
Adventures in Twitter Censorship [pdf] - oskarth
http://members.efn.org/~paulmd/OwnWork/AdventuresinCensorship.pdf
======
netik
All of you are misinterpreting Twitter's "features" here.

Most likely the root cause of this is an internal feature at Twitter called
"per-country takedown."

If someone from Germany asked (and had a valid court order) that the Tweet be
taken down for German users, then Twitter has the ability to disable the Tweet
for people coming from German IPs.

I don't agree with this, I lobbied heavily against it while I worked there to
no avail, but it's a solid explanation for why you wouldn't be able to see a
Tweet in different regions.

~~~
logic
epeus is right; I'm not at Twitter anymore either, but the last time I looked
at this, per-country takedowns were clearly labeled as such (ie. you hit the
tweet from the blocked country, you get clear "this isn't visible to you"
messaging).

My honest guess? Cache coherency is hard, man.

~~~
logic
Amusing side-conversation we're having right now: apparently my reply above
didn't show up immediately for some folks.

Obviously, Hacker News is censoring me.

------
ogig
One of my main concerns with mainstream social networks is this kind of subtle
censorship/filtering. Some people think their Facebook stream is an accurate
representation of their friends and surrounding reality, they are ignorant of
the algoritms that decide what they will see and what not.

~~~
SFLemonade
This so true and a major concern. The next wave of highly effective propaganda
and thought control could very easily manifest itself through this. Today,
people know better than to blindly believe the news media. If information is
coming from a single entity, it could be pushing an agenda, so take it with a
grain of salt. We all know that. But when it appears to come from a community,
that's entirely different. It seems completely genuine and trustworthy.

But what happens when Zuckerberg meets with German political leaders to
discuss the silencing of anti-refugee posts on Facebook? We know that the
technology exists. If you've ever advertised on Facebook, you've seen how
easily one piece of content can be given massive priority while others can go
quietly ignored. But that's not how it seems to the user. It just seems like
all of their friends are thinking one way....so they should too.

There are massive implications to this.

~~~
DasIch
Germany does not intend to silence anti-refugee posts. Germany wants to stop
illegal incitement of hatred. Such as promoting or even threatening to burn
down asylum centers, to hurt or even kill refugees and those that help them.

Those are not just words, asylum centers are being burned to the ground,
refugees are attacked, just recently some were killed on the border the EU,
just yesterday someone tried and almost suceeded in killing a politician who
helped refugees.

You have to be insane to support this as free speech unless you support these
nazis.

~~~
teddyh
“ _The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of
one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive
laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is
to be stopped at all._ ”

— Widely attributed to H. L. Mencken

~~~
PavlovsCat
Would HN be better if personal insults and death threats were allowed, would
it improve the exchange of ideas and the expression of opinions?

~~~
GauntletWizard
Yes. Your idea of a personal insult is my idea of spirited debate. I've been
warned twice in the past few weeks by HN moderators because I've used similes
that they've found offensive. Honestly? I find that offensive. They'd better
censor their censorship.

~~~
DasIch
I think you will find many people disagreeing with you on that. In Germany
it's even illegal to insult people because in Germany dignity is considered to
be a human right just as much as freedom of speech is.

~~~
GauntletWizard
Clearly, Germany has failed - If people had any dignity, they wouldn't need a
government to protect it.

------
0x49
Im more concerned with social censorship and the mob mentality that seems to
be determining justice. If you say something that is not politically correct
or against the current narrative, you will get
fired/bullied/harrassed/silenced/all three.

Without honesty, there will be no progress. I shouldnt be afraid of posting my
opinions and expressing my freedom of speech because i might lose my
livelihood. But its the sad reality.

~~~
task_queue
You are in essence saying there shouldn't be social consequences for speech.

~~~
csandreasen
The internet has created a weird environment where repercussions for socially
unacceptable speech (even if taken completely out of context) can be
dramatically more severe than any harm that was caused by the original
speaker. In general, a distasteful tweet or Facebook post shouldn't cost
someone their job, make them a target for anonymous threats or make them fear
interacting with society at large any more than it would have if the message
had just been spoken. There was a good piece on NPR recently that explored a
number of examples:

[http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?story...](http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=440286008)

~~~
swang
There has always been repercussions for socially unacceptable speech. What the
internet has affected is who can hear or read your speech.

If I go into a supermarket and shout, "I hate black people and they shouldn't
even be in America!" I am going to suffer the consequences, but probably only
from the people who heard me. Everyone else will have heard it second-hand and
may due to social circle pressure decide to sever ties with me. The only way
I'll actually suffer long-term (other than being beat up by a mob) is if I was
famous since people like it when famous people do things.

The problem is, people continue to think that "The Internet" is just some kind
of throwaway void where they can spout whatever they want. Justine Sacco
probably isn't a racist, and was probably making a joke about "white
privilege" or "white bubble". But she showed poor judgement in assuming that
writing that in a public space would be benign. Even with her lack of
followers. Text is not a good way to facilitate a joke that requires context.
Her joke about AIDS and Africa and white people not being affected is based on
some context no one but herself had.

If _I_ am at the supermarket and I hear some old cranky dude yell that out.
It's a story I'll probably tell my friends about. They in turn may decide to
use that as an inside joke/catchphrase of our circle of friends. But there is
no way I'll repeat that to someone else outside of the group of friends that
know what the context is. I definitely won't post it on Twitter, not without
at least having posted the story about the crazy old man in the supermarket.

So I kinda laugh when people say they can't say anything that's not "PC"
anymore. That to me just means they want to really spout some really offensive
opinions to a public audience without paying the consequences of doing so.
Then of course when there is kickback, they blame it on people being too "PC"

~~~
SFLemonade
Part of the problem that I see, is that in modern America, everyone is a
victim. Anything can be considered offensive. And when that happens, we find
it acceptable to utterly destroy people's lives over 140 characters...in the
name of "social justice". It's ok to call Justine Sacco a fucking bitch and
wish brutal rape upon her, so long as you do so in defense of social justice,
right? It's ok to shame her, cause her to lose her job and go into hiding, so
long as you're part of the "progressive" and "forward thinking" mob, right? In
fact, one may even consider it comedic, right?

That is what you call justice?

We have effectively returned to the days of witch hunting and public hangings,
but this time our medium isn't the town square. It's the Internet.

Justine Sacco's tweet was a joke. And she even subscribed to the very
"liberal" thought that was shaming her. Her joke was tongue-in-cheek. But her
shamers weren't liberals. They didn't care about actual reason and discourse
and open-mindedness. They weren't the liberals that we think of today; the
ones that were always on the right side of history. The ones that marched
alongside MLK. The ones that stood up for women's rights. No, they were
"progressives". Pseudo-liberals that fight for the oppressed by oppressing
others. The open-minded, forward thinking, altruistic group that wants
everyone to be heard...until they disagree with their views. Then they must
return to the mob-mentality of the stone ages, in the name of "progress".

These people don't care about progress. They don't care about social justice.
They care about the entertainment of destroying someone's life, the feeling of
dehumanizing another human being, and the gratifying thought that in doing so,
they were being a model human...an enlightened individual...better than the
rest. But they aren't. They are the most simple, selfish, uncompassionate, and
closed-minded beings of our generation.

And we support them. We encourage them.

We have no idea how stressful and oppressive of a world we are creating for
ourselves. And all in the name of pseudo "anti-oppression". We must remember
the importance of true freedom of speech. The importance of unpopular thoughts
and discussions. The importance of open discourse without the threat of
condemnation. Where everyone can be heard and we can build a better world
together. Where the enlightened truly care about helping the unenlightened to
see things differently. Where true progress is bred.

~~~
swang
I agree there is a lot of mob mentality going on. But I feel like you are only
viewing this when you perceive it to be started by the "left". Mob mentality
is not a left or right problem. "Progressives" are not the one's doing this.
Mob mentality is a human thing.

Is your reasoning that only people attacking Justine Sacco were "progressives"
and "liberals?" Does that mean everybody, to put for a lack of a better term,
"on the right" understood the context of Justine Sacco's tweet and did not
join in and pile on?

I mean in the context of just those tweets, what she said was pretty racist
and offensive. So the implication that only liberals attacked her means that
either conservatives didn't attack her because they already understood what
she meant by those tweets (hard to imagine anyone could in that moment since
one of the biggest things about it was that she was on a plane and couldn't
defend herself) or they didn't believe those tweets were racist (which they
were when taken without context).

Dividing people by framing this as a left/right issue is not the way to go if
you really want to stop the internet mob.

------
alfiedotwtf
“You can say what you like but no one will hear you. And also, you'll think no
one cared, so you'll give up trying.”

Isn't this what JTRIG's "Online Covert Operations" is all about?
[https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-
manipulation/](https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/)

------
olefoo
This is not at all surprising in that censorship is one of the few viable
business models for a 'free-to-play' social network.

Defusing and diffusing social movements before they get traction is something
many organizations with money are going to find appealing whether or not it
works...

Facebook understands this quite well and is the canonical example of the
model; but if you don't think that "Steering the conversation" is a core value
proposition for privately operated social networks ( including Hacker News )
that are free to the general public; you are naive.

------
pmlnr
Yet another situation to highlight
[http://indiewebcamp.com/webmention](http://indiewebcamp.com/webmention)

Circumventing that would be near impossible.

------
hellbanner
I'm seeing this Retweet from the US. What's going on?

~~~
kylnew
The writer seemed to be suggesting the censorship could be temporary, and
lifted after no longer fresh and less likely to be retweeted. Also, though
probably not true in your case, it sounds like actively following the account
means these rules don't apply.

------
username223
It seems like Twitter is experimenting with hell-banning. This is hardly a new
evil.

