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.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday November 10 2014, @03:50AM
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).
Vote for Pedro
(Score: 2, Interesting) by GoonDu on Monday November 10 2014, @04:18AM
If I remember correctly, it was Twitter's automated responses. There was an earlier incident where accounts on the Gamergate's side were also suspended along with accounts that support Atheist+ as well. I think the whole fiasco really tripped their automated responses.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Sir Finkus on Monday November 10 2014, @04:22AM
I don't understand why twitter does any kind of censorship of this type. It seems like things like threats and harassment should be dealt with by law enforcement, not word filters on twitter. In my opinion, the only thing content they should be trying to block is spam and anything they're legally obligated to remove from their service.
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(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Monday November 10 2014, @08:32AM
Twitter's public image wouldn't look so good if they just ignored accounts making death threats. They provide a commercial service and need to sell it to companies and advertisers, so like it or not they have to take a stance sometimes. They have a pretty good record actually, basically allowing pretty much anything as long as it isn't illegal under US law.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Sir Finkus on Monday November 10 2014, @09:45AM
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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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 10 2014, @10:31AM
The difference is that all the services you mentioned are sending supposedly private messages to selected persons, while Twitter messages are public.
It's like an event host will likely not get problems if he doesn't stop you from telling your explicit sexual fantasies in private to a friend on the event in a way no one not involved can hear it, but there will be a huge outcry if he doesn't stop you from doing the same publicly on stage.
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Monday November 10 2014, @11:29AM
Actually, in the UK (where Thunderf00t is based) the phone companies are required by law to take action if they get complaints about abuse and harassment. More over they are generally quite eager to shut down scams and criminal enterprises using their networks, and are under no obligation to provide service to everyone.
Thunderf00t probably had a lot of complaints registered against him, not without merit I might add. Twitter did the right thing, acting to stop his on-going actions while they did further investigation and presumably contacted him to ask him to tone it down a bit. They have no obligation to prove him with a platform, and have shut down many other troll accounts in the past.
Ironic that the "cookie" on this page reads "You can never trust a woman; she may be true to you."
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Sir Finkus on Monday November 10 2014, @11:22PM
Thunderf00t probably had a lot of complaints registered against him, not without merit I might add.
I'll admit I haven't been following this gamergate bullshit, but reading this guy's history I don't see anything that qualifies as harassment.
The comparison of twitter to broadcast television also doesn't really work. Over the air broadcasts are regulated by the FCC, and similar entities in other countries. Cable and satellite channels can choose their own standards as to what they want to broadcast. On channels like HBO, virtually anything goes.
It is very easy on twitter to block or unfollow people whose messages you don't want to read. If you're using twitter as a platform to try and advance a political agenda, it's natural to expect that people with differing opinions are going to try and pick your statements apart, and even insult you. That's something that comes with the territory.
The attitude of "ban first, figure it out" also has problems. Twitter is a very real-time medium. Banning someone at a critical time can silence them when their arguments might be most relevant. It's far to easy for people that just don't like someone to bandwagon report someone. There are similar problems on sites (such as this one) with user moderation. Posts that don't follow the hivemind tend to get downvoted and effectively silenced. Dissenting opinions are often the most important ones to hear.
Really, I think the only reasons twitter should ban someone are threats, fraud, and network abuse (spamming other users, hacking accounts etc). In most cases these should be evaluated by a human, not an algorithm. Obviously things like links to phishing sites can be checked for automatically.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 11 2014, @08:04PM
Correction
Thunderf00t is English but lives and works in the US
It is obvious you know nothing more of the man than wild speculation and rumour, do some research, read some of his allegedly offensive tweets, watch some of his youtube videos then try telling me he is guilty of harrassment.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Monday November 10 2014, @05:41PM
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?
The difference is one-to-one communication vs. one-to-many. A more appropriate analogy would be a broadcast company. Most broadcast companies do in fact censor their content.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday November 10 2014, @02:28PM
You seem to be missing my point entirely, and acting as though Twitter has some sort of responsibility to host whatever its users want to host, when no such obligation exists.
To use a meatspace metaphor here: Let's say something newsworthy happens near your front door, and a local news reporter comes to your house to interview you about what happened (this has actually happened to me when a high-speed police chase ended on my lawn). That reporter may use what you say in their report, but they also might not. Or maybe they'll want to include it and their editor says no. But in any event, they are under no obligation to include a word you say in the story. You gave the reporter the information to do with as they will, and they'll do whatever they want with it.
Sure, law enforcement can and at this point probably should be involved in dealing with the criminal threatening cases, but Twitter has every right to censor its users, for whatever reason it likes. It has no responsibility to the public discourse, and ultimately all it is is you trading the contents of your 140 character messages and targeted advertising eyeballs for a possibly wider audience for what you have to say.
Vote for Pedro
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday November 10 2014, @09:07PM
and acting as though Twitter has some sort of responsibility to host whatever its users want to host, when no such obligation exists.
Not a legal or economic obligation, but the argument could be made for an ethical one.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Common Joe on Monday November 10 2014, @05:24AM
I think the "so what" is that if you want to have any kind of communication with large groups of people (and therefore a chance to "make it big"), you need Twitter, You Tube, and Facebook for the marketing. Of course, a person or company can have their own URL, but that only goes so far. That is where the problem comes in. In a way, we (as a society) are censoring ourselves.
I think this article by Wait But Why [waitbutwhy.com] has some fascinating pie charts... especially the second one.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Monday November 10 2014, @06:13AM
you need Twitter, You Tube, and Facebook for the marketing.
No, you don't. In fact spending time on that guarantees you will "make it small", because nobody that matters spends any time at the navel gazing trough of twitter. It gets far more people into career threatening trouble than it helps.
Oddly even junior high kids are starting to get this, even then the 20 somethings are still waiting for the tweet that will change their lives.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Monday November 10 2014, @07:04AM
The Wait But Why Article I suggested was interesting if you haven't read it. Disclaimer: I am not affiliated Wait But Why, but I am a regular reader.
What would you suggest for Wait But Why? As a person who wants to better target people for my own personal stuff, what do you suggest for me? (Note: The stuff I want to peddle is not associated with my Soylent News name "Common Joe".)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 10 2014, @02:19PM
Well, from that article I gather Twitter in particular isn't relevant (YouTube wasn't even listed). Facebook, OTOH, provided a big part of the pie.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Monday November 10 2014, @09:20AM
Well, I can, but I'm not constantly craving attention.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 10 2014, @06:18AM
>someone published people's addresses
>evidence that people have been false flagging (a certain developer "reposts" images advocating harassment of her for being in anti-Gamergate, despite the date on the metadata of the image being before she involved herself in Gamergate)
Nothing to see here! Please move on!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 10 2014, @04:59PM
So we shouldn't use such crappy services! I don't know the people mentioned or whether their cases have any merit or not. However the issue is very real. And sadly this encroachment is happening also offline.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_space#Privatization [wikipedia.org]