Twitter loses its free speech

[ivan134]

2 hours ago, zacRupnow said:

Intrusion and censorship are not the same. Not even close.

No, actually this is the same thing. You are implying that a private entity is obliged to you when they are not funded by your tax money and they cant fine or arrest you. What exactly is the difference between a private individual and a private business that isnt even a provider of an essential service? Do you think social media is an essential service?

2 hours ago, zacRupnow said:

Muting a player you find annoying is not censorship.

Not taking your kids to R rated movies is not censorship.

Not watching movies in public is not censorship.

These are examples of you choosing what information you want to see, hear, or know.

 

Censorship is denying everyone from seeing, hearing, or knowing information whether they want it or not.

Examples:

North Korean citizens not allowed to leave the country.

People in Russia blocked from certain websites by the government.

People in Syria are beheaded for not believing in or being skeptical about Muhammad.

Here in the USA when the Patriot Act was passed all the public could know was that it let the government listen in unwarranted on phone calls between convicts and their lawyers (enter Edward Snowden, guess what? That act enables the government to collect almost all forms of communication unwarranted from all US citizens).

That is what censorship is. Ok so those are more extreme examples but something as small as removing words from a book and not allowing the original to be read is censorship too. But it's small stuff like that that paves the way for the extreme, first it's a book, then it's the news, etc.

Okay, in what way is Twitter's action similar to any of these? Every thing you just listed are things done by one form of govt or another. Twitter is not obliged to you or anyone. The person/people who started Twitter or the board of directors are free to set the rules for the business they started. If you dont like the rules, take your business somewhere else.

2 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

I get your example, but it's borderline a straw man here vs what is actually happening on Twitter:

 

1) Anita Sarkeesian herself is part of this new "Trust and Security" council. She's well known to be completely anti free speech going as far as demanding the UN censors the entire internet because people are mean to feminists (And she ways this without irony) She also disables all comments on her videos, calls virtually any criticism to her ideas and videos "harassment" and calls someone who snaps a picture of her on a public place a stalker (Ben did not dox her, did not harass her, did not followed her SHE showed up after he was already there, etc.)

 

2) Twitter has already begun "soft banning" people meaning that they'll remove their verified status without justification vs their own rules (Milo) they also just stop showing someone's tweets because they happen to have the wrong political views (Mercedes Carrera) and finally outright delete accounts just for being a fairly popular Donald Trump supporter 

 

3) There's this little number:

 

 

Straight from their C.E.O. himself: someone who thinks freedom of expression "starts with safety" and appoints people known to shut down any kind of criticism to their ideas as "not safe". That's not freedom of expression: you can't put restrains on speech, only on very extreme cases like people actually calling to commit crimes directly. In which case for example, Twitter has no problem to allow SJW extreme banter like #Killallwhitemen 

 

4) People have already completely lost their accounts for being say, popular supporters of Donald Trump (like  @RWSurferGirl ):

 

http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/02/08/twitters-attempt-to-silence-generation-trump/

 

So you really think this is about 12 year olds being angry, misanthropic sociopaths? No that's what they want to pretend it's about. But pretty much like Gamergate the fact that there's actual harassment of SJWs going on is almost entirely a product of their imagination because they can't handle any criticism and challenge to their (often fairly unfounded and illogical) ideas.

 

 

Sorry, but none of these things constitute censorship or culling of freedom of speech. Twitter is not funded by your tax money and therefore, is not obliged to you.

1 hour ago, Misanthrope said:

Nope, is publicly traded henceforth they are a public company:

 

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=TWTR

 

That doesn't means that they can be made to enforce actual freedom of speech but it does means investors can (and if you look at their free falling stock do) say what goes on and not and vote with their wallet or if it's the board of directors themselves actually vote.

The reason they are doing it is absolutely irrelevant.

[Misanthrope]

I just love how you straw man me implying that I say the government or a regulatory body should intervene (I was never talking about a legal definition of free speech) and then you quote me again where I explicitly state that they can't be made to enforce actual freedom of speech.

 

If you already know my position why do you distort it and misrepresent it ON THE SAME POST no less?

[LukeTim]

I wonder if the people here complaining about twitter's "censorship" would be making the same complaints on seeing, for example, a customer at a restaurant being ejected for verbally abusing and threatening violence on other customers for saying they thought the chowder was nicer than the bisque. Crying that this customer has had his "freedom of speech" (a lot of people need to learn what that actually means) violated, and this is censorship by the restaurant. Or whether they would think "that was an unpleasant fellow, I am glad he was removed." I am inclined to assume the latter.

 

Because essentially that is all I am seeing from this new initiative from Twitter. " To ensure people can continue to express their views on soup freely and safely in The Restaurant" to "To ensure people can continue to express themselves freely and safely on Twitter "

[Master Disaster]

6 hours ago, Windspeed36 said:

There is no such thing as free speech: too many people are butthurt over things or it's against the law because of one thing or another.

Freedom of speech on the internet has never existed. Americans seem to believe their laws extend to websites which is a fallacy, the site owners have the freedom to restrict and censor any content they want without question.

 

The only exceptions to this are news and parody which are written in law as being unrestricted. There's also some exceptions for educational purposes too.

[Misanthrope]

13 minutes ago, LukeTim said:

I wonder if the people here complaining about twitter's "censorship" would be making the same complaints on seeing, for example, a customer at a restaurant being ejected for verbally abusing and threatening violence on other customers for saying they thought the chowder was nicer than the bisque. Crying that this customer has had his "freedom of speech" (a lot of people need to learn what that actually means) violated, and this is censorship by the restaurant. Or whether they would think "that was an unpleasant fellow, I am glad he was removed." I am inclined to assume the latter.

 

Because essentially that is all I am seeing from this new initiative from Twitter. " To ensure people can continue to express their views on soup freely and safely in The Restaurant" to "To ensure people can continue to express themselves freely and safely on Twitter "

Again, this is not what it's going on. The analogy would be that someone is asked to leave a restaurant for saying "I think the wage gap is a gross misrepresentation of data that doesn't looks at important factors like life choices" because a feminist find that offensive and hateful speech.

 

Sure the restaurant has every right to kick you out for it. But then said restaurant claims they're pro free speech, put that same feminists on their trust and security council and then you want us to not comment on it? 

 

Who knows maybe you're not fully aware of how deep the issue goes here but if you follow gamergate you know how Feminists lie and misrepresent legitimate concerns, refutations and counter points and just call you a misogynist, an MRA, or even call your employee to tell him you're a rapist for having a different opinion.

 

Look here if you don't believe me

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

[LukeTim]

4 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Again, this is not what it's going on. The analogy would be that someone is asked to leave a restaurant for saying "I think the wage gap is a gross misrepresentation of data that doesn't looks at important factors like life choices" because a feminist find that offensive and hateful speech.

 

Sure the restaurant has every right to kick you out for it. But then said restaurant claims they're pro free speech, put that same feminists on their trust and security council and then you want us to not comment on it? 

 

Who knows maybe you're not fully aware of how deep the issue goes here but if you follow gamergate you know how Feminists lie and misrepresent legitimate concerns, refutations and counter points and just call you a misogynist, an MRA, or even call your employee to tell him you're a rapist for having a different opinion.

 

Did you read the same press release that I did?

Are you wearing a tin foil hat at the moment by any chance?

 

Is gamergate still remotely relevant? I can't believe how long that non-issue dragged on for.

[Misanthrope]

1 minute ago, LukeTim said:

 

Did you read the same press release that I did?

Are you wearing a tin foil hat at the moment by any chance?

 

Is gamergate still remotely relevant? I can't believe how long that non-issue dragged on for.

Did you read my numerous post on this thread posting actual statements, actual cases, sources, videos, etc? No of course you didn't, it's easier to go to ad hominem than to present an argument to what I've been saying.

 

You'll definitively love this safe, new Twitter. I just hope you don't end up having the wrong politics and get eaten alive, like many do.

[Stadin6]

why cant we all just be nice to each other. maybe we wouldn`t need censorship.  

[MageTank]

Don't worry guys. As always, MageTank has the solution. Here we go:

 

Don't use Twitter.

 

Well, that's settled. Let me know when you need me to solve another problem. MageTank...AWAYYYYY

[Osiris199]

3 hours ago, zacRupnow said:

Muting a player you find annoying is not censorship.

Not taking your kids to R rated movies is not censorship.

Not watching movies in public is not censorship.

These are examples of you choosing what information you want to see, hear, or know.

 

Censorship is denying everyone from seeing, hearing, or knowing information whether they want it or not.

Examples:

North Korean citizens not allowed to leave the country.

People in Russia blocked from certain websites by the government.

People in Syria are beheaded for not believing in or being skeptical about Muhammad.

Here in the USA when the Patriot Act was passed all the public could know was that it let the government listen in unwarranted on phone calls between convicts and their lawyers (enter Edward Snowden, guess what? That act enables the government to collect almost all forms of communication unwarranted from all US citizens).

That is what censorship is. Ok so those are more extreme examples but something as small as removing words from a book and not allowing the original to be read is censorship too. But it's small stuff like that that paves the way for the extreme, first it's a book, then it's the news, etc.

1. I didn't mean muting other players. I meant the content age restrictions, they are a way to censor material which is not appropriate for certain demographics (children and such). There is a reason why porn sites have a warning portal site which "verifies" if you are older than 18.

2. Same as point 1

3. It is censorship if it blocks out a specific genre of media or specific content. People are not allowed to view something if it isn't allowed by lawmakers or other embodiments. Whether the content is illegal or not, you can still qualify it as censorship.

[Notional]

5 minutes ago, LukeTim said:

Did you read the same press release that I did?

Are you wearing a tin foil hat at the moment by any chance?

 

Is gamergate still remotely relevant? I can't believe how long that non-issue dragged on for.

Journalistic objectivity and unbias is a non issue? Are you for real?

 

This twitter announcement is all about pc (censorship), which is being overseen by social marxists.

 

If you don't understand the problem with political correctness, you might want to read up on Stasi and the soviet union in general (or just look at North Korea). You could also read up on George Orwells 1984. A great story, reality has surpassed a long time ago. That's right, people's biggest fears has turned real many years ago. Apparently people are generally too ignorant to even know this happened.

 

Quote

“Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.”
― Edmund Burke

And we are slowly repeating the introduction and implementation of the most oppressive ideologies known to modern times. The problem is that it is happening so slowly and outside of the areas you are in, that you probably don't even notice it. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither are oppressive regimes.

[LukeTim]

8 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Did you read my numerous post on this thread posting actual statements, actual cases, sources, videos, etc? No of course you didn't, it's easier to go to ad hominem than to present an argument to what I've been saying.

 

You'll definitively love this safe, new Twitter. I just hope you don't end up having the wrong politics and get eaten alive, like many do.

 

Actually I did read your nonsense. Again. Did you read the press release? Feminism is never mentioned. It's not in any way directly related to gamergate, feminism or those pesky "SJW"s you hate so much.

 

How conceited do you have to be to believe that this is a deliberate effort by twitter to cut out your opinion and those of people like you?

[MageTank]

5 minutes ago, LukeTim said:

 

Actually I did read your nonsense.

YOU TRYING TO INSULT AN INTERNET MINORITY BY CALLING THEIR VIEWS NONSENSE? YOU WANNA THROW DOWN BRO? 

 

 

Sorry, I binge watched south park recently, and this thread is slowly turning into a PC Principal field day. Carry on.

[Notional]

8 minutes ago, Stadin6 said:

why cant we all just be nice to each other. maybe we wouldn`t need censorship.  

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Many people believe their oppression/pc is a good thing and they are doing it out of good intentions. Marxism and communism was born out of good intensions, but turned out to be the worst and most oppressive regimes in the modern world.

 

Liberalism, freedom and free speech is the only way for everyone to live the life they want. That should always hold priority to "being nice". Something that is impossible when people get offended by everything these days.

2 minutes ago, LukeTim said:

 

Actually I did read your nonsense. Again. Did you read the press release? Feminism is never mentioned. It's not in any way directly related to gamergate, feminism or those pesky "SJW"s you hate so much.

 

How conceited do you have to be to believe that this is a deliberate effort by twitter to cut out your opinion and those of people like you?

Feminist Frequency is literally listed in the censorship team. That is a feminist propaganda channel that was a large part of GamerGate. Doesn't get much more feminist than that. You know things can exist without being mentioned right?

[Misanthrope]

11 minutes ago, Stadin6 said:

why cant we all just be nice to each other. maybe we wouldn`t need censorship.  

Anita Sarskessian of Feminist Frequency is part of the announced council. Does it needs to be mentioned? Her entire career and everything she does revolves around Feminism.

[LukeTim]

Anita Sarkeesian is part the council because she has been probably the most high profile victim of abuse and harassment on twitter. It makes perfect sense for her to be part of such a council, regardless of her status as a feminist.

[Stadin6]

On 2/12/2016 at 8:58 AM, Misanthrope said:

Anita Sarskessian of Feminist Frequency is part of the announced council. Does it needs to be mentioned? Her entire career and everything she does revolves around Feminism.

u fuckin serious m8. How can someone like Anita Sarskessian get the ability to censor people. RIP Thunderf00t and tl:dr at least on twitter.

 

 

On 2/12/2016 at 9:04 AM, LukeTim said:

Anita Sarkeesian is part the council because she has been probably the most high profile victim of abuse and harassment on twitter. It makes perfect sense for her to be part of such a council, regardless of her status as a feminist.

think of all the people that are not actually harassing her, just debunking her lies.

[Notional]

4 minutes ago, LukeTim said:

Anita Sarkeesian is part the council because she has been probably the most high profile victim of abuse and harassment on twitter. It makes perfect sense for her to be part of such a council, regardless of her status as a feminist.

Milo Yiannopolous has easily gotten equal or worse harassment, with sent syringes, dead animals and similar sent to him. Why is he not part of that? Or even more pressing, why did Twitter remove his verified status?

 

Everyone with strong opinions who air them publicly will get "harassed". The most harassed person on the internet right now is called Donald Trump. Maybe he should control twitter! No?

[MageTank]

2 minutes ago, LukeTim said:

Anita Sarkeesian is part the council because she has been probably the most high profile victim of abuse and harassment on twitter. It makes perfect sense for her to be part of such a council, regardless of her status as a feminist.

Aaaaand here lies the problem. "Victim of abuse". You have just opened a can of worms, because there are thousands of people that believe that 90% of this abuse is fabricated, or is self inflicted to get attention. Not to mention you called her a feminist, which will also anger the real feminists that spend their time fighting for equality, rather than complaining about sexist video games. 

 

I am probably a terrible person for saying the following sentence, but here goes nothing.

 

Online bullying is a sham. Someone being mean to you online is not bullying. There are some extreme cases where internet bullying is real (posting very private, intimate pictures of someone, or releasing their physical location alongside death threats) but telling someone they are stupid, or their cause is unjust, does not constitute internet bullying.

 

Now, I know that I myself have also just opened up Pandora's Box, but it's hard to disprove it. A lot of the doxxing done to some of these radical "feminists"(anti-male crusaders) have yet to be proven. Even when federal agents get involved, they find no such occurrence.

 

I genuinely do not care about what twitter does to censor people, because I don't have any social media accounts, nor would I care even if i did. Companies shoot themselves in the foot all the time, and this is no different. The problem with this very specific circumstance is the huge conflict of interest that has been introduced. We have a professional victim, now in a position to determine what is right or wrong on a social media platform. Not just that, but someone with their own agenda to push too, meaning a potential chance to abuse this position. 

 

That's just my unwanted two cents.

[Misanthrope]

14 minutes ago, LukeTim said:

Anita Sarkeesian is part the council because she has been probably the most high profile victim of abuse and harassment on twitter. It makes perfect sense for her to be part of such a council, regardless of her status as a feminist.

Disagreement is not harassment. Regardless of how much she and her supporters and peers want it to be so.  She just finds profit in playing the victim, got her all the way to the UN where she failed to present any evidence of real harassment.

[jasonvp]

6 minutes ago, MageTank said:

I am probably a terrible person for saying the following sentence, but here goes nothing.

You're not a terrible person, but rather one of the few beacons of reality in this entire thread.  This, BTW, coming from an 'older' guy who's been around the Internet longer than web sites have existed.  I'm sure the majority of the folks here on LTT and reading this thread can't possibly fathom an Internet without the World Wide Web overlaid on top of it.  But it did exist for a very long time.

 

And it was wonderful.

 

Usenet, kids.  Look up Usenet.  Learn about what it was, how it worked, and why it was as powerful and successful for so long prior to any web browsers, web servers, or even the HTTP protocol existing.  Why am I bringing up a seemingly ancient and archaic (by today's standards) tech?  Because that was true freedom of speech as defined within the confines of the Internet (not a legal definition!)  No one owned it.  No one guarded it.  No one got to say what did and didn't get posted to the Usenet newsgroups.

 

We weren't "nice" to one another on Usenet.  Sometimes, we were just downright nasty.  In fact, there were whole newsgroups set up specifically for flaming each other: alt.flame being the most popular of them.  But even outside of those newsgroups, people spoke (via writing) what was on their mind without concerning themselves with "being nice" or fitting within any sort of guidelines or standards.

 

Quote

 

I genuinely do not care about what twitter does to censor people, because I don't have any social media accounts, nor would I care even if i did.

 

The only way communication on the Internet will be "free" of oversight like what those twits at Twitter are doing is: stop using their services.  Or never start in the first place (like me... what's Twitter anyway?)  Anyone can stand up a web server and start a discussion forum or playground.  But when that "someone" does that, they instantly become the owner and master of said forum, and they can dictate any speech rules they like.  It's a rare case when that happens and the speech rules are a free-for-all like Usenet used to be.

 

 

[Real_PhillBert]

The way I see it, "Free Speech" (at least in the US) revolves around the First Amendment. So lets take a quick look at that:

Quote

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Ok now lets break it down a bit.

 

Congress shall make no law:

1) respecting an establishment of religion => I'd say that does not really apply in this situation.

2) ...or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; (religion) => Again, not applicable to this situation.

3) ...or abridging the freedom of speech, => this has some potential so we will look at this in a minute.

4) ...or of the press, => again there is some potential since the press do use twitter, so lets look at this too.

5) ...or the right of the people to peaceably to assemble => since this is discussing the physical gathering of people, it doesn't really apply.

6) ...and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances => given that the proper course for petitioning the government does not involve twitter, this does not apply.

 

OK so it looks like 3 and 4 are the only ones that have any potential here, so lets pull those statements out in their entirety.

 

Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.

 

So the question becomes, did congress make a law which violates the above; obviously not. Therefore this is not an abridgment of your freedom of speech. 

 

That may have been the long way around but the point I want to make is that you DO NOT have the right to say whatever you want on someone else's property, be it physical or otherwise. If I invite you into my house and you start talking about how much you would like to have sexual relations with my dog, (really anything I dont like, but I just picked this since I think we can all agree it's not cool) I am well within my legal rights to ask you to GTFO. 

 

Here's the thing, I cant really stop you from saying anything, but I can ask you not to do it on my property. This is what's happening here, twitter is not stopping anyone from saying anything, they just don't want it on their property. 

[Misanthrope]

I don't think anyone used the legal or constitutional sense of the term freedom of speech here. And if they did you just thoroughly refuted them.

 

Can we now get back to talk about what we think Twitter should and shouldn't call free speech with the established fact that they banning people, restricting political opinions, etc. Is perfectly legal?

 

Because we're more interested in their morally reprehensible behavior not changing the subject to legal free speech.

[AlTech]

8 hours ago, Windspeed36 said:

There is no such thing as free speech: too many people are butthurt over things or it's against the law because of one thing or another.

EXCEPT In AMERICA. 

[Real_PhillBert]

19 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

I don't think anyone used the legal or constitutional sense of the term freedom of speech here. And if they did you just thoroughly refuted them.

 

Can we now get back to talk about what we think Twitter should and shouldn't call free speech with the established fact that they banning people, restricting political opinions, etc. Is perfectly legal?

 

Because we're more interested in their morally reprehensible behavior not changing the subject to legal free speech.

The title of the thread includes free speech, therefore it's fair game to make the case that this instance is not a free speech issue.