Remember when twitter was praised for being part of what helped the Arab Spring?
Now both corrupt and moral alike can be clamped down by these rules. Who will be the arbiter of what is considered a "violent organisation" and what is considered fair? Are "freedom fighters" on the side of good exempt from these suspensions or are twitter now simply too much part of the establishment to care for the next revolutions?
I can understand that twitter absolutely need to clamp down on spread of hate-speech and the spread of horrendous videos such as those that were produced by ISIS/ISIL for propaganda and recruitment purposes. But vague rules leads to selective enforcement which could be worrying for free speech and democracy in future.
> videos such as those that were produced by ISIS/ISIL
ISIS videos are what people are using to sell these policies. In reality, a lot of mainstream political speech in the US and EU will be censored by these policies. This is not an accident. Social media has succeeded too well in allowing normal plebians to spread ideas the ruling classes find distasteful.
How many times have you seen Donald Trump called a Nazi? You dont think it a stretch to have twitter ban people for supporting certain policies? Twitter does seem to lean quite heavily left, does it not?
What about the rise of the right in the EU? What about "undesired" stories about actual problems, large and small scale, caused by migrants? Pretty important topic, I would think, yet we already have communities self censoring all over the internet, what is stopping twitter from applying these laughably nebulous rules to hide a side of discussion on this topic too?
Well, when the president praises Nazi's as 'very fine people', what do you expect? Also, when the European far-right whips up fear and bullshit beyond all proportion against groups of the EU's own citizens, what do you expect?
See, that's the sort of thing he's talking about precisely. You've already made your mind up about Trump's comment, and detracted the conversation entirely. Next thing you know, you and other Twitter users all make a big hoo-ha about a relatively benign comment because you think it's offensive, and decide to report it to Twitter for it to get banned. There is nothing hateful about his statements, and you really should re-evaluate your critical reasoning (or news sources, if you took them for their word on it rather than evaluating it yourself) if you think it does.
Case in point: "And I'm not talking about the neo-nazis and white supremacists, because they should be condemned totally"
Moving back. Political speech, commentary, opinions and debate need to be uncensored entirely, no exceptions, if you are to have a democratic society. Otherwise, you're just thought-policing people into thinking/acting into the norm. Sure, harassing someone over a political view won't fall under that, but the key qualifier there is "harassing". I'd go so-far as to say that any platform that is open to the public needs to be punished for silencing any sort of political speech. That is undemocratic, for lack of a better word. Because it shuts-down general debate.
Yeah, like, those are actually the extremist groups with ties to terrorism that this kind policy is designed for. It’s not Twitter’s fault that mainstream politics has gone haywire... I mean maybe it is, but point stands
Right, and nothing more from the US armed forces ;) Or even the UN, for that matter. Or police forces. And what about team sports? Rugby is pretty violent, after all.
Surely this is just the spirit of the rule and not the literal definition? Or will all nation states be suspended from Twitter?