
Twitter discloses 10k accounts suspended for fomenting political discord - melenaboija
https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/20/twitter-discloses-another-10000-accounts-suspended-for-fomenting-political-discord-globally/
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GrassFedAltCoin
I'm amazed at how certain people seem on either side of this debate. This
seems to me like an incredibly difficult problem, and I can't see a solution
that doesn't involve significant trade offs.

On one hand, silencing people for "inciting unrest" does sound like something
a dystopian judge would say before passing sentence. On the other, there is a
philosophical argument—and economic incentive—for Twitter to protect its users
from harassment and targeted manipulation, especially when it is state-
sponsored.

Where the line gets drawn for these definitions seems to be the hardest part.

~~~
dymk
A single individual or organized group possessing thousands of accounts used
to astroturf a platform is abusive of the platform, regardless of what the
message is - banning that sort of activity doesn't seem dystopian.

~~~
GrassFedAltCoin
I don't disagree at all — but in your hypothetical situation, they're clearly
not being banned for causing "unrest." They're being banned for creating fake
accounts to spam the platform en masse, "regardless of what the message is" as
you say.

~~~
dymk
FTA:

> Saudi Arabia’s state-run media apparatus were found to be “engaged in
> coordinated efforts to amplify messaging that was beneficial to the Saudi
> government.”

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mc32
If they are bots which get paid or are under control of a government, sure,
suspend.

If these are individuals voicing opinions and not inciting violence, I think
they are wrong. People should be able to have disagreeable opinions, even
illegal opinions (“pot should be legal”), “the minister in an asshole”. People
should not be guilty of wrongthink.

~~~
djsumdog
Twitter blocked my account for a nearly 10 year old post. I'll admit, I'm not
prod of the post. It was immature and something I wouldn't write today. But
looking at our past is how we grow, and erasing it doesn't seem right:

[https://fightthefuture.org/article/twitter-is-trying-to-
eras...](https://fightthefuture.org/article/twitter-is-trying-to-erase-the-
past/)

~~~
sterkekoffie
I don't see how anyone is going to grow from being exposed to your
misogynistic tweets. Getting banned is better than nothing, even if 10 years
too late.

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mastazi
I’ve been wondering for a while whether I should delete my Twitter account and
this piece of news suggests to me that perhaps I should.

The sentence “Fomenting political discord” sounds a lot like 1984.

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nbst
In the article, the accounts were "actively spreading misinformation and
encouraging unrest in politically sensitive climates."

Sounds fine to me. Overreaction much?

~~~
Kaiyou
Inconvenient truths often get mislabeled as misinformation.

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dymk
What truths are being labeled as misinformation here?

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Kaiyou
If I knew and told you that for this very site I'd get banned. If the truths
weren't inconvenient, no one would bother mislabeling them.

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Porthos9K
If you really cared about preserving your right to freedom of speech, you'd
have your own website. You check your rights at the door the second you log in
to a platform you don't own or control.

Twitter isn't a government agency, but a private corporation protected by
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. They have the right to reject
any content you contribute without being liable for any user-generated content
they publish.

That means they don't owe you a platform. Likewise, you owe them nothing, so
why tolerate Twitter's continued existence? Just open up /etc/hosts and set
twitter.com's IP to "0.0.0.0". Problem solved.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
That's still requiring someone to host you (assuming your not self serving),
your ISP to connect to you, and your DNS to continue directing people to you.
You're always reliant on someone else's platform to keep you afloat on the
internet.

~~~
Porthos9K
I know, and I think some of that could be eliminated if ISPs were required by
law to allow people to self-host Web and gopher sites (and properly secured
SMTP) on residential connections and do a full IPV6 rollout so that you can
have your server directly accessible without NAT if you want. Then you can
just give out your IPV6 address if domain registrars refuse to serve you
because they find your site's contents objectionable.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
So instead of forcing Twitter we forces the ISPs? I'm not sure if that's an
improvement.

~~~
Porthos9K
We should be smacking around ISPs anyway, just to remind them that as limited-
liability corporations with government-issued charters they exist in their
current form _on public sufferance_ and must remember their place while they
still have one. We the people are sovereign and have the right to demand that
the officials we elect to govern on our behalf regulate corporations to serve
the public good instead of pursuing _shareholder value uber alles_.

This being the case, I don't see any reason why ISPs be permitted to say that
individuals should not be allowed to run internet-accessible websites or
gopher holes out of their homes. I think enacting reasonable legislation to
force ISPs to allow residential customers to use their service to publish
content as well as consume it will create a richer and more robust internet.

Now, if you still find the notion of forcing corporations to do things
objectionable, it might help to remember that corporations are not human
beings. They have no inherent rights, only powers defined by law. They are
like governments in that regard.

You have the right to run a business and work for a profit. You do _not_ have
the right to do so from behind the aegis of a LLC. That is a _privilege_.

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newsreview1
Sounds a bit Orwellian to me, trying to control/disallow what others may or
may not think or voice

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ipython
But if you would think of the activity instead as a DDoS attack on your mental
attention span would you come to a different conclusion?

I was downvoted before for suggesting that DDoS protection would constitute a
limit on free speech, so clearly this community feels that DDoS protection is
a "good" thing.

I think we can all agree that human attention span is a limited resource, much
like network bandwidth.

If we make a simple analogy between network bandwidth and human attention
span, then how is an automated bot (or army of humans) sending out mass
propaganda to overload your attention any different than an automated bot
transmitting junk data to overload your network bandwidth? Why would you
control one but not the other?

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ganzuul
Perhaps a special tag such as "suspected troll" would suffice.

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kanox
State-sponsored misinformation should be protected by freedom of speech.

~~~
jakelazaroff
Twitter is a private entity which has no obligation to host said speech.

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sp332
The first amendment doesn't apply to twitter, but we can still hold them
accountable for their content policies.

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jakelazaroff
Insofar as "hold them accountable" means organizing a boycott or something,
sure (although I don't know why you'd be against them _not_ allowing state-
sponsored misinformation).

Parent said "protected by freedom of speech", though, which in this context
sounds like they're suggesting that Twitter should be compelled by law to host
it.

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decasteve
Governments have chosen to use Twitter as a medium for communication. It’s an
open form platform to post by anyone but government officials do communicate
via Twitter in an official capacity. Some agencies post things to Twitter (and
Facebook) but nowhere else — not even on their own government websites.

I’ve had government officials ignore emails but respond to tweets (as someone
who no longer uses Twitter, this is now quite frustrating).

At some point Twitter can no longer hide behind the “private entity” flag. A
line gets crossed and even if there’s not technically a legal standing for
freedom of speech on a platform like Twitter, there’s a ideological debate to
be had whether it now should be. Certainly a decade ago much of the idealism
sold to us around social media was that it was an equalizing force for free
speech and communication.

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jakelazaroff
_> A line gets crossed and even if there’s not technically a legal standing
for freedom of speech on a platform like Twitter, there’s a ideological debate
to be had whether it now should be._

That’s fair, and I’m up for that ideological debate (although my position
would still be that Twitter shouldn’t feel obligated to disseminate speech it
doesn’t want to). But the parent was arguing that the legal standing should be
created.

 _> Certainly a decade ago much of the idealism sold to us around social media
was that it was an equalizing force for free speech and communication._

There are actors with the resources of nation-states wielding hundreds of
thousands of fake accounts to run massive propaganda campaigns… and your
position is that _allowing_ that is the way to make social media an equalizing
force?

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diveanon
So they finally banned Trump's account?

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PorterDuff
Trump's account is a beautiful example of how useless Twitter is.

Typically it goes...

Trump: CONGRATULATIONS ON FIREFIGHTERS FOR MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. THIS
ADMINISTRATION IS FOR FIREFIGHTERS!

Followed by 1k responses of YAY TRUMP! and 50k responses of people vomiting up
any old thing that's just as insulting as they can cook up. Why on Earth do
people waste their time on this sort of thing? It has evolved from keyboard
warriorhood to some sort of internet Tourette's.

/end old man rant.

~~~
krapp
>Why on Earth do people waste their time on this sort of thing? It has evolved
from keyboard warriorhood to some sort of internet Tourette's.

Because the President of the United States has decided that shitposting on
Twitter shall be his primary means of communicating with the people, and the
courts have decided this means he's not allowed to block anyone from his feed,
because the people have a right to hear their governments' words and to
petition it with grievances.

What's happening on Twitter is the platform being used as intended by everyone
_but_ Trump - it's not _supposed_ to be used for deep, nuanced, complex
discussion. It's for posting links and blogging about your food - nonsense
that can fit into a couple of sentences. But thanks to him elevating it to a
higher status than it deserves, it's now become the nexus for American
political communication and debate with this administration.

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jstewartmobile
about damn time! this "internet" thing--letting ordinary dummies all over the
world ( _even the ones in shithole countries_ ) talk to each other--is, was,
and always will be _bad news_.

only way to protect these fools from " _fake news_ " is to filter everything
through the pure and blameless mouths of demographically-targeted, perfect-
haired multimillionaires reading teleprompters. it is the only way!

in light of this glorious victory--thank you Lord Jesus!--we are only a few
years away from setting things right.

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Porthos9K
Nice sarcasm. Too bad hardly anybody seems to get it.

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SketchySeaBeast
People could be understanding the sarcasm, but instead down-voting as that's
not what this site is meant for.

~~~
jstewartmobile
literature and history be damned, we should all stand in obedient awe of some
lisp nerd's rules for meaningful conversation

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AnimalMuppet
You know, on that lisp nerd's site, yes, you kind of _do_ have to follow their
rules.

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jstewartmobile
I would if I could.

They are rather subjective, and arbitrarily enforced. I'm a nerd, not a mind-
reader!

