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Twitter Had Been Drawing a Line for Months When Trump Crossed It


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2020 May 31, 12:22pm   1,374 views  13 comments

by marcus   ➕follow (6)   💰tip   ignore  

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/30/technology/twitter-trump-dorsey.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage


In 2018, two of the president’s tweets stood out to Twitter officials. In one, Mr. Trump discussed launching nuclear weapons at North Korea, which some employees believed violated company policy against violent threats. In the other, he called a former aide, Omarosa Manigault Newman, “a crazed, crying lowlife” and “that dog.”

At the time, Twitter had rules against harassing messages like the tweet about Ms. Manigault Newman, but left the tweet up.

The company began working on a specific solution to allow it to respond to violent and inaccurate posts from Mr. Trump and other world leaders without removing the messages. Mr. Dorsey had expressed interest in finding a middle ground, executives said. It also rolled out labels to denote that a tweet needed fact-checking or had videos and photos that had been altered to be misleading.

The effort was overseen by Vijaya Gadde, who leads Twitter’s legal, policy, trust and safety teams. The labels for world leaders, unveiled last June, explained how a politician’s message had broken a Twitter policy and took away tools that could amplify it, like retweets and likes.

“We want to elevate healthy conversations on Twitter and that may sometimes mean offering context,” Del Harvey, Twitter’s vice president of trust and safety, said in an interview this year.

By the time the labels were introduced, Mr. Trump was not the only head of state testing Twitter’s boundaries. Shortly before Twitter released them, the president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, tweeted a sexually explicit video and the Iranian leader Ali Khamenei posted threatening remarks about Israel.

Last month, Twitter used the labels on a tweet from the Brazilian politician Osmar Terra in which he falsely claimed that quarantine increased cases of the coronavirus.

“This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules,” the label read. “However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.”

On Tuesday, Twitter officials began discussing labeling Mr. Trump’s messages after he falsely asserted that mail-in ballots were illegally printed and implied they would lead to fraud in the November election. His tweets were flagged to Twitter through a portal it had opened specifically for nonprofit groups and local officials involved in election integrity to report content that could discourage or interfere with voting.

Twitter quickly concluded that Mr. Trump had posted false information about mail-in ballots. The company then labeled two of his tweets, urging people to “get the facts” about voting by mail. An in-house team of fact checkers also assembled a list of what people should know about mail-in ballots.

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1   marcus   2020 May 31, 12:25pm  

Save me the "NYT is commie propaganda," or the more reasonable, "yeah, that's Twitters side of the story." (good job sherlock)

I know that's not interesting to most cult members. But hey, there are some literate and curious centrists or even reality based republicans around.
2   MisdemeanorRebel   2020 May 31, 12:26pm  

Bullshit. Khameni has said all kinds of Bullshit much worse than Trump, never got a Twitter flag. So has Farrakhan.

Free Speech or lose special lawsuit immunity. Take your pick, twitter. Not Both!
3   marcus   2020 May 31, 12:30pm  

I would comment on your reading comprehension, but I know you didn't read it. Apparently even the headline is lost on you.

Hint: "Months."

The first part of the quoted passge refers to 2 Trump tweets in 2018, that they did nothing on.
4   marcus   2020 May 31, 12:30pm  

Have you ever considered quitting this emotional political commentary and perhaps finding a good way to exercise your critical thinking skills for a while ?
5   Tenpoundbass   2020 May 31, 12:35pm  

Well Twitter has opened themselves up for a massive Class Action law suit that is going to Gawker them.

Just wait and see.
6   MisdemeanorRebel   2020 May 31, 12:45pm  

BobbyD says
So? last I checked it was a private company. Who is stopping a competitor?
7   MisdemeanorRebel   2020 May 31, 12:46pm  

marcus says
Have you ever considered quitting this emotional political commentary and perhaps finding a good way to exercise your critical thinking skills for a while ?


Okay. Like this?

8   Tenpoundbass   2020 May 31, 12:50pm  

BobbyD says
Well maybe if action is taken on section 230 but then again so will all interactive computer services including patrick.net


No I think if you remain an open platform not censored them you are a platform. If you are curating content based on political or religion beliefs conflicting with content you do allow, then you are a publisher.

Platforms have the right to moderate their forums. And historically they have all done a fantastic job. I used to Frequent a Fender Guitar forum back in the early 2000's.
The owner of the site got tired of hearing the Move On butt hurters, so he made a rule no political discussions. The owner stuck with that edict and never once wavered from it.
Even if there was major Conservative victory and someone posted a thread on it, it was promptly deleted. And if you did it more than a couple times he would put you on timeout. It didn't matter if you were Democrat or Republican no political discourse.

Patrick allows all political discussion but does not allow personal attacks.

In short if you run your platform with bias and you allow one side but not the other, then you are a publisher. It doesn't matter if that bias comes from your deep seating roots in your philosophies or if is revenue driven by advertisers telling you to delete content they don't agree with. There's a difference than a platform that allows all sides to be represented.
9   marcus   2020 May 31, 12:55pm  

True. But it is a real issue, and a good question, as the populous drifts towards idiocracy and there will even be ever more sophisticated bots throwing wrenches into anything even remotely resembling productive dialogue (I know, twitter?), how do you prevent it from just becoming a bunch of stupid noise ?

I'm undecided on what the answer is, or for that matter even what the question is. Perhaps that question will lead to the "next big thing" on the internet. Over the years, Patrick has toyed with a few ideas on this
10   Tenpoundbass   2020 May 31, 1:09pm  

BobbyD says
But he does't moderate all himself and that could cause problems in the future.


Moderating is not the same as biased curating.

The difference here is Patrick doesn't ban Marcus and hide his posts because other users or advertisers requested it.
11   marcus   2020 May 31, 1:11pm  

Is it possible that Trump actually in bed with Twitter and this is all designed to make future competition impossible ? While also increasing the attention Trump get on twitter from his base ?

Somehow feels like part of Trumps con game.
12   Hircus   2020 May 31, 1:11pm  

BobbyD says
So? last I checked it was a private company. Who is stopping a competitor?


Customers only vote with their dollars when realistic alternatives actually exist.

Building a twitter alternative isn't too challenging from the technical perspective, but its worthless without a user base. These social network companies that currently reign have an incredibly durable moat around their business - the user base. The larger your user base grows, the more enticing your product becomes. This gives a huge advantage to the first company able to establish a user base, and makes it very, very difficult for a competitor to challenge the current champion. See the failure of Google+ for an example.
13   Tenpoundbass   2020 May 31, 1:12pm  

BobbyD says
But he does't moderate all himself and that could cause problems in the future.


Oh I just caught what you meant by that. Yes that could be a problem is he allows pious moderators to dictate decency of the fly.
That happens way to often in forums where some are made Moderators while others aren't.
Sometimes people get censored because they aren't part of the clique.

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