
Twitter locked my account for a nine year old tweet - djsumdog
https://fightthefuture.org/article/twitter-is-trying-to-erase-the-past/
======
romaaeterna
Unaccountable censorship of expression by our main communication providers is
incompatible with Democracy. Communication is often a natural monopoly, and
you can't just "start a competitor" to Twitter and have the market fix the
problem (see gab.ai).

If we're going to have censorship on the big platforms (Youtube, Facebook,
Twitter, Reddit, etc.) and backbone providers (ISPs, Cloudfront), us normal
human beings need the right to appeal, public auditing, bright line rules, and
due process rights.

It's not wrong for Twitter to have rules to protect the weak from the strong,
and individuals from the mob, but it needs to be accountable and above board
about all of it or it will make the problem far worse.

EDIT:

Just to provide an example, here are a few ways this notification could have
been so much better.

1) List the specific rules violated. Link to the public process for rule
review and adoption.

2) Link to ids and contact information for any human beings who made the
decision.

3) Link to code and data sets for any algorithm behind the decision.

4) Provide and link to an appeal procedure instead of just a compliance
procedure.

Imagine how much better that openness would be for Twitter's users. (While
somewhat onerous for Twitter the company.)

~~~
hacknat
I’m confused. What technology did twitter replace? Oh it didn’t? This is
completely new, the ability to communicate to this many people at once? Okay
so what ancient rights are being trampled exactly? If anything we probably
need to be censoring people on Twitter right now as it doesn’t seem to
convince anyone of anything other than that the people on the other-side of
their argument are sub-human.

Edit:

Also, it always riles me up when someone refers to social media as a “main
communication” provider. What fraction of the population gets its political
discourse off of Twitter?

~~~
prepend
In Q1 of this year, twitter had 68 million monthly active users in the US [0].
Hard to tell how many of them follow political discourse. But that’s 20% of
the population (give or take) and it’s a substantial fraction.

I’m not sure how but I want that fraction to get before appropriate rights are
defined and adopted.

The US common carrier rules were only enacted in 1934 [1] so it took a while
before phone companies were forced to respect some US rights. Twitter is only
15 years old so it’s likely that this private company (and others) will be
regulated just like the private telephone companies were regulated.

I had hoped that technology had advanced enough so respecting human rights
would be embedded into the design. But now I think it will take laws and
regulations which will inevitably, and sadly I think, also squelch innovation.

[0] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/274564/monthly-active-
tw...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/274564/monthly-active-twitter-
users-in-the-united-states/)

[1]
[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/201](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/201)

~~~
lancesells
I have no idea what the real MAU numbers of actual people are but I would
think it's maybe a quarter (5%) of the population. There are so many bots on
twitter along with company accounts, meme accounts, IFTT automation, etc. that
I can't imagine it's 20% of the US using twitter each month.

~~~
bryanlarsen
If you count the number of people indirectly reading twitter through other
media the number is much higher than 20%. And it's not just media directly
quoting and crediting twitter; I imagine journalists get a very high
percentage of their leads and sources through twitter.

------
mabbo
Honest question: is the source of the problem the hateful intent of the
message, or the use of "bad words"? My reading on culture these days is that
one can usually get away with spouting horrendous, hateful ideas so long as
they do so without using a short list of offensive words.

If the truly are trying to scrub hate from their platform, I applaud their
effort, but they'll never succeed. Hate is too hard to define and so subtle
you can't actually remove it all.

If they just want to remove bad words, why not use literal black-text
censoring in situations like this, like TV has done for years? Give this user
the option of preserving their moronic comment, hate and all, without the bad
words that I'm sure advertisers are asking to be removed.

~~~
koheripbal
My issue with it is entirely different - the user isn't American. He lives in
New Zealand.

Throwing HATE at a US politician during a US election in public is foreign
interference and should be removed on _that_ basis.

~~~
lucaspm98
It seems somewhat unrealistic for a user to not be able to express opinions
about the politics of another country. Elections more often than not have
international implications. For example, as an American I have varying levels
of interest in Chinese, Russian, and EU politics. Coordinated interference by
foreign governments is a completely different problem.

------
mattnumbers
IANAL.

One of the reasons that this feels so novel is that this is an example of ex
post facto enforcement. In this case, Twitter is punishing the user for an
action performed at a point in time before such an action was punishable. (In
fact, I haven't checked - it may have been punishable, but the punishment was
not usually enforced, which is a separate issue of selective enforcement.) The
US Constitution prevents both Congress and the individual States from passing
ex post facto laws that punish individuals for actions committed before such
action was illegal. Obviously, private corporations are not bound by the same
laws as the government. So, as platforms like Twitter continue to update their
policies and enforcement mechanisms in response to issues such as hate, and as
these definitions are broadened, cases such as this are likely to become more
common.

~~~
smsm42
Twitter rules are not law, so by law they can do whatever they damn well
please. Including banning your account randomly, deleting any tweet they like,
or anything in between. Legally, they owe you or any of their users exactly
nothing. However, you also owe them nothing - you can stop using Twitter any
second. Which I wholeheartedly recommend to everybody. I did it years ago and
it's not hard. If you don't like what they're doing - just walk away.

Of course, that doesn't mean we still can't criticize Twitter - but walking
away should be the first step.

------
tablethnuser
The rule of thumb I use is to ask: if someone had shouted this in a
supermarket or bank line, what would happen?

Internet communities should aspire to be more like local communities. If
you're a jerk in real life, people will show you the door.

Making this about grand abstract concepts like free speech or censorship is
internet fun for people who like to debate. But it's overcomplicating the
situation. Twitter is just showing a jerk the door. They can rejoin the
community after an act of contrition.

The nine year thing is misdirection. Twitter's search algorithm in 2019 will
still gladly show that tweet if your search term is just so. If tweets are the
inventory on Twitter's store shelves, why would any business want to display
the tweet in question at any time?

Academic institutions and governments have already hooked themselves up to the
Twitter fire hose. All tweets are saved for archival purposes. Twitter itself
doesn't have to muddy its product to provide an archival experience.

This is curatorship; not censorship. Unfortunately reality isn't
~~outrageous~~ _engagement-inducing_ enough to make the front page news.

~~~
stronglikedan
> what would happen?

Nothing. It's not a bad tweet. It's not threatening violence. It's not racist.
It's not hateful towards a particular group. It's just a criticism wrapped in
an insult, and frankly, not even a comparatively harsh insult. It's sad that
some people think it should be removed.

~~~
jmull
I think the person would be kicked out of the store, possibly permanently.

I don’t think you’re going to convince too many people it’s perfectly OK to
shout profanities and insults at people.

------
sarah180
Counterpoint: you used Twitter to publish aggressively misogynist language,
and by leaving it up, you continued to distribute hateful material. If Twitter
is going to police hate speech, this the right kind of content, and "it was a
while ago" is not really a defense when you're still distributing that
content.

People often play the "it's not misogynist speech" game, but the first thing
you did was to dismiss her based on her gender. Your fault here is more than
"two party hate," and you still haven't owned up to your misogynist behavior
in my opinion.

~~~
metalliqaz
> "it was a while ago" is not really a defense when you're still distributing
> that content.

I think you're missing the point here. It was published 9 years ago. He didn't
continue "distributing" it, he published it once and Twitter distributed it
for 9 years.

The point, as I understand it, is that Twitter passively agreed that the tweet
was just fine for their platform for 9 years. Then, after doing so, their
standards changed. Fine, standards are supposed to change. However rather than
simply delete the tweet, they suspended the account.

So, in effect, "your account did something that is against the rules, before
it was against the rules."

I won't wade into the politics here, but I'm curious how you know that he
dismissed her ideas because of her gender? Is there any reason to think that
he would have embraced her ideas if she was a he?

~~~
Grue3
>how you know that he dismissed her ideas because of her gender?

If Sarah Palin was a "he", he wouldn't have called her a "cunt" and a "whore".

~~~
mikelyons
I call male politicians cunts and whores all the time! How can you assume
this?

~~~
Grue3
Do you really not understand the difference between calling a man these words,
and a woman? This is literally how you sound: "I'm not racist, I call white
people N-word all the time too!"

~~~
mikelyons
You made that up!

------
perspective1
Their notification was fine. The tweet was vile and full of expletives. You'll
have trouble finding any business or institution that tolerates speech like
that. This isn't the censorship hill anyone should want to die on.

~~~
TheOperator
I don't agree. Wartime cartoons are vile yet we rarely censor them because of
the historical value.

I do think that going back a decade with an algorithm and getting people to
clean up tweets that likely match a regex filter is whitewashing and it does
make twitter a less valuable historical resource. It's a totally different
argument from the normal you should be able to say what you want - because I
would support censorship of such tweets in the present.

~~~
defertoreptar
The problem is that Twitter probably sees a lot of complaints to the tune of
"but the other guy said the same kind of thing and he didn't get banned!"

If they want to enforce a policy consistently and not have to face constant
complaints, then I don't think grandfathering in old violations after some
arbitrary date is going to work.

------
bitcurious
Given today’s culture I would think Twitter is doing you a favor. It’s better
that you silently delete the post than have it be dug up by angry X and get
you fired and ostracized.

~~~
Vaslo
Coming here to say just this. We had a college senior intern who had talked
about drinking and drugs during his freshman year and left them up. Someone
who didn't like him dug it up and sent to HR, and his full time offer got
rescinded.

------
danso
Putting aside the surrounding argument of whether Twitter is right to have
this content policy, and accepting for the sake of argument that this is the
kind of tweet that Twitter’s policy does censor (if haphazardly applied), I
guess I don’t see the age of the tweet being necessarily relevant. All twitter
content has long-tail reach, if Twitter has decided that they don’t want their
service to ever have that content, then grandfathering old content doesn’t
make much sense.

The question of whether the content flagging was automatic is an interesting
one. In other instances, such as James Woods (who is still in Twitter
purgatory) [0], the message he received doesn't have any language that
indicates that it was manually reported and flagged, which it most certainly
was.

Given how slow Twitter has been to roll out features in general, and Jack
Dorsey's continued insistence on avoiding heavy handed moderation and
policies, I have to doubt that Twitter rolled out an automated content system
with such high potential of being an embarrassment. I don't know the author,
but just because he isn't a frequent/recent Twitter user doesn't mean that an
angry Internet mob from some other community hasn't decided to target his
Internet accounts in general.

[0]
[https://twitter.com/Millerita/status/1119655394899415040?ref...](https://twitter.com/Millerita/status/1119655394899415040?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1119655394899415040&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailywire.com%2Fnews%2F46558%2Fjames-
woods-twitter-jail-heres-tweet-got-him-amanda-prestigiacomo)

------
moksly
Seems more like twitter banned the author 9 years too late.

~~~
chrisan
It is definitely an immature tweet, however I think 9 years can change a
person a lot.

Maybe twitter could have given him a warning about his tweet and ask if he
would like to delete it before the instaban algorithm hit

~~~
onion90
Twitter could, of course, have just given a warning. But I also don't see any
problem treating the tweet as if it were current. The age of the tweet does
not change whether it is acceptable or not, does it?

~~~
whafro
Well, he was banned for violating the Twitter rules, and those rules didn't
exist at the time.

Getting a message saying something like "this message violates the rules
today, so we're going to delete it" or "delete this message within a week or
we'll have to ban your account" would seem more reasonable to me than
immediate ex post facto enforcement.

~~~
onion90
I assumed that the comment had already violated rules at that time and simply
was not recognized or discovered as such a violation earlier.

------
tarsinge
Locking the account post facto without warning is debatable, but I don’t
follow the argument of how the author has grown up since this tweet. Insulting
people is not acceptable in a public space, no matter the date or the age of
the aurhor, it’s basic education. Freedom of expression is not freedom to
publish insulting messages. I’m glad Twitter is enforcing this.

------
partlysean
> It’s honestly a very immature tweet. It’s something I wouldn’t say today. I
> have personally grown past the hate of the two party system. I feel like I
> have a clearer and more mature view on American elections…

Congrats on your new political maturity, but no mention or reflection on the
deeply sexist language you used makes me think that you haven’t grown at all.

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
Honestly... Way to give a non-apology and twist the narrative.

'I have personally grown past the hate of the two party system'.

No, your 'hate of the two party system' was not what the problem was and I am
pretty sure you are smart enough to figure that out. You were not locked for
tweeting against the two party system. Let's not pretend this ban had anything
to do with politics. If anything Twitter is full of left-leaning folks many of
whom would celebrate such juvenile and crass language.

------
protomyth
_I started using Twitter back in 2008. Before the age of smart phones_

Talk about erasing the past. I dearly hope knowledge of what came before
iPhone and Android isn't washed over like all the non-Apple 8-bit computers.

~~~
onion2k
Exactly. That should really read "I started using Twitter back in 2008. A
decade after Windows CE phones became quite common, and 5 years after the
launch of Windows Mobile."

~~~
pjc50
Windows CE phones were significantly worse than simply trying to use a Nokia
3210. They were very much a false start.

~~~
onion2k
I had an HTC TyTn II back in about 2006. It was flawed but ultimately it was a
pretty good device given the limitations of the time. Trying to cram Windows
on to a phone without changing things was a mistake obviously, but for some
things (email..) it was awesome.

------
apo
> In recent years I’ve been using an open source, federated alternative to
> Twitter that uses a protocol called ActivityPub. I run my own server for
> myself and my friends. People on my server can communicate with other
> servers that support ActivityPub, similar to e-mail. If people on my server
> don’t like the way I manage it, they can always export their content and
> start their own, or transfer to someone else’s server.

Twitter is a for-profit company offering a product (its customers) to
advertisers. As such, they get to delete any content whatsoever, regardless of
the reason. They happen to be using a policy that will cause some accounts to
be locked. This is going to get a lot worse because advertisers loath anything
that doesn't conform.

Twitter and Facebook aren't the problem - they're symptoms of the terrible,
low-hanging monetization fruit on today's web.

There are solutions. One is to stop criticizing Twitter for being beholden to
its advertisers and instead build/participate in censorship-resistant
platforms.

That's going to result in loss of reach, at least for a time. Then again, so
does getting blocked.

~~~
tortasaur
Can't you both criticize Twitter and use open platforms? They aren't mutually
exclusive.

------
hoistbypetard
I think Twitter should delete everything older than XX days old, where XX is a
number on the order of 15 or 30. The kind of heavily context-dependent short
form throwaway expression the site is built for and actively encourages does
not age well, and an auto-delete policy that emphasizes that would make the
site better and cheaper to operate.

~~~
LocalPCGuy
As posted elsewhere in these comments:

    
    
         “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten,
         every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building
         has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is 
         continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped.
         Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is 
         always right.”
         
         ― George Orwell, 1984
    

I'm not justifying what Twitter did in this case, but I significantly disagree
with the idea of removing old posts.

------
abc126589
Shameless plug: you can use services like Twitter Archive Eraser
([https://martani.github.io/Twitter-Archive-
Eraser/](https://martani.github.io/Twitter-Archive-Eraser/)) to selectively
delete old tweets and in bulk.

Many of us identify with the author and most content created on social media
years ago have no reason to stay around.

~~~
jayess
I use a similar service to delete my old tweets, older than 30 days. No way I
want some public archive of my thoughts out there forever.

------
motohagiography
I have a problem with this whole concept that you don't get to have ideas and
test them, but that the ideation and words themselves _make_ you something or
means you _are_ or _have become_ something.

It's dishonest, lacks any legitimacy, and it is the root of the culture war.
Words only have the consequences the reader or listener gives them, they do
not have intrinsic consequences in themselves. The fantasy that mere belief is
transformative or redeeming is a seductive deception.

Platforms should demonstrate they are principled before merely driving certain
interests, even (especially) if they are convinced those interests are the
right ones.

~~~
chippy
Interesting idea it reminds me of a religious debate about belief and faith
versus good works.

~~~
motohagiography
Key insight. Very closely related. In the secularized instance of it we're
encountering now, people could be said to be substituting demonstrations of
belief for mercy, etc. I'd argue the particular choice of symbols in a
religious war is really secondary and not meaningful to how predictable its
progress is, sadly.

------
paulpauper
This is why so many people are deleting old posts, whether it;s Facebook,
Instagram , YouTube, or Twitter. Users are at the mercy of algorithms and
content moderators, and appeal is often impossible for violating these
arbitrary rules.

------
rileyriley
Is the point of this article supposed to be "Humans grow, so leave the vile
stuff I said when I hadn't grown as much around for more and more people can
see that I said it?"

IMHO the fact that the biggest font in this article is used to reprint the
reprehensible statement is a clue that this author is actually resisting
growth by implying what he said isn't actually that bad, and twitter should
keep showing it to more strangers. Real growth would look like deleting the
tweet yourself and looking for traces of it in your current language!

~~~
Kuraj
Deleting the tweet would be like pretending they never said that in the first
place, which is arguably worse.

------
alfiedotwtf
I (@alfiedotwtf) got suspended. I asked support for clarification as to why I
got suspended, but only to get a reply saying "we can't tell you why you were
suspended, and don't ask again because we won't respond". Wtf Jack.

Edit: It was one week before the Australian federal election, which does make
me suspicious as to the reasoning of my suspension

Edit 2: Since there's a slim chance that someone from Twitter will see this
message, if you're able to see why I got suspended, could you Signal me the
reasoning (+61-400-777-227)

------
heavenlyblue
On the other hand, it seems like someone was interested enough in the OPs
Twitter that they went all the way to 9 years ago to report it.

------
rurban
I'm not having a problem with twitter finally finding it out, and asking the
user to remove it. But isn't there a catch-22?

> As a result we've locked your account.

> What you can do:

> To unlock your account, you must do the following:

> Remove Tweets that violate our rules.

Can you actually remove tweets when your account is locked?

E.g When Google locks your account you lost everything. You certainly cannot
talk to them, remove any violating content or fix things. As it looks (unable
and unwilling to test), Twitter implemented locking by just prohibiting to
post new stuff, but allows you to fix stuff. Which is very fine to me,
compared to Google.

------
ryanmercer
_facepalm_ I have blog posts from 2001 that make me cringe that I keep up
purely to show that I've changed considerably in 18 years.

When James Gunn was fired from Guardians for something he said in a tweet
years before I was dumbfounded. Now Twitter is actively policing old posts?!

People change, nations change. Violent criminals can become bastions of peace
and philanthropy. Why is society, or a company, persecuting people for tweets
that are years old. If someone says something awful today, deal with it, but 9
years ago?! If there's an offensive 9 year old tweet, delete it and send the
user an email saying their tweet was deleted for violating such and such
policy but locking an account 9 years after the fact?!

~~~
wincy
Boy I’m glad my Xanga is long gone. I recall reading what I wrote at 16 at 22
and being mortified. I imagine today I’d die of embarrassment if I so much as
glanced at it.

------
jblakey
I realize I may be out of touch (pushing 50) with the current state of things,
but I keep asking myself "What right do I have to expect a Company (that I pay
no money to) to provide me with access to their service?"

------
wanderfowl
This just underscores one of the main things I desire from social media these
days: Ephemerality. I wish that social media services, Snapchat aside, started
treating content as transient. Services like TweetDelete help, but I can't
think of anything I'd say on a Microblogging service that I want to exist in 9
years.

Yes, yes, "everything on the internet is permanent". But every one of my
social media streams could benefit from a "Automatically delete after one
month" setting.

We grow, we learn. Why not let our social media represent who we are, not who
we were?

------
tonyjstark
The tweet in question is a good reason to be banned. Now if they would apply
those rules to other users too, that would be nice. Twitter is full of abuse,
hate, harassment, racism, sexism but then some of the high-profile users are
allowed to do this without getting banned, others a banned for 9yr old tweets.

Not saying it's easy to always find the right line on what should be banned
and what not but for clear hate-speech you don't have to provide a platform
and if you do, you should be measured in that context.

------
petercooper
Pro-tip: Use Twitter search for "from:yourusername word" where you replace
yourusername with your Twitter name and 'word' with things like the f word, c
word, r'tarded, and so forth. Delete any tweets that do not stand up to modern
standards.

I did this a while back and am thankful I did. I seemed to say a lot of things
that were passable on Twitter 10 years ago but I would not dare to say now :-D
(Nothing extreme, but things like "$some_technology f'in sucks" and such.)

------
fortran77
It was vulgar, but there were no threats made, and this was to a public figure
who enjoys controversy.

I'm very surprised this is called "hateful conduct". It's merely vulgar.

------
johnday
It seems like the simplest approach for Twitter to make would be to remove
specific posts, rather than accounts, for tweets made over a year ago (say).
It's not fair to hold someone to account for the actions of a very different
person, even if they happen to be a continuation of that person.

(Edit: And to be clear, I would have been a-okay with Twitter having banned
the user at the time, for the content in question!)

------
maeln
My account has been locked because I ... used Twitter. I was rarely Tweeting,
almost only RT/liking other Tweet. But one day, I started to have a discussion
with another user regarding a subject that I was a bit knowledgeable about,
and after something like 10 tweets in maybe 20+ minutes my account just got
locked for "suspicious activity".

Twitter was asking for a phone number to unlock the account. And since I never
gave them my phone number, any number could have work. Which mean that if
somebody really hijacked my account to spam, they could have just definitely
take it for themselves ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ . I saw this as what it was: just a attempt
at taking even more personal data from me.

I never unlocked the account and I don't use Twitter anymore. And honestly, it
has been great. Twitter is just full of people talking about thinks they don't
have any knowledge about, overly emotional reaction and everybody trying to be
more extreme than the other. Even when being very careful about who you
follow, you are not protected since Twitter started to display Tweet from the
people followed by the people you followed randomly.

~~~
wincy
They were worried you’re a “Russian Bot”. Gotta watch out for those since
Silicon Valley believes they’re literally the only reason Donald Trump won.

------
gurkendoktor
I am mostly amazed that Twitter's rule is not simply, "don't harass people". I
guess this tweet is an offense specifically because it uses gendered
harassment? Is there a list of gender-neutral insults that we can refer to for
compliance reasons?

~~~
mosselman
The thing is that this was 9 years ago. The landscape of what was acceptable
back then is completely different from what it is now. Going back in time and
banning people for this sort of thing is essentially the same as banning
movies from the 60's because they don't show enough women driving cars or men
helping out in the kitchen.

~~~
benwad
I don't think that tweet was ever acceptable - calling someone a "cunt",
"whore", "idiot" and telling her to "go fuck yourself" all in 140 characters
is really going out of your way to be unpleasant.

~~~
nilkn
It's always been acceptable so long as it's directed at the right person.
What's changed in the last 9 years is simply who can be targeted with such
language. Twitter supports and publishes language like this on a mass scale
today.

------
krelian
Not on twitter by about 8 or 9 years go my Adwords account was banned. I ran
ads that were against the TOS (I admit, I didn't read it but since the ads
were approved - not sure it's still the case but at the time each ad was
manually approved - I thought it was OK). The ads run for a total of about 30
- 40 minutes then I stopped them (I was playing with affiliate marketing
links). Next day my adwords account was banned and there was no way of getting
it reinstated. I tried contacting the Adwords support again about a year ago,
but to no avail. The bad thing is that the infringing ads are still in my
account, I can't delete them, so even if some soul reviews my account (and I'm
sorry for my prejudice against the average support person, it's just
experience) they'll probably think I'm still at it.

One of the dangers about doing business with these behemoths.

------
crankylinuxuser
The big issue, which I have received significant consternation of "ownership",
is that these mega-corps are creating their own dictatorships online. And they
are how "speech" is conducted, given their monopoly on where the people are.

The obvious and most consistent counterclaim is that these are "private
entities who can choose whom to deal with".

That statement is predicated on the facetious assertion that a corporation is
a human, and should be treated as such and provided latitude as one. It
obviously is not. And with their clout in personnel, money, lawyers, and more
- they are a uberhuman.

The path forward seems clear. Corporations should not be treated the same as
real humans. And their powers should be limited to prevent these formations of
super-countries with draconian and arbitrary laws, just because technology
allows them so.

------
joestr
I'm not weighing in on whether these kinds of tweets should or shouldn't be
allowed, but genuine question: how does this violate rule #1? Is it the use of
the word 'cunt'? I don't see how the harassment was based on race, ethnicity,
national origin, sexual orietntation, gender identity, relgiious affiliation,
age, disability or serious disease.

Potentially that Palin is a woman, they've decided that 'cunt' could be based
on gender, however I received the same email from Twitter for a (heat of the
moment) tweet about Ajit Pai where I called him a cunt, and he is not a woman,
so I don't understand their policy. They wouldn't unblock my account until I
deleted the tweet.

------
pcunite
This is what happens when we allow computers to decide what is fair, decent,
and open to discussion, I think it is called ML Fairness, or something like
that.

------
word-reader
It really is shocking how much has changed in the past 10 years. This post
could have been mainstream late-night comedy, but it's not just that the
targets have shifted: it's still OK, good even, to attack Sarah Palin, you
just can't do it using certain words. The bigger change seems to be this
obsession with words having some kind of incantatory, emanating power (even 9
year old words on a Twitter account), along with the associated fiending about
the private thoughts of whoever posted.

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mark-r
I don't understand why the action was to disable the account, rather than
deleting the offending tweet.

~~~
tedunangst
Twitters approach is that of teaching a pet not to pee on the rug. You rub
their nose in it first. "Bad, bad!"

~~~
mark-r
Anybody who's ever had a dog will know that rubbing their face in it 9 years
later won't do any good.

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not_a_cop75
It seems that the answer is not simply to switch to other corporate website
that does twitter like things, but rather change to a federated tool that
people can run themselves. This would by it's nature prevent censorship.

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txsoftwaredev
Twitter has banned / restricted accounts for merely stating "Learn to Code" in
a Tweet. Nothing they do at this point should be surprising.

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wsc981
I am still puzzled why my Twitter account was locked a few years ago. I tried
to ask the people at Twitter to show me the problematic Tweet for 2 times, but
never got a response. I did post some kind-of right wing stuff regarding
immigration and such, but none of it offensive. And certainly not using rude
language as the person in the link did in his nine year old Tweet.

In the end I just gave up on Twitter. Sad, cause I liked to use it mainly for
myself, to follow some people that interest me and to keep a kind of
"bookmarks on my thoughts".

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circa
Time to pull a Radiohead and delete all your tweets overnight.

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ejefz
Getting banned for calling someone (a high rank politician!!!) a whore is the
state of the internet in 2019.

Thing is, he's suggesting Mastodon as an alternative... there you would not
only get banned for calling a woman a whore, you'd probably get doxxed and
then swatted too.

~~~
nailer
> Getting banned for calling someone (a high rank politician!!!) a whore

Also calling them a 'cunt'.

Attitudes like the above are why ordinary men and women don't want to become
politicians - it's assumed to be OK to insult them in any way. Why not just
call Palin a hypocrite?

You should be able to criticise politicians. However if you want better
politicians, screaming that they're cunts and whores instead of communicating
like an adult won't make that happen.

Edit: replying to below due to rate limit

> If someone cant handle a verbal insult over the internet, I don't think they
> are fit for office

But it's not 'a verbal insult'. It's thousands. Most humans can't handle a
thousand insults a week. It wears at you - SEAL training involves simulating
humiliating experiences because most people don't have the mental strength to
not crumble. I'd take a bet that includes both me and you.

Edit 2: replying to Iamthirsty

OK. You don't think being constantly insulted would have a chilling effect on
someone becoming a representative because ... people can insult people in
other professions?

It seems like you believe I think it's hard to work a job where you may be
insulted.

This isn't correct. I think it's hard to work a job where you may be insulted
a thousand times a day.

~~~
tdxgx
If someone cant handle a verbal insult over the internet, I don't think they
are fit for office

~~~
brokensegue
Does that justify toxic behavior?

~~~
iamthirsty
Toxic behavior happens on every level of society and to every occupation.
Being a politician doesn’t automatically make toxic behavior towards you—it
was always okay towards you! That’s how the world works.

However, when you become a public figure and especially a political one people
may feel more entitled to lash out against you, as you literally hold power
over their lives, even if they themselves may disagree with you (as in, voted
for someone else or the like.)

~~~
brokensegue
Is that a yes or a no?

------
Chazprime
TLDR: don’t act like a c@&t online. And if you did, delete it.

~~~
pixl97
Though that said, most law enforcement has a statute of limitations on crimes
except the very worst of them like killing another human being. If you're
going to go after a fossilized tweet, just remove it, locking accounts after
that long seems rather silly unless they are posting new content against the
rules.

~~~
m-p-3
Even with law enforcement, there is something called statute of limitations
for most minor crimes.

~~~
M2Ys4U
Depends on the juristiction. The law of England and Wales, for example, does
not have _any_ time limitation for prosecution.

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cabaalis
Same argument as normal: they don't want to platform that kind of speech, and
it truly was horrible speech.

Learn from it, remove the post, and move on. Not sure why this is news. It's a
little bit of a narcissistic post, I think (A sentiment of "How dare you call
me out, I'm an atheist who calls right-wingers names online") and I'm not sure
why this is news except some people feel that more right-wing hatred is being
suspended than left.

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la_barba
I wonder if Google will start banning accounts if you sent an email with
offensive words..

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daybreak
If we replaced Sarah Palin with some left-wing politician, I'm not sure this
article would get any traction. People would be saying "their platform, their
rules", "freedom of speech only applies to the government" and calling out
author for his sexist slurs and throwing around the "hate speech" label.

I'm not sure what the solution is, even recent articles on proposed social
media legislation[1] led to comments that Trump is trying to "censor the
internet".

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20669477](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20669477)

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whamlastxmas
Somehow I would guess tweeting trump is an "old fuck" wouldn't have Twitter
enforcing the same rules.

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provolone
Meanwhile twitter is promoting sponsored tweets from Xinhua. Travel to
Xinjiang - Everything is great! Come visit the temples in Lhasa, but be sure
to make your reservation in advance!

