Stopping Trolls Is 'Now Life and Death For Twitter', Argues Backchannel (backchannel.com) 637
"This is the year that Twitter's future will be determined," argues Backchannel's editorial director, noting that Twitter's revenue growth is slowing, and "None of the features that cofounder Jack Dorsey has introduced since he returned to the company as CEO last year have succeeded in attracting new users." But Backchannel suggests it's because the trolls "are winning," discouraging new sign-ups and driving existing customers to leave. "We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform, and we've sucked at it for years," Twitter's CEO wrote in an internal memo in 2015. Backchannel argues bluntly that Twitter "has a hate problem." New submitter mirandakatz writes: It's been exactly three years since Twitter first promised to solve its harassment problem. In those three years, the company has made countless such promises, introducing dozens of new "fixes" and even going so far as to ban notorious troll Milo Yiannopoulos last month. But still, abuse on Twitter continues, and stopping it is now critical to the platform's future success...
"Twitter did an excellent job of inventing a digital platform for realtime idea exchange, but it has yet to create the feature that allows the community itself to ferret out the abusers..." writes Backchannel. "And if it cannot figure out how to eradicate the harassers, Twitter's other challenges will remain intractable."
"Twitter did an excellent job of inventing a digital platform for realtime idea exchange, but it has yet to create the feature that allows the community itself to ferret out the abusers..." writes Backchannel. "And if it cannot figure out how to eradicate the harassers, Twitter's other challenges will remain intractable."
Oh no (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet another "SJWs are the good guys, conservatives are the bad guys" story.
trolling for clicks (Score:3)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:trolling for clicks (Score:4, Informative)
No. Let's be absolutely clear since there seems to be a lot of confusion about this. Twitter banned him for harassment. Mere racism is not enough to get someone banned, as countless prior tweets by Milo himself prove.
They banned him when he started faking screenshots of his victim's tweets in order to encourage his mob of followers to harass her. Twitter can obviously see how messages are re-tweeted and then followed up by abuse. It's that coordination that got him banned, not all the many many offensive things he has said over the years. Twitter gives people like him a huge amount of leeway.
Re:trolling for clicks (Score:4, Insightful)
Twitter sign up rates have slowed down for the same reason Facebook has - there's only a limited number of people interested in that shit on a day to day basis
Yep, once you've signed up virtually everyone on the planet who wants to play the Twitter game, that's when the growth suddenly stops (oh noes!), and membership and participation inevitably start to decline. (And Twitter is a game, just not one in the conventional sense.)
Twitter: The Confetti of The Internet
Re:trolling for clicks (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, what the hell is Twitter good for anyway?
I've found that Twitter is good for answering the following sorts of questions:
Did I just feel an earthquake?
Did anyone else hear that explosion?
Is Netflix really down, or is it just me?
Etc.
RSS is even better for that, and on the plus side stupid people don't even realize it exists.
Re:trolling for clicks (Score:5, Funny)
RSS is even better for that, and on the plus side stupid people don't even realize it exists.
RSS? I've never heard of- hey, wait a minute!!
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RSS is even better for that, and on the plus side stupid people don't even realize it exists.
RSS has a content generation problem, more so because people don't realise it exists.
Like it or not currently we get some of the first news from twitter, that is then picked up by news groups who then put it on an RSS feed. But if you're willing to wait then you can always just watch the 6pm news.
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http://earthquake.usgs.gov/ear... [usgs.gov]
Why would i ask other users when i can immediately see what actual geologists and scientific instruments have to say?
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Re:Oh no (Score:4, Interesting)
Thanks for using the "SJW" moniker. People know and understand what SJWs are and they know and understand why they don't want every discussion to devolve into a social justice war around which topics should get censored.
(This message was posted to preempt the latest SJW tactic of "concern trolling" about the use of the term "SJW". They don't want themselves described that way because it highlights their bad behavior. You are supposed to be on the defensive, not them.)
Re:Oh no (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no mechanism in *any* of the social media to link to a person, but filter their content. And that's the problem nobody has solved.
Your right to speak doesn't mean You have the right to force me to listen. Sometimes people want social media to follow the activities of friends and family, and not get bombarded with everything any of them have ever liked. Social media is going to die if nobody can solve the signal to noise problem.
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When someone broadcasts their personal opinions and lives to the world on Twitter, they can expect differing opinions and criticism if done in a self righteous fashion.
Twitter is sort of like the old Usenet for commoners.
That is shat happens when the internet goes mainstream and low tech.
Re:Oh no (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh no (Score:4, Funny)
Re: Oh no (Score:5, Insightful)
That has nothing to do with homophobia, that's the same rubbish as "you must hate Ghostbusters or you're misiogynist". Shit is shit.
Yiannopoulos is mostly someone who has noticed quickly how it works today. Be loud, be obnoxious and most of all be controversial. And what could possibly be more controversial than a flaming homosexual who is also a conservative? All you really have to do today to become famous is to create a shitstorm and get people worked up about yourself. Content or an actual message are so overrated. For reference, see Sarkeesian.
All you have to do is get people worked up about what you say.
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Posting obviously fake screenshots (he forgot to edit out the delete button, FFS) and encouraging others to harass people is not just being controversial, it's organizing a mob. That's why he was finally banned, after years of spouting "controversial" shit.
Re: Oh no (Score:5, Interesting)
And by banning him all they accomplished is giving him a platform. You can't throw a dead cat over your shoulder without hitting a video on how he was treated unfairly by Twitter. I actually remember a video about him declaring that was about the best thing that could happen to him.
Say what you want, he's good at this game. He knows how to play people.
Re: Oh no (Score:5, Insightful)
Say what you want, he's good at this game. He knows how to play people.
He is damn good at it, but I wonder how long he can keep it up before the schtick gets old.
Still, every time he uses the term "professional victim" to refer to someone else, I chuckle to myself. They're all amateurs compared to him.
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I've heard of him, but only a couple of times. I think your comment: " You can't throw a dead cat over your shoulder without hitting a video on how he was treated unfairly by Twitter." was a bit hyperbolic.
I guess it has to do with what one seeks out on the internet. I don't mean that to sound judgmental but if you keep seeing videos of this Milo guy and I've only heard of him a couple of times and that other poster has never heard of him at all then it's clear our internet habits are somewhat different
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Sorry, but the harassment campaign against Leslie Jones was well underway before he said anything to/about her on Twitter.
Re: Oh no (Score:4, Insightful)
Bah, I rather suspect you hate him because he's an outspoken conservative. Everything else is confirmation bias.
The schools have trained a generation now that "conservative == evil", and let confirmation bias do the rest. People are sure that the National Socialist party must have been right-wing, not from any study of history (where it gets into semantics, but there were lots of progressive laws early on), but because "duh, evil == conservative, any moron can therefore see the Nazis were conservative".
People actually believe that "liberals are usually right, conservatives usually wrong", in the face of the otherwise clear notion that almost all new ideas are wrong. You might make faster progress by being more accepting of new ideas, but you're necessarily going to be wrong more. But who cares about that logic stuff (logic is a tool of the patriarchy), obviously conservatives must be wrong about almost everything because "conservative == evil", and, duh, evil is wrong.
It's really remarkable what 16 years of political propaganda targeted at children and young adults can achieve. [As an aside, how many of you believe that teachers are underpaid because you learned that from a teacher growing up, and never really re-examined the idea as an adult? Maybe it's true, maybe not, but did you carry that belief into adulthood without ever realizing the conflict of interest?]
Re: Oh no (Score:5, Interesting)
Bah, I rather suspect you hate him because he's an outspoken conservative.
I am not the person you responded to, but I hate him because he is emblematic of what conservatism has become, to many people. Before you ask: No, it's not just conservatism. Jill Stein has been pissing me off all month in a completely different way.
I remember when every Slashdot commenter knew that "liberal" and "libertarian" were both kinds of "progressive". We were all united in the cause of human progress, and we all agreed on what the underlying problems were, even if we had ideas about how to fix them.
Post-Cold War, post-9/11, the polarised political machine has convinced us all that the enemy is the people living right next to us. Whether it's the new misogynist on the right or the anti-science hippie on the left, an intense hatred of progress has gripped large parts of the English-speaking world, and Milo represents this self-loathing in its most insanely stupid form. He's far from alone in this, but he is the one we're discussing in this thread.
Re: Oh no (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll bite. I believe teachers in the public sector are underpaid. I've never once had a teacher of mine mention anything about pay. I don't think my teacher friends mention it either. The fact that they routinely buy pens, books, supplies out of their own budget indeed suggests they're not underpaid.
But I see how so many people teaching are there because they passionately believe in it, and they'd get higher salaries elsewhere for their skillsets, and the reaching sector doesn't attract regular people who chose jobs that pay competitively. None of it is commensurate with how I think learning and teaching should be valued in our society. I'm glad I'll (just barely) be able to afford to send my three kids to a school that does pay enough salary.
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Bah, I rather suspect you hate him because he's an outspoken conservative.
He's no conservative. He says whatever he thinks will get a rise out of people. He's a colossal narcissist interested in pushing himself and doing whatever it takes to achieve that. He does not appear to have any political philosophy beyond that. So I claim he's no conservative, to he will use conservative angles when he believes it will suit his agenda.
As an aside, how many of you believe that teachers are underpaid because you lear
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Bullshit. If that were the metric, Randi Harper would have been banned ages ago instead of being lauded as their heroine against bullying.
And Brianna Wu, Anita Sarkeesian, Jon McIntosh, and several dozen other people. The big "anti-harassment" voices that the left and twitter like to promote as some of the largest harassers on their platform to this day. If Twitter has done anything, it's shown that if you're of the right political ideology they'll ignore you as long as it doesn't go too far. Much like how Facebook is happy to carry one particular point of view. But if you happen to be an ex-muslim bringing to light extremism/fmg/etc they
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They are essentially doing the same that a school is doing that has a bullying problem. Because the school has no bullying problem as long as the one bullied doesn't fight back. Until then, it's just swell. Bullies bully and are satisfied that they pretend to be the kings of the school yard and the ones bullied just shut up and bear it. For the school, this is not really any kind of problem because everyone is either happy with the situation or shuts up about it.
Same with Twitter. As long as only one side i
Re: Oh no (Score:4, Informative)
Ah yes Anita Sarkeesian. She bullied so many people by daring to talk about her opinions of videogames on youtube. Even worse she harassed the hell out of gamers by viciously having her kickstarter campaign get massively overfunded.
No one said feminists were smart. But considering that she's doxed people, yes indeed she should.
Would you mind waiting until I have a nice bucket of popcorn before starting?
Would [tumblr.com] you [crimeandfederalism.com] like to eat your crow now or later? [escapistmagazine.com]
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So it's no longer needed to stand on the shoulders of giants to be successful, today all you have to do is climb on the trash heap.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
He was removed because Twitter could only choose between pissing off the SJW crowd or the crowd following him. There was no middle ground for them Twitter could not win in this. They choose to side with the SJWs for the sole reason because they already know what kind of batshit insane shitstorm they're able and willing to cause.
It's a bit like how schools side with the schoolyard bully in the hope that whoever he beats up will stay silent and the bully is happy as long as he can continue bullying. Their pro
Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know (Score:5, Insightful)
He was removed because Twitter could only choose between pissing off the SJW crowd or the crowd following him. There was no middle ground for them Twitter could not win in this.
It's simply not true and you are on a site which proves it. The middle ground is to moderate them both down. Basically, any troll posts should be allowed, but should be very hard for people to find. Twitter is failing to do something which Slashdot has succeeded in doing for years. This is a clear sign of failure.
Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know (Score:5, Interesting)
Basically, any troll posts should be allowed, but should be very hard for people to find. Twitter is failing to do something which Slashdot has succeeded in doing for years.
Not really, most of the Slashdot old guard has abandoned moderation and the trolls have taken over duties.
The best way to view Slashdot today would be to make invisible anything which has an equal number of +1 and -1 votes. If one troll faction hates it and the other troll faction loves it, it's probably not worth reading.
Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know (Score:5, Interesting)
The best way to view Slashdot today would be to make invisible anything which has an equal number of +1 and -1 votes. If one troll faction hates it and the other troll faction loves it, it's probably not worth reading.
That touches on the problem of thumb-up/thumb-down moderation often turning into agree/disagree. Slashdot tried to avoid this by naming the different downmods. But this may becoming less effective as newer users moderate as thumbs.
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If I could +1 Insightful, I would. But I can't, so I'll just "Like".
Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod parent up. Regardless if you're an SJW, or a homosexual conservative, twitter has obviously created a double standard, and the problem isn't with what direction they've chosen (mobs from SJWs okay, mobs of conservatives not okay), but the fact that they chose a direction at all. The arbitrary nature of their actions should be a wakeup call to *anyone*, because tomorrow, it could be you.
What they should do is create "twitterleft.com" and "twitterright.com", and capture both audiences in their own spaces. Instead, they've at the very least disenchanted the people they censor plus a fair number of those who they don't censor but still care about censorship.
Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know (Score:4, Interesting)
Twitter doesn't care about hate, they care about their bottom line, and losing users like Jones hurts their bottom line.
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Twitter could not win in this. They were caught in between the battle of two groups hell bent on creating a huge shit storm if they don't get their will. Basically the position Twitter is in here is that of a school teacher caught in the fight between two groups of bullies not wanting to concede that the other one even exists.
On a more global scale you could compare them with the UN, caught between Israeli and Palestinians. You can't win that fight. The only thing you can do is take a side and endure the fa
Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know (Score:4, Informative)
If twitter isn't willing to take assertive action to win these battles, they will lose their current exalted position. If you let haters drive people off, those people have left, and the haters are still there to rinse and repeat.
Same in other forums. You either have a system that can counteract it, or you completely lose majority demographics.
Re:raging asshole, maybe, but he is right you know (Score:5, Interesting)
You forgot about her whole punching down campaign in response, including trying to get her followers to harass some of her harassers (still a violation of Twitter rules, something Milo did not do): http://www.breitbart.com/big-h... [breitbart.com]
There are assholes online, and if you are a celeb you are probably going to get more than your fair share of them. It sucks, and after she stomped off after her own bullying, she returned.
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She was somewhat unprepared and didn't handle the situation perfectly, like people who have been getting harassment from Milo for years do. But Milo can't make the same excuse. He knows what he is doing, he faked screenshots rather blatantly (forgetting to edit out the delete button, I never said he was competent) to encourage his mob. It says a lot that he had to do that, such as the restraint that his victim showed towards him and his followers.
Making one or even a few mistakes don't put anyone on the lev
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Maybe Twitter is doomed, but it's doom will come a lot faster if it does nothing at all. I've seen this repeated many times over the years; a web forum or newsgroup of some kind gets popular, then the trolls invade, the management and moderators either cannot or will not bring it under control, and then all that's left are the Milos of the world. Hell, that even happened to one of my community's local web boards. A few trolls were allowed to run rampant, everyone else left, and by the time the owner finally
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you think people should be free to be bigoted? Should a small council of self-designated "experts" get to censor whatever they want by labeling it "bigotry", or "trolling", or "triggering", or whatever else they've decided to be intolerant of? Please let us know so we can tell whether you're an authoritarian censor or not. Thanks.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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I would say there's a difference between the two comments, directed attack against an individual versus a general attack, and one that is read as a joke these days, against the GOP as a whole.
What would be telling is if you posted something like "DEM party is a communist miser bastard party." and see what that gets you.
Or try "Trump deserves prison for stealing from college students.".
Gotta align the statements to claim the difference in behavior. I suspect the same reactions from the
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Informative, really mods? I can go to ANY right wing site RIGHT now and say "GOP is the rich old white people party" and I will NOT be banned...compare this to how many left wing sites will ban your ass immediately if you talk about how Hillary is a crook that deserves PMITA prison.
These aren't equivalent claims.
Twitter isn't interest in stopping trolls unless (Score:5, Insightful)
those "trolls" disagree with Jack.
If a troll or harasser happens to have the same political views as Jack, he doesn't care.
Re:Twitter isn't interest in stopping trolls unles (Score:4, Insightful)
Haven't you heard? It's impossible for an SJW to be a troll or harasser, since "troll" and "harasser" implies a power relationship, it's impossible for an SJW to be one (since they don't have any power on the social media platforms they now completely control). So the powerless SJW's who now have all the power on all social media CAN'T harass or troll. Only the powerful conservatives and liberal dissenters who have no power on any social media platforms have the power on social media to be trolls/racists/sexists/abusers.
Also, it's very important that we protect LGBT rights and the rights of Muslims who support killing LGBT's.
Look up! (Score:2)
Yeah, you missed it completely.
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Well of course not. Its not trolling if its 'true'.
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It's not ideal, but the most potent response isn't damage control ("only fucking shitlords say SJW") or arm-waving, loudly announced corrections ("ACTUALLY, hacker means...") it is to relabel.
Premature relabeling is futile and will probably make society miscategorize your subgroups further (e
"Re-labelling" (Score:2)
> It's not ideal, but the most potent response isn't damage control ("only fucking shitlords say SJW")
> or arm-waving, loudly announced corrections ("ACTUALLY, hacker means...") it is to relabel.
> Premature relabeling is futile and will probably make society miscategorize your subgroups further
> (eg the tumblrs) but if your entire group is clearly stuck under old stereotypes it's probably best to
> pack up and leave behind an empty shell for continued scapegoating, despite being uninhabited.
Bl
Can't say I agree (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can't say I agree (Score:5, Insightful)
There's never been a good way to deal with actively disruptive individuals (whether you call them trolls, flamebaiters, or whatever). I remember back in the old Usenet days a few of the more "serious" newsgroups either becoming moderated or creating moderated subgroups simply to try to deal with spammers and trolls. Not a job I would have wanted.
The problem is bigger now because the Internet is bigger now, and it's every bit as hard to find a good solution to.
My attitude is that Twitter can do what it likes. It doesn't owe the likes of Milo Yiannopoulos a platform. Of course it risks going the way that so many moderated newsgroup did a quarter century ago, abandoned by users who couldn't stand the restrictive policies and uneven enforcement.
The real answer (Score:4, Insightful)
Give people the ability to filter. One of the main purposes of Free Speech is to promote thought. Listening to other opinions is how we hone and change our own. Forcing everyone to live in a bubble results in what we have now in the College Snowflake (AKA SJW) class of people. Not only does this class of people live in an echo chamber, but they lash out at anyone telling them something not in their chamber. Ben Shapiro being banned from speaking at a campus instead of banning the people who don't want to hear him is insanity, not College.
Any time I hear speech I dislike I can walk away. Don't blame trolls for sites that make you see them, Slashdot for example allows browsing while ignoring them for the most part.
As for Twitter, they should have died long ago. Any company that bans and censors things they dislike while allowing death threats to the same people they claim are bad shows the hypocrisy their leadership. As an easy example, Milo receives death threats from all kinds of people who don't get banned from Twitter, yet he gets banned for mostly being obnoxious while defending his review of a movie. That was the last, not only, time he was punished by Twitter for having an opinion they didn't like. (Don't listen to the fabricated narrative, do the research and read his posts.)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
was under the impression it was something specific to the attacks on Leslie Jones
@Nero didn't attack Leslie Jones. Nobody, including Twitter, can product a single tweet by @Nero that violated their TOS.
specifically @Nero forging tweets from her and posting "screenshots" of them in order to whip up hysteria against her.
Forging them? Did they hack into Leslie Jones' account and put those tweets there and then make nobody delete them for over a year? Because there they are:
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This is the specific fake tweet [wordpress.com], since deleted. Unfortunately I don't have an archive link, but it's been widely verified including by Twitter themselves.
It's pretty amateurish, he even forgot to edit out the delete button.
Re:Can't say I agree (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a reason Milo has so many fans around here. A lot of people want a version of free speech where no one can ever judge them for being fucking assholes, where there are no consequences for any kind of speech. These are the kinds of people who think a CEO of a company, that is its chief manager, can openly say homophobic things, even when many of the people working for him may be LGBTQ, because, "RIGHTS!"
All that freedom of speech guarantees is the State can't come and lock you up for saying unpopular, including bigoted things. It doesn't guarantee that your neighbors won't despise you, that your boss won't sack you, that your kids won't think your awful, and that you'll feel the narrow eyes of your fellow human beings on the back of your neck when you're buying some Corn Flakes at the store. The Founding Fathers knew very well that the best way to control nasty-mouthed people was via society's powerful levers of shame and shunning, and the State itself should never pick the winners.
My attitude is this. If Twitter won't let you say the kinds of things you want, go to a forum that does. But of course that's not what trolls like Milo want. They have no interest in echo chambers, because they fancy themselves provocateurs. They need to attach themselves to a wider audience that they can shock and irritate, and that way when they get called out, they can do their own version of "SJW", which is to whine like babies that they're being oppressed.
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Name a single white slave in America before the civil war.
Name a single SJW who has been banned from Twitter.
Exactly who is being oppressed again?
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Yes. The was proclaimed guilty by association (of violating unwritten, otherwise unenforced rules) and then banned.
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By "guilt by association", you mean encouraging his Brown Shirts to harass Jones. And there's also the matter of the faked Jones tweets. Milo got nailed, and got thrown off. Twitter doesn't owe him a platform.
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You must have missed some context there, because it doesn't make any sense at all. How is that mob baiting?
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What type of trolls? (Score:3, Insightful)
You basically have two types of trolls these days, there is the spammers and people spewing all sorts of predictable BS (like here on Slashdot you have the GNAA and Goatse). They are easy to block with Bayesian filtering or even plain blacklists. Then there are the more modern 3rd wave feminist trolls, they behave like they have a valid point and may even get a following of people agreeing with them, yet they make a community toxic by designating pretty much all dissent as "personal attacks". I've seen it happen recently in an otherwise healthy 20yo community, in less than 3 years it was destroyed by leadership trying to make the organization a "safe place" and more than half the membership left mostly voluntarily after key members were forced out.
I think Twitter has more of the second problem: trying to make a platform available that is "safe" for everyone meaning it will only ever be good for a single person because any dissent will be viewed as unacceptable speech.
Can we choose death then? (Score:2, Interesting)
Twitter sucks anyway. It's a bad service run by haters and censors.
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Twitter should die. It is just a source for rumors and unsubstantiated drivel. It no longer has any redeeming value.
When people played by the rules, it sort of worked. No longer. The dark side of humanity has found an outlet for their hate, and loves it.
Spew hatred and untruth to hundreds of thousand, and millions, of people, with just a #hashtag and a click.
Twitter is responsible for the rise of Donald Trump. He could not have done what he did without Twitter.
Twitter is responsible for the rise of DAESH/IS
Verified Account filtering options (Score:2)
They might want to consider giving the extra filtering functionality given to Verified Account users to everyone else so such chaff can be more widely filtered out.
I've said it before and I'll say it again (Score:2)
What's the point of Twitter? (Score:3)
Can someone explain to this ol' fogey why anyone wants to own Twitter at $18/share?
A cursory look at the company's recent financials shows it's still losing money. The number of shares outstanding is also increasing, so even if the company manages to generate (real) free cash at some point, you're entitled to a smaller share of it. The entire thing is bizarre -- it's not like Twitter's in a capital-intensive business like aluminum or shipbuilding.
I wouldn't be surprised if Twitter is sold in the not-too-distant future. I suspect a grown-up management team could probably make Twitter profitably generate cash.
life and death (Score:2)
Disagree != Troll, unless you're Twitter. (Score:3)
"Twitter did an excellent job of inventing a digital platform for realtime idea exchange, but it has yet to create the feature that allows the community itself to ferret out the abusers..." writes Backchannel. "And if it cannot figure out how to eradicate the harassers, Twitter's other challenges will remain intractable."
In other words, Backchannel wants a SOCJUS-friendly echochamber.
You know what I always say about twitter... (Score:2)
Fuck Twitter!!!!
Ban hammer (Score:2)
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of course they are going to support the 99.99999% of SJW's who don't want to be disagreed with.
FTFY
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She generally doesn't complain that people criticism her though, she does the right thing and responds with a counter argument. I'm talking about the group that only complains, which unfortunately is quite large.
The funny thing is that they complain about "SJWs", while doing all the things that SJWs are known for. Complaining about people disagreeing with them, and demanding that they stop, and trying to alter society to that end.
Re:Milo a Troll ? (Score:5, Informative)
Odd that you never heard about SJWs doxing and harrassing people, and I know of one case where they even tried to get someone fired for making counter arguments to their bullshit.
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As opposed to the GamerGaters who tried to get several web sites shut down or made bankrupt by convincing their advertisers to drop them? There are asshats on both sides, but it tends to be the anti-SJWs that are more organized about it. Fortunately their movement is largely discredited in the mainstream media, so their plans rarely work for longer than it takes the target to google them.
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What's that got to do with ants [wikipedia.org]?
Ok, ok, I bite. The main reason I found this article about the insects there was that there isn't even one about that overhyped bullshit in my main language. So I finally read up on the "bit controversy", which only did reaffirm my hypothesis that any "controversy" that needs to have "-gate" attached to it isn't even worth wasting time to know about. Anyway. The maker of a flash game breaks up with her boyfriend, he's going into a hissy fit and harasses her, and before anyone
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Replace SJW in your post with misogynist (or, hell, pick a label of your choice, it doesn't really matter) and it will be just as valid.
Re:Milo a Troll ? (Score:4, Insightful)
And you just demonstrated that you're no different by stating "that is why many, many people think that those spouting off about SJW are idiots."
Thanks for serving as a self-referential example.
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The whole reason I use the term "SJW" is because of the judgements I've made over years and years of observing many of these people, people who self-identify as "social justice warriors".
Uh huh. Well, I've been called an "SJW" numerous times (as an insult, I presume, though accusing someone of fighting for social justice is about on the same level as cursing someone by wishing them to earn a lot of money).
I judge people not on what they say but on what they do.
Saying is not passive. I'm gonna judge the dai
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You post is currently at +4, Troll.
I've not seen one of those in years, so 10 internet points for you!
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I see your comment is moderated troll.
Would you care to explain how that is applicable here ?
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Oh and this doesn't apply to you.
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My understanding (I didn't even know who Milo was before this) is that he was saying things that some (many?) people found offensive. I read some of his articles after a quite Google search, and I can certainly see why. The man is a conservative attack dog, but is also an unabashed gay man - that's got to be frustrating to the political left, because he's both an 'enemy' as well as one of the 'protected' classes. But who was he harassing on Twitter? His followers?
I'm all for banning users who actively h
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He isn't just controversial, he does things like post fake tweets purporting to be from his victims [wordpress.com] and uses them to encourage others to harass them. You can tell it's fake, by the way, because he forgot to edit out the delete button.
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Milo isn't a troll in the true sense, he's just a fuckwit who is determined to make a fool of himself in public.
But the only way that's relevant here is that he carries on that way in the service of an ideological leaning of which the Twitter CEO disapproves. He's welcome to ban anybody he wants from his private service. But the phony outrage that only applies to jerks on the other team, while jerks who support his preferred politicians are allowed to thrive in the twitterverse - that's the issue. He can do as he likes, but lying about the standards involved is just another Silicon Valley liberal showing his variabl
Re:Wake me up when they ban RealDonaldTrump (Score:5, Insightful)
The real reason for the flack twitter gets is lack of honesty. If they only want progressive views expressed, they need to make it a policy/part of the TOS. Then everyone will know where they stand. No more passive-aggressive moderation of users who express contrarian political views. They'll be banned outright for TOS violation.
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Do you have an evidence of this bias towards certain political views? I keep asking and never get any. Every instance I've ever seen has been harassment of some kind. Simple outright racism or other bigotry never gets a ban. Look at how many people tweeted that Ghostbusters photo with the ape, or the one of Michelle Obama made to look like an ape, without being banned.
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Every instance I've ever seen has been harassment of some kind.
Yeah because you conveniently choose to interpret it as such.
Simple outright racism or other bigotry never gets a ban.
Sure it does... whether it is or not, as long as the user is a white/male criticizing someone who's not.
https://i.sli.mg/fNAcRy.jpg [i.sli.mg]
Of course when someone like Jones makes racist statements about whites, it's ignored. She was part of a movie that was deliberately designed to be sexist towards men as part of its comedic artistry (sexism is apparently ok as long as the targets are men). The movie turned out to be shit on multiple fronts, and when sh
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https://twitter.com/Lesdoggg/s... [twitter.com]
Why hasn't this user been banned for inciting harassment?
Re:trolls are good (Score:4, Insightful)
There are two problems with your idea. First, trolling and disagreement aren't the same thing. The only reality trolls reveal is that there are a lot of horrible people online who don't care about any standards of civilized behavior.
Also, the trolled can just leave twitter. Eventually it will just be trolls trolling trolls.
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No, trolls don't fucking do that. They're just mean-spirited sociopaths bent on making people feel bad. And quit the "snowflake" shit, your type have just as thin a skins.
Re:They don't have a product (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think my case is pretty strong actually.
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A form asking for a phone number in 2016 is as foolish as asking how many horses you use to pull your carriage.