It is definitely an immature tweet, however I think 9 years can change a person a lot.

Maybe twitter could have given him a warning about his tweet and ask if he would like to delete it before the instaban algorithm hit

They blocked the account but as you can see from the bottom of the screenshot in the article the account could be reinstated by deleting the tweet in question. If the author is honestly saying they no longer stand by what they posted 9 years ago they could easily just delete it and move on.

That raises a bunch of different questions about what Twitter are doing to change history, and the way they represent their platform, but those are separate to the banning of users based on their history.

Besides, this might be motivated by Twitter acting on a complaint. It could be that Sarah Palin (or someone representing her) complained about the tweet recently, in which case Twitter need to deal with that now.

Exactly. This is all beyond ridiculous. The harm to the author is minimal. Just remove the tweet, tweet out a link to this very blog post, and be done with it. Twitter has no interest in thought control, nor capability to do it. They just don't like hosting garbage like the Palin tweet that will come back to embarrass them.

There is a very reasonable middle ground here. No one is demanding we all submit to corporate thought police. No one is being shunned from social media access without recourse. Just make a minimal effort to conform to routine societal decorum, and you can shit on Sarah Palin all you want.

I'll go one step further: by forcing them to act upon it, instead of deleting/hiding it and notifying the user, Twitter is engaging in behavioral training, like you would train a dog.

Asking someone to do something is not behavioural training. The sort of training you're talking about only works by repetition of the behaviour and reward interaction, and there's no evidence that Twitter will be repeating this over and over again for each user. That's just nonsense.

Twitter could, of course, have just given a warning. But I also don't see any problem treating the tweet as if it were current. The age of the tweet does not change whether it is acceptable or not, does it?

Well, he was banned for violating the Twitter rules, and those rules didn't exist at the time.

Getting a message saying something like "this message violates the rules today, so we're going to delete it" or "delete this message within a week or we'll have to ban your account" would seem more reasonable to me than immediate ex post facto enforcement.

I assumed that the comment had already violated rules at that time and simply was not recognized or discovered as such a violation earlier.

That’s interesting question. Following this principle, should we ban historical books that suggest to e.g. kill self-claimed witches, treat nonbelievers as second-class people and so on?

If someone calls you a racial slur, is it ok to wait nine years and then punch him in the face?

This isn’t really a punch in the face though, is it? If someone discovered you used racial slurs nine years ago, I think they would be justified in choosing to no longer associate with you or ask you to recant what you had said in the past.

>It is definitely an immature tweet, however I think 9 years can change a person a lot.

Absolutely, I have blog posts from 2001 I leave up that are absolutely horrid.

In 2001 I was a 16 year old, who's father had died 12 days before his 13th birthday and was moved to another school a few months later where he had no friends and fell in with the punk/goth crowd. I didn't care about school, all I cared about was music and getting high or running around shows or the mall while tripping. I said stupid shit on livejournal under a username only my friends knew, mostly complaining about my mother and school. I now host those on RyanMercer.com, wholly attributed to me.

That's who I was when I was 16, it's not who I am now.

Now I post about problems we face as a civilization, I post about things that interest me, I post about things that scare me, I post about how we need to come together and put aside foolish things to focus on ensuring a better future for ourselves and our offspring but I'm not going to hide who I was 18 years ago. Now I put thought into my posts, I don't rush to a computer to type "oh my god I hate them all blah blah blah raging against society", I'm not going to try and cover that up as that's part of my experience, who I was is part of who I am, if anything it shows that people can mature.

So, based on the second paragraph of article:

    It’s honestly a very immature tweet. It’s something I wouldn’t say
    today. I have personally grown past the hate of the two party system.
    I feel like I have a clearer and more mature view on American
    elections, as well as seeing past the endless media designed to keep
    most people angry. This tweet was from a different era in my life. I’m
    not proud of it, yet it is a part of my history. Furthermore, it’s
    nearly a decade old.

are you suggesting that this reader is too thoughtful for twitter?

Or that by allowing them to stay on the platform, they provide an example that people can temper their political extremism over time by maturation and introspection, thereby disproving that the flyswatter techniques you seemingly prefer for the moderation of discourse may be ill-suited to actually promoting healthy discourse?

I'm not following the logic.

You know, when I read that paragraph I was actually on board with the author. We’ve probably all said stupid things on the internet at one point.

Then I read the actual tweet and lost all sympathy. It’s just so horrible, and, I think the author actually shows a lack of growth by dismissing it as this 9 year old “immature” mistake.

Man I’m glad Twitter didn’t exist when I was young because this sort of tweet had nothing on how me and my friends talked to each other, and talked when we were just hanging out shooting the shit. Every passion was inflamed, everything seemed like a pressing battle. We tried to be as offensive as possible to get a rise out of one another. I’d be banned from everything forever. I’ve learned to not talk like a moron, but when does a person get the chance to learn that skill if everything you’ve ever said follows you forever?

Is calling some one stupid or telling them to fuck themselves all that horrible to you? There wasn't even a threat of violence or attacking based upon "protected characteristics."

Out of curiosity I looked up the authors CV, and he started attending a university in 2000.

I do find someone old enough to attend a university, calling an elected official stupid cunt and a whore, horrible.

He called someone "stupid", "cunt", "whore" and "fuck yourself".

The tweet is hateful.

Not really a ban, more like a temporary lockout. A ban means no appeal, no hope of ever getting the account restored. Twitter is very strict though

Twitter would not have banned the author for that tweet 9 years ago.

They didn't.