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: 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.