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posted by janrinok on Thursday February 22 2018, @07:33PM   Printer-friendly
from the death-of-the-bot dept.

According to Ars Technica

A number of "alt-right," pro-Trump, and self-described conservative social media personalities awoke this morning to find that they had a lot fewer followers on Twitter than they had the night before. The apparent cause was the latest culling by Twitter of accounts that in some way violated the company's terms of service, a Twitter spokesperson told Ars, including "behaviors that indicate automated activity or violations of our policies around having multiple accounts, or abuse." The sweep has some on the right accusing Twitter of politically motivated censorship.

"Twitter's tools are apolitical, and we enforce our rules without political bias," a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement emailed to Ars. The accounts were targeted as part of "our ongoing work in safety," the spokesperson said. "We also take action on any accounts we find that violate our terms of service, including asking account owners to confirm a phone number so we can confirm a human is behind it. That's why some people may be experiencing suspensions or locks. This is part of our ongoing, comprehensive efforts to make Twitter safer and healthier for everyone."

And at Vanity Fair:

Renewed fears of censorship have once again led some users to talk about leaving to join Gab, the so-called free-speech social network that cropped up in 2016 as an alternative to Twitter. And Gab couldn't be more pleased. Utsav Sanduja, the company's chief operating officer, told me on Wednesday that the company had seen "a surge of donations, Gab memberships, [and] user sign-ups" since Tuesday night.


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday February 23 2018, @06:17AM (4 children)

    by aristarchus (2645) on Friday February 23 2018, @06:17AM (#642240) Journal

    What you, and many other eds (I will not mention names) fail to realize is that my submissions are in fact, non-political, because they are fact, and the alt-right, neo-nazi, anti-feminist objectors to my subs are just what they are. When Will Soylent New Live UP to the Promise that Was Fuck Beta! Not soon, I am thinking. Meanwhile, take a look at my most recent submission on whether it is time to retire "alt-right". I think it is, they have outed themselves as ferking nazis.

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  • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday February 23 2018, @07:28AM (2 children)

    by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Friday February 23 2018, @07:28AM (#642252) Journal

    alt-right - neo-nazi

    If you could just submit a single submission that is not about the alt-right or neo-nazis or any other of your pet hates we might consider it. Have you tried writing about the situation in Ghouta, Syria? Have you thought of some aspect of science and technology? Have you considered any of the business news that is occurring daily? How about starting a discussion about a new piece of hardware that is likely to make an impact on our daily lives? No, not at all. You are limited to one topic and, through it, you hope to give publicity to your own political views.

    We have discussed the alt-right - but intelligent discussion does not need repeating every day. Please pick something new. Put the alt-right neo-nazi stuff in your personal journal.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday February 23 2018, @08:15AM (1 child)

      by aristarchus (2645) on Friday February 23 2018, @08:15AM (#642260) Journal

      One of my projects, at the moment, is about Buddhism and violence. And it is interesting that one of the recent works I am using addresses our issue, albeit somewhat indirectly. You see, I am a demon. Now, let's not get all the BSD and Linux types all het up, I mean a more or less traditional demon. Why does it take so much to find the source I am referring to?> [lionsroar.com]. Dalton's book, good read, if you have the time, and even if you do not.

      Now what struck me about Dalton's work was the origin of the demons. Did you ever think, "why are the demons so evil?" Of course you did not, they are just evil the way jmorris is whatever he is, and TMB is libertariantard. These are givens. But Buddhism, you know, Buddhism is different. Buddhist is really based on the doctrine of causation. OK, Dependant Co-Origination, same-same. So, where do demons, like the anti-fa demon aristarchus come from? Read on.

      In Dalton's exemplary text, the demon starts out as the son of a prostitute, who dies giving birth to him, in a charnel ground (graveyard, to you Westerners). Now the point, really, is the no one comes to help the young human, and he end up suckling on the puss that is coming from his dead mother's breasts. If anything is going to make you become a demon, that will. And it gets worse from there. But the point of the Buddhist tale is not so much that we need to harden schools and arm teachers, or in the case of the Buddhist story, rely on Bodhisattvas to battle the demons, but perhaps we should look to the origins of demons that would shoot up their high school, or in a very much lesser case, constantly submit very Fine Articles about the Alt-right: why? Could it be, oh Soylent Editors, that at some point you left aristarchus to suckle at a dead breast, and now he can submit nothing else? Could it be, that this is the result of censorship, intentional or not, and now we have to live with the consequences?

      Actually, if you are interested in this line of thought, the recent remake of the "Journey to the West" (it's Chinese) is interesting. MonkeyKing, not so much, but the River Demon: case in point.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 23 2018, @08:18AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 23 2018, @08:18AM (#642263)

        Reavers! They made them!

  • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday February 23 2018, @08:56AM

    by aristarchus (2645) on Friday February 23 2018, @08:56AM (#642274) Journal

    And in seconds that submission is rejected. Coincidence? Correlation does not imply causation, except when it does.