Atheist vlogger Thunderf00t reports that Jordan Owen, Slade Villena, and Mykeru were "all suspended from twitter for no reason." Jordan Owen is the co-producer of the documentary The Sarkeesian Effect, a critique of the methods of controversial vlogger Anita Sarkeesian. Mykeru is the producer of The Block Bot and the Dumbification of the Beeb, a critique of the BBC Newsnight segment "Talking to the Twitter Trolls and those Who Study them". Slade Villena is a former writer for Gamasutra and the founder of indie game developer Rogue Star Games.
Thunderf00t himself was suspended from Twitter for two weeks in September for unclear reasons. At that time Twitter had also banned the account of "The Camera Lady", the researcher for a video series accusing award-winning developer Phil Fish and the Independent Games Festival of racketeering.
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Over the past year as the communications service Twitter has rolled out new features with the stated goal of stopping "abusive tweets", critics have expressed concerns that this technology may be used for political censorship. These concerns received broader attention last week when Cryptome published a report by Paul Dietrich alleging that Twitter had hidden information about leaked NSA papers from American users.
As alleged by Dietrich, Twitter will hide information from users for the critical period of the first 24 hours, when users are most likely to spread the information, before allowing the information to be seen again. The disappearance and reappearance of the information resembles a software glitch. Dietrich describes this mechanism as "Censorship that doesn't look like censorship... Subtle, deniable, and quite ruthless."
Concerns about the system were first raised in April by Twitter user Daddy Warpig who reported that Twitter was hiding all posts by certain users of the conservative #TCOT and liberal #Gamergate hashtags along with users affiliated with the Sad Puppies campaign of science-fiction authors protesting against a perceived bias in the Hugo Awards.
Twitter introduced a revised system in May, stating that it would hide only "tweets sent directly to an individual which are from a recently registered account and use language similar to previously flagged messages." Lizzy Finnegan, a writer for the Escapist, discovered that Twitter was hiding messages from established users who had previously used the #Gamergate hashtag but was not blocking new accounts created to test the system by sending the exact same messages.
[More after the break.]
So what? (Score:3, Informative)
Twitter is under no obligation to provide service to anyone they don't want around (provided they aren't making the decision solely because of a very very short list of inborn traits like race or gender). Neither is Youtube, Facebook, or any other privately run site. You have every right to say or write what you want online, provided that you are not participating in a criminal conspiracy by doing so. You have no right to use any particular company's servers to do so. SoylentNews could ban me, right now, just because, and I would have no recourse.
My guess is that Twitter had a reason, though. It might have been a stupid reason, or an unjust reason, but it probably had one. My guess would be words in their tweets were similar to the ones used by the actually dangerous Gamergaters (the ones that are making violent threats along with publishing their targets' addresses), and so whatever algorithm they developed to try to find and ban those people snagged them (possibly falsely, but since I don't follow Twitter drama at all I really don't know).
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Re:So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Twitter's public image wouldn't look so good
Oh? Do telephone companies suffer image issues because they don't scan conversations and ban people from them using their service if people trip filters? What about the postal service? Gmail? SMTP servers? Twitter a medium for communication, and give its users tools to remove or block any users they find objectionable. They have every right to ban anyone they want from their service, but I think they lose much more image banning people with "offensive" opinions.
As far as death threats go, I don't think I've seen any evidence that any of the people involved in the story have made any, so that point is rather irrelevant.
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Sign of the times? (Score:1, Insightful)
As Harvard and other big universities dumb down and plainly do not teach "social responsibility" to their students for a while now, could this be the general effect? That when a small start up hires MBA's taught from those places suddenly put their teachings to practical use: defend share holders before moral or cultural standards.
The other example is google and their 'do no evil' mantra, which has shifted to 'on average do less evil'.
Or is it that it is us who are wrong - looking at sites with massive up take on a gimick idea and expect that site to be an institution with morals... which I said before, arent being taught except if you read adam smith's original writings?
The real reason (Score:0)
They got banned for using some dipshit word like "vlogger" to refer to themselves
Re:The real reason (Score:4, Insightful)
Vlogger? Seriously? Did they think: "'blogger' doesn't sound stupid enough, we need to up our game"?
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Are they really journalists? (Score:1)
Or are they just gamergate agitators?
from one of TFAs (Score:0)
Slade Villena: Because it’s weaponized political speech; misogyny is an extremely hot button topic in the developed world, it incites an automatic reaction with common folk. Inciting and politicizing #GamerGate with misogyny is an effective disinformation tool; as it goes with false rape accusations against individuals, accusations of “homosexuality” “pedophilia” against clergy & school teachers. The language is a weapon. It is losing its effectiveness. They are losing because I have weaponized my language, and many other indie game devs like me, who have been silenced, isolated and vilified by industry cliques. They are losing because they keep using the same weapons, the same megaphones, and no one is buying it anymore.
Well played, twitter. Bye bye Slade.
Not extactly suprising (Score:1, Interesting)
The crowd they're up against uses "The Block Bot" [theblockbot.com]. It's a program that lets a Twitter user block a big list of people it the developer considers "nasty" (read: has a different point of view). Not only does it block them, it uses the user's account to report them for violating Twitter's community guidelines. Hardly suprising these people are getting suspended considering all of this is decided by an algorithm, which is being manipulated.
This is my shocked face (Score:1)
Although the summary went out of the way to avoid the hashtag, this is about #GamerGate so account banning is just part of the stupid establishment type folk's way of fanning the flames and ensuring the controversy doesn't die out. That is pretty much what started it in reality. It was a tempest in a teapot until 4chan went on an account banning spree. Think about that, 4chan, the infamous hive of scum and villany known for decades as the worst place on the Internet decides to start banning accounts by the thousand to shut down a nasty rumor and some fanboys snarking about it. Raise your hand if you didn't see the only reaction possible would be epic nerd rage. Doh!
It isn't paranoia when they are out to get ya. Especially when thousands of people have accounts very publicly banned. The is that very banning that gives them the sense that they are the righteous and 'the man' has to be afraid of their efforts because they wouldn't be flailing around with the banhammer otherwise. They are already marginalized outcasts, oppressing them only unifies and strengthens their resolve.
Twitter is Eternal September all over again (Score:0)
I guess Twitter is a good source of fodder for Chris Hardwick's TV show, but outside of that I'd be quite pleased if I never had to hear about it again.