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Twitter Social Networks

Twitter Bans 'Hateful Conduct' (reuters.com) 492

An anonymous reader writes: Twitter has updated their site rules to prohibit "behavior intended to harass, intimidate, or use fear to silence another user's voice." According to the new rules, "You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability or disease." This follows criticism that Twitter (and other social networks) haven't done enough to prevent the ramblings of the Islamic State and other terrorist groups. "Tuesday's announcement did not disclose changes to Twitter's enforcement strategy. A company spokesman declined to say if any were in the works. The new rules also said that Twitter might respond to reports that somebody is considering 'self-harm' by contacting the person to express concern and provide contact information to mental health practitioners."
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Twitter Bans 'Hateful Conduct'

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  • FTFY... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by x0ra ( 1249540 ) on Wednesday December 30, 2015 @03:06PM (#51210237)
    Twitter ban 'dissenting political opinions'.
    • Re:FTFY... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Aaron Bateman ( 4366931 ) on Wednesday December 30, 2015 @03:10PM (#51210271)
      x1000 SJWs rejoice, now they can muzzle any and all opponents by crying "hate speech".
      • Re:FTFY... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by NotDrWho ( 3543773 ) on Wednesday December 30, 2015 @03:27PM (#51210443)

        Yeah, we all hate it when other people disagree with us. So to be safe, maybe we should just ban all speech, period.

        Better yet, just shut down Twitter altogether. Only way to be sure.

      • This is literally rape.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        Yes, those damn SJWs:

        Their hypervigilant drive to hunt down any topic that, using the most tenuous of tangents, can be bent, crammed or shoe-horned into an excuse to make a screed against those that disagree with them
        Their logical fallacies of calling those that disagree with them bigots whilst casting broad aspersions on generalized groups of people
        Their false equation of somebody calling them out on their shitty opinions as an attack on free speech
        Their desperate need to frame everything as being so

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      "on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability or disease"

      I don't see "political views" listed there. Also,

      "You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people"

      This is not a political viewpoint. Kill them is never a political viewpoint, its an irrational response to irrational actions. What you said is cute but ultimately incorrect and highly misleading. Should we advocate killing you for it?

      • by fche ( 36607 )

        On the bright side, in their full "The Twitter Rules" article, there is a separate bullet for "Violent threats (direct or indirect): You may not make threats of violence or promote violence, including threatening or promoting terrorism." Seems to subsume the "hateful conduct ..." bullet, but I'm not a lawyer, merely a reasonably logical person.

        On the dark side, they don't define "targeted abuse or harassment". Of course this will be misused to abuse and harass people.

      • by x0ra ( 1249540 )
        "race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability or disease" *are* political views...
      • Re:FTFY... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by NotDrWho ( 3543773 ) on Wednesday December 30, 2015 @03:48PM (#51210651)

        "on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability or disease"

        I don't see "political views" listed there. Also,

        Lol, so naive.

        Don't you know that saying "I like Donald Trump" these days is the equivalent of saying "I hate all Muslims" and is therefore a hate crime? Or that going to a feminist rally and holding up a sign that says "I disagree with feminism" creates a hostile environment for women and is therefore not only a hate crime, but also a form gender discrimination and also rape?

        I wish I were joking. That's how far the left that I was once proud to be a part of has sunk in recent years.

    • Twitter ban 'dissenting political opinions'.

      So Iran teaching it's schoolchildren to chant 'Death to America' is a 'dissenting political opinion' and you're OK with it, then? So-called 'Islamic state' assholes tweeting about cutting off people's heads is a 'dissenting political opinion'?

      • How cute that you think this will only be applied to ISIS. Naivete at its finest.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by kheldan ( 1460303 )

          How cute that you think this will only be applied to ISIS. Naivete at its finest.

          Oh I'm sorry I didn't realize you live in the United States of Twitter, and that what the administrators of that site do is what you live and die by! Twitter is a business not a country. They can create and enforce any rules for using their FREE service that they want, and it doesn't infringe on your 1st Amendment rights whatsoever, you can always go somewhere else -- or is your life so sadly limited that without Twitter you'll wither away and die? If so then I pity you. Otherwise you can always 'vote with

    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      Their house, their rules. If that makes the bigots vote with their feet, well, then Twitter will have to do without that revenue.

  • Will we prevent you from silencing others by silencing you. Pray I do not alter the deal further.

    • Will we prevent you from silencing others by silencing you.

      How's that morally any different from: "we will stop you from imprisoning people in your basement by throwing your ass in jail"?

  • These new rules make me feel intimidated, harassed and I'll now be silent on Twitter out of fear.
  • My first thought is that twitter would implement it using a twitter bot. I think that would do more harm than good. Think about it anyone remember clippy?

    I see you are contemplating self harm would you like to:
    Chat with a certified chatbot?
    Email twitter support?
    Send a tweet with the hashtag #HELPME ?

  • by Etherwalk ( 681268 ) on Wednesday December 30, 2015 @03:22PM (#51210389)

    Prohibiting "behavior intended to harass, intimidate, or use fear to silence another user's voice"? Does that include the hate speech against muslims that has become a part of the Trump campaign's effort to get votes? The hate speech against "the great Satan" you get out of some in the middle-east? The hate speech again Israel you get out of millions of people worldwide? The hate speech against Palestine you get out of Israel? The hate speech against ISIS you get out Paris in the wake of the terrorist attacks? The hate speech against Parisian Jews you get out of Parisian Muslims?

    Isolationist, anti-foreigner Joe McCarthyism, Anti-Semitism, Donald-Trumpism, there is always someone trying to use fear and hate as part of a power grab in a country's domestic political narrative. Do we really want corporate leadership at Twitter to be in charge of deciding when that's okay and when it should be censored?

    • does it also go in the reverse? all the insults and vile things said about him just for disagreeing? comparisons to hitler? I mean do we really wanna go down this slippery slope??
      • If I never have to hear another comparison to Hitler.......oh, what a sweet day that would be.

        (Not at the cost of censorship, though).
    • Prohibiting "behavior intended to harass, intimidate, or use fear to silence another user's voice"? Does that include the hate speech against muslims that has become a part of the Trump campaign's effort to get votes? The hate speech against "the great Satan" you get out of some in the middle-east? The hate speech again Israel you get out of millions of people worldwide? The hate speech against Palestine you get out of Israel? The hate speech against ISIS you get out Paris in the wake of the terrorist attacks? The hate speech against Parisian Jews you get out of Parisian Muslims?

      In the best case, it will change people from saying, "I hate him" to "I don't like what he does."

      In the worst case, it will be partisan, ideological censorship.

  • The moment Twitter's pet SJWs run afoul of the rule will be the real test.
  • Nice! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by _KiTA_ ( 241027 ) on Wednesday December 30, 2015 @03:28PM (#51210453) Homepage

    Oh, wow, so no more "Kill All Men" [twitter.com] hashtag or "I Drink Male Tears" images? Because those are pretty damned hateful, even though it's apparently socially acceptable to hate men in a way that it's not for women...

    (Whisper, Whisper)

    Oh, that's still ok? Huh. Well, at least, no more "Men are the source of all school shootings in the world" [archive.is] type posts, right? Because that's a bigoted, ignorant, statement that ignores...

    (Whisper, Whisper)

    Huh. Well, ok, then at least they're going to block ISIS accounts and the people perpetuating the fake "Max Temkin is a Rapist" hate-crime posts, right? Because the former is a ltieral terrorist organization and the latter is a discredited hoax that people are using to try and destroy someone whose only crime is he's young, male, and heterosexu... 0000%#N$! NO CARRIER

    You have been blocked for Thoughtcrime against the Party, please delete your posts to be allowed back in.

    All this is going to do is give the psychotic misandric and racist losers (the so called "Social Justice Warriors," the left-wing authoritarian hate-mob that has infested the Liberals in the US) an in so they can continue to use bots to mass-report dissenting opinions and get them banned. They're already doing so, this just codifies it as official Twitter policy.

    • Re:Nice! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by dywolf ( 2673597 ) on Wednesday December 30, 2015 @03:48PM (#51210643)

      if you cant post your "dissenting opinion" without "threatening people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability or disease", then you have some issues you need to work on.

      • So being so insensitive to the mentally unwell (and others who "have issues"). Someone might report you to the Twitter Police for hateful conduct.

      • Re:Nice! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by _KiTA_ ( 241027 ) on Wednesday December 30, 2015 @04:19PM (#51211001) Homepage

        if you cant post your "dissenting opinion" without "threatening people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability or disease", then you have some issues you need to work on.

        Ok, lets talk about what they claim, and how this will go down in reality. Because Twitter has a really bad track record of saying one thing and enforcing another.

        For example. There is a delightful young transwoman named Sarah Nyberg who has been harassing gamers on twitter for months now. (But that's ok, because harassing neuroatypical white males is socially acceptable. Especially if they're overweight and straight, too.)

        Sarah Nyberg is a pedophile. [youtube.com] She openly admits this. She also openly admits that she took photos of her 8 year old niece in her underwear and shared them online. She openly admits that doing so gave her an erection.

        She admits all of this [medium.com], but that it was ok because some people were rude to her and that's somehow worse.

        TALKING about this, due to Sarah Nyberg being part of the SJW clique, results in you being mass-reported by a botnet and your account auto-locked by Twitter's algorithms until you delete the "harassing" posts.

        The people doing this openly brag about doing this. Twitter does not care.

        Twitter can post all the fluff pieces about how this is going to combat trolls and harassers they want. People who have been the victim of this passive agressive "crybullying" know that the authoritarian nutjobs involved claim any disagreement with their socio-political views is "harassment" [reddit.com] or "Cyberviolence" [soundcloud.com] and that Twitter apparently agrees with them.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Can't tell for sure if you're male or female from your alias, but I will tell you this, friend: To appearances, I'm the sort of person these so-called 'SJWs' target, because they don't know me. In half a century of life I've known people from all walks of life, all different lifestyle choices, all different circumstances of birth, and to be specific for the topic of this whole discussion thread, I've known 'real' feminists, and I've known so-called 'feminazis', and I can tell you that there's a huge differe
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Censoring free speech is awful. Not as bad as islam, but still awful. This is a mistake.
  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday December 30, 2015 @03:43PM (#51210605)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by nuckfuts ( 690967 ) on Wednesday December 30, 2015 @03:48PM (#51210645)

    Instead of

    "You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of..."

    How about

    "You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people." PERIOD

  • by Theovon ( 109752 ) on Wednesday December 30, 2015 @03:49PM (#51210663)

    I don’t joke about harming people. It’s stupid and rude. Hell, I don’t joke about harming terrorists. I just make statements about how they need to be stopped. And there are a few cases that I believe are criminal, like threatening to kill the US president. Anyone who threatens to commit voilence or even jokes about it deserves to be smacked around (but in a figurative sense, of course).

    That being said, I think that explicitly prohibiting statements like this is a can of worms that you don’t want to deal with.

    Actually, twitter prohibiting this kind of speech is totally legal, because it’s a private business.

    But what I’m concerned about is any time a stupid joke can be taken too seriously by humorless people in authority, and some kid’s life gets ruined because they had a moron moment.

    I guess what I’m trying to say is that I believe that, with the exception of a few very rare cases, all speech should be protected, no matter how stupid it is.

    And don’t get me started on this “safe zone” bullshit that’s been popping up at universities.

  • Wall Street already doesn't like Twitter's lack of growth and if they eliminate hateful trolls and fake accounts then Twitter is going to have to start eliminate analysts' twitter accounts as well because the projections are going to be rather 'hateful' as well.
  • I guess with the holiday and all, we could just go ahead and consider today Friday, right? I mean, it's not like anybody's doing any work.

  • Poor Twitter. Nobody understands that they're only censoring us for our own good. I love it when people do that, it gives me a warm feeling, like I just shit my pants.
  • Oh the idiocy... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Simulant ( 528590 ) on Wednesday December 30, 2015 @06:06PM (#51211895) Journal
    ...in these comments.

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