Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
Twitter has launched a new way to punish users for bad behavior, temporarily "limiting" their account.
Some users are receiving notices their accounts are limited for 12 hours, meaning only people who follow them can see their tweets or receive notifications. When they are retweeted, people outside their network can't see those retweets.
Some speculate these limitations are automatic based on keywords, but there is no hard evidence.
This would be fine if this was used uniformly to clamp down on harassment, but it appears to be used on people, simply for using politically incorrect language.
Source: http://heatst.com/tech/twitters-new-tool-to-crack-down-on-politically-incorrect-language/
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday February 21 2017, @06:57AM
But Twitter is also still a private company, so their rules are their rules.
This always comes up, and it's almost always irrelevant. Who is saying that Twitter shouldn't be able to make these rules, exactly? If there are such people, then respond to them specifically. Criticizing Twitter's rules is not the same as saying they are not legally allowed to have them.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday February 21 2017, @07:25AM
The post I was replying to said that "censoring ANYONE is both ethically bankrupt and intellectually vapid." I do not believe that statement to be valid for all times and places. I wasn't debating legality, rather the parent's sweeping statement on morality. And whether or not I agree with Twitter's choices on how to censor, I don't necessarily consider it some sort of moral lapse if they choose to censor even in a minimal fashion. It'd a business choice. I may not like it, but that doesn't make it immoral.