[josteink]

So banning right wing users for having right wing opinions are OK…

But banning antifa-accounts, that is accounts held by people taking part in month long riots and looting and political real-world violence… that is bad?

Is this satire? Is this an honestly held opinion? Or am I missing something?

[shakezula]

This is a false premise. Without understanding why each account was banned and what infraction was cited we can't make a clear comparison or judgment about either case. Otherwise it's just more outrage-porn.

[tzs]

Has CameronNemo's post been edited after your comment to add that link to the article at The Intercept?

If so, check out that article. It should clear things up.

If not, and you have read the article, you probably skimmed it and mixed up antifascist and antifa. Generally the later is a subset of the former.

[zaroth]

I read the Intercept article, and clicked through and read some the screen captured tweets from the “antifascist” accounts that were banned that the article did not care to include.

The Intercept article is not journalism. It’s a PR piece for the accounts that were banned and quotes spokespeople for the impacted groups totally uncritically.

Calling them antifascists seems a misnomer too, they seem to me to be actually anti-capitalist rabble-rousers and professional rioters. Educating, equipping, funding and inciting violent riots seems a clear TOS violation to me.

The “no true antifa” arguments sounds like the sort of ploy that was used when these riots kicked off and democrats in Congress and MSM talking heads were trying to laugh off the idea of “antifa” as a violent domestic terrorist organization simply because they don’t have an org chart.

[timeon]

What does it tell about people who wants to paint black mark on antifascist label in thread about unbanning far right?

[zaroth]

Ah, classic. So this is actually all just shitposting and looking for ideological battle then.

The “antifascists” literally wore the mark themselves while committing upwards of a billion dollars of property damage over the course of a year+ of riots.

But seriously, please just take it elsewhere. Your innuendo is borderline if not actual libel.

[_kbh_]

> Calling them antifascists seems a misnomer too, they seem to me to be actually anti-capitalist rabble-rousers and professional rioters. Educating, equipping, funding and inciting violent riots seems a clear TOS violation to me.

So I take it you think everyone involved in the January 6 riot including Donald Trump should be banned from Twitter then?.

[stonogo]

Where are the month-long antifa riots?

[jasonlotito]

> So banning right wing users for having right wing opinions are OK…

What views?

I saw some of the tweets people got banned for. Are you okay with me associating those views with right wing views?

> that is accounts held by people taking part in month long riots and looting and political real-world violence

So, you are saying that your alleged criminal activities off Twitter should feature into whether you are banned? (Note, you never claimed they violated ANY of Twitters rules in your comment)

Is this satire? Is this an honestly held opinion? Or am I missing something?

[threeseed]

You are missing the fact that no-one was getting banned merely for having an option or for their actions outside of the Twitter platform. They were banned for continuously violating the terms of service e.g. inciting violence, racist or xenophobic content, doxxing etc.

And what happened here is that those left-wing accounts were banned without any such violation i.e. it was purely arbitrary and the very thing you claim you don't want.

[lmm]

> You are missing the fact that no-one was getting banned merely for having an option or for their actions outside of the Twitter platform. They were banned for continuously violating the terms of service e.g. inciting violence, racist or xenophobic content, doxxing etc.

Where's the evidence for this claim? Twitter did not publish rationales for bans and there was no clarity or consistent enforcement of what did or didn't constitute a ToS violation.

[willcipriano]

What's odd to me is if this question came up a few months ago we would see lots of "it's a private platform" and "freedom of association" comments that aren't as prevalent all the sudden.

Those left wing people that were banned, very likey supported the system that just got them banned.

[jasonlotito]

No one in this thread is arguing that people who violate the rules shouldn't be banned. We are discussing the hypocrisy of what Elon is saying vs what he is clearly doing.

He is free to do this all he wants. We are free to laugh and mock as he flails around, lying and making stuff up.

You just wanted to quickly jump in and make this comment because you "got 'em" but really you just missed the mark.

[UncleMeat]

People aren't saying that Twitter cannot ban these people. There is no hypocrisy here. People are saying that Twitter is being run badly.

[esotericimpl]

I don't think people care if left wing or right wing people are banned. People want consistency, safety and the rules applied equally.

Right wing people seemed to act like shitheads more often so they are banned more often.

I'd continue arguing however, conservative law, jurisprudence and overall culture seems to always boil down to that there are in groups who the law protects BUT does not bind, and out groups who the law binds but does not protect.

You can pretty much view all of twitter's new moderation capability through that lens and then it starts to make perfect sense.

[rvz]

There you go. Not a problem when right-leaning accounts were banned on the same ToS violations of inciting violence and impersonation, and now somehow it is a problem when it is applied to left-leaning accounts doing the same thing.

> Those left wing people that were banned, very likey supported the system that just got them banned.

Exactly, and the rules must be applied equally, which wasn't the case before.

If both sides are now angry over Twitter's moderation system and are building their own echo-chambers, then Twitter (2.0) will remain as a site for a more balanced discussion without either extreme screaming on the platform.

At the end of the day, I'm still laughing at the entire Twitter chaos and the screeching minority who are pretending to leave Twitter whilst keeping their accounts and screaming about Elon Musk elsewhere rent free unable to ignore him in their own echo chambers.

[kmeisthax]

You're missing a lot of things.

The right-wingers that got banned presumably broke one of Twitter's rules - maybe they said "I wish someone would shoot (insert politician they don't like here)". Even if you take "pre-Musk Twitter had a left wing bias" as granted, that doesn't mean the right-wingers were wrongfully banned.

>But banning antifa-accounts, that is accounts held by people taking part in month long riots and looting and political real-world violence… that is bad?

The only way to boil this down to a politically neutral rule is if we banned every right-winger who was at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 alongside everyone who went to a BLM rally that turned violent in 2020. And as far as I can tell neither behavior alone was a violation of Twitter rules as they stood at the time. The rule was no inciting violence on-platform, not no being involved in violence whatsoever.

As far as I can tell, pre-Musk Twitter had two biases:

- Their moderation team was understaffed and overworked because Twitter was too big of a target to effectively moderate. Twitter moderation would overprosecute easy-to-detect cases (i.e. LMG staff getting banned for months because of them sarcastically saying "I'll kill you") and underprosecute difficult ones (i.e. everyone harassing Twitter's villain-of-the-day).

- As a direct consequence of this, right-wingers were more likely to be banned. This is because their rhetoric is inherently more violent[0] in ways that were easier to detect.

Musk has basically decided to cut the moderation team in half and unban all the right-wingers in the name of "balance". All this does is say "we are now letting right-wingers break all the rules, but left-wingers must be on their best behavior, if we let them stay on the platform at all".

[0] Specifically, left-wingers were saying to smash windows, right-wingers were saying to smash people.

[leephillips]

> their rhetoric is inherently more violent[0] in ways that were easier to detect.

Do you have any evidence for this generalization? The only overt violent threats I’ve seen on Twitter are men encouraging rape and murder of JK Rowling and other supporters of women’s rights. I don’t know if they’re “right wing” or not, but their surrounding rhetoric is what’s usually associated loosely with the “left”.

But surely this depends on what one happens to see. That’s why I’m wondering if you have any kind of random sample from which you can draw your conclusions.

[UncleMeat]

Definitely not doing the "she's not transphobic, really" argument any favors here by calling transwomen "men."

[redcon]

He didn't say they were transwomen - that was your interpretation.

Perhaps this is your inner transphobe trying to come out?

[BillSaysThis]

What you see is anecdotal, not data.

[leephillips]

That’s exactly my point.

[giraffe_lady]

> Sp banning right wing users for having right wing opinions are OK…

Maybe! Being part of a group that also holds certain opinions isn't really relevant to whether expressing those opinions violates a policy. But which opinions did you have in mind?

Here have an extremely relevant tweet.

https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/105039166355267174...

[fundad]

"LOL no...no not those views"

pure gold