Twitter Has Suspended 235,000 Accounts Since February For Promoting Terrorism (theverge.com) 132
An anonymous reader writes: Twitter has suspended 235,000 accounts since February for promoting terrorism, the company said in a blog post today. "Daily suspensions are up over 80 percent since last year, with spikes in suspensions immediately following terrorist attacks," the company wrote. "Our response time for suspending reported accounts, the amount of time these accounts are on Twitter, and the number of followers they accumulate have all decreased dramatically." The company said it's also expanded the team that works on flagging such content, and claims to have made progress on stopping accounts from starting again under a new handle. In a previous post from February, Twitter said it had suspended 125,000 accounts since mid-2015.
Contra-Number? (Score:5, Insightful)
And how many people has it silenced who are against terrorism [theguardian.com]?
I'd be more impressed if they didn't seem to have a little club that used a small cabal to decide who should be banned and who not... real trolls roam free on Twitter while people deviating from Group-Think are banned. It makes me question if the numbers they give are even real or just for show.
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Free speech is not the issue when free association means no one will listen and you will have no opportunities to speak.
Re: Contra-Number? (Score:1)
You can thank white, Western European Christians for creating the concept of free speech.
I could also thank Jefferson Davis for causing the legal end of slavery, Adolf Hitler for showing the evil of AntiSemitism, and Sauron for ending the War of the Ring.
White, Western European Christians crushed those who said things they found unpleasant and many cultures have standards of free speech from the longhouse to the forum.
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White, Western European Christians crushed those who said things they found unpleasant and many cultures have standards of free speech from the longhouse to the forum.
He was talking about where the concept of free speech originated (Athens, ca. 5th century BC). He didn't say it was a concept exclusive to white western Europe,
Re: Contra-Number? (Score:3, Insightful)
Christianity was widely practiced in Athens during that time? Please tell me more.
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Seriously, these white christian power people give stupid a bad reputation!
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Is there anything white, European Christians won't take credit for? (undeservedly)
Hell, in a generation, US Christians will probably be taking credit for marriage equality and LGBT rights.
Why don't you try getting marriage equality and LGBT rights in a non-Christian county.
Like Saudi Arabia.
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Plenty of non-Christian countries had LGBT rights literally thousands of years before white christian Europeans even existed.
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Not true at all (Score:2)
People who deviate from group-think are banned in real-life too.
People have real discussions all the time in public, at bars, at work - they are not banned, there is real conversation and people listen to each other (to a point). Even if you end up totally disagreeing with someone, you still carry on with them as an co--worker or a friend - I have many friends who are utterly in disagreement with a number of things I believe in, but we both just carry on knowing the other person is wrong.
If you don't know
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The difference between online and normal social engagements is you are connected to a far broader and more diverse range of people ie in my younger days, regional towns in queensland had black hotels and white hotels and you did not go into the wrong hotel unless you wanted problems (this being a more extreme form of social separation, another extreme form being in prison versus not being in prison). What the online environment does to push many differing social groups to interacting together. So the probl
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And as we all know, the worst "real troll" of them all is the no-true-Scotsman
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You are so full of fucking shit! You don't have freedom from someone's speech, you do however have the freedom to ignore it. Milo did nothing wrong, he was punished because he was simply was right wing and gay which goes against the democrat narrative. The democrats are ruining this country by wrecking free speech. Remember, you can't have true free speech if you suppress "hate speech" because hate speech can be defined as anything you fucking want it to be defined as.
Nannybot 2016 (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm against the promotion of terrorism and all that, but do we really want tech companies policing our speech?
This would like someone listening to all our telephone conversations to see if we were talking about terrorism. Oh, wait...
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If I run a service, I want to be able to decide who uses it, yes.
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Phone companies can't do that. Your ISP probably can't. Where do you draw the line?
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You draw the line if it's a vital service with no competing alternative. Like electricity, home phone lines, sewer, water, garbage, and probably internet service ... to name a few.
Outside of that a company can refuse service to whoever they want. Twitter falls so far outside the realm of "vital service" that it's not even a question. Twitter's only concern is setting rules that maximize their use base (and hence profit). In this case obviously they've decided that it's in their interests to quell terrorism-
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Hope you aren't breaking into baking, because I've got some bad news about your dreams of your control over your business...
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What an outdated concept. You don't have the right anymore to refuse service to people.
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I'm against the promotion of terrorism and all that, but do we really want tech companies policing our speech?
This would like someone listening to all our telephone conversations to see if we were talking about terrorism. Oh, wait...
I guess we do, if by "we" you mean the majority of the people that use these public forums. And that's the nub of it, I suspect: the word 'public'. I don't use social media very much, but as far as I know, none of them guarantee that you are private, when you use them, on the contrary. They let you use their sites for free, because their business model needs the data you provide when you use their services; that is the way you pay them. They only want to keep it "private" in the sense that this is valuable
...with spikes *after* terror attacks. (Score:1)
Great, after they're done we can stop them from continuing.
As good as this xkcd: http://xkcd.com/937/
Freedom of speech (Score:5, Insightful)
So twitter is against freedom of speech?
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The terrorists should declare themselves corporations, THEN they'll get freedom-of-speech.
Al Qaeda Inc. documents its expenses (Score:3)
You think al Qaeda isn't a corporation? Someone read its expense reports [nydailynews.com].
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Hey, if AQ gives better ISP service than the big telecoms, I'm signing the hell up!
It's not more evil, just switching Devil brands.
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The First Amendment guarantees that the government will not abridge your freedom of speech. (Certain limitations, among them threatening public officials, still apply.)
It says nothing about private entities, such as corporations, being prohibited from abridging your speech.
Look at it like this. Freedom of speech does not guarantee you a venue. It guarantees you a voice. No one has to listen, and no one is obligated to provide you a microphone.
You can say what you want, but Twitter still has the option under
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I don't live in the US so I couldn't care less about its constitution.
Freedom of speech is not only a law (in many countries). It's also a principle. Twitter is free not to stand by that principle. They just better never say they defend and promote it.
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I don't live in the US so I couldn't care less about its constitution.
Twitter is based in the US so is bound by their laws. Welcome to the discussion.
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So? US laws doesn't forbid Twitter from breaching freedom of speech on its web site. What is your point? That freedom of speech can't be a broader principle than its legal definition in one country?
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Because this thread is US law. Look that the first post: "The First Amendment ...". Welcome to the discussion.
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The first post of this thread is by danbob999, and doesn't mention the first amendment. When Kierthos misunderstood the concept for the American constitutional use of it, danbob999 corrected him. This thread is not US law, it's freedom of speech (it's written right there in the subject).
BTW, Americans are allowed to use "Freedom of speech" as a concept too, they don't have to be limited by the American constitutional/legal use of the expression. The company is against freedom of speech in their lawn, and th
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People are free to believe that what twitter are doing is wrong - but if they are not also inviting everyone to spraypaint slogans on the walls of their living rooms then then they are being hypocrites.
I do not want neo-NAZIs spraypainting swastika's on my living room wall. That's my right as well. There's a reason why free speech laws end where they do - because ANYTHING MORE is automatically an infringement on equally important rights of other people, such as the right to freedom of association and the ri
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I understand your point and agree partially with it. Since I'm Brazilian, and grew with different laws and slightly different values, I'll make some points that might add to the subject.
We had a dictatorship not long ago and our post-dictatorship constitution and laws developed in a way that if you are in the communication business you cannot choose what people say. If some speech is illegal (like racism or crime incitement), then you should either get a court order to remove it (pretty fast), or alert the
Re: Freedom of speech (Score:2)
Thats an interesting approach. Though where do you draw the line between publishing company and communications company ? Does a newspaper become a communications company if it published 'letters to the editor'? Can it filter which letters to publish ? And what happens if it is a foreign company with Brazilian users ? Must they forfeit the rights they have at home for visitors from Brazil ?
In principle I am in favour of that approach but it seems rather fraught with legal complexity.
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But if you have a phone company, you cannot choose what's in people's sms messages or calls. The same applies for Facebook, etc, that are effectively replacing the phone companies.
And that's where you are wrong (and you are not alone). Facebook is absolutely not a basic utility. Just because people enjoy it doesn't make it essential nor a necessity.
And if you disagree, that's fine, but Facebook is a US company and under US law it's operations are absolutely not governed in the same way as essential services like water, sewer, electrical, etc. If Brazil wants to try and go that direction with Facebook's operations in their country, you're going to find out what it's like to live witho
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I'm not sure exactly were they draw the line. Letters to the editor are up to the editor to choose, I'm sure of that. I'm not sure about comment sections in a news website, but they do censor those so I guess it's still in their domain, but I cannot be sure because someone would have to sue and (un)fortunately we don't sue as much as Americans. I did a duckduckgo, google and jusbrasil (a legal cases database) search and couldn't find anything relevant, it might exist, but must be buried very deep. It's all
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I think you might have misquoted me (because your argument is on the basic utility point). The part where you quoted me holds true. I was always talking about how things actually work here in Brazil 1. Phone companies cannot choose what people say. 2. the same applies to Facebook, etc 3. Facebook is effectively replacing them.
On the point you made:
We do not regulate or argue that they are a basic utility. The point about regulating as utility was only a comparison with the American law. It seems that in the
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Unless that microphone sits atop a cake for a same sex wedding wedding. You tolerant people sow our own destruction with your intolerance.
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You should read Karl Popper. Tolerating intolerant views (such as homophobia) is, in fact, a logical fallacy and NOT tolerating them does NOT in any way make you intollerant, you CAN'T be tolerant UNLESS you are refuse to tolerate those views - since tolerating them will lead to the destruction of ALL tolerance.
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The First Amendment guarantees that the government will not abridge your freedom of speech. (Certain limitations, among them threatening public officials, still apply.)
It says nothing about private entities, such as corporations, being prohibited from abridging your speech.
Look at it like this. Freedom of speech does not guarantee you a venue. It guarantees you a voice. No one has to listen, and no one is obligated to provide you a microphone.
You can say what you want, but Twitter still has the option under their Terms of Service to ban you. You can still say the same things; you just can't say them on their service.
I would add it also does not protect you from the consequences of speech. Yell fire in a theater is the mos quoted example, but walking into a biker bar and telling the biggest guy there his girl looks like a methhead skank and her crotch smells like the rotting cum from the last gangbang is well within your rights. No piece of paer is going to protect you from what happens next.
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To add to your example. Lets assume the guy then starts beating you, you pull out a gun and shoot him. You claim self defense in court - you will be convicted of murder. Self-defence in almost all jurisdictions on earth is precluded as a defence for 'first aggressor' and no sane judge or jury would NOT consider your words there to make you the 'first aggressor' - after all, they are clear an example of "fighting words".
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In a way it does - the US constitution is not unique - most countries have very similar laws, for a very good reason, it's just about the only *sane* way freedom of speech can work. Unless you are personally happy to let BOTH the local SJWs AND the local neo-NAZIs spraypaint slogans on your living room wall.
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While that may be a good argument - twitter is concerned about their own risk. They were already charged with abetting terrorism in France this year - they were acquitted in the end, but that kind of case is bad PR, costs a lot of money and risks getting a bunch of laws passed you have to comply with.
It's cheaper to pro-actively root out users who put your business at risk of such things.
Whack-a-mole. (Score:2)
Otherwise this would seem pretty futile.
Trump's account is still active... (Score:1)
But Trump's account is still active... Along with Clinton's. There got both sides of the crooked fence for you guys. Sorry, but neither are Presidential material. But Clinton is a professional and Trump is a child.
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Do you want a professional corrupt lying scumbag, or an amateur corrupt lying scumbag? That's one for the philosophers.
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I don't want to waste my vote on either of them, which is why I donated to Gov. Gary Johnson's campaign.
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Donating to Johnson's campaign might make sense - assuming you want his message heard, and that your donation will help that. Actually voting for him is a vote for Trump if you would otherwise have voted for Clinton - and vice versa. There's no point claiming that your 'personal integrity' prevents voting for one of the two viable choices. Abstaining (which a Johnson vote essentially would be) isn't a particularly virtuous stance - no matter how much you flatter yourself that it is.
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Why is paying for a vote illegal anyway ? It makes no sense. You can buy candidates. You can spend a fortune trying to sway elections.
Why should only politicians get to be bribed to support something ? Why not let them buy voters too ?
It would be the greatest piece of entirely voluntary wealth distribution in history. That may just make up for the insanity of who will rule.
On the other hand, if you think that's crazy, welcome to the anti-money-in-politics side of the fence.
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It's more like - do you want a professional, equivocating, truth-shading, politician, or an amateur, flat-out liar who says completely insane shit all the time along with its complete opposite from minute to minute.
This Hillary and Trump are 'both liars' argument is a big part of the reason Hillary lies - and used a private email server in the first place. She's a 'liar' to the extent that you can play gotcha with things she says - and many do and have. And she tried to hide her email to prevent it from b
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If "Will they lie" was the only concern - the amateur would win.
But since the question here is "which person should have the fucking nuclear launch codes" - I will choose to go with the person who isn't a fucking textbook example of antisocial personality disorder ("psychopath" in common parlance).
Now in a sane world - this would be the time to vote third party - unfortunately no third party candidates in the US deserve a vote either. No really. Neither Gary Johnson nor Jill Stein deserves a vote no matter
it was a "social promotion" (Score:2)
So, does that mean... (Score:1)
...that Trump's account was deleted?
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Hillary is the one with an actual head count.
Just the terrorists??? (Score:1)
First they came.. (Score:1, Insightful)
First they came for the terrorist supporters, and I did not speak up because I was not a terrorist supporter.
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Because clearly, promoting violence as a means of getting your way politically is totally equivalent to that quote.
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If these people wanted a war, that would be great, instead, they advocate for violence against civilian targets. If you really want to support that, feel free, but I and many like me will just call you a coward, not a warrior.
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What constitutes a civilian is also ambiguous when you are talking about an internal struggle against your own government. Suddenly police go from civilian to uniformed and armed agents of government and a civilian resistence can not obey the usual rules of war, with dramatically inferior resource
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Basically, our own criteria for selecting enemy combatants applied against our own domestic government by an armed civilian force engaged in civil war is in fact fair game. Bombing a bus just for the shock value is not.
That is the point I am trying to make. The definition of terrorism doesn't cover what you are speaking of, it is about attacking helpless bystanders. Things like car/backpack bombs, attacking a mall in Africa, those types of things. People advocating for a new government shouldn't be considered terrorists, as they aren't engaged in terror attacks.
The patriots in the American revolution weren't terrorists, the IRA were. The difference is entirely in the methods used to achieve the goals.
BullShit (Score:5, Insightful)
They have suspended conservative posters simply because of posts of those people's followers, but they let ISIS supporters like Anjem Choudary continue to post.
And while they might pretend to take some actions against terrorism. they seem to be doing nothing to silence posts promoting tourism.
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Wrong approach... (Score:1)
Banning speech just moves it from one platform to another
I'd rather honestly know who the assholes are, instead of banning them and having them go underground.
The best counter of hate speech is more speech.
The best disinfectant for a society is the light of day.
235,000? (Score:3)
In other news, in the condition that the world is in these days, all that's going on, simply talking about what's happening, and sharing your thoughts makes it hard for others to NOT be able to look at what's been said as terror.
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As of the end of the second quarter of 2016, they had 313 million active monthly users.
Now, how many of those are twitter-bots, I couldn't tell you.
Wish we could ban terrorism in our media eh? (Score:1)
I think a lot worse is done by our war promoting hate promoting mainstream media...
But what about Donald Trump... (Score:2)
After all, hinting that gun owners might take matters into their own hands IF Hillary is elected (the time ordering and meaning of his sentences was very clear) sounds like promoting anarchy, treason, and terrorism to me.
Also, if he asserts that Obama is the "founder of ISIS" then he has to acknowledge that he wanted to "found ISIS" in exactly the same way as he clearly an unequivocally stated in TWO CNN interviews. So let's call him -- by his own standards -- a "co-founder of ISIS".
One can then work one's
World heat map? (Score:1)
I would really like to see something like this, of the banned accounts by geolocation.
Deeply Disturbung (Score:2)
This is deeply disturbing.
A private company is divining which of its users are in some way expressing opinions that it thinks might be divergent with that of the government of the country in which t operates?
This is far beyond an act of fascism. Twitter did this of its own accord, not at the request of government. Twitter per-emptively bowed in obeisance due to its fear of a government demand,
If you do not find this disturbing, then you have not read enough history.