkward in-between spot and is bound to create such controversies.
Online hosting or financial providers have never been "neutral."
Twitter has never been a "Utility" in the way that you may be imagining it to be.
Yes, of course - but - it is becoming so.
Twitter and Facebook are starting to approach the threshold of 'public good' wherein at least, there would need to be rules or regulations.
If TW and FB did not actually regulate their content - we would see this exposed much more quickly. Foreign/Russian interference in elections would immediately force Congress to act, there's just too much power.
Aside from the ambiguities of 'how and what to police' we do have the added complexity of the nature of 'large, ostensibly public platforms' managed by private companies.
The argument is that it's getting there. It's the leading platform for public debate in the US right now. Journalists spend their days refreshing their Twitter feed, so the effect isn't just in the size of Twitter's platform but its influence.
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A number of countries are directly demanding they remove content that is considered "terrorist" or in some way an incitement to violence. Realistically, they have no choice but to have policies that forbid any such content on the platform.
France, for example, recently passed a law demanding that various illegal content be removed in 1 hour or 24 hours, or face enormous fines: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52664609
Where did Twitter represent itself as a company with progressive values?
They fucked this up so badly.
They could have just banned him and said "It's a free country and they felt like it."
Instead they're trying to high-road, and it's.. such a mistake.
The high-road leads to where we actually want to be.
I was thinking about what you said in the other thread about trolls, and I think you're off-base. Trolls aren't zen master ego busters, they're the self-hating jerks they seem to be. The "zen master ego buster" story is just another layer of the ego trip.
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It's a risk. It's not a mistake. I appreciate they are trying to thread a very difficult needle. I'd argue democracy's continued survival is predicated on being able to both have a flattened playing field where every voice is accessible and like-minded people can find each other easily (what the Internet has enabled so far), and a way of inoculating people against lies intended for malicious manipulation (which the Internet has also enabled). Getting there, if we can, will be messy and ugly. Failing will be fatal to the idea that people can effectively self-govern.
We'll, they're certainly escalating. I don't think that Trump actually wants to shut Twitter down, nor does he want to get banned there. The banning would rile up his base, but it would do so at the expense of his primary channel of communication. This action puts the ball back in Trump's court and asks him how far he wants to actually go.
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Fact-checking obvious lies is a "progressive value"? Wow, that really shows how bad things have gotten.
It has as least as much to do with not fact-checking the claims of people you agree with. Politics is replete with lies. Remember "all 17 intelligence agencies"?
The idea of neutral just-calling-balls-and-strikes fact-checking in politics is a fantasy. The only thing that actually works is debate.
By choosing what to fact-check you can make any agenda. In practical terms there really isn't an "objective truth discoverable by journalism".
I'm pro slander tho, twitter should be able to pin a tweet in every account saying trump has small hands. Americans in general don't see how great chicanery is for a country.
If the lies are obvious, why do they need "fact checking"?
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Very few statements are entirely true or entirely false. So let's not pretend like "fact-checking" is an ideal.
Whoever is doing the "fact-checking" wields great power that can very easily be abused or subverted, similar to the ministry of truth in 1984. This is what people are concerned about.
And while that is clearly an extreme, even a small bias in the fact-check is greatly amplified given the number of users on Twitter/Facebook/etc.
Mail-in ballots have been linked to voting fraud in the past. See the 2017 Dallas City Council and the 2018 North Carolina congressional race for example.
Maybe if twitter wants to start fact-checking Trump, don't start with him tweeting that water is wet.
> utilities
It's natural monopoly and highly regulated.
> online hosting
There was several hoster that ban pornography and white supremacist hosting content.
> financial providers
Templeton fired the lady that was choking her dog while calling the police because an African American man was bird watching. He also asked her to leash her dog.
It's a private company. I don't believe Trump is under a protected class to get special perks.
One can also check easily-discoverable recent US military policy https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23347453 to discover that those who think these things through don't condone "looting ⊃ shooting".
Bonaparte was a fan of the "whiff of grape" https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurrection_royaliste_du_13_v... but we all know how that ended.
Isn't it a long standing thing that the US Military use of force rules in warzones are generally more restrictive than the policies for use on their fellow citizens by police back home?
Yes
One obvious example of this is simply ammo. Military bullets don't expand as much as bullets available to cops or civilians. A military bullet is explicitly not allowed to be an expanding hollow point which really messes you up.
There are all sorts of international agreements on not using certain types of things in war - types of bullets are no exception.
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This is a very confusing post if you have followed American wars over the last 50 years.
Do you have any idea of the level of misery inflected abroad? How can that even be compared?
Doesn't that mostly have to do with the amount of training, responsibility, leadership etc. that comes with military hierarchy? It can still get pretty bad (coverup and/or violence wise), but it seems that at least they have some sense of the relationship between violent actions and their consequences.
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Not really. See FM-3-19.15, "Civil Disturbance Operations"[1]
[1] https://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-19-15.pdf
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I don't think anyone was arguing that Trump was someone that "thinks these things through"
I can't tell who needs who more in this symbiotic relationship.
And here I was thinking the same thing about Facebook and Republicans.
Good, and frankly they should have been doing this sort of thing sooner.
Would you feel the same if Twitter were purchased by Rupert Murdoch and Twitter hid tweets that Fox considered not true?
Remember that it's only a matter of time until ownership changes or another larger platform gains traction, perhaps even one owned by a foreign government with significantly different ideas of what is "true", IE TikTok.
The issue here is not "considered not true" but promoting illegal violence which I think Murdoch also probably avoids.
I'm guessing they had been holding back until the campaigning season started. Now they get maximum impact.
His feed has been getting worse recently, and the publicity of his misbehavior has been escalating. Maybe he's acting out more because it's an election year. Bit of a chicken/egg issue that I wouldn't want to get stuck defending either side.
But the fact of the matter is that the Citizens United ruling grants private corporations the right to free speech. He can continue to use Twitter, but they've literally got the right to campaign against him, editorialize, shadowban, or straight up ban him. He could choose to follow the site's rules, or run off to Gab. But he's doing it for attention and his tantrums and Twitter's non-enforcement actions are getting him a lot of that.
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End corporate involvement in politics! Oh wait... Its okay if they attack republicans. /s
I'd like to see a system like this: if your tweet is blocked for a reason, all you have to do is find a tweet that's worse than it is for that same reason, that is not already blocked. If the moderators agree then yours is unblocked and the other's is. Maybe disputes with the moderators' decision can be public, so people can see which way the wind blows with the particular social media platform.
Lots of people here will propose ways of gaming this system, such as setting up fake accounts where they make worse tweets. I don't want to pre-argue with them by making this post really long though. I think that starting with this design it's probably possible to tweak it to encourage honesty.
Leaving aside the logistical and gamification reasons why this would be a bad idea – you’d also be creating an incentive structure for people espousing marginally offensive content to actively seek out and engage with more extreme positions? It would result in radicalization, not moderation, even if it worked as intended.
Twitter is well within the rights to do this, but I have seen tweets from blue check marks essentially calling for violence and Twitter didn't remove them. So, does that mean Twitter actually -supports- those view points now? If Twitter is going to police people, it needs to be across the board. Otherwise it's just a weird censorship that is targeting one person and can easily be seen as political.
Everyone is applauding this because they hate Trump, but take a step back and see the bigger picture. This could backfire in serious ways, and it plays to Trump's base's narrative that the mainstream media and tech giants are colluding to silence conservatives (and maybe there could even be some truth to that.) I know the Valley is an echo chamber, so obviously no one is going to ever realize this.
Erm, what? This is just not true, and is a false dichotomy. Moderation is hard. Always has been. Stuff will slip through the cracks.
POTUS has the most popular (and currently most controversial - note, that's _controversial_ not _extreme_ or some other morph) so it's easy to see why Twitter are on top of it. Other blue-checked accounts, whilst more "important" than unverified, just simply don't compare to the importance and prevalance of POTUS' account.
If most of the mistakes happen in one direction, then I would argue that there's some other mechanism at work than just "mistakes".
Update: data https://quillette.com/2019/02/12/it-isnt-your-imagination-tw...
Update: admission https://www.vox.com/2018/9/14/17857622/twitter-liberal-emplo...
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>This is just not true, and is a false dichotomy. Moderation is hard.
It's absolutely true, and has absolutely nothing to do with moderation "being hard". As someone who absolutely opposes Trump, but also absolutely opposes our many wars and global bombings, I'm horrified on a daily basis (and have been since 2009 when I joined Twitter) by open calls for violence against a wide variety of countries from Syria to Venezuela to Iran. When has Twitter ever suspended anyone (let alone a public figure, or even Trump himself, who has called for violence against other countries many times) a single time for openly calling for violence against the people of any of the countries? The answer is never. Its beyond absurd, bordering on delusional, to pretend that Twitter's actions here weren't nakedly political and have absolutely nothing to do with a standard against, "fomenting violence".
> If Twitter is going to police people, it needs to be across the board.
One way to look at this is that that's exactly what Twitter has started doing. The president violated the TOS, and got the treatment prescribed under the TOS. His EO yesterday essentially asked for everyone to be treated in accordance with the TOS, so he's (ironically) getting exactly what he asked for.
It remains to be seen whether, in compliance with the EO, they apply this to everyone in a transparent and uniform way from now on. I hope they do.
Wait, Trump, the guy who had a platform plank complaining about his predecessors' use of executive orders as "power grabs" [0], actually issued an executive order about Twitter's TOS?
0 - https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-10-19/trump-...
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There is a worse side effect that comes from conservatives feeling that they have been silenced, as people feel like they have less and less say in a political process they are more and more likely to start employing means outside of it. The real risk here is that if more and more outlets for conservative voices are silenced, whether for good cause or not, this will reinforce the narrative that many of them have that they are the defenders of the truth and right and there is a vast conspiracy operating to seize their guns, deprive them of their rights, and whatever else they can imagine. As that happens there becomes more and more moral justification and greater and greater need there is seen to employ violence in end of their goals.
Ultimately the more and more "dangerous" opinions and people who share those opinions are silenced the more and more dangerous they become in reality.
EDIT: The nature of this comment is intended to be observational not advocational.
Do you believe it’s more dangerous to: A: Remove a post encouraging violence with the risk it’ll anger a group of people? Or... B: Keep it and let it reach 80 million followers?
There’s plenty of evidence that many sites (twitter included) allow violent speech from specific groups because they’re worried of the political backlash. These groups still complain about being silenced just the same, despite blatantly violating the TOS.
It doesn’t work. You’re just giving dangerous and violent people a platform to organize, encourage and enable violence. As a platform owner, you can’t just hope they’ll behave if you treat them nicely.
Alternatively - if those pushing the far-right violent rhetoric don't have as much of an audience, their support may fade because they don't have a platform.
Deplatforming works.
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Unless the content is called out for inaccuracy, bigotry, etc the user may not even be aware of the issue they create. Like if someone retweets a claim they believe but it is flagged as misleading and fact checked that might be the first time their views were checked and they might recognize their beliefs are wrong and rethink things. But they often won't and I think that is as much part of the problem. Trump won't rethink his position because a tweet was fact checked, he will attack the fact checker and supporters will do the same thanks to his example. There is no self reflection or awareness when called out and the poster becomes defensive, refusing to accept their comment as fake news or bigotry.
If conservatives feel they are being silenced but cannot recognize that the views 'censored' are often bigoted, racist, or simply unpopular or abhorrent outside their bubble, then what do you to? If you call out blatant racism you are less likely to find the user recognize their racism, apologize, and not use such language again and more likely to be called a snowflake and have that behavior turned up a notch. If the original comment is then downvoted by the community or removed by mods then it will enforce that persons view that they are being attacked. This is incredibly common on Reddit where users often include a 'bring on the downvotes' type edit after stating something intolerant or clearly false.
The solution is not to allow these views and opinions to sit unchecked but to recognize a modern civil society must be intolerant of intolerance and moderate appropriately. Downvote and report racist comments. Apply fact checking to statements, even those you believe or feel to be true as that is a sign of bias. If the user doubles down, move on as there is no value in arguing with someone putting their feelings and beliefs/bias above facts and reality. Perhaps when society or their online community turns their back on their comments they will finally have the time to reflect on why and recognize their behavior was unwarranted and unwanted.
> as people feel like they have less and less say in a political process they are more and more likely to start employing means outside of it
Teetering on the brink of an epiphany.
you're saying it like it's not already happening, and it's completely divorce from any actual reality or perception. When they say "I'm being silenced" they are simply pushing buttons they know work with more reasonable people, they are just using the "system" to their advantage. Conservatives in the USA are not a good faith actor and should never be taken at face value.
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The valley being an echo chamber doesn’t necessarily mean those implementing this have their heads in the sand.
It can’t be all perfectly achieved, but to do nothing, as they were before, could be now determined to be a worse case than providing these annotations to flagrant misuse by the highest impact profile that they can’t do away with entirely.
The legal issue is that their legal protection from defamation and libel under section 230 requires them to moderate "in good faith". If they only selective moderate accounts, then that protection may not survive in court.
...but I think a greater concern we can all agree on, is that for the type of communications that Twitter does - Twitter is effectively a monopoly. The people being censored here can't even themselves go to any alternative platform, because there's really no other platform at that scale for that content format.
...that's a bigger problem, because it gives Twitter the power to shape global communications unilaterally. Something no corporation should have the power to do.
I think, broadly, that censorship should be regulated by democratically elected bodies - not corporations.
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The issue is that the rules are being enforced selectively. Just this week Twitter fact checked Trump's opinion on mail voter fraud by linking to other experts' opinions. It seems more like a move to influence the election rather than enforcing the rules.
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Eh? Do you have any examples? This is nothing new, Twitter has been applying this standard to tweets for a very long time (it's part of their ToS!). It usually results in deleting your tweet or an outright ban. The only difference here is that they've kept the tweet up since they deem it to be in the public's interest.
There are tons of examples. Look in almost any thread and there are people calling for public hangings of politicians, assassinations. The "guillotine" crowd. People telling people to burn down the city. Some people saying anti-Semitic stuff...I've reported a lot of this. Twitter usually comes back and say they found it wasn't in violation of anything. There are other politicians, such as Chinese officials, Iranian officials the Twitter has not policed or marked as misleading despite them being outright anti-Semitic or propaganda.
https://twitter.com/RaheemKassam/status/1266340243134963712
EDIT: Scroll down a bit, the original poster made their account private a few moments ago
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It wasn't explicitly calling for violence but Elon Musk's recent tweet [1] calling for "politicians & unelected bureaucrats" to be "tarred, feathered & thrown out of town" certainly was trending in that direction and could easily have been interpreted as a call for violence, or at least assault, by some sections of Musk's vast (35 million) collection of followers. Especially when the particular 'unelected bureaucrat' that Musk had been most vociferously complaining about and attacking, the Alameda County Health Officer, had been named in numerous news reports.
[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1261100731378982912
Would the same happen if Theil owned Twitter, and fact checked, etc. Joe Biden? IMO we would see the opposite, and liberal politicians calling for Twitter to be taken down. One person's soap box is another's tabloid.
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How about this one:
https://twitter.com/kathygriffin/status/1086927762634399744?...
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> If Twitter is going to police people, it needs to be across the board. Otherwise it's just a weird censorship that is targeting one person and can easily be seen as political.
There is no such requirement.
Twitter is well within its rights and ethically totally clear to "police" a sentiment from the President of the United States, while letting much more severe sentiments from egg accounts go un-policed.
Moderation isn't an algorithm, a binary condition, applied perfectly to an input set to get a deterministic output. It's subjective, and that's both OK and correct.
> ethically totally clear to "police" a sentiment from the President of the United States, while letting much more severe sentiments from egg accounts go un-policed
Debatable
Seriously. Twitter and Facebook are full of liberals talking about "bringing back the guillotine" but I don't see any of that getting censored.
I'm pretty conflicted on this issue overall, but I don't think it's entirely nuts to hold the President of the US to a higher standard than many other accounts.
Be completely honest to a stranger:
When you see content like you are talking about, do you report it using the websites’ tools? Please be honest.
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I know what you mean, but that's an insult to actual liberals. You're referring to leftists. They hijacked "liberal" some time ago.
When someone is high profile they will be treated differently. That's just the nature of being high profile. Trump has said a lot of things that would have gotten you or I banned if Twitter noticed. Twitter let Trump slide for a long time, and is finally moderating some of the most egregious examples.
And to be clear, anyone calling for violence should also have similar actions taken against them. But, me shouting get out the guillotine to my 10 followers is different than POTUS saying the same thing.
I’ve seen hundreds of extreme violence towards cops including death and worse. I’ve reported many and nothing happens. Some have many likes and retweets including by blue check marks. The justification of violence and racism towards a certain race and to cops is Alex Jones conspiracy level stupid. The bias is insane to any regular person
It's going to be interesting when you come to the end and are reviewing your life, realizing that you decided to spend what little time you have on this planet being the volunteer gestapo misguidedly trying to defend militarized police from the words of civilians who are upset that they are killing unarmed citizens.
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It will absolutely backfire. Twitter is now going to editorialize re: their users' content. It's impossible to do this without being perceived as being biased, and twitter is already a partisan hellscape, it will only exacerbate the situation.
Instead of being the police, Twitter should do what Rotten Tomatoes does. There are plenty of people - journalists and researchers analyzing the facts behind what celebrities say. They should analyze what the analysts say and display a score.
Even better, directly link the research on the topic, from both sides. Instead of drawing a conclusion on behalf of everybody, give people what they need to draw their own.
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The problem then becomes, who decides which tweets to fact-check? If most politicians at the higher levels are liars, singling out a few of them is unfair even if Trump is notorious for it.
Twitter can clearly not fact-check every single tweet on its platform. But what if they did it for every tweet (maybe from a verified account) that X people report for being untruthful? Trump would look bad even if Twitter held everyone to the same standard, and the blue checkmark would come with some responsibility not to lie, so why not?
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[insert black mirror joke reference]
There's also the question of who it is that is predicting violence (or giving a dog whistle signal to his followers that violence is OK.) This is not a blue check mark living in his mom's basement predicting (or asking) for violence, it's the chief executive of the United States.
> I have seen tweets from blue check marks essentially calling for violence and Twitter didn't remove them
Moderation, at scale, is a very tough problem to solve.
It's important context to note that Trump's tweets are the most widely publicized. As such it should be self evident as to why they would focus their limited resources to policing tweets such as his.
I imagine other factors have to do with the technicalities of executing on this, and the user’s visibility and “viral-ity”. On the technical, you can automate the job and have awkward success sometimes if you don’t get a human to intervene and verify what the algo’s flag as potential violation tweets. Now considering the user, the user’s number of followers, whether they are public figures (so because elected, celebrity, activist, etc. reasons) or whether the tweet has gone viral (regardless of the user’s pre-existing popularity). These kinds of things influence because someone with visibility and audience making calls to violence or some other questionable act is distinct in how actionable others around the world are to react to such a figure making questionable statements. So it’s not a matter of policing everyone, because there’s a lot of nuance and challenges. And the answer isn’t to give up because that’s just cowardice in the face of a big social challenge. We’ve got to carefully experiment and wisely assess these cases.
I think many people aren't taking into account the visibility of Trump's twitter. Trump making violence-glorifying or factually incorrect or medically dangerous tweets is far different from other twitter user's or even other blue-check-mark users because his reach is far wider than the vast majority of those users. Further, Trump has an established track record of doing this repeatedly. Those two facts establish a clear and rational basis for targeting his tweets specifically.
Completely agree with your second point though (not that there is any collusion to silence conservatives - but that this whole situation will be taken that way and used to energize that base).
There is video of Twitter employees admitting there are on-going efforts to silence "shitty people" on the platform. It's quite clear who these "deplorables" or "shitty people" are.
What is the most annoying about this, though, is the tweet they chose to "Fact Check". (I use quotation marks because "fact checking" by linking to CNN and WaPo is not fact-checking at all, rather an appeal to a different authority.)
The tweet they chose to police is speculation about the future. If I say the boiling point of water is 50 degrees, you can fact-check that. Its an objective truth that water boils at 100c.
If I say mail-in votes will cause election fraud, you cannot prove or disprove that statement. All you can do is show me someone else's statements, opinions, and predictions on the matter.
Given that Trump says so much objectively false stuff, it annoys me they didn't go after one of those tweets instead.
You catch the most flak when you're over the target...
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Trump should glorify violence. When soldiers achieve their objectives successfully, he should glorify that. When police use a measured and legal amount of violence to enforce law and order he should glorify that.
Liberals will pretend not to understand that to score a quick win.
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There is absolutely some truth that the mainstream media and tech giants are colluding to silence conservatives - the truth is that the mainstream "conservative" position in the US happens to involve behavior that runs afoul of neutral content norms (don't threaten people with violence, don't call them racial slurs, don't dox people, etc.) disproportionately more often than people with other political beliefs. Sure, there are some people of other political persuasions who are "essentially" calling for violence, but there's a large gap between "as MLK said, a riot is the language of the unheard, so I can't condemn it" (and even that is hardly a universal position among non-conservatives) and "I, the actual commander-in-chief of an actual military, am telling that military to use violence against my own people" + "We all think this is good and proper, do it."
This is an uncomfortable, rude, politically incorrect truth - but we're not going to have a productive discussion about "silencing conservatives" if we can't admit it.
It is absolutely possible to advocate for the political positions of conservatives (looking through the 2016 GOP platform, for instance - limited government, federalism, avoiding trade deficits, repeal of Dodd-Frank, auditing the Fed, right-to-work, opposition to abortion, support for the electoral college, removing gray wolves from the endangered species list, etc., etc.) without behavior that runs afoul of the norms. If there's a case where Twitter suspends someone for opposing Dodd-Frank, then we should absolutely criticize Twitter. (And I think there's a legitimate discussion to be had about where the line is about criticizing the government's pandemic response vs. spreading misinformation, for instance.) But saying "Conservatives really like to advocate for shooting people without due process, Twitter doesn't permit the advocacy of shooting people without due process, therefore Twitter is biased against conservatives" is more of a statement about conservatives than about Twitter.
I think this is actually a balanced argument.
HN should have a setting so that the most downvoted posts show up at the top of the page... That would save me a lot of scrolling to get to the unpleasant but accurate content.
> I have seen tweets from blue check marks essentially calling for violence and Twitter didn't remove them
As a Twitter user, I've been concerned with this as well. Clicking on the Minneapolis riots "trend", roughly 1/3 of the top tweets were promoting violence while the overwhelming majority of the remainder were merely sympathetic toward the violence, with only a small sliver denouncing the violence. Note that I don't follow violent or far-left accounts (generally a-political tech accounts, and I'll unfollow people who have especially authoritarian or hateful views in either direction), yet these are overwhelmingly promoted to me (in general, not just in the particular case of the MN riots) either in trends or in the random "here, have this extreme, toxic Tweet from another follower of someone you follow" Tweets that Twitter tosses into my feed. I'm not sure that Twitter is actively promoting extreme left-wing views (it could be that Twitter's user base is really just so far left that its algorithms just can't find any moderate content for me or something), but I don't blame anyone for thinking it does.
EDIT: I'm aware this is a controversial topic, but I'm curious if I'm being downvoted because people don't believe my characterization of my timeline/trends or because my tone was less than thrilled with the volume of left-wing tweets I'm shown or something else. I'm a heretic and I don't deserve my Internet Points, so take them away, but indulge my curiosity about your specific objections! :)
It's because lots of people don't want to admit the issues with the current state of affairs with big-tech social media, such as lopsided and selective enforcement of the rules...
so they must police across the board or police none? Well since it's impossible to police everything what should they do?
In my view at the end of the day Twitter can police whoever they want and users can leave if they don't like it.
The enforcement of rules in rarely applied with 100% accuracy in any realm. Not because the rule enforcers support some infractions, but because they have limited manpower and must prioritize their tasks.
I think you also have to know if the tweet was reported. Obiviously twitter isn't going to read all tweets so only ones that are reported can they act upon.
I don't think any reasonable person would think that Twitter supports violence simply because they aren't removing posts from people who don't matter. When you have limited resources, you have to apply them in a way that has the most impact. Making sure the President of the United States is adhering to their ToS seems like a good place to start.
Remember that Twitter gets something like 500 million tweets per day. If it took someone working minimum wage 15 seconds to decide whether or not a tweet violates their ToS, Twitter would spend 30 million dollars a day on this, and the results probably wouldn't even be that good. So they don't do that, instead focusing resources where they will have the most impact.
I am also pretty sure they are not trying to censor conservative viewpoints. If Joe Biden starts telling people to go shoot looters or that Mitch McConnell murdered one of his aides, I am sure they will add a little note to those tweets.
This is correct.
You are technically correct, however the same logic applies to every type of enforcement.
Ideally the enforcement of every rule should apply to everyone equally, but in practice we see the police behave differently towards different people, we see tax audits and penalties applied mostly to people without the means to defend themselves and we see how apparently the law and government rules don't even apply to Trump. The world still goes on and we somehow deal with all of this.
Twitter enforcing their own rules is just going to be more of the same.
> 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.
[1]: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/public-intere...
To be fair, in regard's to Trump's Twitter account, a Federal judge has already ruled that Twitter absolutely may not remove his account, and likewise, he may not block people who insult his spray tan, because it's a de facto public forum for interacting with the POTUS.
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Can you cite other politicians that have been subject to these rules?
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> essentially calling for violence
Ironic that a microblogging service leads to lack of nuance. who would of thought?
My first read of trump's tweet was explaining the national guard has to move in because 'looting leads to shooting'. As in, we have to restore order to avoid more people getting shot. At the time Trump tweeted this, there was already one death from a pawn store owner shooting a looter.
So depending on your priors, your PoV, Trump was either promoting violence or trying to quell violence.
culture of 140 characters = more confusion, more division, more tribalism. If we valued well written, long form writing from our leaders we wouldn't be in this mess. Instead, we value twitter and leaders who make great slogans and can push people's buttons in 140 characters.
Don't be so disingenuous. The phrase is famous and it obviously is obviously not intent on trying to quell violence. I know to be contrarian and radically 'rational' is popular among tech types but it doesn't mean you have to bury your head in the sand when what is being said is so clear.
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As much as I hate Trump, this isn't a "Trump thing". This was someone with a large following who was very clearly and overtly threatening to turn a situation into a bloodbath.
Twitter regularly hides violent tweets. It is just algo based and nothing to do with conservatives. I mean, it may seem biased if conservatives are posting a lot of violent tweets
Twitter has literally bend over backwards for Trump. They have said that they will not remove him not matter how much he violates their ToS. If even after that it is seen as "silencing their voice", you know it is a bad faith argument. Just the other day he retweeted something heinous about "dead Democrats" and Twitter let that tweet stand. At some point, don't you have to live up to some principles instead of always be scared of bad faith arguments ?
I'm just going to say again that I can't for the life of me understand why people are in agreement that this tweet glorifies violence. It is a call to stop being violent lest violence increase.
Looting always leads to shooting. This is a simple fact.
I'm horrified that so many people think me saying that is glorifying violence. I don't understand it in the slightest. Seeing this tweet by Trump get silenced absolutely convinces me that there is a conspiracy. Not so much against the right, but against truth.
You should read up on the history of the phrase "when looting starts, shooting starts"
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This raises an interesting point.
I think the realistic truth is that Trump doesn't really have a precise idea about what he's saying quite a bit of the time. His defenders rush in, and shape his words into their best possible light, and of course his opponents shape his words into their worst possible light.
Which version did Trump mean? Almost certainly neither: his modus operandi has been to say many vague things, and gauge the reaction to determine his next steps. Part of this process means simply speaking a LOT, and saying things that are vague and inflammatory. What better way to read a reaction than to ensure you create a reaction in the first place? In this sense, his words only have as much power as we keep giving them, and yet no one one seems to have learned this lesson.
You seem intelligent and well-spoken. I believe that when you say "looting always to leads shooting" you mean something like "when people are looting, it's unfortunately almost inevitable that there will be violence." (Please correct me if I've got you wrong.) When Trump says it, he doesn't tend to mean anything in particular. As usual, he's trying to drum up controversy.
And so, there's a difference in context between when you might say it, and when the president says it. It's not simply the case that I believe you hold a genuine belief, and that Trump is pressure testing his next controversy. It's also the case that you're a private citizen, willing to explain and qualify your claims, while Trump is the head of country, intentionally saying inflammatory things during difficult times.
[edit]
Apologies, I actually had no idea there was a particular history to the phrase "when looting starts, shooting starts"
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Other people will perceive it as glorifying and advocating violence regardless of how you or I see it. You can rightfully be horrified but it doesn't change the fact that this tweet arguably increases the probability of more violence happening. There is at least one person that read this tweet and interpreted it as a call to violence and that is the problem. Words matter and should be used carefully.
Because the exact phrase has historical context [1] in a sense of: if you loot, we shoot. Clearly it wasn’t said in a sense of: looting inevitably leads to violence.
That makes it sound like Trump used it in a similar fashion.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/where-does-phrase-...
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Fascist language is generally constructed to externalize blame. That doesn't mean its calls for "peace measures" are not calls to harm those people. Trump has been inciting racist violence for years. Take your head out of the sand. Context matters.
it's almost like the president of the united states is held to a higher standard than some random jackanapes with a "blue check" next to their name.
Only so much as the media and government lets twitter have this within their rights. If it was Peter Theil running Twitter, I don't believe we would see the same reaction from the media.
China is the leader here, let's briefly study how they do social media -- this will show where US is going.
They review everything after an account gets so many likes. The platform is responsible. One day I was doing something dangerous on a live stream -- immediately banned for 48 hours and got a human message. Posts with factual errors about current events -- immediately removed, on pain of platform liability. Human reply. No AI.
The platform is liable for what is published on the platform in the same way a newspaper is liable for what is published in the newspaper.
The liability is changing and so yes Twitter is going to police people.
I welcome this change in liability.
China is a leader in nothing but theft and herd mentality
For everyone bashing Twitter's actions, including the President, why don't they just leave the platform for Gab or something else?
I don't quite understand the "if you don't like it leave" theory. Is it really so unreasonable for people to want to influence the way the established platform works rather than switch and be alone on a new platform. Nobody is going to bother coming with you to Gab.
You could make a similar argument about selling on Amazon. They have rules that you must obey if you want to sell products on their marketplace. If they were not allowed to moderate the content and curate it, then the amazon marketplace would be less appealing to customers and sellers.
Twitter should be able to moderate and curate it's content to protect their brand image. If they don't challenge lies on their platform and remove toxic content, Twitter will become less attractive platform for both individuals and advertisers.
For J. Random Twitterer, sure. The President does have whitehouse.gov available, though.
Clearly rhetorical, but the reason is that's where the audience is. They will tolerate a lot for that reason but there's presumably some limit. I would not be surprised if whenever Trump leaves office, he announces he's leaving twitter for some twitter clone he's a part owner of geared for conservative audiences. He might be big enough and important enough to his supporters for this exodus to actually be meaningful.
Don't think he'll do it until he loses an election or his 2nd term is up though.
That was also the suggestion when businesses didn't want blacks or treated them differently. If you don't like it, leave.
Link to @realDonaldTrump tweet: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/12662311007807447...
tweet text:
> ....These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!
Disclaimer text:
> This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible. Learn more
"Learn more" links to this page about "public-interest exceptions"
https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/public-intere...
edit: here's the official thread from @TwitterComms about it: https://twitter.com/TwitterComms/status/1266267446979129345
Completely agree with trump here honestly. Looting private business is not a form of protest against the police or the state for that matter.
You should investigate the racial history of the phrase “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” and also consider whether property crime deserves loss of life.
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Really? People who steal should be shot?
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For those who don't like opening Twitter links:
https://nitter.net/realDonaldTrump/status-/12662311007807447...
Page not found
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Why is this reply being downvoted? It is merely informative.
It shows the actual words, which are hard to spin. If we keep what was done vague, we can spin it any way we please.
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> Why is this reply being downvoted? It is merely informative.
Because this is HN. Expect some guidelines-lawyer to cite some section that was technically breached by that informative reply.
> It is merely informative.
That's the problem.
When facts/information doesn't align with one's agenda, some people have a terrible habit of trying to have it hidden/banned/removed/etc.
You would think in hackernews of all places, we'd upvote the comment to see exactly what trump wrote so that we can decide for ourselves when it was "glorifying violence". Sadly, many here don't want that to happen.
I think because it just restates what's in the link being discussed, when the link is not inaccessible nor behind a paywall. There are a lot of people who think that's bad form on HN. That's my guess. People trying to force everyone to "read the articles" on HN.
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HN is quickly turning into a leftist SJW and socialist haven, similar to Reddit
As someone of mixed ethnicity who, if I was there could easily be victimized by a senseless mob to whom I owe nothing and have committed no crime against.. yea I am not happy with how the mainstream media promotes and covers this story, downplaying the victims of the chaos and sympathizing with outpourings of anger even if illegal. To clarify, looters should not be shot, law should prevail, and the policeman involved in the original incident should be investigated.. but the mainstream media is to my mind basically behind the looters, and I know if by chance I or someone like me were to be caught in the crossfire and killed, the mainstream media, posturing as champions of justice, would just implicitly shrug. So yea I can't help but feel disaffected by this coverage, no matter how vile the originating incident.
Relevant: https://www.cnn.com/2017/04/28/us/la-riots-korean-americans/...
> The Rodney King verdict and the ensuing riots are often framed as a turning point for law enforcement and the African-American community. But it's also the single most significant modern event for Korean-Americans, says Edward Taehan Chang, professor of ethnic studies and founding director of the Young Oak Kim Center for Korean American Studies at the University of California, Riverside.
> The nearly weeklong, widespread rioting killed more than 50 people, injured more than 1,000 people and caused approximately $1 billion in damage, about half of which was sustained by Korean-owned businesses. Long-simmering cultural clashes between immigrant Korean business owners and predominately African-American customers spilled over with the acquittals.
I'm on the side of the protesters here, don't get me wrong. But the media sweeps under the rug how often the rage from these events gets taken out on Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, etc.-owned small businesses. There is a narrative the media wants to peddle (black versus white), and these complexities don't have any place in the media narratives.
A fair amount of this is caused by the state and police. Why do you think that the rioters were in koreatown during the rodney king riots?
Police defended the rich neighborhoods and pushed the riot into places where society tolerates more damage.
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> these complexities don't have any place in the media narratives
I'm reminded of the film "Do the Right Thing", by Spike Lee. 1989. Not much has changed in America.
This movement is about centuries of unjustness. To me, it is appropriate that the occasional bystander and business is overlooked. That doesn't mean that if you were my sibling, or friend, or business that I wouldn't be entitled to express personal pain. But the magnitude of my pain is nothing next to the pain that's led up to this, and no it wouldn't be appropriate for it to get remotely equal attention.
Sure, ideally bystanders and local businesses (in particular) would be spared. But nothing about the historical events leading to now is ideal.
Where was this movement when Justine Damond was shot in the gut by a black cop in Minneapolis? I don't recall any protests, let alone riots or burning down the city.
And if your expression of pain includes looting booze from a liquor store or a TV from Target, what exactly are you trying to say? By the way, those bystanders and local businesses owners are people of color too.
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Unfortunately, both you, the media, and the looters keep forgetting the events are, as you said, history.
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It could have all been ended before the rioting started if the police officer was charged for his actions. Obviously looting is wrong but peaceful protests obviously aren't working either.
They were fired and will face the justice system, which while it normally moves slowly, will move a little faster in this case thanks to top down pressure.
I don't see how in a country with independent judiciary anything more can be done.
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It could have all been ended when the bystander peacefully asked the police to stop putting the knee on Floyd's neck. Obviously violence is never the answer, but it's hardly surprising in this case.
He and his colleagues were immediately fired and he has since been charged for his actions. It hasn't even been a week, what more do you want?
edit: s/charged/arrested
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You are enabling a fascist government. You are complicit.
This is the strategy to vilify any movements from the people: focus on how they are acting violent, when this violence is very well in proportion to the enemy’s first move.
How is looting innocent shop owners in proportion to the wrongdoings of the police force?
And if this 'an eye for an eye' philosophy is what you are promoting, how is Trump's tweet then out of place?
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Sure, but ideally the function of the state is prevent the formation of senseless mobs through even-handed treatment and a well-functioning justice system. When it fails to meet those expectations, people turn to other means to defend themselves and enact retribution.
This is human nature and the entire story of our history. Aeschylus even wrote about it:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oresteia
I think there is an issue where a minority of people live very sheltered lives in the kind embrace of the state, so they have a very difficult time accepting that actually, the experience is shit for a wide swath of other people who have the same right to be protected.
> if I was there could easily be victimized by a senseless mob
Your comment is what is senseless fear. Protesters are not attacking random people, no matter what your ethnicity.
the policeman involved in the original incident should be investigated
Oh give it a rest. We saw him kill the man, he can sit a cell and prepare for his trial like any other killer. If you don't like what people int he media say find different commentators or stop listening to pundits altogether.
I am sick to the back teeth of people complaining about 'the mainstream media', when Fox News and Sinclair broadcasting are two of the biggest companies in TV.
> Oh give it a rest. We saw him kill the man, he can sit a cell and prepare for his trial like any other killer.
He can sit in a cell while being investigated. The fact that it is all on camera just makes it a quick investigation. But everyone gets due process. (also EVERYONE there needs to be investigated, not just the killer)
The investigation lead to an arrest today. That's how the system works. And it worked in this case.
Where was your rage for Justine Damond? Shot by Officer Mohamed Noor from the passenger seat of his police cruiser, across his partner. Where were the riots?
Also, when people complain about MSM they are including Fox and Sinclair. It's all corrupted and meant to drive a narrative instead of presenting objective views from both sides. It's not up to MSM to tell us how to think about events. Their job is to report the facts. Hardly any of them do anymore, if they ever did.
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>looters should not be shot, law should prevail
That is literally the law of the land. Read into castle doctrine and duty to retreat. Business owners have the legal right to defend their life on their property with deadly force if left no choice (i.e. a mob has surrounded you)
At any rate his tweet was ambiguous, he could have meant shooting naturally follows looting, not that he was ordering the guard to execute civilians.
This entire event is effectively self-defense from a community that has felt terrorized by the police for decades.
It could've been easily prevented by actually arresting someone that committed abject murder, but the city and the police chose to instead defend a man who has killed multiple people in the past and got away with it scott-free. So when people feel like justice no longer exists, there should be no surprise that they get angry.
It doesn't help that the police also employ agent provocateurs whom help incite riots and looting so that they can use more violent tactics with glee.
Could it have? I don't know. What is encouraging is that in the past they would have put the officers on paid leave and treated them with deference while the investigation took place. In this case they were promptly fired within 48 hours of the incident by the police chief.
There were also a lot of statements from police leadership that this incident wasn't acceptable or normal police procedure which is a drastic change from in the past where you had people staying silent or even defending and rationalizing the perpetrators actions.
The looting and rioting weaken a cause that after many years of being in the spotlight seemed to have reached a tipping point of overwhelming agreement.
> So when people feel like justice no longer exists, there should be no surprise that they get angry.
I think this is the key here. The whole BLM movement has been going on for years and, for the most part, it seems like a lot of people are more aware. It doesn't seem like anybody from the top cares to do anything about it though.
I'd like to say, as well, that this is a statement of fact that can be observed by looking at media coverage, testimonial, historical and fictional books on the topic of the black experience in america. To deny this is a direct attempt to re-write history to justify an accumulation of power amongst the hands of a specific, ever-shrinking elite.
Things are, ultimately, knowable. Its not "political" or up to "opinion".
Looting private businesses and setting fires isn’t “self-defense”.
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> This entire event is effectively self-defense from a community that has felt terrorized by the police for decades.
To put it with MLK: A riot is the voice of the unheard.
The systemic issues of the Black (and other foreigner) community across the Western societies, especially with police and laws specifically designed to target them (e.g. almost all drug legislation), have been ignored for way too long. I'm no friend of rioting myself but I will not judge upon those who have deemed it necessary to be finally heard.
> It could've been easily prevented by actually arresting someone that committed abject murder, but the city and the police chose to instead defend a man who has killed multiple people in the past and got away with it scott-free
I don't know if it could have been prevented by arresting just this murderer, as it's far from an isolated incident.
I do however think it could have been prevented by an edict from the top years ago, issuing a zero-tolerance policy for harassment, abuse and murder by police officers, with focus on clearly racially motivated incidents. I'm fom the UK, so don't claim to understand american politics, but I just don't understand why something like that hasn't happened, especially when Obama was president.
Your first claim is that the entire event is community self-defense, and your last claim is that police agents are responsible for the unrest.
You are totally right.
Not even close, but keep telling yourself whatevwr you need to to justify violent riots and indiscriminate looting. Never seen an HD TV looted in self defense before, but hey the media owned by God's Chosen People trying to use blacks as violent foot soldiers for marxism is just a conspiracy pushed by bigots and idiots, right?
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Yes, one only need to compare the police treatment of predominantly white, armed brigades storming government buildings in Michigan to what happened to the first wave of predominantly black, non-violent protests in Minneapolis to understand there are other forces at play here.
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I know it is "never too late" for things like this to happen, but it's definitely late.
One of the main reasons for bad things to happen is the lack of education (which, in turn, leads to resist to change) and, therefore makes people prone to believe to unbelievable things.
Social platforms like Twitter should have long had things like "fact checking" ANY statements and should have restricting not only violence glorifying posts, but also the ones with racial or sexual discrimination and all the others .
It is late, but I like seeing it happen at least for the person with the most "glorifying" record in dividing a society.
Yeah, the whole reason we have public education is that democracy requires a knowledgeable voter base. When social media companies were just starting out, I get why they weren't fretting about societal effects. But even if we go by business metrics, a collapse of democracy would probably be bad for their businesses. It's past time for social media companies to take responsibility for their negative externalities. And that definitely includes all sort of "negative information value" content.
Yeah, there's a difference between educated and knowledgeable. But I don;t agree on the reason of existence of the public education system - its not about the voter base, it's about improving not only yourself, but the society as well (as improving society secures in a way improvement of you and your offspring).
I don't find social media companies responsible for the user generated content, but I do find them responsible for making it damn too easy to spread fear and then doing nothing about it. Or, as in case of some, promoting the division.
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> But even if we go by business metrics, a collapse of democracy would probably be bad for their businesses.
But the ride the will be extremely profitable and business have shown to care more about short term than long term. Some examples are Nestle guzzling ground water during droughts, Johnson's baby powder with talc, the entire oil gas and coal industry, Pacific gas and electric company, etc.
Public education and knowledgeable voter base in the same sentence, what a joke.
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and should have restricting not only violence glorifying posts, but also the ones with racial or sexual discrimination and all the others.
Do you think tweets that make derogatory references to Karen's or "tech-bros" should be deleted?
Should a Tweet that says, "There will be no peace as long as there is no justice for the centuries of white supremacy and centuries white people oppressing all other peoples." be banned? What about a Tweet saying, "There will be no peace as long as their is no justice of centuries of Jewish puppet-mastery and Jews oppressing all other peoples"?
I'm OK with restricting racist and sexist posts in the public square -- as long as the censorship is applied equally to all ethnicities and sexes. And if the censorship was applied equally, a lot of Tweets from "anti-racist" activists would need to be censored.
And there is the crux of this argument, at least as it pertains to HackerNews. Which is the palpable fear that white supremacy focused rhetoric will be marginalized and de-platformed.
I'm not saying every single opinion should be redacted (opinions should not be redacted - they are simply statements of who you are and what are your values), but (false) fact statements and clear/open calls for racial and sexual discrimination, etc.
the moment society started to see social media as a source of news, the battle was lost. nobody ever used myspace to stay fresh on the situation in the balkans.
Yeah, I agree, but they used main stream media which was also heavily polarized, offering one point of the view only.
That would make sense if every message were placed on hold before publishing while it got reviewed. But this is a real-time system. And even then, there are often multiple sides to events.
Is it a hard problem? Sure. Can they get everything? No. But that doesn't mean that they can't quickly act to minimize the total impact. As with many things, 80% of the value can be gained with 20% of the work.
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I'm not saying it's easy, but effort should be made as it is important. If you see the real-time voice recognition on the new Pixel phone, the technology for this type of action might not be that far away.
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I disagree that Twitter has been missing "fact checking". Instead I think the problem was bots.
Take an obviously absurd political viewpoint, which nowadays has to be really absurd. Here's an example: Tom Cruise should be president of the United States. Scientology will make America great again.
Sounds pretty fucking absurd, right? But throw in 50 million bots on Twitter and Instagram pretending to be Americans who think Tom Cruise should be president, and now your once absurd view point simply becomes "the other side of the aisle." It's of course all fake.
Unfortunately this exploits the minds of otherwise kind hearted people that do really want to give you a chance to hear you out. It is how democracy should work after all. But the current reality is this "other side" is basically just white supremacists. Full stop. They're not all rotten people, plenty of them were goaded into embracing the hatred because the internet, and all those fucking bots, makes it look normal
WW2 taught us to shut down Nazis right away. Zuckerberg and Dorsey have utterly failed as Americans.
Are you seriously saying that 49% of US voters are white supremacists? This is one of the most absurd conspiracy theories I have ever heard.
Snopes is a dumpster fire and the content editors consistently show a weak grasp of logic. Fact checking on a mass scale is a pipe dream and a massive minefield of false positives.
Although I might support this because I despise Twitter and support anything that might quicken it's demise.
Once again! Bravo Jack and the Twitter team! Thank you taking a stand against bullying.
Now if only they would crack down on the huge wave of Chinese bullshit they allow.
They added fact-checks to two of Lijian Zhao’s tweets yesterday. Not sure if that counts as a crackdown, but it’s a high level account.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52833063
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Did any of this bs you refer to come from the president of China directly?
There's the xenophobia we all know and love. Right in time to steer the conversation from looking inwards.
Is the POTUS clearly inciting violence or is it another instance of people having a wild interpretation of what he said? I'm so tired of this dynamic that I don't even bother anymore.
Judge for yourself, the exact tweet is:
> These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!
Worth noting that this is a quote from former Miami Police Chief Walter Headley. In '67, he said the phrase "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" during racially charged protests.
> Is the POTUS clearly inciting violence or is it another instance of people having a wild interpretation of what he said?
The POTUS unambiguously quoted racist Miami police chief Walter Headley who called for violence against African Americans during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. This couldn’t be a more clear example of inciting violence.
The guy who openly called for police to rough people up in the past does not get the benefit of the doubt here.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/28/donald-trump...
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You are making an assumption that the interpretation is wild.
really? wild interpretation? it's a weird construction that's widely known to have been used by the police chief during similar circumstances? how big does the donkey have to be before you pin the tail on it? i wager there could be a video of trump composing the tweet with a biography of the police chief in view and open to the page with those words and you'd still claim to doubt the intent.
it's exhausting having to take this kind of bad faith skepticism seriously.
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If you truly believe in what they are doing, then buy their stock and prop up the price, because it is plunging right now. Words alone are about as useful as clapping for healthcare workers.
Wouldn't call a 1 percent drop "plunging".
Regardless, stock comes back up. These are reputation points that will stay for a while.
Plunging is a strong word, but this is still an excellent point. Just bought the stock for support.
Now if only they'd give Kaepernick's tweet [0] equal treatment, to be even-handed.
[0] https://twitter.com/Kaepernick7/status/1266046129906552832?s...
Even nonviolent protest was never intended to be peaceful. Not in they way many people would use the word “peace”, anyway.
“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’”
That’s MLK in his letter from a Birmingham jail. Who was completely devoted to nonviolence. Even he made abundantly clear that nonviolence does not equal a lack of pressure or tension.
I don’t see Kap mentioning shooting anyone in that tweet? Either you linked the wrong one or you’re trying to paint a false equivalence.
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There’s such a thing as a peaceful revolution. Portraying this as similar to the President calling for shooting people is disingenuous.
For anyone who doesn't want to click, Twitter quarantined (you can click "view" to see it, however engagement is disabled) a Presidential tweet in which he calls on a mayor to "get a city under control", threatened to send in the national guard, said the military is behind the governor, and said that if there is difficulty they will assume control. His specific reference to violence occurred at the end the tweet, which he ended saying "Any difficulty, and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!"
This is very interesting to watch unfold in real-time.
I find it fascinating the President of the United States is ranting about 1st Amendment violations with regards to a private business. Pretty sure there is nothing in the 1st Amendment that says he is guaranteed the right to tweet.
I hope Twitter takes this a step further the next time he violates their ToS and gives his account a 48 hour suspension.
I understand why Trump is picking this fight but I can't help but feel Twitter hold the power. Sure Trump has been a big driving factor in Twitter really hitting mainstream but I would be surprised if he was still adding huge value to the platform. If anything banning Trump would be the biggest thing to ever happen to Twitter as he wouldn't let it go.
However I can't see a way for Trump to win such a fight. It could go all the way to the SCOTUS but if they sided against Twitter it would affect literally every big social media platform in the US which I can't see happening.
Zooming all the way out I don't see why Twitter really care about such a fight as there is no way Google and Facebook (to name just two) would let things go against Twitter as it would be devastating to them as well.
With free speech it gets interesting how you interpret it. One interpretation, which I think Trump is using, is that "laws come last". There is a principle that says free speech should be protected and laws only come to cover the cases where the principle can be infringed. So twitter, in this interpretation, would be correct according to current law, but would stand on the wrong side with regards to a higher value of upholding the principle.
However there is another interpretation which says that ability to remove someone from your private business is also an expression of free speech. And that private companies as well as individuals are free to choose who they do business with. But there is one nuance here - this is better served under another principle which is "freedom of association". Freedom of association states that you can refuse to deal with anyone you don't like. However in USA this principle recently lost its value after certain group of Christians were not allowed to refuse baking a cake for a gay couple. So it seems there are certain protections.
But then there is a third thing which is that in some countries (and I am not sure here about USA) the president has the right to send a message using any media channel he sees fit, and the media channel cannot refuse. Informing and communicating with the public is one of president's duties and refusing to send his message infringes upon it. If USA has such a law and if Twitter could be interpreted as a media platform then it could be against the law for Twitter to do what it is currently doing. Unlikely thou, as twitter has a team of lawers and likely they were consulted beforehand.
> Zooming all the way out I don't see why Twitter really care about such a fight
Companies are ran by people and those people take political sides. Twitter is on the democratic party side, and the election season is coming. I predict we will se a bigger coordinated effort spanning Google, Youtube, and Twitter, and some other big corporations as we get closer to USA president election date.
Thank you for your insights.
> But then there is a third thing which is that in some countries (and I am not sure here about USA) the president has the right to send a message using any media channel he sees fit, and the media channel cannot refuse. Informing and communicating with the public is one of president's duties and refusing to send his message infringes upon it. If USA has such a law and if Twitter could be interpreted as a media platform then it could be against the law for Twitter to do what it is currently doing. Unlikely thou, as twitter has a team of lawers and likely they were consulted beforehand.
I looked into what powers the President of the US has in regards to sending a message and from what I found there are only specific rules (not sure if they are laws) for TV and radio to broadcast Presidential messages unaltered when asked.
Even if one was to interpret those rules to include the internet as well surely that would fall onto ISPs in that they must give unrestricted access to government services such as whitehose.gov rather than giving the President unlimited power of literally any US-based website?
I am sure if Twitter bans Trump's account he would push forward that he has unlimited power to communicate via any website he pleases although I have no idea how that would play out in the courts. It certainly goes against the small government position the Republican party talk about for businesses.
> Companies are ran by people and those people take political sides. Twitter is on the democratic party side, and the election season is coming. I predict we will se a bigger coordinated effort spanning Google, Youtube, and Twitter, and some other big corporations as we get closer to USA president election date.
I also think this. Seems Facebook has picked their side with Trump.
Me thinks Twitter has been planning for this outcome for a while now which is why they have held off on banning his account. I wouldn't be surprised if they take the step to ban him sometime in the not too distant future.
As President, or any public figure, you are responsible not only for the intention of your words, but also every feasible interpretation of your words, as well as the impacts of your words, regardless of intention.
I say this not to imply that Trump didn't know that this statement could be taken in multiple ways, but to remind people that even if it can it doesn't matter. It's tragic this has happened, and also tragic to have a leader who reacts to the situation in this way, and that a large swath of the country applauds him for it.
Vague and menacing threats are much more thuggish behavior than emotional reaction to the killing of an unarmed civilian.
As for what Twitter is doing, I'm curious whether they follow this path to it's logical conclusion, which is, eventually Trump being banned from Twitter. He's a huge driver of traffic for them, but perhaps they're thinking about life after Trump at this point, months away from the election.
Every feasible interpretation? No way. That’s not gonna work. No one would be able to say anything. At best people would talk like ex Fed chair Greenspan. Undoable.
Yes, every feasible interpretation. That doesn't mean you can't say anything without multiple interpretations, but it _does_ mean that, if you are called on another interpretation of your words, then you spoke unclearly. You need to clarify your meaning and apologize if it was flagrant.
Yes, that is a lot of overhead for communicating. That's what I believe we should expect of our elected leaders. Sadly, nearly half of voting Americans don't seem to agree with me.
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Please point me to something Obama said that could be interpreted as inciting deadly vigilante violence.
I’ll wait.
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He might spend his 2nd term without Twitter or he might follow-through on his vague threats of reforming social media
Vague and menacing threats are admittedly thuggish behavior, but I think it's hard to argue that it's more thuggish than burning down a police station.
I believe there’s a suitable MLK speech in which it explains property violence in response to human violence is an attempt to push the majority to action using loss of property when it is clear loss of life means nothing.
Given that it’s clear literal loss of life meant very little to people but property damage gets multiple multiple news coverage and POTUS coverage etc etc. it’s hard to consider burning down a police station when the police killed someone on camera to be completely improper. All attempts to appeal peacefully to the people who are supposed to deliver justice have failed, and in fact, those who are supposed to deliver justice have done the unjust thing...
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Well of course it isn't "more thuggish." The use of "thug" was done on purpose. It is a known racist dog whistle. Trump's racist followers know exactly what he means when he says "These THUGS are..." They replace that with the n word. It's just as a society we don't allow them to say the n word any more, so they've replaced it with a myriad of dog whistles.
What I'm saying is that, in their minds, every single person in that mob is a "thug," and everything they're doing is (in your words) "thuggish."
But the mob of white folks in Charlottesville? Nothing thuggish there. That's just white folks protesting against being oppressed by minorities.
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When I think of thugs, I think of premeditated stick ups, protection money rackets, and intimidation.
A riot is dangerous, unpredictable, and unwise (imo), but I wouldn't characterize it as thuggish. It's clear to me the reason that word was used was to appeal to his base, who are eager to put a label on these protestors as a way of dehumanizing them.
https://theconversation.com/thugs-is-a-race-code-word-that-f...
FWIW, even in the most far-right audiences I know of, I don't recall a single instance of people taking issue with the "rioters'" reactions against the police force.
I see a focus on the looting and destruction of private property that is unaffiliated with the police: a Target and an Autozone in particular. If anything, I'm seeing broad support for what's happening with regard to the MLPD.
This is not a simple partisan issue. Not even close.
One angle I don't see discussed: I wonder if Trump commits to more risky/bombastic/divisive plans as president because he feels confident that he can directly frame them and control the narrative by using his audience on Twitter, and he feels emboldened by how immediately Twitter is able to deliver the reactions. If there's a chance this is true, I can especially understand Twitter wanting to have no part in this. It would be fucked up to force anyone like Twitter to be the ones working to support this if they didn't want to be the ones doing it and associated with it.
Twitter should have suspended the account of a repeated rule breaker a long time ago.
If I threatened to shoot the president, I would be in jail already, not to mention my twitter account would be suspended.
https://twitter.com/search?q=%22shoot%20trump%22&src=typed_q...
https://twitter.com/swoIIens/status/1266247882652278785 https://twitter.com/uwork4me247/status/1265065191311638529 https://twitter.com/SweeetTeeeaaa/status/1263924178048241665 https://youtu.be/E4i3bAtEuJE?t=184
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Twitter's stock price had far too much to gain to lose the traffic he brought. They are complicit in the current state of affairs.
I don't disagree; I think my point is just another reason on top of that.
I've said in the past that if Twitter had a "dislike" button in addition to the "like" button and only showed the cumulative score (like reddit or HN), Trump would've gotten much less gratification from Twitter due to lower net "likes" and would've given up Twitter entirely, which would almost certainly have altered his behavior.
Large scale botnets would likely be employed.
Trump playbook: 1)cause problem 2)throw a fit, bluster, and lie to get his base riled up 3)gain minor concession from opponent and/or back down 5)claim victory
It's way too late for that, though. I left twitter more than five years ago (can't remember the exact date) when it became clear it had became a gathering place for ordinary fascism and you could not have a reasonable discussion without having extremists harassing you. And this started long before Trump's election (in France, we have a name for that : the fachosphere).
I'm willing to give it an other chance if they implement proper moderation (because in the end, I love talking with people very different than me, especially if they are of different political views, provided they're willing to discuss and don't just want to harm opponents), but I'm afraid the harm is done, and everyone is radicalized, now.
Seems like there's a whole lotta fascists on this internet.
...where "fascist" is defined as: "anyone who disagrees with me".
That this comment is still up five days later, and amidst the current news, is a shocking failure by the mods.
What an embarrassment.
Who has actually expressed or implied this definition of fascism?
Why is this comment allowed to stay up?
Nope. Where it's defined as people enacting or cheering right wing authoritarian destruction of democratic society.
Like the supporters of Donald Trump.
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So I have a question about this. Does free speech apply to platforms like Facebook and Twitter? I would have thought that a website owner has a choice about the content of their website, even if that content is user generated. Surely they could remove any tweet they wanted and not be sued?
It depends. And the problem that people have is that social media companies want to be both publishers and platforms.
For example, T-Mobile is a platform. They aren't responsible for anything you say when on the phone, using their network.
CNN is a publisher. They are responsible for anything that gets posted on their website, and can get sued accordingly.
Social media companies want to choose what is posted on their website, but also not be held responsible for anything that is posted on their website. They want the perks of being a publisher, and the perks of being a platform.
Obviously there are arguments made on both sides. But that is the general disagreement, if I understand correctly.
> CNN is a publisher. They are responsible for anything that gets posted on their website, and can get sued accordingly.
This isn't true though. CNN/NYTimes/etc can't be sued for 3rd party comments on their site. CNN is also allowed to filter what comments make it on their site. These are not opposing ideas.
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The "publisher" vs "platform" debate is a false dichotomy without any basis in the actual law. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive under Section 230. A newspaper is responsible for the content they "publish" but if I comment on one of their articles they are not responsible for what I've said on their "platform".
> It depends. And the problem that people have is that social media companies want to be both publishers and platforms.
> For example, T-Mobile is a platform. They aren't responsible for anything you say when on the phone, using their network.
> CNN is a publisher. They are responsible for anything that gets posted on their website, and can get sued accordingly.
Also T-Mobile is a point-to-point communications platform, while CNN is a broadcaster.
Social media seems like a new thing that doesn't have directly analogous antecedents. It's a high-impact, wide-reach broadcaster that has little to no editorial control. Before it, broadcasters lacking editorial control were marginal and low-reach.
I still find this to be such a silly comparison, really.
CNN is a publisher.. they pay people to be on TV, they pay people to write articles. Of course CNN (the company) is liable for what it puts out, because they are literally creating 100% of the content and paying people to do it. So if they are slandering someone with no basis, it's logical to say "Uh CNN is literally paying people to write lies to mislead people".
Now let's take a site like HN. People post articles here, people comment on articles. HN isn't "creating" any of the content like CNN. So obviously some random person posting a story or commenting complete bullshit is not HN's goal.
Now what's the argument... that as soon as HN starts to flag something as misleading, remove "spam" (who determines what is a spam article?), then suddenly they are put into a publisher realm and can get sued for what is or is not on there?
I mean.. to me that is LAUGHABLE that someone wants to argue as soon as a site like reddit/twitter/hn starts to do anything to the content they treated like a publisher and are liable for the content. This already happens a billion times a day across all those platforms anyway.
perhaps there aren't two sides.. that there is a genuine third form: the publisher-platform -- one which best describes both how these platforms do operate, and how they should do so.
When you have billions of users wanting to post content you can hardly be a publisher in any traditional sense; nor will the gov./society/users let you be a platform.
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This is precisely what Trump's executive order targets. Section 230 of the CDA gave websites and social media networks a little wiggle room in the platform vs publisher stance. They could moderate as they see fit without being liable for the content on their sites. Now that's being weakening, or more precisely becoming more well defined by the FCC. There will be strict requirements to be considered a platform, one example of which is needing to have a well defined terms of service and strictly follow that all across the board.
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The 1st Amendment does not apply to private platforms, except perhaps if Twitter was denying access on protected attributes (race, gender, etc).
Anyone can be sued for any reason. It is extremely unlikely a suit against Twitter for moderation will succeed. In theory they have the legal ability to remove all GOP politicians, knitters, or fast food companies from their platform.
The newest Executive Order about Section 230 means the FTC can enforce anytime Twitter doesn’t follow their own stated policies. So Twitter will just adjust their policies to give themselves more latitude. Even this is legally murky and will take years to be resolved in court.
Here is a very recent (likely put out due to this as it's not a full opinion) ruling on the topic: https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/05/27/facebook-twitter-a...
"Freedom Watch's First Amendment claim fails because it does not adequately allege that the Platforms can violate the First Amendment. In general, the First Amendment 'prohibits only governmental abridgment of speech,'" the court wrote, citing a previous opinion issued by the D.C. Court of Appeals. The judges went on to say that "'a private entity who provides a forum for speech is not transformed by that fact alone into a state actor.'"
Not sure what you mean. Free speech as a concept apples to them as well. Free speech as a law however does not force them to keep content up.
People expect the service to work as stated. So blanket-removing would not be legal.
But in general, you might be right (I am not sure).
"For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king"
The service that hosts the accounts of all branches of the US military, all major weapons contractors, all three letter agencies, and many foreign militaries, governments, and world leaders guilty of all manner of war crimes, and this is where they draw the line for violence. Really interesting.
Well, in political science and sociology, one of the most common definitions of the state is that it possesses a monopoly on legitimate/lawful violence.
Violence conducted via the military or police, according to regulation, is lawful.
But violence conducted by citizens, or by members of the government or military that is not according to law/regulation, is not lawful.
I'm not saying Twitter's drawing the line exactly right, but it's somewhere in the right vicinity.
Presidents are also commanders in chief; a civilian that has ultimate control of state’s violence monopoly. Still the distinction between lawful/unlawful applies.
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Wasn't Trump referring to stand your ground laws?
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"Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts"
I think Trump's saying that if things get out of control, law enforcement will start shooting. If I understand your post correctly, this would be lawful...
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Twitter didn't draw the line at promoting violence (which is a line I can agree with), they drew the line at a prediction of mail-in voting resulting in fraud.
This is using past violence as a threat of imminent violence while the other accounts you mentioned will generally reference violence indirectly or in the past tense. That is an important distinction.
He is the commander in chief. He has the capability to threaten violence.
This tweet, while in bad taste IMO, was a threat to those who are planning to continue looting and burning buildings in Minneapolis.
I’m not sure if you’ve seen the videos, but there are full scale riots. Rioters completely looted a Target and burned it nearly to the ground.
Is “shooting” the answer to that? Probably not. And hopefully the National Guard is not going to do that.
But at the end of the day, this is the commander in chief making a public statement, and Twitter is editorializing it. Make of that what you will.
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That's a fair point. I'm not defending Trump's tweet, but it seems defining violence glorification is arbitrary. It would be funny if Twitter adds a rule that says you can be an organization whose whole purpose is to make devices that kill people as long as you don't glorify making devices that kill people.
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The president is the most visible face of the government. Of all the ones you mentioned, it's the only one people actually vote for. What he says and does has the most impact. So I don't find it "interesting", I find it entirely reasonable.
Only if you think that there are only Americans in this world.
Hint: there are non-Americans too.
Downvotes? HN really thinks there are only Americans on this planet? Of dear.
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People in the United States do not vote for a president. They vote for an elector who in turn will vote for the president. This is an important and often left out detail in how the American political system works, in theory it could have protected us from the current dumpster fire.
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Also don’t forget that Hamas has many official twitter accounts in various languages.
Have they posted suggestions of shooting their own citizens and not been sanctioned by Twitter?
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> Really interesting.
Is it "really interesting" that Twitter is paying extra attention to the President of the United States' Twitter account? I don't think so.
You can make the case that humans often engage in threats to prevent violence.
Having seen a few people threaten each other, and not get into a physical fight. But to walk way. I would say it can be preferable to actual fists thrown. Words are not violence.
'Trump's phrase "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" is an unattributed quote of Walter Headley, Miami's police chief in 1967. It was a threat to citizens who were upset that police had terrorized a black teenager by holding him over a bridge.' (https://twitter.com/mattsheffield/status/1266246092393336838)
An unattributed quote?
The OP means that Trump didn't use quotation marks or mention that it was a quotation. (I myself didn't realize it was a quotation.) There is no attribution or quotation marks in the tweet.
I found the attribution of the quote very informative and am very surprised it is currently downvoted. My own summary of the tweets is also downvoted, not sure what I could/should add to it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23347395
I tried to neutrally summarize the tweets, in case people wanted to know what they said without clicking.
What is your question?
100K people dead and this guys priorities are Twitter and coming up with ways to throw more fuel on a dumpster fire of race relations and police brutality. Bravo.
It totally fits his history of drawing the public's attention away from the most unflattering things that he has done.
It's the US.
Scapegoating blacks is how you win elections. I'm not saying it's right, I'm saying that it gets lots and lots of people to vote for you.
So yes, to the extent that winning elections is important to politicians, this sort of thing is made a priority.
I’m curious to understand HN’s algo: Why has this thread, with over 1299 comments, decayed so quickly to the bottom of the 2nd page?
more upvotes -> higher
more time passed, more comments -> lower
So comments actually work against it?
One thing that's fascinating about this is how Twitter has become so centered around political discussion (& histrionics). It's become the backbone of the sort of inside-baseball of politics. The lightning rod at the center of both politics and Twitter is Trump. Trump is such a powerful force because he can bend the ridiculousness of the twitter conversation to his will. He's perhaps an outcome of all the incentives of the social network.
So limiting Trump is to me a kind of commentary on Twitter itself. Maybe something like a Trump is the end-game of a Twitter-like network?
“ ....These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!”
Which part of that tweet glorifies violence?
Is there recent research on the effects of political polarization on the mental health and sanity of americans?
The White House twitter account has issued a response: https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1266367168603721728?s=...
This* Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence. However, @Twitter has determined that it will allow terrorists, dictators, and foreign propagandists to abuse its platform.
*Referring to an attached picture of a Khamenei tweet about Palestine
I think Twitter user @HoarseWisperer summed it up quite well:
Framed it quite well. A good summary should note if there is significant complexity involved in the statement, not take a biased framing of the situation, and give no indication that they have done it.
Silencing of one side allows for faster indoctrination to the opposite.
Where's the violence though? Or are they applying the stereotypical western misunderstanding of jihad = violence/terrorism?
https://news.gallup.com/poll/7333/jihad-holy-war-internal-sp...
When people risk being killed during a jihad, it kinda implies that a text does not refer to a greater jihad aimed at improving one's soul.
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When the tweet in question also talks about Palestinian independence, it's not talking about "internal jihad". It's talking about violence. And when it talks about "even if death", it's talking about being killed when engaged in violence, not about when engaged in peaceful resistance.
whataboutism on his part
That's amazing. Of all the horrific thing people post to Twitter all day long, a vague statement about Palestinian independence is the "best" whataboutist comparison Trump could find to match his own threat to open fire on the country he is sworn to defend.
I don't think the Khomenni tweet is a valid comparison to Trumps (for other reasons) but lets be honest — This tweet is anything but a "vague statement about Palestinian independence", since it directly references and advocates for Jihad and Martyrdom.
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How about this? https://twitter.com/kathygriffin/status/1265440342892929025?...
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> Of all the horrific thing people post to Twitter all day long, a vague statement about Palestinian independence is the "best" whataboutist comparison Trump could find
You're thinking the best example is the one that should obviously be removed. But that's not what he's after, because then they'd just remove it. What he wants is something it would be maximally contentious for them to remove.
I am so, so tired of everyone apply "conservative" to outright nonsense. We should say "republican" or "trumpian" instead.
There is nothing conservative in many of the far-right ideas, by any definition of the word. If the idea or opinion is:
1) Based on pure hate
2) Based on treating a protected class badly - you know, the whole reason we have class protections
3) Based on NOTHING AT ALL, no facts given, other than sometimes a turtles-all-the-way-down derivation of other crazy opinions, and sometimes with a "make it true" initiative bringing up the rear. Speculation is not a position. Speculation is not a position. SPECULATION IS NOT A POSITION!
those are NOT Conservative. Those are crazy. Especially #3, employed all the time by the current POTUS.
I personally believe the Conservative movement has actually been wildly successful over the last several decades, and the country has shifted significantly to the right.
Now, all that remains is the crazy. That is all the right has to differentiate itself, and they're going all in.
Anyway, TLDR: crazy is not Conservative, please use Trumpian or Republican if that fits. Also, speculation is not a position :)
Amusingly it looks like Twitter's report system contradicts the hiding by saying there's nothing wrong with the tweet:
https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1266452015493906435
President Trump has also clarified his remarks, which is a welcome move.
If I’m reading that correctly, it’s a completely misleading assertion by @WhiteHouse. It appears as though this is in response to the quote of the original that was also reported. Given that the quote is adding a comment on to the original text, their ruling makes sense to me.
That said, it looks like they’ve hidden it as well now. So maybe they see it as an attempt to circumvent the TOS and are treating it the same way.
A plain non-technical reading of the email from Twitter doesn't describe the structure you're suggesting - so it's possible that Twitter's email template is not properly rendering the structure of the tweets.
This seems like an escalation. How would both sides continuing to escalate play out?
Trump would probably get banned at some point, especially if his tweets start to endanger rank-and-file Twitter employees (inspiring death threats, etc.). How likely is he to get injunctive relief if he gets banned?
I don't think Trump has thought this conflict through completely.
Given that this is an election year, I imagine that he is absolutely going to intentionally try to get himself banned - then spin the whole "liberal-bias-censorship" card.
...and it might work. These sorts of stories play riiiight to the centrist/libertarian/independents - whom he's grooming to not be afraid of showing up in person to the election booth in November.
I wrote this on the duplicate topic here, copying as I believe it matters:
I know it is "never too late" for things like this to happen, but it's definitely late.
One of the main reasons for bad things to happen is the lack of education (which, in turn, leads to resist to change) and, therefore makes people prone to believe to unbelievable things.
Social platforms like Twitter should have long had things like "fact checking" ANY statements and should have restricting not only violence glorifying posts, but also the ones with racial or sexual discrimination and all the others .
It is late, but I like seeing it happen at least for the person with the most "glorifying" record in dividing a society.
There is more outrage in this thread about some Twitter policy than the dead black man and the racist president inciting violence on Americans.
> Trump is intentionally or inadvertently quoting former Miami Police Chief Walter Headley. In December 1967, months before riots broke out during the (Nixon) Republican National Convention, Headley said “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” at the announcement of a new “get tough” policy for policing black neighborhoods. Headley promised to use shotguns, dogs, and aggressive “stop and frisk” tactics in a bid to reduce crime. “We don’t mind being accused of police brutality,” the New York Times reported him saying at the time. “They haven’t seen anything yet.”
so now twitter decides what is right or wrong? let's shot down this little evil bird.
the media is so biased these days, their job really should be fair and balance and they totally failed, either too left or two right.
social media polarized people more than anything we have seen in history, thanks to facebook, twitter, and google to some extent
Yet somehow Ayatollah Khomeini tweets for the Nth time that Israel must be eliminated (verbatim): https://twitter.com/Khamenei_tv/status/1264541220006739968.
How do you go about "eliminating" a country and its inhabitants without killing them all?
How can Twitter apply these rules inconsistently and be taken seriously?
Promoting violence should have always been the red line. This is very different than regulating 'facts'.
Twitter should maliciously comply with Trump's executive order. Suspend his account, and post a banner saying that it was suspended in compliance with President Trump's Executive Order.
People are wondering "How far does this go? How can Twitter say this is not cool, but allow something like violent movies or games? Where's the line?"
The leader of the United States encouraging law enforcement and the military to shoot American citizens for looting, that's the line.
We have laws in the UK that curtail speech like that, "Inciting violence" is a crime.
Which I agree with to some extent, you're not innocent of a crime because you convinced a person to harm another, just because you were too cowardly to get your hands dirty yourself.
But the US is rather famously not British, so I'm not sure if it's a relevant thing to add to the discussion.
I'm also on the other* side of the Atlantic from this circus, but a little googling over lunch led me to the "Brandenburg Test" for when "Inciting violence" is no longer protected by the 1A. (NB: 1A is an entirely different subject than Twitter's TOS, which I addressed in the original thread)
Briefly: speech which both incites imminent lawless action and is likely to produce such action fails to be protected as US "free speech".
In this case, my IANAL analysis would be that the tweet had imminent application, but would be unlikely to produce action, for reasons given in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23347453 (tl;dr lethal force is the last resort of a well-regulated militia when restoring public order)
* and am therefore fond of "On the fact..." https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd06xx/EWD611.PDF
There's plenty of "speech" criminalized in the US: many crimes are just matters of conspiring to X, or fradulently X... which may have been conducted entirely in speech.
The relevant kind of speech for "free expression" is that which seeks to express an idea/opinion/belief of the speaker.
That isn't criminalised in the UK as far as I'm aware, and would fall under the EHCR protections in any case which are in UK law as the human rights act.
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Part of the issue is if you're hostile to the speaker, you can interpret a call for peace to mean a call for violence. Try to imagine for a moment, that this comment was not made by an evil racist orange man, but someone you like... maybe Ghandi. If Ghandi said: "Looting leads to shooting." Which interpretation would you more likely choose?
1. Please don't loot, it escalates violence and people will get killed
2. Let's kill all the looters
Whether it's Trump or Ghandi, we're imagining we know something about the internal state of the speaker's mind that we don't know.
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People in the US will say the First allows him say such things. They'd be wrong.
I believe the person in question has crossed the line long time ago.
And Twitter should improve their fact-checking and restricting algorithms and apply it all the time.
I am in agreement that waiting to do something is foolish, but I can see why they did not wait any longer.
> The leader of the United States encouraging law enforcement and the military to shoot American citizens for looting
That's an extremely literal interpretation of his words. Most people would interpret that phrase to mean "you better think twice before looting because I'm not going to sit idly by and let you do it" but in the form of a vaguely threatening, yet catchy rhyme.
> The phrase was used by Miami's police chief, Walter Headley, in 1967, when he addressed his department's "crackdown on ... slum hoodlums," according to a United Press International article from the time.
> Headley, who was chief of police in Miami for 20 years, said that law enforcement was going after “young hoodlums, from 15 to 21, who have taken advantage of the civil rights campaign. ... We don't mind being accused of police brutality."
This is where the quote comes from.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/where-does-phrase-...
Edit:
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-quotes-cop-sparked-rac...
> The National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence found that Headley's remarks and policing policies had been a significant factor in sparking the riots.
> Headley died four months after the riots. The Times in its obituary noted his policies had caused "growing resentment" among black Miami residents.
Our President fully understands the gravity of those words. This is what he wanted to say. This is what he meant. This is what he believes. This is WHO HE IS.
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> That's an extremely literal interpretation of his words
Yes, which is better than a reasonable interpretation of his words would show them to be, because going beyond a mere literal reading to consider the deliberate historical reference and the implicit subtext makes the statement worse, not better.
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> Most people would interpret that phrase..
Even if you're right, which you're not, what is "Most" here? 51%? 63%? 90%?
Are you saying that it's bad if the majority of people are riled up to engage in violence following his tweet, but OK if 40% do? 10%? 1%?
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What's vague about 'When the looting starts, the shooting starts'? It seems extremely specific to me.
> Most people would interpret that phrase to mean "you better think twice before looting because I'm not going to sit idly by and let you do it"
What do you base the knowledge of how most people will have interpreted this statement on?
The historical experiences of different classes of people can have a profound impact on the perspectives they have in relation to the government. An 80 year old black man might have a very different relationship with governmental authorities than a 30 year old Latino, or a 40 year old Caucasian.
Do you think it is morally wrong for a store owner to protect his store using guns? Do you think it was morally wrong for the Koreans to sit on their rooftops with guns to protect their stores from looters during the LA riots ( https://warisboring.com/the-legacy-of-the-roof-koreans-28-ye...)?
If the "people" you reference are incapable of telling the difference between movies/games and the POTUS threatening violence on his own people (and arguably a majority of the country), than this is exactly why Twitter needs to do what it's doing.
So on the one hand people can tell the difference between presidential tweets and movie violence... but on the other hand they take all his tweets and interpret them in the most literal way?
> encouraging law enforcement and the military to shoot American citizens
Also, small business owners getting their livelihoods destroyed by thieving thugs.
Rioters should not destroy businesses, correct.
Sword rattling is pretty standard behavior for leaders everywhere throughout history.
Sure, alongside slavery, genocide and mass murder. Perhaps we might draw a line on occasion?
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> ...shoot American citizens for looting...
When the government uses violence to enforce the law... that's part of the system.
...but the more fundamental question is "Who gets to decide?". Should it be a corporation or an elected body?
It is literally the president’s job to command the military. If he gives a warning that looting will lead to shooting, it is not glorifying violence. It is a statement of fact.
And looting always leads to shooting, regardless of who is saying it.
First of all, look up the Posse Comitatus Act.
Next, the 4th, 5th, and 6th amendments to the United States constitution. Telling armed forces to shoot unarmed people because they happen to be looting (e.g. when there is no imminent threat to life) is summary execution and unconstitutional.
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The national guard does not work like that. Also, no the military cannot just shoot people on the spot for being in the area of looting, it is not a "statement of fact." You just made this up and pulled it out of thin air so don't respond with "well prove it" or some other BS. Quit being a racist troll and reflect on your hateful little life.
> It is literally the president’s job to command the military.
Even if one views the Tweet as a legitimate military command, which it is not, unless the government has seized Twitter with just compensation as required by the 5th Amendment, it is not Twitter's obligation to ignore its own standard sfor the purpose of relaying such orders by the President.
Otherwise, except as to explaining why Twitter opted for the public interest notice rather than simple removal, the President’s job is irrelevant here.
> If he gives a warning that looting will lead to shooting, it is not glorifying violence.
That doesn't follow from the preceding, and the statement as written glorifies violence, both potential future violence and specific historical violence by the government against it's citizens, in much better the same way (though far more proximate historically and thus much worse) that it would if Trump said “Kill them all, and God will know his own.”
> It is a statement of fact.
It is quite possible to state a fact (or make a threat which one has the power to declare execute, which is more the case here than statement of fact) while glorifying the outcome that would be produced and/or the past historical antecedent which is invoked.
Well, so do you censor things like Dr Dre’s 187 because it might be interpreted as inciting violence against (corrupt) police? A public figure of renown among fans.
Media companies have applied censorship or content warnings to rap music and other art forms - voluntarily or otherwise - for decades without a word of protest from those people determined to make the case for the POTUS' immunity to Twitter's rules
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Two notes: 1) I am not Jack Dorsey and Twitter is not my product, so I'm not sure why you said "you". 2) Dr Dre is not the president of the United States and does not have the authority to direct law enforcement and the military... surely you see the difference.
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I think you could argue the authority level difference between the president and Dr. Dre means something.
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> The leader of the United States encouraging law enforcement and the military to shoot American citizens for looting, that's the line.
Is this supposed to be bad? I actually wish that our own PM had done the same. I am sure that the citizens of a lot of countries that live under the rule of criminal syndicates, looters, and highwaymen would agree.
It seems that the US citizens are fine with state mandated violence as long as it does not include them. Nothing happened regarding https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21018041 for example.
It is bad because the value of human life (even people you don't like) is infinitely greater than material goods. A looted store can be repared, restocked, rebuilt. A dead human stays dead forever and yields a mountain of grief around him. They are not comparable at all.
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> It seems that the US citizens are fine with state mandated violence as long as it does not include them. Nothing happened regarding https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21018041 for example.
I don't think it's fair to paint this as unique to US citizens. I'd go as far as saying this is generally true across the world, with few people protesting state sanctioned violence abroad, and significantly more people protesting domestic state sanctioned violence.
I don't think that's unusual. I think it's normal that we care more about our own lives than we do others lives, we care more about people dying at home than we do abroad.
I'm not saying this is a good thing, but it is normal human behaviour. A good example of this is watching how peoples perceptions of this latest coronavirus unfolded.
There's too much going on in all of our lives to have time for every bad thing happening elsewhere. You pick your battles. That's ok. You still have to live your life for yourself at the end of the day, nobody else is going to live your life for you.
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> Is this supposed to be bad?
Yes.
> I actually wish that our own PM had done the same.
That would be bad.
> I am sure that the citizens of a lot of countries that live under the rule of criminal syndicates, looters, and highwaymen would agree.
They are also bad.
What is better is to have a functional police system that responds proportionately.
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Side topic: Should government control looting when it comes to violent protests?
Looting is illegal. It happening when there's a violent "protest" going on doesn't make it any less illegal.
One of the government's core tasks is to enforce the law, so yes, the government should control looting.
And FWIW, I think "violent protest" is a misleading euphemism. This is a riot, whether you speak American [0] or English [1].
I honestly don't understand why this is a question. Why wouldn't the government be expected to enforce the law?
[0]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/riot
[1]: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/riot
I am raising this question because many think that looting is the right thing to do and it allows avenge of George Floyd. I personally think that it hurts George Floyd's cause and only creates more divide. Violence is not the answer to society's deep racial issues.
Thanks I guess for citing the definition of a Riot. I think that's a better word for it.
Isn't the US a federated country? Surely it's up to the local police to ask for help from other police if they wish to, and then perhaps ask for help from the national guard, not the other way round?
And isn't it state governors who control the national guard, not the Federal president?
I assume the Waco types will be out there opposing "The Feds" trampling over state rights?
The US has a federal system, but people are guaranteed basic rights within it. If the local government can’t or won’t protect those rights (the police abandoned one of their five precincts to the looters!), the feds have the right and duty to step in.
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Yes. Looting hurts people that have nothing to do with the protests. Protecting them should be highest priority.
I totally agree with the protests but I think looting is wrong and unproductive and hurts their own cause.
The cost-benefit is not that clear-cut. Attempting to protect material at the cost of civil unrest, likely wounded protesters and police officers, possibly even more death. Sounds like taking a step back might have been the best of all the bad options.
Yes. However theft does not warrant lethal force.
More importantly though, the government should be more concerned with the cause than the symptom. Arrest the officer and this goes away.
It’s terrible that folks are looting and taking the focus away from the problem, but it’s also shameful to evoke George Floyd’s name to shame them without making mention of the officer who started this mess.
Looting should be prevented regardless of protest. The punishment for looting should not be death.
With innocent people being harmed, and at least one killed, I think they should. Letting this get out of control is not the best option, as tensions are already high from covid, and this could be a feedback loop to more unneeded violence, with unintended victims caught in the cross hairs.
With a gas line possibly being cut, and ~170 business burned down, this is spiraling out of control [0]
I mention the gas line (though I don’t know if this a fair comparison) for the potential of chained explosions like the one in Merrimack Valley [1]
Regardless, I think many are using the protests as an excuse to loot, and let off steam from the tensions of lockdown, in addition to its obvious main reason.
[0] https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2020/05/29/protesters-take-mi...
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrimack_Valley_gas_explosi...
> ... and ~170 business burned down, this is spiraling out of control
To be clear, that is NOT what the article you linked states.
It reads:
> The St. Paul Police Department said more than 170 businesses were looted or damaged Thursday, and dozens of fires were set.
They can.
The process is Local Police, State Police, Gov calls in National Guard, Gov goes to State legislature, State then asks President for help.
@dang hey can we unflag this?
I vote we move the discussion to reddit, which is a better suited platform for politics.
I'm sorry, but technology does not exist in a vacuum insulated from the rest of the universe. An implementation of any given application, its code, its infrastructure, and its services may be apolitical, but as a platform that is used for communication it is important that conversations be had about how these platforms are used. Perhaps you can bury your head in the sand and pretend that society is not falling apart at the seams due in large part to the spread of misinformation across any number of internet forums and social media services, but I think the rest of us may have an opinion that is inimical to ignoring the problem.
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Does Netflix have a documentary maker inside the Whitehouse at the moment?
Yet, Kaepernick's isn't hidden (which also pushes violence).
Free advice: Never tweet.
Twitter is definitely allowed to do this, legally, but seems like a pretty short-sited decision. There's no way that poking the bear like this is going to lead to anything except a more highly regulated platform.
> There's no way that poking the bear like this is going to lead to anything except a more highly regulated platform.
How? Attempts at regulating Twitter's ability to fact-check on their own privately owned platform would almost certainly fail a First Amendment challenge, and the Democratic House isn't gonna go a long with new laws to crack down on it either.
I’m now fully expecting republican mega donors coming together to trying to gain control of Tweeter as strategic asset. At $23B market cap it’s fairly easy target given there are already other major investors wanting to see Dorsey out. There already had been movement to buy off super cheap local radio stations and turn them in to conservative media at scale. Republican think tanks understands the immense value of building media channels and they have ton of money sloshing around. I can imagine Twitter with new CEO banning all tweets from Joe Biden because they are all deemed factually incorrect or misleading.
I hate to have anything even vaguely in common with Trump, but there is some sense in this.
The platforms have been shadow-banning (a particularly egregious policy), censoring, and otherwise shaping the content on their sites for a good while now.
At the same time they claim to be merely a 'pipe', conecting content producers, and consumers.
They can't have it both ways.
This 'executive order' is obviously a spiteful, and frankly, unbelievable-that-it's-legal move by this, man, but there is still a germ of truth to it.
For me, tagging content, but still making it generally available, is far less sinister than disappearing it, or only presenting it to profiled users, etc, etc.
IMHO.
Any modern pipe connecting consumers to producers is going to rely on some sort of matching algorithm to map the two. If they just used some sort of dumb FIFO -- user retention and advertising dollars would disappear.
Like it or not, there are political ramifications in that algorithm no matter how hard it tries to be neutral. Even platforms that stay 'hands off' are shaping content and it's almost impossible for them not to while retaining what we've come to expect from a modern platform.
I find it clever that Twitter is not deleting the tweets, but simply adding their opinions about it.
I don't know if you can call "censure" when your messages are still visible to the public, but the "editor-that-is-not-really-an-editor-but-sort-of" simply adds a banner saying "yeah, sure, right."
I can't wait for Trump to protest the flagging, and Twitter to respond that "flagging tweets while letting them visible" is just expressing their free speech. Surely Trump supporters are all in favor of free speech in a free country, right ?
yes we support free speech but if they are editiorializing then section 230 no longer applies to them. we should prosecute them for all the child exploitation and other crimes such as defamation on their platform
As they should.
It did not "hide" the tweet
In other news, in an unfortunate training accident a low yield nuclear device was dropped on twitter HQ
People who voted for Trump wanted chaos and now he is giving it to them. If he keeps going he might get re-elected.
I feel really disconnected from what is the online mainstream thought. Trump is a huge embarrassment and this tweet should never come from our president. Twitter is doing some real selective enforcement that doesn't seem even handed or even logical. The Tweet in question vaguely qualifies, and there is much worse stuff being posted to Twitter that more clearly and more demonstratively glorifies violence. Search Twitter for "burn it down" (just a example phrase, but you could pick "shoot the cops" or any number of things) https://twitter.com/search?q=%22burn%20it%20down%22&src=type... and you get https://twitter.com/Pork_Soda_187/status/1266287249261424641 https://twitter.com/katie80980282/status/1266287106147508231 https://twitter.com/hengebeat/status/1266286823480782852
and these are all in the last 5 minutes. Selective enforcement doesn't put Twitter in a good light and doesn't seem like something that is in the best interest of their company. Also it is a bad look that their head of site integrity was saying vile stuff about the other half of America.
I really dislike Trump and will definitely vote against him. I don't get the overwhelming support for actions like this from Twitter.
It's often troubling, but moderation has always been selective.
This particular selective moderation is functionally equivalent to Twitter giving their backing to an actual, real-world riot and associated calls to murder cops whilst hiding behind Section 230 in order to avoid any liability. That seems... inadvisable, though obviously popular with the political faction most of their employees come from.
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Twitter has become the example of right vs left. I don't think this tweet "glorifies" violence, but my opinion doesn't matter, only Twitter's. That herein is the problem. It would be interesting if Trump left twitter and made the journalists follow him to some other platform.
It's perfectly okay that you hold the opinion that the tweet didn't glorify violence. Your opinion is objectively wrong, but you're allowed to hold it.
Only according to your opinion. Just because you disagree with me does not mean you're right.
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I would like to see the impact of this feud , it will start with Twitter stock.
Objectively - how is this advocating for violence? I have not been following this deeply but it seems like there is already serious violence occurring where dozens of people have been charged with probable felonies and buildings have been set on fire? Isn't it the responsibility of the local government to protect private property? It certainly seems like the situation is out of hand when a police station is burned to the ground.
The National guard has been dispatched in similar situations e.g. Rodney King riots. Ostensibly the reason for the deployment is to "ensure peace"
I understand Trump walks a thin line, but in my opinion he is very skilled at never literally advocating for violence or overtly racist actions.
I absolutely do not condone excessive force against anyone, but I fail to understand how this specific tweet is glorifying violence. I'm just trying to understand
The phrase Trump uses is a direct quote from a police chief who was explicitly giving the OK to his police officers to kill protesters.
Much as I hate the over-use of the term "dog whistle" this is the exact thing it means. It has plausible deniability, but to the intended audience it sends a clear message.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/05/29/when-the-l...
I see, the original post didn't show this tweet
This might be helpful for the context. Mark Zuckerburg went to Fox News and Trump tweeted about how Facebook will not do the same. Zuckerburg also had Xi Jinping's book on his desk at some point.
publicity stunt
This is great! Now we can have a real conversation about free speach, net neutrality and so on...hopefully Trump will get some some abusive dmca notifications as well. That would be gold!
Hiding the tweet instead of removing it seems like a good compromise to me, but I think this sets a pretty difficult precedent for Twitter. Once you start hiding tweets like this, you are implying that any high profile tweets you don't hide are not classified as glorifying violence. And every time you hide a tweet for glorifying violence, people who supported that tweet will show examples of other tweets which were not hidden to show that it should not have been hidden/removed. Seems like an impossible standard to uphold given the amount of people glorifying violence on their platform.
Only if they applied the rules equally to all politicians, and only if the process were transparent.
There's a lot of danger in allowing corporations to control the political conversation globally.
Too late for that. They have for many years. This is only the most visible form of control.
Corporations spend enormous amounts of money every year on exactly this. I believe lobbying politicians to take their side and the shaping of media coverage has had an even larger impact than hiding a tweet behind a click.
In 2017 a rogue twitter employee suspended Donal Trump's account on last day at the job. Did the world politics change in that downtime?
The account was only suspended for like 17 minutes, and it’s not clear the POTUS even noticed. So no, no impact to world politics.
One week of A/B testing would an ideal experiment for social scientists studying impact of world leader's tweets on the world news. Almost a utopia.
And all the Trump bots seem broken with the situation.
Normally a lot of botlike responders with a generic message on a message of Trump.
Not on this tweet it seems.
Keep digging, Dorsey.
Also something to note: Trump is using the POTUS account to retweet his personal not official titled account (realDonaldTrump).
So.. If he gets banned, we have a cause of ban evasion.
We might see 2 twitter accounts banned. This is going to be fun and amusing.
Hopefully they’ll just kick him and his acolytes off the platform. I’ve not met people so drunk on hero worship that they forgo facts and reason as I have when speaking with my trump supporting friends and family. And now he’s trying to sway elections by using misinformation? Openly using the pulpit of the highest office to spread patently false rumors? His fear mongering is harmful and has been violating Twitter’s terms for years but hey I guess it was good for business until recently... still good for them.
Lol apparently Trump's tweets are in par with NSFW
Maybe Trump should stop quoting racist violent people.
Wow. This man needs a lesson on how to deescalate a situation properly. Will this heavy handed approach really make people less angry? I doubt it..
He's not trying to deescalate. He's throwing gas on multiple fires.
Predictably. Anything for a diversion of what a screwed up government this is.
I think it's interesting how he's threatening China about HK on one hand, but on the other hand being a lot more literal and aggressive towards his own people.
He seems to be fairly aggressive against other countries:
> Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!
> To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE
He sounds more like a super villain from a comic than a president.
He has never considered them "his own people."
I think he does not know how to handle the moves being made by China to advance its territorial claims in this chaotic moment. That would explain Donald's domestic diversions.
China is pushing outward toward Hong Kong and Taiwan, in simultaneous fashion. In the former, we have the national security law. In the latter, we have new and uncamouflaged threats that China will use military force in Taiwan if it cannot control the island peacefully.
If Trump keeps our attention away from the China problem, it won't affect the stock market and we won't focus on its impacts on the world economy.
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IMHO, he's a closeted dictator and would really like to be in Xi's or Putin's shoes.
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And his supporters said that women cannot be presidents because they're too emotional..
Jack or Trump?
Not immediately sure if you're talking about Trump or Dorsey here...
The National Guard would go to stop violence, wouldn't it?
Pretty interesting how people even here try to invert the situation for political reasons.
You tell me, he quite literally says the military is with him and ready to shoot when people start looting.
Please tell me how I am inverting the situation? Or should I use your translation book to make sense of his tweets?
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The national guard shooting citizens isn't "stopping violence".
Wouldn't they cause violence?
The over-reaction here is just completely fucking stupid.
The statement that juxtaposed "looting/shooting" is akin to juxtaposing a combination not unlike "drunk driving/car wrecks" or "where smoke/there's fire" and the like.
But yeah, okay, just fly into apoplexy because you find the man tasteless and rude.
Oh just great. The american left should stop pushing people away by acting like spoiled babies.
The idea that twitter's actions are going to lead to anything good is terribly misguided. The idea that acting out your collective trump derangement syndrome is helping is even more misguided.
Please keep Twitter employees in your prayers, it’s really idiotic of Jack Dorsey to put all the employees at risk.
I used to work at Uber in 1455 on Market St, right beside Twitter and every now and then we had to avoid going to office or come at odd times given the protests.
Nuclear Hot Take: Covid-19 is the first social media virus. We all know what the "facts and science" are now and much of it is from misinformation and lies spread on twitter.
Twitter needs to be taken down today!
Don't forget to donate to Recall Gavin 2020 Campaign!
https://recallgavin2020.com/
Same twitter used to proudly keep up ISIS murder videos and used to defend it.
Send all of the middle east into meltdown, as militants foment biblical anarchy, engage in AK-47 raids, snipe tanks with RPG attacks and indirect fire, and oh right, the beheadings, but woah, woah, woah.
Trumpy say pee pee and poo poo, and that's a no no.
How is that glorifying violence?
> when the looting starts, the shooting starts.
What part of this isn't?
It doesn't unequivocally say that at all. It can reasonably be interpreted as: "once people are willing to break the law and start looting, it's not long before there are also people shooting"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
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I think it's the bit about "looting starts, the shooting starts."
Really? "When the looting starts, the shooting starts"... in reference to THUGS (which we all know what he means by that euphemism). Can't tell if you're joking, but either way it's in poor taste.
Well, looting had already started hours before he'd posted this.
That being said - the President of the United States, just stated on one of the largest social media platforms used in the U.S., that citizens of the U.S. are now to be shot. From his words, immediately. It could even be viewed as "they should've already been shot at"
If you don't understand how this is glorifying violence, I don't think you can be made to.
I'm reading the tweet more like 'I will authorize the use of deadly force by the military against the looters'. Although I could see several interpretations
But I think the real thing people aren't able to come to grips with is how Trump uses the media in such a style that gives him all plausible deniability, builds outrage AND builds support. All at once.
Where does it unequivocally say that?
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trump is going to create an onlyfans account now.
Out of curiosity, what is do the democratically passed laws in major economies actually say about the use of violence to stop looting ?
Woke: POTUS is threatening violence on protestors
Broke: POUTS want to stop the looting
It begs the question... who's in charge here? The government or the corporations?
Who's in charge of Twitter? I'm going to go with Twitter.
Well, it is a private company's site, so I would assume the corporation. If I walked into a Starbucks and started being rude to patrons, I can easily be removed on a whim. Just because it is a place that encourages social interactions does not mean that they have to allow interactions they do not like. I do not see the difference here.
Twitter is used for formal announcements because Trump himself has decided that it is a good place to make them, not because Twitter has placed themselves in that position. Granted, they make like being in that position and it probably benefits them greatly due to the increased ad revenue and engagement, but they can also make the decision that his presence is not worth the vitriol it generates. He can easily choose another avenue (Facebook, Reddit, News media, etc) to make announcements if it is no longer the best choice for him.
I was suddenly struck with an image of Trump angrily posting his updates on Hacker News.
Neither. The population are, or at least should be.
The population should be in charge of twitter? Doesn't that seem a little funny?
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After leaked recording with Joe Biden promising 1000000000 USD to Ukraine for helping his son with the criminal investigation, I doubt many people will vote for him.
Here is one of the leaked records: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPVPBNGH2HA
Shooting looters?!
Can't he drone strike middle eastern people or start another war, like decent American politicians do?
The former hits too close to home for people, literally.
So many blockbuster movies... no more ads for those. Oh, I see it’s an official. Let’s see what violence means. Is encouraging people to oppose dictators encouraging violence?
Should we just step back and laugh?
What is funnier than people on both sides of an argument taking themselves way too seriously, and engaging in a bunch of troll-on-troll action?
So people not liking the head of the country talking about having people shot by the military is "taking themselves way too seriously"? Only one side is bringing death and lethal action into the discussion, not sure why you mentioned "both sides".
What should police do to stop looting? Loot looters' homes to stay at equal level of violence?
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The US president threatened to send the military into a state to shoot looters among a huge, out of control protest that started over a police officer murdering an innocent citizen. Who the fuck is taking this "too seriously" at whom we should "laugh"?
The comment was directed at Jack and Donald, two people taking themselves far too seriously.
However, I am willing to extend the scope of the guffaw to the comment bombers on HN who, themselves, might be staring too hard at the bug in the script, rather than stepping back some distance to consider the architecture.
May peace, wisdom, and a great weekend find all, despite the nitwits.
Time for Trump to use Mastodon.
With how strange things have been lately, I wouldn't be surprised if he jumps on TikTok.
He'd love Gab.
Twitter was 'kind of' dying before Trump. Now its a pretty nice place with people to follow (Some sort of network effect?). But its too far from being open, requires phone number, lacks 'RSS' and etc.
I wish he moved to Mastodon. Decentralized, open source. It only needs users
That would be really funny.
Imagine all the devs and supporters of Mastodon trying hard to come up with a pretext why it is okay to block him from the network via technical changes.
It's pretty established that individual Mastodon nodes are able to impose the rules they want and network with whichever Mastodon nodes they want. And many popular Mastodon nodes have stricter rules than Twitter, so it would hardly be surprising if they shunned someone who broke rules on Twitter.
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This how Donald Trump won in the first place. People just won't learn. They can continue bubbling themselves by losing the next election too and get shocked.
Downvoting me will increase your shock after the next election.
This seems like a dubious foundation for Twitter to start with. If Trump controls the National Guard there is a definite public interest in knowing when he is likely to deploy the National Guard. It'd be headline news after the fact; it should be telegraphed beforehand.
Trump might be bluffing, but Twitter can't possibly know.
The president does not have the authority to call in the National Guard to perform law enforcement in a state — that is the governor’s decision:
https://kstp.com/news/minnesota-national-guard-activated-to-...
https://www.npr.org/2018/04/05/599895184/why-president-trump...
> If Trump controls the National Guard there is a definite public interest
But he doesn't.
Also it is illegal for the federal government to use the military as a police force: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act
The hardest part here is deciphering what the incoherent tweet is trying to say.
We have a President that is consistently harder to comprehend than GPT-2. Let that sink in.
Here's some back on the phrase. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/where-does-phrase-...
The amazing part to me is that Trump knows an authoritarian-violence catchphrase from 50 years ago. "MAGA" indeed.
It's interesting Twitter finally started taking a stand in Trump's last year as president, I wonder if it's because they hope he'll get ousted and they won't have to deal with the backlash from him for too long. Or it's just a marketing ploy, perhaps customer count was falling.
I'm not trying to valorize Jack, but why is it so hard to believe they just finally feel some level of responsibility? While you should always keep an eye out for more banal motivations, at some point one can only tolerate so much.
I agree that Jack is well-intentioned, but I think he's making a huge mistake by choosing a half measure. Twitter's current policy allows Trump to claim he's being silenced while simultaneously allowing him to get his message out to his Twitter followers. It's the worst of both worlds.
Twitter should either let him tweet whatever he wants or ban him.
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At this point I feel like Twitter is _trying_ to push Trump's buttons. 4 years of not censoring Trump's tweets and now all of a sudden they have an ethical obligation? Which straw broke the camel's back?
You could also say that at this point Trump is _trying_ to push Twitter's buttons to justify basically destroying them
I really don't understand what part of Trump's tweet is "glorifying" violence, can anyone help me out on the rationale?
"Lets spread outrage to lure poor people to go out in the middle of a pandemic and maybe then we could also justify to shoot down some of them also as a bonus. Either the hate, or the virus, will take them."
Is this the plan?
This looks more and more like than if the goal would be moving from saving most people possible to culling people in the undesired groups and focusing in saving people in the correct groups. First targeting the more gullible and vulnerable to make them to try unsafe remedies (that only really ignorant people would fall for), then telling people that masks are useless or harassing people that uses it, and now this.
Communities are dumb by default, but are composed of smart people. I would love to see Spike Lee, or Whoopi Goldberg, or Michelle Obama, or Jay-Z to ask people to be smarter than that and keep themselves chill, cold thinking and safe. Going out in a rioting mass at this moment only does a favor to racist people. Don't fall for that.
"when the looting starts, the shooting starts."
Just read that a few times until you get it through your head.
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Twitter's problem is that Trump wants to pick a fight, and there's no good way to avoid it.
Trump's base is not on Twitter. Fact checking tweets provides more grist for the outrage mill, and the media which his base consumes amplifies the conflict and not the substance. So the tweets will get worse and worse.
It's impossible to give Twitter good advice, it's a horrible position to be in.
They should honestly just cross the rubicon and suspend his account. Playing both sides like they have will only prolong the conflict. Trump and the outrage mill alike will still find things to interpret as fighting until Twitter just pulls the switch.
Trump chose Twitter as his platform; they never chose him. His tweets have been central to his political presence and his ability to immediately alter the country's (and world's) discourse about current events. It would be humiliating for him to lose that platform, because he embraced it voluntarily.
Except it wasn't glorifying violence. Like at all. He was not saying that if looting continues then police would start shooting, that's a twisted and strained interpretation.
He was stating simply that looting begets violence, meaning that the looting must be stopped before things become more violent. It is a call to action to those who appear content to let the looting run rampant as if it's somehow OK or justified.
In such an escalation both protestors and counter protestors would be shooting, so bringing the situation under control quickly is in the best interest of the protestors and the community as a whole.
It is a clear example of the dangers of allowing Twitter to moderate when such an egregiously bad interpretation of Trump's tweet triggers moderation.
Trump seems to think Twitter is a public service within his domain, rather than a private company with its own agenda & governance. I'm glad Twitter is responding to him, I respect them for the position they're taking.
In addition to his executive order [1], Trump has threatened to delete his Twitter account [2].
[1]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-to-sign-executive-order-t...
[2]: https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/News/video/twitter-flags-trumps-t...
Can you cite an alternative platform similar to twitter?
Mastodon is quite similar. Also, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Medium, Blogger, etc. will all let you post content to a group of follower.
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Why do police keep killing black people?
Why do black people keep killing black people (way more than police who are not all white FYI)?
I actually reported it, and will act as if I actually played a role in this /s
Very much looking forward to seeing how this plays out this evening.
If I could recommend a title edit though, "Donald Trump" --> "POTUS"
As an elected official and part of a giant bureaucracy the US president has a right to make proclamations, and the media has the right to criticize, refute and contradict. Where this gets delicate is with a person who holds enormous power and is literally leading the administration. People want to hear what this leader has to say, and censoring/hiding/second guessing what this person says is arguably undemocratic. Trump is irrelevant here, it could be any elected official or administration leader. Pompeo or the US military could be considered to 'glorify violence' with their statements, does this give Twitter the right to hide their tweets? This is a free speech issue at the heart of democracy, and Twitter keep overstepping their S230 remit.
But twitter is a private business or isn't it? Twitter users must agree to Twitter TOS isn't it?
Your freedom of speech is also Twitter's freedom of speech and if you don't like that someone uses their freedom to calls you on your bullshit - then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .
POTUS has whitehouse.gov if he thinks that private business does not let him say what he want's to say.
Section 230 'hands off' service provision rather than editorializing is the issue here as well as rights to free speech whoever you are. The fact Trump enrages most people is a separate distraction. This is a downward slope to more censorship by large unelected global corporations and their political proclivities and goals.
I can’t believe everyone is suddenly in favour of censorship. Do you want 1984? Because this is how you get 1984.
I don't think it's fair to call this censorship because of the amount of transparency twitter is showing. Something like shadow banning people is probably inappropriate most of the time, but now that trump signed the eo twitter is responsible for the content on their platform, so they've got to protect themselves from legal liability.
Censorship comes in many forms. Governmental censorship? Bad. Self-censorship of a platform such as Twitter, good, and necessary.
Self censorship? How do you know those doing the censoring aren’t bought and paid for? Censorship is bad - period.
Can we have a "Godwin point" equivalent for when someone brings censorship for no reason? The "Orwell Scarecrow"?
In your opinion what got censored in this case?
It's not censored, you can see the tweet with an extra click, it just has a warning.
Plus it's a private company.
No, a private company putting up a warning the that President of the United States is advocating the execution of protesters for looting is not censorship.
I don't have time to explain to someone for the umpteenth time how this is different, and even within the "well golly Twitter is a big company, maybe it's a public utility" argument, the president is a much more unique position and situation than the average user.
The President could talk about how he thinks we should execute our fellow citizens, or call our political rivals skanks, or tell us that Coronavirus will magically disappear by Easter, or that hydroxychloroquine is a miracle cure, all by standing up his own microblog platform and blast it from S3 or Azure. He could hold his press conferences and bullshit to the whole nation, or set up email distros... all things he has done or could do.
Please, for the love of society and sanity, stop throwing around 1984 references every time someone shuts someone else up. Read the goddamn book.
POTUS can SMS the entire nation at once. He is not being censored in any meaningful sense of the term.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-45730367
Exactly. Not to mention that what Trump tweeted about has long been the single workable solution to widespread looting.
Protests are fine. Mayhem and larceny, however, are not. Violence against lawbreakers is absolutely enshrined as acceptable, and that isn't going to change for the foreseeable future. There is nothing whatsoever wrong with Trump's tweet, certainly nothing overriding the First Amendment.
Further, Twitter is absolutely in the wrong to portray itself as passing some kind of absolute judgement on the President's views, and in fact that it is above the Presidency. It is NOT a neutral platform.
Twitter must be a victim of the toilet paper shortage because they just wiped their ass with Trump’s executive order.[0]
Jokes and politics aside, is this a smart business move on Twitter's part? I'm curious how they envision this playing out. I'm really not sure what I expect to happen; Trump may be a fool, but he's stubborn and persistent. There are also politicians on both sides of the fence who are at odds with social media right now--and often Silicon Valley in general. (See: encryption)
I have no doubt Twitter put a lot of thought into this. Does anyone have insight into what Twitter expects to happen? Also, what would they expect to happen if they opted not to label/hide/whatever some of Trump's tweets?
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23342161
haha, good. but I dont envy Twitter management. they have stepped onto a very slippery slope.
and one they cant make a "winning" decision about. however this works out, Twitter will lose.
As much as I hate FB and dont use it, they have made the "safer" decision.
Part of the reason people hate FB and don't use it, is that their leadership is afraid to make risky decisions for the benefit of their users and the quality of their platform.
It seems like Facebook is beating Twitter in terms of frequency and duration of use: https://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-... (2017).
'safer' in this case means protection of their profits rather than protection of people.
well done FB /s
I'm a bit surprised that this fight with the POTUS doesn't have a stronger influence on Twitter's stock value.
He's not moving anywhere and any Twitter controversy gets more people to tweet about that controversy... Until he forces a significant part of his followers to leave, it's not a bad situation for Twitter to be in.
> Until he forces a significant part of his followers to leave, it's not a bad situation for Twitter to be in.
That would force them to stop complaining, and there is a lot of value, and money to be made, in whining all the time and playing the victim constantly. So it won't happen.
> Until he forces a significant part of his followers to leave, it's not a bad situation for Twitter to be in.
That would be even better for Twitter.
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> He's not moving anywhere...
If they're going to block his tweets, why wouldn't Trump go elsewhere? It'll be interesting to see what he does do next.
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IMO this is a misunderstanding of the situation.
People on Twitter are mostly not voting for Trump. Trump voter demographics are roughly white male rural middle-income evangelical non-college-educated over-50, and this does not overlap much with Twitter user demographics (80% millennials).
So Trump has nothing to lose on Twitter, so he can't lose. The goal for his tweets is to make a big story, and Twitter intervening makes it an even bigger one.
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The risk isn't users leaving, it is regulation
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It does impact the stock, and that's likely a part of the reason it took Twitter so long to take even the smallest action against his violations of their rules. The President is using the threat of allowing social media companies to be held liable for their content, as retaliation against Twitter. The stock was down 4.5% yesterday and is trading lower in the pre-market session.
To be honest I actually think this has a lot more to do with the fact that Dorsey has been an absent CEO. The only person who really has the authority to pick this fight is Dorsey and he hasn't been engaged enough in running twitter to care. This was observed through all sorts of side-effects where Twitter was basically failing to innovate for the past few years. Now the activists got involved and forced Dorsey into actually running the company he's finally in a position to pay attention and act on these things.
Hiding = processing, so Twitter generates new content by filtering parts of the original content. Therefore, Twitter is a publisher and should be held responsible for all of its content. This should have been a no-brainer.
What kind of utterly ridiculous policy is hiding posts for “glorifying violence?” So if I write a post about the Bangladeshi independence war, saying how great it was that we beat those damn Pakistanis, my post would get hidden?
When you threaten to start shooting people you are glorifying violence. I am guessing you didn't even look at the tweets.
So if I say it was great that India came in with guns blazing in 1971, killing thousands of Pakistani soldiers to liberate Bangladesh, that is a view that should be censored?
Why is that ridiculous?
Because violence is one of the fundamental political and sociological forces in the world, and preventing people from talking about it in the abstract--as distinguished from targeted threats of violence to specific people--is completely off the reservation. As a Bangladeshi, I have a country because people like my uncle went to war and killed a bunch of Pakistanis. I bet Polish people are glad that Americans gunned down millions of Germans in the 1940s. Steven Spielberg's "Munich" was an amazing account of Operation Wrath of God--glorifying the assassination of terrorists that killed 11 members of Israel's 1972 Olympic team. Violence is often a proper subject of glorification.
In practice, I strongly suspect the Twitter isn't actually applying the policy as written. Instead, they're applying the policy selectively, based on ideological biases.
So is twitter going to hide tweets that have incited and glorified the riots in the first place? I haven’t seen consequences for the antifa and DSA accounts that are responsible for these riots. It certainly seems like Twitter has a double standard.
I couldn't care less for the politics of the USA, but it is mildly amusing that twitter are trolling one of their most prominent users.
Moderating a prominent troll and raising the standards to the level of every other user, is not really politics.
Oh, but it is. It is when the prominent troll is also POTUS.
You and Twitter may want it to not be politics... But unfortunately both doing nothing and doing something are political moves by Twitter HQ, I'm afraid.
If we ingore context, but without it this wouldn't be discussed.
To define Donald as a troll is also political statement.
...and a particularly thinly skinned user.
... it is just as if they were intentionally trying to stir controversy, so that more and more people join the trollfest
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I said it yesterday and got downvotes, Twitter’s CEO decided to pick sides in the political battle so they should expect what’s coming to them.
Fact checking doesn't imply picking sides. Not fact checking does.
Maybe a statement that we can all agree on would be: _selectively_ fact checking implies picking sides?
I think it's a point of contention (colored by existing political views) as to whether or not Twitter is selectively fact checking here.
Hopefully this isn't too controversial, there's a lot of hostility already in this thread, and I don't want to contribute to it.
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Can you explain how not fact checking implies picking a side?
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> Fact checking doesn't imply picking sides. Not fact checking does.
Fact checking with partisan media sources does imply picking sides.
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And they're not fact checking Biden.
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it sort of does, WHO they use to check the facts can very def define what side they're on.
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Sounds like maybe you should take the hint. It's not "taking sides" to point out that you're glorifying violence if you as the president are threatening to deploy military force against protestors.
I've done my own share of protesting (living in Eastern Europe forces you to do that sometimes) and we never resorted to looting. If we had done so I would have expected the powers that be to take some counter-measures that would have involved more than strong verbal reprimands, yes.
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Sending police to stop violence is "glorifying violence"? How exactly?
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Does not wanting your government to shoot US citizens count as choosing a side now?
I don't understand. He broke their TOS. They applied a punishment in line with their TOS.
Do heads of state somewhere not-stated to the public have some sort of social media diplomatic immunity?
He attacks people on Twitter and pretends he can literally do what he wants without consequences — whether from the government and rule of law or in this case, a private company.
You’re getting downvoted for a fair call out. There’s a deeper rot in this country where a select group believes freedom and fairness is something they can own and define, screw reality or objective fact. Anything else is biased and a conspiracy paid for by Soros, Obama, Hillary, Muslims, Hispanics, and the “swamp”.
To believe that it’s even possible to not pick sides is non-sensical.
“Not picking sides” often means siding with the status quo. That might be fine but it’s not the same as not picking a side.
"them" who?
I think they just mean them=Twitter
> so they should expect what’s coming to them
The national guard?
what's coming to them? Is it violence? That's how I often here the phrase "get what's coming to you" used.
I was talking about stuff like this, of course: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/27/politics/donald-trump-twi...
Perhaps you spend too much time around violent people?
The phrase is the equivalent of “reaping what you sow”.
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But it’s okay for President Obama to call the Baltimore rioters “criminals and thugs”.
https://nypost.com/2015/04/28/obama-calls-baltimore-rioters-...
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
Enough.
If Twitter sucess to fight for the truth without exposing bias they will be the most remarkable heroes of the 2001 century and could begin a whole change of behavior of websites regarding fake news and hate speech
That's fun. Twitter did shut up foreign presidents a couple of times before, but I guess this is the first time with the president of USA. That's ballsy as fuck. Impertinently, even. Totally not ok to do, but fun to watch.
censoring the commander in chief is an active act of aggression against the american people. not only should we repeal section 230, we should view twitter as a hostile power.
we should study twitters deep ties to the saudis and china. and jack should be investigated. they also should no longer be protected by section 230 and therefore should be prosecuted for the child exploitation they host
Don't you have press conferences in your country? You know, where a leader or political figure can express their policy decisions without having to abide by private website ToS.
section 230 was a special provision that was passed to protect the fledgling internet 25 years ago. i don’t think it’s crazy to think it needs updating or repeal.
I don't see the problem, just reject the special privs for twitter and treat it like a publisher. It should be fairly simple, either you do not moderate at all (and your not responsible for whatever people say on your platform) or you moderate and therefore you publish. It aint that hard. Twitter clearly moderates, that's fine, so it should be treated as a publisher, not as a public 'facility'. Simple.
Or perhaps we should take a step back and design a new set of rules that can allow Twitter and other companies to moderate without having to be responsible for the content. I feel like there’s a false dichotomy being portrayed here that’s unnecessary.
This kind of logic makes life hopelessly complex. It's a very simple rule that does not need 'special adjustments'. Just stick to the rules we agreed upon and face the facts. Twitter is now a publisher. You cannot bend the rules everytime you don't agree with them.
So all platforms that have moderators (reddit, 4chan, FB, etc) are considered publishers now? What would actually be defined as a platform in your model?
4chan hardly moderates. If Twitter wants to cater to people that want some kind of filtering just allow those people to enable a filter. Problem solved.
A platform should not moderate at all. Only remove clearly illegal stuff. For the rest, offer filters for people that want to have them (or better, design a protocol: <content-label type="trump">) so it can be built into browsers.
That way you can have both: free speech and optional filtering. And you can be a platform instead of a publisher.
(edit: I added some elaboration on a possible solution )
Twitter does not want to be a publisher, because then lots of people will sue it for libel and other nasty stuff in twits.
So it should stop editorializing and moderating.
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Downvoted? O dear, did I say something that isn't allowed by Marx?
In fairness, Trump's tweets are not about actually doing anything, they are more about getting votes. So arguing the feasibility of suggestions outlined in a Trump tweet kind of misses the point.
No. This man holds the office of the POTUS. There are certain responsibilities that come with it. The officeholder cannot make deadly threats publicly and expect everyone to just shrug it off.
But does that responsibility extend to other members of Government, or just the President?
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It was a message, directly to law enforcement, that he thinks it’s okay for them to shoot protestors so long as there is looting. I can’t see how anyone would see that as anything other than a crime against humanity
No, I don't think it was. A plain reading of the quote does not direct anyone, to do, anything. It is an observation. Just like it was your observation (and opinion) that it said something different.
The questions are this: Who is right? Who decides that?
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I don't know why you're getting down voted. Trump's words are a quote of someone who believed that "... it’s okay for them to shoot protestors so long as there is looting."
Trump is very much saying he believes looter should be shot.
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I think it’s a threat directed at private gun-owning citizens that would be willing to take the law into their own hands. I’m old enough to remember the L.A. riots, where the police essentially peace’d out and let the resulting storm “work” itself out. It was God-awful for everyone involved, from the looters to the business owners to the innocent bystanders watching idly by.
Trump is warning the looters that they are taking their lives in their own hands, not just against the police, but against other private citizens protecting their property.
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That’s a bubble of reality distortion surrounding the public facing messaging of the man. That is not the expectation for the Office of the President. He won. He got to the top office.
This is my comment on the other HN thread about this:
> The phrase was used by Miami's police chief, Walter Headley, in 1967, when he addressed his department's "crackdown on ... slum hoodlums," according to a United Press International article from the time.
> Headley, who was chief of police in Miami for 20 years, said that law enforcement was going after “young hoodlums, from 15 to 21, who have taken advantage of the civil rights campaign. ... We don't mind being accused of police brutality."
This is where the quote comes from.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/where-does-phrase-...
Edit:
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-quotes-cop-sparked-rac...
> The National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence found that Headley's remarks and policing policies had been a significant factor in sparking the riots.
> Headley died four months after the riots. The Times in its obituary noted his policies had caused "growing resentment" among black Miami residents.
Our President fully understands the gravity of those words. This is what he wanted to say. This is what he meant. This is what he believes. This is WHO HE IS.
Not sure why you’re downvoted.
I think that you’re right about Trump’s motive. It’s all a PR game to keep him in power, even and especially when he says nasty stuff. If you try to argue with it as if it was reason then it will be like punching a cloud.
Under that mental model, it’s hard to predict how this will play out. I don’t know how this Twitter action will affect the psychology of his supporters. It will be interesting to watch!
Really? Because literally this week Trump tweeted something and then followed it up with an executive order.
He also promised to throw Hillary in prison for the emails. Still waiting on that one.
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Calling for the quelling of an insurrection is not "glorifying violence," it is exactly what a government is supposed to do.
Saying "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" is glorifying violence, which is the literal quote, and not your extreme paraphrase.
Glorification of violence is not simply referencing violence. That doesn't make sense.
By calling for the military to shoot protesting citizens? Come on.
Looting is a reasonable form of protest? George Floyd’s death is horrific, and I pray justice is served, but communities cannot be destroyed in pursuit of that justice.
Some of this reminds me of Koreatown during the LA riots. If authorities don’t step in, militia’s will rise up to defend their families and livelihood. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Los_Angeles_riots#Destruc... I think it’s reasonable that a community would defend itself when attacked, but when the National Guard is purposed for that protection, why shouldn’t they be called in?
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How is looting stores and destroying public property a proper way to protest?
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Using the dog-whistle racist term "thugs" (in all caps, no less) and proclaiming that you are going to shoot people is escalation of violence. Notice not one other public leader is talking about shooting people-- in fact, the mayor and other local officials are expressing empathy for the rioters and pleading with them for peace.
Trump knows this language will only provoke people and make the situation worse (or he ought to, and certainly any competent, relevant advisor would). He absolutely is glorifying violence.
It's long past time to regulate social media like a phone company, natural monopoly, or common carrier. The DOJ needs to break them up for violating the public trust, then limit their ability to refuse service to law abiding citizens moving into the future. Government has every right to force companies to be neutral platforms through regulation. It's time to revoke/enforce section 230, especially the "good faith" clause.
Anyone who says that "Twitter is a private company that can refuse anyone" has never ran an actual company. There are plenty of rules against companies discriminating. That argument is the same argument used by Democrats against the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 which a Republican majority congress passed (82% of republicans voted yes).
Remember when this forum was up in arms about NET NEUTRALITY? Remember when the big bad ISP was going to censor you? Remember when all the sites went black because thats what the ISPs would do? Now the sites that went black are all committing the censoring. All the sites that went black track every movement you make online. Who needs DNS when you have outgoing link tracking and like buttons on every page.
Social media is about to be regulated. Its about time.
> The DOJ needs to break them up for violating the public trust...
Twitter, Facebook, et al are entertainment. There's not trust to violate.
Even if they were an informational service having the DOJ "break them up" would be way more illegal than anything they could directly publish.
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I feel you almost were able to lawyer your way to something coherent, but ultimately, you are advocating for government regulation of speech, IMHO.
Section 230 lets providers like social media companies publish user-generated content without having to review the content first. For example, if you libel someone on Twitter, that is your problem, not Twitter's problem. If you take away Section 230 protections, social media as we know it probably dies. Instead of a real-time pulse on what people are thinking, you'll just get what looks like the letters to the editor section of a newspaper. People who are already celebrities will not be censored, but you will be because you're too small to be worth the risk of being liable for. That means any grassroots political movement, no matter what side of the ideology spectrum it falls on, has no place to start. Be careful what you wish for.
I'll also point out that if Section 230 protections are removed, Donald Trump loses more than anyone. Nobody is going to carry his messages if they can be sued for their content. He'll have to make his own Twitter. His press conferences won't be broadcast live because the liability is too high. It is hilarious to me that Donald Trump is probably the largest beneficiary of Section 230 and he's the one that wants to remove it.
Section 230 is what lets the little guy exercise his or her right to free expression. It gives them a platform where they have an opportunity to let their opinion rise to the top. It saves them from having to buy their own printing press and build their own audience. Nobody is going to buy you a printing press if they're liable for everything you say. So what happens is you don't get to talk anymore.
> regulate social media like a phone company, natural monopoly, or common carrier.
Twitter is not a public utility.