Kanye West Is Suspended from Twitter After Posting a Swastika
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I think it's a striking demonstration of the perils of living above your means. If we take the definition of "poor" as the inability to pay for one's monthly upkeep, it's possible for Musk to simultaneously be the richest and the poorest person in the world.
And sure, he could always increase his investment by using more personal funds to make the interest payments, taking the longer term view (whether business or idealistic based). But the fact is that he hasn't, and has been framing this situation exactly as Twitter needing to immediately service that debt.
Also who was banned for posting "men are not women"?
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=men+are+not+women+twitter&t=iphone...
I assume you'd be okay with Twitter (and other forms of media) banning right-wing politicians and groups in the USA that associate with Nazis and fly Nazi flags at their rallies? Or those who call for Jewish people to be exterminated? Except no, everyone was up in arms about Twitter and liberals doing just that pre-Musk, because "free speech". Banning Kanye a month ago was the worst thing in the world, and today it's completely justified (despite the fact that he is posting much milder stuff). Funny how the conversation has turned now, and everything Musk does is justified using whatever mental gymnastics is necessary.
Yes. I would support this ban for same reason I support Kanye being banned.
> associate with Nazis
I don’t support guilt by association. Punish people that do bad things not people that talk to people that do bad things.
> Except no, everyone was up in arms about Twitter and liberals doing just that pre-Musk
No they weren’t. They were pissed off about political bans not bans on racial violence. I mentioned an example earlier in this thread.
I don’t think you listen to people that you perceive to be your opponents.
Edit (can’t reply due to rate limit): I don’t think Kanye should have been reinstated after “death con 3” - please, if you want to know my opinion on something, just ask rather than assuming.
Twitter banned Kanye for exactly this, were heavily criticized for it, and Musk reinstated him when he took over. So what is different now? If anything his recent tweets are milder (remember going "death con 3 on jewish people")?
And why is trans hate okay but Jewish hate grounds for an instant ban?
I think this is the sort of thing that poses a problem; that's basically a position on a controversial issue. It's not hate speech anymore than saying "There is no God" is hate speech against religious people.
Similarly, some people believe gender is subjective, and that people can "be" another gender if they feel like it (if I am getting this wrong lmk; it's obviously a simplistic statement of that position). Others believe the question is purely objective and determined by observable biology--i.e. "it's not subjective, and as a descriptive matter, you are x gender".
In contrast, "marriage is between a man and a woman" is basically purely normative. It is not a statement about what "is". It is a statement about what should be.
But also, "trans women are women" is normative, since it seeks to prescribe how trans people are treated by society.
(I don't think this is a simple question at all, but this particular tack is not as sound as it might appear. There was a time not so long ago that vitriolic antisemitism, even in the US and western Europe, was pretty much the consensus view.)
Most importantly, I think as a practical matter, there is a big difference between "I do not think gender is subjective; instead, it is determined by observable biology" and "Jews are a treacherous race who control the levers of power and do not properly belong in our society".
Obviously, there is real hate speech against transgender people; but basic criticisms of that lifestyle choice (including the very labelling of it as a "lifestyle choice"), without more, cannot reasonably count as such.
I would be interested how many people who want to deplatform or censor criticisms of the phenomenon of transgenderism would agree with critcising Sam Harris in similar fashion. His criticisms of religion, in particular Islam, are very virulent and strident, and don't seem logically that distinct from "denying" that a man can become a woman. Doesn't he basically say that religion is a kind of mental disorder and that society should ban it? In fact, things like complaining about calling women "birthing people" seem quaint in comparison the stuff he says.
That said, I don't think there's much banning going on of people who are truly just stating their position "x is not y." In fact if that were the case, you'd see e.g. JK Rowling booted immediately. So why isn't she? In my view, platforms and individuals are making assessments of other people's intents and the likely impacts of their words in totality.
It's a deeply inconvenient fact that the words "a b c" uttered by one person to one audience can yield completely different results than the exact same words "a b c" uttered by a different person to a different audience. This is inconvenient because it makes consistent-appearing regulation basically impossible, but the reality is that everyone does this every day. We get it wrong a lot, but on net, it's obvious that a neo-Nazi with disgruntled, armed, lonely young men followers saying, "the Jews are overrepresented in media" is completely different from Pew Research saying "the Jews are overrepresented in media." These two phrases are different in basically every single way that matters!
So this is why IMO JK Rowling and Sam Harris kind of get passes. It's very obvious they're not calling people to arms. It's obvious their fans are not about to go raid a mosque or a gender-affirming care clinic. This is not so obvious for, as far as I can tell, many of the people who've gotten hit by Twitter's moderation.
Edit: And just to be crystal clear, I don't think Twitter or anyone else has gotten this exactly right. Idk what that'd even look like. It's a ridiculously hard problem. But that's why I never bought a website with 160MM DAU declaring that free speech is back.
Whereas others who just go ahead and say it will eventually get their accounts suspended.
It's the dogwhistle versus the foghorn.
> there are so many differences between a religion and a gender decision/behavior/whatever you'd like to call it that they're really hard to compare in this way.
Since you seem to have forgotten or are having difficulty reading the thread.
You: They're both round-ish you absolute moron.
Seems you have a bone to pick with aspirins and/or elephants. Have a good weekend!
I would say that there are a couple ways in which religion and gender decision/identity are quite comparable in specific contexts like this; namely, they both involve people adopting assertions or beliefs that are empirically untrue (and I say this as someone who does believe in God and is somewhat religious), and asking for varying degrees of deference to such beliefs.
In the free speech context, we have the issue of when something is criticism of these subjective beliefs, versus when it is hate speech. I believe I can furnish at least one other, more clear example of a context in which, to me at least, they are pretty comparable.
I think your point about "who is saying it" is like...I agree with your example, but I don't see that can be a rule lol. That's just discriminating on the basis of who is saying it--and besides, how do you necessarily know whether someone is armed and lonely?
Does JK Rowling get a pass? She wasn't banned on Twitter, but she gets routinely dragged by a lot of people nowadays. IDK what most people think of Sam Harris. I am just glad he isn't more well-known and popular.
I also agree that it is a complex problem lol.
This seems very squishy to me, I mean, fine, I don’t disagree, but it’s exactly the kind of thing old Twitter would be dragged for. Which symbols are “credible calls to violence” and who gets to decide that? Musk? I mean yes from a legal perspective he owns it, but his whole Schtick was greater transparency. If he wants to run Twitter “same as the old guard but his opinion, not theirs” ok, but then I want to stop hearing the moral grandstanding.
Right?! His property, his rules - it's totally fine whatever he decides. He just doesn't get wrap himself in the free speech flag.
Get captured by pirates and see how much of a joke it is.
How about the Confederation flag?
*gender affirmation
(edit: which is to say, trans people never made any claim to changing anyone's sex)
But the fact is that Sex and Gender are two different concepts - one, as you point out, is a biological matter having to do with reproduction, and is settled and done, usually, long before the body becomes conscious. Gender, on the other hand, manifests mostly as performance, but nonetheless arises from a deep-seated place in the mind. So if someone says their gender does not match their sex, this is not a difficult concept to hold in one's head.
I don't doubt you've seen people saying horrible things of all kinds on Twitter and Reddit, but understand, those places have nothing to do with the real world. You're here because on some level, you do understand that, and you want better. Welcome.
When people say that their gender doesn't match their sex, they're expressing a rejection of their material existence. These are men who don't want to be men, and women who don't want to be women. I think it's no surprise that many then engage in self-deception, looking for ways to support a belief that they aren't the sex that they actually are.
Here's a right leaning site with screenshots of the tweet if that makes you feel better: https://nypost.com/2022/06/30/twitter-suspends-jordan-peters...
Matt Walsh trolls transgender people and enjoys making their lives miserable because he believes their existence is a threat to his personal code of morality. He also wishes to ban transgender people, even adults, from receiving any sort of care beyond conversion therapy which is considered abusive and banned in many countries.
https://www.mediamatters.org/matt-walsh/daily-wires-matt-wal...
None of them are simply saying "men are not women."
It's like the difference between saying you think homosexuals are deviants who should burn in hell and saying "marriage is between a man and a woman." In both cases you're trying to be a jerk, but in the former you're being a lot more aggressive about it. There's a reason why even most homophobes don't like the Westboro Baptist Church. Only the biggest jerks support openly harassing and trolling people because of things that they can't control. Even if you think being gay or trans is a mental illness, a mental illness is still something you can't control. Trolling people is obviously not an attempt to help them. It's an attempt to make them suffer because you hate them.
Did you read the tweet you posted? Peterson’s criticisms of Ellen Page’s physician (not even Page herself) are not harassment or defamation any more than your criticisms of Peterson are.
I see that you're not ideologically motivated here. ^_^
It's decidedly not "criminal" for an adult to get a surgery that is commonplace for men with gynecomastia just because they have an "F" on their birth certificate. Breast tissue is breast tissue and there is no regulation that says that anyone has to have a minimum amount of it based on their sex assigned at birth. Women have breast reductions, especially at advanced ages, to help with their mobility all the time after all.
Peterson's objective was to slur Eliot Page by casting him and the doctor who treated him in a negative light. It's slimy trolling and provocation. Not speaking truth or even a simple fact like that "men are not women." Just thinly veiled hate for his hungry audience to feed on.
Separately: an adult “with F on their birth certificate” is called a woman. Ellen Page was Ellen Page when she had the surgery.
The past, much like the Tweet you keep talking about, does not change because you wish it to. It’s fascinating you labelled someone that disagrees with you as ideologically driven when you believe you can determine reality with your mind.
You don't know anyone's medical history. You haven't given anyone a karyotype test. You'd use a new set of names for people in many circumstances and even pronouns likely in the case of an obvious intersex condition. Your decision to call Eliot Page she against his wishes is clearly ideologically driven and hateful. A petty snub more or less.
Doing it makes you a cruel person. I'm sure you don't see yourself that way, but, newsflash, humans generally want to be "good" so most cruel people think they are good and justified in their actions. They just have some toxic/anti-social ideas rooted into their sense of morality.
In this case it seems you've convinced yourself that by snubbing transgender people you're somehow protecting... truth? BiOloGiCal ReAlItY? Gendered terms predate any concept of sex chromosomes or even gametes. Jeez Ottomans worried about their concubines getting pregnant from EUNUCHS because they didn't fully realize that testes created sperm or that sperm was separate from semen. That's why they preferred dark skinned eunuchs, so they could tell if a baby was illegitimate.... Which is just to say that if you want to be "traditional" gendered terms are about surface level assessments of a person's physical appearance and social roles considered appropriate to such an appearance, not biology. If you transported Patti Harrison[1] (a very passable trans woman) back to King Arthur's court she'd be treated like a lady I assure you.
The even more fundamental thing though is respecting people's autonomy. It's a very aggressive act to call someone by labels that they dislike. Try continually getting someone's name wrong on purpose, maybe call a guy named Ted Bruce all the time, and see how your relationship with that person develops....
Yes, and this includes people's linguistic autonomy; their freedom to say what they see.
We all know that Page is female. We also know that Page most likely wants everyone to refer to her as if she is a man.
Some people, who believe in the ideology of gender identity, will say that she really is a man, so this is no problem for them. Others will acquiesce out of a feeling of politeness, or social pressure. But many will say, no, she's female, so she's actually a woman.
Please respect the autonomy of the latter group to express a view that you disagree with, due to your differing beliefs. In particular, there's no need to start haranguing people with unfounded accusations of hate.
Does it make me a jerk to call you out for being a jerk? No....
Do I think you should be put in prison for being a jerk? No....
But I'll be honest, if you refuse to be kind to transgender people I'll find you distasteful and untrustworthy the same way I would a homophobe or a racist to be.
I realize from conversations with conservatives that many people consider supporting trans people as a form of virtue signaling, but from my experience it's the opposite. I live in a small town in a deep red county in a deep red state and the trans topic has become a shibboleth where not extending the basic respect of labeling trans people how they wish to be labeled is something that people do with prideful smiles and jolly laughter. It's a public display of cruelty that people bond over. There's nothing about it that smacks of protecting dignity or truth. It's just the same old human meanness that's popped up time and time again in history and always leads to nothing good.
I hope you'll grow as a person and treat people from outside of your experience with kindness and openness rather than callousness and suspicion. It's not the easy thing to do, but it's the right thing to do.
"Women's sports are for women, not men pretending to be women"
It is not hard to find many more cases and of course the vast majority of banned accounts belong to people with no public profile and you'll never hear about them.
[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/twitter-suspends-u-s-s...
> Hartzler’s tweet, posted in mid-February, said: “Women’s sports are for women, not men pretending to be women,” _and included her TV ad targeting transgender people in sports and particularly University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas._
Emphasis mine.
In those cases, free speech wins open and close, very simple, and if you are upset about it it's because you're part of the cabal that's trying to take down Elon/Twitter/free speech.
what? how is that valid? the whole point is being able to say something regardless of if it hurts someones feelings.
It has nothing to do with principles of any sort.
Impossible to write off harrassment and doxxing to "It's just a website!"
I don't have a problem with Twitter banning hate symbols but I have a massive problem with the intellectual bankruptcy over this "free speech absolutism" horse shit.
The free speech absolutist stuff never included violence he was clear about that. People were being banned for simply not being left wing. That was a huge problem and it’s stopped.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1593673339826212864
Evidentally that doesn't work on celebrities.
Posting a swastika alone is not necessarilly a call to violence like posting a confederate flag or ACAB isn't always a call to violence.
It's been more than evident that the drivers Musk's policies on moderation are commercial and personal which is well within his right.
Others are pointing out the hypocrisy of him claiming that his motivations for setting policy have been a dedication to 'free speech absolutism' which is clearly not the case.
If yourself and others the moderation policy on Twitter was too oppressive to right wing views and are happy with this new direction all I can say is good for you. But you and those same other people should come out and expressly say that instead of getting on a high horse over "free speech absolutism" when thats clearly not what you're interested in.
We both know this has nothing to do with Apple, don’t be ridiculous…
Edit : like Sandi's replied below, it's been confirmed https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1598090996281413638?s=46...
"Hateful conduct: You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease."
Musk never allowed swastikas on Twitter
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1598090996281413638?s=46...
Very funny to see people twist themselves into a pretzel to explain why this ban is justified despite all of Elon's phony preening about "free speech" over the past few months. Elon paid good money to live out his twitter admin power fantasy and it's as simple as that. Free speech is a brand not a real principle that Elon cares about. The most ironic part is that Swastikas are still allowed on twitter, but personal attacks against Musk are a big no-no.
The people who actually use swastikas would like to be disassociated from the murderous megalomaniac who appropriated their symbol and used it is his white supremacist propaganda.
No joke.
This was evident even before a "tricky" case came up. His opening salvo was "free speech reigns," then immediately "well, law of the land matters," then "wait I guess I didn't think about how to handle variations in laws..."
The whole money=intelligence makes no sense, many field require high level intelligence but don't monetarily reward comparatively well (e.g. scientific research)
And West posted the Raelian symbol, not a swastika.