
Twitter bans 7k QAnon accounts, limits 150k others as part of broad crackdown - MBCook
https://news.yahoo.com/twitter-bans-7-000-qanon-000000686.html
======
Apocryphon
Back in the '90s, when you entered AOL Instant Messenger chatrooms there was
always disclaimers saying that certain content (swearing, hate speech, sexual
material, etc.) were subject to be filtered out, or would cause you to be
kicked.

Message boards and forums have always had moderators and admins who could
censor at will. You're posting on one right now.

Can anyone explain how Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, etc. is qualitatively
different from any of these other websites?

~~~
manigandham
The scale. These major platforms are becoming increasingly dominant forms of
communication and mediums of expression.

There's a real question about when they cease being just another website or
chatroom and become a public utility.

~~~
shadowgovt
I don't think the scale argument holds water, because back in the days of AOL,
AOL had, by percentage, about as much control over what mainstream user saw as
Twitter and Facebook.

~~~
bezmenov
It's disingenuous to compare the relative reach of AOL in the 90s to that of
Twitter and Facebook in 2020. In absolute terms, both Twitter and Facebook
dominate contemporary discourse at a scale far surpassing any company prior.

~~~
shadowgovt
I agree. AOL had far more control over the average online user than FB and
Twitter do now. The fact we even say "FB and Twitter" indicates this.

In the early AOL era, one couldn't even use it to access the web.

~~~
r00fus
It seems as if you and bezmenov actually disagree. AOL was influential online
but _online_ was not an appreciable part of the media and national discourse.

So AOL was a big fish in a tiny lake. In comparison today, FB and Twitter both
are megaliths that impact how the ocean currents circulate.

------
vecinu
Can anyone explain what is happening with the downvotes on this post? Almost
every single top level comment has been downvoted to almost disappearing.

~~~
dang
1\. The community is divided because society is divided. Each side downvotes
the other.

2\. HN users tend to downvote tedious, repetitive flamewar.

------
timavr
I don't know what is the right answer.

It is like we are stuck between two evils.

One is censorship, that is used by dominant group to silence everyone else.

Another is bunch of minority groups that might have outlandish aims and use
free speech platforms to harrass everyone else.

What I don't like that it is left to private company to sort it out and enact
their own policies. This questions should be clearly handled on legislative
level. In the end of the day a company provides a service, they shouldn't be
the judge of how much free speech is allowed/not allowed.

So I would say it is not failure of twitter here, it is just massive failure
of our political process, but we all kind of know that already.

~~~
gremlinsinc
the right to post on twitter, or even have a platform isn't a human right,
it's not even a constitutional right, it's a 'privilege' the company gives you
as long as you don't act like an idiot. Just like every web forum on the
internet since aol and newsgroups in the 90s.

W/out twitter you lose a voice you'd never have had if Twitter didn't exist,
so by them banning hate speech maybe if your voice matters you'll exercise
some caution and prudence when making a statement.

~~~
timavr
The problem is that the same argument is used in dictatorships to ban people
and activist from traditional media(print/TV).

Right now, what prevents Russian government/companies going to twitter and
telling them look guys, you just banned your American extremists, can you
please do the same for ours. They also practice hate speech, disinformation
etc. The only problem is that Russian extremists look like average centrist US
democrat.

In terms what is the right and what is not the right is not really for twitter
to determine in this case. My point was it should be determine on legislative
level what should be on twitter and what shouldn't.

In the end of the day twitter is a massive part of the political process.
People exercising their rights, complaining to their representatives,
supporting them, spreading their message.

So if you ban entitties from twitter, you ban them from political process. And
I do think some entities should be banned, but it shouldn't be up to twitter,
it should be up to us citizens to decide that.

If we think that holocost-deniers, nazy sympaphizers or whatever should be
banned from social media bring it to the vote, pass the law, hopefully it will
stand supreme court challenge and move on.

~~~
shadowgovt
Not quite. The key difference is that dictatorships will also shut down
independent publications they accuse of wrongspeech.

Nobody is arguing Stormfront should be shut down. In fact, the argument looks
more like "Twitter is no more obligated to host the QAnon conspiracy theory
than Stormfront is to host a weekly editorial from the head of the Anti-
Defamation League."

------
vmception
They should just use the admin panel to start posting different stuff, a
distributed re-education campaign with shadowban for user-generated content

I'm sure they granted themselves this power in the Terms of Service, if not
then I'm sure they've granted themselves the power to update the Terms of
Service

------
stevebmark
It's been encouraging to see companies grow a backbone and crack down on
harassment and hate campaigns, and not hide behind cowardly cries of "free
speech." Twitter has taken too much time to do this, but recently they've been
doing it more. Even Reddit, notorious for powering and consciously allowing
hate campaigns, has cracked down more.

It's also been interesting that the proponents of allowing these campaigns to
continue say that stopping them will indeed lead to totalitarian censorship of
"free speech."

Granted we must always be vigilant against social pressure going too far. For
example, the mob that formed to find the Boston marathon bomber over-zealously
targeted the wrong people, risking their lives. We must learn from things like
this.

But to jump from banning hate campaigns on private platforms, to total
censorship, is an impressively intellectually dishonest juggling act.

~~~
skindoe
What has Qanon ever said that can be remotely considered hateful?

Who determines what is hateful?

~~~
djur
That Chrissy Teigen was on the Epstein flight logs and involved in sexual
depravity, despite being a minor at that time; that pictures Tom Hanks takes
of random roadside detritus are secret signals to a worldwide network of
Satanic pedophiles; that there is video of Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin
sexually abusing a child and cutting off her face; that Michelle Obama was
secretly assigned male at birth and should be called "Michael"; and so on.

Also, just look in the replies of any regular person who attacks QAnon claims
on Twitter and you will see responses accusing them of being a pedophile, a
murderer, a Satanist, and claiming that they, their families, etc. will be
imprisoned or executed.

~~~
throwaway829
I've been following "Q" out of curiosity since when it started posting. Not
sure if it's a pied piper op, as Wikileaks said, or something else. However
I've not seen any of the things you listed as examples of hateful content. You
can search all the posts yourself. "Chrissy Teigen" and "Hanks" show no
results. Clinton is mentioned but none of the "cutting off her face" stuff.
Where did you get these ideas?
[https://qposts.online/?q=Teigen&s=keyword](https://qposts.online/?q=Teigen&s=keyword)

~~~
djur
"QAnon" is the community of people who subscribe to the idea that "Q" is
leading them to some hidden truth. I got these ideas by seeing thousands of
people identifying as QAnon followers express every one of the ideas I listed
above. You just have to look at any one of those famous people's tweets to see
QAnon replies baselessly accusing them of horrible things. The codeword used
for the supposed Clinton video in QAnon is "frazzledrip".

The nature of "Q", or at least the current person publishing under that guise
(likely Jim and/or Ron Watkins), is that they rarely make any kind of concrete
claims or predictions, but they've certainly made allusions to Moloch, Satan,
cannibalism, etc. when referring to political figures. It's the responsibility
of "bakers" in the community to take "Q"'s "crumbs" and come to conclusions.
Certainly these conclusions have been widespread in the community for years
and have not been spoken against by "Q".

------
some1else
Facebook hate groups don't need Twitter accounts to operate. Regardless of the
presumably positive outcome for the mainstream timeline, this is likely a
futile whack-a-mole move that only benefits Twitter. Hate groups organize in
private and output the vitriol with whichever fake accounts they have in
possession. The way to definitively solve this societal problem is to help the
people caught in the self-radicalisation filter bubble to overcome their real-
life problems that fuel the hate. Banning them from the services that played a
part in turning them seems a bit hypocritical.

~~~
AndrewBissell
The comparison to hate groups is a little off the mark. QAnon doesn't organize
in secret, and so far you're not likely to get fired if someone shows a
picture of you wearing a Q shirt to your employer. That said I agree with the
broader point that this may not do that much to inhibit QAnon, especially
because it exhibits a lot of cultlike belief that might just be reinforced by
this ban.

~~~
Fjolsvith
In fact, "Q" predicted this behavior by the social media platforms over a year
ago, so the QAnon movement is not, in general, surprised by Twitter. According
to their conspiracy, Twitter just checked off a box in the list of items they
believe will happen coming up in the future.

~~~
shadowgovt
As prognostications go, "The mainstream media will find my nonsense so
aggressively hateful that they'll kick it off the site" is right up there with
"It'll be cold in winter."

Especially when Q controls the level of the aggressive hate in the nonsense.

~~~
Fjolsvith
> Especially when Q controls the level of the aggressive hate in the nonsense.

I'm not so sure that the level of aggressive hate from the populace is
attributable to Q. I believe he's just tapping into it.

~~~
shadowgovt
So, to give a concrete example: one way Q could ratchet back on the aggressive
hate in the nonsense is to just stop posting. Stop posting anything. That
would ratchet it down.

~~~
Fjolsvith
They tried once to silence Q by taking down 8chan. Like Obi-Wan, he just came
back stronger.

~~~
shadowgovt
The mistake there was trying only once.

~~~
Fjolsvith
They didn't make that mistake. They tried to shut down 8kun, repeatedly. So
many times that 8kun was able to harden their services with the assistance of
the DOD.

I always wondered why the military was helping 8kun. [1]

1\.
[https://twitter.com/prayingmedic/status/1194054383488516096](https://twitter.com/prayingmedic/status/1194054383488516096)

~~~
shadowgovt
The fact that I haven't heard of 8kun until right now is indicative of the
utility of shutting these things down. If people have to go to a backwater
site only known about by word-of-mouth, that's fine. Much better than
broadcasting conspiracies through Twitter and FB.

"There is a secret truth to the universe known only to this secret cabal in
the back of this drinking parlor" is an old trope. Far more expected than
"There is a secret truth to the universe and Twitter is letting the nutters
who believe in it multicast it via one of the most populated social networks
on the planet." Better for Twitter to give it the axe, lest people confuse a
badly-hashed-together conspiracy theory for actual truth.

~~~
AndrewBissell
You not having heard of 8kun really hasn't done a damn thing to slow down
QAnon, actually. You're not in their target audience and they don't need you
on board to achieve their purposes.

The best way to combat conspiracy theories like QAnon would be for our elites
and institutions to stop constantly preying upon the people and lying to them
about it via a neutered press, and actually hold some members of their own
class accountable for once. The massively corrupt corporate giveaway that was
the Covid stimulus is a great recent example. The Epstein case being slow
walked by the FBI for 25 years and then trying to sweep it all under the rug
with "oops he killed himself while the guards were asleep and the cameras
malfunctioned!" is another. As long as this kind of stuff continues, people
will attempt (often haphazardly and incorrectly) to understand how and why it
isn't being stopped, and who's in charge of it. They will be easy targets for
grifters and bunkum artists who rush in to fill the gaps left by complete
radio silence on the part of mainstream media sources.

You know, I don't agree with QAnon and think it has many properties of a
dangerous cult, but they do at least have one advantage over run-of-the-mill
liberals in correctly identifying the ruling elite as the chief cause of the
world's problems, instead of constantly focusing blame on "deplorable" Trump
supporters with zero actual power or influence.

~~~
shadowgovt
I'm not sure how one concludes that the body politic that elected Donald Trump
as President of the United States has zero actual power or influence.

~~~
AndrewBissell
By recognizing that electoral success doesn't actually translate into direct
implementation of the voters' preferred agenda, as both the Trump and Obama
administrations starkly demonstrate.

~~~
shadowgovt
Ah, okay. And thank God it doesn't, as both the Trump and Obama
administrations starkly demonstrate.

~~~
AndrewBissell
Yeah god forbid we get something like accountability for the financial sector
after 2008, an actual end to our ruinous wars in the Middle East, any sort of
investment in real infrastructure or re-industrialization in the U.S., or an
actual draining of the swamp of corruption in DC. Thank heavens the power
elite knows what's best for the voters better than they do.

~~~
shadowgovt
And by the same coin, thank God we didn't get a giant wall along the border,
didn't kick out people from the United States who have lived here their entire
rememberable lives, and didn't abolish social security, Medicare, and
Medicaid.

The problem with expecting representative government to do "What the people
want" is the people want a lot of things. Many of them incompatible. Some of
them terrible ideas.

~~~
AndrewBissell
Are you seriously under the impression that the impetus to cut entitlements is
coming from the broad base of voters and not the ruling class? Trump
campaigned on _not_ cutting Social Security and Medicare.

~~~
shadowgovt
And then he tried, and the only thing that stopped him was Congress.

I do not know what to make of that, other than to suggest the "elite vs
commoner" division may not be politically clear.

~~~
krapp
>I do not know what to make of that, other than to suggest the "elite vs
commoner" division may not be politically clear.

The mistake is believing "elites" comprise an organized group with a single
motivating purpose and unified agenda exercising arbitrary power over the
facade of government.

The problem with using terms like "elites" and "ruling class" when referring
to American politics is that while they're a great basis for conspiracy
theories and class warfare, the simple dimensionality of "left vs. right,
elite vs. commoner" don't describe the actual complex dynamics of political
reality, or the fact that checks and balances do sometimes work.

------
torresjrjr
For those looking for a viable, already-blooming alternative, with resistance
to such problems, look into the Fediverse.

[https://torresjrjr.com/archive/2020-07-19-guide-to-the-
fediv...](https://torresjrjr.com/archive/2020-07-19-guide-to-the-fediverse)

~~~
shadowgovt
Unpopular opinion: while I don't oppose the existence of non-moderated social
networks in the sense that I'd want them extinguished overtly, I'm not deeply
convinced they're good, especially in this decade.

gab.ai gave breathing room for a man to be so radicalized by surrounding
himself with anti-Jewish conspiracy that he murdered people at a synagogue.
4chan is a notorious breeding ground of terrible memetic hazards (including,
notably, QAnon).

I don't guarantee Fediverse will end up the same, but the alternative services
seem to collect mostly fringers who got kicked off of mainstream services with
cause, and that's not a group I intend to support with my time and engineering
labor. When I see a new social media site pop up, the first question I have is
"What stops it from being the next gab.ai?"

------
onyva
Good “first” step. Thing is in a time of public health crisis misinformation
is not something we need to put up with. It’s should be blocked, not just not
propagate. Social media has indeed become a public health problem.

------
hadrien01
This Yahoo article is just a copy of that one:
[https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/twitter-
bans-7-000-qa...](https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/twitter-
bans-7-000-qanon-accounts-limits-150-000-others-n1234541)

And the NBC website doesn't have an impossible-to-opt-out GDPR popup

------
themark
Article says that the Wayfair ordeal was a Qanon conspiracy. How was that
attributed to them?

~~~
bynormous
By following the digital trail - [https://www.insider.com/wayfair-human-
trafficking-conspiracy...](https://www.insider.com/wayfair-human-trafficking-
conspiracy-theory-tied-to-qanon-2020-7)

~~~
skindoe
That's not the evidence you think it is. In sports analogies That would be the
equivalent of brian windhorst tweeting out something and then you saying that
it came "Directly from LeBron James".

People are not responsible for what their ignorant fans say.

~~~
thephyber
That's a feature of QAnon, not a bug.

If none of us knows the identity of "Q" then anyone can pretend to be their
prophet and there is no way to confirm nor disconfirm. This is why I describe
QAnon as a LARP -- it's easy for the average person to participate without
knowing any rules (because there are none).

~~~
skindoe
Don't you think if your going to attempt to argue against someone you should
argue against what they actually said?

If so then why the double standard with Q there are dumb fans who post
stupidity for literally everything. You would think people would actually
quote the source (always ignored) instead of using a clear falacy of using
ones followers to define them.

~~~
thephyber
> People are not responsible for what their ignorant fans say.

This is what I'm arguing against. When it comes to QAnon, you can't know the
difference between QAnon, QAnon fans, and any rando who pretends to be either.
It's a feature of the LARP.

------
AndrewBissell
For those interested in a deep dive into QAnon and its origins I highly
recommend this podcast by Robbie Martin. He goes into possible links to Roger
Stone and Erik Prince (and therefore ultimately Trump).

[https://soundcloud.com/media-roots/the-origins-of-qanon-
foll...](https://soundcloud.com/media-roots/the-origins-of-qanon-follow-the-
white-rabbit-into-a-deeper-layer-of-the-maga-cult-pt-1-of-2)

------
newobj
See? It's not so hard.

------
berryjerry
Don't know what QAnon was, apparently it's not just one person but 7K accounts
so a group? I took one visit to the website not long ago and wrote it off as
garbage. Obviously there is true stuff mixed in but I'd say the fake news
level at least slightly higher then CNN so I can see why twitter would flag it
as such. Should they be banned though? Honestly, I'm more for leaving the
nonsense like flat earth stuff up so you know who is crazy, but twitter will
do twitter things.

------
yobi-ponti
Time to get off of twitter

~~~
shadowgovt
A lot of people did that years ago, when Twitter's response to a notorious
Twitter troll being elected as President of the United States was to modify
their TOS so that there's a "newsworthiness" carve-out that keeps trolls on
Twitter.

------
codeddesign
I’d like to see Antifa added to this growing list as well.

The article states this group has “ties to dangerous real-world activities”.
Does anyone know of any? Or is this just conjecture? The article’s statement
was fairly vague.

~~~
exogeny
Can you describe to me what you think Antifa is?

~~~
manigandham
A loose organization with regional groups, ranging from random protesters by
proximity to political activists to violent criminals and terrorists, with
various claims from generally left/socialist ideologies to outright radical
extremism.

~~~
dwd
I would say "completely disorganised" rather than "loose organisation" and I
can't see that changing.

The left is a vast collection of competing factional ideas that in many cases
the only common purpose is a demand for change.

Environmentalists can't agree with each other, let alone animal welfare
activists who can't agree with native/traditional rights; and theres a range
of single issue movements that end up diluting support for bigger picture
issues simply by association. I'm not saying that they are wrong or their
demands invalid but it draws attention away from the messages everyone could
get behind if there was better focus.

It happened with the "Occupy Wall Street" and "BLM" will likely go the same
way if it doesn't simply stick to one core message.

~~~
gremlinsinc
I'm on the left, and can concur. Many of us were pissed about Bernie losing,
and thinking yeah now's the time for the Green party to win...

Then there's like at least 3 groups trying to start 3 new political parties,
those of us pushing for the greens, more pushing for one of the socialist
parties, and some even pushing for the libertarian party (I'm a
leftist/socialist libertarian, but the libertarian party is NOTHING like a
left/libertarian), and some voting for Trump out of spite, or insanity, and
the rest probably cow-towing to vote for Biden.

Just ideas alone it's pretty disjointed. No organization. I mean the right/tea
party at least was pretty coherent and had a pretty good structure to
accomplish their goals.

Leftists though have their own purity tests, and their own minds made up and
can be rather stubborn about how to accomplish goals, what those goals should
be, etc...

I think we all have ADHD or something.

However, there's no 'terrorism' on the left, or very rare. antifa is not a
terrorist org. Show me the deaths, the bombs, etc. I can show you plenty of
those on the right though, an antifa terrorist is probably some kid egging or
graffit-ing a building. That's about as serious as they get, because most on
the left are also pacifists.

~~~
dwd
The Greens in Australia are a sad case in point. They turn over people like
crazy and I suspect that is largely due to the stress and pressure of
basically herding cats. I've been silently wondering whether they were even
infiltrated by a fifth column who exasperated these internal divisions to
break their hold in the Australian Senate as the deciding vote for most
issues.

Bernie was unfortunately an outsider who never stood a chance without the
power brokers in the Democrat party stepping forward to back him, but the
Greens seem to just eat their own.

------
motohagiography
This comment was on a dupe thread and I'm adding it here in case this gets un-
flagged. There is a good reason to discuss this:

I sympathize with the argument that social platforms are private and can do
business (or not) with whomever they please, the counter argument is that
these platforms are "Radical Monopolies"
([https://wikitia.com/wiki/Radical_Monopoly](https://wikitia.com/wiki/Radical_Monopoly))
apropos of a recent HN thread on Ivan Illich, where the analogy for the effect
of being kicked off a platform is not like Ford declining to sell you a car
where you can just go get another one, but rather, cancelling your license in
Los Angeles.

It's not 1:1, but if you lose your drivers license in a city like LA or non-
coastal state, your ability to participate in society (find work, etc) and
your social franchise in society is diminished because the automobile has a
radical monopoly in American cities.

Twitter and social platforms like Facebook have definitely become radical
monopolies for reputation, where if you have no social media presence, you are
excluded socially. (Regarding Facebook, try find a date without an instagram
page.) Facebook execs even commented publicly early on that people without
Facebook accounts should be treated as suspicious.

That QAnon types are so ridiculous and indefensible is what makes them a great
example for discussing how and whether to protect minority views. Twitter does
have the right to do what they want, and I'm optimistic that these purges will
create demand for the divergent platforms that will replace this first
generation of them, but to say this right is simple and natural ignores
precedents of radical monopolies that were enabled and sustained by political
protection, which seems naive. The non-libertarian case for limiting social
platforms ability to purge can be summed up in president Obama's thoughts,when
he said, "you didn't build that."

Arguably, social platforms that rely on network effects to become radical
monopolies didn't "build that," either.

~~~
shadowgovt
I'm not sure what you mean by "enabled and sustained by political protection"
in this context. Facebook and Twitter didn't have to build the web
infrastructure, but there were other social networks in existence before those
two became dominant. I'm not sure how we perceive their network effects as
non-self-built.

Facebook beat out competitors with two advantages: access to primary sources
(they primed the network with college students) and requirement to use real
names, which set them apart from other persona-based social networks at the
time and encouraged people to be their "normal selves" on FB. Turns out,
that's what a lot of people wanted; relative to the cyberpunk-esque other
options, it felt "normal and safe." They made a market choice and it paid off
for them.

~~~
motohagiography
Social media could not have originated anywhere else in the world because the
platforms were built on freedoms and opportunities guaranteed by the US.

Facebook was a way for people who went to Harvard to tell people they went to
Harvard without having to actually _say_ it, and for everyone else to be seen
know them - Facebook didn't build Harvard, but it is an effect of it.

Twitter is an artifact of speech protections and nerds, and now that it has
arrived it's trying to cast off the taint of trade to become a walled suburb
safe for middle class banalities. Did a few thousand lines of code create
billions in value, or did a society with a network effect produce it?

~~~
shadowgovt
I don't think I disagree with your assessment of Twitter, but I don't see the
problem. It happens all the time.

The Wild West gave way to towns and suburbs too. Turns out, most people don't
want to get shot in the street at high noon, and once the pioneering time is
done, that kind of behavior becomes no longer acceptable. Pioneers who have
also decided they're done risking having to duel in the hot sun will stick
around; pioneers with more risk tolerance (or a thirst for that kind of
experience) then often set out for new territory to tame.

~~~
motohagiography
It's funny how extending that analogy begs the question in the small matter of
what to do about the natives, which is loosely analogous to the problem of
social media, where you colonize and coopt, and then have the issue of what to
do with the subjugated people. Not a lot of "right thing," and "good guy,"
stuff there.

The radical monopoly concept captures this dynamic, where products bulldoze
culture. Sure, it's progress, but just don't look behind the curtain, and
certainly don't be as sanctimonious as the social media platform execs have
been.

~~~
shadowgovt
The Internet is no more than 50 years old, and Twitter less than 15. There are
no 'natives' here; the "land" Twitter occupied (to absolutely torture an
analogy) didn't exist until the twitter.com domain was registered and the
service was set up.

There may be people who helped Twitter gain widespread adoption by their fame
who are now feeling taken advantage of by Twitter changing its rules to kick
them off their service. Maybe we can bend the analogy far enough to call them
'displaced natives?'

Do such people exist though? I'm pretty sure the Venn diagram of QAnon
supporters and long-lived Twitter luminaries is two circles. Even if we accept
the notion of "Twitter natives," we seem to raise the question of who the
"displaced natives" are when regular Twitter users have to put up with this
novel conspiracy nonsense.

~~~
motohagiography
I'd agree we should put this simile out of its misery, but there were internet
"natives," before twitter as there were people who live in the society
impacted by it. That twitter's participation in the radical monopoly of online
reputation can affect the ability of a barista in a flyover state getting a
job shows how people are in fact culturally displaced by the technology.

QAnon is bonkers, but as an example of a culture being displaced by a
technology platform, which I argue is the unavoidable effect of the dominance
of said platform, this is good example of the effect of these platforms. They
aren't neutral. They're welcome to be against whatever QAnon is for, but I
don't buy the story that Twitter is virtuous and worthy for doing it, and
they're not the little guy or the people, they are the dominant paradigm.

------
jakeogh
Curious people can read the posts themselves at qmap dot pub.

------
auganov
> We will permanently suspend accounts Tweeting about these topics that we
> know are engaged in violations of our multi-account policy, coordinating
> abuse around individual victims, or are attempting to evade a previous
> suspension — something we’ve seen more of in recent weeks.

So is Twitter essentially admitting this rule is only enforced against groups
they don't like?

If they're spreading hatred against some groups or harassing individuals why
not use these rules instead? Twitter prohibits that already.

Also the timing is interesting given America is having and election in a few
months and these Q people are some of President Trump's most devoted
supporters. Didn't seem to bother them for over 2 years.

~~~
thephyber
You could have read another 2 paragraphs lower and had your questions
answered:

> The spokesperson said while the targeted enforcement against QAnon fell
> under Twitter’s existing platform manipulation rules, its classification of
> QAnon as coordinated harmful activity was a new designation. The
> spokesperson said Twitter was taking action now because of an escalating
> degree of harm associated with the conspiracy theory.

Q / QAnon only exists because of the Trump election. It's a way for "President
Trump's most devoted supporters" to be engaged in the campaign. I wouldn't be
surprised if the entire LARP was created by or steered by the campaign team.

~~~
codeddesign
In regards to your last point: Is it though? That’s a very large
generalization for half the country.

That’s like saying Obama supporters are pro killing innocent people with
drones. Obviously this is ridiculous.

Both far right and left have extremists that shouldn’t be tolerated by anyone.

~~~
thephyber
I didn't mean to insinuate that _all_ Trump supporters participate in the
QAnon thing.

I have yet to see a QAnon follower who didn't also support Trump, so from my
perspective being a Trump Supporter is a necessary but not sufficient
condition for being a QAnon follower.

> Both far right and left have extremists that shouldn’t be tolerated by
> anyone.

I'm not sure what you mean by "tolerated" here. I'm fine with calling them out
for their silly ideas and actions. Perhaps even "canceling" them if they get
too extreme. I'm not interested in actually adopting their techniques.

------
amiga_500
The USA is such a mess.

Can't have free speech because too many voters are conspiracy nuts. Can't ban
content because free speech.

The level of ignorance has to be seen to be believed, on sites like 4chan.

Education can clear this impasse, but is it too late?

~~~
manigandham
Free speech the concept is different from the First Amendment, which is
different from private companies and private property.

The fringes will always be there, they're just more visible and vocal now. The
real issue is whether a platform will choose to be moderated or not, and what
tools it offers to users to control their experience. All major platforms are
still working on that balance, especially as they become increasingly dominant
mediums of expression.

~~~
thephyber
> The fringes will always be there, they're just more visible and vocal now.

And the fringes have enlisted bots to amplify their message, which includes
accusations of serious criminal behavior with no evidence that would stand up
in court.

I suspect media platforms won't actually be able to fix these problems because
they are codependent on the outrage that they create.

~~~
manigandham
I agree. Communications have been mechanized and "social" has expanded in
scale beyond any human limit.

------
rukittenme
if i hosted a forum i would very likely ban people who posted extreme
messages.

but, of course, im small. the relative harm to the extremist is small. they
can find another place to spread their awful message. but what if i'm bigger?
what if i have monopolized a large portion of political speech within a
country? what if my platform is the primary communication channel for the
president of the united states? do i then have an obligation to provide a
platform to that speech?

what if myself and a few friends own such a significant share of the internet
that we can effectively remove extremists from all online participation. they
cant host a server. they cant register a domain. they cant use private
messenger apps. they cant send or receive money.

to what degree can a person be ostracized from society for having an unpopular
opinion.

i certainly don't agree with the views of the taliban. i certainly wouldn't
want to be complicit in the hosting of those views. but i have to wonder, if
"illegitimate" speech can be removed by a small minority of corporate leaders
how long is it before "legitimate" speech is removed?

can a democratic society really exist where all opinions are filtered through
a corporate elite? can "problematic" speech be allowed to exist so long as it
doesn't call for violence? are calls to violence always evil?

the BLM protests have certainly made calls to violence. should the cause for
racial equality be stopped because it offends or threatens a minority (or even
a majority) of people? couldnt' the BLM protest be construed as "problematic"
or "illegitimate" and removed from the civil discourse overnight?

im asking because i don't know what to do. there doesn't seem to be a clear
path forward. there is no "public square" on the internet. its all private.
but there's no one left in the "real" public square. the one in meat space.
the "public square" has moved onto private property and there's no way to get
it back.

