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Comment by TheHypnotist | Hacker News Reader

On the other hand:

If your political stance violates the TOS that is enforced on non-public offical users, is it really "political bias"? Maybe you should rethink your politics if bullying, inciting violence, and inciting hate speech is part of your position.

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The problem will arise when twitter selectively enforces these rules on people with only one political stance.

Hypocrisy is a common human trait, and one that should be accounted for in such a process - it's hard to look at Twitter's past actions and assume they'll do this one perfectly.

Maybe, maybe not. In this case time will tell and considering the effect of their action seems relatively trivial, is this really worse than inaction?

You seem to be assuming your conclusion as your premise.

There is a great example in the thread below that might as well be surfaced here. When blue-checks on twitter post 'kill white people' it is magically not bullying, not inciting violence and not hate speech.

https://www.label56.com/wp-content/uploads/verified-hate-1.j...

What is worse is the secondary effects when people point to twitter not taking action as a justification that posting 'kill <skin colour>' is somehow acceptable if <skin colour> == white. After all, twitter allows it so it must be OK.

- Teddy Wilson was mocking the "white genocide" conspiracy theory. He's also white.

- Dadito Calderone was making a joke about people who pretend to be concerned about crime in black neighborhoods when really they're trying to demonize black people as criminals.

- ka5sh, and possibly Brian Clevinger, is quoting the TV series Roots.

- Bobbie Oliver was talking about a movie in which a black man escapes slavery by killing his captors.

- Shay Stweart Bouley was sharing a story with an intentionally provocative title

- Tracy Bommeisha-Ann Clayton was ironically using a painfully exaggerated black accent.

- Yasser Lester is saying something similar to Nick Hanauer telling plutocrats to beware of pitchforks and torches.

None of these people were actually advocating for killing white people, nor or they making these jokes in a targeted way that would constitute bullying. Furthermore, many of these tweets are many years old, which indicates that they were found by scraping the bottom of the barrel.

I am pretty sure that if one would take the approaches you have outlined - e.g. quoting some TV show, making a 'provocative title', speakig in an exagerrated accent -- but with the people <colour> swapped, they would be flagged in a relatively short order. No matter how bening the motive, the message is not OK. The fact that you think that it is OK and make excuses for it is the illustration of my GP post's last point.

I disagree. If you go looking, you can find verified accounts suggesting killing Hispanics [1], putting Jews in ovens [2], killing Indians [3], and otherwise committing genocide [4].

[1] https://twitter.com/KillerMike/status/612315197663940608.

[2] https://twitter.com/TheBillyProcida/status/62535136510415257...

[3] https://twitter.com/ZaidZamanHamid/status/505972865766658048

[4] https://twitter.com/AlexisGZall/status/604026752013230080

I've seen far more on the left calling for bullying, inciting violence, and inciting hate than the right.

Oh good, I'm not alone in seeing this trend. The left seems to have a more "if you're not with us you're against us" stance.

Even if that's true, people on the right seem to be more likely to actually follow threats with physical violence. At least this is the case in Germany where the deaths caused by right-wing extremism since the beginning of the 90s number more than a hundred, while there have been only two deaths since 2001 caused by left-wing radicals. Unfortunately the article I read on this didn't have numbers for left-wing violence in the 90s, but I doubt they would make up for this significant difference.

Abortionists incite violence. In fact, they commit violence and murder. Let's start banning them? :-)

What is an abortionist?

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/abortionist

Any of the 3 is cool.

We've banned this account for taking HN threads into ideological flamewar. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules when posting here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Whether or not it's political bias depends on what's in the TOS and who gets to define "bullying", "inciting violence", and "hate speech".

I can definitely think of ways any of those could be defined by Trumpists. Suffice to say those definitions are likely to differ substantially from those that a typical Pride attendee might offer.

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