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from the no-wonder-I've-not-seen-a-Vogon-on-Twitter dept.
Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
Social media giant Twitter has banned a Belgian Elite Dangerous player for tweeting a poem in reply to a tweet from the official game's account. Tim Wellens, the now-suspended Twitter user, has yet to regain access to his account at the time of writing, despite multiple appeals.
[...] In Elite Dangerous, the Thargoids are an alien race that is at odds with humanity. Twitter caught onto the threatening language that Wellens used — despite directing it at a fictional group — and suspended his account. According to Eurogamer, in an email to Wellens, Twitter support explained that they took action because he violated their "rules against posting violent threats."
He has since appealed the decision, pointing out that he "never ever threatened a real person or organization on Twitter."
"Thargoid or foe, I'm coming to kill you, was directed to the thargoids and enemies in the game," he told Eurogamer.
His appeal was met with a computer-generated email, and Wellens followed up by re-appealing his case. As of Oct. 8, his account remains out of his hands.
Good ole Artificial "Intelligence"...
Source: https://techraptor.net/content/twitter-suspends-elite-dangerous-player-for-posting-poetry
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 20 2018, @10:26AM (1 child)
So you think trying to filter out threats of violence or to kill, which this post contained, is all about political correctness? Twitter, and all other social media platforms, are used for threats of intimidation and violence every day. Stopping that is not "politically correct".
Obviously the post in question wasn't directed at people, but you can't expect filtering/AI/whatever-you-call-it to understand the relationship between the poster and the group. IMO the post should have been removed by "name of technology here" and the poster's account flagged for immediate review by a human. If the post was an actual threat it should have been reported to the police (which doesn't apply in this case).
Twitter, no matter how useless many of us think it is, loses credibility when they go after real posts threatening real violence if they start giving people passes. When it comes to threats of violence these platforms should err on the side of caution.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Saturday October 20 2018, @02:56PM
I generally agree that threats should have consequences but the problem with the business model of twitter, google, facebook, or whatever, is that they don't use enough real people to do the evaluation because real people cost real money. So the platforms err on the side of treating every issue like it can be appropriately solved with a sledgehammer, which is false. If these companies are going to act as moderators, they should do so responsibly and I'm not getting the impression they do that. Two wrongs don't make a right.