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Comment by gorwell | Hacker News Reader

This is like the Apple photo scanning issue. Start with something all of society agrees is reprehensible and implement the tools of authoritarian censorship on that basis.

"We will shortly be trialling the development of a new product feature that temporarily autoblocks accounts using harmful language"

"We are also continuing to roll out our replies prompts, which encourage people to revise their replies to Tweets when it looks like the language they use could be harmful."

"Everyone has a role to play - including the government"

Who defines what's harmful? How long until merely unpopular views or any form of dissent is harmful language? Perhaps you think the current set of harmful-language-definers are infallible and on your side. What if that changes in 2024? What if these tools are in the hands of your enemy?

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"They're just getting rid of Alex Jones" the highbrow commentators said.

"Why are you being so weird about protecting Alex Jones?" they wondered in the direction of anyone with even a shred of perception.

People will still unironically argue “the slippery slope is a fallacy”.

Nailed it. No government shouldn't play a role in deciding what speech is acceptable.

Do you believe it has any role in this?

It’s likely government pressure played a role here, yes. The source doesn’t mention this, but it’s illegal to say racist things in the UK and people are being prosecuted for the incident in question. (https://apnews.com/article/euro-2020-soccer-sports-arrests-h...)

This isn't about governments anyway, but if we're going to go that way, the government should protect its citizens, especially those from marginalized communities.

Those marginalized communities overwhelmingly don't want government or corporate regulation. No minority wants that because oppinions allowed would always need to conform to the current Zeitgeist, obviously.

You are talking about fringe opinions being regulated.

There are many countries in which it is completely within the government's purview to regulate speech, including the United States. Companies like Twitter are finding themselves in an impossible situation in which their legal safe harbors are not sustainable because of the compliance overhead of operating in so many jurisdictions at the same time.

Instead they just try to implement a one-size-fits-all global authoritarian standard on everyone to attempt to continue their liability dodges in each and every jurisdiction their service is available. In practice it means the entire network has to abide by the laws of the jurisdictions with the harshest speech codes.

So, right, Twitter began with a perspective that the American constitutional principle of free speech is great, and that it should be spread everywhere. Now the imperial soft-power avenue of approach moves in reverse, in which Americans are going to be asked to comply with Continental standards of permissible speech.

What do you propose instead?

Regulation, ideally coming from an elected legislative branch of democratic governments. Like was done with mass media, e.g. radio and TV. Definitely not outsourcing that kind of stuff to companies having quasi monopolies on their services.

Laws against racism already exist.

Allow it. Let the racists be racist. Let them expose themselves so we all know who to ridicule and ignore. Not only has this wacky notion of free speech worked well for a long time, society has grown far less racist despite no official policing of speech.

The insidiousness that comes from controlling speech is far greater than the insidiousness of a small group of assholes who say mean things. The short-sightedness of many continues to astonish me.

What do you do when that leads directly to murder?

Say it's a great tragedy and if only people had more firearms at hand thins would be different?

Investigate and find the murderers so they can be punished?

I struggle to understand how that could happen. Why would you choose to murder or not murder someone based on Twitter’s moderation policies?

reminds me of the parable of the man on the roof in a flood waiting for god to save him saying no to the people who pass by offering a lift.

what if this is a part of the "ridiculing and ignoring of racists"?

"Let them expose themselves so we all know who to charge and prosecute with criminal behavior". Fixed that for you. There are laws regarding this, so either use them or might as well eliminate them if they have no teeth.

Ignoring them does not work, and only emboldens them. Ridiculing them online seems to act mostly like feeding a troll.

First of all, you have no idea whether that's true anymore than I do.

Second, so freakin what?? So 0.01% of the population says mean and ugly things - so what? It's very, very easy to avoid and ignore it. Meanwhile, policing speech is not only going to obviously open Pandora's box in general, but it will probably cause more people to be racist.

>First of all, you have no idea whether that's true anymore than I do.

I don't know what is true?

That is not true. They were ignored for the longest time and their numbers were dwindling. They just got more support when people started policing hobbies, books, comedy. That will obviously lead to further opposition, which aren't racists but are declared as such.

As if racists in power wouldn’t do their utmost to curtail free speech.

That people ignore speech they don't like.

What Twitter really needs to do is give users better tools to ‘curate’ what they receive in their stream.

Let me choose if I accept posts with foul language, hurtful language, posts with adult content, posts with NSFW pics, posts with political content, posts with inane topics (cat pics, memes, etc), posts from genZ, posts from boomers, sports, international, national, local, etc, etc.

Give us the tools so we can decide what we want to receive. You [ought]1 not decide for us what we wish to consume.

I want agency with regard what I consume and choose not to consume. Don't remove my agency and make me into a passive consumer of your product.

[1]fixed for precision.

>You do not decide for us what we wish to consume.

Except that they very much do. "You should not decide" would be better phrased.

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