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Posted in Law at 12:25 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Twitter continues to demonstrate intolerance towards free speech; it’s not possible to point out that a particular person used to publish under a different name
THIS I could not believe! Though I didn’t think it was a joke, either.
The above tweet gave me trouble some minutes ago. The tweet is very, very old. Hundreds of thousands of tweets ago.
My question is this: how are people supposed to know about the prior publications if the name changed? The past publications are very much relevant to this. Because this person used to support Wikileaks and then opportunistically started to attack Wikileaks (to promote MuckRock).
Is pointing out the connection between the two (same person) “hateful”?
What is this, a joke?
“Is pointing out the connection between the two (same person) “hateful”?”I did not even mention gender at all (only names, both factually associated with the same person).
Journalists covering Wikileaks have lately been claiming that Twitter was hiding their tweets from followers, especially those that concern Wikileaks.
The above smacks of some sort of “right to be forgotten” (RtbF) thing, where one can change name and then flag as hateful any mention of past writings. As if it’s not legal to link one’s current actions to past writings.
This, I think, should be scandalous! How is it a policy violation to merely point it out?
“This is a very serious threat to free speech.”I will ask my online friends who are trans if this is considered — in their eyes — sufficient grounds for such an action because, assuming it has something to do with LGBT rights, this paints their cause in a bad light — one detrimental to journalism.
Imagine Wikileaks referring to Chelsea Manning as “formerly Bradley Manning” (as it has sometimes done, e.g. when linking to old articles that say “Bradley”) and then getting banned from Twitter for it.
This is a very serious threat to free speech. This is why I took this screenshot. This is the first time Twitter does this kind of thing to me.
“I don’t even know who reported this to Twitter. A slippery slope for sure.”If someone called George changes his name to John or Jane becomes Shiela, does that too make it “hateful”?
There’s not enough clarity in the Twitter message to say why it was deemed “hateful”. It’s very vague, very opaque.
Anyway, a few clicks later, the tweet was deleted (by them, by Twitter) and they let me back into my account with over 750,000 tweets in it.
What next? Will somebody else try to flag something and reach three strikes? Based on this sort of threshold for “hate”, how many other tweets can be flagged “offensive” or whatnot? I don’t even know who reported this to Twitter. A slippery slope for sure. Online lynch mobs trying to ‘cancel’ people or de-platforming them isn’t a new thing; did I get a target on my behind? Cherry-picking things I typed in a hurry several years ago? █
Update: WOW! They’ve just done that again. Similar thing. Here we go:
Update #2: And now Techrights is under DDOS attack. Curious timing.
Update #3: I have also just discovered, 6 hours late, that at the same time Twitter suspended the Tux Machines account, which is totally unrelated, citing “suspicious activity” (very vague) and requiring a phone number and long recovery process to get the account back. This happened around the very same hour as the above process. It’s not likely that the overlap is a coincidence. In a decade of Twitter this never happened to Tux Machines. Is there a coordinated attempt to suppress speech?
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