Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

Twitter is vigilant about protecting the feelings of people who deny vaccines for children and even let them die in their custody. I’m speaking of CBP/ICE agents and the following notice I received from Twitter:

Isn’t that amazing? No doubt had Twitter been around when the Brown Shirts and SS were popular, it would be protecting their feelings as well.

Apologies for the long silence! I hope to resume at least daily postings starting with this one.

Not satisfied with suppressing the free speech of millions, Twitter is expanding the power of its faceless censors to seek out and silence dehumanizing language.

From their post:

…
For the last three months, we have been developing a new policy to address dehumanizing language on Twitter. Language that makes someone less than human can have repercussions off the service, including normalizing serious violence. Some of this content falls within our hateful conduct policy (which prohibits the promotion of violence against or direct attacks or threats against other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease), but there are still Tweets many people consider to be abusive, even when they do not break our rules. Better addressing this gap is part of our work to serve a healthy public conversation.

With this change, we want to expand our hateful conduct policy to include content that dehumanizes others based on their membership in an identifiable group, even when the material does not include a direct target. Many scholars have examined the relationship between dehumanization and violence. For example, Susan Benesch has described dehumanizing language as a hallmark of dangerous speech, because it can make violence seem acceptable, and Herbert Kelman has posited that dehumanization can reduce the strength of restraining forces against violence.
…

Let’s be clear: I don’t tweet, re-tweet or otherwise amplify any of the conduct that is now or would be in the future, forbidden as “dehumanizing language.”

At the same time, it is every user’s right to determine for themselves what content, harmful and/or dehumanizing, they wish to say or view.

Trivially easy for Twitter to implement filters that users could “follow” in order to avoid either harmful or dehumanizing speech, tuned to their specific choices. The same is true for followable block list of users known to spew such nonsense.

For reasons unknown to me, Twitter and its fellow travelers want to police the “public conversation.” So that its nameless and faceless censors can shape the public conversation.

Twitter censorship favors the same values I do, but even so, I find it objectionable in all respects.

If you know anyone working at Twitter, challenge them to empower users with followable content filters and block lists.

I have and all I get is silence in response.

PS: If you are interested in feminist power analysis, silence is the response of the privileged when challenged. They don’t even have to acknowledge your argument or produce facts. Just silence. Maybe I should write a post: Twitter and Patterns of Privilege. What do you think?

@wikileaks pointed out that Twitter’s censorship policies are taking sides:

Accounts that affiliate with organizations that use or promote violence against civilians to further their causes. Groups included in this policy will be those that identify as such or engage in activity — both on and off the platform — that promotes violence. This policy does not apply to military or government entities and we will consider exceptions for groups that are currently engaging in (or have engaged in) peaceful resolution.
… (emphasis added)

Does Twitter need a new logo? Birds with government insignia dropping bombs on civilians?

Governments, democratic, non-democratic, kingships, etc. that keep secrets from the public, share a common enemy in Wikileaks.

Wikileaks self-describes in part as:

WikiLeaks is a multi-national media organization and associated library. It was founded by its publisher Julian Assange in 2006.

WikiLeaks specializes in the analysis and publication of large datasets of censored or otherwise restricted official materials involving war, spying and corruption. It has so far published more than 10 million documents and associated analyses.

“WikiLeaks is a giant library of the world’s most persecuted documents. We give asylum to these documents, we analyze them, we promote them and we obtain more.” – Julian Assange, Der Spiegel Interview.

WikiLeaks has contractual relationships and secure communications paths to more than 100 major media organizations from around the world. This gives WikiLeaks sources negotiating power, impact and technical protections that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to achieve.

Although no organization can hope to have a perfect record forever, thus far WikiLeaks has a perfect in document authentication and resistance to all censorship attempts.
…

Those same governments, share a common ally in Twitter, which has engaged in systematic actions to diminish the presence/influence of Julian Assange on Twitter.

Caitlin Johnstone documents Twitter’s intentional campaign against Assange in Twitter Is Using Account Verification To Stifle Leaks And Promote War Propaganda.

Catch Johnstone’s post for the details but then:

1. Follow @JulianAssange on Twitter (watch for minor variations that are not this account.
2. Tweet to your followers, at least once a week, urging them to follow @JulianAssange
3. Investigate and support non-censoring alternatives to Twitter.

You can verify Twitter’s dilution of Julian Assange for yourself.

Type “JulianAssange_” in the Twitter search box (my results):

Twitter was a remarkably good idea, but has long since poisoned itself with censorship and pettiness.

Your suggested alternative?

Twitter management continues to fail.

Consider censoring the account of Lauri Love. (a rumored hacker)

Competent management at Twitter would be licensing the rights to create shareable mutes/filters for all posts from Lauri Love.

The FBI, Breitbart, US State Department, and others would vie for users of their filters, which block “dangerous and/or seditious content.”

Filters licensed in increments, depending on how many shares you want to enable.

Twitter with no censorship at all would drive the market for such filters.

Licensing filters by number of shares provides a steady revenue stream and Twitter could its censorship prone barnacles. More profit, reduced costs, what’s not to like?

PS: I ask nothing for this suggestion. Getting Twitter out of the censorship game on behalf of governments is benefit enough for me.

Twitter reduces reach of users it believes are abusive

More opaque censorship from Twitter:

Twitter has begun temporarily decreasing the reach of tweets from users it believes are engaging in abusive behaviour.

The new action prevents tweets from users Twitter has identified as being abusive from being displayed to people who do not follow them for 12 hours, thus reducing the user’s reach.

If the user were to mention someone who does not follow them on the social media site, that person would not see the tweet in their notifications. Again, this would last for 12 hours.

If the user who had posted abusive tweets was retweeted by someone else, this tweet would not be able to be seen by people who do not follow them, again reducing their Twitter reach.
… (emphasis in original)

I’m assuming this is one of the changes Ed Ho alluded to in An Update on Safety (February 7, 2017) when he said:

Collapsing potentially abusive or low-quality Tweets:

Our team has also been working on identifying and collapsing potentially abusive and low-quality replies so the most relevant conversations are brought forward. These Tweet replies will still be accessible to those who seek them out. You can expect to see this change rolling out in the coming weeks.
… (emphasis in original)

No announcements for:

• Grounds for being deemed “abusive.”
• Process for contesting designation as “abusive.”

Twitter is practicing censorship, the basis for which is opaque and the censored have no impartial public forum for contesting that censorship.

In the interest of space, I forego the obvious historical comparisons.

All of which could have been avoided by granting Twitter users:

The ability to create and share filters for tweets.

Even a crude filtering mechanism should enable me to filter tweets that contain my Twitter handle, but that don’t originate from anyone I follow.

So Ed Ho, why aren’t users being empowered to filter their own streams?