Twitter has no problem…
…with Farrakhan comparing Jews to termites.
After all, he’s not on the right, so Twitter’s hate speech rules are applied to him more liberally than they are to those on the right.
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
We’re no longer talking about a corrupt media, but a wildly corrupt media. Here’s another amazing one from Ann Coulter.
As I understand it, there are two models available to Twitter and Facebook. One is that they are common carriers, obligated to let anyone ride, but not responsible for what the riders say (the riders are responsible). The other is that they are publishers, in which case they ARE responsible for the content on the platform. Because they are so large, the rules that might apply here, for instance, are moot.
If they are common carriers, they need to stop censorship. If they are publishers, they need to censor content a lot harder.
I have already instituted the ultimate censorship of Twitter — I no longer use my Twitter account. And I am not far away from doing the same thing with my Facebook account. If several tens of millions of other Americans would do the same thing, America would be a better place.
Tommy Jay your link is hated by Silicon Valley.
I had to fight through repeated warn-offs// fire walls to view Ann’s column.
blert, I’ve seen a little bit of that, but was never sure. The only one I was sure about was “The DrudgeReport,” which installed the same virus on my computer about 4 times before I figured it out. I doubt that was Matt’s intent.
Relevant for the deeper picture of what happens if Twitter and Facebook go down.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2018/10/17/the-great-facebook-purge-soross-signature-tactics-and-the-crisis-in-social-media/
I won’t go into the analysis of Soros and his intents, but wanted to quote this as pertinent to Neo’s post, and the idea of many on the Right that we should slam the door against the social media (you can’t fire me, I quit):
“After she was deleted in the 11 October purge, successful conservative Facebook publisher Tanya Grimsley (who has posted at LU in the past, and now runs Great American Republic) asked an important question. Where are the high-profile pundits and politicians while this is going on? What are they doing to defend the Facebook publishers who amplify their messages to a base that never hears from them via any mainstream, legacy media outlet?
Grimsley’s plea is heartfelt and pointed:
“How will you keep the conservative base informed and getting them to turn out? They cannot be informed if you have no voice. Our voices. They have been purged. You have been silent. …
What good will your voice be when there is no one to take it further because the ones who were passing along your messages have been purged?”
I’ve begun to see pushback from some of the high-profile pundits in the last few days. I’ve been advised by associates of visits to brief congressmen on Capitol Hill. Those are encouraging signs. But I would also ask a question, after laying out this survey of what a Soros campaign looks like.
Do they understand that this is a big-system battle, not over fake news or Russian bots, and not over whether every conservative webpage is their kind of webpage, but a battle for the future of information and communication?
Because George Soros understands it.”
I had just finished reading Brandon Morse’s accounts at Red State, which Neo linked, and recommend watching his embedded video (it’s at both links).
I’m repeating them here because it’s important to see what the subject matter comprises. Twitter objects to humor directed at the Left but has no objection to violence and hate directed at the Right.
But they aren’t biased at all.
I’m amazed they let Twitchy stay on-board.
https://www.redstate.com/brandon_morse/2018/10/17/twitter-banned-npc-meme-used-social-justice-warriors-hard-left/
https://www.redstate.com/brandon_morse/2018/10/17/twitter-comparing-jewish-people-pests-exterminate-fine-making-fun-leftists-will-get-banned/
A little more background on how the Twits work their magic:
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/10/17/healthy-conversation-twitter-takes-no-action-as-louis-farrakhan-calls-jews-termites/
“Breitbart News also reached out to Twitter for comment, but did not receive a response. It is not the first time that Twitter’s press team has failed to inform conservative media of newsworthy developments in a timely manner. The company also briefed establishment media ahead of the suspension of Alex Jones from the platform, while neglecting to inform conservative media.
According to Bernstein’s post, Twitter claims that its policy on “dehumanizing language” has yet to be implemented. Yet the company has already started mass-banning users who deploy the “NPC meme,” a cartoon designed to mock leftists for scripted, uncreative thoughts.
Twitter has thus far refused to acknowledge that its downranking algorithms, designed to police content that strays close to rule violations, implicitly favor the left. Because Twitter factors in the number of times an account has been blocked or muted when deciding whether to downrank its content, it has set up a system that favors the easily-offended: people who like to shut themselves off from contrary opinions. It isn’t merely a stereotype that these people tend to be found more frequently on the left — research has found that Democrats are three times more likely than Republicans block or unfriend people over their political opinions on social media.”
Has the NPC meme even been banned?
According to the BBC, some accounts were suspended for spreading false election day dates, which were part of NPC tweets.
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-45888176
If one of you oppressed RWingers have a twitter account, lets do a test. Tweet out some NPC stuff…lets say a pic of a greyed out Horse named Stormy…and lets see what Twitter does.
They banned people for the oldest election day joke in history? That’s even worse.
It’s not about hate. It’s about how you hate, who you hate. Just fit the narrative, everything will be OK.
Manju mentions an NPC meme. I’ve just come across it, and though it is clever in some ways, I’m not certain what the uproar is.
According to sensitive progressive types, they object to it because it demeans them in a potentially dangerous way by questioning their “agency”. Yes, there’s that magic, get-out-of-jail and feel instant validation, word.
It appears that progressives are insistent that their “agency” is affirmed by those “neanderthals” and bitter clingers, whom they have slated for political extinction and social replacement. “Agency” is the new “sentience, apparently, which as we all recall was the new “consciousness”, which had replaced the “soul” and the attribute of “intrinsic value” which every progressive denied as existing and therefore could not credit itself with having.
But so, the collectivist zombies of the left, are now upset because a new zombie meme representing them has appeared.
Perhaps the famous old one was less offensive.
Manju mentions an NPC meme. I’ve just come across it, and though it is clever in some ways, I’m not certain what the uproar is.
According to sensitive progressive types, they object to it because it demeans them in a potentially “dangerous way” by questioning their “agency”. Yes, there’s that magic, get-out-of-jail and feel instant validation word: “agency”.
It appears that progressives are insistent that their “agency” is affirmed by those “neanderthals” and bitter clingers, whom they have slated for political extinction and social replacement. “Agency” is the new “sentience”, apparently; which as we all recall was the new “consciousness”, which had replaced the “soul”, and the attribute of “intrinsic value”, which every progressive denied as existing and therefore could not credit itself with having.
Not sure what luster “agency” adds to their C.V. Stalin certainly had “agency”, and he’s in Hell.
Nonetheless, the collectivist zombies of the left are now upset because a new zombie meme representing them has appeared from out of the “gaming community”, which calls their powers of independent thinking into question.
Now, why would anyone liken progressive Democrats to mindless zombies?
Perhaps the famous old one was less offensive.
Manju:
Manju = NPC. Change your alias, you’ll save typing two letters with no loss of content.
Manju, Rob – do you happen to have a link showing what the false information was? I guess I don’t know the oldest election day joke in history.
“When some of the accounts started tweeting false information regarding the upcoming mid-term elections, Twitter took action to suspend a number of the accounts.” – BBC
1500 accounts were sending out false info, whatever it was — must have been really importantly wrong. So, what was it?
And I don’t trust Twitter to judge lies from satire at all, or even lies from truth these days. Their “you have been suspended” announcements are cryptic to the max, judging from the ones I’ve seen published by the banned writers.
What Twitter says they are doing.
Some of their actions are quite defensible, and probably over-all useful.
Some…may have a little wiggle room for identifying “false” as “things we don’t like” but maybe they’ll stay neutral. Maybe.
https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2018/an-update-on-our-elections-integrity-work.html
“We continue to enforce our rules against intentionally misleading election-related content. In August, we removed approximately 50 accounts misrepresenting themselves as members of various state Republican parties. We have also taken action on Tweets sharing media regarding elections and political issues with misleading or incorrect party affiliation information. We continue to partner closely with the RNC, DNC, and state election institutions to improve how we handle these issues.”
* * *
What’s interesting is that the 50 “pretend” accounts all purport to be Republican; with no other information, it isn’t unreasonable to suspect Democrats of masquerading to sow confusion. Analogous to self-perpetrated hate crimes.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6233063/Twitter-outlines-new-ways-spot-fake-accounts-ahead-midterm-elections.html
“It now considers the use of stock or stolen avatar photos, stolen or copied profile bios and intentionally misleading profile information, like a user’s location, as suspicious.
The firm is also encouraging political candidates use two-factor authentication, or an extra layer of security that’s required to log into an account, but they’re not requiring officials to use it.
Many politicians have already turned on two-factor authentication, Twitter said. …
Twitter said it’s also banning any posts that contain hacked materials.
It previously banned users who made hacking threats, but now that’s expanded to prohibit the distribution of hacked information ‘that contains personally identifiable information, may put people in imminent harm or danger, or contains trade secrets.’
However, users are still allowed to share commentary, such as news articles, about a hack or hacked materials.”
Have they banned Heidi Heitkamp yet for doxxing survivors?
* * *
https://www.axios.com/report-twitter-suspended-1500-fake-accounts-spreading-false-election-day-information-liberals-30d60651-4c20-4aac-a11a-d0975a013b71.html
“Over the weekend Twitter suspended 1,500 fake accounts a pro-Trump group created to mock liberals because the accounts had been spreading false information about Election Day, such as saying that Election Day is November 7, when in fact it is on Tuesday, November 6, per The New York Times.
Why it matters: Reddit’s largest pro-Trump forum,”r/the_donald,” likely created the trolling campaign as a joke, but spreading false information about the midterms can keep voters from casting ballots. “Similar types of disinformation spread on social media in 2016, which makes companies like Twitter nervous,” as the NYT’s Kevin Roose writes.”
Calendar errors are not unusual even in MSM publications and authentic organizations — I often get “oopsie” emails correcting an erroneous announcement of sales or shows. Why not just a gentle reminder to FIX IT instead of suspending the accounts? And is that permanent or temporary?
Kind of like hitting a fly with an elephant gun, as we used to say in the Dark Ages.
In defense of “agency” — maybe it’s not too much to expect people to look up a reputable site (like their local government) to get the correct date — it’s also on all the mail-in ballots we have ever received.
Unless: they don’t know that US elections are always on the first TUESDAY in November.
They can’t read the ballot.
Here’s a more detailed account, and is reasonably informative, despite coming from the Times. Doesn’t convince me to amend my prior comments about satire and agency.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/us/politics/npc-twitter-ban.html
“Late last week, a group of users on r/the_donald, Reddit’s largest pro-Trump forum, decided to take the NPC meme to a wider audience. They created dozens of Twitter accounts using fictional NPC personalities, the NPC Wojak avatar and bios like “fighting against Nazi Racist Drumpf Fascist Cheetofinger.” They used these accounts to follow and tweet at one another, as well as at liberals, creating the semblance of an army of resisters mindlessly repeating anti-Trump talking points.
The campaign began as a joke. But a few of the accounts started posting misleading information about the midterm elections, including encouraging liberals to vote on Nov. 7. (Election Day is Nov. 6.)
…
Are these people actually trying to interfere in the election?
Probably not. Evidence suggests that these are mostly just attention-starved gamers looking to impress one another by “triggering the libs” with edgy memes. But not everyone gets the joke. State officials are already worried that voters will be fooled by deliberate social media campaigns that contain incorrect voting information. Similar types of disinformation spread on social media in 2016, which makes companies like Twitter nervous.
…
Aren’t you giving these trolls the attention they’re seeking by writing about them in The New York Times?
Yes, probably. But understanding how these things happen, and how easily joke memes can escape the internet’s seedy underbelly and morph into actual tools of influence, is part of understanding the mechanics of modern politics. As we’ve learned, ignoring trolls doesn’t always make them go away.”