Twitter deletes China embassy's Xinjiang 'emancipation' tweet
bbc.com
bbc.com
Twitter's decision therefore takes a stand on what the "truth" is.
This is not intended to judge how true the original article by the way, for future downvoters.
Twitter is not an arbiter of truth and never was. Their policies are clear.
They are not an arbiter of truth or an authority.
The problem with Twitter is that it can ban information based on western media consensus. aka echo chamber.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-23/video-uyghurs-shaved-...
This is holocaust level work.
The ABC link shows a random video uploaded and verified as 'authentic' by someone who sits at his home watching Google maps. If that's the level of evidence required for Holocaust then it's a lost cause to reason with you.
also to add, there are 12 million uighur in china, if the claim of genocide on 3 million of uighur is true, that means 1 in 4 uighur are slaughtered. Xinjiang to this day is open for visits for foreigners, there are zero reports of refugees in neighboring countries. If the there is indeed a holocaust going on, then these evidence should be easy to find right? and you probably wouldn't need to rely on "leaks" and videos verified by a 22 year old "goolge map" expert.
I'm of the belief that any coercion with the intent to disuade women from having any (or more) kids is ethically wrong, (except for some very very limited cases). Govt really shouldn't have a heavy influence on what is a family decision.
While I'm all for educating poor areas in order to increase quality of life... if one of the stated goals of that education is to reduce the number of that populations offspring, then there are some tough ethical questions about such a program that need to be answered.
And that's before you even get into the "targeted minority" aspects.
And yes, I get that one easy way to "improve quality of life" is to have fewer kids (I personally disagree), and I get that educated couples often have fewer kids...
but if that's where the bulk of the QoL bump is coming from... Then that's just straight up population control going by an alias with better branding.
The policy has historically allowed exceptions for ethnic minorities, but looking at news stories they have been physically putting birth control devices in Uyghur women without consent too. The state perfected its art of surveillance by testing on minorities; it's no surprise they also perfected some other human rights violations from experience with Han people.
(There are cheap condom programs, but the entire country just doesn't talk about sex. You get few safe sex talks, and all these stuff end up as balloons for kids and hairbands. Combined oral contraceptives are cheap and OTC, but the culture is heavily against "unnecessary use of western medicine", especially for the cheap ethinylestradiol/levonostrogel kind because "cheap means bad". So you end up with good women's bodily autonomy on paper and terrible execution, even without the violations.)
It's sterilization, so that Uighur families can't have children.
EDIT: HN won't let me respond, probably due to the automatic moderation controls kicking in on this article, so here's an example of the forced sterilization policy indiscriminately targeting all Uighur women: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/04/muslim-minorit...
The more boring explanation is the simpler one I think; that they're bringing policies toward minorities in line with policies toward the majority -- i.e. ending a form of "affirmative action" they used to have.
You can argue that population control of _any_ kind is wrong and cruel, and I think that's a totally defensible argument, but there's a rhetorical sleight of hand going on here where people equate China's controversial population control measures (that have been ongoing for decades) with the elimination of a particular ethnic minority, Nazi-style.
It's a culture- and religion-based form of oppression. The ethnic Uighur people are Muslims, for the most part. They form a distinct subculture within China. The Communist Party sees their nonconformity as a threat to social harmony. That's why, in addition to forced sterilization and forced birth control, the government has imposed forced re-education in concentration camps.
Their goal is to destroy the Uighur population's distinctiveness as a subculture in China. It is deliberate ethnocide (by forced internment) and genocide (by reproductive suppression).
Which makes you ask, what's the difference between Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups like the Hui? Well, the biggest as far as I can tell is the influx of new, extremist ideologies like Wahhabism that are actually quite _incompatible_ with the indigenous culture. The reasons why that happened seem complex, but maybe you can say it's an unfortunate outcome of US and Russian meddling in the region over decades.
It's absolutely true that there's increased security and surveillance targeted at Uyghurs in the region, I've seen a lot of videos taken by travelers from the area that confirm that. There's also a coordinated and systemic program of re-education, as admitted by Chinese authorities. I'm sure there is a non-zero amount of abuses as part of this whole program, but I don't think that's the same thing as genocide. & I think the stated reason in their propaganda for _why_ this is all happening passes the smell test... Otherwise, wouldn't they be repressing Hui Muslims as well?
(Also see Tibet -- people said the same thing about Tibetan culture 20 years ago, but it's pretty well-understood now that there were foreign-funded separatist elements back then)
How would your opinion change if that correlation were found to disappear in the coming decades? Or if it actually began to reverse (for example as populations shift to being more urban where kids are expensive and access to assisted reproduction depends on wealth)?
>The best way to "control" population growth is...
Then provide some level of govt incentive to reach that goal, it's still coercion (or if you prefer, manipulation), even if the incentive is 1st order positive effects, and the stated goal/result is a 2nd or 3rd order effect.
Thinking about it, I keep coming back to preditory lending/selling tactics or dark-pattern manipulation (except the UI is your life choices) as comparisons, but I haven't worked out exactly why, yet, other than it bothers me in a similar way. Moreso, since it's government.
It's a coordination problem. Everyone wants to act in the way that maximizes their happiness/success/utility, but in doing so acts in a net-negative way. One of the premier purposes of government is to solve coordination problems. Why is it unethical for the government to solve this coordination problem?
Or, more concretely, why does my right to have a dozen children trump my children's right to have sufficient resources left to them to live a happy life?
People are free to use or not birth controls if they want or not children, same for the education. People aren't tricked in reducing the amount of children they have. Data in developed countries seems to point that when people are better educated and have the tools to decide for children, they get them later in life and in less quantity (without considering other factors, such as religious communities that have more children per woman than average).
But what I was originally going to say is that the language gets really fuzzy really fast. Like you could argue that sex education is a form of persuasion (though I wouldn't say coercion) and is easily argued as a form of population control. But I think many of us would call that beneficial. I'd say the same with free/cheap and easy access to forms of birth control. I'd say that enables more choice. But if we're talking about a counseling center that guilt trips someone into having the child or not having the child I'd call that coercion and I don't think that's right. But others would call that persuasion and education. So I think this gets messy really quick and a bit of expanding on the thought for clarification is needed.
I used the word "coercion" intentionally, although it's not exactly right.
Just as "coercion" implies "force or threatening," "persuasion" implies an "un-forced, freely-made choice." And that is a big part of what I'm questioning depending on particular circumstances.
At what level of deception or trickery or lies-of-omission, does the free-choice become the illusion-of-choice?
Hypothetically, in Xinjiang, if (and I get that this is an extremely unlikely "if" for obvious reasons) if we presume the actions are exactly the same (provide/offer/compel education), and the end results are exactly the same (results in suppressed Uighur birthrate, but educated),
Then does the government's good or bad intent matter?
What's the difference between these scenarios, if
1) China govt being honest and trying raise the QoL in Xinjiang to be equal with the rest of China, or
2) China govt lying, and using education as a pretense because of the low birthrate result that they desire?
Giving the state arbitrary powers to limit population growth is a form of violence. Having a state sactioned sterilization on excess children is just as horrific as a war, without any of the spoils of war.
The problem lies in the fact that the gov is the last body left to resolve our deepest conflicts as we are no longer free to commit acts of violence on our own behalf. Making it through life used to be materially difficult and death was far more common. Living in our current heaven-like atmosphere has far darker implications for the age-old conflicts.
Except, you missed the part where, if someone's free to run up the score with 4, 6, or 10 children...they also have the freedom to watch them starve if they can't support them.
I don't know that better planners should be forced into subsidizing bad family planning/no family planning.
What about government policies that persuade women to have more children? Are those ethically ok?
That it be worse than, for example, forced foreskin removal or teeth correction would only follow from the axiom that reproduction is a higher goal that all should have.
If one can say that one can kill a man who has not yet been conceived, by stopping his hypothetical future birth, then every form of contraception is murder, nay, the simple election not to have sex or otherwise procreate is then murder.
The argument of genocide of course does not imply that the man who is sterilized is killed so long as he be allowed to live after the sterilization, but rather that his future, hypothetical offspring is, because it would now never come to be.
The comparison I made was with forced foreskin removal and forced dental correction, something that can also not be undone.
any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
As usual, U.N. definitions are made without much thought, and quickly lead to the absurd when being held to even the slightest of inspection — it is almost as if it be a forum of very emotional men, who put very little thought into what they are doing.
If we say that stopping future births rather is problematic, then most forms of sex education are problematic.
That would be perhaps true if the Dutch government were planning to give out free condoms only to white people or only to black people or only to blonds or only to christians etc. If they are universally giving out condoms, then they are obviously not trying to destroy any particular ethnic or national group inside their own country - the obvious limit to the UN definition.
Then they are only giving them out to the “ethnicity” called “the Dutchman”.
But this another matter of why I'm never very impressed with any definition that names the pseudoscientific concept of “ethnicity” — it is of course entirely an arbitrary thing what is and isn't classified as a separate “ethnicity” much like how the difference between a dialect and a separate language is of course one of politics, not science.
If only the province of Frisia were to have a plan for handing out such condoms, would that qualify as genocide of the Frisians then, which some claim is a different ethnicity for historical reasons? Are the inhabitants of each city perhaps a different ethnicity?
If you permanently and compulsorily sterilized everyone in Frisia, yes, that'd be a genocide. Giving them condoms they can voluntarily and reversibly use is not.
If the government were giving out free vasectomies or tubal ligations to certain ethnic groups and not others, that would be a wildly different story.
I'm simply saying that by the U.N.'s definition of “genocide”, handing out condoms can be construed as such, and that the definition is therefore not worth much, or rather, that following it's definition, genocide is not problematic per sē, as it does not necessarily involve the involuntary taking of human life.
Free condom initiatives typically do not have that intent.
However, if the local authorities in Frisia were to implement such a plan, that would be closer to the first case of universal measures, since the authorities in Frisia shouldn't be expected to hand out condoms in other provinces. Of course, if it turned out that the measure was in fact planned by the central government and passed off as a local idea, that would again move the needle towards being suspicious.
In general, intent matters - that is why the law can't be formalized mathematically. If a country is targeting some group that it has historically considered "different" (regardless of how questionable the difference is) with some kind of measure which may have negative consequences, that measure should receive scrutiny, and the context should be identified. For example, giving poor people condoms may be an attempt at population control in one country, while in another country it may be a democratically enacted benefit.
We are far away from providing mathematically clear definitions of legal concepts such as genocide, murder, theft, fraud and anything you like. There are always surprising subtleties, and intent and context are always going to be a part of the definition.
>However, if the local authorities in Frisia were to implement such a plan, that would be closer to the first case of universal measures, since the authorities in Frisia shouldn't be expected to hand out condoms in other provinces. Of course, if it turned out that the measure was in fact planned by the central government and passed off as a local idea, that would again move the needle towards being suspicious.
This is a distinction you make, but not a distinction the U.N. definition makes, which shows that you, much as I do, do not find the definition credible.
The U.N. definition does not factor in supranationality as a condition.
> In general, intent matters
Perhaps, but that difference is not given in the U.N. definition.
> that is why the law can't be formalized mathematically.
Then the definition should have never been offered as a rebuttal.
> If a country is targeting some group that it has historically considered "different" (regardless of how questionable the difference is) with some kind of measure which may have negative consequences, that measure should receive scrutiny, and the context should be identified. For example, giving poor people condoms may be an attempt at population control in one country, while in another country it may be a democratically enacted benefit.
All of this goes far beyond the original definition and is quite ad hoc.
I suspect that if further challenges and exceptions be raised against all these further rules, that more ad hoc rules are further and further added.
> We are far away from providing mathematically clear definitions of legal concepts such as genocide, murder, theft, fraud and anything you like. There are always surprising subtleties, and intent and context are always going to be a part of the definition.
Indeed we are, so perhaps the definition should not have been offered as if it actually be meaningful and the U.N. should drop the prætence of it's having “definitions” and “rules” for what is clearly simply “we rule on a case by case basis, mostly on our gut feeling.”
And that is too how laws work. I find that in practice the written text of the law is largely irrelevant vis à vis the gut feeling of whatever man vested with the power to interpret the law and I believe that not much would change in practice if entire law books were simply replaced with “The judge may do as he will and punish what he finds immoral on a case by case basis.”
Rule of law is almost always a veil for rule of men.
> Perhaps, but that difference is not given in the U.N. definition.
Yes, it is. The UN's 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines it explicitly with intent in mind:
"... genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group..."
Of course it is! The definition explicitly says "any of the following acts committed with the intent to [...]".
One more thing that the definition says that I hadn't even noticed and that significantly simplifies my examples, and immediately makes your example clearly NOT genocide, is that point (d) talks about imposing reproductive restrictions, which offering free condoms will never do.
> All of this goes far beyond the original definition and is quite ad hoc.
Yes, I was going beyond the strict definition of genocide and exploring similar concepts. The idea of defining what "ethnic groups" etc. means by historical precedent is probably the exact intent of the UN definition, though.
> And that is too how laws work. I find that in practice the written text of the law is largely irrelevant vis à vis the gut feeling of whatever man vested with the power to interpret the law and I believe that not much would change in practice if entire law books were simply replaced with “The judge may do as he will and punish what he finds immoral on a case by case basis.”
This is completely wrong for 99% of law, and might be slightly true for a few aspects of criminal law. In 99% of cases, the judge is ruling entirely on the law, there is no moral cause to be explored.
In general, actions done to children by their parents (or with their parents' expressed, unequivocal consent) are not considered "forced" except in cases where the harm is large. So, male circumcision or teeth corrections or vaccinations are not "forced" on the children, because they are acts that their parents consider are beneficial to the child.
However, if the state were to force children to be circumcised or have their teeth aligned regardless of their parents' desires, then most people would object to that.
Even more importantly, any actions which affect someone's ability to use their body in a normal way are generally considered abhorrent. That is why male circumcision is usually tolerated, while female circumcision is an abomination, even if done by one's parents. Forced sterilization is obviously in the second case, since it is terminally preventing someone from performing one of the 3 fundamental components of life.
Obviously so is forced foreskin removal and forced tooth correction, so I fail to see that point.
> In general, actions done to children by their parents (or with their parents' expressed, unequivocal consent) are not considered "forced" except in cases where the harm is large. So, male circumcision or teeth corrections or vaccinations are not "forced" on the children, because they are acts that their parents consider are beneficial to the child.
I see, so it would be fine of the parents were the ones forcibly sterilizing them rather than the government.
I find that absurd: I for one am in favor of government-mandated vaccinations and find this to be a very desirable thing opposed to letting parents be the ones to decide.
> However, if the state were to force children to be circumcised or have their teeth aligned regardless of their parents' desires, then most people would object to that.
Yes, which I find absurd.
It matters not to the man whose body was irreparably altered whence the order to do so came — it's a rather shallow comfort to then be told that it was fine because it was the will of one's parents rather than the government's.
> Even more importantly, any actions which affect someone's ability to use their body in a normal way are generally considered abhorrent. That is why male circumcision is usually tolerated, while female circumcision is an abomination, even if done by one's parents. Forced sterilization is obviously in the second case, since it is terminally preventing someone from performing one of the 3 fundamental components of life.
Yes, you call it fundamental which goes right back to that it only holders water if one considers reproduction a higher goal that all must aspire to.
And with “all”, one can argue roughly half of all; I've noticed that he moral queasiness of sterilization of the male seems to be quite a bit lower than with sterilization of the female — as if that not be rooted in some belief that a female's primary function is to be a reproductive engine: close your eyes and think of England.
Reproduction is a fundamental function of your organism, whether you chose to use it or not (for example, I am not going to reproduce). Any entity forcefully removing your body's ability to perform any of its fundamental functions is obviously abhorrent. If the state were seeking to remove your ability to see or your ability to consume food or excrete it, would you find that a matter of definitions?
By contrast, male circumcision and teeth straitghening are essentially cosmetic differences. Male circumcision is more problematic (and it is certainly not considered anywhere close to normal in most of the world), but even there the harm is minimal - being able to cover one's glans with one's foreskin is not a significant ability that anyone could claim has a significant effect on their life (of course, the risks of complications associated with the procedure itself are a different matter).
> I've noticed that he moral queasiness of sterilization of the male seems to be quite a bit lower than with sterilization of the female
I have no idea where you have seen this. I haven't even seen the sex or gender of the person being potentially sterilized discussed at all in any discussion of the horror of forced sterilization. Certainly nowhere in this thread or even the deleted tweet.
Overall, you seem to want to either make some kind of eugenic argument for forced sterilization (which I consider so abhorrent it's not even worth arguing against), OR some kind of strange more-liberal-than-thou argument that reproduction shouldn't be given some special place (which no one is, it's just that reproduction is the ONLY function of the body that anyone seems to think it might be ok to take from you for some strange reason - it isn't, anymore than gouging your eyes or removing your inner ear would be).
And what test or criteria might you use to decide what is and isn't a “fundamental function of one's organism”?
> By contrast, male circumcision and teeth straitghening are essentially cosmetic differences.
It is not so much the result of both that I find problematic as the painful methodology by which they are achieved.
Cutting up a man sans any anæsthesia, sewing him back up, and leaving him otherwise alive but with a scar is also merely cosmetic; it was, however, rather painful for him.
> I have no idea where you have seen this. I haven't even seen the sex or gender of the person being potentially sterilized discussed at all in any discussion of the horror of forced sterilization. Certainly nowhere in this thread or even the deleted tweet.
It has been well discussed and noted that physicians seem to be far more willing to perform elective sterilizations on males than on females and find some kind of greater moral fault with the latter than the former.
> it isn't, anymore than gouging your eyes or removing your inner ear would be).
And I would submit that most, if not nigh all human beings when given the dilemma of either surrendering their reproductive capacity or an eye, would surely pick the former.
It's telling that human beings willingly surrender their reproductive capacity all the time, but I have seldom heard of a man who decided to have a healthy eye removed simply because he wanted himself rid of it.
So yes, I consider removing a man's reproductive capacity to be quite trivial and inconsequential compared to removing his eye.
Which of both would you choose?
Sure, that is something to discuss. In the case of teeth, most parents in most of the world only have their children go through procedures that are likely to be important for their health (even if the child may not like the procedure). Male circumcision is also not something I condone personally, and it is relatively rare in most of the world outside some ethnic/religious groups.
> It has been well discussed and noted that physicians seem to be far more willing to perform elective sterilizations on males than on females and find some kind of greater moral fault with the latter than the former.
We are discussing forced sterilization here in general. When you are talking about male elective sterilization, do you mean vasectomy? Because then, one reason why surgeons may be more willing to go through with it is because it is (at least theoretically) reversible, so it constitutes a smaller decision than surgical female sterilization, which is always definitive.
It is also true that historically doctors have felt far more entitled to make decisions for women's bodies than for men's, so I do expect that this shamefully persists.
> So yes, I consider removing a man's reproductive capacity to be quite trivial and inconsequential compared to removing his eye. > Which of both would you choose?
This is not about choice - that is the whole point. The population we are talking about is not given any choice - the state is deciding to change the way their body works, against their own interests.
Even more importantly, while taking away someone's reproductive capacity may be a smaller apparent harm than taking away their eyes, it is a much, much worse harm over the long term of the community. Literally destroying the Family as a core part of their community is going to destroy their old age, and it is an explicit attack on their culture.
> It's telling that human beings willingly surrender their reproductive capacity all the time, but I have seldom heard of a man who decided to have a healthy eye removed simply because he wanted himself rid of it.
You will find very, very few human beings permanently surrender their reproductive capacity willingly EXCEPT for those who are essentially finished with it - people with at least one, but likely several children. True, there are likely slightly more people who willingly permanently give up their reproductive capacity than people who have an eye removed, but the reason is also obvious: there is absolutely nothing to gain from having an eye removed, while giving up your reproductive capacity allows you to have unprotected sex without the possibility of expensive, hard to care for children.
> And what test or criteria might you use to decide what is and isn't a “fundamental function of one's organism”?
There are many ways to come up with a definition that will include reproduction but not include crooked teeth or the foreskin. In fact, reproduction is so fundamental that we usually define life as being primarily related to reproduction - that is, any chemical substance that can simply reproduce itself is usually at least a candidate for being considered a form of life (the minimalist definition is just a fixed physical form and reproduction + heredity).
So while many functions of a living organism are more or less "fundamental", reproduction is almost the only one you can't debate away.
Now, if looking strictly at one individual organism, it is true that reproduction becomes much less fundamental, so I am assuming that this is the angle you are thinking from. But I don't think this is the right way of looking at it when considering whether a medical procedure could be justly forced on an entire population.
You might as well ask, why is forced sterilization worse than forced removal of your appendix?
Oh, please. Twitter's application of its policies is outrageously inconsistent, even for high-profile U.S. officials. Otherwise, how come the many people who openly defend the extra-judicial killings by the U.S. military (from Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump) have yet a twitter account? And I'm not saying anything about tweets supporting the violent overthrow of several governments worldwide; those are tolerated because they align with U.S. interests. Twitter is the ministry of truth of the U.S.A. and its main mouthpiece.
EDIT: https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/773545200807534592
(This tweet by Hillary Clinton glorifies an extrajudicial killing in foreign territory, with the opposition of the country where it happened, and at the same time manages to sneak in some falsehoods. The text is: "When our SEALs took out bin Laden, they brought the terrorists' families to safety first. That's American honor. " This is false, since several members of the bin Laden family died in the attack, including women and children. I'm not saying that killing bin Laden was wrong, just that Twitter policies are wildly inconsistent regarding violence and falsehood.)
He was not entitled to any protection afforded uniformed combatants, but I'm pretty sure it still would have been against the Geneva Conventions to kill him with sarin, for instance.
The U.S. wasn't behind the killings of Ghadaffi. Ghadaffi was killed by his own bodyguards after Ghadaffi's own citizens overthrew their government in a civil war spurred by resistance movements in neighboring countries arising from despots incarcerating and assassinating political opponents.
The U.S. was behind the killing of Bin Laden. He organized the single largest terrorist attack against the U.S. in history. As a non-state actor, he was not protected by any laws, therefore, killing him was not illegal nor was it extradjudicial. This has been the state of international law for over a century, as codified in the Geneva Conventions and the amendments and followup conventions. If you have issues with international law, take that up with the Hague.
This is false, since several members of the bin Laden family died in the attack, including women and children. I'm not saying that killing bin Laden was wrong, just that Twitter policies are wildly inconsistent regarding violence and falsehood.)
Bin Laden's sons were killed in the attack and one of his son's wives, but no children were killed. They were not just innocent collateral damage; they were killed in the attack while resisting U.S. forces. The non-resisting members of the family are alive today to talk about what happened because we didn't kill them.
I imagine bin laden was still protected by Pakistani laws, same as people inside the US are protected by US laws, even if they've pissed off some other country
“Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.” - George Orwell
Which is why so many factions in Washington are putting so much effort to undermine potential challengers as the American destiny is to be number 1. The moment another group becomes more powerful, they know that what you describe will occur.
I imagine bin laden was still protected by Pakistani laws, same as people inside the US are protected by US laws, even if they've pissed off some other country
You imagine incorrectly. As a non-state actor, bin Laden was not subject to the protection of any nation's laws. This has been international law for over a century, and this view was upheld by the U.N. Moreover, Pakistan's government itself said it had no issues with the legality of the operation, and indeed elements of Pakistan's government and military participated in aspects of the operation.
On a side note: the US bombing of Libya, and Hillary's remark in particular, is seen by some as a watershed moment in North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons [3]. In response to international pressure, Gaddafi suspended Libya's nuclear weapons program in 2003. The subsequent US/NATO bombing of Libya and Gaddafi's brutal death supposedly convinced the Kims that if they ever gave up their nukes, they'd be vulnerable to the same type of foreign intervention and overthrow.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlz3-OzcExI
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Muammar_Gaddafi#Captu...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/us/politics/hillary-clint...
[3] https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/libya-the-for...
I find this argument to be uncompelling.
The same situation happens with twitter, that only enforces its rules when they go against the mainstream USA mentality.
Edit: not sure if this is allowed but I'm curious why I am being downvoted? Is there some logic I'm missing here? Or I guess people just think state-sanctioned violence should be allowed? If so, wouldn't this tweet by China be fine, since this violence is being done by the Chinese state?
- an illegal mob ransacking Congress in an attempt to overthrow an election, and
- a constitutional arrest of a criminal president (e.g. by the House Sergeant-at-Arms, or by the FBI under Mike Pence’s and the Cabinet’s order via the 25th Amendment)
should not need an explanation.
Twitter is clearly drawing a line somewhere about what violence is okay, and what violence isn't, and it's not particularly clear where it is and if there is any bias.
It is worth noting that “state-sanctioned” violence does not always mean legally-sanctioned violence, since state actions can easily be criminal, or at least lawless.
- The Capitol Hill mob was illegal violence, albeit state-sanctioned (by endorsement of the president)
- Arresting the president (either under Congressional authority or the 25th amendment) would be legal state-sanctioned violence
- Although nominal Chinese law is somewhat authoritarian with regard to ethnic minorities and Muslims, the reason the Xi regime is so desperate to cover up and propagandize the concentration camps is that they are illegal under Chinese and international law
This is basically what politics is - deciding how to fairly apply violence. So Twitter is taking a political stance by only removing some calls. And an especially strong stance if they are going to start judging nation states.
Personally, I find that it would be far more fair for Twitter and FB to allow these accounts but to add editorial notes to their tweets/posts explaining that the company believes strongly that these are falsehoods, or something similar. Even the current "This claim about election fraud is disputed" seems somewhat disingenuous to me.
I do think a label is the best solution, especially for accounts that represent a real person or entitity and aren't anonymous.
You're really saying that forcing someone to the ground at gunpoint, handcuffing them, and dragging them to jail where they'll be locked up and can't leave isn't violence?
Edit: plus my first comment described a peaceful arrest, not someone resisting.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/forced-sterilization-la...
They're not isolated cases.
... which Twitter can block.
Exactly. That was kind of like telling a content creator to build a web site and post videos there after getting kicked off YouTube. Sure, only a fraction of their fanbase will start using their site to consume their content, but hey, at least they have a broader reach than almost anyone on Earth had 20 years ago.
Something can be a highly currated narrative and be accessible to everyone. Shit, people even have web browsers on their phones and computers these days. Social media in general, and Twitter in particular, does not encourage the creation of highly currated narratives.
We should probably invent a publish-subscribe distributed protocol for this, maybe some kind of Really Simple Syndication.
+1 for that. Was RSS just too much effort to catch on? Or was discovery the issue? It's a great thing.
> The following extract shows how a messaging client's text entry could be arbitrarily restricted to a fixed number of characters, thus forcing any conversation through this medium to be terse and discouraging intelligent discourse.
<label>What are you doing? <input name=status maxlength=140></label>
Actually, the problem isn't Twitter per se, is that we've found out it's easier to digest (and regurgigate, and fabricate upon) 140 characters at a time. Twitter has inadvertently found an incredible exploit and vulnerability of the human mind, and now it's out there and we're fucked, excuse the French.
Even if Twitter were to die tomorrow, my conjecture is that most of the news and media will move to some other form of short-and-easy-and-dumb social network. 140 characters is what the TV was to the radio.
The comparison with radio => TV breaks down when you realize that TV is a medium much richer in information than both 140/280-character text and radio. (Of course Twitter is not just text these days.)
But anyway, I'm much more concerned about not so much journalists themselves, but rather about those people that are still trying to have discussions on Twitter. Starting with politicians, for obvious reasons.
Could the government have built such a system by commission for the public good (after all it was directly involved in the Internet, the substrate thereof), or is this something that was only able to coalesce with private capital, markets, and profit motive?
People talk about free speech, but free speech has never meant freedom from moderators. Twitter is well within their rights to place limits on allowable content, just as there are limits to allowable content on HN.
The Chinese embassy is well within their rights to make these comments on their own website.
When you choose to create or consume content on a 3rd party platform, you’re agreeing to their terms and conditions, which often includes some scenarios where they can block or censor your content or access. Complaining about that after the fact is pretty silly.
The “I’m leaving X and moving to Y” is a temporary solution. Substack, Parler, Spotify, etc. aren’t any better in the long run, they’re just newer and offer a temporary reprieve. You’ve still hitched yourself to a wagon and are along for the ride. Maybe that ride is better for you, but don’t think for a minute that you’re in the driver’s seat.
You’re not truly free until you own the distribution network. Or an owner-less blockchain publishing network might eventually work as well.
Why? It is on the dot-org TLD, doesn't it have to abide by the dot-org rules?
According to this article[0], specific threats of violence are not allowed.
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/opinion/dot-org-domain.ht...
Not just twitter. I feel the fact that social networks keep recommending interests to the users (groups of shared interests or profiles of shared interest) will by definition lead to recommending more and more extreme content, further pushing the divide. Make no mistake, what's happening now in the US is not only the fault of Trump as the leftist narrative is pushing, it's both extremes feeding off of each other. They keep blaming each other without anyone willing to step back and try to reach a common ground.
Selling unsanctioned VPN services is a crime in China but using an unsanctioned VPN is in a legal gray area but largely tolerated so long as you don't draw attention to yourself. Twitter itself has estimated that it had 10M MAU inside of China as of 2016.
They’ve become Pravda. They’ve become CCTV.
The irony is probably lost on them. This is so sad. Welcome home ‘Granma’.
However, this is a comment thread of OP comparing Pravda to Twitter. You are not at a higher risk of death by the government for trying to start a competitive platform to Twitter.
I think this misses the point.
Twitter, Facebook, etc cover a majority of Americans. These social media platforms have a significant effect on the beliefs and values of their users. Divisive, outraging content drives engagement. This leads to the curation of echo chambers that work to continually galvanize and outrage users.
I have made the choice not to use social media, but a large majority of Americans do. Since we live in a democracy, this gives companies like Twitter and Facebook a non-trivial amount of control over elections and legislation.
I don't think this can be ignored with the quip "just don't use the platforms". These platforms have the ability to form public opinion, and that is a problem for democracy that we as a society need to solve.
I think this ascribes a lack of self-determinism that I see in a lot of these arguments. We (the people) give Twitter and Facebook that control. If they have violated the norms we (the people) have set in such a way that we want to take that power back, we can. This seems self-evident since you are a non-user.
I don't accept that argument. I think most people who are active on social media are not aware of the effects it has on them. Social media is designed to sink its claws into your brain in an addictive way.
Allowing Twitter free reign crosses the line between Democracy and Mob Rule. To protect our democracy, we need to protect the ability of people to think for themselves.
This is not true. Most are aware at this point that social media is not healthy and is addictive. Saying they don't is the equivalent of saying you didn't know smoking was bad in the 90s.
> To protect our democracy, we need to protect the ability of people to think for themselves.
I think your comment is weirdly contradictory because yes, I agree we should protect the ability for people to think and choose their media consumption for themselves. Don't like twitter's moderation decisions? Leave it.
Ultimately free speech means nothing if the legislature can be stormed with the intent of kidnapping/murdering members of the process.
They do not become the hero because they got ban happy after the fact.
I think there are fairer comparisons to be made, but Pravda is in my opinion not one of them.
Now, I grant you that many people around the world for whatever reason, take their positions too far and outright sew deception, violent hate, fraud, etc. So it’s very complicated. But given the importance and breadth, I don’t think we should allow these companies to set agendas: “Thou shalt not have a conversation over this and that.”
Conspiracies may have negative impact, but people should be allowed to discuss them because as history has uncovered some conspiracies were in retrospect reality.
Chinese government should receive much bigger and larger scale criticisms. To prevent them applying the policy to other ethnicity groups.
But given the geographical situation, I doubt anyone is going to seriously challenge China. No one did that when China was weaker and more cooperative, no one can do that when China becomes strong and assertive.
"Study shows that in the process of eradicating extremism, the minds of Uygur women in Xinjiang were emancipated and gender equality and reproductive health were promoted, making them no longer baby-making machines. They are more confident and independent."
How quick we change our values.
Don't we learn anything from our past mistakes? Still waiting for anyone to find mass destruction weapons in Iran.
Standing up for human rights is great, but there is a fine line between being a good activist and being ignorant, uninformed and imperialist. A private US company cannot decide for the rest of the world if China has violated humans rights if there is no evidence for it.
There are primary sources available that are the basis of this report.
While yes, it's true it's very difficult to get solid data out of remote and tightly-locked-down regions of totalitarian states...
Let's be honest: if you wanted to Tweet something that convinced the world you were sterilizing Uighurs, this is what you would Tweet. "Pay no attention to that marked change in birth rate, that's just because our women are so happy now!" Yikes.
But irrespective of what I would do myself, this tweet does neither prove for or against such actions and therefore it's not Twitter's role to silence it. Let our governments and independent investigative journalists do their work and give us a counter view if they disagree with that tweet. There was no need for Twitter to get involved. I think they did that to balance their editorial decision on Trump and to please both, the democratic party as well as the republican because social media companies fear that new legislation could harm them and so they try to appeal to everyone now.
Source: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/twitter-says-it-...
https://nypost.com/2020/07/30/twitter-execs-refused-request-...
This tweet is particularly famous:
https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1263749566744100864
Honestly I don't think Twitter's removal of the Xinjiang tweet had anything to do with foreign policy at all, it just made feminism look bad, which does actually crush birth rates (even if that's not what happened in Xinjiang). Right-wing Twitter was exploiting the CCP tweet for this alone.
https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1263551872872386562
I have no opinion on or knowledge about the situation in the Middle East, but I found these tweets interesting in terms of what is allowed on Twitter.
Why?
There might be additional requirements to benefit from the hosting status : of size, power, economic model, &c.
https://www.laquadrature.net/2018/10/16/un-tiers-mediaire/ (fr)
(Some of this has now been implemented in the EU.)
Just in general, if Twitter really believes their platform has the power to induce violence and alter elections, then why are we allowing a small number of unelected Twitter execs complete control to determine how that power is used?
Jack Dorsey's vote shouldn't be worth orders of magnitude more than yours and mine just because he's the CEO of a communications platform.
I just bought some $TWTR cuz of this = )
(As a Chinese I'm always glad to see an American company doing what is right without giving a F how the CCP would take it.)
What fewer people is aware of is that the US has a prominent historic role when it comes to the "development" of eugenics.
Let's take this horrible book, for example... "The blood of the nation: A study of the decay of the races through the survival of the unfit":
https://archive.org/details/bloodofnationstu00jorduoft/page/...
This book inspired many eugenics programs that took place in the 20th century, including the ones in Nazi Germany.
Who wrote this? No other than the founding president of Stanford University, David Starr Jordan. From California.
You would expect Americans at the time to be horrified by this book? Not precisely. He received honorary degrees by multiple American universities, and he has a plethora of things named in his honor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Starr_Jordan#Monuments_a...
And we could be talking about this all day. The US is also responsible for the mass sterilization of Latinas, with a special emphasis in Puerto Rico. By 1965, 34% of Puerto Rican women aged 20–49 had been sterilized.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/twitter-says-it-...
https://jewishjournal.com/news/worldwide/319713/twitter-offi...
To those downvoting, I urge you to read the tweets linked. If I am wrong, simply quote the portion of these tweets which specifically makes a call for genocide and I will be delighted to be proven wrong.
"Why should & how can #Israel be eliminated? Ayatollah Khamenei's answer to 9 key questions."
"The only means of bringing Israeli crimes to an end is the elimination of this *regime*. And of course the elimination of Israel *does not mean the massacre* of the Jewish people in this region. The Islamic Republic proposed a practical & logical mechanism for this to international communities."
I have a hard time understanding why so many people equate Israel with Israelis. Many people are opposing the Chinese government. Do you also equate their calls to end China's government with a call to genocide against all Chinese?
>"Down with USA" means down with @realDonaldTrump , @AmbJohnBolton and @SecPompeo . It means death to the American politicians currently in power. It means death to the few people running that country; we have nothing against the American nation.
Aren't recognized "ethnic minorites" (or however they phrase the term) exempt from this law? Uighurs, Tibetans, etc.
At a minimum, I thought the limit was higher (than the historic limits for not-minority families).
Can anyone confirm or point to authoritative info in english?
I wonder if Twitter could do the same here.
Although I disagree with this tweet of China embassy, I want it to be shown to the world for others to judge. If nothing else, we can learn how frequently the China embassy tweets questionably.
Labeling it seems right.
I think in a democratic society we accept certain structures and laws. If the government declares a group an enemy of the state, then I think it’s fair to comply with that law. Making your own laws is not though.
However, just the other day there was hooplah about GitHub not allowing access from Iran. So it’s like people want to eat their cake and also have it.
It might be different if Twitter had a monopoly on social networks, but that's not the case.
China is not declared a foreign enemy by law and yet the US government is actively using banning and sanctioning their otherwise legally operating companies. If they're not a foreign enemy, do they not have rights in the US?
This whole thing is only shades of grey. Pretending it is black and white makes an honest conversation about it impossible.
So while not an enemy, they do engage in anticompetitive activities and we should counter them.
Now that becomes complicated when you deal with authoritarian regimes whose local laws may significantly violate international law (severe human rights violations, etc).
But that’s only half the deal. The other are the one sided onerous and coercive terms applied to foreign/international companies.
There are two main possibilities of why Google almost pulled out completely from China. One was safeguarding IP, the other is that at the time they cared a bit more about their ideals.
> I think that was precisely their point?
Is China our enemy?
And with this joke of an army is good enough to kill free speech on the net. That's almost as tragically comical as the floatsam in the Gulf of Tonkin that caused millions of deaths, but it's happening right now.
If people don't want 'big tech' to be 'Ministry of Information' stop using them as such? The Chinese government has plenty of channels they could use instead.
It’s like denying someone electricity. Sure we can do without. But society is now set up such that not allowing someone to use electricity is beyond the pale.
Social media has made themselves indispensable and as such they owe access to whomever they’ve extended access to, unless the users violate local laws.
In any case, I’m willing to listen.
> It’s like denying someone electricity.
In some parts of the United States being denied utilities can (and does) lead to death as a result of exposure. I don't believe comparing this to deplatforming from the internet is a good faith argument.
> It may not be exactly indispensable now, but they want to become such.
So they're not now, but they want to be, so we need to treat them like they are? That's like saying we should apply monopoly laws to every company in a market because they're trying to grow. When Twitter has a monopoly on the distribution of speech, I'll agree with you. In the meantime, even without social media, there are more ways to deliver a message than there ever have been in the history of mankind.
As has been mentioned over and over the last few days, freedom of speech means you have the right to say it, not the right to broadcast it.
> In that light I think in ten years when they are your bank and whatever else
I say this semi-sarcastically, but when I can't spend my money because I've been deplatformed from twitter, I screwed up more than them.
Without getting into the point of the conversation[1], taking the most extreme interpretation of someone else's words and argue against that would be the no good faith argument in this case, IMO. The HN guidelines encourage to steelman the other person's point and argue against that; you seem to have done the opposite.
In other words, the other person didn't argue that removing access to social media was akin to killing you (like it would be for a few people if they didn't have access to electricity), but that it would be a huge inconvenience (like it would be for most people if they lost access to electricity).
[1]: I'm starting to not see the point in discussing the merits of free speech or what constitutes free speech or censorship. I believe free speech is fundamental, and for that reason it's anyone's prerogative to think otherwise. Getting into that discussion at all is also a bit ironic.
>>there are more ways to deliver a message than there ever have been in the history of mankind
really resonates with me - its a lot easier now then it ever was with "letters to the editors" or "public access cable" or whatever other medium you pick. Even getting a ham license and taking your message global is easier then before.
By that logic, MS Windows licenses should be free and Wal-mart should be forced to stay in every location it killed off all the competitors. Maybe home depot and ikea too?
But MS windows isn't free, and box stores close locations. TBH, I find these 'mostly monopolies' a lot more disturbing then social media companies.
Fortunately, we aren't seeing such actions yet, so we don't really have a large need for such laws. But yes, if such actions happened, then that would be bad and we should make that illegal.
You mean, be successful?
> It’s like denying someone electricity.
Like electricity? That's a laughable assertion.
Thankfully you are completely mistaken about what the law is.
It's not much of an improvement if we just have a privately owned Firewall.
Now I feel we are making quick brash moves in a moment of excitement and drunkin power, with no judicial oversight. In our collective hangovers we will begin to realize the true ramifications of tech companies deciding what is fair speech and fair thought at its inception, way before a movement, momentum or Legal judicial oversight is even possible.
- Their own website.
- (self-published) books and/or periodicals
TBH, I don't know and I don't care...
Twitter, FB, and even HN are not government agencies, and it's really getting tiresome to hear people complain they should act like one. I don't even use social media outside of imgur and HN. Its really getting annoying listening to whining about how so and so can't use their favorite echo chamber any more.
What happened to the conservative stronghold position that companies can refuse service as they see fit? Hell, isn't jack a buddhist? Maybe he's just started banning stuff that offends his religious beliefs? (As far as I know, he's still the majority owner of twitter, so he can basically call the shots.)
In short, there is no 'right to be on XXX' (FB, twitter, whatever) and private companies can and will de-platform you for a variety of reasons.
ps - thanks for the link. Sounds more like trying to justify the Uygur persecution then anything else.
Entering into a contract ('creating an account') is probably something you shouldn't do without reading the terms.
"copyright is merely a conspiracy thrust upon us", so its perfectly fine to pirate software.
Also, any code I make public will be under terms _I_ find acceptable - what 'everyone knows' really doesn't factor into the equation. You're not entitled to set usage terms for my work.
Oh, and respect for the rules IS required - or you get de-platformed. For examples see half of HN's front page :-P
edit: formatting - need more coffee
edit: actually, I didn't...copyright is a criminal offense too, I think ? "up to 5 years in jail" ?? oh well, my bad.
> The user must click a button or check a box. This action helps confirm the user's agreement of the terms.
https://www.upcounsel.com/are-website-terms-and-conditions-l...
It's not just you either; I've seen comments with 'False.' strewn around this site and it sounds (to me) equally as cold.
Just a friendly note. You're neither a liar nor is your comment false.
I admit, I agree that "Lie." was a little on the cold side. I find that when people blurt out something so obviously and verifiably false that they are either being lazy or facetious which also does not "lead to a constructive conversation". Perhaps if I had the ability to downvote it I would have done that and moved on. Not an excuse, just an explanation.
I just see it a lot here and I pay (way too much) attention to the words/phrases people use, and that one bothers me especially for whatever reason.
https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/glorification...
"This Tweet is not in violation of our policies".
Source: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/twitter-says-it-...
So now you are back in the position of making a judgement call about whose laws permit free enough speech. There's no black and white line to draw here.
Difference in free speech between countries is not some linear continuum that gets gradually fuzzier when you get closer to Russia, Saudi Arabia and China. It varies a little, countries have idiosyncrasies, then there is big discontinuity.
Now let's start going through the other countries and tell me how this isn't a spectrum. Where does Malaysia fall on your bright line? Turkey? The Philippines? Iran? Thailand? Belarus? Brazil? Egypt? Eritrea?
I guarantee you that attempting to draw a bright line will absolutely run into fuzzy edges and judgement calls.
This is one of the reasons I think old-school forums are superior in terms of "web hygiene". You have a group of moderators, each responsible for a clearly defined section and a userbase small enough so rules are still enforceable. And the people running it are not an untouchable megacorporation.
[0] I don't actually have a newsletter.
Twitter could just let the tweet exist for people who personally choose to follow the Chinese US embassy at no cost to other tweets. I mean, it's from a national government's embassy, their angle is not hidden at all.
Now they open themselves up to all sorts of questions, are they softer on the Saudis? On Israel?
Getting into picking and choosing which foreign governments are allowed to post, and which messages they'll countenance, at additional expenses for their mod team? Twitter has a foreign policy?
You'd obviously see similar arguments about keeping Trump's account. What if the leader of a country calls for violence? Keep it because diplomacy?
As someone else mentioned and I now agree with, Twitter isn't an arm of the government. It's a U.S. company that has rules. Government officials can use any platform they want to get their message out. Companies can mostly do whatever they want with their own platforms.
Honestly, this sort of action just seems like a return to the status quo; you can say what you want, and people who read a lot of embassy press releases might see it, but good luck finding a newspaper who’ll cooperate if it’s abhorrent stuff like this.
Twitter has to obey the law, other than that they don't owe that embassy anything.
You might be surprised to know most 4chan boards are very tightly moderated.
If you don’t agree with it, for moral reasons or otherwise, you’re free to provide your own service.
"Parler, the "free speech" social network, reportedly removed a post by Lin Wood, in which the pro-Trump lawyer threatened violence against Vice President Mike Pence.
"Get the firing squads ready. Pence goes FIRST," wrote Wood, according to Mediate. "
https://news.yahoo.com/parler-removed-violent-mike-pence-170...
I can easily find tweets that are violent that stay up for weeks after being reported. It feels like Twitter is being held to a different standard than Parler and that is my issue.
I'm willing to bet that it's going to be amended, just like the EU version of it was.
Consider this precedent :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama
> The Court rejected that contention, noting that ownership "does not always mean absolute dominion." The court pointed out that the more an owner opens his property up to the public in general, the more his rights are circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who are invited in.
In its conclusion, the Court stated that it was essentially weighing the rights of property owners against the rights of citizens to enjoy freedom of press and religion. The Court noted that the rights of citizens under the Bill of Rights occupy a preferred position. Accordingly, the Court held that the property rights of a private entity are not sufficient to justify the restriction of a community of citizens' fundamental rights and liberties.
Twitter has terms of service - that in and of itself is not equivalent to a sidewalk opened for all to use.
It is illegal, due to common carrier laws, for a phone companies to engage in certain actions. They are actually forced to accept certain customers.
These existing laws that apply to phone companies could be expanded to apply to other forms of communication networks.
If this was P2P messaging I'd agree. But that's not the case here.
Do you have the slightest evidence for this? Census data shows that Uighur population doubled in the past 30 years, because this population hasn't been subjected to the "one child policy" among other things.
This is a war of propaganda, from both side. None is particularly more believable than the other. proceed with caution.
> For decades, China had one of the most extensive systems of minority entitlements in the world, with Uighurs and others getting more points on college entrance exams, hiring quotas for government posts and laxer birth control restrictions. Under China’s now-abandoned ‘one child’ policy, the authorities had long encouraged, often forced, contraceptives, sterilization and abortion on Han Chinese. But minorities were allowed two children — three if they came from the countryside.
Anyway, a world where China's tweet is up and this link is the first reply to it strikes me as far better, in discourse and the availability of truth, then a world where I know I'm only allowed to read this article and China cannot defend themselves.
I am afraid this isn't propaganda unlike the above tweet.
I find it weird to denounce one as propaganda but not look into who wrote this. A lot of the anti China sources are based on his or US and/or weapon manufacturers funded sources.
In this case the fact the tweet was taken down made headlines, but if censorship like this is becoming the norm, as it looks like it is, then these issues potentially get no exposure or discussion.
That seems more dangerous to me.
I used to agree with this line of thinking, but I believe the past dozen years or so of the information age have made it abundantly clear that simply having the truth on your side and making a rational case for it is not even remotely sufficient to counter the spread of misinformation.
Honestly, I'm not sure that free speech as a concept will be able to survive the information age. It seems as though any society holding it sacrosanct might be doomed to collapse from divisive pressure both internal and external. I hope I'm wrong about that, but only time will tell, and interesting[0] times they will be.
[0] In the apocryphal chinese curse sense of the word, if that wasn't obvious.
I'm confused, then why did you say this?
> I used to agree with this line of thinking
Unless I'm misinterpreting this, you seem "not to longer agree" with the merits of free speech. If so, then why do you hope to be wrong about it eventually disappearing?
> the past dozen years or so of the information age have made it abundantly clear that simply having the truth on your side and making a rational case for it is not even remotely sufficient to counter the spread of misinformation.
Even if I agreed with this—which I don't—the answer to this hypothetical reality is definitely not to start removing actual information.[1]
For instance, having tweets like that exist would be good counterevidence to all to apologia of certain bad actors that goes around, even here in HN.
> Honestly, I'm not sure that free speech as a concept will be able to survive the information age
Usually the first ones silenced are the ones promoting censorship. That's what I'd usually say anyway, but it is pointless; I would be silenced eventually too and I don't want to be silenced, even if it happens to me after it does to the ones who are "inadvertently" asking to be silenced.
> It seems as though any society holding it sacrosanct might be doomed to collapse from divisive pressure both internal and external.
Do you have historical evidence to back up this claim?
All in all, my hope is that we find easier, better ways for people to fact check, instead of removing data wholesale. Language is the basis of civilization, so restricting communication is not the way to go. Improving it is the way to move forward; it has always been so, I think.
[1]: And to note, I'm not saying that what was said in that tweeted article wasn't an awful lie. The information is not the content, the information is the fact that it was said at all.
I still believe in the merits of free speech as regards reasoned good-faith open debate and communication, what has changed is that it is now clear to me that bad-faith propaganda without regard for reason cannot be countered by reason, and that such communication is in fact significantly dangerous.
> Even if I agreed with this [that misinformation can't be countered with reason] —which I don't— the answer to this hypothetical reality is definitely not to start removing actual information.
If recent events haven't convinced you, I honestly don't know what will. I don't see any way around having to remove the underlying (mis)information in order to prevent its spread. Events have shown that merely tagging misinforamtion as such is not effective, and that's without getting into an argument about who gets to judge what is and isn't misinformation.
> Do you have historical evidence to back up this claim?
You mean aside from the increasingly violent divisiveness of politics in the past dozen years? Not really. I'm not intending to prove it exhaustively in my post so much as to say that it seems like it might be the case. I welcome evidence to the contrary.
> All in all, my hope is that we find easier, better ways for people to fact check, instead of removing data wholesale.
People have many methods to fact check right now, but it has been shown that people prefer to ignore information that runs counter to what they want to be true. People can be lead to water but can't be made to drink, it seems. Indeed, the information age has made fact checking more accessible than it has ever been in history, yet we have seen recently that people will attempt to overthrow the government based on outright fabrication and even call for the hanging of an otherwise politically aligned individual for disagreeing with them.
These two sentences cannot be true at the same time; one is either in favor of free communication or one isn't. There are many ways to name the idea of "I'm okay with speech as long as I deem it to be in good faith/not dangerous", but free speech is not one of them.
It's the entire point: "I might hate what you say, but I'll defend your right to say it."
> If recent events haven't convinced you, I honestly don't know what will.
Why would anything convince me of the idea that something I deem to be the basis of progress in civilization, is actually not so?
To give an example: The church had significant power—even over the state in vast swathes of Europe—in the middle ages, and they were pretty censorious. Yet the renaissance still happened, in no small part thanks to the printing press and the huge boost it gave to the sharing of knowledge.
Interestingly, the reformation also happened around that time, and with it brought quite a few religious wars, with both groups making claims that don't sound all that unlike to "the other side is spreading falsehoods and there's no other way to stop them".
Nowadays, catholics and protestants seem to be mostly okay with each other, and I'm sure today's conflicts will eventually become a thing of the past too. But it will not be thanks to censorship.
> that's without getting into an argument about who gets to judge what is and isn't misinformation.
This is an argument against your point, not in favor of it, I think. Who's the arbiter of what's misinformation? Twitter or any of the other gigantic and "evil"[1] corporations?
> You mean aside from the increasingly violent divisiveness of politics in the past dozen years?
Interesting, many claim that misinformation is at fault of that divide. Just as many instead claim that it's siloing, filter bubbles and echo chambers the real culprit.
> I'm not intending to prove it exhaustively in my post so much as to say that it seems like it might be the case. I welcome evidence to the contrary.
But the burden of proof is on the one who affirms, not on the one who denies. Believing something just because it seems like it might be true and because one hasn't looked for counterevidence can be unfalsifiable. To wit, one might just believe it and that's that.
Which is, of course, one's prerogative. Free speech and all that; everyone is free to believe anything.
> People have many methods to fact check right now.[...] Indeed, the information age has made fact checking more accessible than it has ever been in history
Case in point. There might be many ways to fact check and it might be more accessible, but clearly not enough, for whatever reason. For example, in this case, if it were easier and faster, you could have more readily looked for evidence of your "any society holding free speech as sacrosanct is doomed to collapse" claim, I think.
[1]: Well, they're "evil" as long as the discussion is not about free speech but instead about any of the other unethical things they do. When the subject is censorship, many people are in their favor, it seems.
Sure, fact-checking has never been so "fast or efficient"... But it clearly is still not yet fast or efficient, or perhaps promoted, enough.
But even that aside, I don't understand what's the point I apparently missed. I can only think that the implication is that fact checking already is as good as it'll ever be and, even assuming that that was true (it isn't), then we should just give up on free speech and resign ourselves to censorship? Well, I didn't "miss" that point, I just don't agree.
> not even remotely sufficient to counter the spread of misinformation.
However, allowing the tweet to be removed - especially when its consequences are so critical - takes away the only tool we have at our disposal. It may not be enough, but the conclusion we ought to reach from this should be that we need more of it, not less of it.
Worse, it makes the situation murky by placing a veil over the initial communication, because the tweet's effect of having been seen has already occurred. Obfuscating this information after it has already seen the light of day adds to its dark powers and makes disinformation harder to stop.
Hasn't that been the case for all of human history?
Not to mention the population most affected by this can't challenge it since they're being decimated by forced re-education camps where they are sterilized by the same government that tweeted this
It's a little tone deaf to ask why it being challenged is preferable in light of that isn't it?
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This is getting so old so quickly in the last few days.
I'll take the flak from people insisting the traction here is totally organic and has nothing to do with current events and that I'm just trying to derail things with "orange man bad":
This wouldn't have made front page as quickly before Trump's suspension. A quick search shows out of the last few months this post already has more points than any other twitter removal post.
Their removal of an entire campaign wasn't even a blip: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/11/technology/twitter-chines...
At the end of the day Twitter left a President's account along for 4 years through hundreds of violations of their platform, petty insults, vague threats to entire nations, etc.
They finally blinked when that person led to 5 casualties after a mob attacked the Capitol.
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For the slippery slope to matter, there needs to be a slope.
Twitter has demonstrated their extreme restraint in censoring anything remotely deemed as official.
People can keep forcing this angle of how "dangerous" it is that they're willing to remove only the most egregious instances of rules violations on their private platform but it's just not true.
It's their right that was cemented by the Supreme Court because some lady didn't want to bake cakes for gay people, and the discretion in applying that right is excellent.
You can talk about hypotheticals where they go off the deep end and start censoring everything... but by that logic the US government can go off the deep end and start censoring print media. Nothing is immune from doomsday hypotheticals.
Censorship is not a solution, it's the problem. Both in China and in Silicon Valley.
China is free to publish its nonsense on its own channels. why should Twitter agree to be a propaganda platform for China?
Twitter can't police every post, but if a post gets a million views and is a blatant lie about human rights abuses, it's a bit silly to argue they should let that slide because it's an 'important statement from a foreign government'.
If the NYT tweets about this statement, and attaches the proper context based on generally accepted standards of proper journalism, it wouldn't have been an issue. You can talk about things without being a propaganda piece. Hitler advertising in the NYT in the WW2 shouldn't be accepted. Journalists writing about something Hitler said and putting it in the context (i.e., mentioning the human rights abuses), is fine. Apologies for the obligatory nazi reference but it makes explaining the principe so much easier, even if China isn't as bad.
Twitter did not prevent them from stating anything. Twitter employees simply decided they want to have no part in this. Are you saying they should be forced to publish this tweet?
The logic here escapes me.
It is a distinction with no real meaning to me, in this case.
If I was an employee at Twitter working to expand the reach of my platform, and the platform was being used to brag about genocide, then I would feel partly responsible for normalizing that behavior.
>By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods now known or later developed (for clarity, these rights include, for example, curating, transforming, and translating).
You could possibly argue that things like email or telephones won't censor people, but if foreign governments tried regularly calling us to send propaganda, they'd get blocked.
There are not enough people holding the Chinese government's nose to the shit they're dropping.
Any sorting or recommendation algorithm makes a choice about what ideas should be signal boosted and which ones should be hidden.
You visit twitter to see twitter's take on what's important
> Twitter is blocked in China
> According to the official verdicts as of 2020, hundreds Chinese were sentenced to prison due to their tweeting, retweeting and liking on twitter.
I don't think they'll be all that surprised.
The essence of tech giants: censorship based on allegations.
Vote with your wallet, stop buying Chinese products. Stop supporting this clearly evil regime.
Would we have been so flippant about buying products from the third reich???
I’ll politely refuse your invited to support the CCP (oppressors of the Chinese people) by proxy so as to not upset the people of China - you see how your logic is circular here...?
Newsflash, the entire global west is sub-replacement and mostly has been for decades. South Korea just hit a stunning, absolutely suicidal TFR of 0.85. And it's only going to get worse.
Suggesting this possibility somehow got me banned in several subreddits. There's something going on here.
Yes, there's something going on and you are not supposed to talk about it in polite society—or anywhere at this point.
Even the immigrant plan sucks, because there are very few countries worldwide which aren't on a trajectory to reach replacement TFR within a decade.
The implications of high global population are also (with tongue planted firmly in cheek) "suicidal."
With the exception of figuring out how to care for elderly with a declining population, there are many advantages to a declining population. Specifically, the planet only has so many natural resources. We can only pollute so much. If we had significantly less people, things like limited resources and pollution wouldn't be that big of a deal.
The people the world does have vary in resource consumption and pollution by like 50x (Bahrain vs developing African nations).
How we develop, and the technologies we invent to live sustainably, makes a dramatically bigger difference than how many people we have.
And likely, an inverted age pyramid makes it far, far harder to invent these technologies, as our political systems become gerontocracies, science ossifies, and all our resources are pumped into taking care of the ever-growing elderly.