Has Twitter made a statement on this or are they merely banning posts and suspending accounts and citing "abusive behavior" as the reason? Whatever the case I'm all for Twitter doing idiotic things like this because more people will wake up and leave their platform for decentralized, federated alternatives.
The article says the ban was instant, so it's probably their automated detection models. I can see them having some AI that auto-bans all posts with a photo with that symbol. And I can also see them having an exclusion list for some accounts that they think would be bad PR if they accidentally banned which I'd guess right now would include the official Ukrainian accounts and the NATO accounts.
Seems sometimes these models backfire, it can't distinguish between an account promoting the symbol versus an account denouncing the symbol. My guess is the models were meant to ban accounts promoting the symbol.
But also, it's possible Twitter just wants to ban all conversations related to it, since no matter where the account stands, it's probably going to put them in a bad spot.
If I were in a deciding position at Twitter I would find it extremely challenging to handle war propaganda, to be honest. I’m quite torn here.
Using the Nazi trope is clearly playing the west, where it has been effectively tried, tested and abused in past and present. As one example of many, during the peaceful revolution the same accusation has been used by the GDR to discredit the Monday demonstrations. While it’s true that there were some neonazis walking, it was a tiny percentage.
A war comes with propaganda and is probably the most difficult moment for social media tech. I will be curious whether someone can come up with an intelligent, rational solution that learns from the mistakes made in history - and values and represents the principles of human rights the west defines itself by.
A tech solution could be detecting polarized, one-sided speech and automatically presenting information orthogonal to it. Could also help against other kinds of rabbit holes and increase frontal lobe usage in people.
Preface: I value freedom, liberty, democracy, equality and individual rights (for all) above all else.
I'm sure there are extremist groups in Ukraine, as there are most everywhere. But what do we mean by Nazi here?
I associate Nazism with a disdain for liberal democracy and the parliamentary system, and also an intense emotion of antisemitism, scientific racism, and interests in eugenics.
As an outsider, I see Russia as partially fitting that definition, in that they are against liberal democracies, but they don't overwhelmingly show emotions for the latter. So I wouldn't say Russia is Nazi, but it is somewhat Fascist, at least its leaders are, in that they are a kind of anti liberal, anti freedom, anti democracy, but with strong capitalist ties.
The war conflict between Ukraine and Russia, again, as a Western outsider, appears to be a war between a Ukraine who was trying to make itself more and more into a free liberal democracy, and a Russia which didn't want them too, as they are against free liberal democracies.
So from an outsider perspective, as someone who values free liberal democracies above all else like I said, it seems we have to support Ukraine, not doing so would geopardize our own freedom, liberties and democracy which was so hard to obtain in the first place.
Now the extremists groups in Ukraine I know very little about. The blog linked appears to imply they are mostly against Muslims, I'm assuming it's part of a long history of conflict as well. But some Muslims are also against freedom, liberty and democracy. And like I said, I value individual rights and thus everyone's right to religion is very important to me. But some religious groups are against freedom, liberty and individual rights themselves, and therefore also require fighting against if you want to keep your own freedoms from them.
This is unfortunate for good people of faith, because you quickly get clubbed up, people think if push comes to shove you'd side with your religion and not with freedom, liberty, democracy and individual rights.
Now, anti-islamist wasn't a big part of Nazism as I know, but I can understand using the same name for them. What isn't clear to me here is if they're truly Nazis, which requires the former to be true, they need to have a disdain for liberal democracies as well. Because if they don't, it would mean they are simply against groups and organizations that are against freedom, liberty, democracy, equality and individual rights. As part of fighting for those, you might end up fighting Muslims, you might end up fighting Jews, you might end up fighting Christians, etc.
Simply put, as an outsider, it is really hard to tell who values what, and who is fighting for what. And this all seems like propaganda either way. Calling them Nazi without context or clarification, what do they believe in, what do they want? That feels like propaganda against them. Similarly, Russia's messaging feels like propaganda, and I'm not able to make out what is the true stance of Russians in Ukraine, what are they fighting for, what do they want, what would they want if Russia wasn't involved at all? Maybe their freedoms and liberties are actually under siege, and their effort for equal democratic representation and their individual rights are being squashed, but I have no way to know that, because the propaganda machines are creating too much noise.