[MichaelGG]

The link above shows him being mean to her. Perhaps he told other people to be mean, too? (Dunno, if he did, I'd think it'd be shown all over.) Or maybe Twitter decided he isn't a good fit for them. He's said that "feminism is cancer", so they might find that offensive. He's popular with the kind of people that might insult her, so perhaps him being rude was enough cause for Twitter?

Maybe Twitter will implement some system to hide new/anonymous/unvouched users from messaging more popular users. Or give them filtering capabilities. As the target in this case says, "Twitter I understand you got free speech I get it. But there has to be some guidelines when you let spread like that."

[danso]

I don't mind that Milo mocked the movie or actress. But he also retweeted (noticeably) faked tweets that purported to show her using extremely anti-gay epithets, the kind of thing that turns a flamewar into a full-blown digital witch burning.

If someone posted to HN a viral news article that used obviously faked tweets to show that Elon Musk is an admirer of Hitler, no one would be surprised if that account (and the article's site domain) ended up permabanned from HN.

[jimbobimbo]

Is it possible to retweet a fake tweet?

[danso]

A common pattern is to screenshot a Tweet, to preserve it before it is deleted, and attach it to your own Tweet as an image.

[cocotino]

>Maybe Twitter will implement some system to hide new/anonymous/unvouched users from messaging more popular users.

That exists already, new accounts don't trigger notifications to anybody.

[viraptor]

> Maybe Twitter will implement some system to hide new/anonymous/unvouched users from messaging more popular users.

So basically do a split between users known enough to not be abused and everyone else? Not a great solution. They've already got policies to deal with abuse (https://support.twitter.com/articles/18311), but they don't act on it very often. They should just decide if they want to go "full free speech" like reddit, or actually have some rules and enforce them. Right now they fail both sides.

[MichaelGG]

Splitting users sucks, but it is what people are asking for. Indeed there are blocklists that are shared to help people ignore groups, so users are already doing it in a hacky way. A kudos/vouch system might work fine. They've got thousands of employees -- certainly they can figure something out better than what they're doing. Right now it's just random-nuke-if-it-gets-attention. And it certainly feels like Twitter has a political bias.

>"full free speech" like reddit

Reddit went sorta censorious didn't they? Decided any sub that made fun of fat people was not allowed and applied that sitewide (killed new subreddits with different people, if they shared the same topic). Created a system that requires signing up and verifying email just to get a read-only view of certain subreddits? (For instance, r/blackfathers, a subreddit which had _no_ content, was quarantined, so you can't even see that it has no content unless you verify and login.) There's no justification for requiring a verified email account to view content, except to serve as a chilling effect.

It's totally their right, just they shouldn't be held up as a bastion of free speech. Even 4chan surpasses them on that account.

[donatj]

The block lists, especially the non-publicly published ones, are awful.

I got in a well mannered Twitter argument - as a pacifist I was arguing that violence is never the answer, against a tweet promoting violence by a fairly popular Twitter user. They thew some foul language my way before blocking me. Fine, they don't want to talk to me. I can live with that.

The kicker though was I subsequently found a number of other completely unrelated things like @PicardTips blocking me as well. It took me a while to understand what had happened. I tried emailing @PicardTips to no avail. Sigh.

A world where expressing an opinion any other person finds offensive leads to blacklisting isn't a world I want to live in.

[selllikesybok]

Had a hunch you weren't blocked for promoting peaceful behavior. Reviewed your tweets. Was not surprised to confirm my hunch. FYI, since it occurs to me you may not understand: they reacted based on what they perceived as lack of compassion, obliviousness, and other cues which indicates you would contribute nothing positive to their experience of the platform.

[donatj]

If they very strictly only wanted compassion, they shouldn't have wrapped their argument in a political subtext. Saying inflammatory things and then expecting people not to disagree but instead to shower you in compassion is ridiculous.

You had to have dug through thousands of tweets to find it. As I said, fine, they can block me, for in your opinion being logical and analytical, which is very strongly connected to nearly all my views.

That causing me to be blocked from other things that don't even have a direct beef me though is plainly unjustified.

[selllikesybok]

You're putting words in my mouth - I don't think I called you logical or analytical. :)

Maybe I'm atypical, but that was like 30 seconds of lookup time. Profile has Twitter link. Twitter search https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Adonatj%20violence&src=ty... turns up, what, seven results? Including https://twitter.com/donatj/status/441687625154691072, the tweet from two years ago you mentioned upthread.

Since you were responding to this tweet, https://twitter.com/christinelove/status/441680446150041600, wherein someone is trying to help their friend beg for money in order to try to avoid dying from cancer, I'm not clear why you felt it was appropriate to shoehorn in your own political commentary?

To put a fine point on it, they very strictly only wanted $$$, or failing that, retweet/like activity which would boost their signal to get the message to someone more likely to give them $$$.

That's as logical and analytical read of the message as I can come up with.

Consider the options - do you really, in your heart of hearts, think this tweet - is a call to reasonable debate on the topic of healthcare reform, taxation, etc? Like, seriously, did you think that? Real question, no sarcasm.

The lady with the friend with cancer, who you engaged in a way that she (and I, for that matter, and I have reason to suspect the two of us are not unique in our reading of your actions) considered inappropriate, seems likely to have a similar enough set of experiences to mine that she formed the same opinion as I did.

Given that, to anyone with this set of experiences and way of reading the situation, you give the impression of being an insensitive blowhard (not namecalling, just trying to explain the reaction), it would make sense for people who have a low threshhold for dealing with people like the type of person you appear to be, to have nothing to do with you. Again, rational actors making rational decisions about how to improve their lives and spend their time.

If sharing blocklists is an effective way for likeminded people to create a shared experience on a platform that they prefer to have, it seems like a course of action with very few downsides.

Compare and contrast that method (quietly ignoring/blocking someone you and/or your peer group and extended networks), with, for example, sending thousands of explicitly and enthusiastically racist, sexist, and frankly tasteless messages at someone to drive them off the platform.

In your logical and analytical read of the situation, doesn't it make sense to do the least harmful, least energy-intensive thing that achieves your desired result? In this case, not dealing with someone on Twitter whom you don't want to deal with?

I mean, it sucks that you can't read your preferred source of Picard memes (or whatever) without opening up your browser / changing your twitter name / or taking some other slightly-greater-than-normal-effort to do so. I totally emphasize with the enormity of that inconvenience, and really, perhaps more importantly, the indignity of suffering semi-public consequences for your previous statements.

But I'm having trouble agreeing that it's worse than, say, having some random dude pop up on the interwebs and try to school you on why crowdfunding is, in fact, exactly how healthcare should be paid for, when your friend is dying of cancer.

----

ETA - Okay, I take some of that back. Friend was not dying. Friend had received successful treatment for cancer, and was being stuck with the full medical bills due to denial of claims for all related treatment by the provider of his medical insurance plan. Friend was attempting to avoid imminent bankruptcy and credit ruination, not death, at the time of your comments.

That's what I get for skimming the Evite!

[gakada]

Twitter, as a platform, is not geared towards discussions. It's impossible to have any sort of debate in 140 characters, it forces all arguments to be reductive.

So I think they did you a favour.

[viraptor]

> Splitting users sucks, but it is what people are asking for.

[citation needed] I see how some users could want some filtering or limited groups. That's fine. But what I responded to is "some system to hide new/anonymous/unvouched users from messaging more popular users". That's literally a "you're not popular enough for us to care about harassment" situation.

[MichaelGG]

I'm not sure it's a popularity thing. Verifying ID with Twitter should be enough to get rid of a lot of trolls. Or having another user vouch - most people know someone.

[MBCook]

He had hundreds of thousands of followers and has been implicated in sending them after people he doesn't like/agree with and encouraging harassment numerous times.

[MichaelGG]

But no smoking gun this time? Any other times? Or just the effect of a popular, charismatic guy doing something and others joining in?

[adekok]

No smoking gun.

But, he holds opinions which are anathema to the people who implement Twitters censorship policy.

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/02/twitters-new-safety-cou...

FTA:

> They think their right never to see something that upsets them outweighs the historic, hard-fought-for freedom of people to say and write what lies in their hearts and minds.

To paraphrase Christopher Hitchens, who do you trust to censor the media you read? My answer is "No one, I'm an adult."

Some people believe that we can only achieve safe political discourse via censorship. They are either unaware that censorship affects political discourse, or they plan on using their control of censorship to control the political discourse.

[jonathankoren]

I know it may come as a surprise, but it's not about you. It's about harassment. You may think think that doxing and constant harassment both online and off is "political discourse," but it's not. It's actions that make all discourse impossible.

You can cry about your freedom all you want, but you're in someone else's sandbox. You play by their rules, unless you're trying to say that society should compel speech on private actors.

[adekok]

> I know it may come as a surprise, but it's not about you. It's about harassment.

Well.. proof would be nice. i.e. proof that Milo instigated and/or coordinated a campaign of harassment against her.

The only evidence being offered is for Milo calling her names. Which is not evidence of harassment.

> You may think think that doxing and constant harassment both online and off is "political discourse," but it's not.

You're projecting. It's a tell.

You'll note that I didn't make any such claim. So why are you attacking me for a claim I didn't make? Could it be that you think anyone who disagrees with you must support doxxing and harassment?

It's easier to label people as "evil", than to think rationally about your own position. Or to treat someone else in a discussion as a human being who deserves respect.

> You can cry about your freedom all you want, but you're in someone else's sandbox.

Yeah, label me a crybaby. It's the 5 year-old attitude towards online discussion. You don't use facts, evidence, logic, or common decency. Just "You're a big poopy head".

Please go look at Twitters code of conduct. And then look at the high profile people they've banned. How many have violated the code of conduct?

As a hint: People that the censors don't like seem to get banned a lot... even when they don't engage in ban-worthy behavior.

The censors absolutely abuse their power to further their own political agenda. They ignore the rules that they created. And you support them.

It's not just that it's Twitters sandbox. It's that they don't follow the rules they created. It's entirely reasonable to point out their hypocrisy, and to call it censoring of political discourse.

Any reasonable person would agree. i.e. A person whose first argument is not to label someone else as a shitlord who supports doxxing and harassment.

[jonathankoren]

> You're projecting. It's a tell.

At least the irony of this statement isn't lost on one of us.

[jonathankoren]

> The censors absolutely abuse their power to further their own political agenda. They ignore the rules that they created. And you support them.

Wha? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12004792

[eli]

Does that "something" rise to the level of harassment as defined by Twitter's ToS?

[jonathankoren]

The guy is a well known troll and ringleader. He revels in it. His followers revel in it. There was plenty of reason to ban him, long before now. Lest we forget the whole gamergate fiasco.

Shit, that's still going on? Fuuuuuuuck....