Twitter suspends alt-right figureheads | Hacker News Reader

Twitter suspends alt-right figureheads

bbc.com

167 pointsfunkylexoo362 comments

I can only see this as furthering the echo chamber that caused many to be so blindsided by Trumps victory.

I would like to see specifically why these people were suspended. If they're engaged in harassment obviously the suspension should hold up. If it really is just mass reporting for political speech (I've had friends msging 'targets' for reporting purely for them admitting to voting for Trump), I can only see it as a bad trend.

These people don't go away just because you ban them from your favourite sites. They just disappear from your own view, and go away to a more insular community, more of an echo chamber, where they become more radical.

Agree, very disturbing trend and it only increases the animosity between groups.

The trending method of improving diversity and inclusivity is through exclusivity. This will not work.

People and groups who don't talk to each other grow further apart and trust each other less.

> The trending method of improving diversity and inclusivity is through exclusivity.

We should remember the source of this article, the BBC, said not so long ago: Whites Need Not Apply.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/03/bbc-criticised-by...

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/695312/BBC-seeking-research...

I'm amused that several people downvoted that true, relevant, and documented comment.

Trying to control the information?

True. People flocked to Twitter to hear general opinion, which the press didn't provide. That is changing.

They have also been controlling the trending #hashtags; trying to channel only certain type of discussion.

What happens if a group like the Koch brothers decides to buy Twitter and ban the other side of the spectrum and control hashtags in a different manner. It's a slippery slope

What do you do about Twitter and Facebook becoming the propaganda arm of the alt-right?

There's no simple solution here. Part of the Alt-Right platform, as I have it, is that the media (be it news or social media) is corrupt and bent on silencing them. Suspending their accounts would only reinforce that belief.

I would also hope that we can come up with a solution that doesn't involve hindering others's ability to communicate. Even if it is the simplest and most effective tactic, it seems like that's just fighting the symptoms rather than the disease.

From what I see in my feed, it seems 100% of "progressives" have doubled down on their hyperbolic, established, in-group rhetoric. I followed everyone that I follow because they are programmers, not because they are "progressives". But from looking at my feed, one would think that I deliberately set out to create a radical SJW echo chamber for myself.

I looked at a list of OSS project leaders and other programmers recently and was surprised at the popularity of the hammer and sickle symbol in their bios.

Upside is that I now know who not to listen to when the next tech drama pops up.

Do you literally mean hammer and sickle? Or is that a literary device?

Literally the unicode character for hammer and sickle (U+262D)

Wow. Do you have references?

Exactly the same here. You wrote my thoughts perfectly.

It's sad actually.

> From what I see in my feed, it seems 100% of "progressives" have doubled down on their hyperbolic, established, in-group rhetoric

Then that's a problem with your filter bubble.

> I followed everyone that I follow because they are programmers, not because they are "progressives".

Which is why your view of progressives produced by that is distorted. Programmers who happen to be progressives aren't representative of progressives as a whole (they aren't representative of the broader group along class/income, education, race/ethnicity, or gender lines, among others, and several of those do correlate with preferred approaches.)

Who is representative of progressives as a whole?

Other than a sufficiently large randomly-selected sample, no such group is particularly likely to be.

But these alt-right figureheads aren't your average trump voters. They actually are racist and nasty people and we shouldn't group them together with other conservative/right/trump voters.

I am very suspicious of people throwing these terms around. Especially because the left uses the terms "racist", "sexist", and "hateful" (etc) to demonize their opponents as opposed to actually addressing certain issues in debate rationally. The willingness to use these terms so freely to shut down debate means I simply don't believe such charges unless I'm shown something that actually meets a reasonable definition. Too many have simply cried wolf here.

I don't know of the people banned (I don't use Twitter) they may actually be all of these things: but I will not use the flimsy, leftist definitions to make that determination. You'd have to give more than your word that they are "racist" and "nasty".

If you don't know of the people banned, read about them. They're true white supremacists. Twitter is under no obligation to be a platform for the KKK as twitter is a private company.

I actually don't care about the people being discussed enough to look them up and I have little interest in substantiating someone else's claim. If you want me to believe someone is a nasty racist, you can tell me why and show me examples. A huge part of the reason that dialogue is breaking down in the U.S. is because these sorts of charges are so easy to fling out there and too many people take it for granted that they're justified. Worse, too often not taking for granted means you get the label yourself. It's no wonder that the polls missed how closely fought a thing the election would be.

My point about some people feeling justified in conceptually stealing the moral condemnation implicit in a term like "racist", while defining that term to mean something very different than what it does mean, stands without regard to whether or not that this is the case with Twitter and these individuals. No one should trust these accusations until the specific case is actually made arguing for the validity of the charge.

OK, I gave in... I looked the first name up that I came across, and what little I looked at and I tend to agree: it looked genuinely racist. By that I mean that it fit a definition of racism that is: decisions or beliefs about individuals using the non-volitional physical category of race/ethnicity of that individual as a factor in their conclusions. That and only that. Everything else, I said in the first two paragraphs stand.

[EDIT FOR ADDITIONAL POINT] Also, Twitter as a private company has no obligation at all to support/allow any position, even if that position: left or right, reasonable or unreasonable, substantiated or unsubstantiated. It's their ball, they can play whatever game they want. My points aren't about Twitter's rights as much as they are about no longer believing "naked" charges or racism, sexism, etc.

"A cartoon of Pepe the Frog is a commonly used symbol of the alt-right" is the subtitle of the image in the BBC article. Look at it, the drawing innocence is really staggering: I'm wondering what is the link, whether the link is warranted, and whether Twitter used posts of Pepe the Frog to recognize alt-right people. Sounds like a badly AI-generated inference to me.

As someone with a fairly large rare Pepe collection, and who has been responsible for illustrating some extremely rare Pepes, but is in no way sympathetic to the notion of white supremacy, I find this whole Pepe controversy quite annoying. I've even removed the Pepe patch I had on my backpack in fear that someone would misinterpret my politics.

The clearest indiction I had that the media and the Clinton campaign were completely out of touch with reality came after reading this gem of an article on the Clinton campaign website.

https://www.hillaryclinton.com/feed/donald-trump-pepe-the-fr...

Wow, thanks for posting this. I'm not a US citizen so I had not reviewed the candidate sites but I started to suspect things like this had to come from the democratic campaign. I figured soundbites though, not a page on the website. Unbelievable.

You're most welcome.

I usually take my civic duty fairly seriously and try to stay on top of the candidates and their campaigns but this year I found the negativity and vitriol displayed by both sides to be so grating that I was just tuning things out these last few months.

This whole issue with Pepe really drove things home for me, as juvenile as that may sound. I first stumbled upon Pepe years ago when I was even less sure of myself than I am now and I found the image of Pepe staring out of a window as the rain poured down outside [1] to be a perfect illustration of angst.

I'm upset that such an innocent meme could be co-opted by literal Nazis, but to be honest, I don't hold neo Nazis in particularly high regard so I'm not really surprised nor disappointed. On the other hand, I'd like to think a major candidate's campaign would put a bit more thought into the issue than simply asserting that Pepe posters are all Nazis.

I think most decent people would be upset and hurt at being called a racist, sexist, homophobe, or Nazis without a concrete reason. Yes, Pepe is just a stupid cartoon frog and it's not the end of the world that I no longer have him adorn my backpack, but still I feel this is a good example of the effect falsely labelling people with certain isms can have.

Despite being a progressive far to the left of Clinton, this whole affair makes me sympathetic to all the Trump supports, many, perhaps the vast majority of whom are not racist and have legitimate anger at the way Washington has neglected their concerns, who now face being lumped in with actual racists by the media.

[1] http://i.imgur.com/7oHRgrf.jpg

I just listened to the story of Pepe yesterday. https://gimletmedia.com/episode/77-the-grand-tapestry-of-pep...

The artist who created Pepe had nothing to do with the alt-right, it's an internet meme they took by sheer volume, just by using it a lot. Pepe has been around for 10 years, and the use of it as a symbol of white supremacy is 2-3 years old. The artist recently got put on a web page by the Anti Defamation League on a post categorizing Pepe as a hate symbol, next to the Nazi Swastika. The artist called them to try and get it reconsidered and have his name removed, since he had nothing to do with current usage of Pepe. He's now trying to #savepepe.

The current usage of Pepe by the so-called alt-right has sadly but definitely been intended as a symbol of hatred and racism, but I wouldn't assume the discrepancy between what Pepe looks like and what hate groups use it for implies anything about how and why Twitter is blocking these people.

The reality is sometimes the meaning poured behind a symbol gets changed. The SWASTIKA symbol, originally meant "Good Fortune", existed 5000 years before the Nazis used it.

it's an internet meme they took by sheer volume, just by using it a lot.

I think you have your causallity a bit mixed there. They did use it a lot, and then people started lobbing guilt by association at the rest of us that were using it. We had no option but to let Pepe go.

Pepe is a symbol of hate because it wasn't my (or anyone's) hill to die on defending the integrity of a meme from libel by social manipulators.

The particular situation with pepe the frog is a bit more nuanced than news sources let on.

He went from "Feels Bad, Man" comics to being very frequently photoshopped with 3rd reich / swastikas / other neo-nazi logos.

Pepe is an interesting case because it brings up the discrepancy between trolling (messing with others in "bad fun") and actual people who vehemently support and push aggressively hateful messages.

>> very frequently photoshopped with 3rd reich

This really is one of the more ridiculous Clinton campaign talking points that just made them look very out of touch.

Pepe is a common meme template. Of the thousands of Pepes that I have unwillingly seen, none were neo-nazi except those in articles accusing Pepe of being a neo-nazi symbol. However, if you go to a deliberately offensive chan then sure, you will find every meme-template being used offensively.

> Of the thousands of Pepes that I have unwillingly seen, none were neo-nazi except those in articles accusing Pepe of being a neo-nazi symbol.

YMMV. In the circles I browse, they are frequently used, but they were only used to troll. They are certainly used for more aggressive hate in other places, including on Twitter.

This has been my experience too. I've been baffled at the coverage of Pepe as a hate symbol. I had seen it around on the internet for years. To me it was just another meme. The idea of it being a hate symbol came off to me almost as propaganda.

> being very frequently photoshopped with 3rd reich / swastikas / other neo-nazi logos.

Your samples are biased there. If you are already looking at alt-right tweets then obviously you will see more trump- and nazi-related pepes.

If you look anywhere else then pepe is just another highly versatile meme.

/pol/ also shopped MAGA cap onto various anime characters. Momiji inubashiri being particularly popular, probably because she already wears a red hat in her canonical design. Does that mean those anime characters themselves symbolize hate or even conservatism? I think not.

It just means that outside observers are not familiar with memetic mutation.

This whole Pepe the Frog thing went off the rails of being ridiculous a long, long time ago. It's at the point where it has gone completely meta.

There's a podcast about how Pepe became a symbol for the alt-right

https://gimletmedia.com/episode/77-the-grand-tapestry-of-pep...

and some article about the original artist trying to put a stop to that

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/its-not-...

> They actually are racist and nasty people and we shouldn't group them together with other conservative/right/trump voters.

This sounds like stereotyping to me.

One of the suspended accounts belong to Richard Spencer: " an American white nationalist known for promoting white supremacist views" [1]. The others are the same type of character.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_B._Spencer

So?

Are you kidding me? Those who identify as "alt-right" aka Far Right are definitely racist and nasty folks and you can easily see it by reading through their screeds and "jokes."

In the US, they have a right to express themselves, but they do not have a right to be accepted as decent and normal people.

> Those who identify as "alt-right" aka Far Right

While the alt-right is defined by some toxic views (white nationalism, particularly) also found in some parts of the far right, it's a distinct group.

Wrong. Alt-right is a burgeoning group, AND what we are seeing is democrats are trying to strike early to get the "racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe" label associated with them. Basically alt-right is the same as "anonymous" people don't really know who identifies with x,y,z parts of it and it's just frightened democrats who are scared to death to have another group against them that they can't use their standard buzzwords to demean them. E.G. Obama with his "oke-dokes"

Wake me up when Twitter actually suspends demonstrably more toxic groups on the left. Those who have infiltrated and are even holding conferences on evils of "whiteness" and white-hating. So far, Twitter are showing they are biased censoring scared little puritans.

You have no idea. I worked with someone who had been radicalized by these groups, and the things they are willing to do to achieve their aims of stamping out people of color and other groups they oppose is nauseating. They are dangerous.

Stereotyping as opposed to it being a conclusion about a person's character based on things they say?

alt-right by definition is racist and sexist. that is the definition of the alt-right platform.

Citation?

From Wikipedia: "The alt-right has no formal ideology... 'Alt-right' is a recently coined umbrella term, with no clear criteria of membership yet agreed upon."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right

Would each of the people being banned agree that they've signed on to an admittedly racist and sexist platform? I doubt it.

EDIT: Let me amend "I doubt it" to "I am not sure and haven't done enough research to have an informed opinion." From the article I can't get the full set of people that are known to have been banned or how many of them are professed white nationalists...

The funny thing is that the alt right (at least from the Trump campaign onwards) is based on the idea that if you're not an extremist, you're a "cuck". So, while it isn't a clearly defined ideology, it is a group seeking increasingly more extreme ideologies as time passes.

Twitter's move reduces their platform and reach but increases their cultural cachet — they're becoming the Certified Opposition to all of society's ills.

Dozens of people in my close social circles identify as "alt-right", and none of them are remotely sexist or racist.

Do they understand what is happening to the label that they identify with? Do they seek to make a clear statement about what they believe the alt right stands for?

If they let some definition take hold that includes racism, then in the future when they object to saying that the alt right is racist, they aren't standing up for what they believe in anymore, they are providing cover for the racists that stole the label from them.

I would expect libertarians to be considered "alt right" by the average person.

Do they call themselves alt-right?

edit: honest question

Yes, it's a very convenient label to throw on people who disagree with the orthodoxy regardless of their actual beliefs.

By their opponents anyway.

Watch this and let us know who should be getting the ban hammer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXpi3F0E5ro

We should have hearings to deal with this problem, and then blacklist anyone who might be a racist sympathizer. If only good old Joe Mccarthy was still around.

I'm not sure why the above is down-voted. There's a litany of evidence to suggest that this is actually true.

Such heavy claims require evidence. Also, it is painting one group as a whole, which reminds me of ...

I don't think it's painting one group as a whole at all. No one is suggesting that all or most Trump supporters are racist. Only that many alt-right figure heads are.

It's not a heavy claim. With Steve Bannon being appointed to the upcoming White House staff, there's been a parade of examples illustrating the blatant racism of alt-right figureheads.

While I appreciate the sentiment that Democrats lost the election by painting much of the population (uncritically) in very broad unflattering strokes, I don't really think the trend of people saying "Well you just can't talk about a group of people as a whole" is going to last. If you're unwilling to discuss groups of people as a single entity, the entire field of social science makes little sense.

I think maybe that we've lost sight of the fact that any time we talk about a group of people, we're really implicitly having a statistical discussion.

> No one is suggesting that all or most Trump supporters are racist.

"You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”

- Hillary Clinton, Sep 2016

> With Steve Bannon being appointed to the upcoming White House staff, there's been a parade of examples illustrating the blatant racism of alt-right figureheads.

I've looked at all the articles claiming that Bannon is "bad" (they use different words, of course), and I'm completely unconvinced. Seems like more of the "all Trump supporters are racist" meme.

"No one is suggesting that all or most Trump supporters are racist."

I have seen that claim hundreds of times in the past few days.

"reminds me of" != "is".

The article says

"The social network has not given an explanation for its actions."

Banning is fine, but it would be nice if they can actually say in writing, citing reasons and evidence, why they banned them (even if lots of evidence exists elsewhere).

Banning without any explanation isn't of any use to anyone

In the US, the Net Neutrality position describes internet access as a utility, not a luxury. Further the UN declares it a Human Right. If either/both of those positions hold, then the gatekeepers - Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc - suppressing any view or blocking access to any group could be a violation of human rights.

I think that will have to be settled in court, but it will get messy for those companies.

Nobody is being banned from the internet. They are merely being banned by a privately owned American website. Businesses in America have the right to refuse service to any individual provided it is not due to protected status. In America your opinions do not grant you protected status.

A litany? Seems an opportunity missed not to produce it rather than resort to mere assertion. If you want to persuade others of your view, that is.

> If it really is just mass reporting for political speech

It's not just for political speech. Multiple asian artists drawing cartoon porn, which was properly marked as sensitive content, got their twitter accounts suspended after some offended people mass-reported them.

These were figures representing groups that shout down diverse opinions and quell the free speech of others with noise and abuse. You're not improving understanding and engagement between communities when you allow bullies to silence the meek.

> shout down diverse opinions and quell the free speech of others with noise and abuse

How does that work? Twitter banned them for spamming?

They have those echo chambers already. Some of them are talking about moving to a platform like Gab.

However, most of them realize that the appeal of Twitter is in being able to expose normal people (or 'normies' in their terminology) to far-right ideas.

It's delusional to think that these people want to enter into a conversation or a discourse of any kind - they're using Twitter as a platform to draw attention to their ideas. Twitter, as a commercial business - not a public commons - has no obligation to support that.

I was with you when you started to describe a soundproof echo chanber filled with progressives, which blinded them to public opinion. However you sort of pivoted at the end to an alt-right echo chamber. Perhaps it's a bicameral echo chamber. (insert Westworld comparisons here)

If they are in fact members of the Alt-Right -- which it seems none of them deny -- then I don't see why any further explanation is required.

The Alt-Right is an SPLC-designated hate group. They promote vile hatred against People of Color, women, Muslims, LGBTQ2s, immigrants, etc. I find it disturbing that well educated people could possibly believe a privately-owned company has some duty to serve as a platform for that filth.

and why should anyone care what the splc concludes? serious question.

Huh? You're seriously asking why we should care what experts on the far-right have to say about far-right organizations?

The same "experts" that fell for the Clinton campaign's forced meme that pepe posters were all nazis? That SPLC?

I've seen no evidence of trump supporters being targeted. There is no trend.

edit: wait, is it possible that just because I don't see it happening doesn't mean it isn't? Kind of like police brutality against black lives?

I didn't followed too much news recently, but two that I heard about, I bet there was/will be more.

http://www.dailywire.com/news/10664/video-trump-voter-dragge...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/anders-vendel...

A couple of others:

http://nypost.com/2016/11/14/teen-girl-says-she-was-brutally...

http://www.masslive.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/11/trump_sup...

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/black-lives-ma...

http://patch.com/massachusetts/boston/trump-supporter-allege...

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/subway-rider-a...

There are attacks happening on both sides and it's really pushing us into a scary position as a country. What makes things worse is we have people faking attack stories as well which will likely lead to further violence as people feel the need to retaliate:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/11/1...

Both sides really need to take a step back and realize they're just continuing the divide.

I'm personally against Twitter banning folks unless they're engaging in harassment of other users. It would be nice though if the platforms like Twitter and Facebook more severely punished those harassing others though.

That's because you're not looking for it. Anyone who protests gets muzzled along with the banee.

Banee? Is that "someone who has been banned"?

Social media actually enables these people. A lot of them felt empowered when they found out many other people thought like them.

People were blindsided because the majority didn't vote for Trump, but the US's backwards system meant that didn't matter.

In a democratic system where everyone's vote was equal, we would not have President-Elect Trump.

Everyone knew it was a close election, and that the system we have is the system we have. It's not like the DNC was surprised by the electoral college last week.

People were blindsided because polling scientists treated the states discretely. What were the odds that Trump wins Ohio and Florida and Wisconsin and Michigan? This wasn't four separate battles -- it turns out that if he wins one of them, the odds are pretty good he wins all of them.

How do you know the result of a completely different kind of election? The candidates would obviously campaign differently in the case you are describing.

Numbers:

Trump : 60,834,437 votes Hillary : 61,782,016 votes

Popular Vote result ( as in your vote counts the same as everyone elses ) President Hillary. US System ( the weight of your vote depends on what state you live in ) President Trump.

If you want to break it down further than that, well there is no reason to analyze anything ever because it's always a completely different situation.

People were blindsided because in any measure people consider fair and democratic, Trump would not be president. Trump was president once Ohio, NC and Florida were called for him. The rest of the country didn't matter except for counting exactly how many electoral college votes he was going to get, but we could have stopped counting votes by about 11pm EST on November 8. For the presidential election, it was just a formality after that.

Your argument is completely fallacious. The contest from the beginning was to get the most electoral votes. The candidates campaigned with that in mind. In many one-sided states like California and Utah, voters voted with that in mind, i.e., Republicans stay home in CA and Democrats stay home in UT. If the election had been about the popular vote, the candidates would have used radically different strategies and the voters in heavy red and blue states would have voted. None of this is controversial.

People forget why the electoral college was created. Every state gets 3 votes for free. More votes added based on population. That's by design, because it props up the small states.

The Constitution intentionally gave disproportionate power to small states to prevent the large states from being able to ignore them entirely. That was a condition that the small states demanded for joining the union.

This election worked exactly as it was intended. The small states preferred Trump, and their constitutionally granted power was sufficient to overule the authority of the larger states.

Although Twitter obviously has the right to do this, legally, I don't think it is good.

Twitter is esentially a public infrastructure for real-time communication. We have public officials from countries all over the world that use Twitter to communicate to their citizens.

For that (and similar) reasons, I would strongly prefer if Twitter didn't go around policing what types of political opions are okay and aren't. Even if you really hate the people that Twitter bans, imagine if things were the other way around, and they started banning very liberal users.

The very liberal users aren't inciting hate speech, racist, misogynistic, and often times anti semitic attacks on other users en masse

Hate exists on both sides. If you want to ban the hate from one side, why not ban the hate from all sides?

Both sides have a lot of racism (and other forms of hate in general), but they likely look and feel quite different to very partisan observers. Once you start banning users for whichever type of hate you happen to dislike more than the others, things can go downhill quite quickly.

Increasing the transparency around this subject would improve the situation. If twitter wants to ban people due to their speech, users should at least be informed why those users were banned, so that they can decide for themselves if they agree or not.

You really just aren't looking:

https://www.reddit.com/r/UofT/comments/4rr3ga/blm_toronto_wh...

That's Facebook but you can find blatantly racist, sexist, etc stuff from people on the left of the political spectrum on every major social network these days.

This is clearly a satirical response to the type of logic used by white supremacists to bolster a concept of genetic superiority over other ethnicities. Imagine just for a moment being black and hearing the inverse of this statement every day online

Have you not heard of the Nation of Islam?

You know that the 7/7 Dallas shooter (Micah Johnson) was inspired by black supremacist hate speech, right?

The nation of Islam is a horribly depressing group also standing on a platform kf misogyny and anti semitism. They are an extremist group that luckily has been waning in recent years. Also, unlike white people, they have never held a monopoly on power, instated discriminatory laws, stopped white people from securing proper jobs or housing, or became police offers that then killed white people with impunity.

I think it's a bit of a stretch to say for certain that his visiting of these sites is what inspired him to the shooting.

Is it inconceivable that the thousands of police shootings over the past couple years, increasingly public, took a toll on this person who eventually could have become consumed by hate, prior to seeking out groups of others who can relate? That the seeking out of hate groups could be the symptom, rather than the disease?

Personally, I don't find it surprising that out of the millions of black people that have been (and still are) oppressed by the police, that a few of them will be inspired to do something like this by their reality alone, without the need for outside influence.

No, they are posting anti-white bigotry and threats to kill the President.

Twitters "cultural background training" for its new mods surely contains the progressive stance that you can't be racist against white people.

How can you be racist against the ruling, privileged class? Sure, white people can have it bad too, but we still have all the privilige and automatic perks. It isn't bigotry as much as self defense against how many white people are still deeply entrenched in racism. As a whole, white people are still oppressors.

Even thinking of "whites" as "privileged" is racism. In reality, different people are different (shocker, I know). Obama's family (half-black) is much more privileged than many white straight men that are homeless. If instead of race you focused on circumstances that actually matter (bad family background, poverty, uneducated, jobless), you'd achieve much more.

Racial conflict in America is something that occurs and has modern repercussions. Race matters to a lot of people and should be recognized as having an axiom of privilege not unlike class (which you broght up), gender identity, and sexuality. If you don't believe that different skin colors are treated differently in America I beg you to speak with myself or another person of color of how they have been outsided or treated in uncomfortable and unpleasant ways for no other reason than their skin color. Alternatively, we can examine why black people are jailed for lesser offenses than whites, regardless of class.

Please read this: http://occupywallstreet.net/story/explaining-white-privilege...

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/racism https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/racism

> a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race

Nothing in there about privilege. You can't just redefine a word because you say thats what it should mean.

Every race can be racist.

The current axiom is that yes, anybody can have prejudiced views about anybody else. Sure, and it's perfectly fine and normal to feel hurt when you are getting the hit from it. But the way progressives talk about racism today is that racism is prejudice + power structures. You can be hated all day long for being a white person, but until people of color are pulling all the invisible power structures, it doesn't really go farther than that. This doesn't invalidate that people hurled terrible insults at you, but there are not any vast structures in place to systemically keep you down as a result of these prejudices.

It's extremely convenient when the major labels that you use to demonize your political opponents cannot apply to you, even when you do the exact same behavior, based on definitions that your side made up. Extremely convenient.

Who said they don't apply to everyone?

if you blame "white males" for everything and shoot down any counter-argument with "privilege" then yes, you're being racist, because you're stereotyping an entire race.

Just to give an example of how this would sound if it were reversed:

Liberals are inciting violence using paid operatives(probably including the recent riots), have shot Trump supporters, use powerful institutions(Twitter, universities, etc.) to shut down speech they disagree with, and their most recent presidential candidate has historically been opposed to gay marriage and took foreign money from a country that executes gays. Liberals are also very racist, using zoning laws to exclude minorities from their gated communities in California.

Rattling off a bunch of hate every time you think of the other side is how you get angry people.

These are all true, and I'm not a liberal so I'm cool with this. There are things I don't like, such as your complaint about Twitter overstepping it's bounds. Hell, I'll even do you one better. Liberals love pipelining more people to prison, they love unnecessary voter registration beuracracy, and they love supporting institutions that keep the poor poorer and the rich richer. Racism is a bipartisan issue it's just that the alt right has been more vocal about their racism online recently while the left tends to hide it away while still quietly supporting it. Check out a trend dubbed "white feminism," it talks all about this

"History doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes"

Mark my words, racist is the new communist. They didn't even bother to change the colors around, I guess that will save on printing up new propaganda. "You aren't a dirty red are you?"

I have been hanging around here on HN after the election and there was one group that IMO tried to portrait everyone but themselves as dumb half-humans.

And it wasn't the republicans. It wasn't people from flyover country laughing about their victory.

Edit: 2 down, no comments. And I have a weird feelings it isn't the republicans who are out to get me. ;-)

I have enough points so feel free to illustrate my point.

You aren't serious are you? The "alt-right" movement has put out several videos in recent days that shows just that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXpi3F0E5ro

They're not getting banned for opinions, they're getting banned for their actions on Twitter.

Eh? Can you please explain the difference... it's 140 characters of text FFS.

An opinion sits in your head. Twitter cannot observe an opinion on its own.

An opinion translated to action, though -- here in the form of Tweets -- is not merely an opinion.

Twitter has a thing called "The Twitter Rules" which includes a section on "Abusive Behavior". https://support.twitter.com/articles/18311

Here's some of Twitter's relevant rules:

Harassment: You may not incite or engage in the targeted abuse or harassment of others. Some of the factors that we may consider when evaluating abusive behavior include:

- if a primary purpose of the reported account is to harass or send abusive messages to others;

- if the reported behavior is one-sided or includes threats;

- if the reported account is inciting others to harass another account; and

- if the reported account is sending harassing messages to an account from multiple accounts.

Hateful conduct: You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease. We also do not allow accounts whose primary purpose is inciting harm towards others on the basis of these categories.

Someone can say they hate The Jews on Twitter. What they can't do is say they hate a particular Jewish person, and link to that person's account, and encourage their tens of thousands of followers to post anti Semitic hate to that person.

> What they can't do is say they hate a particular Jewish person, and link to that person's account, and encourage their tens of thousands of followers to post anti Semitic hate to that person.

Like, let's say, kill DT because [insert victim group du jour here]ism?

Or I'll kill you because u so white, and kill all white people? #noracist

a source for [Parent] is the Milo Yiannopoulos and Leslie Jones fiasco.

118 points in 1 hour, page 3 of HN? This story is writing itself.

The alt-right is not a small number of people. 50 million went to the polls and voted for Trump. And with things like this, you're giving them ammunition. You just told 50 million people that their views are not accepted in society. You just told the electoral majority that they are not allowed in one of the most common forums for political discourse.

It's not a good thing. The nation is deeply divided, and the actions of the liberals are giving the alt-right more strength. Tactics like this only work if you apply them to small groups, and even then it only works if the vast majority are not sympathetic to the cause.

That's not the situation in America. You are covering your ears and telling the bully he doesn't matter, and that he's not allowed to play with you. Except you're telling that to half the classroom, not just one bully. And you've got control of the soccer field, and most of the balls. You've become the bully. And you've given the rest of the class a lot of ammunition to dislike you.

The story here is simply that politics don't belong on Hacker News, and users (rightly) flag stories like this.

I think the question is how do we determine if a post is relevant to HN when it involves some elements that are "not relevant" (politics) and some that are (technology/Twitter).

There have been several posts—and fruitful discussions—about Facebook, the social media echo chamber, and the election. Why are those posts appropriate, but this is not? Because this is specifically about the alt-right? Because it attracts a certain type of commenter?

IMO the problem seems to be this stories shoot up until people who are happy with the outcome of the election cements the top spots of the threads again (they do, on every story, seems there is a majority of people here who are happy with or at least respect the election.) Then flagging starts. At least this is what it looks like to me.

IMO some debate is useful and it could also be good because we could flag out a few more people who like to dismiss others as "dumb racists".

You honestly think the majority of HN participants are happy with the outcome of the election?

page 5 now with 125 points, 16 mins after the above comment.

Why does the alt-right have issues with them being banned from systems, but don't see issues with themselves banning others from systems.

For example, Twitter bans them from using Twitter, but the /r/The_Donald echo chamber bans anyone with a counter view to their own.

If you want freedom to speak on certain platforms, you need to provide the same rights to everyone.

Reddit is in a much less monopolistic situation. Twitter is a mandatory medium for public communication. That's which censorship on Twitter is worse than in a subreddit.

Besides, it's a long stretch to imagine that right-wing media convinces people to become right-wing. In my case it's rather the opposite: I've been super-over-surcovered with left-wing pro-women communication until my 30s (whether in media or in programmer conferences), I noted that the mantra "Women are oppressed all the time" didn't match what I witnessed in companies (e.g. men from GitHub CEO to Douglas Crockford and all the way down to colleagues are being fired upon unproven accusations by women), which made me investigate the topic only to find that 90% of feminists' arguments are incorrect, which made me search for more reasonable media, aka "right-wing media" according to left-wing media.

Liberals have made a speciality of accusing right-wingers of censorship. That left-wing media like Twitter resorts to censorship only reinforces the perception that the world isn't fair and severely biased with double-standards in favour left-wingers.

If anything, I wish Brexit + Trump meant the end of the ban on some ideas like discussing immigration or men's rights.

Arguing that Twitter is so necessary to public communication that it should be regulated as something like a common carrier (perhaps applying the same to Facebook and YouTube) is an interesting argument, but one you usually hear from the left, not the right. The right usually takes more of a hardline private-property viewpoint along the lines of, "private companies should be able to institute whatever rules they want on their platform, start your own if you disagree".

> Twitter is a mandatory medium for public communication

What makes it "mandatory" - the fact that they choose not to use an alternative, or the fact that they have not built an alternative?

The network effect. Viewers are on Twitter, so no party can succeed without using Twitter for communication.

What's your point, are you saying that new political parties are only allowed to grow if build their own Twitter competitor or have pre-approved ideas?

Twitter IMHO is a very poor medium for public communication. It is very difficult to discuss complex issues like gender relations or the dynamics of immigration in a sober, thoughtful, nuanced manner via streams of 140 characters. In the former in particular I actually feel there's a definite case where Twitter amplified division; the notorious "SJW vs MRA" storm advanced little if any productive discussion and merely put people in opposing camps lobbying grenades at the other side.

If this is now "mandatory" for public communication now, I feel that's a huge downgrade from public communication methods in the past.

I don't want to presume to tell you how to use twitter but to me, it seems to be clearly geared as a one to many broadcast channel. It is much more akin to a protocol that allows people to subscribe to events/ideas/movements/news and get succinct updates about them. It is a terrible place for discussion objectively, but I believe this was by design-- and a feature.

I do agree with you there. Twitter is great for immediate notifications like that.

For discussion, if people, say, tweeted a link to their blog entry with their thoughts, I feel that would be a great use case of Twitter. Unfortunately some chose to do the entire discussion on Twitter. That often ends up poorly.

> Twitter is a mandatory medium for public communication.

That's the precise difference.

There are two solutions I envisage for Twitter's behaviour. One is a market solution of people moving away from it (e.g. towards Gab). This might be infeasible due to network effects.

The other is regulation: communication services above a certain size be required to be an open platform. This would still allow twitter to ban people, but anyone would be allowed to re-used Twitter's data feed making it much easier to set up a competitor.

> censorship on Twitter is worse than in a subreddit

Not least because anyone can set up their own subreddit with their own moderation rules.

> Twitter is a mandatory medium for public communication

Which is why everyone should stop using twitter. A private company should never have that much control over critical infrastructure.

I don't know if you can quite draw that parallel. /r/The_Donald (which I myself am banned from) isn't the entire platform. Twitter is an entire platform. The_Donald is meant to be an echo chamber, much like Sanders for President was, they too would ban people on a whim. However, me being banned from /r/The_Donald is not any where near being banned from Reddit itself. Someone blocking me on Twitter is not me being banned from Twitter.

My fear here is that Twitter and Facebook are now political machines, even if I agree with what they are doing -generally-. Facebook is cracking down on "fake news," I saw fake news all the time on Facebook, from left (re: vaccines, GMOs, The Kochs) and right (re: Obama, Hillary, Global Warming.)

So, which is Facebook going to crack down on, and which one isn't it going to? I get trolled on Twitter more from the Right, but I do get trolled from the Left as well. Which is Twitter going to crack down on? They don't seem to have an open coherent policy. If I'm harassed by left and right, but I see more of the right being banned, at what point does this stifle speech?

Sure Twitter and Facebook are private companies and can run themselves in whatever manner they wish, but if they -do- have a bias, they should be open about it. If Facebook and Twitter wants to win my trust that they are handling this correctly, they should make the data of their bans public. Even old forums have a ban list and often reasons for bans as public. There is no such public face for these two platforms. They don't even have to have names/handles as public, just a graph that shows the data behind it.

Apples and oranges. /r/The_Donald is a subreddit niche specifically for supporters for Trump, it is standard for a niche subreddit with a specific goal to ban users which attempt to hinder that goal from happening. Hillary-subreddit does the same.

I was more trying to express the irony of it, even if one a spot and the other is a platform. Twitter doesn't have a "spot" so it is the platform you get banned from.

Virtually everyone opposes banning people they agree with but supports banning people they disagree with.

Try to compare like with like. If you're talking about subreddits, is the donald any more of an echo chamber than e.g. shit reddit says? (which AIUI autobans people just for posting on some particular other subreddits). If you're talking about twitter they do seem to be applying different standards for what qualifies as "hate speech" depending where you are on the political spectrum.

Its extremely ironic that the group claiming to "champion the fight against the social justice warrior and their safe spaces" does pretty much the exact same thing as what they say they hate.

Welcome to the future where everyone is surrounded by a virtual reality bubble that endlessly strokes their ego by reinforcing their preexisting beliefs.

Honestly I see a lot of people doing this and agitating for it. Everyone wants a "safe space."

Do Twitter and /r/The_Donald have equivalent mission statements, though? I don't think Twitter aspires to be a meeting point for extreme political views.

Isn't that exactly the point? One bans for extreme views/hate speech, one bans for dissent.

/r/AskHistorians bans people who post jokes, I don't know if that qualifies as "dissent". It seems in line with the purpose of the sub.

Sure. Are you agreeing or disagreeing with me? The T_D subreddit explicitly says that dissent is not tolerated, so yes, I suppose it is in line with the purpose of the sub. The problem is with them being upset with twitter for enforcing their purpose: a platform open to everyone to express themselves outside of hate speech/abuse.

Because /r/The_Donald is a community, they don't give out bans for the entire Reddit website, only from their own community.

Twitter is not a community, it's a website akin to Reddit which contains communities.

Twitter doesn't have an ability to ban you from parts of the community. So they are a single community.

So that analogy falls apart because they're different kinds of websites.

I'm very interested in this topic. Do you have concrete evidence of contrary voices being silenced by administration in /r/The_Donald?

It may bear some consideration that this particular sub-reddit is itself silenced by having its stories removed from the front page by algorithm, which to me represents as great a sin or greater.

/r/The_Donald has in its sidebar, literally, that people that do not wholly support Trump are not welcome.

That being said, I'm okay with that. It's not a place for reasonable discussion, it's just shitpostland.

However. Twitter prides itself on being a serious social network with considerations for free speech and the "new media"... being banned from something like that just because of what you believe is silly.

They're not being banned for their opinions, they're being banned for their actions on Twitter.

Can you point to some of those actions? I'm having trouble finding any evidence that shows they should be banned.

Now, I think their viewpoints are disgusting too. But their views don't affect people, their actions do.

Greater sin or no, I've personally seen accounts get banned for sharing contrary views in that subreddit.

I mean, it's in their sidebar... "No Dissenters".

There is no data other than available to the mods of The_Donald or reddit at large, but there are A LOT of results just a google away, this was the first hit [1].

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/BannedFromThe_Donald/

It's right in the rules:

- No Dissenters or SJWs. AfterBerners MUST Assimilate.

It's explicitly against the rules of the subreddit to dissent against their narrative or express "social justice warrior" views.

See rule iv.

> No Dissenters or SJWs. AfterBerners MUST Assimilate

I've been banned on at least a half dozen accounts for posting anti-Trump comments on that subreddit. So, yeah.

corey "i'm just asking questions" moncure. Do HNers fall for this kind of concern trolling?

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=corey_moncure

I think the appropriate comparison to "Twitter" would be "Reddit", not specifically the /r/The_Donald subreddit.

If they started banning your Reddit account for being a communist, I imagine a lot of people - including "The Donald" - would be angry.

I agree that if is hypocritical however clearly the scale is substantially different. Subreddits are typically echochambers especially small niche non-defaults.

Twitter is a platform. Your analogy would be more akin to Reddit banning a subreddit-- which happens. I personally disagree with platforms like google, reddit & twtr editoralizing & policing things like ideology & expression. I certainly lean more libertarian here, but actions like this certainly are a slippery slope. It appears like favoritism in a benevolent view and censorship in a more hard line stance

Those things don't match up like you think they do. The equivalent of /r/The_Donald banning users is equivalent to /r/politics banning anyone who posted critically of Clinton between July and the election (even though The_Donald only claims to support Trump whereas Politics is intended to be more unbiased).

These are subreddits with their own admins managing them. Twitter as a company is banning users from their entire platform. The equivalent would be Reddit as a company banning very liberal users.

Twitter bans them from using Twitter, but the /r/The_Donald echo chamber bans anyone with a counter view to their own.

Twitter is effectively the digital commons, run by a professional organization.

A subreddit is a subsection of a reddit, a website that lets any user roll up with a clowncar of mods and claim some land within their namespace.

> /r/The_Donald echo chamber bans anyone with a counter view to their own.

When you know there are super PACs literally spending millions of dollars to manipulate people on sites like Reddit, and other subreddits (like /r/HillaryClinton) also ban all dissenting opinions, why would you leave yourself so vulnerable to attack? Just so you can brag about occupying the moral high ground?

Reddit's completely opaque, volunteer moderator system guarantees that every single subreddit is biased in one way or another. /r/The_Donald was only doing what was necessary to create a community where people could discuss Trump without being berated and silenced by downvotes.

I'm not sure if it makes sense to compare Twitter, a general communication tool used by every demographic, and a subreddit, which is a privately ran community.

You can't just go off and make your own Twitter, with blackjack, and hookers.

You can more-or-less do that on Reddit.

That requires logic and critical thinking though.

Do you really expect logic from people who consider the right to have the following views equal?

"I believe people's sexual preferences are private and the state should not interfere in it."

"I believe homosexuality is a crime and all gay men should be killed".

I'm not sure I agree with this. I think I'd rather have people with extreme opinions talking in the public where they are subject to counter arguments than somewhere less public where their message goes unchallenged.

I agree and disagree - on the one hand I prefer to have them out in the open so its easier to understand the kind of misinformation that is being spread, but unfortunately it seems like a large number of people (well, everyone to some extent but some people have more trouble it seems) separating fake information from more-or-less true information.

My guess is that by them having this platform, they can easily reach those who are primed for believing what they read. If people weighted the most informed responses equally to the tweets themselves that would be one thing, but my guess is that is not the case.

And even worse, when you ban those accounts, you reinforce the ideas that there's a media conspiration against the alt-right, giving the most vocal proponents of that ideology a platform to disseminate their ideas and victimize themselves.

I agree 100%. We need exchange, dilution, exposure therapy, to become familiar with each others' ways and ultimately realize we're not a danger to one another if we're all working, well-fed, raising our children in peace.

The counterargument I see people making is that "hating $group is not an opinion." They see opinions as matters of taste, like twitter should just be about discussing flavors of ice cream, while racism is purely a crime and has to be punished. My response to that is words from the tip of the iceberg. We must discuss what's under the ocean's surface. NIMBY'ing assholes spoils that conversation space.

The next leader of the most powerful nation on earth already elected on a campaign that openly advocated torture and war crimes and made all sorts of racially charged insinuations. The USA seems set to embark on a terrifying policy of mass deportations in a few months.

A white supremacist is set to be installed as White House Chief of Staff, and his previous incarnation was as owner of news outlet talking in the public arena, presumably having his message challenged in exactly the manner you describe.

I think that your way of doing things has already run its course.

There was more to the Trump campaign than just misinformation on social media. Without wanting to rehash old discussions I think it's fair to say that most of the people who voted for Trump acknowledged his flaws but ultimately found Hillary Clinton less palatable.

Personally I don't think there was a single good candidate on the ballot.

Making Hillary unpalatable was part of the alt-right campaign to elect Trump. #SickHillary and other ways of killing her trustworthiness were campaigns imagined and put into effect by Trump sympathizers.

Yes, smear campaigns happen on both sides. I'm talking beyond that though. E.g. Some saw Clintons "career politics" as her being indoctrinated into the status quo whereas Trump represented a change.

I was as unhappy about the result as the next lefty but it doesn't help the situation to assume that all Trump supporters are ignorant, nor any of the worse accusations. Those supporters will have their reasons and if you want any hope of swaying their opinions then you have to listen to their arguments - something we did a poor job of in both the UK's EU referendum and the American election. We got preachy instead, so many on the opposing side kept their opinions quiet and we ended up not only misjudging the support of those campaigns had but ultimately losing the vote as well.

The reason there's a white supremecist in the white house is precisely that people silenced white people on places like Twitter when they complained about institutional social injustices against them.

So the white people got together and voted as a minority bloc for a member of their minority that would favor their interests over all others.

Your solution of trying harder to supress them will only get more Donald Trumps elected.

Not really. We are going to wipe out that tendency by educating people better.

Educated people, on the whole, tend not to be racist, bigoted fascists.

That's a lot of people to educate. And where? Some sort of infrastructure would be necessary to educate so many. But it probably wouldn't need to be permanent, just temporary until the masses are educated. You know, a sort of camp for education.

> The USA seems set to embark on a terrifying policy of mass deportations in a few months

I really wish the MSM would stop burying facts in the story and out of the headlines. Not that I agree with it, but Trump has stated time and again that he wants to deport people in the US illegally who ALSO have a criminal record. There was some stat from the gov. that ~1.9 million illegals also have some criminal record, and that matches the figures he has thrown around.

My point is that the hyperbole in these discussions means that no one will ever come together. People need to act more like President Obama now that the election is over, and figure out how to make the best of a situation they may not like. Democracy will go on.

You might not like this, but Obama has already deported more people than any other US president—2.5 million people to be exact.[0]

That's about what Trump is proposing.

[0] http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/obamas-deportation-policy-num...

Doesn't Twitter allow actual terrorists to post?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/technology/...

Just so long as they don't post anything supporting Trump.

Zing!

Seriously though, if we have to have these political (tech-related if you stretch) discussions on HN, these green accounts should not be allowed to participate.

I believe they recently started closing those too.

They never should have.

In other words, Twitter gives the Information They Don't Want You To Know badge to a group that already thrives on such framing https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12961185

Unless there were specific examples of breaking Twitter's terms and conditions from each individual, this does nothing but popularises alt right. Even then, the way they did it, just plays into alt right narrative. I don't how is this benefitial

Painting insults and threats and bullying as legitimate criticism is the main rhetorical fallacy of the alt-right movement. They have a guarantee of free speech in this country but they do not have a guarantee of Twitter access.

Twitter allows threats and bullying when it comes from the left. They refused to ban the freaking jihadists. They have SJWs posting #killallmen, #KillAllWhiteMen #maletears in droves. Nothing ever happens to them.

This move is simply political censorship.

For all the people downvoting, it's true:

https://twitter.com/hashtag/killallmen

About half of the tweets are serious "killallmen" comments. The other half are people complaining about it. And, complaining that twitter won't do anything, despite their terms of service saying such behavior is ban-worthy.

Or look at twitter banning Milo... because other people engaged in harassment. People who had no clear tie to Milo.

At no point could Twitter point to Milo's behavior, and say "this violated our terms of service, so he's banned". They just banned him, despite their terms of service.

I've mentioned this before on HN, and asked "What, exactly, did Milo do? Please point to something he did."

I received no replies, but got plenty of downvotes. Which says to me that the people involved (like the ones downvoting here) know their opinions are contrary to all facts and reason.

So if you're thinking of downvoting, try instead to convince me I'm wrong. Adult discussions are much more productive than naive attempts at censorship.

You're being intellectually disingenuous to believe that #killallmen is a legitimate threat of violence towards men. Find me some examples of violent feminists lynching and murdering men on the basis of feminist dogma.

Meanwhile, those with racist, bigoted, homophobic, and anti-semitic viewpoints continue to commit actual hate crimes, murders, campaigns of intimidation, and worse.

So yeah, you're making a typical strawman argument to deflect legitimate criticism and turn the conversation away from the topic at hand. Not worth engaging you further on this point, but if you want to discuss the topic at hand, I'm all ears.

> You're being intellectually disingenuous to believe that #killallmen is a legitimate threat of violence towards men

Many (not all) of the people who say this really do believe it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCUM_Manifesto

http://www.dailywire.com/news/8386/feminist-journalist-all-m...

> Find me some examples of violent feminists lynching and murdering men on the basis of feminist dogma.

How about violence towards men, based on their dogma? See Jordan Peterson in Toronto, among many others.

> Meanwhile, those with racist, bigoted, homophobic, and anti-semitic viewpoints continue to commit actual hate crimes, murders, campaigns of intimidation, and worse.

Which are all bad. And should be stopped.

But you're being intellectually disingenous if you believe that fighting all bigotry is bad, because some bigots are more violent than others.

> So yeah, you're making a typical strawman argument to deflect legitimate criticism and turn the conversation away from the topic at hand.

Only if you ignore all facts and reason.

Sorry.

> Not worth engaging you further on this point, but if you want to discuss the topic at hand, I'm all ears.

i.e. you don't want to admit to the bigotry and hostility I dislike, because you think it's not as bad as the bigotry and hostility you dislike. And, you're so full of yourself, that you're unwilling to learn from people who disagree with you. People who just might have reasons for their opinions.

In this mindset, the good people are (by definition) good, and can do no wrong. The bad people are (by definition) bad, and can do no right. You don't need to engage the bad people as people, because they're evil and despicable. You can just dismiss them out of hand.

Or, you can do what Daryl Davis did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis

A black man befriended KKK members, talked to them as people. He used friendliness, along with facts and reason, to convince them that racism was wrong.

Are you calling actual jihadists left wing? Or are you calling SJWs jihadists?

SJWs generally support anything Islam (which never made much sense to me, because how anti-woman Islam is).

waaa you are a confused individual.

Speaking of male tears...

Another great example! Good job demonstrating!

A great example of what? I'm having trouble working out what's upsetting you here.

Why does everything that Twitter does feel so ham-fisted.

People love having their speech limited, I'm sure this will work out great for twitter.

This isn't the limitation of free speech, this is a private company telling one of its users that they aren't welcome due to their behavior. It's like if you were at a store and started soapboxing about <insert alt right conspiracy bullshit here> loudly right in front of the register, the manager of the store is 100% allowed to ask you to leave. Freedom of speech means your speech isn't illegal, not that you will suffer no consequences for it.

ETA: some people made some comments below this that made me want to clarify a few things:

1) Twitter being publicly traded does not automatically make them beholden to every person on Earth, especially in matters of free speech. They're still allowed governing their platform in whatever way they see fit.

2) a better analogy might be a comedy club on open mic nigh.t. If you get up on stage and start making racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. Jokes the club owner has every right to throw you out. Yes, it's a public forum, but limiting your use of what is ultimately a private (i.e. not government owned) establishment does not constitute a violation of your rights unless it can be proven that you were denied access due to your membership in a protected class, or based on your gender, etc. Free speech doesn't protect you from (peaceful and appropriate) backlash.

The comment you replied to doesn't say free speech and doesn't invoke the constitution.

They are talking about the comedy club where the owner permanently bans anyone who makes jokes on certain topics. People stop going to it.

Which I think Twitter is going to have to have some standards about what sort of behavior they allow, it's just that there is risk of going too far and making the platform boring and useless. Banning accounts used for harassment is not going too far. Banning accounts because some arbitrary number of people don't like what they say probably is.

I think your analogy falls a little flat because 'right in front of the register' at a store isn't literally purpose-built to be a speech platform, as Twitter is.

That only works in practice if there are public spaces where you can excercise your free speech. If everything is a private space, then it's fine that the government won't limit your speech - but that promise becomes pretty vacuous.

I firmly believe that if something becomes as big as twitter (facebook, google, amazon, ...), it becomes infrastructure and should be subject to similar rules as the government. It should no longer be treated like that mom and pop groceries store.

It took people centuries to wrangle civil rights (including free speech and parliamentary representation) from their states - in that process changing them into democracies. Before, all of that was completely unheard of. I wonder if in future, people will fight the same way for free speech on Twitter, universal access to Amazon's shipping infrastructure, the right to be indexed (or forgotten) on Google, and so on.

> This isn't the limitation of free speech

I'm not talking about free speech. This is a company that didn't censor <x>, deciding to censor <x>. I'm sure the users that discussed/read/were-interested-in <x> will be thrilled. That is all.

He's not commenting whether it's right or not. He's just saying people won't like it

Twitter is very much a public company beholden to its shareholders.

> this is a private company

I think you mean public company. They went public a few years ago.

Except that Twitter is not a private company. They are a publicly traded corporation.

Nobody has provided evidence of any bad behavior of the banned accounts.

> People love having their speech limited, I'm sure this will work out great for twitter.

I love having hate speech limited, if that's what you mean.

The problem with banning hate speech is that it is relative. Next up, books will be banned because they incite alternate opinions.

There's a difference between mere 'alternate opinions' and hateful, prejudiced opinions.

It's seems disingenuous for you to conflate them.

The even bigger problem is we're assuming they were banned for "hate" speech because Twitter hasn't even said why yet. If they took down tweets that they felt were hate speech and communicated to the speaker and the community I would be more okay with it. A silent ban of dozens of accounts is their right as a business but I'll still say it's a stupid decision.

Bear in mind that some people consider this site to be sexist and racist - check out the #hnwatch hashtag on Twitter. Everyone commenting here "good", consider that as a member of HN, others tar you with the same brush. Still so happy?

Mind sharing an example/hypothetical of it being relative?

Yeah... probably not.

There are plain facts about the world which are often considered "hate speech". FBI crime statistics, for example. They gotta be banned to maintain the narrative.

As long as it is applied consistently. Are they also banning those spewing hate for Trump or the police?

It is just like everyone who is rioting with slogans like 'not my President.' These same people were giving Trump a hard time when he said the election system was rigged and didn't enthusiastically say he would support the results of the election. The left is doing a good job reenforcing the exact image many people voted against. The elitist attitude of tolerance unless disagreed with.

EDIT

Thanks for the downvotes and further proving my point. I would never vote for Trump, but simply pointing out hypocrisy and double standards does get people upset.

Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences, and Twitter is free to do as they like with their platform.

http://sealedabstract.com/rants/re-xkcd-1357-free-speech/

With the right of free speech comes the responsibility to extend that speech to others. Because if we leave who is heard to simply "who can speak the loudest", we won't find out when we're wrong.

See also: Mill's "On Liberty", available now in every Intro to Philosophy textbook.

While I agree with your statement, I think it's important to protect the concept of free speech in many places and to disrespect companies who don't.

Twitter has failed to do so here and is showing a blatant political statement (unless there were specific cases of harassment with these people or something, in which case I may be overstepping).

I think generally views like this are better left in the spotlight of the public where they can be properly argued with and not dragged into private forums and facebook feeds where it's much harder for people to see a wider response to them. Banning them is harmful to people who are getting a casual interest in their ideas and start reading up on it. When the only place they can do that is Breitbart or similar, how do you think that'll go?

Absolutely, the only way to truly deal with racism, sexism, and a whole host of other -isms is education, whether through experience that teaches otherwise, or a facts-based approach that leaves little room for argument.

My problem is so much of what goes on in these public message boards is not fact-based. Alt right groups pander to people's irritations and insecurities in a million small ways. They blatantly lie about individuals or scenarios. They set up straw men, then demonize and demolish them with words like 'cuck' and 'illegal' to inflame their readers, even when the people they're discussing are not those things at all. And when they're confronted with a dissenting viewpoint, they ignore it and move to the next. It is literally impossible for rational individuals to have discussions with them.

I think part of the problem is people don't tend to internalize lessons taught by others without respect for that person, and on the internet, everyone is a stranger. I don't want this kind of speech banned because it's offensive - I want it banned because its nonsensical, it enrages people only looking for a reason to be angry, it gives a platform to people that can't even defend their views without resorting to constant insults, it's a waste of time. That's probably my lack of caffeine talking, though.

>Twitter has failed to do so here and is showing a blatant political statement (unless there were specific cases of harassment with these people or something, in which case I may be overstepping).

Everyone keeps making comments like this. "This is a massive injustice! Unless Twitter was justified idk."

Maybe we should wait for a statement from Twitter before passing judgment.

Ok, so Twitter can definitely ban some people from its website, but "Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences" taken at face value, is pretty terrifying, especially given how our president elect has responded to criticism. Those consequences should be bounded to essentially: ... and now they don't like you anymore, and won't invite you to parties.

Honestly, if there wasn't censorship of alt-right views to begin with on Facebook and elsewhere, then perhaps more people would have been motivated to get out and vote for what they believe in, rather than thinking that they had already won.

Or maybe everyone on Facebook unfriends people with differing opinions anyway so it would only benefit those within the white supremacist echo chamber.

They're just kinda late, IMO.

Not limiting speech wasn't really working out for them either. Abusive users was one of the reasons floated for their difficulty selling.

"Twitter finally bans accounts partaking in persistent abuse and harassment"

This isnt a freedom of speech / diversity of thought issue, these people are abusing others. Frankly I would prefer the police got involved and hate crimes and threats were taken seriously, but while late at least twitter are doing the right thing.

The comments here are extremely disheartening. It appears that the HN community values hate speech and harassment over "free speech" on a privately owned platform. I applaud Twitter for making itself a safer space for marginalized groups with this step even if it is very little, very late.

Edit: it is with heavy heart that I must say that I am EXTREMELY depressed by the amount of white racism denial I am seeing in the comments here. The hacker news community is demonstrating to me an extreme aversion to understanding or deconstructing racism in this country and is satisfied with endlessly repeating ancient defenses against racism under the package of feeling oppressed because marginalized groups of people are finally speaking out against their oppression.

People with different views need to be listened to and debated with rather than silenced. this newspaper article from a BBC journalist is quite thought provoking http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/journalists-are-helping-to...

As much as I disagree with the views of the "alt-right" (why not call them far right by the way?), I can't help but be astounded that we've opened that can of worms? Who got to decide who should be banned? Isn't Twitter basically free speech? Why are we even drawing lines to begin with? As soon as you do that, someone else with a different world view will start banning the accounts of transgenders, community organizers, since we're now basing our judgment of Twitter accounts on subjective criteria.

People have a right to follow/unfollow accounts and we should leave it at that.

Out of place but I want to hear American HN regulars opinon;

Is this provacation or utter lack of self awareness as it i will only play into Trumps hand?

Part of Trump's argument has been "the system is rigged" so this support it, especially once you consider that Twitter did not ban people calling for protests during the Arab Spring. In fact, the State Department - run by Hillary Clinton at the time - specifically asked for Twitter to keep accounts open and information flowing.

This is ideal for Trump and crew.

In the US, the Net Neutrality position describes internet access as a utility, not a luxury. Further the UN declares it a Human Right. If either/both of those positions hold, then the gatekeepers - Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc - suppressing any view or blocking access to any group could be a violation of human rights.

I think that will have to be settled in court, but it will get messy for those companies.

But Arab Spring tweets weren't characterized by racially-charged harassment of other users.

Next time, MSM can honestly claim they didn't see it coming.

It's sad how what's supposed to be an open and democratic platform, isn't.

Letting people silence others isn't democratic, it's antidemocratic. You can spout whatever garbage you want but don't try to prevent others from spouting theirs.

little meta - HN is not the best place to have these discussions. the way voting works here, everything is too conformist, too sugarcoated, and most importantly, downvotes are regularly handed out (at least in such emotional discussions as political discussions are wont to be) according to the political views of the high-karma elites, and more particularly according to their lack of moral self-control (i.e. many will not "abuse" downvotes like that, but that then just gives more power to those doing it).

is it OK to assume that, among the people with high enough karma to cast downvotes, the distribution of political views equals that of the general commenting population? or, better question - does that even matter? i don't know, is it even possible to achieve some kind of crowd-sourced moderation without exposing the system to the risk of gangs of idealists attacking dissenters with downvotes?

I think the musician Jarvis Cocker explained this best in his song, "Running the World." Particularly the lines, "In theory, I respect your right to exist, I will kill you if you move in next to me."

People love to free speech, except when it involves supporting all the things they don't like. For the record, I don't love any extremes and certainly not the alt-right, but censorship is worse. It is never justified, under any circumstances.

If you don't like something, don't listen. People are and can be protected plenty of other ways, for example by laws against murder. The law anywhere isn't perfect, but censorship is even less so.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRGGbyZzuTg

Actually this matches NPI's policy too, guess they can't complain:

>"NPI will, however, exclude those who show reckless disregard with the media, or those who've made morally indefensible public statements. Such people make our movement look bad. We choose not to grant them a platform. It’s as simple as that."

Source: http://www.npiamerica.org/the-national-policy-institute/cate...

This will end badly.

For whom? I think this is going to go very well for gab.ai. Obviously, not as well for Twitter.

To all those concerned, they were not suspended for being racist. They were suspended for trying to silence people they disagreed with via targeted harassment. If you do that, you might get banned, regardless of your political alignment. There are PLENTY of white supremacists who are doing just fine on twitter. According to twitter you are free to spread your shitty ideology as long as you don't actively prevent people from spreading theirs.

It seems Twitter just follow some political will from left/liberal camp. "Freedom of speech" and "democracy" we all know and love.

As I think this is important considering all the discussion so far I feel justified in guiding people to the Ask HN [0] I have just posted. Welcome all feedback

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12967873

Not only do I not see a problem with this, but I don't think Twitter went anywhere near far enough. They should have suspended Trump's account well over a year ago.

Good.

How has the media STILL not realized that the "alt-right" is primarily composed of self-proclaimed "shit posters" and forum trolls who enjoy posting provocative things to get a rise out of the over-sensitive PC police and social justice warriors? They refer to this election as The Great Meme War, and their "leader" (aside from Trump himself) is a poorly drawn cartoon frog.

Those weren't red flags to whatever gullible stooge wrote this story? This is "The Hacker Known as 4Chan" all over again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVhn_tdF3eo

What about the tens of thousands of accounts belonging to islamists cheering about killing non-muslims and preaching hate all day?

Great job, Twitter! Now you can go back to promoting the jihadi profiles at the fullest.

Twitter is a (going bankrupt) common carrier. Lawsuits?

I've heard of ISPs considered common carriers. Is there precedence for sites to be as well?

Not to my knowledge.

I'm going to sell my Twitter stock. They are making one mistake after the other. Do they understand how free speech works? Can they enable that on Twitter?

> I'm going to sell my Twitter stock

You've left that a bit late, haven't you?

How about suspending people who openly advocate genocide? #killallmen

Gendercide?

As an able bodied straight male working in tech, I don't understand how any man can be offended by the killallmen hashtag. I don't feel threatened. They can't even hurt my feelings. Offended men must be very soft and have small dongles.

Here's a simple test. Take someone's rhetoric, like "killallmen". And replace the target with "Jews". If the updated statement feels racist and evil, then the original is also racist and evil.

There's an entire subreddit devoted to this idea: https://www.reddit.com/r/menkampf/

It's eye-opening just how racist many "mainstream" comments are.

But the difference is the context of history, right? While I definitely don't advocate for any "killallmen" stuff, I can recognize the difference between Jews, who were the actual target of a real genocide in which millions died and whose people are located in a country in a region embroiled in actual physical wars, vs men who are the target of.... internet campaigns? A key aspect is how these sentiments manifest (or have manifested) in a tangible sense.

Not to detract from your main message, but much of #killallmen was actually males from 4Chan during "Operation Lollipop" (source is a quick Google away off the quoted words). They also had #BanFathersDay trending

>I don't understand how any man can be offended by the killallmen hashtag

You say don't understand. Do you want to?

They clue to your lack of understanding is in the first part of the sentence

> As an able bodied straight male working in tech

Perhaps if you imagine yourself to be someone else in another background, place, circumstances you can begin to see why a hashtag which appears (if one was unfamiliar with the history of it) to advocate the killing of millions might be offensive to some people.

You might even come to the conclusion that while you don't find it personally offensive you can understand that some might find it troublesome.

I remember the die techie scum protests. Vomiting on busses, throwing rocks at bus windows etc. It was very threatening.

Oh yes, the "poor" rich people being threatened by the actual poor. Very threatening indeed.

It is about applying the same rules to everyone. Plus it is illegal in many countries.

And my group (I am from east europe) was target of 6 genocides/persecutions in past century. I feel threatened, to the point I turned down some job offers.

How will this help Twitter turn a profit?

It depends. There are two angles to this that I can see:

A) Twitter has a bad reputation for bullying and harassment; almost any financial analysis I read about Twitter has this as a strong negative. If Twitter is cracking down on this finally, this would help this reputation and potentially it's profit.

(Note that I'm assuming here that Twitter actually is suspending these accounts not because they are alt-right, but because they are bullying or trolling. I know the alt-right has a bad reputation in some sources for engaging in trolling behavior; I do not know whether this applies to the individual accounts in question.)

B) Being a haven for extremely divisive speech tends not to be the type of place that attracts advertising from companies with large amounts of capital; companies like these (larger ones) tend to default to inclusive for obvious reasons (it's better to have a potential customer base of everyone).

I don't like the idea of banning alt-right accounts for the sake of them being alt-right, but I can easily see justifying bans if either a small population harasses a larger portion of the users, or if significant advertising dollars are at sake. Twitter is a business.

This is a valid question methinks. I am not sure of the distribution of regular HN readers that identify with the so-called "alt-right" movement, but suffice to say millions of Americans do.

Abuse on the platform reportedly lost them a Disney acquisition.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-17/disney-sa...

> Walt Disney Co. decided not to pursue a bid for Twitter Inc. partly out of concern that bullying and other uncivil forms of communication on the social media site might soil the company’s wholesome family image, according to people familiar with management’s thinking.

Maybe now Disney will buy them?

Maybe companies more companies will buy ads?

I don't know. I own TWTR shares and cry every time I check my account.

Yet another reason why Twitter will ultimately fail. Censorship of whoever you think are nefarious characters when purported "victims" can easily just block people is just plain silly. We already know there are block list services that will autoblock. So if anyone is getting trouble from troll / enemies or want to be their own echo chamber, it's easy to do all this stuff. Bye Twitter, hello Minds & Gab.

Media is trying to control the narrative of the Trump victory... Filter-Bubble, Alt-Right, Fake-News Anything but the truth

There's actually a decent canary to determine whether this is the opening salvo of a purge.

If Twitter bans @ScottAdamsSays - whom some have called a Trump apologist but who doesn't seem overtly racist - then we'll know the purge is on.

Good.

Twitter has a legal and ethical responsibility to not allow their platform to promote vile racism, sexism, Islamophobia, etc. No one owes anyone a platform to spew their hatred.

If the bigots don't like it no one is stopping them from getting their own websites.

>A cartoon of Pepe the frog is a commonly used symbol of the alt right

So basically a witch hunt where they're finding "problematic" people and removing their opinions. On the first screenshot two of the "leaders" of the alt right have MAGA hats on, twitter could have just came out openly and said it didn't want Trump supporters on their platform.

Has the other shoe dropped yet? Having gone after the figureheads, who's next? Their followers? Smells like the beginnings of a witch hunt.

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