Forced sterilization is violence, and the glorification of it by any actor is glorification of violence. Certainly this highlights the power that a platform like Twitter has to silence people, but this specific deletion is not inconsistent with Twitter's policies, and it is not itself indicative of further movement down a slippery slope. But it does make it even more important for journalists to have systematic ways of holding Twitter to account should it overstep in the future.
I know this isn't a popular opinion, but for the sake of sharing:
I'm of the belief that any coercion with the intent to disuade women from having any (or more) kids is ethically wrong, (except for some very very limited cases). Govt really shouldn't have a heavy influence on what is a family decision.
While I'm all for educating poor areas in order to increase quality of life... if one of the stated goals of that education is to reduce the number of that populations offspring, then there are some tough ethical questions about such a program that need to be answered.
And that's before you even get into the "targeted minority" aspects.
And yes, I get that one easy way to "improve quality of life" is to have fewer kids (I personally disagree), and I get that educated couples often have fewer kids...
but if that's where the bulk of the QoL bump is coming from... Then that's just straight up population control going by an alias with better branding.
Why is population control inherently wrong? sustainable envrionment and forever exploding population is a pair of inherently conflicting goals, at least while we still only inhabit earth. We have to acknowledge there is a maximum which this planet can handle. Even if we do regard having children as a very personal right, we must acknowledge the collective effect is not within our control, not in the near future.
There is a quite strong correlation between level of education and number of birth per women. The best way to "control" population growth is to give easy access to a good education and birth control solutions (I mean condoms and the pill). No coercion required.
I'm opining/arguing that if you make this statement:
>The best way to "control" population growth is...
Then provide some level of govt incentive to reach that goal, it's still coercion (or if you prefer, manipulation), even if the incentive is 1st order positive effects, and the stated goal/result is a 2nd or 3rd order effect.
Thinking about it, I keep coming back to preditory lending/selling tactics or dark-pattern manipulation (except the UI is your life choices) as comparisons, but I haven't worked out exactly why, yet, other than it bothers me in a similar way. Moreso, since it's government.
That's a rather strange position to hold. It brings in issues related to both the Prisoner's Dilemma and the Tragedy of the Commons. To whit, each individual reproductive group may desire more offspring, but each successively larger generation consumes more resources. Given a (for the foreseeable future) finite amount of resources, unrestricted population expansion is net harmful to society as a whole, even as large families may be beneficial (i.e. result in greater happiness) for individual groups.
It's a coordination problem. Everyone wants to act in the way that maximizes their happiness/success/utility, but in doing so acts in a net-negative way. One of the premier purposes of government is to solve coordination problems. Why is it unethical for the government to solve this coordination problem?
Or, more concretely, why does my right to have a dozen children trump my children's right to have sufficient resources left to them to live a happy life?
There is no manipulation. You offer better choices to people than they currently have, such as access to good education and tools they are free to use to manage their personal life (e.g condoms). As a side-effect it is expected that the number of birth per woman will reduce over time.
People are free to use or not birth controls if they want or not children, same for the education. People aren't tricked in reducing the amount of children they have. Data in developed countries seems to point that when people are better educated and have the tools to decide for children, they get them later in life and in less quantity (without considering other factors, such as religious communities that have more children per woman than average).
In a sense, law-making is all about providing incentives. How's birth control any different than other aspects of life? I'd say that's a quite broad definition of coercion/manipulation.
That works a little in reverse as well. If you can curb teenage pregnancy you significantly change the demographics of a region and lead to women being the power drivers in a community. It literally reverses cycles of poverty
...and you can only do that with education and contraception, since human nature makes people feel okay to break the rules so long as they aren't being watched. Punishing teenagers for doing teenage things has never worked out anywhere (not sure if that was the intent of your message, but just putting it out there).
That's true, but this is also an attempt to a moral question with a pragmatic empirical answer. The problem with this is the data can always change.
How would your opinion change if that correlation were found to disappear in the coming decades? Or if it actually began to reverse (for example as populations shift to being more urban where kids are expensive and access to assisted reproduction depends on wealth)?
So I was going to reply to the parent but after thinking a little more I think I have a better good faith interpretation. I think they used "coercion" instead of "persuasion" because it is a stronger word (implying forcing or threatening). So if we read their comment that way I don't think they disagree with you or would be against even encouraging things like planed births and making birth control widely available.
You might not be wrong. Though after rereading it, I'm convinced that it was suggested in that comment popluation control is wrong regardless. Note the paragraph on education. So in that framework, providing education with the intention of reducing birth would be unethical. How moderate or non-coercive of a means are we talking about?
That's true, but hard to tell when the person hasn't responded. I tend to try (key word) to use the strongest form of someone's argument (not that I think you're talking about their weakest form).
But what I was originally going to say is that the language gets really fuzzy really fast. Like you could argue that sex education is a form of persuasion (though I wouldn't say coercion) and is easily argued as a form of population control. But I think many of us would call that beneficial. I'd say the same with free/cheap and easy access to forms of birth control. I'd say that enables more choice. But if we're talking about a counseling center that guilt trips someone into having the child or not having the child I'd call that coercion and I don't think that's right. But others would call that persuasion and education. So I think this gets messy really quick and a bit of expanding on the thought for clarification is needed.
I'm not ideologically opposed to contraception, for what it's worth.
I used the word "coercion" intentionally, although it's not exactly right.
Just as "coercion" implies "force or threatening," "persuasion" implies an "un-forced, freely-made choice." And that is a big part of what I'm questioning depending on particular circumstances.
At what level of deception or trickery or lies-of-omission, does the free-choice become the illusion-of-choice?
Hypothetically, in Xinjiang, if (and I get that this is an extremely unlikely "if" for obvious reasons) if we presume the actions are exactly the same (provide/offer/compel education), and the end results are exactly the same (results in suppressed Uighur birthrate, but educated),
Then does the government's good or bad intent matter?
What's the difference between these scenarios, if
1) China govt being honest and trying raise the QoL in Xinjiang to be equal with the rest of China, or
2) China govt lying, and using education as a pretense because of the low birthrate result that they desire?
Bonus: China just relaxed it's "one-child" laws in the rest of the country, in an attempt to increase the country's birthrate. Does this change your mind about the 2 scenarios above?
It's wrong because we own our own bodies. The confict of expanding humanity does not go away when you manage the population, people will want to expand.
Giving the state arbitrary powers to limit population growth is a form of violence. Having a state sactioned sterilization on excess children is just as horrific as a war, without any of the spoils of war.
The problem lies in the fact that the gov is the last body left to resolve our deepest conflicts as we are no longer free to commit acts of violence on our own behalf. Making it through life used to be materially difficult and death was far more common. Living in our current heaven-like atmosphere has far darker implications for the age-old conflicts.
Historically when governments have executed it the concept has ended in genocide? I'm not trying to accuse you of ill intent or supporting such a position, but once a government is given these tools the inevitable outcome has been such once the willing political party takes power.
This is "population control" targeted at a specific ethnic and religious minority, not population control in general. China is trying to crowd out the Uighur population by settling ethnic Han Chinese from elsewhere in the country and by imprisonment and forced sterilization of the population. This campaign meets the UN criteria for genocide.
China's Uighur policy isn't "One family one child."
It's sterilization, so that Uighur families can't have children.
EDIT: HN won't let me respond, probably due to the automatic moderation controls kicking in on this article, so here's an example of the forced sterilization policy indiscriminately targeting all Uighur women: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/04/muslim-minorit...
Where did you read that? If I read it correctly, they used sterilization on couples who already have children at the limit allowed. I won't call it can't
But the question is, _why?_ What's their incentive to apply more cruel population control on one ethnic group over others? We're talking about a repressive government, but not a race-based regime like Nazi Germany was. Indeed from their own propaganda they seem like they bend over backward to trumpet the well-being of their ethnic minorities, and you'll hear of cases of the Great Firewall censoring outpourings of nationalist/racist sentiment.
The more boring explanation is the simpler one I think; that they're bringing policies toward minorities in line with policies toward the majority -- i.e. ending a form of "affirmative action" they used to have.
You can argue that population control of _any_ kind is wrong and cruel, and I think that's a totally defensible argument, but there's a rhetorical sleight of hand going on here where people equate China's controversial population control measures (that have been ongoing for decades) with the elimination of a particular ethnic minority, Nazi-style.
But the question is, _why?_ What's their incentive to apply more cruel population control on one ethnic group over others?
It's a culture- and religion-based form of oppression. The ethnic Uighur people are Muslims, for the most part. They form a distinct subculture within China. The Communist Party sees their nonconformity as a threat to social harmony. That's why, in addition to forced sterilization and forced birth control, the government has imposed forced re-education in concentration camps.
Their goal is to destroy the Uighur population's distinctiveness as a subculture in China. It is deliberate ethnocide (by forced internment) and genocide (by reproductive suppression).
I understand that's the claim, but on the other hand, the biggest Muslim ethnic group (Hui) aren't repressed.
Which makes you ask, what's the difference between Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups like the Hui? Well, the biggest as far as I can tell is the influx of new, extremist ideologies like Wahhabism that are actually quite _incompatible_ with the indigenous culture. The reasons why that happened seem complex, but maybe you can say it's an unfortunate outcome of US and Russian meddling in the region over decades.
It's absolutely true that there's increased security and surveillance targeted at Uyghurs in the region, I've seen a lot of videos taken by travelers from the area that confirm that. There's also a coordinated and systemic program of re-education, as admitted by Chinese authorities. I'm sure there is a non-zero amount of abuses as part of this whole program, but I don't think that's the same thing as genocide. & I think the stated reason in their propaganda for _why_ this is all happening passes the smell test... Otherwise, wouldn't they be repressing Hui Muslims as well?
(Also see Tibet -- people said the same thing about Tibetan culture 20 years ago, but it's pretty well-understood now that there were foreign-funded separatist elements back then)
While sterilization has jumped up several times, one cannot actually effectively commit a genocide by performing sterilization operations on an entire population. Most of what's going on is coercion and soft power.
Unwanted pregnancies can be prevented through education. This is not something that must be done in teenage years, there are adults who are unaware of contraceptives or don't have access to them. Permanently preventing someone from having children is immoral, the alternative is actively being ignored by the govt. in question.
Family planning did and still does mean something coercive in China for most people. To them it's about paying a fine for extra kids, and when local govt gets angry forced birth control. People hid kids for a reason.
The policy has historically allowed exceptions for ethnic minorities, but looking at news stories they have been physically putting birth control devices in Uyghur women without consent too. The state perfected its art of surveillance by testing on minorities; it's no surprise they also perfected some other human rights violations from experience with Han people.
(There are cheap condom programs, but the entire country just doesn't talk about sex. You get few safe sex talks, and all these stuff end up as balloons for kids and hairbands. Combined oral contraceptives are cheap and OTC, but the culture is heavily against "unnecessary use of western medicine", especially for the cheap ethinylestradiol/levonostrogel kind because "cheap means bad". So you end up with good women's bodily autonomy on paper and terrible execution, even without the violations.)
The argument would be, what is the intent of the CCP in pushing this program, gien the evidence of coercion from Uyghur camp survivors. Is it as virtuous as state media argues? Doubtful.
> I'm of the belief that any coercion with the intent to disuade women from having any (or more) kids is ethically wrong, (except for some very very limited cases). Govt really shouldn't have a heavy influence on what is a family decision.
What about government policies that persuade women to have more children? Are those ethically ok?
Except, you missed the part where, if someone's free to run up the score with 4, 6, or 10 children...they also have the freedom to watch them starve if they can't support them.
I don't know that better planners should be forced into subsidizing bad family planning/no family planning.
The post by the Chinese embassy is not advocating for forced sterilization. Rather, it is disputing the claim that forced sterilization is happening and saying the decline in birth rate is due to choice by the Uyghur women.
Twitter's decision therefore takes a stand on what the "truth" is.
Thank you for pointing out that the article explicitly states the Chinese position as "The changes were not caused by 'forced sterilization' of the Uygur population". While a tweet advocating forced sterilization might be violence, a tweet saying "We agree forced sterilization is bad, and we are not doing it" is not violence. The justification for removal must lie elsewhere.
The problem with the Chinese government is that it's illegal to investigate the truth behind any statement so there's no way to know if what they say is true.
But of course they won't police everything, just what doesn't put them in trouble if they do so. Good luck with deleting a tweet from Netanyahu praising how ethical is the Israeli army.
The BBC link shows a leak without context. And with some balant mistranslations
The ABC link shows a random video uploaded and verified as 'authentic' by someone who sits at his home watching Google maps. If that's the level of evidence required for Holocaust then it's a lost cause to reason with you.
also to add, there are 12 million uighur in china, if the claim of genocide on 3 million of uighur is true, that means 1 in 4 uighur are slaughtered. Xinjiang to this day is open for visits for foreigners, there are zero reports of refugees in neighboring countries. If the there is indeed a holocaust going on, then these evidence should be easy to find right? and you probably wouldn't need to rely on "leaks" and videos verified by a 22 year old "goolge map" expert.
Genocide doesn't necessarily mean slaughter - the primary method I've heard used is medically preventing women from having children, which then kills off future generations. Genocide also, by definition, relates to killing off a culture - which there's plenty of proof for regarding the CCP's "re-education" camps - where children taken from their parents. And honestly it'd not be hard to hide disposal of human remains, even en mass in systematic way. There are plenty of reports and claims if organ harvesting as well. That your asking these questions makes me think you've not done much research or watched any documentaries on the CCP.
Exactly, there are parallels between the news leaking and between what happened during the holocaust. Except now you're dealing with a more sophisticated enemy.
OP and myself are making the case that, by dipping into politics and labelling certain opinions, rhetoric and/or factual claims as "unacceptable", they're making themselves exactly that.
That forced sterilization is happening is fact. Twitter isn't taking a "stand" on what the truth is (it is telling that you put truth in quotes). Twitter is simply deleting tweets that spread misinformation, whether the misinformation is about US election claims or pretending that there isn't a genocide happening in Xinjiang. Actions such as this that deter the spread of fake news on social media platforms are needed because bot accounts that rapidly repeat false statements are possible on the Internet.
Let's say the journalists decide that Twitter is suppressing important information. Let's say that ABC News does an article on it. That's good. It gets the word out, within limits. But the word would get out much better if people tweeted links to the article...
> glorification of violence (...) not inconsistent with Twitter's policies
Oh, please. Twitter's application of its policies is outrageously inconsistent, even for high-profile U.S. officials. Otherwise, how come the many people who openly defend the extra-judicial killings by the U.S. military (from Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump) have yet a twitter account? And I'm not saying anything about tweets supporting the violent overthrow of several governments worldwide; those are tolerated because they align with U.S. interests. Twitter is the ministry of truth of the U.S.A. and its main mouthpiece.
A policeman who doesn't fine anybody is merely incompetent. A policeman who fines only black people is downright evil. You cannot say that his actions amount to "not going far enough" because he fails to fine people of other races. They are actively discriminatory.
The same situation happens with twitter, that only enforces its rules when they go against the mainstream USA mentality.
(This tweet by Hillary Clinton glorifies an extrajudicial killing in foreign territory, with the opposition of the country where it happened, and at the same time manages to sneak in some falsehoods. The text is: "When our SEALs took out bin Laden, they brought the terrorists' families to safety first. That's American honor. " This is false, since several members of the bin Laden family died in the attack, including women and children. I'm not saying that killing bin Laden was wrong, just that Twitter policies are wildly inconsistent regarding violence and falsehood.)
We were in a state of military conflict with Libya, which was openly hosting and funding dozens of terrorist groups dedicated to attacking the U.S. and American citizens.
The U.S. wasn't behind the killings of Ghadaffi. Ghadaffi was killed by his own bodyguards after Ghadaffi's own citizens overthrew their government in a civil war spurred by resistance movements in neighboring countries arising from despots incarcerating and assassinating political opponents.
The U.S. was behind the killing of Bin Laden. He organized the single largest terrorist attack against the U.S. in history. As a non-state actor, he was not protected by any laws, therefore, killing him was not illegal nor was it extradjudicial. This has been the state of international law for over a century, as codified in the Geneva Conventions and the amendments and followup conventions. If you have issues with international law, take that up with the Hague.
This is false, since several members of the bin Laden family died in the attack, including women and children. I'm not saying that killing bin Laden was wrong, just that Twitter policies are wildly inconsistent regarding violence and falsehood.)
Bin Laden's sons were killed in the attack and one of his son's wives, but no children were killed. They were not just innocent collateral damage; they were killed in the attack while resisting U.S. forces. The non-resisting members of the family are alive today to talk about what happened because we didn't kill them.
So if the next Dalai llama was hiding in the US, would it be ok for the Chinese government to fly in special forces to assasinate him?
I imagine bin laden was still protected by Pakistani laws, same as people inside the US are protected by US laws, even if they've pissed off some other country
You’ve hit on the unspeakable. No public figure can give a credible answer to your question while remaining logically consistent and in power.
“Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.” - George Orwell
Which is why so many factions in Washington are putting so much effort to undermine potential challengers as the American destiny is to be number 1. The moment another group becomes more powerful, they know that what you describe will occur.
The Dalai Lama initiated terrorist attacks against China? If not, then it's not even remotely the same thing and you know it.
I imagine bin laden was still protected by Pakistani laws, same as people inside the US are protected by US laws, even if they've pissed off some other country
You imagine incorrectly. As a non-state actor, bin Laden was not subject to the protection of any nation's laws. This has been international law for over a century, and this view was upheld by the U.N. Moreover, Pakistan's government itself said it had no issues with the legality of the operation, and indeed elements of Pakistan's government and military participated in aspects of the operation.
It looks like you've been using HN primarily for political battle. Can you please not do that? It's against the rules (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and it's the line across which we start banning accounts (https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...), regardless of which politics they're battling for. This is because it destroys what HN is supposed to exist for, which is curious conversation on a wide range of topics.
> As a non-state actor, he was not protected by any laws
He was not entitled to any protection afforded uniformed combatants, but I'm pretty sure it still would have been against the Geneva Conventions to kill him with sarin, for instance.
When she was Secretary of State, Hillary famously quipped "We came, we saw, he died" [0] in regards to former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. He was sodomized with a bayonet and executed in the street [1] by US-backed rebels after Hillary convinced President Obama to bomb Libya [2].
On a side note: the US bombing of Libya, and Hillary's remark in particular, is seen by some as a watershed moment in North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons [3]. In response to international pressure, Gaddafi suspended Libya's nuclear weapons program in 2003. The subsequent US/NATO bombing of Libya and Gaddafi's brutal death supposedly convinced the Kims that if they ever gave up their nukes, they'd be vulnerable to the same type of foreign intervention and overthrow.
Twitter doesn't apply this evenly though. If any call to violence is supposed to be removed. Every tweet calling for the arrest of Trump (or anyone) also needs to be removed.
Edit: not sure if this is allowed but I'm curious why I am being downvoted? Is there some logic I'm missing here? Or I guess people just think state-sanctioned violence should be allowed? If so, wouldn't this tweet by China be fine, since this violence is being done by the Chinese state?
If you believe that Justice means something, then there is a difference between Just violence and Unjust violence. Even a single state can produce both Just violence (locking up criminals or criminal instigators) and Unjust violence (extra-judicial killings or forced sterilization).
I agree, but by allowing some calls to violence and not others, Twitter is placing itself as a judge of what violence is justifiable and what isn't.
This is basically what politics is - deciding how to fairly apply violence. So Twitter is taking a political stance by only removing some calls. And an especially strong stance if they are going to start judging nation states.
Personally, I find that it would be far more fair for Twitter and FB to allow these accounts but to add editorial notes to their tweets/posts explaining that the company believes strongly that these are falsehoods, or something similar. Even the current "This claim about election fraud is disputed" seems somewhat disingenuous to me.
- an illegal mob ransacking Congress in an attempt to overthrow an election, and
- a constitutional arrest of a criminal president (e.g. by the House Sergeant-at-Arms, or by the FBI under Mike Pence’s and the Cabinet’s order via the 25th Amendment)
I never mentioned the Capitol protest? I'm talking about this tweet by China. This is state sanctioned violence (by China) and so is arresting someone.
Twitter is clearly drawing a line somewhere about what violence is okay, and what violence isn't, and it's not particularly clear where it is and if there is any bias.
I was referring to your comment about arresting Trump - Twitter’s line is clearly about “legal” state violence. This wouldn’t be murder or forced sterilization or a coup d’etat. But it could be a legal (or even legally murky) military action, and certainly the arrest of someone like President Trump, who is subject to many good-faith allegations of serious violent crimes, and should be arrested to face trial for them.
It is worth noting that “state-sanctioned” violence does not always mean legally-sanctioned violence, since state actions can easily be criminal, or at least lawless.
- The Capitol Hill mob was illegal violence, albeit state-sanctioned (by endorsement of the president)
- Arresting the president (either under Congressional authority or the 25th amendment) would be legal state-sanctioned violence
- Although nominal Chinese law is somewhat authoritarian with regard to ethnic minorities and Muslims, the reason the Xi regime is so desperate to cover up and propagandize the concentration camps is that they are illegal under Chinese and international law
In what way was the Capitol mob “state sanctioned”? The president has a constitutionally defined role and ordering angry mobs to sack government buildings is not part of it (and in any case he didn’t explicitly tell them to do it)
It is violence whether they broke the law or not. We have as a society mostly deemed it to be acceptable violence. It doesn't mean that it's not violence though.
You're really saying that forcing someone to the ground at gunpoint, handcuffing them, and dragging them to jail where they'll be locked up and can't leave isn't violence?
You're changing the goal posts to redefine "arrests." To arrest someone is to enforce the law. You can be peaceably arrested, unless you resist arrest, which is further violating the criminal code.
A peaceful arrest is still done under the threat of violence though and is still violent. By this logic if I go to a bank with a gun and say, "give me all your money" and they comply without a fight it's not violent?
Edit: plus my first comment described a peaceful arrest, not someone resisting.
Why is forced sterilization more objectionable than forced body modifications that commonly happen?
That it be worse than, for example, forced foreskin removal or teeth correction would only follow from the axiom that reproduction is a higher goal that all should have.
Your analogy is poor. Removing your ability to reproduce and have a biological family is taking away a natural "capability" that your body has. The two counter examples you provided are specifically cosmetic in nature and thus not at all the same.
You might as well ask, why is forced sterilization worse than forced removal of your appendix?
Genocide is the killing of men who are currently alive.
If one can say that one can kill a man who has not yet been conceived, by stopping his hypothetical future birth, then every form of contraception is murder, nay, the simple election not to have sex or otherwise procreate is then murder.
Do you not see the difference between forced sterilization (removing a person's ability to procreate) and contraception (giving a person the ability to have sex without procreating, which they can choose to change later)?
Of course I do, simply not by the argument that forced sterilization is genocide, an argument which necessitate that one can “kill” a not yet existing man by stopping his future existence.
The argument of genocide of course does not imply that the man who is sterilized is killed so long as he be allowed to live after the sterilization, but rather that his future, hypothetical offspring is, because it would now never come to be.
The comparison I made was with forced foreskin removal and forced dental correction, something that can also not be undone.
any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Then I see nothing wrong with genocide per sē if (d) fall under it, for by this definition, the Dutch goverment's plan to hand out free condoms to teenagers is a form of genocide, as it is a measure intended to stop births within the group of Dutchmen.
As usual, U.N. definitions are made without much thought, and quickly lead to the absurd when being held to even the slightest of inspection — it is almost as if it be a forum of very emotional men, who put very little thought into what they are doing.
If we say that stopping future births rather is problematic, then most forms of sex education are problematic.
> the Dutch goverment's plan to hand out free condoms to teenagers is a form of genocide, as it is a measure intended to stop births within the group of Dutchmen.
That would be perhaps true if the Dutch government were planning to give out free condoms only to white people or only to black people or only to blonds or only to christians etc. If they are universally giving out condoms, then they are obviously not trying to destroy any particular ethnic or national group inside their own country - the obvious limit to the UN definition.
Then they are only giving them out to the “ethnicity” called “the Dutchman”.
But this another matter of why I'm never very impressed with any definition that names the pseudoscientific concept of “ethnicity” — it is of course entirely an arbitrary thing what is and isn't classified as a separate “ethnicity” much like how the difference between a dialect and a separate language is of course one of politics, not science.
If only the province of Frisia were to have a plan for handing out such condoms, would that qualify as genocide of the Frisians then, which some claim is a different ethnicity for historical reasons? Are the inhabitants of each city perhaps a different ethnicity?
I would argue that a plan for handing out condoms only with proof of citizenship could be suspect of an attempt at ethnic cleansing. Similarly, if the central government of the Netherlands passed a law to hand out free condoms only in some particular province that may be suspect as well, especially one that has been considered of a different ethnicity.
However, if the local authorities in Frisia were to implement such a plan, that would be closer to the first case of universal measures, since the authorities in Frisia shouldn't be expected to hand out condoms in other provinces. Of course, if it turned out that the measure was in fact planned by the central government and passed off as a local idea, that would again move the needle towards being suspicious.
In general, intent matters - that is why the law can't be formalized mathematically. If a country is targeting some group that it has historically considered "different" (regardless of how questionable the difference is) with some kind of measure which may have negative consequences, that measure should receive scrutiny, and the context should be identified. For example, giving poor people condoms may be an attempt at population control in one country, while in another country it may be a democratically enacted benefit.
We are far away from providing mathematically clear definitions of legal concepts such as genocide, murder, theft, fraud and anything you like. There are always surprising subtleties, and intent and context are always going to be a part of the definition.
> I would argue that a plan for handing out condoms only with proof of citizenship could be suspect of an attempt at ethnic cleansing. Similarly, if the central government of the Netherlands passed a law to hand out free condoms only in some particular province that may be suspect as well, especially one that has been considered of a different ethnicity.
>However, if the local authorities in Frisia were to implement such a plan, that would be closer to the first case of universal measures, since the authorities in Frisia shouldn't be expected to hand out condoms in other provinces. Of course, if it turned out that the measure was in fact planned by the central government and passed off as a local idea, that would again move the needle towards being suspicious.
This is a distinction you make, but not a distinction the U.N. definition makes, which shows that you, much as I do, do not find the definition credible.
The U.N. definition does not factor in supranationality as a condition.
> In general, intent matters
Perhaps, but that difference is not given in the U.N. definition.
> that is why the law can't be formalized mathematically.
Then the definition should have never been offered as a rebuttal.
> If a country is targeting some group that it has historically considered "different" (regardless of how questionable the difference is) with some kind of measure which may have negative consequences, that measure should receive scrutiny, and the context should be identified. For example, giving poor people condoms may be an attempt at population control in one country, while in another country it may be a democratically enacted benefit.
All of this goes far beyond the original definition and is quite ad hoc.
I suspect that if further challenges and exceptions be raised against all these further rules, that more ad hoc rules are further and further added.
> We are far away from providing mathematically clear definitions of legal concepts such as genocide, murder, theft, fraud and anything you like. There are always surprising subtleties, and intent and context are always going to be a part of the definition.
Indeed we are, so perhaps the definition should not have been offered as if it actually be meaningful and the U.N. should drop the prætence of it's having “definitions” and “rules” for what is clearly simply “we rule on a case by case basis, mostly on our gut feeling.”
And that is too how laws work. I find that in practice the written text of the law is largely irrelevant vis à vis the gut feeling of whatever man vested with the power to interpret the law and I believe that not much would change in practice if entire law books were simply replaced with “The judge may do as he will and punish what he finds immoral on a case by case basis.”
Rule of law is almost always a veil for rule of men.
> Perhaps, but that difference is not given in the U.N. definition.
Yes, it is. The UN's 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines it explicitly with intent in mind:
"... genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group..."
> Perhaps, but that difference is not given in the U.N. definition.
Of course it is! The definition explicitly says "any of the following acts committed with the intent to [...]".
One more thing that the definition says that I hadn't even noticed and that significantly simplifies my examples, and immediately makes your example clearly NOT genocide, is that point (d) talks about imposing reproductive restrictions, which offering free condoms will never do.
> All of this goes far beyond the original definition and is quite ad hoc.
Yes, I was going beyond the strict definition of genocide and exploring similar concepts. The idea of defining what "ethnic groups" etc. means by historical precedent is probably the exact intent of the UN definition, though.
> And that is too how laws work. I find that in practice the written text of the law is largely irrelevant vis à vis the gut feeling of whatever man vested with the power to interpret the law and I believe that not much would change in practice if entire law books were simply replaced with “The judge may do as he will and punish what he finds immoral on a case by case basis.”
This is completely wrong for 99% of law, and might be slightly true for a few aspects of criminal law. In 99% of cases, the judge is ruling entirely on the law, there is no moral cause to be explored.
You continue to conflate "handing out condoms" with forced sterilization. The two are not the same thing.
If you permanently and compulsorily sterilized everyone in Frisia, yes, that'd be a genocide. Giving them condoms they can voluntarily and reversibly use is not.
In some extreme cases, it may turn out that a country is attempting to reduce a particular population by providing what appears as benefits. Probably free condoms are far too voluntary and ineffectual to come even close, but still - if anyone attempted it with the distinct intent of reducing some specific population, it could be somewhere in the neighborhood of ethnic cleansing.
I'm simply saying that by the U.N.'s definition of “genocide”, handing out condoms can be construed as such, and that the definition is therefore not worth much, or rather, that following it's definition, genocide is not problematic per sē, as it does not necessarily involve the involuntary taking of human life.
In general, actions done to children by their parents (or with their parents' expressed, unequivocal consent) are not considered "forced" except in cases where the harm is large. So, male circumcision or teeth corrections or vaccinations are not "forced" on the children, because they are acts that their parents consider are beneficial to the child.
However, if the state were to force children to be circumcised or have their teeth aligned regardless of their parents' desires, then most people would object to that.
Even more importantly, any actions which affect someone's ability to use their body in a normal way are generally considered abhorrent. That is why male circumcision is usually tolerated, while female circumcision is an abomination, even if done by one's parents. Forced sterilization is obviously in the second case, since it is terminally preventing someone from performing one of the 3 fundamental components of life.
Obviously so is forced foreskin removal and forced tooth correction, so I fail to see that point.
> In general, actions done to children by their parents (or with their parents' expressed, unequivocal consent) are not considered "forced" except in cases where the harm is large. So, male circumcision or teeth corrections or vaccinations are not "forced" on the children, because they are acts that their parents consider are beneficial to the child.
I see, so it would be fine of the parents were the ones forcibly sterilizing them rather than the government.
I find that absurd: I for one am in favor of government-mandated vaccinations and find this to be a very desirable thing opposed to letting parents be the ones to decide.
> However, if the state were to force children to be circumcised or have their teeth aligned regardless of their parents' desires, then most people would object to that.
Yes, which I find absurd.
It matters not to the man whose body was irreparably altered whence the order to do so came — it's a rather shallow comfort to then be told that it was fine because it was the will of one's parents rather than the government's.
> Even more importantly, any actions which affect someone's ability to use their body in a normal way are generally considered abhorrent. That is why male circumcision is usually tolerated, while female circumcision is an abomination, even if done by one's parents. Forced sterilization is obviously in the second case, since it is terminally preventing someone from performing one of the 3 fundamental components of life.
Yes, you call it fundamental which goes right back to that it only holders water if one considers reproduction a higher goal that all must aspire to.
And with “all”, one can argue roughly half of all; I've noticed that he moral queasiness of sterilization of the male seems to be quite a bit lower than with sterilization of the female — as if that not be rooted in some belief that a female's primary function is to be a reproductive engine: close your eyes and think of England.
> Yes, you call it fundamental which goes right back to that it only holders water if one considers reproduction a higher goal that all must aspire to.
Reproduction is a fundamental function of your organism, whether you chose to use it or not (for example, I am not going to reproduce). Any entity forcefully removing your body's ability to perform any of its fundamental functions is obviously abhorrent. If the state were seeking to remove your ability to see or your ability to consume food or excrete it, would you find that a matter of definitions?
By contrast, male circumcision and teeth straitghening are essentially cosmetic differences. Male circumcision is more problematic (and it is certainly not considered anywhere close to normal in most of the world), but even there the harm is minimal - being able to cover one's glans with one's foreskin is not a significant ability that anyone could claim has a significant effect on their life (of course, the risks of complications associated with the procedure itself are a different matter).
> I've noticed that he moral queasiness of sterilization of the male seems to be quite a bit lower than with sterilization of the female
I have no idea where you have seen this. I haven't even seen the sex or gender of the person being potentially sterilized discussed at all in any discussion of the horror of forced sterilization. Certainly nowhere in this thread or even the deleted tweet.
Overall, you seem to want to either make some kind of eugenic argument for forced sterilization (which I consider so abhorrent it's not even worth arguing against), OR some kind of strange more-liberal-than-thou argument that reproduction shouldn't be given some special place (which no one is, it's just that reproduction is the ONLY function of the body that anyone seems to think it might be ok to take from you for some strange reason - it isn't, anymore than gouging your eyes or removing your inner ear would be).
> Reproduction is a fundamental function of your organism, whether you chose to use it or not (for example, I am not going to reproduce). Any entity forcefully removing your body's ability to perform any of its fundamental functions is obviously abhorrent. If the state were seeking to remove your ability to see or your ability to consume food or excrete it, would you find that a matter of definitions?
And what test or criteria might you use to decide what is and isn't a “fundamental function of one's organism”?
> By contrast, male circumcision and teeth straitghening are essentially cosmetic differences.
It is not so much the result of both that I find problematic as the painful methodology by which they are achieved.
Cutting up a man sans any anæsthesia, sewing him back up, and leaving him otherwise alive but with a scar is also merely cosmetic; it was, however, rather painful for him.
> I have no idea where you have seen this. I haven't even seen the sex or gender of the person being potentially sterilized discussed at all in any discussion of the horror of forced sterilization. Certainly nowhere in this thread or even the deleted tweet.
It has been well discussed and noted that physicians seem to be far more willing to perform elective sterilizations on males than on females and find some kind of greater moral fault with the latter than the former.
> it isn't, anymore than gouging your eyes or removing your inner ear would be).
And I would submit that most, if not nigh all human beings when given the dilemma of either surrendering their reproductive capacity or an eye, would surely pick the former.
It's telling that human beings willingly surrender their reproductive capacity all the time, but I have seldom heard of a man who decided to have a healthy eye removed simply because he wanted himself rid of it.
So yes, I consider removing a man's reproductive capacity to be quite trivial and inconsequential compared to removing his eye.
> It is not so much the result of both that I find problematic as the painful methodology by which they are achieved.
Sure, that is something to discuss. In the case of teeth, most parents in most of the world only have their children go through procedures that are likely to be important for their health (even if the child may not like the procedure). Male circumcision is also not something I condone personally, and it is relatively rare in most of the world outside some ethnic/religious groups.
> It has been well discussed and noted that physicians seem to be far more willing to perform elective sterilizations on males than on females and find some kind of greater moral fault with the latter than the former.
We are discussing forced sterilization here in general. When you are talking about male elective sterilization, do you mean vasectomy? Because then, one reason why surgeons may be more willing to go through with it is because it is (at least theoretically) reversible, so it constitutes a smaller decision than surgical female sterilization, which is always definitive.
It is also true that historically doctors have felt far more entitled to make decisions for women's bodies than for men's, so I do expect that this shamefully persists.
> So yes, I consider removing a man's reproductive capacity to be quite trivial and inconsequential compared to removing his eye.
> Which of both would you choose?
This is not about choice - that is the whole point. The population we are talking about is not given any choice - the state is deciding to change the way their body works, against their own interests.
Even more importantly, while taking away someone's reproductive capacity may be a smaller apparent harm than taking away their eyes, it is a much, much worse harm over the long term of the community. Literally destroying the Family as a core part of their community is going to destroy their old age, and it is an explicit attack on their culture.
> It's telling that human beings willingly surrender their reproductive capacity all the time, but I have seldom heard of a man who decided to have a healthy eye removed simply because he wanted himself rid of it.
You will find very, very few human beings permanently surrender their reproductive capacity willingly EXCEPT for those who are essentially finished with it - people with at least one, but likely several children. True, there are likely slightly more people who willingly permanently give up their reproductive capacity than people who have an eye removed, but the reason is also obvious: there is absolutely nothing to gain from having an eye removed, while giving up your reproductive capacity allows you to have unprotected sex without the possibility of expensive, hard to care for children.
> And what test or criteria might you use to decide what is and isn't a “fundamental function of one's organism”?
There are many ways to come up with a definition that will include reproduction but not include crooked teeth or the foreskin. In fact, reproduction is so fundamental that we usually define life as being primarily related to reproduction - that is, any chemical substance that can simply reproduce itself is usually at least a candidate for being considered a form of life (the minimalist definition is just a fixed physical form and reproduction + heredity).
So while many functions of a living organism are more or less "fundamental", reproduction is almost the only one you can't debate away.
Now, if looking strictly at one individual organism, it is true that reproduction becomes much less fundamental, so I am assuming that this is the angle you are thinking from. But I don't think this is the right way of looking at it when considering whether a medical procedure could be justly forced on an entire population.
Reading through all of these twitter issues lately I still scratch my head how we got to a place where a medium like Twitter, which I've always found to favour the trite and flippant, has become some sort of semi-official mouthpiece for governments and politicians.
I think one man's flaw might be another man's feature in this case:
> The following extract shows how a messaging client's text entry could be arbitrarily restricted to a fixed number of characters, thus forcing any conversation through this medium to be terse and discouraging intelligent discourse.
<label>What are you doing? <input name=status maxlength=140></label>
This is the main reason. Twenty years ago it was very hard to get your message as Government out there to the people, with media being the only conduit to do so, of course with their own agenda. Now if you want to communicate a point, or refute something, you can hop on Twitter and sort it out.
But if people are only reading on social media, then they will only see it when someone else posts it there (e.g. a newspaper). Or I’ll read it from a newspaper and it’s still filtered through someone’s perspective, unless it’s an op ed. To reach people directly, you need people to be regularly checking wherever you post. Probably what GP meant by being able to create the narrative better on social media.
People won't continuously reload a web page that is a political leader's stream of thought?
Something can be a highly currated narrative and be accessible to everyone. Shit, people even have web browsers on their phones and computers these days. Social media in general, and Twitter in particular, does not encourage the creation of highly currated narratives.
We should probably invent a publish-subscribe distributed protocol for this, maybe some kind of Really Simple Syndication.
You can use the word “should” all you want, but the fact is that Twitter is where most people are today. And when you’re trying to your message out, that matters.
This is what makes me roll my eyes at anyone who says getting kicked of Twitter is being “silenced”. Make a web page and you have broader and more direct reach than almost anyone on Earth 20 years ago.
Exactly. That was kind of like telling a content creator to build a web site and post videos there after getting kicked off YouTube. Sure, only a fraction of their fanbase will start using their site to consume their content, but hey, at least they have a broader reach than almost anyone on Earth had 20 years ago.
My point is that while it may suck, it’s not the violation of human rights that some people treat it as. So I understand if someone kicked off YouTube complains about it but I’m not going to entertain the idea they’ve been silenced.
Twitter (and Facebook) might have problems and ill effects on large numbers of people, but they are a reliable way of getting a message out to a group of people--in the case of Twitter, to anyone (even if you don't have a Twitter account, you can visit https://twitter.com/AccountName for updates).
Could the government have built such a system by commission for the public good (after all it was directly involved in the Internet, the substrate thereof), or is this something that was only able to coalesce with private capital, markets, and profit motive?
Don't take anything said on Twitter at face value, and repeat this to anyone repeating anything said on Twitter (including websites that might include Tweets). Hopefully they will, at some point, get the memo ?
Yes, journalists are one of the the most important people that should get this memo. I've been telling them this at any opportunity for years now. Funnily, Trump getting banned hurts my case.
Journalists go where there is the news. These days, the news is on Twitter, and that is the real problem.
Actually, the problem isn't Twitter per se, is that we've found out it's easier to digest (and regurgigate, and fabricate upon) 140 characters at a time. Twitter has inadvertently found an incredible exploit and vulnerability of the human mind, and now it's out there and we're fucked, excuse the French.
Even if Twitter were to die tomorrow, my conjecture is that most of the news and media will move to some other form of short-and-easy-and-dumb social network. 140 characters is what the TV was to the radio.
The news are still in the "real world", but I guess it's much more expensive to do journalism there… (thankfully, investigative journalism isn't dead yet)
The comparison with radio => TV breaks down when you realize that TV is a medium much richer in information than both 140/280-character text and radio. (Of course Twitter is not just text these days.)
But anyway, I'm much more concerned about not so much journalists themselves, but rather about those people that are still trying to have discussions on Twitter. Starting with politicians, for obvious reasons.
Twitter has become a place for extremism. Once politicians figured out that they can say anything they want on Twitter, and that their supporters or sock puppets will spread it around like it's the best thing ever, it encourages extremism.
People talk about free speech, but free speech has never meant freedom from moderators. Twitter is well within their rights to place limits on allowable content, just as there are limits to allowable content on HN.
The Chinese embassy is well within their rights to make these comments on their own website.
This is exactly why WordPress became so popular. You own and control your own content.
When you choose to create or consume content on a 3rd party platform, you’re agreeing to their terms and conditions, which often includes some scenarios where they can block or censor your content or access. Complaining about that after the fact is pretty silly.
The “I’m leaving X and moving to Y” is a temporary solution. Substack, Parler, Spotify, etc. aren’t any better in the long run, they’re just newer and offer a temporary reprieve. You’ve still hitched yourself to a wagon and are along for the ride. Maybe that ride is better for you, but don’t think for a minute that you’re in the driver’s seat.
You’re not truly free until you own the distribution network. Or an owner-less blockchain publishing network might eventually work as well.
So is .org still managed by PIR? Is there a list of domains they suspended because its content (or its user's purpose) was in conflict with their rules?
Not just twitter. I feel the fact that social networks keep recommending interests to the users (groups of shared interests or profiles of shared interest) will by definition lead to recommending more and more extreme content, further pushing the divide. Make no mistake, what's happening now in the US is not only the fault of Trump as the leftist narrative is pushing, it's both extremes feeding off of each other. They keep blaming each other without anyone willing to step back and try to reach a common ground.
Isn't twitter banned in china? I think it would be fair that since chinese "peasants" can't use it then the chinese "elite", companies, and government should not be able to either. I for one would support twitter banning them, let them taste their own medicine.
Twitter isn't "banned" in China in the way Westerners conventionally understand the term. Twitter IPs are blocked as a matter of policy by the GFW. Various institutions inside of China have the IP exception rules like universities and government offices. If you have an officially sanctioned reason to use Twitter like buying ads on there for Western export products, you can apply for an official VPN that gives you legal access to Twitter. Twitter has a sales office in Beijing that helps with stuff like this.
Selling unsanctioned VPN services is a crime in China but using an unsanctioned VPN is in a legal gray area but largely tolerated so long as you don't draw attention to yourself. Twitter itself has estimated that it had 10M MAU inside of China as of 2016.
People here complaint about moderation is being moderated here, and they are OK with it. OK meaning they are not actively pushing back on such moderations.
This seems to be an overreaction, particularly when you have the option not to use it. Just like the majority (of Americans) choose not to use other "free speech" platforms in part because of the disinformation, propaganda, and bots roam free.
Twitter, Facebook, etc cover a majority of Americans. These social media platforms have a significant effect on the beliefs and values of their users. Divisive, outraging content drives engagement. This leads to the curation of echo chambers that work to continually galvanize and outrage users.
I have made the choice not to use social media, but a large majority of Americans do. Since we live in a democracy, this gives companies like Twitter and Facebook a non-trivial amount of control over elections and legislation.
I don't think this can be ignored with the quip "just don't use the platforms". These platforms have the ability to form public opinion, and that is a problem for democracy that we as a society need to solve.
> I have made the choice not to use social media, but a large majority of Americans do. Since we live in a democracy, this gives companies like Twitter and Facebook a non-trivial amount of control over elections and legislation.
I think this ascribes a lack of self-determinism that I see in a lot of these arguments. We (the people) give Twitter and Facebook that control. If they have violated the norms we (the people) have set in such a way that we want to take that power back, we can. This seems self-evident since you are a non-user.
Your argument, perhaps taken to an extreme, is "The majority of Americans have 'voted' to let Twitter decide their votes, therefore the control Twitter has over our democracy is valid".
I don't accept that argument. I think most people who are active on social media are not aware of the effects it has on them. Social media is designed to sink its claws into your brain in an addictive way.
Allowing Twitter free reign crosses the line between Democracy and Mob Rule. To protect our democracy, we need to protect the ability of people to think for themselves.
> I think most people who are active on social media are not aware of the effects it has on them. Social media is designed to sink its claws into your brain in an addictive way.
This is not true. Most are aware at this point that social media is not healthy and is addictive. Saying they don't is the equivalent of saying you didn't know smoking was bad in the 90s.
> To protect our democracy, we need to protect the ability of people to think for themselves.
I think your comment is weirdly contradictory because yes, I agree we should protect the ability for people to think and choose their media consumption for themselves. Don't like twitter's moderation decisions? Leave it.
I don't disagree with your arguments. I do disagree with having Twitter, a monopoly, compared to Pravda, a state-sponsored communication channel. Ignoring practical feasibility, I suspect if you tried starting a platform that disagreed with Pravda, you'd risk your life. I don't think starting a competitive platform to Twitter will put you at a higher chance of being arrested, kidnapped, or killed by the US government.
I think there are fairer comparisons to be made, but Pravda is in my opinion not one of them.
The power of these corporations is a big issue, but the deletion of obvious misinformation and fake news such as the tweet in question here is clearly in the public interest. If anything, future regulation of social media platforms would likely include provisions that force the social media platforms to delete misleading content like this tweet.
How does this argument go? Pravda was not "the ministry of truth" because soviet citizens had the option to not write in it (or read it)? I really do not understand what you want to say.
I'm impressed people keep making the "option not to use it" argument. Our lines of communication are monopolized. "Just don't use Facebook/Twitter/Amazon" is an irrelevant argument since there are no alternatives.
You can absolutely love comfortably and normally in the US without Facebook or Twitter. It's more challenging to avoid Amazon entirely, but you can easily avoid supporting them directly.
I understand the practical difficulty of another platform being created and being successful, and thus the general recommendation of "not using the platform" is futile.
However, this is a comment thread of OP comparing Pravda to Twitter. You are not at a higher risk of death by the government for trying to start a competitive platform to Twitter.
Is removing harmful content becoming ministry of truth? Not like some content wasn’t removed already (child porn, terrorist content etc). Things that society have deemed harmful and illegal. So a line has already been drawn. So is the concern just about where that line should be? Surely the argument isn’t there should be no line right?
Now, I grant you that many people around the world for whatever reason, take their positions too far and outright sew deception, violent hate, fraud, etc. So it’s very complicated. But given the importance and breadth, I don’t think we should allow these companies to set agendas: “Thou shalt not have a conversation over this and that.”
Conspiracies may have negative impact, but people should be allowed to discuss them because as history has uncovered some conspiracies were in retrospect reality.
The problem with no moderation and NOT deleting obvious misinformation and fake news is that social media platforms would then be overrun by bot accounts. Because of the strong capabilities of automation on the Internet, protecting free speech on the Internet does not have a clear solution. What is clear is that deleting obvious misinformation such as this tweet is in the public interest.
Forced birth quota have already prevented 400mm births over it's cause [1]. How many lives that actually translate into is outside of my knowledge scope.
Chinese government should receive much bigger and larger scale criticisms. To prevent them applying the policy to other ethnicity groups.
But given the geographical situation, I doubt anyone is going to seriously challenge China. No one did that when China was weaker and more cooperative, no one can do that when China becomes strong and assertive.
"Study shows that in the process of eradicating extremism, the minds of Uygur women in Xinjiang were emancipated and gender equality and reproductive health were promoted, making them no longer baby-making machines. They are more confident and independent."
Seems like we’re removing lanes from the “information highway.” A once optimistic future to waste. Like radio and tv. Less participation is better now; as in the famous statement of an “excess of democracy.”
I am astonished by how many people claim that China has forcibly steralised women. It might very well be, but I have not seen any evidence yet.
Don't we learn anything from our past mistakes? Still waiting for anyone to find mass destruction weapons in Iran.
Standing up for human rights is great, but there is a fine line between being a good activist and being ignorant, uninformed and imperialist. A private US company cannot decide for the rest of the world if China has violated humans rights if there is no evidence for it.
> I am astonished by how many people claim that China has forcibly steralised women. It might very well be, but I have not seen any evidence yet.
While yes, it's true it's very difficult to get solid data out of remote and tightly-locked-down regions of totalitarian states...
Let's be honest: if you wanted to Tweet something that convinced the world you were sterilizing Uighurs, this is what you would Tweet. "Pay no attention to that marked change in birth rate, that's just because our women are so happy now!" Yikes.
If I was an evil authoritarian leader secretly steralising women then I'd not tweet anything and tell all my other minions to not tweet anything that would raise questions.
But irrespective of what I would do myself, this tweet does neither prove for or against such actions and therefore it's not Twitter's role to silence it. Let our governments and independent investigative journalists do their work and give us a counter view if they disagree with that tweet. There was no need for Twitter to get involved. I think they did that to balance their editorial decision on Trump and to please both, the democratic party as well as the republican because social media companies fear that new legislation could harm them and so they try to appeal to everyone now.
Twitter spokesman on the same tweet Thursday 7: "This Tweet is not in violation of our policies", after being asked about it by an Ars Technica journalist.
Honestly I don't think Twitter's removal of the Xinjiang tweet had anything to do with foreign policy at all, it just made feminism look bad, which does actually crush birth rates (even if that's not what happened in Xinjiang). Right-wing Twitter was exploiting the CCP tweet for this alone.
From his other tweets it looks like a call to action to me, although he has clarified that it's not a call for a massacre. This tweet seems to sum it up:
Twitter sits at the very top of a stack of technologies. Clearly the internet providers shouldn’t ban specific content, AWS should not either. Since Twitter is the most user facing, does that give it more responsibility to regulate the actual content on its platform? If not Twitter, who (if anyone) has the right to regulate content on the internet?
There could be an intermediary status between hoster and editor : a "displayer" would not be liable for what its users do. It would (unlike a hoster) be liable for the moderating choices that he decides to do.
There might be additional requirements to benefit from the hosting status : of size, power, economic model, &c.
Twitter censoring content is only a problem because they have a near monopoly in their domain and present themselves as a platform for everybody. There's no national discussion about HN moderation because it's a much smaller website with relatively few users.
Just in general, if Twitter really believes their platform has the power to induce violence and alter elections, then why are we allowing a small number of unelected Twitter execs complete control to determine how that power is used?
Jack Dorsey's vote shouldn't be worth orders of magnitude more than yours and mine just because he's the CEO of a communications platform.
This book inspired many eugenics programs that took place in the 20th century, including the ones in Nazi Germany.
Who wrote this? No other than the founding president of Stanford University, David Starr Jordan. From California.
You would expect Americans at the time to be horrified by this book? Not precisely. He received honorary degrees by multiple American universities, and he has a plethora of things named in his honor.
And we could be talking about this all day. The US is also responsible for the mass sterilization of Latinas, with a special emphasis in Puerto Rico. By 1965, 34% of Puerto Rican women aged 20–49 had been sterilized.
Neither in the article nor the comments: Twitter previously issued a statement saying that this did not violate their policy. Twitter also justified allowing the calls for genocide by the Ayatollah on their platform.
I can't understand why this newspaper would make such an outrageous claim and cite tweets which very clearly disprove the point just made. Am I missing something, or does the Ayatollah not call for genocide in those tweets?
To those downvoting, I urge you to read the tweets linked. If I am wrong, simply quote the portion of these tweets which specifically makes a call for genocide and I will be delighted to be proven wrong.
"What does elimination of Israel mean in the viewpoint of Imam Khomeini?"
"The only means of bringing Israeli crimes to an end is the elimination of this *regime*. And of course the elimination of Israel *does not mean the massacre* of the Jewish people in this region. The Islamic Republic proposed a practical & logical mechanism for this to international communities."
I have a hard time understanding why so many people equate Israel with Israelis. Many people are opposing the Chinese government. Do you also equate their calls to end China's government with a call to genocide against all Chinese?
A tweet that has not been deleted since being posted in February 2019;
>"Down with USA" means down with @realDonaldTrump , @AmbJohnBolton and @SecPompeo . It means death to the American politicians currently in power. It means death to the few people running that country; we have nothing against the American nation.
Earlier Twitter labeled Trump’s more questionable tweets, instead of outright deleting them.
I wonder if Twitter could do the same here.
Although I disagree with this tweet of China embassy, I want it to be shown to the world for others to judge. If nothing else, we can learn how frequently the China embassy tweets questionably.
It would seem that Twitter is fearful of the CCP, and simply removed the tweet rather than engage with the CCP in a more confrontational way like labeling their tweets.
The tweet might be disagreeable, but it is still an important statement from a foreign Government. Twitter has no right to be 'Ministry of Information'.
The problem is that there's no middleground. Either you don't
play the "ministry of information" role and have to live with
the fact that eventually your platform will turn into a more
chaotic 4chan, or you start removing particularly excessive
content at which point you crossed the only line that can be
clearly defined.
This is one of the reasons I think old-school forums are
superior in terms of "web hygiene". You have a group of
moderators, each responsible for a clearly defined section and a
userbase small enough so rules are still enforceable. And the
people running it are not an untouchable megacorporation.
Since this tweet comes from the chinese embassy of the USA, it seems to me that this is diplomatic matters and should be handled by the government. For example the USA government could apply diplomatic sanctions to the embassy if they do not delete the tweet. I find it very strange that the twitter moderation team is acting in stead of the foreign affairs department.
If we're going to treat Twitter like a public utility, let's just nationalize it and get rid of the oligopoly. Although I'd rather have it broken apart into a bunch of federated websites with a hard requirement to never break federation (GTalk/XMPP style) with the rest of the open web.
This seems backward. The government has no business censoring the Chinese embassy. However, the embassy has no particular right to force platforms to disseminate its propaganda.
Honestly, this sort of action just seems like a return to the status quo; you can say what you want, and people who read a lot of embassy press releases might see it, but good luck finding a newspaper who’ll cooperate if it’s abhorrent stuff like this.
Terrible analogy, newspapers and stations have limited space for what they cover and it's an editorial decision to choose to run something over something else.
Twitter could just let the tweet exist for people who personally choose to follow the Chinese US embassy at no cost to other tweets. I mean, it's from a national government's embassy, their angle is not hidden at all.
Now they open themselves up to all sorts of questions, are they softer on the Saudis? On Israel?
It's more effort to ban a post than to just leave it up.
Getting into picking and choosing which foreign governments are allowed to post, and which messages they'll countenance, at additional expenses for their mod team? Twitter has a foreign policy?
If it's diplomatic matters they should have used the usual
diplomatic channels. They instead posted it on a privately owned
platform they themselves banned in their own country.
Twitter has to obey the law, other than that they don't owe that
embassy anything.
Twitter has the right (and, really, an ethical obligation) to deter the spread of misinformation by malicious actors. This tweet implicitly makes the false claim that mass sterilization in Xinjiang is voluntary, and its deletion will mitigate the impact of the misinformation and fake news.
> it seems to me that this is diplomatic matters and should be handled by the government
You'd obviously see similar arguments about keeping Trump's account. What if the leader of a country calls for violence? Keep it because diplomacy?
As someone else mentioned and I now agree with, Twitter isn't an arm of the government. It's a U.S. company that has rules. Government officials can use any platform they want to get their message out. Companies can mostly do whatever they want with their own platforms.
I didn't write it very clearly, I guess "unmoderated" would have
been a more fitting term. Especially as my main point was about
the need of moderators so the community doesn't turn into a
toxic pit.
The enitity that tweeted this statement forecibly sterlized women and is presenting the results as "emancipation". This isn't disagreeable, its monsterous and diabolical. The same limits that apply to serial killers presenting their handiwork on twitter apply here as well.
I'm inclined to agree across the spectrum. However, I imagine Twitter wants to present an image of balanced moderation after recent domestic censorship.
If that's true, then is it not better the tweet stays up and is challenged?
In this case the fact the tweet was taken down made headlines, but if censorship like this is becoming the norm, as it looks like it is, then these issues potentially get no exposure or discussion.
> If that's true, then is it not better the tweet stays up and is challenged?
I used to agree with this line of thinking, but I believe the past dozen years or so of the information age have made it abundantly clear that simply having the truth on your side and making a rational case for it is not even remotely sufficient to counter the spread of misinformation.
Honestly, I'm not sure that free speech as a concept will be able to survive the information age. It seems as though any society holding it sacrosanct might be doomed to collapse from divisive pressure both internal and external. I hope I'm wrong about that, but only time will tell, and interesting[0] times they will be.
[0] In the apocryphal chinese curse sense of the word, if that wasn't obvious.
> I hope I'm wrong about [society being doomed to collapse because of free speech]
I'm confused, then why did you say this?
> I used to agree with this line of thinking
Unless I'm misinterpreting this, you seem "not to longer agree" with the merits of free speech. If so, then why do you hope to be wrong about it eventually disappearing?
> the past dozen years or so of the information age have made it abundantly clear that simply having the truth on your side and making a rational case for it is not even remotely sufficient to counter the spread of misinformation.
Even if I agreed with this—which I don't—the answer to this hypothetical reality is definitely not to start removing actual information.[1]
For instance, having tweets like that exist would be good counterevidence to all to apologia of certain bad actors that goes around, even here in HN.
> Honestly, I'm not sure that free speech as a concept will be able to survive the information age
Usually the first ones silenced are the ones promoting censorship. That's what I'd usually say anyway, but it is pointless; I would be silenced eventually too and I don't want to be silenced, even if it happens to me after it does to the ones who are "inadvertently" asking to be silenced.
> It seems as though any society holding it sacrosanct might be doomed to collapse from divisive pressure both internal and external.
Do you have historical evidence to back up this claim?
All in all, my hope is that we find easier, better ways for people to fact check, instead of removing data wholesale. Language is the basis of civilization, so restricting communication is not the way to go. Improving it is the way to move forward; it has always been so, I think.
[1]: And to note, I'm not saying that what was said in that tweeted article wasn't an awful lie. The information is not the content, the information is the fact that it was said at all.
> Unless I'm misinterpreting this, you seem "not to longer agree" with the merits of free speech. If so, then why do you hope to be wrong about it eventually disappearing?
I still believe in the merits of free speech as regards reasoned good-faith open debate and communication, what has changed is that it is now clear to me that bad-faith propaganda without regard for reason cannot be countered by reason, and that such communication is in fact significantly dangerous.
> Even if I agreed with this [that misinformation can't be countered with reason] —which I don't— the answer to this hypothetical reality is definitely not to start removing actual information.
If recent events haven't convinced you, I honestly don't know what will. I don't see any way around having to remove the underlying (mis)information in order to prevent its spread. Events have shown that merely tagging misinforamtion as such is not effective, and that's without getting into an argument about who gets to judge what is and isn't misinformation.
> Do you have historical evidence to back up this claim?
You mean aside from the increasingly violent divisiveness of politics in the past dozen years? Not really. I'm not intending to prove it exhaustively in my post so much as to say that it seems like it might be the case. I welcome evidence to the contrary.
> All in all, my hope is that we find easier, better ways for people to fact check, instead of removing data wholesale.
People have many methods to fact check right now, but it has been shown that people prefer to ignore information that runs counter to what they want to be true. People can be lead to water but can't be made to drink, it seems. Indeed, the information age has made fact checking more accessible than it has ever been in history, yet we have seen recently that people will attempt to overthrow the government based on outright fabrication and even call for the hanging of an otherwise politically aligned individual for disagreeing with them.
> I still believe in the merits of free speech as regards reasoned good-faith open debate [...] such communication is in fact significantly dangerous.
These two sentences cannot be true at the same time; one is either in favor of free communication or one isn't. There are many ways to name the idea of "I'm okay with speech as long as I deem it to be in good faith/not dangerous", but free speech is not one of them.
It's the entire point: "I might hate what you say, but I'll defend your right to say it."
> If recent events haven't convinced you, I honestly don't know what will.
Why would anything convince me of the idea that something I deem to be the basis of progress in civilization, is actually not so?
To give an example: The church had significant power—even over the state in vast swathes of Europe—in the middle ages, and they were pretty censorious. Yet the renaissance still happened, in no small part thanks to the printing press and the huge boost it gave to the sharing of knowledge.
Interestingly, the reformation also happened around that time, and with it brought quite a few religious wars, with both groups making claims that don't sound all that unlike to "the other side is spreading falsehoods and there's no other way to stop them".
Nowadays, catholics and protestants seem to be mostly okay with each other, and I'm sure today's conflicts will eventually become a thing of the past too. But it will not be thanks to censorship.
> that's without getting into an argument about who gets to judge what is and isn't misinformation.
This is an argument against your point, not in favor of it, I think. Who's the arbiter of what's misinformation? Twitter or any of the other gigantic and "evil"[1] corporations?
> You mean aside from the increasingly violent divisiveness of politics in the past dozen years?
Interesting, many claim that misinformation is at fault of that divide. Just as many instead claim that it's siloing, filter bubbles and echo chambers the real culprit.
> I'm not intending to prove it exhaustively in my post so much as to say that it seems like it might be the case. I welcome evidence to the contrary.
But the burden of proof is on the one who affirms, not on the one who denies. Believing something just because it seems like it might be true and because one hasn't looked for counterevidence can be unfalsifiable. To wit, one might just believe it and that's that.
Which is, of course, one's prerogative. Free speech and all that; everyone is free to believe anything.
> People have many methods to fact check right now.[...] Indeed, the information age has made fact checking more accessible than it has ever been in history
Case in point. There might be many ways to fact check and it might be more accessible, but clearly not enough, for whatever reason. For example, in this case, if it were easier and faster, you could have more readily looked for evidence of your "any society holding free speech as sacrosanct is doomed to collapse" claim, I think.
[1]: Well, they're "evil" as long as the discussion is not about free speech but instead about any of the other unethical things they do. When the subject is censorship, many people are in their favor, it seems.
You're missing the main point, our fact-checking has never been so fast and efficient, but the point is people just ignore it (e.g. fake ballots being burned, debunked minutes later and millions still believe it).
What point am I missing exactly? I don't understand how that sentence is apropos.
Sure, fact-checking has never been so "fast or efficient"... But it clearly is still not yet fast or efficient, or perhaps promoted, enough.
But even that aside, I don't understand what's the point I apparently missed. I can only think that the implication is that fact checking already is as good as it'll ever be and, even assuming that that was true (it isn't), then we should just give up on free speech and resign ourselves to censorship? Well, I didn't "miss" that point, I just don't agree.
You're correct, having the truth on your side and making a rational case for it is...
> not even remotely sufficient to counter the spread of misinformation.
However, allowing the tweet to be removed - especially when its consequences are so critical - takes away the only tool we have at our disposal. It may not be enough, but the conclusion we ought to reach from this should be that we need more of it, not less of it.
Worse, it makes the situation murky by placing a veil over the initial communication, because the tweet's effect of having been seen has already occurred. Obfuscating this information after it has already seen the light of day adds to its dark powers and makes disinformation harder to stop.
>the past dozen years or so of the information age have made it abundantly clear that simply having the truth on your side and making a rational case for it is not even remotely sufficient to counter the spread of misinformation.
Hasn't that been the case for all of human history?
It's better because Twitter doesn't want to spread their propaganda even if it's rebutted.
Not to mention the population most affected by this can't challenge it since they're being decimated by forced re-education camps where they are sterilized by the same government that tweeted this
It's a little tone deaf to ask why it being challenged is preferable in light of that isn't it?
-
This is getting so old so quickly in the last few days.
I'll take the flak from people insisting the traction here is totally organic and has nothing to do with current events and that I'm just trying to derail things with "orange man bad":
This wouldn't have made front page as quickly before Trump's suspension. A quick search shows out of the last few months this post already has more points than any other twitter removal post.
At the end of the day Twitter left a President's account along for 4 years through hundreds of violations of their platform, petty insults, vague threats to entire nations, etc.
They finally blinked when that person led to 5 casualties after a mob attacked the Capitol.
-
For the slippery slope to matter, there needs to be a slope.
Twitter has demonstrated their extreme restraint in censoring anything remotely deemed as official.
People can keep forcing this angle of how "dangerous" it is that they're willing to remove only the most egregious instances of rules violations on their private platform but it's just not true.
It's their right that was cemented by the Supreme Court because some lady didn't want to bake cakes for gay people, and the discretion in applying that right is excellent.
You can talk about hypotheticals where they go off the deep end and start censoring everything... but by that logic the US government can go off the deep end and start censoring print media. Nothing is immune from doomsday hypotheticals.
> The enitity that tweeted this statement forecibly sterlized women
Do you have the slightest evidence for this? Census data shows that Uighur population doubled in the past 30 years, because this population hasn't been subjected to the "one child policy" among other things.
This is a war of propaganda, from both side. None is particularly more believable than the other. proceed with caution.
I was interested to learn that this policy only dates back to 2014, rather than being some longtime oppression. I had thought it was more similar to America's relationship with the Native Americans.
> For decades, China had one of the most extensive systems of minority entitlements in the world, with Uighurs and others getting more points on college entrance exams, hiring quotas for government posts and laxer birth control restrictions. Under China’s now-abandoned ‘one child’ policy, the authorities had long encouraged, often forced, contraceptives, sterilization and abortion on Han Chinese. But minorities were allowed two children — three if they came from the countryside.
Anyway, a world where China's tweet is up and this link is the first reply to it strikes me as far better, in discourse and the availability of truth, then a world where I know I'm only allowed to read this article and China cannot defend themselves.
Written by Adrian Zenz. I am sorry but if you really want to convince me/someone something isn't propaganda Adrian Zenz isn't the person to link. He is ultra religious and wrote some questional material before he felt "lead by God" against China, and has had quite a few times were we spread fake news.
I find it weird to denounce one as propaganda but not look into who wrote this. A lot of the anti China sources are based on his or US and/or weapon manufacturers funded sources.
If people don't want 'big tech' to be 'Ministry of Information' stop using them as such? The Chinese government has plenty of channels they could use instead.
The article linked by OP says Twitter did not explain it, but since Trump was banned for violation of the Glorification of Violence guideline, maybe it applies here too.
The irony of that statement is the CCP couldn’t use Twitter in China as they had already blocked it. So, they must already use other channels by choice.
Agreed. With each movement and gyration I feel a metaphorical boa-constrictor wrapping tighter and tighter around our freedoms. I can put myself on both sides of most arguments, while my emotional attachment is to a democratic socialist leaning. The implications for tech determining how, where, what and why to every aspect of our daily lives is deeply concerning. Freedom of speech has always had limits and those limits are essential to democracy. Those limits were deeply debated among legal scholars for decades before decisions were made.
Now I feel we are making quick brash moves in a moment of excitement and drunkin power, with no judicial oversight. In our collective hangovers we will begin to realize the true ramifications of tech companies deciding what is fair speech and fair thought at its inception, way before a movement, momentum or Legal judicial oversight is even possible.
I see people asking this question, let me flip it around: where is the guarantee (implicit or explicit) that in a free society we are owed a channel to broadcast a message?
I think when you set out to become ubiquitous, gobble up competitors in your space and advertise yourself in order to gain more followers to cement your network effects.
It’s like denying someone electricity. Sure we can do without. But society is now set up such that not allowing someone to use electricity is beyond the pale.
Social media has made themselves indispensable and as such they owe access to whomever they’ve extended access to, unless the users violate local laws.
>>I think when you set out to become ubiquitous, gobble up competitors in your space and advertise yourself in order to gain more followers to cement your network effects.
By that logic, MS Windows licenses should be free and Wal-mart should be forced to stay in every location it killed off all the competitors. Maybe home depot and ikea too?
But MS windows isn't free, and box stores close locations. TBH, I find these 'mostly monopolies' a lot more disturbing then social media companies.
If Walmart colluded with all the other major grocery stories to ban anyone who wants to raise their taxes, for example, then I would find that pretty horrifying as well and would advocate for laws to prevent that.
Fortunately, we aren't seeing such actions yet, so we don't really have a large need for such laws. But yes, if such actions happened, then that would be bad and we should make that illegal.
I was hoping to find middle ground in this conversation but if you truly believe the ability to tweet or post on Facebook is indispensable, I’m not sure we will.
It won't let me comment on your longer reply below. I just wanted to say, this:
>>there are more ways to deliver a message than there ever have been in the history of mankind
really resonates with me - its a lot easier now then it ever was with "letters to the editors" or "public access cable" or whatever other medium you pick. Even getting a ham license and taking your message global is easier then before.
It may not be exactly indispensable now, but they want to become such. In that light I think in ten years when they are your bank and whatever else, I think they will be indispensable.
In some parts of the United States being denied utilities can (and does) lead to death as a result of exposure. I don't believe comparing this to deplatforming from the internet is a good faith argument.
> It may not be exactly indispensable now, but they want to become such.
So they're not now, but they want to be, so we need to treat them like they are? That's like saying we should apply monopoly laws to every company in a market because they're trying to grow. When Twitter has a monopoly on the distribution of speech, I'll agree with you. In the meantime, even without social media, there are more ways to deliver a message than there ever have been in the history of mankind.
As has been mentioned over and over the last few days, freedom of speech means you have the right to say it, not the right to broadcast it.
> In that light I think in ten years when they are your bank and whatever else
I say this semi-sarcastically, but when I can't spend my money because I've been deplatformed from twitter, I screwed up more than them.
> In some parts of the United States being denied utilities can (and does) lead to death as a result of exposure. I don't believe comparing this to deplatforming from the internet is a good faith argument.
Without getting into the point of the conversation[1], taking the most extreme interpretation of someone else's words and argue against that would be the no good faith argument in this case, IMO. The HN guidelines encourage to steelman the other person's point and argue against that; you seem to have done the opposite.
In other words, the other person didn't argue that removing access to social media was akin to killing you (like it would be for a few people if they didn't have access to electricity), but that it would be a huge inconvenience (like it would be for most people if they lost access to electricity).
[1]: I'm starting to not see the point in discussing the merits of free speech or what constitutes free speech or censorship. I believe free speech is fundamental, and for that reason it's anyone's prerogative to think otherwise. Getting into that discussion at all is also a bit ironic.
> I think when you set out to become ubiquitous, gobble up competitors in your space and advertise yourself in order to gain more followers to cement your network effects.
You mean, be successful?
> It’s like denying someone electricity.
Like electricity? That's a laughable assertion.
Thankfully you are completely mistaken about what the law is.
Sorry but this is a moot point. The real question to ask is do you think it's a good idea or fair to give equal access to Americans and those in nations with free speech, when we're not allowed or able to say what we want to the people of China?
It's naive if you don't consider boundaries or borders of systems and consequences of if there isn't equal reciprocity between those boundaries - there's a power dynamic imbalance that will occur, e.g. it's not an equal playing field - and so it's fair to prevent them access to your population that allows free speech. It's their decision/action that is preventing their free speech, and if they change their action to allow free speech for their population then they'd be allowed equal access to Americans et al; at the moment foreign bad actors do in fact have easy access to populations with free speech - mostly attempting to craft, influencing international narratives or instigate hate to destabilize society/democracy.
The comment I was responding to seems to have been deleted, so I'm gonna leave this here:
TBH, I don't know and I don't care...
Twitter, FB, and even HN are not government agencies, and it's really getting tiresome to hear people complain they should act like one. I don't even use social media outside of imgur and HN. Its really getting annoying listening to whining about how so and so can't use their favorite echo chamber any more.
What happened to the conservative stronghold position that companies can refuse service as they see fit? Hell, isn't jack a buddhist? Maybe he's just started banning stuff that offends his religious beliefs? (As far as I know, he's still the majority owner of twitter, so he can basically call the shots.)
In short, there is no 'right to be on XXX' (FB, twitter, whatever) and private companies can and will de-platform you for a variety of reasons.
ps - thanks for the link. Sounds more like trying to justify the Uygur persecution then anything else.
You know, starting a reply to someone with the single word (sentence?) 'Lie' is not terribly friendly and may not lead to the constructive discussion we all come here to enjoy.
It's not just you either; I've seen comments with 'False.' strewn around this site and it sounds (to me) equally as cold.
Just a friendly note. You're neither a liar nor is your comment false.
To me, simply saying "False." with a link is not any colder than saying "That is false." or "that is untrue, see this ___", etc..
I admit, I agree that "Lie." was a little on the cold side. I find that when people blurt out something so obviously and verifiably false that they are either being lazy or facetious which also does not "lead to a constructive conversation". Perhaps if I had the ability to downvote it I would have done that and moved on. Not an excuse, just an explanation.
Fair point; I see what you mean. It just seems like all it takes is just a few words, and the tone changes dramatically though the meaning remains the same.
I just see it a lot here and I pay (way too much) attention to the words/phrases people use, and that one bothers me especially for whatever reason.
Probably not. If 'everyone knows' the TOS is merely a conspiracy thrust upon 'us'. Then, it'll cease being enforceable. Respect for the rules is not required. It's merely a courtesy society offers, when the rules are 'fair'.
"laws are merely a conspiracy thrust upon us..." Good luck with that logic in your murder trial... :-P
"copyright is merely a conspiracy thrust upon us", so its perfectly fine to pirate software.
Also, any code I make public will be under terms _I_ find acceptable - what 'everyone knows' really doesn't factor into the equation. You're not entitled to set usage terms for my work.
Oh, and respect for the rules IS required - or you get de-platformed. For examples see half of HN's front page :-P
I understand your point but I'm not sure what the TOS has to do with a murder trial... The parent never said anything about all laws being a conspiracy.
The parent implied the mere fact that 'everyone knows' something is a 'conspiracy' is enough reason for it to 'cease being enforceable'. We have both civil and criminal laws, and I listed examples of both?
edit: actually, I didn't...copyright is a criminal offense too, I think ? "up to 5 years in jail" ?? oh well, my bad.
I think in a democratic society we accept certain structures and laws. If the government declares a group an enemy of the state, then I think it’s fair to comply with that law. Making your own laws is not though.
However, just the other day there was hooplah about GitHub not allowing access from Iran. So it’s like people want to eat their cake and also have it.
I think this is actually a great point because it shows how much grey there is in something you're trying to make black and white.
China is not declared a foreign enemy by law and yet the US government is actively using banning and sanctioning their otherwise legally operating companies. If they're not a foreign enemy, do they not have rights in the US?
This whole thing is only shades of grey. Pretending it is black and white makes an honest conversation about it impossible.
It’s true and in that case unless it breaks US law, these companies should comply with local regulation.
Now that becomes complicated when you deal with authoritarian regimes whose local laws may significantly violate international law (severe human rights violations, etc).
But that’s only half the deal. The other are the one sided onerous and coercive terms applied to foreign/international companies.
There are two main possibilities of why Google almost pulled out completely from China. One was safeguarding IP, the other is that at the time they cared a bit more about their ideals.
Twitter doesn't make their own laws. They have a privately owned
platform and can choose how to manage it to some degree. Just
like a restaurant can kick you out if you don't act responsibly.
It might be different if Twitter had a monopoly on social
networks, but that's not the case.
How can you say that when there are hundreds of confirmed cases of ISIS radicalizing people from the internet ? Why do you have a problem believing that ?
Are there? Was it through Twitter? In all likelihood what you're talking about is some random semi-private forum that's going to fly under the radar anyway. And you have that big, huge number: hundreds, not mere dozens, hundreds! My oh my, that's a scary army right there. How many suicide bombers have the harassment by ISrael of the illegally occupied territories population created?
And with this joke of an army is good enough to kill free speech on the net. That's almost as tragically comical as the floatsam in the Gulf of Tonkin that caused millions of deaths, but it's happening right now.
Instead of policing what Twitter can and can't allow on its website, we should look at the root of the issue: the global public square should not be controlled by a single corporation.
That'd ban everyone. Is there a country that permits fully free speech? Certainly not the US. What about Germany?
So now you are back in the position of making a judgement call about whose laws permit free enough speech. There's no black and white line to draw here.
Difference in free speech between countries is not some linear continuum that gets gradually fuzzier when you get closer to Russia, Saudi Arabia and China. It varies a little, countries have idiosyncrasies, then there is big discontinuity.
Yeah? In Denmark you can be fined for language that is insulting or degrading. Germany bans political parties. In Italy speech against the honor and prestige of the president is forbidden. South Korea strictly limits speech around elections. In Australia there is no constitutional protection of free speech and media (particularly depicting violence) is regularly censored.
Now let's start going through the other countries and tell me how this isn't a spectrum. Where does Malaysia fall on your bright line? Turkey? The Philippines? Iran? Thailand? Belarus? Brazil? Egypt? Eritrea?
I guarantee you that attempting to draw a bright line will absolutely run into fuzzy edges and judgement calls.
> Twitter has no right to be 'Ministry of Information'.
Twitter did not prevent them from stating anything. Twitter employees simply decided they want to have no part in this. Are you saying they should be forced to publish this tweet?
They did not publish the tweet. They provided the tools for the tweet to be published. There is a distinction, as they had no hand in the act of creating the tweet itself.
It is a distinction with no real meaning to me, in this case.
If I was an employee at Twitter working to expand the reach of my platform, and the platform was being used to brag about genocide, then I would feel partly responsible for normalizing that behavior.
Twitter is a private sector business in the US with terms that include reserving the right to remove any content for any reason. They have every right to.
If you don’t agree with it, for moral reasons or otherwise, you’re free to provide your own service.
> The Court rejected that contention, noting that ownership "does not always mean absolute dominion." The court pointed out that the more an owner opens his property up to the public in general, the more his rights are circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who are invited in.
In its conclusion, the Court stated that it was essentially weighing the rights of property owners against the rights of citizens to enjoy freedom of press and religion. The Court noted that the rights of citizens under the Bill of Rights occupy a preferred position. Accordingly, the Court held that the property rights of a private entity are not sufficient to justify the restriction of a community of citizens' fundamental rights and liberties.
That’s a really interesting case and surprisingly relevant to today’s situation. I’ve never seen a good argument for being able to counter a companies ability to decide who to service under today’s laws before. People usually concentrate on the idea that new regulation is required.
I think frequency will be hard to prove right now, but when you have things like this, they are completely justified. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck.:
"Parler, the "free speech" social network, reportedly removed a post by Lin Wood, in which the pro-Trump lawyer threatened violence against Vice President Mike Pence.
"Get the firing squads ready. Pence goes FIRST," wrote Wood, according to Mediate. "
I agree frequency is hard to prove but I think its important. If Twitter has a similar or higher frequency then they would also be guilty of consistently inciting violence as well and any person who is consistent should be trying to get Twitter pull off app stores.
I can easily find tweets that are violent that stay up for weeks after being reported. It feels like Twitter is being held to a different standard than Parler and that is my issue.
>By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods now known or later developed (for clarity, these rights include, for example, curating, transforming, and translating).
The newspapers and TV news stations also won't publish the most offensive statements from foreign leaders (or even local ones) either.
You could possibly argue that things like email or telephones won't censor people, but if foreign governments tried regularly calling us to send propaganda, they'd get blocked.
I agree. I'd rather Twitter ban people then just arbitrarily remove random tweets. It's not like the tweets aren't still out there somewhere. They just have decided they don't want the average person to be able to see them.
A ministry of information would jail and possibly harvest the organs of those sending the information. As far as I know, Twitter has not arrested and harvested the organs of anyone working in the embassy.
That's not completely true. We (society) allow these corporations to exist and make money off of us, so there's a worthwhile discussion to have about what should be done about corporations that don't hold our values.
Better to be hated by everyone than counted among the nazis. You can moderate speech, but the first step is to stop caring about the opinions of the chattering classes such as is found on HN (or on Twitter for that matter.)
Indeed. The Catholic Church successfully moderated speech for centuries for the completely benevolent cause of saving people's souls from the eternity of hell fire which awaited them if they were to fall victim to misinformation
They're not, but they can be ministry of their terms and conditions, which don't allow blatant propaganda posts (regardless of whether it's from a citizen or from a government representative) that claim victims of forced sterilisation are simply emancipating and choosing to have fewer children as an explanation for dropping birth rates.
China is free to publish its nonsense on its own channels. why should Twitter agree to be a propaganda platform for China?
Twitter can't police every post, but if a post gets a million views and is a blatant lie about human rights abuses, it's a bit silly to argue they should let that slide because it's an 'important statement from a foreign government'.
If the NYT tweets about this statement, and attaches the proper context based on generally accepted standards of proper journalism, it wouldn't have been an issue. You can talk about things without being a propaganda piece. Hitler advertising in the NYT in the WW2 shouldn't be accepted. Journalists writing about something Hitler said and putting it in the context (i.e., mentioning the human rights abuses), is fine. Apologies for the obligatory nazi reference but it makes explaining the principe so much easier, even if China isn't as bad.
The obligation to apologize for nazi references in one's rhetoric went out the window the moment actual nazis started getting mainstreamed into politics again.
I can’t wait until Twitter has exactly two users after they have banned and kicked out everyone. Jack Dorsey and Vijaya Gadde can tweet their views to the world about how TWTR thinks we should live our lives.
Not buying chinese products harms chinese producers. It won't make a dent to the billionaire politicians that decide and execute on concentration camps.
Cubans are not faring better because there are sactions that prohibit them from gaining access to basic international services, many of which are free. The pressure has to be applied to the people in charge, to their wealth, to their families abroad, etc. Hitting the guy manufacturing iphones is not an effective or morally reasonable tactic.
The wealth and power of the CCP is directly tied to the success of Chinese business internationally (much like the Cuban Communist regime). Their is no private enterprise in China; the CCP quite literally owns all means of production in China.
I’ll politely refuse your invited to support the CCP (oppressors of the Chinese people) by proxy so as to not upset the people of China - you see how your logic is circular here...?
Newsflash, the entire global west is sub-replacement and mostly has been for decades. South Korea just hit a stunning, absolutely suicidal TFR of 0.85. And it's only going to get worse.
The implications of high global population are also (with tongue planted firmly in cheek) "suicidal."
With the exception of figuring out how to care for elderly with a declining population, there are many advantages to a declining population. Specifically, the planet only has so many natural resources. We can only pollute so much. If we had significantly less people, things like limited resources and pollution wouldn't be that big of a deal.
> If we had significantly less people, things like limited resources and pollution wouldn't be that big of a deal.
The people the world does have vary in resource consumption and pollution by like 50x (Bahrain vs developing African nations).
How we develop, and the technologies we invent to live sustainably, makes a dramatically bigger difference than how many people we have.
And likely, an inverted age pyramid makes it far, far harder to invent these technologies, as our political systems become gerontocracies, science ossifies, and all our resources are pumped into taking care of the ever-growing elderly.
