Milo didn't tell his fans to attack her. In fact she had been tweeting with various other people long beforehand and drawing a lot of ire through her comments.
It sets a terrible precedent as far as what Twitter is willing to take a hard stance on.
It sets a terrible precedent as far as what Twitter is willing to take a hard stance on.
As the general public becomes more online-hate-speech-savvy we're bound to see more and more people adopting that strategy.
Bit late for that, they already did.
Personally I think it would be great if these things could be settled in courts with due process. Harassment is a crime and nothing would please me more than to see some of these harassers serve time.
But what's the other way? Twitter becomes non-neutral arbiter of what is right and wrong? One person's rebel is another's terrorist. One person's mob is another's protest. If Twitter starts to get involved in some censorship, it raises the obvious question from members of why that one thing they don't like wasn't censored. The only viable way for a free platform is all or nothing. Can't half way free speech.
There has never been a successful platform without moderation. Even 4chan moderates. Even 8chan. Without it, you quickly get a cesspool of trolls. And then you have nothing but a cesspool.
If it's bad enough that it's illegal then there are legal procedures to be followed. As little as I generally trust judges, there's at least far more oversight than having some random PR rep make the call in secret.
My point is, no one really believes in absolutism.
There's no reason a judge would need to get in on something like this, especially since Milo likely would be culpable by association under the US justice system, the result ultimately being the same. Personally, I don't like the idea of having to get the government involved in all online transactions - I'd like a place to say what I want where the worst that can happen is I get banned - it's not that I plan to say horrible things, it's that I don't trust when automated systems merge with state/federal law. (see: DMCA and youtube). Systems, even non-computer ones, can be gamed.
The US justice system has pretty much been gamed by this point, and it's a pretty expensive game to play. For someone like Milo, if Breitbart wanted to, they could bankroll him so he could play. For an individual like me? I can't afford to play the game. I don't want it to come to this, where you have to be able to afford participating in discussions online. You don't even have to say anything particularly egregious (or anything at all) to be the target of someone just fucking around with the systems.
I'd rather that the ramification for stuff like this was kept to accounts on websites instead of going to the courts.
I agree with that in a sense, but that's not currently the case. The question isn't public court or private company "court", it's whether there should be a private company "court" in addition to the public ones (which, mind you, can already get involved).
At least there is some degree of transparency and public influence on the public ones.
And I do disagree that the transparency that is given in US courts is even useful. The jury process, for example, has nothing to do with justice and all about how easily influenced an individual juror is. It's a horrible component of the US legal system that should have been abolished a long time ago, or at least reformed. Likewise, Judges frequently will cowtow to personal prejudices or outside influences; even if appeals can eventually resolve the issue, this gets back to being able to afford to play, which is not a good system. Even if the legal costs are awarded at the end of the case, there's still the entire time while the case is being processed, lawyers who may not be willing to participate until that time, etc. It's an unacceptable solution in most cases.
Twitter isn't your town square. They have legally set out T&Cs that specify what you are and aren't allowed to do using their service.
Abuse damages Twitter's reputation so it's totally fair for them to shut it down.
And yet, that's what they want to seem like they are. Until something like this happens...
They want to be as close to being a town square as it's possible for a commercial service to be... but there'll always be differences in behaviour caused by anonymity, and scale.
Perhaps more importantly, if the town square turns into a huge argument, and all the reasonable people go home, the town square doesn't have to explain what happened to its shareholders.
Sure, if you want to set up a non-profit or p2p social network (or contribute to an existing one) then good luck getting widespread adoption.
I sympathise, in the social networking world you're bound to the low common denominator of the group you want to talk to.
As a niche user you have a set of opinions that may or may not be bourne out by evidence of majority behaviour. The majority seems to without fail opt for profit-making services because they're usually higher quality & the conditions are broadly considered acceptable.
Edit: Corrected "down-sides" to "conditions" because I don't consider them entirely negative.
If they never have impeded on peoples abilities to have meaningful conversations and exchanging of ideas, then what exactly is the problem? If all you want to do is fling poo, go to the zoo (rhyme unintended).
Its a mall full of insane rentacops and the teens they hunt. The kids, good and bad, just want to hang out, almost no one goes there other than to hang out, but the mall owners are solely interested in selling $300 jeans to your mom.
I was simply pointing out that for a brief time, Twitter was a unique Internet platform: both well known (celebrities and politicians use it) and free of censorship. Plenty of sites are censorship free but they are esoteric and laregly unknown to the general population. I admired that Twitter was a popular platform with unrestricted free speech.