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Twitter's New Tool to Crack Down on Politically Incorrect Language

posted by CoolHand on Tuesday February 21 2017, @03:35AM   
from the will-they-crack-down-on-el-presidente dept.

MrPlow writes:

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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Original Submission

• Public v. private Public v. private (Score: 2) by gidds on Wednesday February 22 2017, @02:25PM

  by gidds (589) on Wednesday February 22 2017, @02:25PM (#470166)

  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?

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• Re:Public v. private (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday February 22 2017, @05:33PM

  by NotSanguine (285) <reversethis-{grO ... a} {eniugnaStoN}> on Wednesday February 22 2017, @05:33PM (#470292) Homepage Journal

  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:

  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. [emphasis added]

  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?

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  No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr

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