Twitter suspended Indian dairy giant Amul for call to boycott Chinese goods

The automated software is intended to predict and prevent public backlash. They aren't lying.

It would be interesting to see a cataloging of censorship actions by social/media companies, etc. alongside the response. Ie Company x did y, z number of times, and blamed a bug w times versus deliberative actions q times.

Maybe it’s good, maybe it’s bad. I think they are a private company with free speech, and people should just not use their products if they don’t like it.

No, the bad thing is that they’re tech giants in the first place. If they weren’t so big, they wouldn’t have so much power, and thus there wouldn’t be a problem at all.

No, it is an inconsistency in the application of the rules.

What is the rationale from Twitter? That wanting reduced dependence on trade with an Authoritarian dictatorship is bad? That the caricature of China as a dragon is offensive? What?

Hahaha they always say that. Trust me Twitter India is the worst when it comes to censorship. They have been randomly suspending accounts and then reinstating them after uproar. This has been going on for a good 3 years. Nothing new for us here in India. All this crap about them being for "freedom of speech and expression" is just humbug. If there was any agency that kept a track of the number of times Twitter suspended a popular account and reinstated it after uproar then the real picture would come out into the open. And Twitter specifically targets right wing accounts. From suspensions to shadow banning. Everything is allowed. This has turned more and more people in India against such biased services. And it isn't helping Twitter or its cause in anyway. It is only causing more alienation. It is only reaffirming our beliefs that Twitter is not apolitical.

I don't see why Twitter has to do it? If it wants people to switch political affiliations then this is the worst way to go about it. I know Jack Dorsey admitted that he is a leftist and most employees in Twitter are leftists too [1]. That those employees who lean towards the right feel threatened to voice their opinions within Twitter. If that is the situation within the company then how can you expect it to not be biased when dealing with political issues on the platform? Surely those biases will permeate into decision making. And one can't blame algorithms always. I don't see leftist accounts being banned by Twitter no matter how much hate and abuse you find on such accounts. So it is not automation. This is definitely targeted.

[1]: Twitter is so liberal that its conservative employees ‘don’t feel safe to express their opinions,’ says CEO Jack Dorsey

https://www.vox.com/2018/9/14/17857622/twitter-liberal-emplo...

As per your article:

> “We have asked Twitter why it blocked our account,” Sodhi said. “We are waiting for the reply.”

Sounds like they suffered from more than a simple CAPTCHA before their login (in which case it also sounds absurd to publicly restrict the account).

Twitter says:

> “Safety and security of the accounts is a key priority for us and to ensure an account has not been compromised sometimes we require the account owner to complete a simple reCAPTCHA process,” a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement. “These challenges are simple for authentic account owners to solve, but difficult [or costly] for spammy or malicious account owners to complete.”

This makes no sense. It's a ~9 year old verified account with 250k followers, operated by one of the largest companies in India, with no unusual tweet activity.

Your account can be suspended if you don’t complete a reCAPTCHA?

I didn’t even know Twitter used reCAPTCHA which feels slightly controversial in itself.

These companies have too much control over public discourse.

You didn't read the latest guidelines? They specifically ban [redacted] unless you're arguing that [redacted] didn't have anything to do with [redacted]. Unless of course, you've accepted money from [redacted], then you are welcome to criticize [redacted] as long as you mark posts as promotional.

It's really pretty easy. Just visit: [redacted] for more details.

More likely is that China used many accounts to report it as violence or some other sensitive category. Automation would have taken it down at that point.

Wow. Building and operating a massive unaccountable automated system to deboost and/or silence undesirable speech is now OK because 'it was a mistake'.

Edit. At what point are the users and/or the public at large owed a detailed postmortem for those 'mistakes'?

It is not a mistake. Twitter has been censoring Right wing accounts in India for past 3 years. The modus operandi is to first suspend a popular account and when there is hue & cry reinstate the account citing some stupid policy reason. Twitter is the most politically biased social media outlet in existence today. No doubt about that.

The bigotry of big tech began a long time ago.