
Enforcing New Rules to Reduce Hateful Conduct and Abusive Behavior - jdelaney
https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2017/safetypoliciesdec2017.html
======
Spivak
This is going to be fun.

> Accounts that affiliate with organizations that use or promote violence
> against civilians

> Content that glorifies violence or the perpetrators of a violent act.

* "Support our troops"

* "Punch a Nazi"

* Basically any enthusiastic history account.

* Mall ninjas.

* Any action movie/tv property.

* Star Wars.

* UFC

It seems almost puritan to try and deny humanity's love of violence.

> If an account’s profile information includes a violent threat or multiple
> slurs, epithets, racist or sexist tropes, incites fear, or reduces someone
> to less than human, it will be permanently suspended.

* A little confused about the 'multiple' requirement. So long as you only hate one thing your good?

* Racist or sexist tropes is a bit hard to pin down. /r/bpt is full of examples of 'racist' tropes that are self-deprecating. I'm not the best at words but they probably want an exception for "laughing with you, not at you."

> intimidates, or uses fear to silence another person’s voice

I can't wait for this to not be applied against people who use public shaming
as a silencing tactic.

Also, there's a bit on irony that in that policy is itself a silencing tactic.
This is going to cause people afraid of being banned to self-censor because a
statement is politically unpopular.

~~~
notyourday
Dear Twitter,

If I'm a member of a visibly protected minority group (Black Muslim) and I
tweet "Death to Zionist Sodomites occupying Holy Jerusalem" would I be
suspended? Asking for a friend.

~~~
creaghpatr
Probably, as you are violating one of Twitter's partner organizations on the
Trust and Safety Council, the ADL, whose mission is to eliminate anti-
semitism.

You can view Twitter's safety partners here to learn which groups have
advisory over what counts as 'hate speech' :
[https://about.twitter.com/en_us/safety/safety-
partners.html](https://about.twitter.com/en_us/safety/safety-partners.html)

~~~
dogma1138
Note he didn’t say Jews but Zionists so it would be ok as long as there won’t
be too many brackets in his tweet. /s

------
minimaxir
Specifically, there's a _this policy does not apply to military or government
entities_ loophole to these new rules, which many believe to be a workaround
for these rules not applying to Trump.

~~~
cryptoz
Yeah, this is absolute doublespeak. Twitter's not 'enforcing' anything, and as
others have pointed out, they are actually making the situation worse. Now
it's clear that even Twitter says if you're rich and famous you can be abusive
without the same consequences as someone who is not wealthy. Ridiculous.

Nobody has ever held Trump accountable for anything. Hilariously, Twitter
holds a lot of power over Trump due to controlling his popular account. They
could hold him accountable. They choose not to. Insane.

~~~
21
> Nobody has ever held Trump accountable for anything. Hilariously, Twitter
> holds a lot of power over Trump due to controlling his popular account. They
> could hold him accountable. They choose not to. Insane.

Trump is the elected president of USA, one of the most important country on
Earth. The fact that you suggest a private company should police his speak is
insane to me.

~~~
21
To those downvoting me, do you think CNN, BBC and all major news outlets
should only report what Trump does, but never actually show a video of him
speak to deny him a platform?

~~~
danaliv
Twitter is not journalism. And as you yourself have pointed out, Trump is one
of the most powerful people on earth—meaning he has at his disposal more
platforms than any of us can even dream of. Twitter can no more "police his
speech" than I can police all of Facebook.

What Twitter _can_ do is decide they don't want Trump to be an active member
of their community. That is not just within their legal rights; it's well
within their moral rights too.

~~~
21
Should twitter also ban the accounts of the president of Russia and the
president of China, because of their support of policies which violate human
rights? (LGBT, Tibet, democracy, the list is long, pick your favorite).

What about the account of Barack Obama, who supported extra-judicial drone
killings of US citizens?

[https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
politics/2016/11/14/13577464/...](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
politics/2016/11/14/13577464/obama-farewell-speech-torture-drones-nsa-
surveillance-trump)

~~~
Buldak
You're conflating a lot here. People think Trump should be banned from Twitter
_because of the inflammatory content of his tweets,_ not because of
objectionable things he does elsewhere. Unless Barack Obama made a bunch of
tweets exhorting drone strikes that I'm unaware of, the comparison you're
suggesting doesn't go through.

------
jsonne
I've gone through and reported a number of accounts that seem to violate this
policy after the announcement and made note of the usernames and if they were
a left wing or right wing organization. I'm curious to see if this will be
enforced equally.

~~~
21
Many will report antifa accounts. It will be a shitfest whatever Twitter does:
ban - they are pro fascists and can't distinguish between "good" violence
versus "bad" violence, no ban - they have double standards for left versus
right.

~~~
Spivak
There's a such thing as good violence?

~~~
21
Well, self defense is a generally accepted case of good violence.

~~~
tyen_
Antifa acts in self-defense? what a joke

------
colordrops
That's how authoritarianism is and will be implemented in the US: by using the
excuse that because a corporation is doing it, then it's not bound by the
constitution. "Twitter is a private entity, so they don't have to follow the
first amendment." But when the government has privatized and outsourced
everything to corporations, then the corporations control the narrative, and
censorship becomes de facto instead of by law. Corporations are a workaround
to get around constitutional limitations.

~~~
tdb7893
If you don't like how a corporations handles speech you don't need to use
their services. The social media corporations are not being controlled at this
point by the government and these issues of free speech are being implemented
not because of the will of the government but because they are wanted by the
consumers (even if it doesn't seem that way here). Consumers should be able to
use the services they want and they want services without these types of
speech

~~~
ThrowawayR2
> _If you don 't like how a corporations handles speech you don't need to use
> their services._

And what are the alternative services that these people should use? Google,
Facebook, Twitter, etc. simply don't have any alternatives that are widely
used or credible.

~~~
tdb7893
I agree but it's the market that's the issue, the government has little to do
with it

------
tsunamifury
Meaningless until they enforce this with their star contributors. Otherwise
it's just further enforcing a set of rules for stars and another for everyone
else.

~~~
vorotato
Yep the verified check was simply a way to impose class distinction. You
should hit up Mastodon/GnuSocial.

~~~
anonbanker
Be wary of Mastodon for their Embrace/Extend of GNU Social, as well as their
banning of entire chunks of the federated network.

Find a good GNU Social site, and bask in the freedom. it feels like Twitter
when it first started.

~~~
detaro
Does Mastodon roll out these bans coordinated across the federated instances?

~~~
TheDong
The administrators of popular mastodon instances share "block lists" manually.
That's the level of coordination.

Shared lists:

[https://github.com/tootcafe/blocked-
instances](https://github.com/tootcafe/blocked-instances)

[https://github.com/MastodonBlocklist/blocklist](https://github.com/MastodonBlocklist/blocklist)

[https://github.com/ticki/mastodon-
blacklist](https://github.com/ticki/mastodon-blacklist)

and others

------
sunsets_44
>We consider hateful imagery to be logos, symbols, or images whose purpose is
to promote hostility and malice against others based on their race, religion,
disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin.

Let the endless game of whack-a-mole over what is or isn't a dogwhistle
commence, I guess.

~~~
mahkoh
Why didn't they include gender identity? Maybe the biggest dog whistle is the
blog post itself.

~~~
ihsw2
Case in point, this comment.

------
staunch
There's nothing wrong with Twitter operating a highly moderated platform.
Hacker News is a successful example.

In both cases though, it's a huge problem that there aren't alternatives that
do off truly uncensored speech. At the very least, there needs to be a force
that checks these organizations when they step over the line.

~~~
DiffEq
Hacker News is successful because it is still yet relatively small. It will
not scale.

~~~
cgb223
Exactly.

It's essentially an example of a benevolent dictator model.

Right now the people moderating are doing a great and largely unbiased job,
but if you try to scale, you'll bring in new people, and gradually the quality
of those moderators will vary with the larger group.

~~~
staunch
This is just lack of imagination talking.

Reddit's sub-reddit moderator system is just one example of how to scale
moderation to millions of users. If a moderator gets out of hand, reddit
admins step in or users move to a new subreddit.

There are a virtually unlimited number of systems like this one could create
and make work.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
"Content that glorifies violence or the perpetrators of a violent act. This
includes celebrating any violent act in a manner that may inspire others to
replicate it"

Does this apply to videos of NFL tackles? Videos of NFL tackles glorify
violence and glorify the tackler (the perpetrator of a violent act).

~~~
robbrown451
Pretty sure the common definition of "violence" excludes such things.

~~~
RcouF1uZ4gsC
You mean it's not violence to hit somebody with your body so hard they fall to
the ground and can result in bone and ligament injuries, or even brain
injuries with permanent neurological issues?

~~~
prepend
Not if it’s consensual.

~~~
fapjacks
That's why you can still duel with someone you dislike. /s

~~~
scrumper
You absolutely can, in a boxing ring for example. It's not unconstrained
violence if it takes place within a framework of rules - i.e. it's a sport.
NFL tackles being the same thing.

A Twitter feed showing _only_ illegal violent NFL tackles? Well, that might
just get banned now.

~~~
fapjacks
_You_ said "unconstrained", but that's not what this is about. I agree that
Twitter has just entered a completely unwinnable situation, and they made a
mistake because nothing they do will be balanced by everyone's definition. I'm
saying the "it's not violence if it's consensual" point is ridiculous and
wrong. Additionally, and perhaps obviously, I was talking about a _duel_ , not
a sport [0].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duel)

~~~
scrumper
Well we're sort of violently agreeing, albeit obliquely. I owe you a response;
you got unfairly downvoted for what was obvious sarcasm and I think my initial
response cast your comment in a bad light.

> "it's not violence if it's consensual" point is ridiculous and wrong.

Exactly - provided that it's done outside the boundaries of some sport. But I
think an actual lawyer would need to say what that means: could you and I, for
example, create a new sport called "Modern Dueling" and construct a set of
rules for it which permits us to fight to the death in a seemingly regulated
fashion? Almost certainly not: no reasonable person would consent to be bound
by those rules. Yet people do die in MMA, for example, and charges are not
bought. It's part of the accepted risk of the sport which is regulated and
refereed to prevent lasting harm to participants.

Would two knuckleheads who decided to dress up in NFL gear and run full tilt
at each other in a parking lot face charges? What if one of them died? I'd
guess yes. Again, I agree with you.

------
tannhaeuser
Just today there was this essay/blog on leading German newspaper FAZ showing
where censorship-by-law of "hate speech" will lead to.

[1]: [http://blogs.faz.net/deus/2017/12/18/erdogans-mob-und-
gruene...](http://blogs.faz.net/deus/2017/12/18/erdogans-mob-und-gruene-
denunzianten-wem-das-spd-netzdg-nuetzt-4778/) _(in German)_

[2]:
[https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&...](https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=de&ie=UTF8&nv=1&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=auto&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=http://blogs.faz.net/deus/2017/12/18/erdogans-
mob-und-gruene-denunzianten-wem-das-spd-netzdg-nuetzt-4778/)

------
patrickg_zill
Twitter is committing a slow suicide. Maybe @jack is just bored with it at
this point...

------
falcolas
I want to condemn this as too broad reaching, and as hard-to-justify
censorship.

Then again, I also don't want to keep seeing things like death threats,
bullying, and general hate-laden vitriol. Seriously, look up some of the
tweets aimed at August Ames and tell me that's OK in any forum.

Ultimately, I have to fall on the side of moderation in this case. A free-for-
all forum has been tried, and it has failed us.

------
lazugod
How does this differ from their previous policies?

------
mr_spothawk
> promote violence ... _against civilians_

that's an interesting angle.

------
Mc_Big_G
So does my tweet @ Ajit Pai wishing that he burns to death slowly get me
banned from Twitter or do I get grandfathered?

------
nikolay
I'm getting tired of the Marxification of America!

------
guywaffle
This is all BS. Twitter has to prove they will enforce their policies, which
means banning Trump. Twitter doesn’t have the guts to do that. Yellow-bellies

------
duncan_bayne
> this policy does not apply to military or government entities

One rule for them, another rule for us. This sort of thing is how Trump was
able to paint "the media" as being full of hypocrites, liars and crooks.

 _Edited to add:_ not a Trump supporter myself, by any stretch of the
imagination. But this is exactly the sort of thing demagogues like to point to
as examples of bias and unfairness. Although Trump himself might not, in this
case, as he seems to be one of the beneficiaries.

------
hkon
What wicked webs they weave. Are they gonna ban the sjws and alt rights
alike... Triggereds

~~~
dang
Would you please stop posting flamebait and unsubstantive comments to Hacker
News?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
hkon
A legitimate question in my opinion

------
shiado
I wish companies would grow some character and tell those they don't want on
their platform "Hey we don't like you, get the fuck out". Instead they always
resort to incredibly weaselly lawyer-speak statements like "Our trust and
safety initiative has concluded that these users have violated our content and
user behavior acceptability inclusiveness policies on several occasions".
Arbitrary enforcement of rules always sounds like bullshit no matter how you
phrase it. Why not just say what you mean?

~~~
taneq
You mean like Cloudflare did when the cancelled Stormfront's hosting for being
assholes? That copped a lot of backlash.

------
aphextron
>Any account that abuses or threatens others through their profile
information, including their username, display name, or profile bio. If an
account’s profile information includes a violent threat or multiple slurs,
epithets, racist or sexist tropes, incites fear, or reduces someone to less
than human, it will be permanently suspended. We plan to develop internal
tools to help us identify violating accounts to supplement user reports.

How can they possibly enforce this hypocritical bullshit while our president
violates these policies on a daily basis? Ham handed nonsense.

