Poll of the Day > Twitter suspends accounts for posing as Black Trump supporters

(+) Yeah! (+)

Wanded posted...

Trumps gonna get more black voters than any other republican nominee

That would be an extremely impressive turnaround, given that the only time in the last 50 years that a Republican candidate won with less Black support than Trump did in 2016 was in 1980 (and if we add in unsuccessful candidates, we only have two more to add to the pile: John McCain and Mitt Romney, both of whom had the handicap of running against the nation's first ever Black nominee/president).

Trump is much more likely to get a lower percentage of black voters than any other Republican nominee than a higher one.

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streamofthesky posted...

It's fraud.

Cracking down on it may technically fall under the umbrella of "censorship", but it's really not what people think about and protest over when they make a stand against censorship.

You know, aside from the disingenuous politically extremist trolls just trying to stir up shit.

I kind of agree w/ Revelation, on not wanting to call it censorship. It's to censorship what picking up a penny dropped on the sidewalk is to theft.

That's the point. It's one of many examples of things that qualify as censorship that are in fact quite reasonable. The existence of such examples is why blanket statements like "censorship is always bad" are silly. There are many bad examples of censorship, absolutely, but those can and should be objected to on an individual basis based on their specific characteristics, rather than employing the lazy, meaningless "it's censorship so it's bad" argument.

Revelation34 posted...

Wat.

Any time you choose not to say something, you're engaging in self-censorship. Any time you choose to say anything, you're choosing not to say every other word in your vocabulary. Therefore, every time you choose to say anything, you're self-censoring the rest of your vocabulary.

Reductio ad absurdum, y'all.

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sodium-chloride posted...

Nope. That episode aired April 2005. Even things you can look up you aren't correct on lmao

the "Probably" at the beginning of the sentence for most people would have implied speculation, but keep literally being salty.

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darkknight109 posted...

That would be an extremely impressive turnaround, given that the only time in the last 50 years that a Republican candidate won with less Black support than Trump did in 2016 was in 1980 (and if we add in unsuccessful candidates, we only have two more to add to the pile: John McCain and Mitt Romney, both of whom had the handicap of running against the nation's first ever Black nominee/president).

Trump is much more likely to get a lower percentage of black voters than any other Republican nominee than a higher one.

Facts.

adjl posted...

That's the point. It's one of many examples of things that qualify as censorship that are in fact quite reasonable. The existence of such examples is why blanket statements like "censorship is always bad" are silly. There are many bad examples of censorship, absolutely, but those can and should be objected to on an individual basis based on their specific characteristics, rather than employing the lazy, meaningless "it's censorship so it's bad" argument.

Any time you choose not to say something, you're engaging in self-censorship. Any time you choose to say anything, you're choosing not to say every other word in your vocabulary. Therefore, every time you choose to say anything, you're self-censoring the rest of your vocabulary.

Reductio ad absurdum, y'all.

That was impressive.

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adjl posted...

<snip> In the case of these fake accounts, though, I don't think there's much to object to. <snip>

I'm not objecting necessarily, I'm just wondering what the specific criteria is. otherwise you end up in the grey zone that companies like this tend to prefer, where it comes down to "whatever we decide should be censored should be censored".

what is it specifically?

- (all) posts that are factually wrong?
- (all) posts that are factually wrong about political issues?
- (all) posts that are using an image of someone's face that is provably not theirs to use?

or something I haven't thought of? (note that these are not rhetorical questions)

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Sahuagin posted...

I'm not objecting necessarily, I'm just wondering what the specific criteria is.

Really, there are none. There are virtually no instances of censorship like this that are going to be free from subjective judgements about what is reasonable and/or appropriate. Some of those judgements are going to be universally agreeable enough to treat them as being effectively objective (much like "Hitler was a douche" is universal enough a sentiment to treat it as factual), but true objectivity here is basically impossible. That's why there is always room to discuss the reasonableness of any such decision, and discussing it is always going to be a good thing because it gets people thinking about it instead of more blindly accepting what they see (whatever that is).

Sahuagin posted...

otherwise you end up in the grey zone that companies like this tend to prefer, where it comes down to "whatever we decide should be censored should be censored".

At the end of the day, that is what it's mostly going to boil down to. These companies do have a right to dictate what they do and do not want people doing with their platform, even if those decisions are completely arbitrary or unjustifiably self-serving. The only reason they ever need to provide a concrete reason for the decision is when it would be worse PR for them not to, not because of any sort of moral imperative. That's why I say it's good to challenge decisions you find questionable, because that gets people discussing and thinking about the material and holds Twitter (et al) accountable for their decision, lest they lose face by not being able to give a reason. Simply hiding behind "censorship is bad," however, does not get people thinking and does not hold Twitter accountable for their decision because it doesn't demand an explanation, meaning it's not an effective objection to raise.

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Section 230 says hello.

You can't have your cake and eat it too in the name of partisanship.

You can be a platform, OR a publisher.

You don't get to play both sides of that coin and still claim 230 protections. Everyone is up in arms at the notion of foreign election tampering, but nearly half the country is willing to turn a blind eye to the Mainstream Media and Big Tech doing exactly the same thing.

There was a recent article about how well over 90% of all comedy at this point is Orange Man Bad, despite it's total lack of originality. If we're talking about manufactured consent, it's hard to tell which side is fucking around in the margins more at this point.

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adjl posted...

<snip>

you're jumping back and forth between different contexts: moral, legal, and public opinion. I'm talking about this in the context of morality. yes, legally they can more or less censor whatever they want since it's a private company. yes, the whims of public opinion may or may not care about any particular action, regardless of anything else. but both of those are separate from whether it's actually moral or not.

you're now saying they can subjectively censor however/whatever they want, just because true objectivity is unattainable? and you think that's how it should be?

my concern is that the rules that you're describing here can be used to do much worse things than just delete tweets. I've seen people lose jobs over situations like this, where the standard that everyone was wasting their time arguing about really just boiled down to "at the end of the day we can do whatever we want". it means the standard is just there to give a false appearance of fairness and impartiality.

as far as "censorship is bad" goes, that would definitely be my default until shown justification otherwise. meanwhile you're defending rules that are effectively "censorship whenever we feel like it", which really is about as authoritarian as it gets.

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How the fuck has that post saying all black liberals are slaves not been modded yet.

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Zareth posted...

How the fuck has that post saying all black liberals are slaves not been modded yet.

Where? And the mods stopped handing moderations like they used too. So 90% of what was modable before gets left.

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Sahuagin posted...

you're now saying they can subjectively censor however/whatever they want, just because true objectivity is unattainable? and you think that's how it should be?

Provided the decisions are transparent enough that people can discuss them and challenge them as needed? I think that's really the only way it can be. There's no way to get around the need to control what appears in people's social media feeds, simply because of the sheer volume of information out there. That means some degree of censorship (the term "curation" would be more commonly used here because it's less pejorative, but they're really the same thing) is necessary. Because the standard cannot be "never censor anything" and true objectivity is impossible, the next best alternative is to act subjectively with enough transparency for people to be able to understand what you're doing.

Now, do Twitter et al achieve that transparency? Very often not (usually for PR reasons), and that's a problem. That's a problem with their transparency, though, not with the fundamental paradigm of censorship.

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adjl posted...

I think that's really the only way it can be. There's no way to get around the need to control what appears in people's social media feeds, simply because of the sheer volume of information out there. That means some degree of censorship (the term "curation" would be more commonly used here because it's less pejorative, but they're really the same thing) is necessary. Because the standard cannot be "never censor anything" and true objectivity is impossible, the next best alternative is to act subjectively with enough transparency for people to be able to understand what you're doing.

i think this is just blatantly wrong, or legal systems would be impossible. transparency being important is a good point, but that doesn't preclude the ability to have a maximally objective process.

companies bake in "we can do whatever we want whenever we want" (or whatever variation) because they can, not because they have to. (in fact they will even do that when it's not legally true.) they could have as objective a process as they pretend to have. it's not impossible to have an objective standard that they do their best to impartially judge cases by, and update as needed. they just aren't made to, and so don't.

from my experience this can and does lead to unjust (and strictly immoral/unethical) outcomes, even if it is not strictly illegal. (many things are immoral without being illegal.)

it's not simply "censorship is bad", it's "unrestricted ability to censor can and will be abused and you may not even know it when it happens".

there's more to say, but I don't know the right solution (should companies be "forced" to be neutral; or maybe to declare a bias upfront if they have one?). in some sense this is an emerging problem with a yet to be discovered solution. (we may spend the better part of the 21st century solving these problems, if we ever do.)

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section 230 should not be treated like a one-way duck blind if big tech wants to play both sides of the coin.

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Sahuagin posted...

companies bake in "we can do whatever we want whenever we want" (or whatever variation) because they can, not because they have to. (in fact they will even do that when it's not legally true.) they could have as objective a process as they pretend to have. it's not impossible to have an objective standard that they do their best to impartially judge cases by, and update as needed. they just aren't made to, and so don't.

Really, that's where the value of transparency lies: When people see the decisions companies make, that gives them the power to make an informed decision to stop patronizing that company. Companies' responses to questionable acts of censorship coming to light are not about defending what they feel is right or any such thing, they're about preserving their public image so people keep giving them money. Enforcing transparency means they always have to keep in mind what they're going to be able to justify, creating an incentive to find objective bases for their decisions.

Now, that's still not perfect, I agree. The social media market is very much not infinite and arguably not all that voluntary, meaning users don't necessarily have the option of taking their business elsewhere if one service is censoring objectionably. Treating public opinion as the arbiter of truth is also a very dangerous idea in many ways. Still, from a legislative standpoint, I think the optimal solution is to require social media services to clearly indicate when they censor something from a user's feed, showing them what they censored and why they've censored it. Twitter's fact check flag is a nice idea in line with this, flagging tweets that conflict with available information without removing them from people's feeds, but I think there's still room for more to be done. Any further efforts to legislate the matter, however, are just going to end up being vague, arbitrary, and potentially stricken down as violations of the companies' first amendment rights.

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you have an android phone? good luck excising google from your daily life if you want to like...i dunno, function.

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adjl posted...

When people see the decisions companies make, that gives them the power to make an informed decision to stop patronizing that company.

one of the things I was going to say is that if you follow the "control speech" path to where it leads, you usually get to USA big money: credit card companies, paypal, banks, major advertisers, etc.

adjl posted...

they're about preserving their public image so people keep giving them money

no, the instances I'm talking about are people within the organization manipulating the rules of the organization in order to spread their political bias. (using "we can do what we want when we want" to justify deleting things for no reason (ie, for personal and political reasons). everyone has probably heard of youtube (google) in particular doing this a lot, but that's not the only example.)

adjl posted...

Enforcing transparency means they always have to keep in mind what they're going to be able to justify, creating an incentive to find objective bases for their decisions.

1) companies *don't actually* have such transparency. 2) the worse they face is a small short-term negative reaction from the small proportion of users who actually care.

adjl posted...

potentially stricken down as violations of the companies' first amendment rights.

I don't see how companies have a 1st amendment right to be able to delete information from their forums, regardless of bias, but that would be interesting to know if it is the case.

LuciferSage posted...

section 230

that's interesting and not something I knew about, thanks

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