Twitter Tackles Terrorists In Targeted Takedown (betanews.com) 105
Mark Wilson writes: Having previously battled trolls, Twitter has now turned its attention to terrorists and their supporters. The site has closed down more than 125,000 accounts associated with terrorism since the middle of 2015, it announced in a statement. Although a full breakdown of figures is not provided, Twitter says most of these accounts were related to ISIS. Having increased the size of its account review team, the site has reduced the time it takes to investigate accounts that are reported, and has also started to investigate 'accounts similar to those reported'.
Too Many T's Timothy (Score:4, Funny)
firsT posT
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Should have dropped the In and used ; instead
Too bad the new new slashdot is just more and more timothy.
Why do they continue to let this moron post stories?
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I think you mean, Totally Teeming with T's, Timothy.
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Timothy tackled the title in this tale--truly triggering end times with his (touch)typing talent
Would be terrorists think twice re ISIS
ta-ta o/
Apologies to teknologists/readers
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LOL ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Holy alliteration Batman!!
We need more of that.
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Replacing "In" with "Through", of course.
What the future holds is (Score:1)
that you will be labeled a terrorist if you disagree with the agenda and the status quo, and thus not allowed on Twitter etc.
freedom (but only for those we like) (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course twitter is a private service and can have whatever policies it wants. But when the whole world communicates with about 2 total services like that, silencing someone there is tantamount to complete censorship. It makes them go underground, where their message of hate becomes even harder to combat.
No, it's best to shine a bright light on their bullshit. Let them say it all they want. The right answer to offensive speech is (1) more speech that makes it clear how fucked up their world view is, and (2) giving people good ways to chose what they listen to, but putting that power in their own hands, not having a central authority decide what is acceptable and what is not.
Turning the internet into something controlled and "safe" is not a good idea, no matter how nasty the speech in question. But we're now centralizing all communication on Twitter and Facebook. The power to do this to ISIS is the power to do it to political dissidents and human rights activists and politically inconvenient people. We should think very, very carefully about what it means to give just a few companies that much control over how literally billions of people communicate.
Re:freedom (but only for those we like) (Score:4, Insightful)
This. Exactly this.
The correct answer to people spouting bullshit is to call out their bullshit. Don't silence them by squelching them, silence them by showing them that they are wrong, that they are not the "vocal minority that dares to say what others only think", but that they are a loudmouth few who babble what everyone else knows is BULLSHIT.
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This. Exactly this.
The correct answer to people spouting bullshit is to call out their bullshit. Don't silence them by squelching them, silence them by showing them that they are wrong, that they are not the "vocal minority that dares to say what others only think", but that they are a loudmouth few who babble what everyone else knows is BULLSHIT.
ISS don't use Twitter to engage in debate with their critics, it's just a propaganda and recruiting tool.
Trying to have a rational discussion with psychotic fascists is pointless. You are never going to convince them they're wrong. It's like arguing with a Nazi on whether or not it's a good idea to exterminate the Jews.
I see absolutely no reason why anyone sane would want to give them any help at all in promoting their message. You can't stop them publishing their crap on the internet anyway, but i
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when the whole world communicates with about 2 total services
The problem are not Twitter's policies, the problem is we rely on 2 services, that happen to be proprietary and non-compatible with competitors, effectively preventing competition to appear.
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Indeed, competition would have such a high burden... they might have to ssh into a server and enter some cryptic command like "dnf install ejabberd" and hire a sysadmin for at least 4 hours to set it up. They would also have to create a website.
A more pressing problem is that you might be targeting people unwilling to pay anything, and they might be willing to consume whatever level of services you are capable of providing.
And you kids should be advised of the existence of email, email lists, and online com
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when the whole world communicates with about 2 total services
The problem are not Twitter's policies, the problem is we rely on 2 services, that happen to be proprietary and non-compatible with competitors, effectively preventing competition to appear.
The whole point of the internet is that you are not limited to mainstream, officially approved or commercially motivated services. If you want to communicate about terrorism or child porn or hiring a hit man or anything else that is illegal, you are free to give it a try, but you really can't complain when large mainstream companies won't want to touch you with a barge pole.
The internet is not limited to Twitter and Facebook. I use neither service, but strangely I don't feel like I'm being censored or re
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While I disagree, entirely, with the OP AC, pointing out where you think the fault lies does not actually make it any less a war. Your "rebuttal" is a nice rant and all but not really salient.
Also, it's fun to blame the US but I'd suggest you study some history - the problem goes back *much* further. Instead of blaming the colonization and arbitrary borders put in place by the League of Nations or the United States or even the USSR - how about we, you know, blame the people who are *actually* causing the pr
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"pointing out where you think the fault lies does not actually make it any less a war"
I wasn't simply pointing out "where the fault lies", because that implies that this rash of fundamentalism is some sort of unintended consequence. Although you could claim that it was unintended regarding our coup of Mossadegh, it certainly is not true of our more recent targets. Saddam? Secular. Gaddafi? Secular. Assad? Secular. ISIS, on the other hand, we handled with kid gloves until Russia got around to bombing them (
*to engender fundamentalism in the Muslim world (Score:2)
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Sure, you win. You can draw any conclusions you want. You can read into my post anything you want. Who am I? Just some pixels on a screen. I checked your links, that's what makes me think you didn't even read what I wrote. That's okay. I'm pixels on a screen and there's not a damned thing I could say that would make you think anything different or new. Hell, you didn't even notice who I suggested was really to blame. Nah, you even kind of repeated it like it's your own idea. Hell, I'm the guy that says we s
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You blamed the league of nations and the west drawing maps. I pointed out that the causes are much more recent than.that. You can blame people cutting off heads all you like, but then you're pretending that these things come about in a vacuum. You can say we're at war, but then you're presupposing that it's a war we did not choose, and that we do not deliberately propagate..
Finally, you can say i'm right about this, and, well, you'd be correct. Have a good day.
P.S. (Score:2)
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I have no idea what it is you're actually trying to say. I'm not sure that you actually read (and understood) my post. For example, I did not advocate violence. Nowhere in my post did I even remotely indicate that I was suggesting a violent solution? So, I have no idea what you mean when you say, "If it would be like you say..." It is like I said. I'd also prefer that they were tried and sentenced in an impartial court of law in the world courts but that's extremely unlikely as I have no control over such t
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It is absurd to equate Islam with Daesh.
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"ISIS accounts are hunted down and extinguished" Instead of hunting accounts they should be extinguishing the head choppers, suicide vest wearing, and AK-47 carrying psychopaths.
You seem to be confusing Twitter admins with military Special Forces.
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That is countered by those who, right or wrong, will judge and make noise about them, "aiding and abetting." (I might as well continue the alliteration.)
So, for better or worse, they are "doing something." Smart people might go, "WTF? You're just making them harder to find and track." Alas, there do not appear to be too many smart people and the smarter people are generally not the noisy ones. So, you get stuff like this. I mean, you wouldn't want to be accused of aiding and abetting terrorist communication
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>The site has banned more than 125,000 accounts after people hit the "Reported for terrorism" button
FTFY
No need to thank me, long as I get an equal amount of "fought terrorism" credits. Yes, I know they're counterfeit, that's obvious, but like them I don't care.
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I'm still using ICQ. Maybe there isn't actually a shortage of services? What then? What if XMPP services can be installed out of the box on any cheap VPS? What then?
There is no need to create fake freedoms, like the right to speak for twitter because you don't have your own platform to kick people out of.
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Wow, you're good at this. A little TOO good.
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Yeah. "Professional Victims"? Double-plus good!
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Huh? Something changed?
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Technically? Yes. Practically? Well... Most of the mentions of Dice are gone (I just went and looked - Dice is still mentioned on the jobs board, I stopped looking at that point.)
Err... You're here frequently. We had a nearly 2000 comment thread. We had another thread with 1000+ comments. We've had someone mention it in nearly every thread. So, I'm not really sure why you're asking... I'll take it at face value 'cause I've got nothing better to do.
About 10 days ago, DHi sold Slashdot and SourceForge. The ne
twitter free to censor & obey western establis (Score:2)
twitter is private so it is in fact free to do as it wishes. twitter can be the prosecution, judge, and executioner, in a private space owned by it
but all people who love freedom will note well and remember , that by this action it is freely indicating that what it wishes is to do is to obey the western secular 'liberal' establishment and its agenda, same that is invading countries, looting resources, running torture camps, sanctioning coups, drone killing children, spying on everyone, etc etc,. twitter is
We are returning to the dark ages. (Score:1)
I fear that despite all the scientific advancements we have made over the last two or three hundred years, despite the technology we now have at our disposal, we are descending into another dark age.
Basically, I would rather know what these crack pot followers of Mohamed or Jesus or whoever are up to than have it hidden from me. At least with openness there is some slight chance of entering into a debate about what really bothers them.
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We *were* going to invade. Without a doubt. Instead, millions of lives were saved, and Japan saved itself to rebuild for another day.
But let's play alt-history here:
1) Let's say that the coup the day before the surrender had worked. The warrior caste remained in power, therefore no surrender.
2) Soviets were invading. The cold war starts here, only its hot.
3) We use Japan as a hot war proxy.
4) ???
Do we lay slag to Japan because it won't surrender? Do we lay slag to Japan to stop the Soviets? Or do we invade
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They weren't even really trying to surrender. They were given ample opportunity to do so. They were trying to vie for an armistice, cease-fire, or discussions (depending on when). That was not an option per the Potsdam Resolution. The only surrender that was to be accepted was complete and total surrender. We did, wisely, allow them to keep their Emperor (in name only) to ease the transition into a non-warring society with democracy, rights, and a representative government.
Had we not dropped the nukes, they
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While there are plenty of muslim and Christian crackpots,o only the muslims kill, torture, rape, burn, etc. women and children indiscriminately.
Tell that to the victims of abortion clinic bombings.
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Tell that to the victims of abortion clinic bombings.
I can't even remember one of those happening here in Canada, and if I remember right the last one in the US happened almost 30 years ago. They were ostracized and called batshit insane by the Christians even the crack-pot Christians.
Muslims though? You hear a blip here and there, like the organizational leader of a group of mosques here in Canada saying all mosques should be under surveillance and so on. And then you hear the rest of them going nope, we're fine...followed up by chanting god is great and
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Tell that to the victims of abortion clinic bombings.
I can't even remember one of those happening here in Canada, and if I remember right the last one in the US happened almost 30 years ago.
Three people were killed in a shooting at an abortion clinic in Novermber 2015.
And, no, it doesn't make any difference that it's not a bombing, terrorism is terrorism.
The point is not the number of actual murders, it's more about the underlying beliefs of a significant minority of Christians and the lower level day-to-day harrassment associated with the issue.
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Re: We are returning to the dark ages. (Score:2)
We are descending into a dark age. We have a culture of death, where we've replaced reproduction with immigration. This has been true for decades, and is becoming more pronounced with the passage of time. We have too many elderly, and our women are facing ever increasing pressure to choose service over family, creating a spiral effect. We will reach a point where we don't have the numbers to keep the infrastructure going. Our modern technological society relies on myriad resources being available, and
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#RIPTwitter (Score:1)
First they came for... (Score:3, Funny)
Then they came for the terrorists...I didn't care because I wasn't a terrorist.
Then they came for the guys with ironic beards...and I started caring.
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Hah! Good one. I had to look that one up 'cause I'm so unhip it's a wonder that my bum doesn't fall off.
"Ironic Facial Hair is novelty facial hair grown with the intention of being "ironic"... Although the results are usually about as ironic as that song by Alanis Morisette. It is generally considered a hipster term. "
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First they came for the trolls...I didn't care because I wasn't a troll. Then they came for the terrorists...I didn't care because I wasn't a terrorist. Then they came for the guys with ironic beards...and I started caring.
Trolls can be amusing, terrorists can sometimes be genuine freedom fighters. But there is never any excuse for ironic beards.
Just another reason to #RIPTwitter (Score:2, Informative)
This is all part of a larger trend of Twitter becoming increasing irrelevant, but much more interesting to me is the #RIPTwitter hashtag and Twitter's burying of it.
For everyone who hasn't been following Twitter recently, Twitter has announced that they're getting rid of the reverse chronological timeline and will be switching everyone over to an "algorithm-based curated out-of-order timeline" some time next week - essentially that horrible thing Facebook did to force companies to pay money to make their po
Propaganda (Score:5, Insightful)
"The site has closed down more than 125,000 accounts associated with terrorism"
^ This, folks is what's known as propaganda and it's utter BS.
It doesn't take more than a couple of seconds of logical thought to realise that either the 125,000 number is wrong or the accounts are not associated with terrorism, unless you include talking about terrorism to mean 'associated with terrorism'
It's sad that people fall for this kind of crap.
Better headline would be (Score:2)
Twitter Tackles Terrorists Through Targeted Takedown
The original headline could imply that the terrorists were in the middle of a targeted takedown when twitter tackled them.
so if we define terrorism (Score:2)
if terrorism is maiming and killing innocents to incite fear in forwarding a political or religious agenda...
wouldn't that make the United States government the biggest terrorists on the planet? So Twitter will be taking down accounts of them and their supporters?
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EXCEPT:
http://america.aljazeera.com/a... [aljazeera.com]
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No.
"Terrorists" (Score:3)
I wonder what their definition of 'terrorists' is, somehow I bet it isn't quite what people are thinking. When the US was bombing the heck out of Iraq/Afghanistan they simply labeled everyone that they killed as "terrorists". When it started to come to light that women and pre teen children were included in those numbers they did finally limit their tally, to including anyone they killed who was armed, including reporters with large scary cameras.
They missed one (Score:4, Funny)
They should leave the accounts appearing active... (Score:2)