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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, Interesting) by bradley13 on Tuesday February 21 2017, @07:45AM
For those who may not have heard of it, the platform gab.ai [gab.ai] seems to be heading in the right direction. Their philisophy is exactly what some commenters here have called for: no censorship, but individual readers can set filters however they want. If you never want to see a message containing the word "retard", you can set a filter for that. However, you can also choose to live without filters. Similar to twitter, it is also entirely up to you to decide who you follow.
At the moment, the platform is (obviously) dominated by people that Twitter has chased off, i.e., the alt-right. However, as Twitter chases off more and more users, that will change.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 21 2017, @08:35AM
I bet that's not true. I bet the alt-right will repel and repulse the alt-left or moderates from going there.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bradley13 on Tuesday February 21 2017, @10:45AM
I bet the alt-right will repel and repulse the alt-left or moderates from going there.
I don't see why, since you can follow whoever you want. For any particular group, you just need critical mass, and maybe a couple of prominent people to follow.
Twitter seems determined to become a padded room, and people are leaving accordingly. While the reported number of accounts is stable, the number of tweets per day has dropped to around half of its peak value in 2014 [businessinsider.com]. Likely, many of the accounts Twitter claims have become inactive.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 21 2017, @10:34AM
Emphasis by me. ;-)
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday February 21 2017, @02:51PM
Well, Bradley - I thought I'd take a look at the place. Your link brought me to a page with two choices - log in, or "let me in". I click the "let me in" button, and was asked for my email. Fill that box in, and I get this message: "Done! You're #466180 in the waiting list." Hmmmm. Almost half a million people in the waiting list ahead of me? I'll probably be dead, buried, and decomposed by the time they get around to me.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday February 21 2017, @07:00PM
466294
I was hoping for 666666 and it would invoke the devil.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 21 2017, @03:05PM
I don't mind seeing nazis and racists segregated from twitter. But it'll create an echo box environment for them which will only reinforce their own views.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 21 2017, @10:05PM
Have you tried gab.ai?
(Score: 2) by dry on Wednesday February 22 2017, @07:03AM
Well someone up the page said this about them,
and this thread mentions that they want an email address and then you get into a queue of almost 1/2 million that perhaps need vetting before letting you in to practice free speech. Sounds like a club where only their version of the politically correct are allowed to speak.
(Score: 2) by gidds on Wednesday February 22 2017, @02:34PM
That sounds quite promising, but I can't help wondering if it's ultimately suffering from the same problem.
I generally don't mind individual words; what I want to avoid is things like hatred, bigotry, prejudice, and suchlike — and you can't filter those with a regexp. Nor can you filter deliberate disruption and trolling. Nor deliberate lies, astroturfing, advertising, scamming, or a variety of other things that humans can recognise (unless done verysubtly) but machines can't. (At least, not currently with sufficient accuracy.)
A site which could filter that (at user choice) would be a serious improvement.
[sig redacted]