Was it Twitter’s “job” to suspend the “Britain First” hate group? Read the account here in Britain’s Daily Mail.
It’s okay to not relate to hate groups.
You don’t need to try to find the soul of every evil person and group on the planet. It’s perfectly fine to recognize evil when you see it and walk away. This is the point when I begin to get edgy, worried, and frankly irritable.
If it isn’t Twitter’s place to suspend a hate group operating on their system, who else should do it? Would you prefer the government stop it?
Hitler could have been stopped. There was more than enough time to put an end to him, but no one did it. No one stopped him. Everyone was worried about protecting Hitler’s freedom of expression. You wouldn’t want to impinge on the man who hates everyone’s civil rights, would you?
I’m sure these same people who hate all the rest of us — and if in power, would probably kill us — will now take legal action because their “civil rights” are supposed to protect them from … what? Spreading the evil they spew? But of course, they entirely object to us — “those people” — having civil rights at all. Dig into the irony. It’s a deep, profound irony.
There has to be a stopping point. There must be a “no more” point.
I get civil rights better than most people, but I also understand that failing to have a “stop, this has to end” point has had catastrophic results not only in England, but everywhere.
Someone has to say “No more. It’s over.” I’m glad it’s Twitter because it is their company and they do have the right to shut them down. If there’s one plus to private industry, the right to not serve parties who do not observe company policy has got to be a big one. If a cake maker can refuse to bake for a gay couple, I’m pretty sure Twitter can stop propagating a hate group.
You want my opinion? I think any group which objects to others having civil rights and First Amendment protections should be relieved of their own. After all, they don’t need them anyway. They said so.
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Categories: Government, Hatred and bigotry, protests
SERENDIPITY - SEEKING INTELLIGENT LIFE ON EARTH 
When I was teaching critical thinking, there was a fallacy my students had a hard time wrapping their heads around; that was the “Irrational Appeal to Tolerance.” The author argued while, in general, tolerance was a good thing, some things by their nature should not be tolerated — he had a lot of examples. Hitler, of course, Bubonic Plague, rape, pedophilia, etc. The question of hate speech always led to animated discussions. I hope it penetrated their relativist sodden brains that everything is NOT relative. One can understand WHY Germany followed Hitler without thinking it was OK.
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Oh for goodness sake! I am so sick of ‘rights’ superseding common decency and humanity, kindness, consideration and self control – all those things, in fact, that constitute ‘loving thy neighbour’, Christ must be wondering why he bothered, particularly at this time of year, and the American Founding Fathers must surely be spinning in their graves to see their carefully-considered words used as a licence for aggressive abuse and crude, ugly rudeness.
‘Civilisation’ is becoming less civilised by the tweet. Thank goodness someone is finally saying ‘enough’.
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Not to be a buzzkill here, but the ability to “speak” on Twitter has nothing whatsoever to do with the First Amendment. “Freedom of speech” is a right against the state, not a right that can be asserted against a non-state actor. I’m annoyed and chagrined when Twitter’s (or any private forum’s) policies on content are conflated with Constitutional rights. They’re not the same thing. Twitter can ban any speech it wants, any time it wants, for any reason or no reason. It is incapable of violating anyone’s Constitutional rights. I like what Twitter has done in this particular instance, but their track record shows that most of the time they favor and prioritize hate speech, Nazis and harassment above other kinds of content. That sucks, but it has nothing to do with free speech.
Other, more responsible social media platforms, like Mastodon, do not pretend to be concerned with “free speech” rights at all. As a result, these platforms, at least the well-moderated instances, are remarkably positive, respectful, polite and troll and Nazi free. Woe unto he who transgresses the rules, but you’ll never hear them shout that their “free speech” has been abridged. That’s the future of social media, and Twitter is behind the curve.
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i have participated in both kinds, and frankly, I’ll take the moderated sites every time.
Free speech, again, does not mean “MY free speech and YOU shut up and listen”. Ev-er.
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I agree. I also think that people who believe I should not have free speech should abjure their own. Live as you speak.
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Your post was very well-stated. I’ve heard that “your freedom ends at the tip of my nose.” But it should say it ends when the sound waves reach my ears! You are right, those people are hypocritical – they want the freedom to impose their beliefs on everyone else! Their idea of freedom is very selfish!
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Good on Twitter. Twitter, if Im correct, is a the equivalent of a public billboard, maintained by a particular group of people, the way Yahoo is/was, the way WordPress is. It can be bought and sold. Even though it’s in the public domain, it’s still privately held. (I think that sounds right)
That means the owners and people who control content on Twitter have the right and possibly the obligation to pick and choose when certain groups or topics get out of hand and threaten to destroy the fabric of the place. Hate speech does that, and it has a pig-pliing effect.
My first message board experience was in 1997 (wow) at Excite. It was a sprawling, fascinating place with dozens of areas, and several troll groups that no one ever monitored. Within a year the trolls had brought the entire mechanism to a screaming halt, and it never recovered. Twitter is obviously also concerned about that, as well.
One vote for Twitter, here.
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I completely agree. And I’d much rather see Twitter do it than wait from some “government intervention,” because that would be “never.”
I also had some early message board experiences, also ended by trolls. They almost did in Amazon, for a while, until Amazon put their foot very firmly down.
No matter what anyone says, you can’t simply ignore hate. The more you ignore it, the uglier it gets. Apparently, some people think it’s fun. I’d hate to imagine what else they think is “fun.”
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One woman at Excite was especially brutal, both in language and attitude. I finally emailed her, and asked her why? She said, “none of you are real. It’s like TV only I’m in it, too, and when I turn off the computer you disappear. ” That may have a lot to do with bad online behavior in general.
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You’re making a very valid point. Hate speech is not free speech and also, kudos to Twitter for doing this. There are so many more groups that must be eliminated first hand.
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And the company that runs the board ARE the ones who need to do it. I was afraid they’d never get around to it.
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But there is still some hope left in the world.
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Amen to that.
Leslie
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A long time ago, having bumped into something seriously evil, I began to realize that everyone doesn’t need or deserve the right to scream their rottenness to the world. Some thing are really bad enough to deserve a quick death — and this was one.
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indeed!
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I couldn’t agree more, Marilyn. There needs to be a line in the sand that says, “no more!” It’s one thing to have civil rights, and allow someone to state their case, it’s another to spew hate. Other than the fact it serves no purpose, it’s degrading and rips away the fabric of humanity. Those impressionable, lost, looking for a way to vent their own frustration and fear jump on the bandwagon. I believe there is a line in the sand. Yes, I don’t have to read it, I can block, I can fire back a diatribe, but that doesn’t change the fact that there should be a line in the sand that says we will not cross here. In this, standing up for all mankind.
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We need to recognize that some things really ARE wrong and we need to stop them. When we have failed to do it, very bad things happen.
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I absolutely agree.
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When will Twitter suspend 45 aka the Orange Idiots Twitter account?
He has spread more hate and incited more violence through his racist tweets.
Somebody please take away his ability to tweet.
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I’m pretty sure they’d take their corporate life into their hands if they tried.
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Lol
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