Updating our rules against hateful conduct(blog.twitter.com)
blog.twitter.com
Updating our rules against hateful conduct
https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2019/hatefulconductupdate.html
88 comments
Twitter would be better received if it were bold enough to also state specific examples of permissible religious satire/criticism. I think that would do a lot to address what people are worried about, and be a step in the direction of having more concrete rules and predictable enforcement.
>Twitter would be better received if it were bold enough to also state specific examples of permissible religious satire/criticism
Talk about a PR Minesweeper, expert mode.
Talk about a PR Minesweeper, expert mode.
[deleted]
If experience is anything to go by, "things I don't like" or "things that offend me" get twisted into things far more severe than what is actually stated, words are now "violence" and make people feel "unsafe".
This rule's application - like all rules like this - will be stretched and exaggerated to cover much more than intended and will be applied unevenly across demographics.
Just like we see on Reddit when /r/ChapoTrapHouse and /r/Bad_cop_no_donut (both of which I sub to, genuinely) gets a pass, while right wing subs do not, when it comes to violent threats and comments.
Atheists and Christians will get the short end of the stick on this. Mark my words.
This rule's application - like all rules like this - will be stretched and exaggerated to cover much more than intended and will be applied unevenly across demographics.
Just like we see on Reddit when /r/ChapoTrapHouse and /r/Bad_cop_no_donut (both of which I sub to, genuinely) gets a pass, while right wing subs do not, when it comes to violent threats and comments.
Atheists and Christians will get the short end of the stick on this. Mark my words.
Well sure, because while there are Muslim and Jewish activist groups on Twitter's Trust and Safety Council there are no groups dedicated to defending Christians or Atheists. https://about.twitter.com/en_us/safety/safety-partners.html
What if someone's holy book contains text that dehumanizes people on the basis of religion?
Criticizing a religion is not the same thing as dehumanizing its followers.
Dehumanization is a defense mechanism which helps us avoid feeling the pain of realizing that humans sometimes do (subjectively) abhorrent things. It's seductive to define such people outside the bounds of humanity as it allows us to excuse treating them poorly. It is nearly always a mistake to do so, because people are, in fact, people.
Dehumanization is a defense mechanism which helps us avoid feeling the pain of realizing that humans sometimes do (subjectively) abhorrent things. It's seductive to define such people outside the bounds of humanity as it allows us to excuse treating them poorly. It is nearly always a mistake to do so, because people are, in fact, people.
This is the important point everyone seems to be missing. If you look at the example tweets they all have some aspect of making the [Religious Group] out to be less than human: rats, virus, maggots, etc.
People can still freely express their distaste for any and all religion on twitter so long as they don’t dehumanize the people who follow that religion.
People can still freely express their distaste for any and all religion on twitter so long as they don’t dehumanize the people who follow that religion.
Application will be different from stated intent. How much you want to bet ?
haven't we all seen this in practice long enough now to know how this little routine goes?
haven't we all seen this in practice long enough now to know how this little routine goes?
This kind of attitude with respect to rules and regulations drives me nuts. Guess what? Every time you have a human applying a rule you’re going to get results that aren’t entirely consistent. Have you ever managed a team and given the exact same task with the exact same instructions to two people? Did you get the exact same work product in return? I very much doubt it.
Rules & regulations should be written, evaluated, and revised the same way code is. Code doesn’t always run as we intended but we (usually) don’t crucify the developer. We learn from the misunderstanding, fix it, and then re-evaluate when the next inevitable misunderstanding comes up. We get feedback and we iterate. That’s exactly what Twitter is doing. Their first policy didn’t work out as planned and this is their next iteration based on the feedback they received on policy v1.0.0
And will Twitter update this policy yet again once they’ve had time to work out some of the kinks? You can bet on it.
Rules & regulations should be written, evaluated, and revised the same way code is. Code doesn’t always run as we intended but we (usually) don’t crucify the developer. We learn from the misunderstanding, fix it, and then re-evaluate when the next inevitable misunderstanding comes up. We get feedback and we iterate. That’s exactly what Twitter is doing. Their first policy didn’t work out as planned and this is their next iteration based on the feedback they received on policy v1.0.0
And will Twitter update this policy yet again once they’ve had time to work out some of the kinks? You can bet on it.
> Criticizing a religion is not the same thing as dehumanizing its followers.
That is all in a matter of perspective. To you it might not be.
That is all in a matter of perspective. To you it might not be.
Bingo. In that case you have to pick a winner and loser. Then you suppress the loser and promote the winner.
Which is the whole point.
These issues of free speech have been around for a very long time, especially with regards to religious speech, which is at the bedrock of free speech, and the Western liberal tradition espouses free speech principles not because it didn't realize someone might get offended, but because it's better than the option of having powerful people/institutions pick winners and losers and decide what is acceptable to say.
Under current rules, if enforced across the board, a modern Martin Luther's 95 tweet stream would be banned because it hurt someone's feelings or criticized their religion. Exposes of Jehovah's Witnesses would be banned. Atheist tracts would be banned. The whole system is unworkable, which is why it wont work -- it wont be enforced across the board. What will happen is that Twitter will adopt de-facto 'protected religions' that cannot be criticized -- say Islam -- and then it will pick the losers -- say Christianity.
Which is the whole point.
These issues of free speech have been around for a very long time, especially with regards to religious speech, which is at the bedrock of free speech, and the Western liberal tradition espouses free speech principles not because it didn't realize someone might get offended, but because it's better than the option of having powerful people/institutions pick winners and losers and decide what is acceptable to say.
Under current rules, if enforced across the board, a modern Martin Luther's 95 tweet stream would be banned because it hurt someone's feelings or criticized their religion. Exposes of Jehovah's Witnesses would be banned. Atheist tracts would be banned. The whole system is unworkable, which is why it wont work -- it wont be enforced across the board. What will happen is that Twitter will adopt de-facto 'protected religions' that cannot be criticized -- say Islam -- and then it will pick the losers -- say Christianity.
No. It's only if it dehumanizes the other. Criticism of the thoughts, ideas, practices are perfectly fine. Dehumanizing the practicers of any particular religion is what's not fine.
You're over-reacting to what the linked post from twitter actually says.
You're over-reacting to what the linked post from twitter actually says.
Define "de-humanizing". If you look at how previous twitter anti-dehumanizing policies were enforced, this was used to
ban NPC memes -- which were not memes against a person but against ideas. It was used to ban people who said things like "men can't get pregnant" -- which is an idea/belief.
I really can't follow you. I spent a few minutes googling and it looks like
1) Twitter punishes 'dehumanizing tweets'
2) One author on kotaku argued that the NPC meme could be considered 'dehumanizing'
3 ???
The ban on 'dehumanization' was in response to NPC memes. It was introduced in mid October 2018 after the NPC memes became popular. They banned over 1500 accounts -- for a while they were banning every account with a NPC face in the avatar. Recall that the NPC meme originates from the (joke) that some people are robotic in their thinking, and the NPC memes are faces running a program. As this was not a violation of any twitter rules, twitter made up a rule as an excuse to block these memes.
But if you think about it, the NPC memes were not arguing that some specific individual was not human, but rather than certain types of reasoning was robotic -- e.g. atavistic, primitive, and automatic. So this was an idea that was being blocked.
Going back to religion, the whole point of religious arguments is that they offend people and challenge the core of their identity. So of course this is going to be used as a weapon against religious views. Especially if your religion includes beliefs that some people are followers of false prophets, children of the devil, etc. Religion is used in many ways as a dividing line over who is favored and who is not.
But if you think about it, the NPC memes were not arguing that some specific individual was not human, but rather than certain types of reasoning was robotic -- e.g. atavistic, primitive, and automatic. So this was an idea that was being blocked.
Going back to religion, the whole point of religious arguments is that they offend people and challenge the core of their identity. So of course this is going to be used as a weapon against religious views. Especially if your religion includes beliefs that some people are followers of false prophets, children of the devil, etc. Religion is used in many ways as a dividing line over who is favored and who is not.
Sorry but if you're not a member of the tribe, you can't possibly interpret the tribe's book. (said in jest to point out the problematic response)
> What if someone's holy book contains text that dehumanizes people on the basis of religion?
Then they probably aren't allowed to tweet their holy book.
Then they probably aren't allowed to tweet their holy book.
What if, as part of a developing story, a journalist quotes a government official making such statements?
Is it dehumanizing to report that someone else made a dehumanizing statement without endorsing the statement? I don't think so.
You are essentially asking “will Twitter make use/mention distinctions in enforcing this policy”. While it is of course impossible to state for certain in advance, I don't see any particular reason to believe they would either be disinclined to or incapable of doing so.
You are essentially asking “will Twitter make use/mention distinctions in enforcing this policy”. While it is of course impossible to state for certain in advance, I don't see any particular reason to believe they would either be disinclined to or incapable of doing so.
My guess is it will depend on whether or not the journalist is considered part of the mainstream media.
I guess you can't post those quotes on twitter then.
I get skin color, sex, gender, sexual orientation etc for protection, but including religion and excluding political word view has always been weird to me. Calling one of the two innate and deserving of protection and the other a choice and undeserving seems like a religious answer.
Narrow down what’s considered — Respondents said that “identifiable groups” was too broad, and they should be allowed to engage with political groups, hate groups, and other non-marginalized groups with this type of language.
And you didn't just tell him to just not de-humanize anybody, instead opting for "okay, that's fine, just don't mention religion when you do it?
Narrow down what’s considered — Respondents said that “identifiable groups” was too broad, and they should be allowed to engage with political groups, hate groups, and other non-marginalized groups with this type of language.
And you didn't just tell him to just not de-humanize anybody, instead opting for "okay, that's fine, just don't mention religion when you do it?
Yeah, the way this has been introduced into their policies [1] is weirdly specific. It's prohibited to target individuals with dehumanizing language if it's related to any protected category, but targeting groups with dehumanizing language is only prohibited if it's related to religion?
[1]: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hateful-condu...
[1]: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hateful-condu...
I'm not convinced centralized models being politically "pushed around" in the age of the internet will succeed. They may likely be a retreat, and long term ebb-and-flow from centralized to decentralized poles.
The centralized but politically watched model is also specially susceptible to Taleb's "The Most Intolerant Wins" theorem.
The centralized but politically watched model is also specially susceptible to Taleb's "The Most Intolerant Wins" theorem.
Specially when religious (or other kind of) minorities where Twitter HQ are located won't necessarily be somewhere else.
[deleted]
Does this mean that Swiftian satire such as South Park's episode making fun of prominent Scientologists is now unfit for Twitter?
I don't believe it would be affected -- as I recall, that episode mocks the religion and its members, but doesn't dehumanize them.
Looking at Twitter's examples, it's not explicitly mentioned but it looks like it is still permissible to mock a religion and its followers in the manner of Christopher Hitchens, and as long as the religion is not compared to a non-human disease/virus/beast it is OK. Hopefully they keep moderation to clearcut rules like this and avoid touching substantive satire and criticism.
It would be helpful if Twitter were bold enough to provide examples of permissible types of criticism/satire.
It would be helpful if Twitter were bold enough to provide examples of permissible types of criticism/satire.
What exactly does "dehumanization" mean?
Did you read the article? They give some fairly vivid examples
It means precisely what it sounds like -- using language which describes the targeted group as something other than (and lesser than) human. The article gives examples where religious groups are described as "rats", "viruses", "filthy animals", or "maggots".
Many cultures use animal analogies to describe nuanced and complicated personality trait combinations. Some of them are more negative than others, referring to combinations of positive and negative traits in varying proportions.
Reductively, calling someone a lion is just as dehumanizing as calling them a shark. In the Bible, people are both complemented and insulted with comparisons to lions. Calling someone a shark is more respectful than calling them a rat, unless you're Chinese in which case I'm not sure what rat means. What exactly is banned here? Twitter gave us only the most obvious examples, leaving the hazy zones open for the endless fighting that I predict is about to start.
Reductively, calling someone a lion is just as dehumanizing as calling them a shark. In the Bible, people are both complemented and insulted with comparisons to lions. Calling someone a shark is more respectful than calling them a rat, unless you're Chinese in which case I'm not sure what rat means. What exactly is banned here? Twitter gave us only the most obvious examples, leaving the hazy zones open for the endless fighting that I predict is about to start.
Welp, you don't get to do that on Twitter now.
So, I understand the attitude that, "twitter is just a platform, they don't have to be just, why wring your hands so much about what their rules are?" This makes sense if their rules don't matter, so in that case why should they even have rules? That's a position I can understand, where you can post anything on Twitter that's legal under US law.
[deleted]
I'm sorry, I don't understand your logic. If someone has rules, but those rules aren't the same as US law, it seems you're saying, they might as well not have rules at all?
Yeah, I was kind of tired when I wrote that. My logic was, if handwringing over Twitter's rules isn't justified then the rules must not matter, because handwringing is justified if and only if the rules matter. If the rules don't matter then they don't need rules beyond basic US law, which would imply that this effort wasn't very profitable.
So, either Twitter isn't right because they took a rough stab into a subtle area, or they aren't right because they took a stab that didn't need to be taken.
So, either Twitter isn't right because they took a rough stab into a subtle area, or they aren't right because they took a stab that didn't need to be taken.
It's like that time Twitter banned Bob Marley for calling people iron like a lion in Zion.
I've been deeply concerned with attacks on religious freedom as of late, this seems like a strong step in the right direction.
Hmm? It seems like this is a step in the opposite direction.
Which religious freedoms have been attacked, and where?
Sounds like a series of cases where courts ruled that religious reasons were not justifiable to allow discrimination, as per the Constitution.
If Twitter removing posts for their political content is not an attack on free speech, then Twitter users insulting religious people is most certainly not an attack on religious freedom...
I do wonder if they will remove comments from prominent American fundamentalists who dehumanize non-Christians and/or atheists?
I assume it is ok to say religion is a virus, or a particular religion is a virus but the rule is that you can't say the followers of the religion are a virus. Likening religion to a memetic virus is not a fringe opinion.
Hopefully, they recognize the group of people who do not practice religion as "basis of religion"
They probably won't.
Atheists are the most oppressed 'religious' group there is but no one will recognize it.
It's common they are left out of so-called "progressive" movements to support peace / safety.
Atheists are the most oppressed 'religious' group there is but no one will recognize it.
It's common they are left out of so-called "progressive" movements to support peace / safety.
Excommunication isn't the solution. Isn't it enough to hide these comments by default, as on HN?
Comments like those in the examples Twitter provided will reliably get you excommunicated from HN.
HN has dead posters. They are still readable for those that want to. That's the type of solution I promote.
Digital media, like Twitter, can't be a megaphone to spread hate speech. That means their algorithms should be smarter, and accept input.
On the other hand, with these media effectively being monopolies, that doesn't mean they can excommunicate (which is what this is about). That should be against the law.
Just like when there is just one shop in town: everybody should be allowed to buy. That doesn't mean the shopkeeper has to smile to every customer. A good shopkeeper may even be able to get this customer some help.
Digital media, like Twitter, can't be a megaphone to spread hate speech. That means their algorithms should be smarter, and accept input.
On the other hand, with these media effectively being monopolies, that doesn't mean they can excommunicate (which is what this is about). That should be against the law.
Just like when there is just one shop in town: everybody should be allowed to buy. That doesn't mean the shopkeeper has to smile to every customer. A good shopkeeper may even be able to get this customer some help.
People really need to get off Twitter. There are a lot of servers on the Fediverse, running Mastodon, Pleroma, Misskey, Pixelfed and other ActivityPub webapps. Just because famous person x,y,z or friends a,b,c, aren't on the Fediverse doesn't mean you shouldn't try it out.
It's like the 1990s, old IRC and AOL chatrooms. You can just follow a lot of randoms and get into cool threads. There are many instances that have open speech policies (which are banned by many other instances) and other instances with standard ban lists. You can choose where you want to sign up. Many of the people on HN have the knowledge to stand up their own if they want. (I run my own in Docker using a ruby tool I wrote: https://github.com/sumdog/bee2).
You can even create accounts of different Fediverse servers to get a better picture of what gets blocked/censored where. The difference with ActivityPub/Fediverse is you have choices.
Twitter, Reddit, et. al. worry so much about keeping people "safe" that they have completely killed off any diversity of ideas. Back before Reddit started their multi-year long banning-of-everything campaign, you had a lot of different voices, with a lot of different ideology, from conservative to socialist to libertarian to progressive .. battling it out with some really great discussion. Now it's all just monoculture.
The places people fled too, like Voat/Gab, are also just monoculture (Gab recently migrated to their own broken, garbage fork of Mastodon ... as if they needed a way to make the Mastodon UI worse). Voat is just a cesspool of hate, and any melting pot where people discussed ideas rationally is kinda gone.
I highly recommend The Coddling of the American Mind, a book that talks about how people today see "Free speech" as a bad thing, how people say words == violence (they don't, violence is violence, and saying words are violence show you're afraid of ideas).
I've also been reading The Strange Death of Europe, which talks a lot about migration and religious hate speech. Honestly a lot of the book is garbage and I didn't like any of the initial arguments, but I also realize it's important to read about viewpoints I don't agree with. As I kept reading, the author did make a lot of effort to interview Muslims (both long term residents and refugees) and he does make a good set of arguments for the difficulty of criticizing religion in Europe (and I don't agree with a lot of his findings, but I think his arguments and original research are worth looking at).
We really need to be careful with these new blurred lines around speech and hate and ideas and ideology and violence. Restricting things on any platform just gives people with those views, people who get banned, more validity in the eyes of people who see them as persecuted. The Westburro Baptist Church is an example of a small, non-evangelistic set of families that barely grow, who are fully supported by slander lawsuits (they're mostly lawyers). If there weren't WBC counter protests and publications against them, they'd have no one to sue, would have run out of money a long time ago, and would have needed to take real legal case work again. The great irony is the reason they still hold strong is due to protesters giving them relevance.
It's like the 1990s, old IRC and AOL chatrooms. You can just follow a lot of randoms and get into cool threads. There are many instances that have open speech policies (which are banned by many other instances) and other instances with standard ban lists. You can choose where you want to sign up. Many of the people on HN have the knowledge to stand up their own if they want. (I run my own in Docker using a ruby tool I wrote: https://github.com/sumdog/bee2).
You can even create accounts of different Fediverse servers to get a better picture of what gets blocked/censored where. The difference with ActivityPub/Fediverse is you have choices.
Twitter, Reddit, et. al. worry so much about keeping people "safe" that they have completely killed off any diversity of ideas. Back before Reddit started their multi-year long banning-of-everything campaign, you had a lot of different voices, with a lot of different ideology, from conservative to socialist to libertarian to progressive .. battling it out with some really great discussion. Now it's all just monoculture.
The places people fled too, like Voat/Gab, are also just monoculture (Gab recently migrated to their own broken, garbage fork of Mastodon ... as if they needed a way to make the Mastodon UI worse). Voat is just a cesspool of hate, and any melting pot where people discussed ideas rationally is kinda gone.
I highly recommend The Coddling of the American Mind, a book that talks about how people today see "Free speech" as a bad thing, how people say words == violence (they don't, violence is violence, and saying words are violence show you're afraid of ideas).
I've also been reading The Strange Death of Europe, which talks a lot about migration and religious hate speech. Honestly a lot of the book is garbage and I didn't like any of the initial arguments, but I also realize it's important to read about viewpoints I don't agree with. As I kept reading, the author did make a lot of effort to interview Muslims (both long term residents and refugees) and he does make a good set of arguments for the difficulty of criticizing religion in Europe (and I don't agree with a lot of his findings, but I think his arguments and original research are worth looking at).
We really need to be careful with these new blurred lines around speech and hate and ideas and ideology and violence. Restricting things on any platform just gives people with those views, people who get banned, more validity in the eyes of people who see them as persecuted. The Westburro Baptist Church is an example of a small, non-evangelistic set of families that barely grow, who are fully supported by slander lawsuits (they're mostly lawyers). If there weren't WBC counter protests and publications against them, they'd have no one to sue, would have run out of money a long time ago, and would have needed to take real legal case work again. The great irony is the reason they still hold strong is due to protesters giving them relevance.
I want to like Mastodon, but there are no like/retweet counts. I have no idea how to find the good content without sifting through mountains of stuff I don't want to read.
Interesting. So criticizing religious positions against abortion, against vaccines, against homosexuality, and in favor of the flat earth will now result in post removal. Assuming this policy is going to be impartially and fairly applied as stated.
No, because positions are not people. If you can criticize an idea without dehumanizing the person who holds said idea, then your criticism doesn't fall into the "dehumanizing people" category.
Censorship is censorship.
At least they admit it.
How so? It seems like only if they say "those animals" (or similar) instead of "those people".
It's entirely possible to criticize without dehumanizing.
The problem is that it's also possible to criticize in a way where it's simply not possible to determine if it was a good faith criticism or not. There's a wide population of people who even optimize for that, they're called trolls.
Moderation mistakes are inevitable, and the consequences of a bad moderation decision can be as bad, or worse, than the effect of the message itself.
IMO, people should learn to defend themselves against trolls rather than helplessly relying on a nanny from above to do it. Unfortunately, using those platforms doesn't give us much of a choice in the matter.
Moderation mistakes are inevitable, and the consequences of a bad moderation decision can be as bad, or worse, than the effect of the message itself.
IMO, people should learn to defend themselves against trolls rather than helplessly relying on a nanny from above to do it. Unfortunately, using those platforms doesn't give us much of a choice in the matter.
> The problem is that it's also possible to criticize in a way where it's simply not possible to determine if it was a good faith criticism or not.
That's a problem in some generic sense perhaps, but not with the application of this policy, which does not rely on a determination of “good faith criticism”, but instead of dehumanization.
Note that the examples of what is covered all are dehumanizing in a very narrow sense (stating directly that the target groups are vermin, viruses, etc.): https://blog.twitter.com/content/dam/blog-twitter/official/e...
That's a problem in some generic sense perhaps, but not with the application of this policy, which does not rely on a determination of “good faith criticism”, but instead of dehumanization.
Note that the examples of what is covered all are dehumanizing in a very narrow sense (stating directly that the target groups are vermin, viruses, etc.): https://blog.twitter.com/content/dam/blog-twitter/official/e...
I'd rather see a random list of posts that are actually being deleted rather than examples that Twitter officially uses, before making the determination that the rule is applied fairly.
That depends entirely on their definition of dehumanizing.
The examples given seem pretty clear - calling people rats, viruses, maggots, etc.
Examples given do not guarantee how a policy will actually be enforced. Motte and bailey rhetoric can be used punish a broad variety of behavior while insisting the policy only exists to curtail something abhorrent.
Is calling someone an asshole dehumanizing?
> So criticizing religious positions against abortion, against vaccines, against homosexuality, and in favor of the flat earth will now result in post removal.
Only if you "dehumanize" said religious people. All of the examples Twitter posted involved comparing the religious in question to animals (or viruses).
So, I doubt a tweet like "I don't think it's right to let the mother die because of fetus complications" would be removed, but something like "Those Christian pigs think a clump of cells are worthy of having human rights?! What kind of monkeys are leading them!" probably would.
Only if you "dehumanize" said religious people. All of the examples Twitter posted involved comparing the religious in question to animals (or viruses).
So, I doubt a tweet like "I don't think it's right to let the mother die because of fetus complications" would be removed, but something like "Those Christian pigs think a clump of cells are worthy of having human rights?! What kind of monkeys are leading them!" probably would.
Some religious people think a human fetus is a fully formed human instead of a bunch of cells that it is. From their point of view, common pro-abortion arguments are "dehumanizing".
I am very certain that tweets criticizing these types of things (which are generally tweets against the beliefs of Christians, however misguided) will remain.
> So criticizing religious positions against abortion, against vaccines, against homosexuality, and in favor of the flat earth will now result in post removal.
I'm pretty sure you can criticize all of those positions without dehumanizing people on the basis of religion, so that conclusion seems unwarranted, and out of line with the examples of the kinds of posts that would be removed by the policy.
I'm pretty sure you can criticize all of those positions without dehumanizing people on the basis of religion, so that conclusion seems unwarranted, and out of line with the examples of the kinds of posts that would be removed by the policy.
[deleted]
This is strangely specific. Is it still okay to dehumanize people afflicted with other kinds of mental illnesses?
Twitter needs to be a set of open source protocols and standards like the internet.
Imagine if all of the internet was owned by one company and they had this kind of power. This is more power than many governments around the world.
Imagine if all of the internet was owned by one company and they had this kind of power. This is more power than many governments around the world.
I'm very concerned about loosing the right to attack religion. It's an important discussion to have and for children to see. All religion is foolish, and has to be approached from a reality-based context.
The reasonable interpretation is that you can attack religion (as an ideology) but you can not attact religious people based on their religion.
Thats a safe split: ideologies do not have (human) rights anyway...
So e.g. you can freely say that the Bible is stupid but can't say the same thing about its believers.
Thats a safe split: ideologies do not have (human) rights anyway...
So e.g. you can freely say that the Bible is stupid but can't say the same thing about its believers.
But it's not the Bible that is stupid, it's just a book (which might've been considered pretty advanced stuff at the time it was written). What if I have a problem specifically with some of its believers?
> So e.g. you can freely say that the Bible is stupid but can't say the same thing about its believers.
From the examples they give, I think you can still call them stupid. (After all, being stupid is very much part of the human condition. It's hardly a dehumanizing descriptor.) You just can't call them rats, maggots, viruses, etc. and advocate for their extermination/removal.
From the examples they give, I think you can still call them stupid. (After all, being stupid is very much part of the human condition. It's hardly a dehumanizing descriptor.) You just can't call them rats, maggots, viruses, etc. and advocate for their extermination/removal.
Maybe you should approach this issue from a reality based context? A business setting rules for what they want to publish does not infringe on your freedom of speech.
> I'm very concerned about loosing the right to attack religion
You aren't losing the right.
You may be losing Twitter's active cooperation if the manner in which you do so is unacceptable to Twitter, but you never had a right to Twitter's active participation in your attacks to lose.
You aren't losing the right.
You may be losing Twitter's active cooperation if the manner in which you do so is unacceptable to Twitter, but you never had a right to Twitter's active participation in your attacks to lose.
You are of course correct in a grand sense, but there's this weird gray area philosophically where someone builds a town square and says "everyone come and talk in my square"...until the hear what you are speaking about!
The problem is likely greater in our corporate/mercantilist system where some state-sponsored and some natural monopolies develop. Totally get and appreciate the private property of the corporation argument...it is their town square after all...but when there is only one that is 'allowed' to succeed, what happens?
This then leads to specific tactical rules we have on the books in the US like FTC and even FCC regs, where some may protest unfair commerce.
IANAL but I can see this is a real mess. Also, what is the ROI for Twitter when it comes to policing this? We know FB has been having problems.
The problem is likely greater in our corporate/mercantilist system where some state-sponsored and some natural monopolies develop. Totally get and appreciate the private property of the corporation argument...it is their town square after all...but when there is only one that is 'allowed' to succeed, what happens?
This then leads to specific tactical rules we have on the books in the US like FTC and even FCC regs, where some may protest unfair commerce.
IANAL but I can see this is a real mess. Also, what is the ROI for Twitter when it comes to policing this? We know FB has been having problems.
> Also, what is the ROI for Twitter when it comes to policing this?
I think most of the things regarding regulating speech coming out of twitter are about avoiding being put in the spotlight next year in the next U.S. election. If what happened in 2016 happens again to any social network, the hammer will fall.
I think most of the things regarding regulating speech coming out of twitter are about avoiding being put in the spotlight next year in the next U.S. election. If what happened in 2016 happens again to any social network, the hammer will fall.
If Twitter was the whole internet, then you would have a point.
As a religious person I disagree that all religion is foolish. But I agree that religions should be attacked. As a christian I've seen many ideas that were presented as "Christian" be attacked severely and then the entire christian culture is forced to re-evaluate the idea in the context of the scripture and determine that the idea is in fact not present or contrary to proper biblical teaching. Attacking ideas is good attacking people is bad.
This crosses into religious flamewar. That's not ok on HN; please don't do it here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Dang, respectfully disagree as this is a meta-comment on the concept, not targeting any specific religion. However you are welcome to delete if you feel it best.
"All religion is foolish" is religious flamebait for sure. We have to judge this by how people react to such statements, and I guarantee you the expected value of such a thread is a flamewar.
Religious and ethnic persecutions have often gone hand-in-hand. Religious minorities of all types will be helped by this, and we'll see less hate-speech on twitter. Seems to be a very reasonable step.
Sidenote: any religion topic really brings out the "I have a problem with religion" types on HN.