10.03.20
Gemini version available ♊︎Twitter Undoubtedly Works for Fascists; We’re Glad Techrights Never Participated in Twitter
Summary: Social control media has always been rejected by Techrights; there’s growing evidence that it’s all about social control… on behalf of those in positions of power, including Donald Trump
SEVERAL readers, including a certain RMS, have lately suggested various improvements to this site’s style in the structural sense (not presentation). We try to focus on the “content” or substance alone rather than side issues such as fonts (some people would complain about anything just to distract from the real issues). This means accuracy comes first, then clarify, later structure, whereas the way it’s visually presented matters a lot less because our primary target audience is people who follow the site over RSS feed (plain HTML), so it’s an ongoing story to these people. It’s principally about building upon existing knowledge, cumulatively, whilst avoiding unnecessary repetition. We don’t do social control media (arbitrary ‘shelf life’ or pure junk) and we like to assume that people who have an interest in the covered topics subscribe to us over RSS feed (or similar), i.e. directly. Wiki pages tie together themes and topics, so catching up is always possible, e.g. EPO scandals all being indexed in one place and updated regularly. We never ever wish to depend on social control media because it is full of misinformation (like totally crazy conspiracy theories, unverified and not fact-checked, scored based on emotion) and highly censorious, especially when power gets challenged. In our next batch of Daily Links we’ll have about half a dozen reports about the latest Twitter scandal. It’s pretty big! Twitter’s boss seems to be Donald Trump. The real boss. Long story short (links to be included separately in Daily Links, but some are added below [1-4]), Mr. Trump has long used his Twitter account to publicly issue death threats to millions of people (Iran, North Korea), but he was never suspended at all! Never! People who merely wish an already-ill Trump (partly his own fault; also indirectly the cause of 213,000+ other American perished lives) will eventually die are being suspended. So Twitter has taken a side. We know whose, right? People wishing for the death of Julian Assange (for exposing war crimes) are perfectly safe in Twitter, but Donald Trump? Heck no! Imagine the public reaction if Twitter Inc. — existing back in January 1945 — also publicly warned it would suspend accounts wishing for the defeat of Germany in the war, including the death of Nazi leadership. Never wish for the death of an already-ill president who supports literal Nazis? It’s increasingly clear that social control media is (and has always been) more a tool of repression than of democracy and/or free expression. For a site like Techrights it’s very important to maintain full independence because we speak truth to power. There are many instruments — both legal and technical — for censorship of sites. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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Twitter to Suspend Users Wishing for President Trump’s Death
Twitter’s policies allow for users engaging in “abusive behavior” to be suspended, including when posting “content that wishes, hopes or expresses a desire for death, serious bodily harm or fatal disease against an individual.”
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Twitter Says You Cannot Tweet That You Hope Trump Dies From COVID
Twitter told Motherboard that users are not allowed to openly hope for Trump’s death on the platform and that tweets that do so “will have to be removed” and that they may have their accounts put into a “read only” mode. Twitter referred to an “abusive behavior” rule that’s been on the books since April.
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Twitter to remove posts hoping for Trump’s death
After reports initially surfaced that Twitter would suspend accounts that posted such messages, the company said the tweets would not merit immediate suspension, but would be swiftly removed.
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Twitter warns it will suspend users who publicly hope for Trump’s death
Update, 7:21 PM ET: Added additional guidance from Twitter that these tweets will not automatically result in a suspension.
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