Updating our rules against hateful conduct

https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2019/hatefulconductupdate.html

by tareqak • 7 years ago

32 84 7 years ago

blog.twitter.com

ddingus• 7 years ago

Hopefully, they recognize the group of people who do not practice religion as "basis of religion"

sdinsn2• 7 years ago

They probably won't.

Atheists are the most oppressed 'religious' group there is but no one will recognize it.

It's common they are left out of so-called "progressive" movements to support peace / safety.

luckylion• 7 years ago

I get skin color, sex, gender, sexual orientation etc for protection, but including religion and excluding political word view has always been weird to me. Calling one of the two innate and deserving of protection and the other a choice and undeserving seems like a religious answer.

Narrow down what’s considered — Respondents said that “identifiable groups” was too broad, and they should be allowed to engage with political groups, hate groups, and other non-marginalized groups with this type of language.

And you didn't just tell him to just not de-humanize anybody, instead opting for "okay, that's fine, just don't mention religion when you do it?

duskwuff3• 7 years ago

Yeah, the way this has been introduced into their policies [1] is weirdly specific. It's prohibited to target individuals with dehumanizing language if it's related to any protected category, but targeting groups with dehumanizing language is only prohibited if it's related to religion?

[1] https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hateful-condu...

droithomme• 7 years ago

Interesting. So criticizing religious positions against abortion, against vaccines, against homosexuality, and in favor of the flat earth will now result in post removal. Assuming this policy is going to be impartially and fairly applied as stated.

ARandomerDude• 7 years ago

How so? It seems like only if they say "those animals" (or similar) instead of "those people".

ceejayoz3• 7 years ago

It's entirely possible to criticize without dehumanizing.

celdon252• 7 years ago

The problem is that it's also possible to criticize in a way where it's simply not possible to determine if it was a good faith criticism or not. There's a wide population of people who even optimize for that, they're called trolls.

Moderation mistakes are inevitable, and the consequences of a bad moderation decision can be as bad, or worse, than the effect of the message itself.

IMO, people should learn to defend themselves against trolls rather than helplessly relying on a nanny from above to do it. Unfortunately, using those platforms doesn't give us much of a choice in the matter.

notus2• 7 years ago

That depends entirely on their definition of dehumanizing.

drocer88• 7 years ago

Censorship is censorship. At least they admit it.

umvi• 7 years ago

So criticizing religious positions against abortion, against vaccines, against homosexuality, and in favor of the flat earth will now result in post removal.

Only if you "dehumanize" said religious people. All of the examples Twitter posted involved comparing the religious in question to animals (or viruses).

So, I doubt a tweet like "I don't think it's right to let the mother die because of fetus complications" would be removed, but something like "Those Christian pigs think a clump of cells are worthy of having human rights?! What kind of monkeys are leading them!" probably would.

Grue32• 7 years ago

Some religious people think a human fetus is a fully formed human instead of a bunch of cells that it is. From their point of view, common pro-abortion arguments are "dehumanizing".

cabaalis2• 7 years ago

I am very certain that tweets criticizing these types of things (which are generally tweets against the beliefs of Christians, however misguided) will remain.

tareqak• 7 years ago

No, because positions are not people. If you can criticize an idea without dehumanizing the person who holds said idea, then your criticism doesn't fall into the "dehumanizing people" category.

dragonwriter5• 7 years ago

So criticizing religious positions against abortion, against vaccines, against homosexuality, and in favor of the flat earth will now result in post removal.

I'm pretty sure you can criticize all of those positions without dehumanizing people on the basis of religion, so that conclusion seems unwarranted, and out of line with the examples of the kinds of posts that would be removed by the policy.

ngngngng2• 7 years ago

I've been deeply concerned with attacks on religious freedom as of late, this seems like a strong step in the right direction.

homonculus12• 7 years ago

If Twitter removing posts for their political content is not an attack on free speech, then Twitter users insulting religious people is most certainly not an attack on religious freedom...

JaimeThompson• 7 years ago

I do wonder if they will remove comments from prominent American fundamentalists who dehumanize non-Christians and/or atheists?

sdinsn2• 7 years ago

Hmm? It seems like this is a step in the opposite direction.

kstrauser2• 7 years ago

Which religious freedoms have been attacked, and where?

ngngngng2• 7 years ago

https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/other-examp...

jngreenlee5• 7 years ago

I'm not convinced centralized models being politically "pushed around" in the age of the internet will succeed. They may likely be a retreat, and long term ebb-and-flow from centralized to decentralized poles.

The centralized but politically watched model is also specially susceptible to Taleb's "The Most Intolerant Wins" theorem.

bassman9000• 7 years ago

Specially when religious (or other kind of) minorities where Twitter HQ are located won't necessarily be somewhere else.

jngreenlee5• 7 years ago

I'm very concerned about loosing the right to attack religion. It's an important discussion to have and for children to see. All religion is foolish, and has to be approached from a reality-based context.

dragonwriter5• 7 years ago

I'm very concerned about loosing the right to attack religion

You aren't losing the right.

You may be losing Twitter's active cooperation if the manner in which you do so is unacceptable to Twitter, but you never had a right to Twitter's active participation in your attacks to lose.

jngreenlee5• 7 years ago

You are of course correct in a grand sense, but there's this weird gray area philosophically where someone builds a town square and says "everyone come and talk in my square"...until the hear what you are speaking about!

The problem is likely greater in our corporate/mercantilist system where some state-sponsored and some natural monopolies develop. Totally get and appreciate the private property of the corporation argument...it is their town square after all...but when there is only one that is 'allowed' to succeed, what happens?

This then leads to specific tactical rules we have on the books in the US like FTC and even FCC regs, where some may protest unfair commerce.

IANAL but I can see this is a real mess. Also, what is the ROI for Twitter when it comes to policing this? We know FB has been having problems.

tenpoundhammer• 7 years ago

As a religious person I disagree that all religion is foolish. But I agree that religions should be attacked. As a christian I've seen many ideas that were presented as "Christian" be attacked severely and then the entire christian culture is forced to re-evaluate the idea in the context of the scripture and determine that the idea is in fact not present or contrary to proper biblical teaching. Attacking ideas is good attacking people is bad.

dang2• 7 years ago

This crosses into religious flamewar. That's not ok on HN; please don't do it here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

jngreenlee5• 7 years ago

Dang, respectfully disagree as this is a meta-comment on the concept, not targeting any specific religion. However you are welcome to delete if you feel it best.

szemet• 7 years ago

The reasonable interpretation is that you can attack religion (as an ideology) but you can not attact religious people based on their religion.

Thats a safe split: ideologies do not have (human) rights anyway...

So e.g. you can freely say that the Bible is stupid but can't say the same thing about its believers.

ceejayoz3• 7 years ago

So e.g. you can freely say that the Bible is stupid but can't say the same thing about its believers.

From the examples they give, I think you can still call them stupid. (After all, being stupid is very much part of the human condition. It's hardly a dehumanizing descriptor.) You just can't call them rats, maggots, viruses, etc. and advocate for their extermination/removal.

Grue32• 7 years ago

But it's not the Bible that is stupid, it's just a book (which might've been considered pretty advanced stuff at the time it was written). What if I have a problem specifically with some of its believers?

goto113• 7 years ago

Maybe you should approach this issue from a reality based context? A business setting rules for what they want to publish does not infringe on your freedom of speech.

whatshisface5• 7 years ago

What if someone's holy book contains text that dehumanizes people on the basis of religion?

jngreenlee5• 7 years ago

Sorry but if you're not a member of the tribe, you can't possibly interpret the tribe's book. (said in jest to point out the problematic response)

dragonwriter5• 7 years ago

What if someone's holy book contains text that dehumanizes people on the basis of religion?

Then they probably aren't allowed to tweet their holy book.

sverhagen• 7 years ago

What if, as part of a developing story, a journalist quotes a government official making such statements?

goto113• 7 years ago

I guess you can't post those quotes on twitter then.

rsj_hn3• 7 years ago

Bingo. In that case you have to pick a winner and loser. Then you suppress the loser and promote the winner.

Which is the whole point.

These issues of free speech have been around for a very long time, especially with regards to religious speech, which is at the bedrock of free speech, and the Western liberal tradition espouses free speech principles not because it didn't realize someone might get offended, but because it's better than the option of having powerful people/institutions pick winners and losers and decide what is acceptable to say.

Under current rules, if enforced across the board, a modern Martin Luther's 95 tweet stream would be banned because it hurt someone's feelings or criticized their religion. Exposes of Jehovah's Witnesses would be banned. Atheist tracts would be banned. The whole system is unworkable, which is why it wont work -- it wont be enforced across the board. What will happen is that Twitter will adopt de-facto 'protected religions' that cannot be criticized -- say Islam -- and then it will pick the losers -- say Christianity.

rubidium2• 7 years ago

No. It's only if it dehumanizes the other. Criticism of the thoughts, ideas, practices are perfectly fine. Dehumanizing the practicers of any particular religion is what's not fine.

You're over-reacting to what the linked post from twitter actually says.

throwaway98434• 7 years ago

Criticizing a religion is not the same thing as dehumanizing its followers.

Dehumanization is a defense mechanism which helps us avoid feeling the pain of realizing that humans sometimes do (subjectively) abhorrent things. It's seductive to define such people outside the bounds of humanity as it allows us to excuse treating them poorly. It is nearly always a mistake to do so, because people are, in fact, people.

elliekelly2• 7 years ago

This is the important point everyone seems to be missing. If you look at the example tweets they all have some aspect of making the [Religious Group] out to be less than human: rats, virus, maggots, etc.

People can still freely express their distaste for any and all religion on twitter so long as they don’t dehumanize the people who follow that religion.

loudtieblahblah3• 7 years ago

Criticizing a religion is not the same thing as dehumanizing its followers.

That is all in a matter of perspective. To you it might not be.

drak0n1c3• 7 years ago

Does this mean that Swiftian satire such as South Park's episode making fun of prominent Scientologists is now unfit for Twitter?

duskwuff3• 7 years ago

I don't believe it would be affected -- as I recall, that episode mocks the religion and its members, but doesn't dehumanize them.

whatshisface5• 7 years ago

What exactly does "dehumanization" mean?

drak0n1c3• 7 years ago

Looking at Twitter's examples, it's not explicitly mentioned but it looks like it is still permissible to mock a religion and its followers in the manner of Christopher Hitchens, and as long as the religion is not compared to a non-human disease/virus/beast it is OK. Hopefully they keep moderation to clearcut rules like this and avoid touching substantive satire and criticism.

It would be helpful if Twitter were bold enough to provide examples of permissible types of criticism/satire.

schalab• 7 years ago

Twitter needs to be a set of open source protocols and standards like the internet.

Imagine if all of the internet was owned by one company and they had this kind of power. This is more power than many governments around the world.

childintime2• 7 years ago

Excommunication isn't the solution. Isn't it enough to hide these comments by default, as on HN?

tptacek3• 7 years ago

Comments like those in the examples Twitter provided will reliably get you excommunicated from HN.

childintime2• 7 years ago

HN has dead posters. They are still readable for those that want to. That's the type of solution I promote.

Digital media, like Twitter, can't be a megaphone to spread hate speech. That means their algorithms should be smarter, and accept input.

On the other hand, with these media effectively being monopolies, that doesn't mean they can excommunicate (which is what this is about). That should be against the law.

Just like when there is just one shop in town: everybody should be allowed to buy. That doesn't mean the shopkeeper has to smile to every customer. A good shopkeeper may even be able to get this customer some help.

rubidium2• 7 years ago

Everyone should read the examples so they have a clear understanding of what twitter is meaning when they say "dehumanize". It's not "hey I disagree with these people" it's "hey I want these people dead/injured/equated to shit".

Religious and ethnic persecutions have often gone hand-in-hand. Religious minorities of all types will be helped by this, and we'll see less hate-speech on twitter. Seems to be a very reasonable step.

Sidenote: any religion topic really brings out the "I have a problem with religion" types on HN.

loudtieblahblah3• 7 years ago

If experience is anything to go by, "things I don't like" or "things that offend me" get twisted into things far more severe than what is actually stated, words are now "violence" and make people feel "unsafe".

This rule's application - like all rules like this - will be stretched and exaggerated to cover much more than intended and will be applied unevenly across demographics.

Just like we see on Reddit when /r/ChapoTrapHouse and /r/Bad_cop_no_donut (both of which I sub to, genuinely) gets a pass, while right wing subs do not, when it comes to violent threats and comments.

Atheists and Christians will get the short end of the stick on this. Mark my words.

creaghpatr2• 7 years ago

Well sure, because while there are Muslim and Jewish activist groups on Twitter's Trust and Safety Council there are no groups dedicated to defending Christians or Atheists. https://about.twitter.com/en_us/safety/safety-partners.html

drak0n1c3• 7 years ago

Twitter would be better received if it were bold enough to also state specific examples of permissible religious satire/criticism. I think that would do a lot to address what people are worried about, and be a step in the direction of having more concrete rules and predictable enforcement.

creaghpatr2• 7 years ago

Twitter would be better received if it were bold enough to also state specific examples of permissible religious satire/criticism

Talk about a PR Minesweeper, expert mode.

djsumdog• 7 years ago

People really need to get off Twitter. There are a lot of servers on the Fediverse, running Mastodon, Pleroma, Misskey, Pixelfed and other ActivityPub webapps. Just because famous person x,y,z or friends a,b,c, aren't on the Fediverse doesn't mean you shouldn't try it out.

It's like the 1990s, old IRC and AOL chatrooms. You can just follow a lot of randoms and get into cool threads. There are many instances that have open speech policies (which are banned by many other instances) and other instances with standard ban lists. You can choose where you want to sign up. Many of the people on HN have the knowledge to stand up their own if they want. (I run my own in Docker using a ruby tool I wrote: https://github.com/sumdog/bee2).

You can even create accounts of different Fediverse servers to get a better picture of what gets blocked/censored where. The difference with ActivityPub/Fediverse is you have choices.

Twitter, Reddit, et. al. worry so much about keeping people "safe" that they have completely killed off any diversity of ideas. Back before Reddit started their multi-year long banning-of-everything campaign, you had a lot of different voices, with a lot of different ideology, from conservative to socialist to libertarian to progressive .. battling it out with some really great discussion. Now it's all just monoculture.

The places people fled too, like Voat/Gab, are also just monoculture (Gab recently migrated to their own broken, garbage fork of Mastodon ... as if they needed a way to make the Mastodon UI worse). Voat is just a cesspool of hate, and any melting pot where people discussed ideas rationally is kinda gone.

I highly recommend The Coddling of the American Mind, a book that talks about how people today see "Free speech" as a bad thing, how people say words == violence (they don't, violence is violence, and saying words are violence show you're afraid of ideas).

I've also been reading The Strange Death of Europe, which talks a lot about migration and religious hate speech. Honestly a lot of the book is garbage and I didn't like any of the initial arguments, but I also realize it's important to read about viewpoints I don't agree with. As I kept reading, the author did make a lot of effort to interview Muslims (both long term residents and refugees) and he does make a good set of arguments for the difficulty of criticizing religion in Europe (and I don't agree with a lot of his findings, but I think his arguments and original research are worth looking at).

We really need to be careful with these new blurred lines around speech and hate and ideas and ideology and violence. Restricting things on any platform just gives people with those views, people who get banned, more validity in the eyes of people who see them as persecuted. The Westburro Baptist Church is an example of a small, non-evangelistic set of families that barely grow, who are fully supported by slander lawsuits (they're mostly lawyers). If there weren't WBC counter protests and publications against them, they'd have no one to sue, would have run out of money a long time ago, and would have needed to take real legal case work again. The great irony is the reason they still hold strong is due to protesters giving them relevance.

wavepruner• 7 years ago

I want to like Mastodon, but there are no like/retweet counts. I have no idea how to find the good content without sifting through mountains of stuff I don't want to read.

08-15• 7 years ago

This is strangely specific. Is it still okay to dehumanize people afflicted with other kinds of mental illnesses?

benmmurphy• 7 years ago

I assume it is ok to say religion is a virus, or a particular religion is a virus but the rule is that you can't say the followers of the religion are a virus. Likening religion to a memetic virus is not a fringe opinion.

Updating our rules against hateful conduct

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