You mean “certain ideologies” like targeted harassment on the basis of race gender or religion, threats/incitement to violence, support of terrorism or genocide, child sexual exploitation, etc.?

I guess that’s true... but such ideologies have no place in a modern society.

If your ideology can only be expressed using hate, get your own platform. Nobody has a responsibility to amplify such messages.

That's very simplistic thinking. The rules could say absolutely no racism which sounds reasonable but then the definition might get blown wide open when a liberal Gov say they need to restrict immigration, if you don't agree with that person that said it you could easily spin that they broke the TOS.

Why do I even have to try and explain this?

“We should restrict immigration to limit labor supply so that the native born can earn better wages” is not the same type of message as “immigrants are cockroaches and we should shoot refugees as they cross the border.”

“We should reject colonial oppression of our country” is not the same type of message as “we must wage religious war against our oppressors, and it is righteous to for young men to be suicide bombers”.

“We should end affirmative action on the basis of race because it isn’t fair to individual members of the majority group” is not the same type of message as “all members of X minority are inherently worthless, and we should purge them”.

“Rape accusations should be handled by law enforcement professionals rather than by school administrators, and the evidence should need to meet a high legal standard to be actionable” is not the same type of message as “X person claims they were raped but everyone knows they are a lying slut and were asking for it.”

Etc.

Why do I even have to try and explain this?

> The rules could say absolutely no racism

This is not what the rules do say. What they “could say” is not relevant here. The rules say: “Hateful conduct: You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.”

This is elaborated here if you want to read about it https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hateful-condu...

Specifically disallowed are (1) violent threats, (2) wishing, hoping or calling for serious harm on a person or group of people, (3) references to mass murder, violent events, or specific means of violence where protected groups have been the primary targets or victims, (4) inciting fear about a protected category, (5) repeated and/or non-consensual slurs, epithets, racist and sexist tropes, or other content that degrades someone, (6) hateful imagery

It’s very hard to see it, but these rules facilitate bias.

When I listened to the interview on Joe Rogan with the Trust and Safety officer, one of the examples she gave was the Milo Youannopolis quote “the world would have been better off if your mother banged you on the rock as a baby” or something to that effect.

This is gross, and offensive, but not a threat. It’s not a threat to talk hyperbolically about a hypothetical and ridiculous past event.

Unless you already find a person scary.

In which case it very very much sounds like a threat, or an incitement to violence.

Language needs context and if you believe that people with certain characteristics (including political orientation) are more likely to be violently dangerous, it is absolutely natural to view things they say as more threatening than you might otherwise.

It’s still bias.

It’s bias if a policeman finds “I have a gun in the glove compartment, and a license for it” more threatening based on someone’s race.

If it were based on some real or perceived fact about the world, still bias.

Actually definitionally bias.

Humans use bias (context) to make sense of the world. And that context (bias) is necessary for communication to makes any sense.

Which means those rules can only be implemented in a way that reflects the bias of whomever is implementing them.

> Milo Youannopolis quote “the world would have been better off if your mother banged you on the rock as a baby” or something to that effect. This is gross, and offensive, but not a threat. It’s not a threat to talk hyperbolically about a hypothetical and ridiculous past event.

As false positives go, if this is the one you're worried about, you can tell that your case isn't strong by asking exactly what a platform that accidentally threw out that sort of content-baby with the actual-threat bathwater would be losing. Even if "it's not a threat" were inarguably true, it doesn't make much sense as a response, because there's no discourse in there, it's simply abuse, and likely runs afoul of other rules, certainly of other sensible rules that could be established.

But to say it's not a threat really stops short of thinking about what was said. “the world would have been better off if your mother banged you on the rock as a baby” is a statement that bypasses any particular criticism -- the kind of thing that might be a valuable feature in speech and discourse -- and instead simply asserts a total lack of value in someone's life. If you think that discourse is valuable, part of the reason for that has to be that you think ideas matter. What are the consequences if people believe in that idea -- the idea that some specific person's life has a total lack of value because they said something Milo doesn't like?

"Not a threat" is a technical judgment, perhaps even a distinction that matters. But there's absolutely the implication of violence, and hyperbole is not an adequate defense, nor would any sensible person find it so if they were told that someone should have done the world a favor and set them on fire as a child.

> rules can only be implemented in a way that reflects the bias

Which is another way of saying that rules will always be about values, both of those who wrote them and those who carry them out. Whether that's a bug or a feature depends on how fit the values in play are.

>If you think that discourse is valuable

Who exactly is going to decide? Rules and values committee?

> What are the consequences if people believe in that idea

So people are stupid, and the all ideas should be first vetted by non-stupid people. Nice.

So what's the alternative? "The rules aren't perfect, so let's get rid of all of them" is not improving things over "the rules intent is good, but humans implementing them will be biased". The solution would be a way to reduce bias.

Ironically, one true solution to the problem of bias is diversity. The thing the groups who most rail against banning of misgendering or racist language despise. Get a a "good conservative" into the group which enforces the rules, as an ombudsman or a watchdog whatever, the same way we'd do for polticically other, and then it can play out.

Disclosure: I am an european left of center, so from american perspective I'm basically communist. I use conservatives as an example because the seem to be the largest group complaining about things like enforcing harassment policies. To communicate my view on this debate with an example, insisting on misgendering people when that causes them pain is worse than a mere insult, it's equivalent to walking up to veteran with PTSD, pulling out a toy gun to their face and going "BANG". That shit would not offline, and it should not fly as a performative act online to normalize it either.

The alternative is to follow the law.

Clearly isn't the same

I'm not sure “the world would have been better off if your mother banged you on the rock as a baby” isn't a threat.

For example if you remove the colourful language from it "the world would have been better off if you were dead" sounds rather threatening.

Context is important "Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?"

“The world would be better off if you were dead” is an opinion, not s threat: it states no intent of future action.

> Context is important "Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?"

That's not a threat, it's a solicitation; it requests other to engage in rather states an intent to carry out future action. But “the world would be better off...” is neither, on its face.

Just because something is an option doesn’t stop it from being threatening. A reasonable person could become afraid that they would be harmed by a person that expressed a preference for their death.

Have you heard of the StackOverflow CoC controversy where a larger part of the community, possible the majority, disagree on the exact definition of harassment of other people on the basis of gender identity?

Did you also hear about the Wikipedia Fram controversy where a large party of the community, including the highest democratically appointed authority (arbcom) disagree with the wikipedia foundation on what harassment is?

To take a random sample further from the past, a guild wars 2 developer accused a fan of harassment after criticism of the game story line got posted. The controversy lead to two developers being fired and the company posting a huge apology which said that criticism of the game story line is not harassment and any fan should be free to express constructive views about the art.

A rule that forbids harassment only has meaning based on how harassment get defined, and with current cultural environment that definition is all over the place.

An even more political loaded area, hateful rhetoric is quite common. Here in Sweden there were a brief suggestion to forbid it on the national broadcast channels, but then the idea had to be basically scrapped as the definition could never really be agreed on. If you have one political party using immigrants as the target demographic for all problems, and an other political party using males as the target demographic for all problems, should we ban both? That is not going to happen.

Protected category is interesting but a extremely US centric concept where the federal government specify a list of protected groups and anyone not on it is a free target. It is a list not even all the states agree on, as political views is sometimes added by specific states and others don't. The concept of an "official religion" is also one which is constantly debated, with groups like copyme trying to get included in the protected category. EU has a bit better and broader definition in Article 10, but the enforcement is mostly up to individual nation states.

You still don't get it. People will claim what you're saying violates some rule if they don't you or your position. Doesn't matter if YOU consider it to be reasonable or not. I don't disagree with your distinctions at all but people are shitty and will not be as benevolent as you.

Regarding your examples. If you say "We should restrict immigration to limit labor supply so that the native born can earn better wages", you will be read by many people as if you were saying "immigrants are cockroaches". These people will group you with people who say the latter thing, and with people who imply the shooting part.

I know that for a fact. I live in Europe. We had a migration crisis recently, and no matter what you believed, how nuanced your position was, you always ended up being called either "a compassionless monster who doesn't care about other people dying", or "a traitor supporting parasites in taking our jobs and destroying our economy".

“We should reject colonial oppression of our country” very much implies “we should wage a war against our oppressors” (not sure why you bring religion into this). Suicide bombing didn't enter the western Overton window just yet, but it surely will if things ever get bad enough. For evidence, just skim [0].

> “We should end affirmative action on the basis of race because it isn’t fair to individual members of the majority group” is not the same type of message as “all members of X minority are inherently worthless, and we should purge them”.

That tells me you haven't been on the Internet recently. It absolutely means the same thing in the eyes of a certain vocal minority that currently dominates all social media, and has an uncanny ability to summon Internet mobs in order to ruin people's lives.

> “Rape accusations should be handled by law enforcement professionals rather than by school administrators, and the evidence should need to meet a high legal standard to be actionable” is not the same type of message as “X person claims they were raped but everyone knows they are a lying slut and were asking for it.”

Except in practice the former is understood by many as the latter, and can end up with you in the news headlines and having your life's work taken away from you.

--

Point being, rules like Terms of Service or Codes of Conduct are easily weaponized and used as tools of oppression if they're not backed by impartiality, rationality, a firm commitment to uphold the spirit of those rules and to nip all attempts at rule lawyering in the bud. Otherwise, either the service itself will abuse the rules, or the users that are best at escalating minor disagreements will. I have zero trust in Twitter on this matter.

--

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_attack#History,_pre-19... One of the interesting things I've learned here today is that apparently, the US trained people to perform suicide bombings with nuclear weapons. The Cold War was an insane time.

Do you have an example of Twitter using its discretion to shut down a participant who (in your opinion) did not violate the site’s rules? (Where they didn’t acknowledge it as a mistake and later re-instate that person? Mistakes are obviously not completely avoidable.)

We are talking about what will get you banned from Twitter, not what will get you called a racist jerk or a terrorist sympathizer or whatever by other participants on the site.

Pessimistic view follows, but:

All of your acceptable examples most definitely fall under "inciting fear about a protected category".

Also, wouldn't "references to mass murder, violent events, or specific means of violence where protected groups have been the primary targets or victims" prohibit Jews from speaking about the holocaust?

The explainer part of the terms (actually reading then clarified a lot):

> We prohibit targeting individuals with content that references forms of violence or violent events where a protected category was the primary target or victims, where the intent is to harass. This includes, but is not limited to sending someone:

> media that depicts victims of the Holocaust;

> media that depicts lynchings.

Ah, then my earlier point is not correct. Thanks

> will you pay me a dollar for each time I'm called a racist, white supremacist, xenophobe, etc.?

I'll pay you a dollar every time your account gets blocked, because I don't give a crap if other users call you mean names for expressing bigoted views. That's not what anything in this thread is about.

> Do you think, for example, Twitter is going to limit engagement on tweets from political opponents calling Trump a racist?

If they break their terms, sure. But calling someone racist doesn't fall under any of these: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hateful-condu...

> ... I don't give a crap if other users call you mean names for expressing bigoted views.

Are you trying to prove my point here, or was that inadvertent? I listed a set of political and legal discussions around sensitive topics that happen to involve race and national origin. I didn't even express any personal viewpoints at all. But in your mind, a "carefully and precisely represented right-leaning position" is enough to warrant being slandered for bigotry. Which is precisely the problem here.

> those rules, exactly how you have stated them, can be--and are--used to clamp down on valid political speech.

As far as I can tell Twitter has not “clamped down on valid political speech”, but only on targeted harassment, threats, and so on.

You are complaining that supporting a racist worldview gets someone called out as a racist by other users of the site. But that’s expected and healthy discourse for a democracy. There’s nothing in Twitter’s terms of service that says people can’t make fun of someone or call them racist.

This is entirely different from getting banned by the platform for e.g. inciting violence.

Claiming that a right-leaning political worldview is racist is a nasty ploy, it’s slander to suppress a dissenting opinion. It’s a dodge from someone unwilling or unable to defend their position by engaging in meaningful debate.

However, repeated degrading attacks against someone are against Twitter policy.

> Repeated and/or non-consensual slurs, epithets, racist and sexist tropes, or other content that degrades someone. We prohibit targeting individuals with repeated slurs, tropes or other content that intends to dehumanize, degrade or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category.

When these policies are applied with an uneven hand, they betray the political bias of those applying the policies.

If you have an opinion (any opinion really) about a race or a national origin, that makes you a bigot, yes. Non-bigots don't have opinions on a color of a skin, nor a place of birth.

Those things are not chosen by an individual and therefore should not be discussed nor should the individual be generalized based on them. You can criticize an individual based on their action regardless of where they're from or how they look like. As soon as you start generalizing everyone who looks like them / is born in the same area as them, you become a bigot.

There, you were already so close to being self-aware that I hope I helped you achieve awareness.

I think you misread what I wrote. Nothing in there was an opinion about a race or a national origin.

No, you haven't expressed any opinion here. You've alleged that you do have some though:

> around sensitive topics that happen to involve race and national origin.

I’ve been careful not to, because the point isn’t to argue a side, it’s to discuss how valid political arguments might be suppressed due to wrongful accusations of, e.g. racism or alleged violations of terms / codes of conduct.

To be clear I agree with your first two paragraphs. It’s only the third which alleges that you’re correcting a belief I have, that I do take issue with.

So I think again you’re reading into what I wrote too much. Why beat a dead horse, but the point there is to recognize that e.g. “immigration policy” is necessarily going to impact populations that are predominantly of a certain race and/or national origin. But crucially, it’s not racist to think that a country should have a border or debate how set immigration policies are enforced along that border. It’s not racist to examine sub-populations which are moving illegally across the border, e.g. to examine the prevalence of drug running, human trafficking, or gang activity within that sub-population, or to examine the share of that sub-population that is currently charged or has been found guilty of committing a violent crime versus other populations such as legal immigrants or natural citizens. This is just basic sociology.

So that’s what I mean by “sensitive [political] topics” that happen to involve race and national origin.

So like, "no hate speech" has resulted in minorities being unable to discuss the harassment they receive on a daily basis, and has prevented communities from using re-appropriated terms (or even talking about community events). Have you just not been paying attention to this stuff? :( (Though like, I feel like it would also require not having friends in minority classes, as I've had tons of people I know raise bloody hell over this stuff on Facebook as their posts get pulled.)

https://www.denverpost.com/2017/07/31/facebook-hate-speech/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2019/04/24/facebook-whil...

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-06/facebook-banning-algo...

Dude, you can get banned permanent from Twitter for writing "men aren't women". Happened to a famous Canadian feminist [0].

Or, I dare you to write some spicy tweets about "white people" and then try the same ones about "black people". Just watch how different your treatment is.

The idea that Twitter Inc. is anything close to even-handed or principles-based in their rules enforcement is a joke. They're entirely converged to a deep San Francisco hardcore-progressive worldview representing about 8% of Americans [1] and perhaps 1% of the world population.

[0] https://thefederalist.com/2018/11/25/twitter-permanently-ban...

[1] https://hiddentribes.us/

> Dude, you can get banned permanent from Twitter for writing "men aren't women". Happened to a famous Canadian feminist [0].

Your citation makes it pretty clear that's not what really happened, and that none of the tweets at issue said anything like "men aren't women".

How so?

Murphy got banned for referring to a specific individual by their former name and gender rather then their current name. Releasing this type of private information is similar to doxing a person and is considered a form of harassment under twitters rules.

Do you have a substantive question, or are you just asking me to save you the trouble of clicking on the link to the article in question?

You made an argument but didn't support it with any facts.

The argument was that your supporting facts don’t support your argument, so the facts are right there?

How do you deal with Twitter's middle east division labeling certain speech terrorism when Twitter San Francisco would have a different opinion?

Just look at Blizzard and their "but the rules!" approach.

It may be trivial to do so, but is Twitter doing it? Skimming their ToS I see no instances of such rules.

Twitter has considered "learn to code" harassment. Of course they are.

If "certain ideologies" promote lies and violence, then it's a good thing that Twitter locks them out, don't you agree?

I don't agree. I want these ideologies in the open, where I can see them, examine them, fight them. I do not want them to go "underground" where they can fester and grow uninterrupted and unobserved by the larger society, until they have grown enough to burst and soak society in puss.

Also, I do not want twitter, a private company, to be the gatekeeper, a gatekeeper we cannot observe or control. Especially not then the Saudis invested $300m in that company (or a reddit which had an $150m investment by essentially China).

Freedom of speech is not absolute, but the limits shouldn't be set by some corporation, but by the People.

Typing words on a keyboard is not fighting anything.

Every time you interact on social media like twitter with a public message you disagree with you inform the algorithms that that message is good content. You amplify it.

Like a virus piggybacking on the immune system our intuitive efforts to subvert the message simply expose more people to the message.

bullshit. Dialogue, personal preferred, but "digital" if not otherwise possible, is a way to actually fight ideology and undermine the ideologist and demagogues.

Sure, the twitters and facebooks with their shitty algorithms tuned for maximal addiction and thus indirectly maximal conflict are far from helpful, but that isn't a reason to stop the dialogue. That's a reason to force these corporations to not behave like drugdealers.

What's your approach to fighting ideology? Hiding it (aka censoring it, "deplatforming") doesn't work. Then you only disenfranchise people to a degree where they a least the already mentally unstable will be put in a mental position of "my life is over, I could as well go out with a bang".

The other alternative is to use force of some kind, like imprison people with the "wrong" ideas, "hit a nazi" or outright kill them... also known as fascism. Fighting fascism with fascism from the other direction does not seem to be a viable approach to me either.

> “whats your approach to fighting it”

I’ve found that you can’t fight ideology. The harder you push against someones identity, challenging their sense of self, the hard they dig in and often begin their own offensive to divert the challenge away from their identity.

Ideology isn’t often rational (unless the identity is based in being rational... but even then thats often more about being a person who is right or smart than actually being rational). You can’t fight it with rationality.

I have no control over you. I cannot change your mind for you. I can only attempt to make it safe for you explore other ideas without loosing your identity. It’s up to you to change your own mind.

> I want these ideologies in the open, where I can see them, examine them, fight them. I do not want them to go "underground" where they can fester and grow uninterrupted and unobserved by the larger society, until they have grown enough to burst and soak society in puss.

Keeping hate groups off of Twitter does more to inhibit their growth than your attempts to debate them.

Prove it. We saw exactly the opposite in Germany when they tried to ban the neo-nazis. Or the RAF.

Or ask the Brits how banning the IRA went for them.

The neo-nazis didn't have a point worth debating that the public opinion suppressed. But they were in part caused by socio-economical problems that largely went ignored.

Deplatforming works. People like Milo Y were raking in massive amounts of cash, then faded into obscurity when they were deplatformed.

On the other hand, the AfD has received ridiculous amounts of airtime in Germany, frequently setting the topics for public debate formats like Hart aber fair or Anne Will and instead of becoming less popular now made gains in almost every election. Indeed, most political conversations in the public media now either directly reference them or (un)intentionally copy their rhetoric around problems.

Compare that with the widespread distaste for the NPD before the AfD showed up, or look at how the total crapshoot of investigations into the NSU terrorist group or more recently the Identitarian terrorists is reported by the media and treated by politicians -- then compare it with the coverage of the RAF.

Also, Germany banned "symbols hostile to the constitution", not neo-nazis. There were attempts to outlaw the NPD for violating the constitution, but they were completely botched by the investigators' reliance on informants and possibly agents provocateur. The NPD wasn't banned. And there are still frequent neo-nazi demonstrations, so claiming "neo-nazis" in general were at any point banned enough to "thrive in the shadows" or whatever doesn't make sense.

You prove your point by debating the neo-nazis on twitter, winning the argument with facts, and shutting them up. Report back here when you've solved the problem.

The point is not to win stupid internet arguments with people so deeply caught in their cognitive dissonance there is no escaping for them anymore anyway.

The point is to prevent them feeling victimized and recruiting other people by stating they are victimized and censored. Do not underestimate the underdog effect.

The point is to engage them, debunk them, as thoroughly and publicly as possible to disinfect people who are on the verge of being recruited.

The point is not to insult and belittle and censor that blue collar worker deplorable because that person voiced some concerns about immigration for example (even misguided or even racist), because when you do, you create another Trump voter who might even go to a White Supremacists rally later, because at least those people take that person "seriously" (or at least pretend they do) instead of throwing a wave of name calling and open hatred.

The point is to have give the nazis and also the disenfranchised but usually also very hateful and misguided young, mostly white, mostly male fellow human being some people so eagerly call "incels" a place where they can vent their bullshit instead of venting it on the 8ch clones populated only with like-minded people pushing each other further and further, and also keep to an eye on them.

And maybe, just maybe, by not always being a total asshole to them (even tho they are total assholes to other people), not going for the easy "you're an incel nazi scum" kill, you will brick by brick dismantle their wall of mouthfoaming ideology.

Like this guy does rather successfully: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis You might know him already; he is a the black musician who went out and actually talked to KKK members and now has a nice collection of KKK robes from people he convinced to quit.

>So you're saying the point is to not hurt neo-nazi's feelings, because if you're nice to them, they wouldn't recruit so many people to their cause?

No, I did not say that. I said to treat them as human beings and not deliberately antagonize them with stupid insults. And to take the power of "victimhood" and "underdogness" from them, which they use, like all extremists, as a powerful recruiting tool. Al Quaida and IS do it, the nazis do it. Trump does it. Because it works.

>because if you're nice to them, they wouldn't recruit so many people to their cause?

Did not say that either.

>Are your own feelings hurt that Milo Yiannopoulos

Go fuck yourself, trying to paint me in that corner.

And since you so nicely referred to that wiki, let me refer to it myself.

>https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Derailment

Gee, I thought your argument was based on the presumption that you were able to engage people in polite civil conversation and change their opinions with calm, logical arguments, and citations to facts and evidence. How is that working out for you?

If you can't change my opinion that your tired old Tone Argument is invalid by telling me to go fuck myself, then how is your polite fight against the neo-nazis on Twitter going? Have you taken your campaign to Telegraph so you can try to change Milo Yiannopoulos's mind without hurting his feelings and making him feel victimized? Because he's not on Twitter any more.

I don't wanna change your opinions. You're not my enemy just a sad troll.

And I have you know I volunteered for Exit in my youth, and we actually helped quite a few neo-nazis quit. The first step was to actually get in touch with them. Not calling them "nazis scum" and screaming "DIE DIE DIE" in their direction helped with that.

https://www.exit-deutschland.de/exit/?c=ueber-uns

What did you do lately other than bullying people on the internet?

Projects like Exit are important to rehabilitate nazis.

Deplatforming and silencing are important to shut down recruitment.

Not every person facing hardship becomes a nazi. It's true that as a society we need to fix the social problems making people vulnerable to nazi recruitment, but we also need to shut down the recruitment wherever possible and allowing it to happen in the open has only resulted in more nazis, not fewer.

You're right that insulting them is unproductive. But giving them a platform is far worse, even -- no, especially! -- when it's "just for debate". Because nazis don't use a debate to defend their arguments, they use it to shape public opinion and knowingly misrepresent facts to create an appealing narrative, and it takes more time, effort and credibility to deconstruct this narrative than to just put it out there.

Compared to the modern Identitarian movement and international white supremacists, the 1990s German neo-nazis were target practice.

Banning Neo-Nazis did work out pretty good in Germany.

It‘s not a perfect or complete solution but exactly the right approach.

Allowing them to only play in the kiddie pool by disallowing symbols and certain speech is also great and works towards making them look ridiculous.

So all in all I give this solution high marks. It obviously cannot alone remove fascism from a society were that was so widespread and deeply ingrained.

Reading all these comments here I can just advise HN people to be a bit more tolerant of imperfect, incomplete and messy solutions to problems. I know, programmers want to have it all neat and clean and complete and with precision but sometimes that’s not anything achievable.

If his attempts to debate neo-nazis on Twitter are anything like his attempts to debate here, it's no wonder they didn't work.

Hi, do you have any sources that indicate that deplatforming doesn’t work as well as open discourse? Thank you.

There are sources for the reverse.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bjbp9d/do-social-media-ba...

Freedom of speech is the government not throwing you in jail for saying things it doesn't like. What Twitter does or does not allow has nothing to do with freedom of speech.

Always that same, tired argument. Yes, they are a private company. But also yes, private companies can be regulated.

Twitter already cannot refuse service to people based on the color of their skin.

Volkswagen did not implement a "freedom of speech, we're a private company and do as we please"-device but a cheat-device violating environmental regulations.

Utility companies have a "duty to serve" and cannot deny you service because you wrote a bad review about them on yelp.

It has long been my stance that companies whose products have major societal impact especially on the functioning of our democracies should be regulated along the lines of public utilities with a duty to serve. This duty to serve is not boundless, just like with the traditional utilities.

Until twitter decides to censor something important to you.

Perhaps the Hong Kong protesters opinions should be fall under this new rule. Because of violence and everything.

If their ideology promotes lies and violence, then yes. But what evidence do you have that their ideology promotes doing that, or are you just making a false equivalence?

China has made these claims.

Turkey has called the Kurds terrorists. America may view them differently.

I mean, China's influence was enough for companies like Activision Blizzard to clamp down on people expressing support for Hong Kong, so it's entirely credible.

Turkey's president literally just ran an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal defending his invasion of Syria and telling tall tales of Turkey's humanitarian mission and unique effort to fix migration, violence and instability.

Twitter is swamped with "bots" (be they actual automated accounts, throwaways, state actors or regime-friendly humans) posting and re-posting fraudulent news stories, lies and plain old propaganda in favor of all kinds of national interests and political leanings.

I wouldn't be surprised if Twitter in an attempt at "corporate impartiality" would be more inclined to go after the Kurds or Hong Kong protesters than Turkish and Chinese slurs, dehumanisation and calls for violence. After all, there are probably more "people" reporting these accounts than reporting the various propaganda outlets.

We can cherry pick a few examples of some of the protestors acting violently, then use that to claim the protestors in general are violent. That's what they've successfully done to claim Pepe the frog is racist after all.

There's a video from Hong Kong that went somewhat viral showing a protester jump kick a police officer in the face who was trying to drag and arrest another protester lying on the ground.

The video was widely shared by protester-friendly accounts celebrating the act because several arrested protesters had recently turned up dead or disappeared.

It's very easy to construct a narrative portraying the protesters as violent criminals if you start from the assumption that all police violence is justified and resisting any form of police violence is not.

EDIT: Oh and the problem with Pepe wasn't that "Pepe is racist because someone used it that way", it's that Pepe became popular on 4chan and was then co-opted for racist imagery and embraced by actual racists who then used it unironically, so it eventually became a calling card.

Likewise the "ok hand" gesture and emote was initially planted as a "hoax" white supremacist symbol by 4chan members but then actual white supremacists started using it, first ironically as a nod to the "hoax", then unironically to demonstrate their affiliations to others.

The problem with these "dog whistles" is that they're intentionally ambiguous and can be entirely innocent in the right context. Of course not everyone posting "funny green frog memes" or using the "ok hand" gesture is a nazi, but if someone who's already suspiciously copying far-right rhetoric randomly flashes the ok hand in a photo op, or uses Pepe (or the less subtle NPC meme) they're most likely trying to say something while retaining plausible deniability.

I see Pepe used a lot on 4Chan in not racist contexts even now.

What would you suggest is the minimum evidence necessary to support the view that an ideology promotes violence?

- Isolated incidents of violence on behalf of the ideology?

- A "sufficiently large" number of incidents on behalf of the ideology? If so, could you elaborate on "sufficiently large" as you see it?

- A general tacit approval of violence?

- An explicit approval of violence?

- Something else?

The problem I think that many see is there tends to be extensive cognitive dissonance. People apply one set of standards to groups they like, and another to ones that they don't. I think you'll find that in trying to answer my above question it becomes quite difficult to include the groups you don't like, while excluding the groups you do like. That's even when my framing above which is unrealistically softball. For instance I didn't even mention things like harassment, destruction of property, etc which I think we should also generally be intolerant of - even when it's a group we like engaging in such things.

Honestly no I don't. Locking them out will just lead to false positives and a forever shifting window of what is acceptable. Obviously acceptability shifts with time but if the response to someone genuinely saying "Wait but what about X? Don't BAD PEOPLE hve a point about X?" gets banned for it they are more likely to side with said BAD PEOPLE

If it gets impartially applied to all such ideologies, then sure, that would be a good thing.