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Twitter suspends Rose McGowans account

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Audioboxer

Member
I've lost count of the amount of threads where people aren't given the proper context and always assume the worst only to later learn that their outrage was unfounded. How many more threads like this before people start catching on that maybe they should be more prudent before passing such strong judgment?

Ask yourself honestly, did you really believe that Twitter was trying to silence her because they're secretly alt-right or something?

In what world would anyone think for even a second that was a plan that had any chance of working?

The same world where Bungie, a video games developer, were clearly behind, involved in and supporting white supremacy/Neo-Nazism because of an armour design... Wait, that didn't end up as "100% on purpose" as some were saying prior to an investigation. Or like that Dove advert which was edited to be shorter so that everyone would react before knowing what the full ad was.

The right gets lampooned for being idiotic and responding to fake news/information before all the facts, but the left does its own good job of "I know 100% what this is" at times as well.

This was clearly to do with the phone number and has now been resolved and the account is active again. Debates about Twitters worth as a platform and all the other shit it is doing wrong, do not lead into a conspiracy theory here that they took down Rose McGowan's account to protect rapists/paedophiles and sexual abusers. That is what some of the responses in here said/implied on the first few pages.

Twitter is garbage with its moderation, no lies detected, but conspiracy theories are the kryptonite of the internet.
 

Tonedeff

Member
It's less about me and more about you and your reputation. I have never seen a post from you that adds to the discussion, and the percentage of your posts that I see just calling other people pieces of shit or something else is pretty high.

You serious? You say this in a thread where most of the posts have no fucking value? If you don't like me, fucking ignore me dude
 
I've lost count of the amount of threads where people aren't given the proper context and always assume the worst only to later learn that their outrage was unfounded. How many more threads like this before people start catching on that maybe they should be more prudent before passing such strong judgment?

Ask yourself honestly, did you really believe that Twitter was trying to silence her because they're secretly alt-right or something?

In what world would anyone think for even a second that was a plan that had any chance of working?

It's very easy to pass judgement on Twitter because they have a proven track record of horrible moderation. If they are explicitly supporting unsavory figures they are certainly implicitly doing so by immediately banning someone like McGowan and letting Nazi's and ISIS run free.
 
I've lost count of the amount of threads where people aren't given the proper context and always assume the worst only to later learn that their outrage was unfounded. How many more threads like this before people start catching on that maybe they should be more prudent before passing such strong judgment?

Ask yourself honestly, did you really believe that Twitter was trying to silence her because they're secretly alt-right or something?

In what world would anyone think for even a second that was a plan that had any chance of working?

In a world where people think that electing Trump as president has any chance of working.
 

Razorback

Member
I think people have called me racial slurs on Twitter and when I reported it I was told it was not a violation of TOS.

I’ve seen plenty of other people sharing their experiences of having people violate the TOS, including posting their phone number and home address, and be told that there was no violation.

So, yeah, I think there’s something wrong with Twitter’s enforcement system. Malice? Maybe not. Only way to be sure is to see if Twitter acts. So far they haven’t.

It's just incompetence on their part. They just don't have that many employees and their algorithms obviously leave much to be desired.

The fact that it's not based on malice is not irrelevant, it's a very important distinction.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

This is important because when you keep attributing malice to every mistake you see, the whole world starts looking like a horribly evil place. And in turn people will respond with hate to such a world and quickly run into a feedback loop of rage.
 

Joe

Member
Rose McGowan was one of the highest-profile users on Twitter for two days straight because she was playing a central role in a anti-sexual assault uproar.

Twitter could have easily just deleted the prohibited tweet and issued a warning but instead they chose to suspend the entire account.

The same Twitter that has zero problems, LITERALLY no problem at all, with user "@jew_killer1488" (https://twitter.com/randileeharper/status/918512354060464131).

You would have to be delusional to defend Twitter here.
 

pigeon

Banned
It's just incompetence on their part. They just don't have that many employees and their algorithms obviously leave much to be desired.

The fact that it's not based on malice is not irrelevant, it's a very important distinction.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

This is important because when you keep attributing malice to every mistake you see, the whole world starts looking like a horribly evil place. And in turn people will respond with hate to such a world and quickly run into a feedback loop of rage.

Twitter is a $14 billion company. Don’t be stupid. They have plenty of resources to hire as many employees as they need. They’ve chosen not to do so. They made this decision for financial reasons. Specifically, they made the calculation that allowing Nazis and Russian bots to take over the platform was worth the savings in labor cost.

At what point does that decision become malicious in its deliberate negligence? Why is that point always somewhere in the future?
 
Rose McGowan was one of the highest-profile users on Twitter for two days straight because she was playing a central role in a anti-sexual assault uproar.

Twitter could have easily just deleted the prohibited tweet and issued a warning but instead they chose to suspend the entire account.

The same Twitter that has zero problems, LITERALLY no problem at all, with user "@jew_killer1488" (https://twitter.com/randileeharper/status/918512354060464131).

You would have to be delusional to defend Twitter here.

.
 

dakilla13

Member
But Trump is still there?? Loool.

Trump isn't violating the TOS. Why is this hard to understand for people?

You may disagree with literally every single word he says (I know I certainly do) but he hasn't posted an individuals private information in a public forum like McGowan did. (If he did then that's news to me and I will change my stance on this matter).
 
Trump isn't violating the TOS. Why is this hard to understand for people?

You may disagree with literally every single word he says (I know I certainly do) but he hasn't posted an individuals private information in a public forum like McGowan did. (If he did then that's news to me and I will change my stance on this matter).

Forget Trump, its a bad example. He is the president so he is afforded additional protection. There are countless other examples of death threats, racial taunting, violence, terrorism, violation of privacy, etc which are allowed to go without punishment.
 

KHarvey16

Member
Rose McGowan was one of the highest-profile users on Twitter for two days straight because she was playing a central role in a anti-sexual assault uproar.

Twitter could have easily just deleted the prohibited tweet and issued a warning but instead they chose to suspend the entire account.

The same Twitter that has zero problems, LITERALLY no problem at all, with user "@jew_killer1488" (https://twitter.com/randileeharper/status/918512354060464131).

You would have to be delusional to defend Twitter here.

“Defend” here is being defined as not assigning specific malicious intent, ie not accepting that Twitter saw she was discussing sexual abuses of powerful white men and sought to stop it. This was being claimed and is what is being discussed. No one thinks Twitter’s policies are flawless or that their moderation is done especially well.
 
It's not like Twitter can't identify the Nazi accounts, they hide a bunch of those accounts in Germany and France. It's pure fuckery from them all of the time.
 

Razorback

Member
Rose McGowan was the highest-profile person on Twitter for 2 days straight because she was playing a central role in a anti-sexual assault uproar.

Twitter could have easily just deleted the prohibited tweet and issuing a warning instead of suspending the entire account.

The same Twitter that has zero problems, LITERALLY no problem at all, with user "@jew_killer1488" (https://twitter.com/randileeharper/status/918512354060464131).

You would have to be delusional to defend Twitter here.

They acted quickly becouse she's famous. Whatever number she posted would have been seen by millions and done a lot of harm to that person.

Could they have just deleted it? It does seem like the obvious choice, but I don't work there, I have no idea how their system works.

Why haven't they banned jewkiller? I don't know, but them being fine with nazism sounds like a very implausible explanation. Maybe they're just incompetent. I don't know if that's the real reason, but to me, it sounds far more probable than the other one.
 

dakilla13

Member
Twitter is a $14 billion company. Don’t be stupid. They have plenty of resources to hire as many employees as they need. They’ve chosen not to do so. They made this decision for financial reasons. Specifically, they made the calculation that allowing Nazis and Russian bots to take over the platform was worth the savings in labor cost.

At what point does that decision become malicious in its deliberate negligence? Why is that point always somewhere in the future?

Twitter would cease to exist if it hired enough people to moderate every single tweet.

And they did not simply decide to allow Nazi and Russian bots. It's a hydra problem, where they keep banning bots and more bots come online. Not to mention that a lot of the "bots" are actually real users paid to churn out propaganda tweets, which makes it harder to for a human, let alone algorithm, to determine whether to ban an account or not.

If you seriously think Twitter and it's employees are okay with the current reality you are out of touch. It comes down to the fact that cleaning up the platform is an incredibly tough problem that hasn't been solved yet, despite them trying.
 

Razorback

Member
Twitter is a $14 billion company. Don’t be stupid. They have plenty of resources to hire as many employees as they need. They’ve chosen not to do so. They made this decision for financial reasons. Specifically, they made the calculation that allowing Nazis and Russian bots to take over the platform was worth the savings in labor cost.

At what point does that decision become malicious in its deliberate negligence? Why is that point always somewhere in the future?

Aren't they famous for not making any money? That seems like a good explanation for why they don't hire more people.
 

BajiBoxer

Banned
Trump isn't violating the TOS. Why is this hard to understand for people?

You may disagree with literally every single word he says (I know I certainly do) but he hasn't posted an individuals private information in a public forum like McGowan did. (If he did then that's news to me and I will change my stance on this matter).
Trump does violate their terms of service, but he gets carte blanche on Twitter because everything he tweets is technically news as POTUS. I think they even said as much.
 

jacobeid

Banned
Twitter would cease to exist if it hired enough people to moderate every single tweet.

And they did not simply decide to allow Nazi and Russian bots. It's a hydra problem, where they keep banning bots and more bots come online. Not to mention that a lot of the "bots" are actually real users paid to churn out propaganda tweets, which makes it harder to for a human, let alone algorithm, to determine whether to ban an account or not.

If you seriously think Twitter and it's employees are okay with the current reality you are out of touch. It comes down to the fact that cleaning up the platform is an incredibly tough problem that hasn't been solved yet, despite them trying.

It shouldn't take 14 billion to come up with a system that prohibits offensive usernames like "Jewkiller."

Twitter has had this problem for years and have done jack shit about it, at least publicly facing.
 

pigeon

Banned
Also, as somebody who worked in Silicon Valley, there is no surer sign you’re about to be handed a steaming pile of bullshit than an engineer telling you the problem is with the algorithm.
 

dakilla13

Member
It shouldn't take 14 billion to come up with a system that prohibits offensive usernames like "Jewkiller."

Twitter has had this problem for years and have done jack shit about it, at least publicly facing.

That account has been banned by the way.

Like I said before, it will always be a problem because the algorithms are not 100% accurate and there aren't enough humans to verify every single account.
 
That account has been banned by the way.

Like I said before, it will always be a problem because the algorithms are not 100% accurate and there aren't enough humans to verify every single account.

There certainly are enough humans to do it. They just don't want to pay for it.

Also, as somebody who worked in Silicon Valley, there is no surer sign you're about to be handed a steaming pile of bullshit than an engineer telling you the problem is with the algorithm.

Amen brother
 

dakilla13

Member
Also, as somebody who worked in Silicon Valley, there is no surer sign you’re about to be handed a steaming pile of bullshit than an engineer telling you the problem is with the algorithm.

As someone who writes such algorithms it's definitely not bullshit. Even the best algorithms based on the vast amounts of data Twitter has will not be 100% accurate.
 

trh

Nifty AND saffron-colored!
Twitter would cease to exist if it hired enough people to moderate every single tweet.

And they did not simply decide to allow Nazi and Russian bots. It's a hydra problem, where they keep banning bots and more bots come online. Not to mention that a lot of the "bots" are actually real users paid to churn out propaganda tweets, which makes it harder to for a human, let alone algorithm, to determine whether to ban an account or not.

If you seriously think Twitter and it's employees are okay with the current reality you are out of touch. It comes down to the fact that cleaning up the platform is an incredibly tough problem that hasn't been solved yet, despite them trying.

People with clear nazi inspired names and imagery can exist for months without being touched. Posting nazi propaganda seemingly sets off no sort of alarm bells whatsoever. It should be *super* easy for a company like Twitter to set up basic filters for this kind of shit. https://twitter.com/FashyFal1488 It took me 30 seconds to find this account. Why is that a thing? Just take a walk through the "Who to follow" tab for an easy line up of similar accounts. It's so fucked up.
 
As someone who writes such algorithms it's definitely not bullshit. Even the best algorithms based on the vast amounts of data Twitter has will not be 100% accurate.

It doesn't have to be 100% accurate, you filter out the obvious trash and send the borderline stuff for review. They aren't even doing that.
 

Joe

Member
“Defend” here is being defined as not assigning specific malicious intent, ie not accepting that Twitter saw she was discussing sexual abuses of powerful white men and sought to stop it. This was being claimed and is what is being discussed. No one thinks Twitter’s policies are flawless or that their moderation is done especially well.
Twitter's abhorrent policies have led to the consistent abuse of its users and has unequivocally suppressed the ability of people, especially minorities and women, to use their voices to confront sexual assault and racism. Explicit or implicit doesn't matter - either way, Twitter is complicit. Rose McGowan's suspension is just the most recent chapter of a very ugly and ongoing book.
 
Again

You
Don't
Want
Twitter
To
Delete
Tweets
On
Their
Own


That is a scary fucking world where people can easily get out of saying stupid shit based on the TOS standards, thereby sliding away from responsibility. As a solution, that's awful. They need to have better CS to deal with things like this instead.

Also, it's very, very important that we call things what they are. This was not some malicious attempt from Twitter to silence her, but Twitter's awful, terrible double standards that are in place. It's not that they are working hand in hand with alt righters, they simply don't give a shit. Which makes them complicit, but it's important to realize their motives so that the issue is tackled in the right way.

Twitter's abhorrent policies have led to the consistent abuse of its users and has unequivocally suppressed the ability of people, especially minorities and women, to use their voices to confront sexual assault and racism. Explicit or implicit doesn't matter - either way, Twitter is complicit. Rose McGowan's suspension is just the most recent chapter of a very ugly and ongoing book.

It does, because when you come at them with conspiracy level theorist stuff you are going to get back nothing in return. If we tackle this in the manner that their moderation is terrible BECAUSE they don't care, you don't have to spend time drawing red lines on a bulletin board all day.
 

dakilla13

Member
It doesn't have to be 100% accurate, you filter out the obvious trash and send the borderline stuff for review. They aren't even doing that.

I bet they are filtering out the trash in the tweet text and not doing enough on the image recognition side to pick out if the account is actually terrible. Look at the account that a previous poster mentioned: https://twitter.com/FashyFal1488

There's nothing in her tweet text (I took a cursory glance through her timeline) that would set off a TOS violation, however all the images that she posts would.

For the record, I 100% agree that Twitter needs to do more, my point being that it's a hard problem and expecting that they get it right every single time is being unrealistic and unaware of the scale of the problem.
 

kmax

Member
People with clear nazi inspired names and imagery can exist for months without being touched. Posting nazi propaganda seemingly sets off no sort of alarm bells whatsoever. It should be *super* easy for a company like Twitter to set up basic filters for this kind of shit. https://twitter.com/FashyFal1488 It took me 30 seconds to find this account. Why is that a thing? Just take a walk through the "Who to follow" tab for an easy line up of similar accounts. It's so fucked up.

https://twitter.com/thenaziparty?lang=en
https://twitter.com/anp14?lang=en

I'm sure the algorithms will find them. Anytime now.
 

KHarvey16

Member
Twitter's abhorrent policies have led to the consistent abuse of its users and has unequivocally suppressed the ability of people, especially minorities and women, to use their voices to confront sexual assault and racism. Explicit or implicit doesn't matter - either way, Twitter is complicit. Rose McGowan's suspension is just the most recent chapter of a very ugly and ongoing book.

I’m explaining to you what the discussion has been up to now. Originally people were claiming she was targeted specifically by Twitter and the powers that be for speaking out against an influential man. The “defense” has been against that specific claim.
 
I bet they are filtering out the trash in the tweet text and not doing enough on the image recognition side to pick out if the account is actually terrible. Look at the account that a previous poster mentioned: https://twitter.com/FashyFal1488

There's nothing in her tweet text (I took a cursory glance through her timeline) that would set off a TOS violation, however all the images that she posts would.

For the record, I 100% agree that Twitter needs to do more, my point being that it's a hard problem and expecting that they get it right every single time is being unrealistic and unaware of the scale of the problem.

There is a difference between some mistakes and on the surface what appears to be basically no moderation. For every 1 they get right there are 100 they get wrong. They are too big of a company for that to be acceptable and hand waved.
 

Joe

Member
They acted quickly becouse she's famous. Whatever number she posted would have been seen by millions and done a lot of harm to that person.

Could they have just deleted it? It does seem like the obvious choice, but I don't work there, I have no idea how their system works.

Why haven't they banned jewkiller? I don't know, but them being fine with nazism sounds like a very implausible explanation. Maybe they're just incompetent. I don't know if that's the real reason, but to me, it sounds far more probable than the other one.
What? Of course Twitter is fine with Nazism. That doesn't mean they endorse it but they are fine with it breed on their platform. You're being naive.

Twitter lets "@jew_killer1488" openly and publicly tweet but then suspends the entire account of Rose McGowan. Indefensible.
 

pigeon

Banned
For the record, I 100% agree that Twitter needs to do more, my point being that it's a hard problem and expecting that they get it right every single time is being unrealistic and unaware of the scale of the problem.

That's what the human enforcement team that Twitter has failed to staff up or train appropriately would be for.
 

Ri'Orius

Member
It shouldn't take 14 billion to come up with a system that prohibits offensive usernames like "Jewkiller."

Twitter has had this problem for years and have done jack shit about it, at least publicly facing.

If they implement a filter that catches "Jewkiller" all that does is force the Nazis to be more creative. The alt-right has shown that they're very good at dogwhistles and fig leaves, to incredible effect. I'd rather allow the Nazis be blatant.
 
If they implement a filter that catches "Jewkiller" all that does is force the Nazis to be more creative. The alt-right has shown that they're very good at dogwhistles and fig leaves, to incredible effect. I'd rather allow the Nazis be blatant.

Disagree completely, you are giving them a huge and complex communication platform to spread their message. It needs to be locked down and last I heard the EU is mandating as such.
 

Kite

Member
The same world where Bungie, a video games developer, were clearly behind, involved in and supporting white supremacy/Neo-Nazism because of an armour design... Wait, that didn't end up as "100% on purpose" as some were saying prior to an investigation. Or like that Dove advert which was edited to be shorter so that everyone would react before knowing what the full ad was.

The right gets lampooned for being idiotic and responding to fake news/information before all the facts, but the left does its own good job of "I know 100% what this is" at times as well.

This was clearly to do with the phone number and has now been resolved and the account is active again. Debates about Twitters worth as a platform and all the other shit it is doing wrong, do not lead into a conspiracy theory here that they took down Rose McGowan's account to protect rapists/paedophiles and sexual abusers. That is what some of the responses in here said/implied on the first few pages.

Twitter is garbage with its moderation, no lies detected, but conspiracy theories are the kryptonite of the internet.

Wait.. the Bungie logo thingy and Dove ad were fake? Hold on, need to re find those threads. Especially that logo, it looked just like keking-stan-whatever..

edit: lololol so the Dove ad outrage was totally bs, both sides do fake outrage news bs wowowow
 

Cybit

FGC Waterboy
I do wonder if the Nazi issue is that the swatsika is also used heavily in Asian cultures as a good luck symbol. Not sure how you'd image search a 45 degree rotation of a symbol. (Might be doable though for all I know)
 

DrSlek

Member
I do wonder if the Nazi issue is that the swatsika is also used heavily in Asian cultures as a good luck symbol. Not sure how you'd image search a 45 degree rotation of a symbol. (Might be doable though for all I know)
Yeah, but then you also have to have the algorithm try to recognise the difference between pictures the Nazis swastika and pictures of the Buddhist/Hindu swastika taken on an angle.
 

nynt9

Member
So Jack, Twitter CEO, explained why she was banned and clarified the mod policy:

https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/918502629679939584

This response is savage:

gOcqLyW.png
 

Joe

Member
I'm explaining to you what the discussion has been up to now. Originally people were claiming she was targeted specifically by Twitter and the powers that be for speaking out against an influential man. The ”defense" has been against that specific claim.
What I'm explaining to you use is that Twitter's intentions do not matter because the toxic environment and policies lead to the same outcomes regardless of intentions.

Also, you cannot look at this situation in a vacuum. This is very much part of Twitter's long and gross history of allowing, directly or indirectly, abuse and hate to breed and propagate on their platform.

Scenario A:
  1. Do not use discretion (except for Donald Trump)
  2. Suspend the account of a central figure during a crucial period for speaking up against sexual assault.
  3. Let "@jew_killer1488" use Twitter freely and without fear of any punishment.
Scenario B:
  1. Do not use discretion (except for Donald Trump)
  2. Suspend the account of a central figure during a crucial period over one prohibited tweet.
  3. Let "@jew_killer1488" use Twitter freely and without fear of any punishment.
We are so far passed splitting the hairs of Twitter's intentions that doing so is starting to appear as tacit approval of online abuse.

Here is the tweet that got Rose McGowan's entire account suspended (as referenced in WaPo article):

screenshot_266.png



The inadvertent carelessness in that tweet is so obvious but yet it resulted in an entire account suspension of an important person during an important period while at the same time "@jew_killer1488" operates freely. Who the hell gives a shit about intention?
 

KHarvey16

Member
What I'm explaining to you use is that Twitter's intentions do not matter.

You cannot look at this situation in a vacuum. This is very much part of Twitter's long and gross history of directly or indirectly allowing abuse and hate to breed and propagate on their platform.

Scenario A:
  1. Do not use discretion (except for Donald Trump)
  2. Suspend the account of a central figure during a crucial period for speaking up.
  3. Let "@jew_killer1488" use Twitter freely and without fear of any punishment.
Scenario B:
  1. Do not use discretion (except for Donald Trump)
  2. Suspend the account of a central figure during a crucial period over one prohibited, but inadvertently careless, tweet.
  3. Let "@jew_killer1488" use Twitter freely and without fear of any punishment.

We are so far passed splitting the hairs of Twitter's intentions that doing so is starting to appear as tacit approval of online abuse.

Here is the tweet that got Rose McGowan's entire account suspended (as referenced in WaPo article):
screenshot_266.png



That tweet resulted in an entire account suspension of an important person during an important time while "@jew_killer1488" operates freely. Who the hell gives a shit about intention?

Is this a joke?

Twitter specifically and intentionally targeting a woman speaking out against a powerful man who abused her in order to shut her up is ABSOLUTELY worse than any mix of incompetence and sheltered viewpoint story you could come up with. To deny that is utterly bizarre.

And secondly, once again I’m telling you who you labeled as “defenders” of twitter were responding to. When one party presents argument A and is met with counterargument B, you don’t get to jump in, change A and claim all of those espousing B are defending against whatever new position you’ve conjured up. It’s incredibly disingenuous.
 

Audioboxer

Member
at the same time "@jew_killer1488" operates freely. Who the hell gives a shit about intention?

Just to say Joe, I don't know why you keep saying that specifically https://twitter.com/jew_killer1488

That account is suspended.

Wait.. the Bungie logo thingy and Dove ad were fake? Hold on, need to re find those threads. Especially that logo, it looked just like keking-stan-whatever..

edit: lololol so the Dove ad outrage was totally bs, both sides do fake outrage news bs wowowow

Bungie graphic logo was chevrons and random symbols created before Kekistan was even a thing. As you said the Dove ad was cut short. People can argue it's still a bad ad, but it wasn't true to how it was originally framed.
 
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