<story><title>Twitter locked my account for a nine year old tweet</title><url>https://fightthefuture.org/article/twitter-is-trying-to-erase-the-past/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hacknat</author><text>I’m confused. What technology did twitter replace? Oh it didn’t? This is completely new, the ability to communicate to this many people at once? Okay so what ancient rights are being trampled exactly? If anything we probably need to be censoring people on Twitter right now as it doesn’t seem to convince anyone of anything other than that the people on the other-side of their argument are sub-human.&lt;p&gt;Edit:&lt;p&gt;Also, it always riles me up when someone refers to social media as a “main communication” provider. What fraction of the population gets its political discourse off of Twitter?</text></item><item><author>romaaeterna</author><text>Unaccountable censorship of expression by our main communication providers is incompatible with Democracy. Communication is often a natural monopoly, and you can&amp;#x27;t just &amp;quot;start a competitor&amp;quot; to Twitter and have the market fix the problem (see gab.ai).&lt;p&gt;If we&amp;#x27;re going to have censorship on the big platforms (Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc.) and backbone providers (ISPs, Cloudfront), us normal human beings need the right to appeal, public auditing, bright line rules, and due process rights.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not wrong for Twitter to have rules to protect the weak from the strong, and individuals from the mob, but it needs to be accountable and above board about all of it or it will make the problem far worse.&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;p&gt;Just to provide an example, here are a few ways this notification could have been so much better.&lt;p&gt;1) List the specific rules violated. Link to the public process for rule review and adoption.&lt;p&gt;2) Link to ids and contact information for any human beings who made the decision.&lt;p&gt;3) Link to code and data sets for any algorithm behind the decision.&lt;p&gt;4) Provide and link to an appeal procedure instead of just a compliance procedure.&lt;p&gt;Imagine how much better that openness would be for Twitter&amp;#x27;s users. (While somewhat onerous for Twitter the company.)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>prepend</author><text>In Q1 of this year, twitter had 68 million monthly active users in the US [0]. Hard to tell how many of them follow political discourse. But that’s 20% of the population (give or take) and it’s a substantial fraction.&lt;p&gt;I’m not sure how but I want that fraction to get before appropriate rights are defined and adopted.&lt;p&gt;The US common carrier rules were only enacted in 1934 [1] so it took a while before phone companies were forced to respect some US rights. Twitter is only 15 years old so it’s likely that this private company (and others) will be regulated just like the private telephone companies were regulated.&lt;p&gt;I had hoped that technology had advanced enough so respecting human rights would be embedded into the design. But now I think it will take laws and regulations which will inevitably, and sadly I think, also squelch innovation.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.statista.com&amp;#x2F;statistics&amp;#x2F;274564&amp;#x2F;monthly-active-twitter-users-in-the-united-states&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.statista.com&amp;#x2F;statistics&amp;#x2F;274564&amp;#x2F;monthly-active-tw...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.law.cornell.edu&amp;#x2F;uscode&amp;#x2F;text&amp;#x2F;47&amp;#x2F;201&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.law.cornell.edu&amp;#x2F;uscode&amp;#x2F;text&amp;#x2F;47&amp;#x2F;201&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Twitter locked my account for a nine year old tweet</title><url>https://fightthefuture.org/article/twitter-is-trying-to-erase-the-past/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hacknat</author><text>I’m confused. What technology did twitter replace? Oh it didn’t? This is completely new, the ability to communicate to this many people at once? Okay so what ancient rights are being trampled exactly? If anything we probably need to be censoring people on Twitter right now as it doesn’t seem to convince anyone of anything other than that the people on the other-side of their argument are sub-human.&lt;p&gt;Edit:&lt;p&gt;Also, it always riles me up when someone refers to social media as a “main communication” provider. What fraction of the population gets its political discourse off of Twitter?</text></item><item><author>romaaeterna</author><text>Unaccountable censorship of expression by our main communication providers is incompatible with Democracy. Communication is often a natural monopoly, and you can&amp;#x27;t just &amp;quot;start a competitor&amp;quot; to Twitter and have the market fix the problem (see gab.ai).&lt;p&gt;If we&amp;#x27;re going to have censorship on the big platforms (Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc.) and backbone providers (ISPs, Cloudfront), us normal human beings need the right to appeal, public auditing, bright line rules, and due process rights.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not wrong for Twitter to have rules to protect the weak from the strong, and individuals from the mob, but it needs to be accountable and above board about all of it or it will make the problem far worse.&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;p&gt;Just to provide an example, here are a few ways this notification could have been so much better.&lt;p&gt;1) List the specific rules violated. Link to the public process for rule review and adoption.&lt;p&gt;2) Link to ids and contact information for any human beings who made the decision.&lt;p&gt;3) Link to code and data sets for any algorithm behind the decision.&lt;p&gt;4) Provide and link to an appeal procedure instead of just a compliance procedure.&lt;p&gt;Imagine how much better that openness would be for Twitter&amp;#x27;s users. (While somewhat onerous for Twitter the company.)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Mirioron</author><text>Even though Twitter and the like might be new technology, they are still replacing the old. People only have so much time in the day and all the other ways that people engage in politics compete with Twitter and the like. And it seems that Twitter and the like have won that competition. This means that a large chunk of political discourse now happens on services like Twitter.</text></comment>