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 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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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-...
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.
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 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...
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.
This sounds like stereotyping to me.
edit: honest question
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...
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.
Even on /b/, which is known for putting up with the absolute lowest quality shitposting on the entire internet, insulting someone as a cuck will now be met with a litany of retorts regarding your "low quality bait". Weird times.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I have seen that claim hundreds of times in the past few days.
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.
Regarding the attacks towards Steve Bannon, I agree. They are only using examples of what other people who don't like him have said. Here is a great speech and Q+A he gave regarding Judeo-Christian values at the highly respected Dignitatis Humanae Institute [0]. Having listened to this speech amongst others, alongside his writings I can only conclude that what is being pushed are simply smears. Breitbart has taken so much power and money away from the mainstream publications, it is in their interests to take him down.
[0] https://soundcloud.com/buzzfeednews/steve-bannon-at-dhi#c=16...
edit: If anyone would like to dispute my opinion, please for good discussion provide primary sources that originate directly from Steven Bannon.
edit edit: please take a look at the Ask HN I have posted here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12967873
https://www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/this-is-how-steve-banno...
"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
Spend a while in /r/the_donald.
1. No, I'm looking at differences in properties of samples drawn from different populations to estimate differences in those populations. Trump-related online forums have a higher fraction of racists than Clinton, Sanders, Cruz, Rubio, Bush, and Kasich forums do.
If Trump supporters in general had the same level of racism as supporters of those other candidates, then we would expect Trump forums to show about the same level of racism as the forums of those other candidates.
2. You seem to think the size of a sample as a percentage of the population is important. It is not. For large populations it is the absolute number of people in the sample that is important, not the percentage of the population.
I am making the assumption that supporters of various candidates are all about equally likely to decide to post on their candidate's forums. It is possible that there is something about Trump supporters that makes racist Trump supporters more prone to make racist forum posts.
That is what you should be focusing on to criticize my inferences about Trump supporters, rather than basing it on your inadequate understanding of elementary probability and how it applies to determining the sample size needed to make reasonably inferences about a population from a sample.
> I see a bright career at WaPo or NYT for you :-)
Have an upvote. I like it when people who are wrong are at least feisty about it.
"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
I think that will have to be settled in court, but it will get messy for those companies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier#Telecommunicati...
I haven't seen this same argument made for websites in particular. If you have good references for that, please do share!
btw, did you create an account just to make this comment? If so, why? It doesn't seem too controversial.
And I think that's the point. ISPs are precedent to show that a company being private isn't of itself a good enough reason to let it censor people. Google and Facebook are big enough that I think they should be considered public fora for speech. Hence the term "Gatekeeper" in the OP.
Just riffing here, but would it be fair to require Amazon to sell any product I want to make available?