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Twitter

Twitter Rolls Out Stricter Rules On Abusive Content (apnews.com) 261

Twitter has begun enforcing stricter policies on violent and abusive content like hateful images or symbols, including those attached to user profiles. From a report: The new guidelines, which were first announced one month ago, were put into place Monday. Monitors at the company will weigh hateful imagery in the same way they do graphic violence and adult content. If a user wants to post symbols or images that might be considered hateful, the post must be marked "sensitive media." Other users would then see a warning that would allow them to decide whether to view the post. Twitter is also prohibiting users from abusing or threatening others through their profiles or usernames. While the new guidelines became official on Monday, the social media company continues to work out internal monitoring tools and it is revamping the appeals process for banned or suspended accounts. But the company will also begin accepting reports from users.
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Twitter Rolls Out Stricter Rules On Abusive Content

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    • No it isn't. It is how old platforms die. They get taken over by the long-timers who have grown old and stale and no longer enjoy the medium and they end up repelling newbies, rehashing the arguments they enjoy with each other and telling everyone else, "Asked and answered. RTFM"

      Usenet.
      Wikipedia
      Slashdot
      Latex support boards are even getting that way.

      It doesn't fucking matter whether you implement a moderation system or not. Old-timers with bad attitudes tend to take over unless you have a moderation
  • by Anonymous Coward

    It's hilarious to see how many of the major discussion or social media platforms raised a huge ruckus about the very recent "net neutrality" policy change in the US.

    Yet despite these platforms demanding that "net neutrality" be applied to telecom infrastructure providers, we've seen them act the exact opposite when it comes to the data they control. They're very in favor of showing partiality toward certain political beliefs, for example. They have ever-expanding definitions of "abusive" content that often

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      False equivalency is false.

      Real net neutrality means that packets aren't judged by their content or source/destination, but net neutrality also means that comments don't get deleted/hidden/censored and users don't get banned just for engaging in perfectly reasonable and legal discussion that some thin-skinned mental weaklings on the political left dislike.

      Says the right-wing snowflake. BTW, it's funny how the right-wingers are always going on and on about how businesses shouldn't have to serve gay people if it goes against the belief of the business owner, but if a business determines they don't want toxic, alt-right trolls on their website you guys suddenly do a 180 and baaaah like little babies. The sword cuts both ways, snowflake.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Look, another SJW making false equivalences. The right to free speech is guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. The right to buy a cake - yeah, I don't see it there, anywhere.

        In fact, if you listened to the baker's argument, he has a very good point: he was essentially being contracted to make an artistic statement he disagreed with. Wedding cakes are less about the cake being eaten and more about the art and sculpture of the cake being made. He refused to make an artistic statement he disagreed with.

        If a sculpt

        • by Anonymous Coward

          Exercising my right to free speech to tell you you're a fucking moron who has no idea what they're talking about or what the 1st amendment actually means.

        • by Kierthos ( 225954 ) on Monday December 18, 2017 @11:15AM (#55761591) Homepage

          So, you're wrong. But you probably already knew that.

          In the case of the baker/cake/gay-wedding:

          When you operate a business of public accommodation, that is, a business that is open to the public, you have to operate under certain rules and laws. One of those laws is that you cannot deny service to a person solely based on that person's inclusion in a protected class.

          Now, federally, there are several protected classes. They include, sex, age, nation of origin, and race. (This list is not exhaustive.)

          Now, that means, if you operate a business open to the public, you cannot refuse service to someone simply and solely because they are a woman, or because they are black.

          States can add to the list of federally protected classes, but may not remove anything from that list.

          Colorado, where the bakery/gay-wedding case took place has added sexual orientation to that list.

          Which means that the bakery could not, legally, refuse service to the couple simply because they are gay.

          If the bakery had been booked solid, and could not have produced the wedding cake in the time required, it wouldn't have been a discrimination case.

          If the bakery didn't even offer wedding cakes as one of the services they offered, it wouldn't have been a discrimination case.

          But because they do make wedding cakes, and because the owner made it clear he wasn't selling the couple a wedding cake because they were gay, it was discrimination, and it was illegal under Colorado's laws.

          • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

            by Anonymous Coward

            Creating a work of art is a First Amendment act, and cannot be compelled - even if the artist is otherwise running a business. No public accommodation law overrides the First Amendment rights of the artists that would be creating the cake.

            Notice that in the Masterpiece Cake case, the owner of the store offered to sell the couple an undecorated cake AND the decorations so they could make it themselves. This would have allowed the couple to get their cake and for the artist to avoid being compelled to speak

            • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              In that case any business could make some trivial artistic expression and put up a "no dogs, no n*ggers, no Irish" sign. I'm not an expert on US law, but that doesn't seem right.

              Anyway, it's not about compelling them to make a cake. Criminals can't be compelled to apologise and show remorse, but if they don't the punishment will be harsher. This is punishing unacceptable behaviour.

          • As a music recordist and producer, do you support the government's compelling me (at gunpoint, or under the threat of incarceration or large fine) to record and produce white supremacist music?

          • No disagreement here, but just putting this out there. What has making a cake has anything to do with being gay or not? I wonder if the couple order the cake online, would the baker still have made the cake.
          • Sorry, but one of the most basic premises of our Constitution -- the idea that government must treat all people equally -- is directly contradicted by the concept of a "protected class".

            You can have one, or the other, but not both.
        • The right to free speech is guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.

          Yes. It's why Concepcion Picciotto was able to protest at the White House for 35 years.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

          However, Twitter is a corporation. They have no legal obligation to provide you a platform. If you don't like Twitter's policies you can use an alternate platform or go make your own Twitter.

      • You seem to be mixing up right wing and alt-right.

        alt-right are a populist leftists that got tired of the worst progressive bullshot and yet still don't like the conservatism of the rightwing.

        Conservatives dont care for alt-right populists either. They see both progressives and alt-right populists as two sides of the same mob mentality coin. Both sides of that coin are intersectional identitarians looking to embrace victimhood as a virtue in different ways. They can both rot.

        • You are confusing the alt-right with various other non-right groups, such as neo-Nazis. The press has been doing that on purpose for the last couple of years, and some people who have nothing to do with the alt-right have been trying to pretend that they are for fun and profit.

          Here is the core of alt-right philosophy: What the Alternative Right is [blogspot.com]

          And here [weeklystandard.com] is an article about a writer going to a meeting organized by Richard Spencer. Spencer likes to pretend that he is alt-right, but he supports about 95%

          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            Whose word shall I take on this, noted asshat Vox Day or Wikipedia? Wikipedia says:

            "The alt-right, or alternative right, is a loosely defined group of people with far-right ideologies who reject mainstream conservatism in favor of white nationalism. White supremacist[1] Richard Spencer initially promoted the term in 2010 in reference to a movement centered on white nationalism and did so, according to the Associated Press, to disguise overt racism, white supremacism, neo-fascism and neo-Nazism.[2][3][4] The

            • Not even close. Spencer's "alt-right" is completely separate and distinct from the populist Alt-Right, which is a populist movement started as a consequence of GamerGate and certain other similar occurrences.

              They have nothing at all to do with one another. Completely separate things. The vast majority of "alt right" belongs to the populist group, and they hate Neo-Nazis just as much as anyone else.
      • by Terwin ( 412356 )

        False equivalency is false.

        (...)

        Says the right-wing snowflake. BTW, it's funny how the right-wingers are always going on and on about how businesses shouldn't have to serve gay people if it goes against the belief of the business owner, but if a business determines they don't want toxic, alt-right trolls on their website you guys suddenly do a 180 and baaaah like little babies. The sword cuts both ways, snowflake.

        Just like 'You can buy any cake in the store, or any cake in the catalog, but I am not creating a new 'gay' wedding cake design for you' has been heralded from day one as 'refusing service'

        Most conservatives seem pretty ok with just voicing concerns, but liberals seem to be all about coercion.

    • Real net neutrality means that packets aren't judged by their content or source/destination,

      Correct.

      but net neutrality also means that comments don't get deleted/hidden/censored and users don't get banned just for engaging in perfectly reasonable and legal discussion that some thin-skinned mental weaklings on the political left dislike.

      Incorrect. Network neutrality is all about connecting people to websites. It's like allowing people to use roads to drive to their destination. Once you get to your destination/website then you have gone onto private property. So if you drive to the grocery store and start yelling obscenities at other customers, they can tell you to leave and the police will kindly escort you out the door if you refuse. Further, if the grocery store does not want to let you back in later, they don't have to bec

    • True net neutrality isn't just at the packet level. True net neutrality applies at all layers, including the highest levels where content and user comments, rather than packets, are the main focus. It means not deleting/hiding comments or submissions, and not banning users, just because they express perfectly legal ideas that hurt somebody's feelings.

      That's 100% incorrect. Net neutrality DOES happen at the packet level, with every user on the Internet, whether an individual or a for-profit business, abl
  • oh great (Score:1, Insightful)

    by AndyKron ( 937105 )
    Now it's Twitter's job to be a nanny to the snow flakes to keep them from melting?
    • If Twitter won't take steps, logically the next step would be to require them to keep appropriate records and provide them to law enforcement for investigation.

      And if Twitter was being 'reasonable' (in quotes because it would probably not be in their financial best interests), they would not require a warrant to hand over logs relating to an obviously hateful post.

      But in truth that's a really expensive option compared to just banning enough of the worst bile-spewing idiots from the service to keep their cus

  • And they utterly fail to see the hypocrisy in their actions. Twitter has themselves become like the Nazis. Note how this rule doesn't apply to military or government.

  • I bet they are using the user-marked media to help in training the recognizer for what users don't mark. That would reduce the cost versus only using media marked by their paid army. That makes me wonder whether the better-financed abusers will create bots to flood the system with non-sensitive media marked as sensitive to poison the AI.
  • by amiga3D ( 567632 ) on Monday December 18, 2017 @03:54PM (#55764077)

    I got suspended once on twitter after I got carried away in a flame war and said something I was honestly ashamed of. I took my punishment meekly because I was very much wrong. What bothers me is that since that day I've reported 15 people for crossing that same line and not one of them was ever considered a problem by twitter. I came to the conclusion that twitter judges strictly on political grounds and I'm more convinced every day.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      They are getting better. Britain First was banned today. Trump re-tweeted them recently, but I don't think they will ban him.

      • by amiga3D ( 567632 )

        They're mostly banning bots. I'm glad of that, I had to spend too much time ridding my timeline of them.

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