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posted by
CoolHand
on Tuesday February 21 2017, @03:35AM
from the will-they-crack-down-on-el-presidente dept.
from the will-they-crack-down-on-el-presidente dept.
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/
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Twitter's New Tool to Crack Down on Politically Incorrect Language
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Life is not for everyone.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Tuesday February 21 2017, @04:47AM
Just dump twitter. They presume to know better than you - even if you agree with them today. Next year, though, some of YOUR ideas may be on the chopping block. You didn't stand up when they came for the Jews? Don't expect anyone to stand up for you.
Mark this day in your calendar, folks. I actually agree with Runaway1956!
It isn't about ideology, nor is it about being offensive. i dislike assholes who spout hate-filled rude/racist/homophobic/elitist/religious/xenophobic/whatever blather as much or more than anyone else. However, censoring anyone is both ethically bankrupt and intellectually vapid.
Louis Brandeis [wikipedia.org] puts it quite eloquently:
Rather than attempting to silence those with whom we disagree, regardless of how evil/hateful/crude their utterances may be, we should use our own voices, wallets and feet to express ourselves instead. We should do so loudly too!
As for those who would censor *anyone*, the solution is to vote with your feet and your wallet. Twitter is censoring people? Don't tweet. Don't read tweets. Don't give them your attention, and let them know *why* you're not doing so. For Twitter, your attention is their profit.
If Twitter (or any other private entity) wants to censor speech, then let them do so without your support. If enough people speak (and more importantly, act) against censorship, the more effective such efforts will be. They need us much more than we need them.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday February 21 2017, @05:02AM
And just who is going to build that alternative to your whims? You can never have a guarantee that there will be a replacement of that niche with a freedom of your speech to your liking. We got lucky with Soylentnews, but there is never a guarantee of a viable alternative.
The problem is, that you are more often than not using a service that others are paying for, and are subject to their rules. In my ignorance I objected to being banned permanently from Slashdot, because they were all about free speech, right? Until they weren't.
Here, I'm pretty sure that the leadership wants to choke the living shit out of me. The tricky part about things like that is that, if you want to have an online forum espousing free speech, you might not get trolls who can say insightful things from time to time. You might just get total garbage. So how do you deal with that garbage? How much do you grow to dislike it before you enact more stringent measures?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Tuesday February 21 2017, @05:58AM
And just who is going to build that alternative to your whims? You can never have a guarantee that there will be a replacement of that niche with a freedom of your speech to your liking. We got lucky with Soylentnews, but there is never a guarantee of a viable alternative.
I'm quite capable of communicating with those with whom I wish to communicate without Twitter or Facebook or any other entity who profits off the creativity of others.
Have your wits been so dulled by booze and 140 character messages that I need to list the myriad methods by which that's accomplished?
The problem is, that you are more often than not using a service that others are paying for, and are subject to their rules. In my ignorance I objected to being banned permanently from Slashdot, because they were all about free speech, right? Until they weren't.
You're making my point for me, aren't you?
Here, I'm pretty sure that the leadership wants to choke the living shit out of me. The tricky part about things like that is that, if you want to have an online forum espousing free speech, you might not get trolls who can say insightful things from time to time. You might just get total garbage. So how do you deal with that garbage? How much do you grow to dislike it before you enact more stringent measures?
As I pointed out a while ago (I'm took lazy to go look it up and post a link to my comment, but perhaps it stuck in that pickled brain of yours) eth, you're a fucking asshole. But you're *our* fucking asshole. You say all sorts of offensive, nasty and ridiculous bullshit. Much of it I find to be somewhere between laughable and downright hateful. Now and again you say something worthwhile.
Then again, even if you never said anything worthwhile, you're certainly tolerated (and welcome here, at least by me) by most folks because anyone can have their say here, even if it's complete horseshit. Much of that comes from the management, and that's something I cherish about this place. As I'm sure, do you.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 4, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday February 21 2017, @02:39PM
"eth, you're a fucking asshole. But you're *our* fucking asshole."
Awwww, I just got a warm fuzzy feeling . . . . oh wait, I think I pissed my pants. Never mind.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 22 2017, @12:19AM
Awwww, I just got a warm fuzzy feeling . . . . oh wait, I think I pissed my pants.
Well, that Depends®.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Gaaark on Tuesday February 21 2017, @06:41PM
I like Ethanol: he provides the ying to my yang. (Did that sound gay to you?) :)
He sometimes says VERY insightful things and often makes me think. At the least, he gives me a chuckle.
Two thumbs up to Ethanol.
"Our Ethanol": yuuuuuuup!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday February 21 2017, @01:24PM
Sometimes its just organic, you get a big enough pile of people on a big enough platform and just like antibiotic resistance doesn't "have to" form yet it always inevitably does eventually, here's gab.ai which like /pol/ is kinda echo-chamber-y but none the less entertaining.
trolls who can say insightful things from time to time.
That's part of the red pilling process which is precisely why the opfor wants censorship. We live in a heavily politically indoctrinated society, looking at media, the education system. Everyone who's not hopelessly bluepilled started by visiting /pol/ or whatever and was like 99% repulsed due to brainwashing but damn that one meme about "hillary voters going to the election polls / trump voters going to the polls" or some ben garrison political comic or whatever got them started thinking, and a month of open minded uncensored thinking later they're all 14/88. And that's exactly why the 1984-style people are desperate for censorship. Once a political philosophy is far past its "best by" date and hopelessly obsolete and unable to effectively model and predict the world, its only hope is to avoid scientific like openness and rely on censorship and oppression to stay in power just a little longer. It happens every time from left to right or right to left. All it ever really does is piss off the victims making for ... overreaction. Hopefully the inevitable overreaction to the death of progressivism will just be a lot of yelling and bad feelings and not the camps ovens after the end of Weimar Germany, but that would require introspection and historical perspective on the side thats instead doubling down with oppression, censorship, and violence, like happens every time in human history, so one guess how this is likely to turn out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 21 2017, @04:20PM
Or, the partisan labels "progressive" and "alt-right" are just red herrings. There is no real progressive policy happening any more, both "sides" just use rhetoric to polarize public opinion and allow bad policy to be passed with little opposition. The evil entities of the world hide behind d labels, the Gates foundation hides behind altruism of research and education in order to destroy our education system. I don't have a good conservative exams offhand but they hide behind religion and morality to push their agendas.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday February 21 2017, @08:51PM
I don't have a good conservative exams offhand but they hide behind religion and morality to push their agendas.
The neocons, yes aren't they an interesting self contained group.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday February 21 2017, @07:17PM
Hey VLM, you know that Matrix fan theory about Zion being just another level of the Matrix to catch clever folks who think they made it out? Hint: that's what these alt-right places are. Clever traps that flatter the egos of small-timers like you, who think seeing through one layer of bullshit means seeing through them all.
Wake up, Neo: the Matrix has you. Forever.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by jmorris on Tuesday February 21 2017, @03:41PM
And just who is going to build that alternative to your whims?
The Alt-Tech movement. The replacement for Twitter is Gab.ai. They are still scaling up and adding features but they even do video already. Twitter is pretty straightforward tech to replicate, it is the revenue model that is eluding Twitter. Gab for now is just asking for donations instead of spending most of their time working ways to sell the eyeballs they are collecting. They know exactly what they are fighting against and have already built in anti-SJW entryism as an explicit goal for management. On the service itself though, Speak freely is the motto and they mean it.... although Weev has already pushed it right to the line a few times. You can't actually break laws. Gab Guidelines [gab.ai] is about as open as you can expect.
I get the feeling things are starting to shift even here. Last month I suddenly found myself banned from moderating. No I don't abuse mods, I am often too lazy to actually moderate but that is a different thing. I will often moderate several posts then get distracted before I hit the bottom of the page and end up closing that tab instead of submitting.... no javascript has pluses and minuses.
Now I notice that the balance of power in moderation has shifted in general, where before there were at least as many up as down votes overall, now I only attract far more downmods, implying I wasn't the only one. Meaning it wasn't a random accident. Somebody has decided this place needs less diversity of ideas and found a more subtle way to 'fix' the problem than the banhammer or shadowbanning. That seems to be the general pattern across the Internet, the first gen was just point and shriek, then call in a strike on the heretics. That generated a backlash, like the creation of SolyentNews. The enemies of liberty do learn, if slowly.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 21 2017, @04:13PM
Occam's razor explanation: people caught on to your bullshit and now apply more critical filters when they see your name. I've been tricked into thinking you had a good point before, then retread the comment and saw it wasn't quite what I thought. There have been a few posts of hours I've liked, so far all technically oriented.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday February 21 2017, @05:14PM
Consider that you're getting downmodded because you're actually dangerously wrong about a lot of things, maybe? I've seen the same pattern; over the last 2-3 months I've noticed you and people like you are attracting a lot more (justified!) heat, and it does me good to see you getting what you deserve.
News flash, shitheel! When you use the term "dark enlightenment" unironically, everyone with half a brain is gonna call you on it! And now that you're getting the ridicule you so richly deserve, it's "whaa, whaa, poor persecuted me, why's DA MAN keepin' me down?!" Go cry in your safespace.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday February 21 2017, @06:52PM
Someone probably modded your comment as spam.
You need to bring it to the attention of the mods if you feel it is unwarranted.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday February 22 2017, @12:27AM
Doesn't sound right. I only got banned from moderating, being flagged as a spammer wouldn't do that while leaving the posting bonus intact, or at we should hope not.
I was hoping mentioning it would bring out others to prove that it wasn't an isolated incident that could be put down to "sh*t happens" but that doesn't seem to be the case. So maybe I just have a stalker.
(Score: 2) by dry on Wednesday February 22 2017, @06:40AM
Easy to have free speech when you make sure only the correct people are allowed to participate.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday February 21 2017, @05:12AM
However, censoring anyone is both ethically bankrupt and intellectually vapid.
Well, as with everything, it depends on context. I completely agree with you that if you dislike Twitter's policy, you should encourage people to stop using the service. But Twitter is also still a private company, so their rules are their rules. If you come into my house and start using offensive language in front of a kid or something, I may also ask you to censor your language, and if you don't do so, I may ask you to leave. I'm not trying "protect" my kid from offensive speech; I just still believe there can be such a thing as "decorum" and "appropriate time and place" for speech.
Anyhow, some people may prefer that Twitter is basically a "free-for-all"; others may actually prefer more policing. But I'm not going to declare that more policing is categorically evil or "ethically bankrupt."
Personally, I think Twitter is mostly nonsense itself, so I don't really care about it much one way or the other.
All of that said, if TFA is true, I heartily will agree with you that this policy seems to be complete nonsense and idiotic. If TFA is true, it seems they are making temporary bans for anyone who uses a word like "retarded" or "fag," even in an appropriate context. Within the past couple weeks, I actually uttered the sentence, "The bread dough should be retarded in the fridge overnight." That's a technical use of the term to describe slowing down yeast growth during fermentation. And English people still use the word "fag" as slang for cigarette. Let's all join in a rousing chorus of that classic WWI tune [youtu.be]:
Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile,
While you've a lucifer to light your fag, smile boys that's the style...."
... And apparently get banned from Twitter??
(Score: 1) by butthurt on Tuesday February 21 2017, @06:20AM
That user was not banned, but was limited.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday February 21 2017, @06:48AM
That user was not banned, but was limited.
True, though without understanding dialectical meanings and context, one could easily see an escalation of such a policy that could result in outright banning.
For example, taking the word "fag," it's perfectly acceptable for a Brit to say "I could really murder a fag" or even "I could murder an Indian right now." Every Brit who is reading this post knows what those sentences mean, but in the U.S. those sentences would not only be offensive, but would likely be construed as hate speech (which Twitter has been known to outright ban).
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Tuesday February 21 2017, @07:14AM
"A fag smoking a fag" was what was actually written.
https://twitter.com/faggotfriday/status/831813645462097921/photo/1 [twitter.com]
The article says it's an instance of "using fag in the British sense, meaning cigarette" but, taking the accompanying photo into account, it also appears to be an instance of using the word in the American sense.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday February 21 2017, @07:28AM
My bad. I actually did RTFA, but took TFA at its word and didn't click through all the links. Now that we've found an apparent error, should we now have a debate over whether TFA is "fake news"?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 21 2017, @12:26PM
Anyone remembers the Seven Dirty Words? George Carlin was 'every thing wrong with this world' apparently.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Tuesday February 21 2017, @04:50PM
Twitter is trying to sustain itself through advertising. That wasn't a concern for the station that broadcast Carlin's routine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_v._Pacifica_Foundation [wikipedia.org]
(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.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Tuesday February 21 2017, @07:49AM
Well, as with everything, it depends on context. I completely agree with you that if you dislike Twitter's policy, you should encourage people to stop using the service. But Twitter is also still a private company, so their rules are their rules. If you come into my house and start using offensive language in front of a kid or something, I may also ask you to censor your language, and if you don't do so, I may ask you to leave. I'm not trying "protect" my kid from offensive speech; I just still believe there can be such a thing as "decorum" and "appropriate time and place" for speech.
Your point is well taken. However, just because I'm anti-censorship, that doesn't mean I ignore context or am disdainful of decorum. I am generally both polite and respectful to those around me, and will generally accede to any request you might make in your space (or even in a public space under most circumstances).
However, I find your analogy to be flawed WRT Twitter. Twitter absolutely has the right to limit and/or censor speech as little or as much as they like. It is, after all, their infrastructure.
That said, their platform is specifically designed to allow the public dissemination of speech. By limiting/censoring that speech, they insult their users' intelligence and degrade the free flow of information and ideas. Given their willingness to do so, I want nothing to do with them and urge others to take a similar stance. If enough people do so, they will need to stop censoring or go out of business.
No one needs to use Twitter. Nor do I need to come to your house if I am unwilling to not to curse in front of your kids, put the toilet seat down after using your plumbing, or do anything else you might require of me when I am in your space.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday February 21 2017, @02:46PM
"they insult their users' intelligence and degrade the free flow of information and ideas."
Thank you. Additionally, it brings Twitter's staff's intelligence into question.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday February 21 2017, @05:10PM
However, I find your analogy to be flawed WRT Twitter. Twitter absolutely has the right to limit and/or censor speech as little or as much as they like. It is, after all, their infrastructure.
That said, their platform is specifically designed to allow the public dissemination of speech.
Actually, I'm pretty sure "their platform is specifically designed" to make them money. I have absolutely no faith that Twitter, Facebook, or any other big online platform is in any way committed to "public dissemination of speech." They are trying to MAKE MONEY. And if they decide censorship will be better at making them money (or allow them to lose less money due to scandals around bad stuff said on their platform of whatever), I'm absolutely certainly they'll eventually choose what will allow them to MAKE MONEY.
The reason to leave Twitter and Facebook and all the other crap isn't this new censorship policy -- it's that commercial platforms like this will ALWAYS be beholden to other goals. Arguing about the morality of their censorship policy ignores the elephant in the room, i.e., what's REALLY driving their decisions (and it certainly isn't detailed philosophical debates about the nature of free expression on the internet).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 21 2017, @07:20AM
Mark this day in your calendar, folks. I actually agree with Runaway1956!
Perhaps, but will rue the day! I once agreed with Runaway, and he tried to bugger me. Ungrateful bastard?
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Tuesday February 21 2017, @08:00AM
Mark this day in your calendar, folks. I actually agree with Runaway1956!
Perhaps, but will rue the day! I once agreed with Runaway, and he tried to bugger me. Ungrateful bastard?
What do you expect when you go and booty bump [collinsdictionary.com] with Runaway?
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 1) by dry on Wednesday February 22 2017, @06:22AM
Seems Americans forget their history or, more likely, have so much propaganda shoved down their throats from birth that even a decent person such as Louis Brandeis makes fundamental mistakes.
The American Revolution depended heavily on silencing opposition. Popular means of silencing included tar and feathering, something likely to kill, letters of attainment from various colonial/State governments targeting those whose viewpoints were unpopular due to being anti-revolution to the extreme of some guy named Lynch hanging those that voiced opposition.
Once opposition has been silenced, it is easy to push free speech though in truth, all the Founding Fathers did was ban the Federal Legislature from banning speech. States were allowed. The Judiciary, in a time when the common law was much more important, were, and as Lincoln showed, the President wasn't denied the freedom to silence people, especially during insurrections such as the American revolution.
There has always been common law restrictions on the common law freedom of speech. Slander, libel, incitement are the obvious examples.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday February 22 2017, @07:58AM
Seems Americans forget their history or, more likely, have so much propaganda shoved down their throats from birth that even a decent person such as Louis Brandeis makes fundamental mistakes.
The American Revolution depended heavily on silencing opposition. Popular means of silencing included tar and feathering, something likely to kill, letters of attainment from various colonial/State governments targeting those whose viewpoints were unpopular due to being anti-revolution to the extreme of some guy named Lynch hanging those that voiced opposition.
Once opposition has been silenced, it is easy to push free speech though in truth, all the Founding Fathers did was ban the Federal Legislature from banning speech. States were allowed. The Judiciary, in a time when the common law was much more important, were, and as Lincoln showed, the President wasn't denied the freedom to silence people, especially during insurrections such as the American revolution.
There has always been common law restrictions on the common law freedom of speech. Slander, libel, incitement are the obvious examples.
Your thought process seems rather mangled, so I'll try to make some sense of it. The discussion at hand is about a *private* entity limiting speech. This is neither illegal nor uncommon in the United States. I used the Brandeis quote, as it makes clear why censorship is bad, and discussed how we might appropriately address speech that is hateful or nasty.
You're correct to say that the First Amendment restricts the Federal Government from restricting free expression. Making that work has been a centuries long odyssey, and we're still working on it. What's more, the Fourteenth Amendment [wikipedia.org] and the Incorporation Doctrine [wikipedia.org] ensure that it does, in fact, apply to the several states.
While there are slander, libel and incitement laws in the US, proving such claims is quite difficult here. As I mentioned, wartime restrictions on civil liberties have been common everywhere, throughout history, and the US (to our shame) is no exception.
Throughout history (both in the United States and pretty much everywhere else) a variety of civil liberties have been curtailed, often quite significantly, usually with violence and often deadly force.
We do remember the vitriol, anger and violence against loyalists during and after the Revolutionary War. In British occupied areas, there were similar occurrences. What's more, the war broke families and turned father against son and brother against brother. Even after the war, those that were on the side of revolution were at each other's throats even before the war ended.
I'm not sure where you come from, but some of us do know our history. And it's filled with genocide (how many native americans are left?), mass enslavement and other atrocities. Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus [wikipedia.org] during the Civil War. The Espionage Act of 1917 is still on the books.
It didn't stop there either, but you get the idea. As time has gone by, we strengthened civil liberties for everyone, although there have been disturbing signs of backsliding of late.
Brandeis was quite clear in his reasoning (and in my view, quite wrong) when it came to wartime censorship (cf.
Schenck v. United States [wikipedia.org]).
Brandeis' thinking matured as he did and famously expressed that in Whitney v. California [wikipedia.org] (where the quote in my initial post came from. Here's more, putting it in context):
Later courts have further strengthened the right to free expression.
All that said, the US Constitution does not apply to private entities. However, the ideals (however poorly implemented historically) ensconced in that document have created a tradton of free expression that's one of the nice things about this country. Don't like it? Just get 2/3 of congress and 3/4 of states to modify the constitution to be more to your liking.
As for your claim that Americans don't know their history, you're talking out of your ass and it smells that way too. I'm sure there are many (if not most) in whatever shithole^W country you hail from that are staggeringly ignorant of *your* history. Oh, and fuck you!
(Score: 2) by gidds on Wednesday February 22 2017, @02:25PM
Let's take some examples from meatspace.
At one extreme, if I'm standing on a soapbox in a public place — say, Speaker's Corner — then no-one should be able to stop me speaking. (With perhaps some very minor exceptions, such as inciting a riot.)
But at the other, if I'm visiting your home, then arguably you should be able to prevent me saying something really offensive to your family, or spoiling the results of a sports event you haven't watched yet.
There's a lot of middle ground, though. What about standing on the street just outside your house, and shouting in through an open door or window? Holding a private committee meeting in the back room of a public venue? Visiting a school? Attending a local council meeting? A cinema?
So even in meatspace, there are a variety of places which seem to fall somewhere in between the endpoints of purely 'public' and 'private' (even though I expect legally they'd be classified as one or other).
So what is Twitter? Is it a private space where people are invited to join in, but where the owners have control over who can attend (and hence what's acceptable)? Or it is a public space where people have a right to be and to say whatever they wish?
Legally and technically, it's clearly the former. They own it, so they can run it however they like. However, you don't have to use it. If you don't like how it's run, you can move elsewhere, or set up your own social networking site, and run that however you want.
Morally, however, it might be different. And your attitude will probably depend on whether it seems more like a public or a private space — which is ambiguous. (After all, in meatspace it's hard to have a public space where everyone is talking and can potentially hear what millions of other people are saying.)
Perhaps our notions and expectations of 'public' and 'private' need to develop further to cope with these new venues. Or perhaps we need further categories apart from both of those.
Meanwhile, a thought experiment. If (as I infer from your post) you think that Twitter should be prevented from withdrawing messages or banning people, then perhaps you might consider what would happen if you had a blog with comments, and it got infested by trolls? Would you want the ability to remove posts or ban users in order to allow your friends to use it? Or would you let something that's valuable to your and your friends die in a swamp on account of your principles?
[sig redacted]
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday February 22 2017, @05:33PM
Meanwhile, a thought experiment. If (as I infer from your post) you think that Twitter should be prevented from withdrawing messages or banning people, then perhaps you might consider what would happen if you had a blog with comments, and it got infested by trolls? Would you want the ability to remove posts or ban users in order to allow your friends to use it? Or would you let something that's valuable to your and your friends die in a swamp on account of your principles? [emphasis added]
Your inference is incorrect, so much so that I wonder about your ability to comprehend English. Perhaps you're not a native English speaker? I said:
The implication is clear, at least to me: If you don't like censorship, don't support entities that engage in it. Twitter can do whatever it wants with its infrastructure.
As for a blog being overrun by trolls, that's a somewhat different situation, given that a blog is a platform for giving a single person or a group a voice. Twitter gives voice (albeit in a limited and fairly useless way) to a myriad of people and groups. What's more, they profit from the "creativity" of their users. Perhaps you can see the difference?
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr