Twitter shuts down account of Sci-Hub

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/01/twitter-shuts-down-account-sci-hub-pirated-papers-website

by amrrs • 6 years ago

551 264 6 years ago

amrrs• 6 years ago

This is absurd. I'd love to see Twitter shutting down Twitter's account because There are lots of Fake News spreading on Twitter!

dimitrios1• 6 years ago

"Fake news" isn't illegal. Piracy is.

PrefixKitten• 6 years ago

I find the notion of owning scientific knowledge kind of unsettling...

jtbayly• 6 years ago

There's plenty of illegal stuff on Twitter, too.

sam_lowry_2• 6 years ago

You mean, sharing is illegal unless done in a controlled way?

tyingq• 6 years ago

Not a fan of "pirated" as the descriptive word for what Sci-Hub does. I'm sure some of it fits that description. On the other hand, a fair amount of these papers are funded with taxpayer dollars, and shouldn't be hidden behind paywalls in the first place.

ABeeSea• 6 years ago

The chairs at the DMV are also paid with taxpayer dollars. I’d be arrested if I tried to walk out the door with one.

typenil• 6 years ago

That's totally the same thing - because downloading a paper destroys the original copy.

superkuh2• 6 years ago

If you took a photo of one of the chairs and looked at it at home you'd be just fine though. You're mixing up theft and copyright infringement.

kache_• 6 years ago

You wouldn't download a chair from the DMV

jenwkejnwjkef2• 6 years ago

Intellectual "property" is not property.

jancsika• 6 years ago

Someone should design a a front-end framework for which anachronistic analogies like this make sense.

E.g., if a user selects some text and chooses "Copy," the text gets deleted and a listener sends a message back to the server to signal that the text has been "pirated."

At that point the server not only deletes the associated data, but sends a message to all extant clients to remove the given text.

Kinda like a realtime borrow-checker, but not so much for memory safety as for the sheer stupidity of it.

Edit: clarification

tehjoker• 6 years ago

"Counterfeit goods"? Sci-Hub is giving us the real deal unlike these for-profit publishers.

TeMPOraL3• 6 years ago

Yup. I don't get that. SciHub doesn't offer counterfeit, it offers the actual, real PDFs, grabbed from the publishers' own servers.

rektide2• 6 years ago

What had Sci-Hub talked about on their feed? Who followed it & can report in?

This seems like the ban may well have been because of who Sci-Hub is, not what they said. Which is an interesting complication to this story of what content/who companies opt to host.

ehsankia• 6 years ago

According to the linked article, most of the tweets were about open science issue, though a few tweets may have had a link to Sci-Hub’s website. The latter probably used as an excuse to ban them.

I just checked and the pirate bay for example has a perfectly fine twitter account with a great handle (@tpb), and their profile even links to the website. Not sure if they have any tweets linking to their website though.

HarryHirsch2• 6 years ago

Twitter has no business inserting itself into a dispute between Elbakyan and Elsevier et al. Few people would have issues if Twitter shut down the Sci-Hub account after they received a valid court order, but a private monopolist cannot be trusted to be the arbiter of what is permitted speech.

memer• 6 years ago

It's Twitter's own servers and they can choose who can use them or not. Permitted speech on the legal scope does not matter when talking about businesses.

stale2002• 6 years ago

Permitted speech on the legal scope does not matter when talking about businesses.

Sure it matters. It matters because a bunch of people want businesses to allow all legal speech on their platform.

And this group of people is growing in support, and they might eventually get enough support to force these business to do so, using legislative changes such as required these major companies to follow common carrier laws.

markus_zhang• 6 years ago

I'd argue once X amount of users use your service you are sort of public service company already. You can't use "oh we are a business so we can do anything we want" to defend yourself about that.

baggy_trough• 6 years ago

Yes they can, but they shouldn't.

john_moscow2• 6 years ago

It's Twitter's own servers

That are offered to the customers below cost of running them in order to stifle competition, which is only possible as long as the government antitrust body is looking the other way.

madeofpalk• 6 years ago

I don't think many are saying Twitter's decision was illegal. They're just saying they don't think they should have made it.

insickness• 6 years ago

"Ownership does not always mean absolute dominion. The more an owner, for his advantage, opens up his property for use by the public in general, the more do his rights become circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who use it."

This from Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501 (1946), a case decided by the United States Supreme Court, in which it ruled that a state trespassing statute could not be used to prevent the distribution of religious materials on a town's sidewalk, even though the sidewalk was part of a privately owned company town. The Court based its ruling on the provisions of the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama

devmunchies• 6 years ago

Twitter's freedom to boot anyone off their platform doesn't mean they are free from consequences.

Same argument used towards hate speech but this is more serious IMO because big tech is the new Standard Oil or Big Tobacco.

john_moscow2• 6 years ago

Twitter is a company. And banning decisions are made by specific people in it. And it's not like after banning Trump they will happily consider their job done and go stock shelves at Walmart for minimum wage. Oh no, they have tasted power and they will continue finding new targets because their cushy job literally depends on it.

bioinformatics• 6 years ago

You missed the worldwide vote for the company that should hold the only truths in all matters? Twitter won. Google second and FB third.

dylan6042• 6 years ago

* Some or all of the content shared in this message is disputed and might be misleading

takeda7• 6 years ago

This whole argument is such bullshit. People are trying to frame it as POTUS suddenly has no way to speak as if presidents before him had no platform to talk to the nation. POTUS and other officials should be banned for using private platform for official messages.

tomjen3• 6 years ago

I disagree, they should have purged Elsevier.

mc326• 6 years ago

I know you’re being cheeky. But honestly no. People and entities should be allowed opinions no matter how we disagree, so long as it’s not outright violent or otherwise violating local laws.

mc326• 6 years ago

Agree.

They’re not violating copyright via Twitter. They should have a voice via Twitter, no matter the accusation.

Do accused murderers [as opposed to convicted] get their Twitter suspended?

This is ridiculous.

kennywinker• 6 years ago

For that matter, should convicted murderers get their accounts suspended? I think not solely on the grounds that they’ve committed murder - but maybe if they are using their platform to cause further harm.

sitzkrieg• 6 years ago

at the end of the day twitter has the right to close whatever account they so choose

29athrowaway2• 6 years ago

Twitter is enforcing DMCA.

buzzerbetrayed• 6 years ago

No, they aren’t. They’re not violating copyright via Twitter

bananabreakfast• 6 years ago

In what world is Twitter a monopoly?

Its market cap is $36B. That's 2X less than Snap and 20X less than Facebook.

AnIdiotOnTheNet6• 6 years ago

It's crazy isn't it? This community thinks Apple and Google are monopolies despite being competitors, ditto Twitter and Facebook.

Microsoft isn't though. Not because they don't completely own the Desktop PC market just as they ever did, but because that market is less relevant than it used to be for web devs.

I live in a strange time.

offby37years• 6 years ago

It is a communication monopoly.

burtonator• 6 years ago

Twitter did NOTHING as Trump basically spend the last 4 year inciting a mob on their platform, threatening people, and committing HUNDREDS of violations that would get you and I kicked off.

THEN ... when there is a literal armed insurrection against the capital where TWO police officers died and 5 people total, and they had pipe bombs and hand cuffs to kidnap people, they waited until FRIDAY after the markets closed to ban Trump from the platform.

Twitter's behavior in this entire thing is beyond unacceptable and borders on treasonous.

I really think everyone needs to be calling for @jack to resign.

devwastaken2• 6 years ago

You don't want to get to the point of a court order. Expecting twitter to defend you when you're committing copyright infringement is ridiculous. They don't have to do it only when the platform is used for direct infringement, they remove the account before they can do that and before the legal problems.

This isn't about speech, it's copyright infringement.

happyopossum• 6 years ago

This isn't about speech, it's copyright infringement.

Are they committing copyright infringement on Twitter?

davrosthedalek2• 6 years ago

It all boils down to this:

a) Should twitter be allowed to cancel accounts who harm twitter?

If yes: b) Who decides which accounts harm twitter? If the answer is "twitter", then they have effectively the right to terminate any account at their will. I don't know what other answer is possible for b) except maybe "the courts", and I'm not sure I like that one.

If the answer to a) is no, for which companies does this apply? Must every company work with every potential customer? Who decides which companies must?

Going through the options, I only see viable: twitter can ban whomever they like, for whatever reason, except for the usual exceptions (religion, race etc).

I wish they wouldn't though.

roenxi• 6 years ago

a) Should twitter be allowed to cancel accounts who harm twitter?

Although some people agree that is the question, it is not the fundamental one here. Most of the respectable arguments are that Twitter's bans are senselessly harming Twitter. They're building a gaping hole in their offering that a competitor can cover.

jjk1664• 6 years ago

Just because you have the legal right to do something doesn't mean you should do it or that you should be immune to criticism for doing it.

For example, in an at-will employment state, an employer can legally fire you for looking at them funny. No one would argue that an employer shouldn't have the right to terminate an employee if they were bad for the company, nor would anyone object to the employer being able to determine what is good or bad for the company. Nevertheless, such an act is a dick move and the employer should be heavily criticized for doing it.

skissane3• 6 years ago

If the answer to a) is no, for which companies does this apply? Must every company work with every potential customer? Who decides which companies must?

Regulated public utilities generally speaking can't just drop customers simply because they feel like it or don't like them or view them as a "threat". Thankfully the electricity company can't just disconnect you because they don't like you. So long as you pay the bills, they have to keep you on as customer. (I think they can disconnect you if you violate technical rules about electrical safety, such as trying to draw more power from the network than your connection is authorised – but they can't simply do it because they disagree with your politics, or because you are charged with a crime no matter how heinous, or because some third party is suing you, or so on.)

And there is an argument for regulating Twitter/Facebook/etc as public utilities.

A lot of people in Australia's conservative ruling party are pretty upset at Twitter. They were asking Twitter to take down a faked image of an Australian soldier slitting a child's throat which was posted by the Chinese government. Twitter refused. Then Twitter banned Donald Trump. Twitter will argue that the two situations were very different, but a number of conservative Australian politicians don't agree. They are calling for government regulations to control when Twitter can remove content or ban people [0]. Effectively, turning it into a regulated public utility, at least in Australia. (If the Australian government goes ahead with this, I can't see any way out of it for Twitter except to either comply or block everyone in Australia from accessing their service.)

[0] https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/threat-to-democracy-...

lliamander4• 6 years ago

twitter can ban whomever they like, for whatever reason, except for the usual exceptions (religion, race etc).

I think we either need to get rid of those exceptions or add more. I'm not sure which.

throwaway8943452• 6 years ago

If Twitter were just a few million users or something, I'd subscribe to the "they're a private entity, let them do what they want", but they monopolize a huge portion of our national (indeed, international) dialogue to the effect that they can unilaterally influence election outcomes for the world's most powerful democracies (at least that's the implication if you subscribe to the 'Russia manipulated Twitter algos in 2016' theory). Unless Twitter's monopoly is broken, content on Twitter (and other monopolistic social media networks) should be regulated as "free speech".

stjohnswarts2• 6 years ago

It's simple, they own the platform, they get to make the call who is on it, including Presidents.

curryst2• 6 years ago

I think the answer to a) depends on whether Twitter wants to continue to have a private monopoly on public discourse.

If Twitter wants to maintain that monopoly and their walled garden, then no, they should not be able to arbitrarily ban users. I would like to see online public discourse declared to be part of the social infrastructure and be treated like a utility.

Alternately, if Twitter is willing to move to a federated-type model where Twitter users can follow Parler users and vice-versa, I think they should be able to continue to ban people.

That neatly resolves this conundrum to me. Twitter loses its absolutely staggering inertia from the size of their userbase. The data becomes open, and social media companies become focused on providing value via exposing you to this data, rather than just by building a moat with it to keep out competitors.

heimatau• 6 years ago

Twitter has no business inserting itself into a dispute between

@dick said recently in an interview that these are geo-political decisions. That they might've did the calculus of losing advertising money but it's not the predominate reason [1].

[1] - I can't find this source. I find it weird that I can't search my history to find it. It was in an interview with either Bloomberg or WSJ.

P.S. The interview was in relation to Trump being banned but I think his response applies to Sci_Hub because these are intentional decisions, not from an AI/automated system.

beebmam• 6 years ago

Why should we FORCE twitter to publish the speech of someone they don't want to publish? Doesn't that itself infringe on free speech?

kypro• 6 years ago

We probably shouldn't (perhaps with the exception of politicians or key public figures), but we should still recognise this is a move that has net-negative effect for humanity – and a move that Twitter didn't have to make.

We can recognise things as being wrong even if they're not illegal.

adolph2• 6 years ago

Trump violated the First Amendment when he blocked certain Twitter users

https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739906562/u-s-appeals-court-r...

Karunamon6• 6 years ago

As I've heard so often in the last few months, "freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences". If they intend to hide behind legal minimums, that is their right, but society is free to retaliate in other ways.

For instance, their (and all other social network) S230 liability protection could be tied to specific conduct, such as no arbitrary bans.

Ikatza• 6 years ago

It's not about forcing Twitter, it's about how Twitter wants to be framed.

As a platform, it bears no responsibility over what's published on it as long as it complies with any court orders to remove illegal content. But it cannot censor or editorialize content.

If it does, it becomes a media outlet and has responsibility over all content published on Twitter, (which doesn't scale very well).

Jack wants to have the best of both worlds. The power to censor whatever he doesn't like, with 0 responsibility over the content he doesn't care about.

apple_innocent6• 6 years ago

These massive websites/broadcast SMS cannot have it both ways.

They cannot seek the protections of being "critical infrastructure" of any sort, common carrier, public forum, etc. and then, at the same time, disable user accounts for any reason just like any other private website.

They have to pick one or the other. The arguments I am seeing online are folks who have chosen one or the other and are arguing from their chosen perspective. For example, I am content to see them as just another handful of private websites, no matter how large they have become.

Meanwhile, the companies themselves, like Twitter, are content to bask in this ambiguity instead of clarifying what they are or intend to be.

EDIT:

Once the number of users has grown past a manageable threshhold where violations of rules can be detected by administrators (instead of relying on others to report them), it may cause some to wonder what are the reasons absent any legal or other compusion when a user's account is suspended.

Looking at the Twitter rules, the possible reasons this account may have been suspended, e.g., copyright violations, are not obvious. What is their justifcation for suspension. Some sources, e.g., The Verge, are reporting that this Twitter account was being used to solicit statements of support from academics to be used in some litigation in India that seeks to block access Sci-Hub in that country. Apparently the Indian court denied the initial request from publishers for an immediate decision in order to allow time for the scientific community to weigh in on the issue.

I hope someone is setting up another means for the scientific community to weigh in on the non-monetary value of Sci-Hub.

unityByFreedom9• 6 years ago

These massive websites/broadcast SMS cannot have it both ways. They cannot seek the protections of being "critical infrastructure" of any sort, common carrier, public forum, etc. and then, at the same time, disable user accounts for any reason just like any other private website.

It's never been proposed that platforms like Twitter become common carriers. That designation was intended for the layer beneath them, ISPs.

I agree that allowing that layer, ISPs, to effectively monopolize content via regional monopolies and ever-growing media conglomerates is problematic. Now they're implementing zero rating in broadband and that means there's a high bar for starting the next Netflix, Twitter etc. If you're not already part of that club you'll have to be super wealthy or take on huge debt from existing tech/wealth dominance just to get your foot in the door.

We really need to encourage competition at the ISP level in order to allow for competition among services like Twitter.

stjohnswarts2• 6 years ago

I can't agree. It's their platform and they can leave up what they like. When someone starts advocating violence, treason, assassination then they can shut down that account. Also in national emergencies (like our current one with right wing extremists) it is also justified. I don't want section 230 undone, it will do far more damage than good.

root_axis4• 6 years ago

Websites are not common carriers.

What is their justifcation for suspension.

I don't see why they should need a justification. Just because something is popular doesn't mean people should be entitled to it. It makes no sense that an arbitrary MAU count suddenly rescinds the property rights of the people who pay money to keep the servers running, as well as to develop and maintain the software. Further, I don't see any benefit to society in policies that might encourage social media use, and speaking economically when these large platforms boot people off it actually increases competition and decreases their dominance because it creates a market opportunity for competitors, exactly like what happened with Parler. Suddenly, nobody seems to care that a conservative competitor to AWS is getting a huge account, shouldn't that be pereceived as a good thing? Why are the people who get banned so insistent on using services they claim are inherently unfair to them? Why not support companies that share your values?

takeda7• 6 years ago

you are mixing up net neutrality and a platform.

Net Neutrality ensures that ISP do what the name says, providing Internet service without interfering with it, like restricting which sites you can visit.

A platform like twitter, facebook, parler. Is something that was created from scratch and is owned by these companies. As of now it's not their duty to allow everyone in. And enforcing it is stepping on their freedom.

Someone here or on reddit, suggested that perhaps the government supposed to provide such public platform. That's an interesting thought, because at that point I would agree that if such things would happen there such complaints would be justified.

raxxorrax• 6 years ago

Twitter wants to be relevant infrastructure and ironically Trump gave most way to that.

Personal opinion is that the best solution would be to dumb Twitter for any discussions, but especially political ones.

jb775• 6 years ago

Twitter doesn't care about any business dispute, we're simply watching them chip away at the foundations of capitalism to facilitate a move towards communism. In this latest example, they're doing their part to suppress research visibility. History doesn't repeat, but often rhymes:

Per historic Soviet communism playbook: all research, including natural sciences, was to be founded on the philosophy of dialectical materialism. Humanities and social sciences [research] were additionally tested for strict accordance with historical materialism.[1]

In other recent examples, I don't think anyone would argue they aren't actively doing their part to suppress free-speech (a requirement for communism). The most blatant and concerning to me is their amplification of discussion around topics that would facilitate the piece-by-piece dismantlement of America's democratic republic. Most recently, getting rid of the electoral college.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_technology_in_th...

trianglem• 6 years ago

They’re a private company they can do what they want. Are you against private enterprise?

perryizgr8• 6 years ago

Twitter is a private business and thus is free to decline to do business with any particular entity for any reason or without any reason. If sci-hub doesn't like it they can build their own twitter. There, I said it :)

dankboys• 6 years ago

They’re a private company, Sci-Hub has to make their own social media service

superkuh2• 6 years ago

Yes, that's a legit option. But it does not mean that what twitter has done here is not very, very wrong. So bad in fact that individual humans should reflect on it and decide if they want to continue supporting twitter themselves by using it.

This is the inevitable end of any popular centralized incorporated means of communication.

rcoveson3• 6 years ago

Can't host it with Google or Amazon, though, as those companies are also willing to take you down before any injunction.

DNS providers will also take you out if there's social pressure to do so; see the recent GoDaddy action against AR15.com. Not sure how you work around that.

As for Internet connection, there was another recent action by an ISP which blocked access to Twitter. So you're not necessarily safe with your ISP either.

I think the only story I haven't heard yet is a landlord evicting its tenants for hosting objectionable content. But without any of the above services, it doesn't really matter.

All that said, it's still possible to stay accessible even if your content isn't legal. The important point is that legal but broadly unacceptable content is never safe. You can be kicked out by any provider at any layer, and getting kicked out once serves as a signal to all the other providers at that layer that they are expected to do the same.

It's kind of like living in a small town 150 years ago. The "people" of the town are the few giant service providers in the country. It doesn't really matter what the law says, if the town consensus is that you are not welcome, then they can make it very hard or impossible to live there. They don't need law enforcement on their side, they'll run you out all the same.

generalizations• 6 years ago

I like that analogy.

Also read on here recently that it's super hard to knock facebook offline because they own all the pieces, even their own domain registrar. Now I've been wondering how hard it is to set up my own domain registrar.

unethical_ban• 6 years ago

This point is why I believe DNS, network and colo services should only be taken down (for content) by legal order.

Social media is layer 7, I think it needs less regulation in that regard. It's like saying "you can't have your business in the phone book" vs. "you can't have a phone".

mrguyorama• 6 years ago

It's kind of like living in a small town 150 years ago. The "people" of the town are the few giant service providers in the country. It doesn't really matter what the law says, if the town consensus is that you are not welcome, then they can make it very hard or impossible to live there.

And yet an entire town ostracizing someone for a non-protected attribute is actually protected speech and behavior under the first amendment. If you can't participate in polite society, there's very few things the government actually guarantees you.

Darmody• 6 years ago

And generate their own power for their own homemade servers.

Triv8883• 6 years ago

Twitter is a public company, no?

jolmg2• 6 years ago

To see the tweets:

https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://twitter.com/Sci_Hub

I should donate more to the Internet Archive. I hate how so much history can just disappear at a whim if it weren't for them.

TeMPOraL3• 6 years ago

How can you see Tweets there? When I try to open some past snapshots, they just render ajaxy "Something went wrong".

(I'm surprised Twitter is archivable in the first place, the whole thing being a pile of JS crap.)

jolmg2• 6 years ago

I see tweets here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20201225111818/https://twitter.c...

I use Chromium for this because on Firefox I have the Referer header disabled and that causes the WaybackMachine to return a 498 HTTP status on an internal API call, but otherwise I see no issues.

Images:

https://ibb.co/1mRqyvW

https://ibb.co/F8TbCLv

https://ibb.co/P1xZwZT

I'm surprised Twitter is archivable in the first place

I'm sure it must have taken some effort by the IA team, but Twitter is a pretty important source to archive, so I'm not as surprised because of that. They simply rock and can be expected of greatness.

The infinite scroll works, but zooming on images doesn't. That's a bit of a shame because Twitter clips them, and they can sometimes contain important content. Loading replies also doesn't work. Still way better than nothing.

userbinator• 6 years ago

I'm surprised Twitter is archivable in the first place, the whole thing being a pile of JS crap

Up until a few months ago, you could still get the old UI if you used a suitable UA header, and until more recently, the "plain HTML" mobile.twitter.com version was available.

But with those shutdown, they are definitely trying to make it hard to consume their content in anything other than their "approved" way, which makes one wonder...

abnry• 6 years ago

I don't support piracy. So I don't support Sci-hub. But I believe that publishers are bilking the public and that publicly funded research should be made freely available. The real way to fix this is to disrupt the reputational incentives academics (and deans supporting this) have to keep publishing in these journals. For some reason, I think this is an unpopular opinion on HN.

cwkoss2• 6 years ago

For most academic researchers, publishing is a net cost: they aren't getting royalties when people pay to read their work. "Piracy" of these documents does not deprive the creators of anything. The only entities it hurts are the organizations of questionable social value who exist by gatekeeping this information.

CryptoGhost• 6 years ago

No one is putting the proverbial gun to academic researchers heads to use these publishers.

HarryHirsch2• 6 years ago

I'd say it's the publishers who cause the problem and which need to be disrupted. When scientific societies ran most publishing, journal prices were quite reasonable.

BTW, you have to thank Robert Maxwell, father of Ghislaine Maxwell and friend of Jeff Epstein for the state of affairs: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-b...

natechols• 6 years ago

The only "disruption" required is for funding agencies, especially governments, to mandate immediate open access as a condition of grants. Milder approaches such as the NIH's current policy have been spectacularly successful, because nobody turns down that kind of money. The main problem has been intense lobbying by publishers, including some academic societies. But open access is not an issue where it should be difficult to assemble a large bipartisan coalition in favor, even in the US!

rcoveson3• 6 years ago

It's unpopular because that disruption hasn't happened yet, and there's no guarantee that it will happen in the next 50 years. In the mean time, the average American is stuck interacting with cutting edge research--research which is often funded publicly--via:

1. Shitty science journalism with paywalled citations

2. $300/yr textbooks

3. Crime

Intuitively, it's difficult to imagine something less copyrightable than a scientific discovery. The world is upside-down.

light_hue_1• 6 years ago

As a scientist I can tell you that Sci-hub is critical to the progress of humankind. I can't even describe how many times we rely on it and how much poorer the world would be without it.

Maybe you should reconsider your position on "piracy" if it would lead to a significant slowdown in solving the serious challenges that face us in the 21st century.

kumarsw• 6 years ago

There are legal avenues to do this. We already have Arxiv (admittedly not peer reviewed) and I believe that there are some open Wikipedia-style journals in the works as well.

jjk1664• 6 years ago

You should support piracy and especially Sci-hub. In bilking the public, the publishers restrict access to scientific knowledge. This restriction delays and limits progress. While any individual hinderance is minor, this is repeated millions of times over. The lost progress is lost to you, as much as to everyone else. How can anyone support parasites who hurt the whole of humanity and don't even have the decency to pay the scientists whose work they profit off? Piracy in this case is not only acceptable, it is a moral imperative.

dickbar• 6 years ago

This move is bold and refreshing. I think Facebook and Amazon should also be taking action (assuming sci hub is using AWS and people are posting links to it on FB and organizing groups).

It’s only fair that, in case of breach of any law, regardless of where it comes from, that same measures be applied in each and every case.

I’m sure HN would agree given what has transpired over the last week.

Edit: I missed to include CloudFlare and others as well. They shouldn’t be providing DNS services to anyone who is breaking any laws.

jokethrowaway• 6 years ago

They're private companies, they are not required to uphold the law.

We have police and courts which are paid to do that.

I can understand removing content that would make them liable in front of a court (as publishers) - anything else they remove it's censorship and I don't like it.

jenwkejnwjkef2• 6 years ago

Sci-hub is not breaking any laws. They are accused of breaking laws. Who gave Twitter, in your eyes, the power to act as a judge?

inglor_cz• 6 years ago

Judge, jury and executioner at the same time.

Robotbeat• 6 years ago

Copyright infringement (especially when arguably in the public interest, even if illegal) and inciting violence are not even close to comparable. Different moral universe. Different legal ramifications as well.

paul_f2• 6 years ago

I wish Facebook and Twitter would ban everything I don't like. That seems healthy.

atomashpolskiy• 6 years ago

It also shut down the account of the Russian-made vaccine Sputnik V today. Seems like they are taking too much upon themselves lately, aren't they?

UPD: Access has been restored.

sam_lowry_2• 6 years ago

I just googled it and could open it in Twitter.

tengbretson• 6 years ago

I'm not very familiar with Sci-Hub, but I doubt they were uploading pirated content to be hosted on Twitter, so what would their violation be? Incitement to commit copyright violation?

bondarchuk• 6 years ago

Ah yes and torrent sites don't host any content either :P

ska• 6 years ago

Not really the same thing unless they were linking to particular copyright works you could find elsewhere, is it?

cwkoss2• 6 years ago

In a just world, any organization which tries to prevent the free exchange of scientific information would be dismantled.

young_unixer• 6 years ago

100th reminder to stop using Twitter and to stop acting like it's an acceptable medium of communication.

specktr• 6 years ago

What’s your alternative method to reach a mass audience?

bob10292• 6 years ago

Produce something of actual intrinsic value and the word usually gets out on its own. Find smaller communities that are more focused on what you actually care about. Targeting the entire internet as your desired audience is the root cause of most of our troubles today.

gpanders2• 6 years ago

Is our collective imagination really so stunted that we cannot conceive of what the world was like before Twitter existed?

2OEH8eoCRo0• 6 years ago

Why does everyone feel the need to reach a mass audience?

pertymcpert• 6 years ago

Print a newsletter and mail it.

bArray• 6 years ago

I for one am glad that our new moral enforcers are keeping us safe from the possibility of free academic knowledge.

CobrastanJorji• 6 years ago

Moral and legal are different.

I think Sci-Hub is ethical. I'm under no illusions that this somehow makes it legal.

Sci-Hub explicitly bills itself as a "pirate website." Twitter's rules explicitly ban both copyright violation and illegal activities. Therefore Sci-Hub is violation of Twitter's rules.

Twitter may well be very selective in their enforcement, but the fact that Sci-Hub is violating Twitter's rules is not in doubt, is it?

garaetjjte• 6 years ago

Did Sci-Hub Twitter account shared copyrighted material actually?

orionblastar• 6 years ago

What about The Pirate Bay account? Should it be banned as well?

LdSGSgvupDV• 6 years ago

Plenty of derivative creation (ex: meme) probably has the copyright issue. Should twitter ban them all?

DyslexicAtheist• 6 years ago

they could sneak it in now because it'll get drowned out by all the other news, and the applause they get for "cracking down on nazis".

but neither are good news for free speech. I'm glad twitter purges alt-right and Q accounts but then why use it as an opportunity to also silence a platform that is the biggest hit since the first time a human rights lawyer uttered "Open Access".

pretty glad I left twitter in 2017. I still read twitter via other people's list (those I used to follow) and via searches on nitter. If you know a great list you still have doom scrolling. But the good thing: when I get too angry (or even too much in agreement with the OP), there is no way to share it with the world. This is both frustrating (in the moment), but literally has no downsides. It has never been once that I woke up the next morning regretting I hadn't already shared whatever my opinion was on literally any subject earlier.

The same platform shapes news today. Literally any subject there are weekly instances where a journo got their story through some "influencer or thought leader". Elon Musk tweeted about Signal and the number of downloads increase within 1 day five-fold. Story is in the NYT and international news. Twitter is a surreal place that shapes way too much the news-cycle in partisan ways. Everyone complains about news being divisive but forgetting where the division comes from - there is simply no way a leftist journalist will have many followers from the right and vice versa. It's been like this forever but twitter (and all of social media) amplified this a million fold. Blame journalism for sure but in the same sentence also damn these individuals requesting features that "drive engagement". How the actual F should an algorithm drive engagement when there is no way of really telling what that engagement will cause. Twitter judged from history has never done the right thing when it could have been up to them. They always waited until enough damage had been done to justify what should be "ongoing housekeeping".

[1] https://twitter.com/signalapp/status/1349577579091566592

jonplackett• 6 years ago

Meanwhile they’re still hosting all sorts of accounts of hackers, jail breakers and many people obviously breaking the law.

It’s a slippery slope and they’ve started slipping. Now how do you stop?

bob33212• 6 years ago

You can't, someone will always be complaining about "X didn't get banned, buy Y did".

The only solution is for Twitter to say "You all are right, our moderation policy isn't fair it leans to the left more than the right, but we think Twitter is a great product that provides a lot of value. If you disagree and want to leave, we understand"

dylan6042• 6 years ago

Which is ironic since it is the right that always wants to shut down things like art/film/music/etc that they object. The gaslighting is ridiculous.

dmitrygr• 6 years ago

Did you enjoy the party?

Everyone cheered Twitter when they started taking down accounts, sure that it would never affect them. Everyone ignored the warnings that it is a very slippery slope.

Well, after a fun party, the bill is due.

29athrowaway2• 6 years ago

It is likely not up to Twitter but rather DMCA related.

lucb1e• 6 years ago

Then wouldn't it say so?

noncoml• 6 years ago

Instead of arguing who, when and why should Twitter ban someone, we should be trying to find a way to stop depending on Twitter, FB and Google for our voices to be heard.

Banning Trump may seem like a good idea in vacuum, but it's a slippery slope. And before you say that the cases are different, my point is that it shouldn't be up to Twitter to decide.

By supporting Trump's ban, we support Twitter to be the arbitrator of free speech.

We either have to treat Twitter as a private company, they can do what even the fuck they want, and hence we shouldn't have any saying, or treat it a public utility in which case only a judge can decided who gets banned and who doesn't

We cannot have it both ways, based on what we thing suits better our believes at the time.

splistud4• 6 years ago

They are a public company (private in the sense I know you mean it) and should be treated as such.

They are a public company that publishes certain opinions by allowing individuals who are willing to espouse those opinions access, while not allowing others.

They are a public company that blocks other opinions from being heard (on other platforms) in association with other technology giants, by removing the ability for other private or public corps any access to meaningful internet services unless they do not stay in the opinion lanes the giants are comfortable with.

They are a public company that is using their position and status to shape public discourse in the United States, and they should absolutely be treated as such. Here's hoping.

Funes-• 6 years ago

It's funny. If a direct popular vote was held on making publicly-funded research freely available, it would pass by a staggering margin. Yet here we are, many easily-solvable issues ignored by government officials later, pretending representative democracy is a valid form of democracy.

swebs• 6 years ago

If a direct popular vote was held promising voters $100,000, it would also pass by a huge margin. Probably every year.

mandelken• 6 years ago

I doubt that. Giving out (free) money indiscriminately will not immediately pass a direct popular vote.

A good case is the Swiss referendum on universal basic income a few years ago that was voted out. And the Swiss have the money to pull it off if they wish.

at_a_remove2• 6 years ago

Twitter flexed, everyone flinched. Expecting more flexing is where I am. They say the slippery slope is a fallacy, but I am starting to think of that as a reflex saying when someone gets caught shoving the Overton Window.

guerrilla2• 6 years ago

Slippery slope is a fallacy when no evidence that the slope is actually slipper is presented. If someone were to, for example, highlight unchecked incentives Twitter has to further censor then that'd be a valid argument.

at_a_remove2• 6 years ago

Well, the incentive can be as tiny as "I don't like them." Recall Cloudflare's CEO waking up "in a bad mood."

koolk3ychain• 6 years ago

I hate that I have to preface this, but I'm a democrat who voted for Biden and doesn't question the outcome of the election. That said, our society does not need this kind of gerrymandering in our online discourse. People need to forget politics for a second and realize the true harm companies like this are inflicting by effectively playing god.

AnIdiotOnTheNet6• 6 years ago

I think the message of holding social media accountable for the harm it causes everybody is being drowned out by the hyperbolic statements like "effectively playing god".

They are not playing god. They own a platform, they are determining who can and cannot speak on that platform. That's the same thing every news paper, internet forum, email server, BBS, public bulletin board, or really any publishing of any kind has done since the invention of publishing.

Twitter is not part of the government, and it does not have a monopoly on internet communication. Hell, it doesn't even charge for its services. You are not entitled to use their platform.

If you are disgusted and disappointed in social media for their behavior, that's perfectly reasonable! There are things you can do about it! you can refuse to use their service, refuse to recommend it to friends, promote competitors, etc.

What you cannot do is pretend that just because they are a large wealthy organization you have some kind of right to use their platform to say whatever you want.

lliamander4• 6 years ago

You are not entitled to use a platform, but there are plenty of reasons why a platform may be liable for kicking you off.

There's the obvious case if they should discriminate against users based on a protected class.

Platforms have also been sued for things like tortuous interference and deceptive practices as a consequence of deplatforming users.

If a user engages in activity that is either clearly illegal or contrary to clear and sensible Terms of Service, removing them is obviously a fine and good thing.

Outside of those circumstances though, I would not take it as a given that there is no recourse if a user is deplatformed.

lovecg• 6 years ago

This is eyebrow raising but hardly the news to lose any sleep over. If for example Google were to unilaterally purge sci-hub from its search results (for “greater good”, not as a result of however questionable but legal-at-this-point takedown request) that would be a serious escalation.

oytis• 6 years ago

Really, why can't US and/or EU government allocate a modest sum from the budget to establish public journals and solve the problem forever. This system seems so obviously broken.

2ion• 6 years ago

Who cares about Twitter anymore? Telegram has more active users than this minor blogspam outlet :)

djrogers• 6 years ago

And yet there are still accounts for torrent sites (@tpb is alive and well last I heard) and other sites that allow for the distribution of copyrighted material.

Something is fishy here, and I really really really don't see the motivation for Twitter to have done this by itself. If this were part of a sweeping crackdown on accounts that promote 'piracy' it'd make sense, but it's not.

Feels more like "a board member has a friend who made a phone call" kind of thing.

Triv8883• 6 years ago

Yeah they really pick and choose what they ban based on "personal opinion".

brutal_chaos_2• 6 years ago

Twitter is helping the argument that platforms are to be content moderators. This kills 230. This will entrench Twitter as one of the few social media services capable, due to the need to moderate at scale.

vlmutolo• 6 years ago

It’s funny — I found this link a few days ago and now it seems like it applies here.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...

It’s a summary of how section 230 works and is worded. The tone of the piece is overly hash and critical of its readers (prompting me unnecessarily to write this paragraph), but it raises some good points, and I was surprised by more than one of the clarifications it made.

Basically, as it applies here, I don’t think Twitter moderating its content to remove SciHub goes against Section 230. My understanding is that it’s specifically covered by 230.

adolph2• 6 years ago

I'm not saying the article is totally wrong, but at least one of the studies they linked to is Internet industry funded (NetChoice: "Described by Politico as tech's most aggressive lobbying presence in Washington D.C."), and authored by one "Michael Masnick" which is the same name as the author of the Techdirt article and also the name of Techdirt's founder.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techdirt

So, until something is litigated to the point of SCOTUS precedent, I think most things are at the level of "that's just like, your opinion, man."

guerrilla2• 6 years ago

Creating a giant barrier to entry for competition?

brutal_chaos_2• 6 years ago

Yes, because of the tooling that will be an upfront requirement and cost.

However, as pointed out elsewhere, much litigation is still needed to really understand the extent of 230 and thus, "this is like my own opinion, man."

1337biz• 6 years ago

Great, we need more of that!

With politicans it is easy to hide behind partisan idealogy to justify that everything is fine.

The more regular, relatively apolitical accounts are getting banned, the more people realize that something is wrong with the way Twitter acts.

49531• 6 years ago

I think the general discourse around high profile account banning raises some interesting questions. I've seen a lot of people in my (generally liberal) social bubble carry the line that Twitter, as a private corporation, has the right to ban accounts for whatever reason they see fit. While technically this is true, should it be? Is there a threshold where a service becomes more of a public good than a private enterprise? I think a lot of us would argue that making ISPs into publicly owned utilities would be beneficial for users.

I think perhaps a legislative approach to monopoly should be nationalizing rather than breaking up. Monopolies can be valuable for consumers if their claws are trimmed.

bob10292• 6 years ago

Monopolies are wonderful if used responsibly. Having 1 standard way to do something across the board can solve entire universes of problems. Interstate highway system, electrical grid, internet, etc. all fall very cleanly into that bucket.

Splitting up a technology company like Amazon or Google would probably just make matters worse over the long haul. Instead of 1 obvious regulatory target you would wind up with several and this creates more shadowy areas for perverse incentives to grow like mold. Just look at how splitting up ATT has played out. It ultimately re-aggregated into more-or-less the same monster but with even more power and influence than in the 80s. If ATT would have been nationalized instead of split up, I'd have a hard time believing we wouldn't have better internet access on average today.

bgilroy262• 6 years ago

Interstate highway system, electrical grid, internet, etc. all fall very cleanly into that bucket

Insurance is another highly networked product that benefits from monopoly

The insurance companies of the 19th and 20th centuries were boons to society because their local buckets of money could be invested in local businesses and spent (practically as a donation) on advertising at the minor league baseball diamond or the church bulletin

The sooner we mitigate the loss of those good effects, the sooner We can benefit from the efficiency of insurance monopolies whose risk pools will be as large as is practicable rather than driven by historical accidents

Triv8883• 6 years ago

They should start with nationalizing the ISPs?

gpanders2• 6 years ago

What would a nationalized, public version of Twitter even look like? Every citizen is granted and guaranteed the right to spew their vitriol publicly where everyone can see it?

I agree with you about ISPs, but I don't see the sense in the argument that I keep seeing about designating social media as a utility or public good. What would that even mean?

Twitter continues to shore up ill will from all sides of the political spectrum. Mastodon, Matrix, and other decentralized, federated communication platforms are increasingly in a good position to put themselves forward as the actual solution to this problem.

hetspookjee• 6 years ago

Iirc Twitter was really close to going down before Trump's election brought it back to life. I'm guessing Twitter will be back to that state in some time.

thordenmark• 6 years ago

Due to Twitter's impact on society, not just the US but the world, they are de facto the public square.

Not unlike the Gutenberg Press - and when you read about the impact that had at first on society the parallels are remarkable.

The defense of "they're a private company and can ban who they want" becomes less and less convincing.

dragonwriter2• 6 years ago

Due to Twitter’s impact on society, not just the US but the world, they are de facto the public square.

I disagree, they are more like an automatically customized newspaper.

Not unlike the Gutenberg Press

Agreed, not unlike the Gutenberg Press. Books and newspapers also are not “the public square”, and we don’t allow people to commandeer presses to get their message out against the will of the onwers of presses.

We did something loosely like that with the public airwaves, via the Fairness Doctrine, but its worth noting that the same ideological faction who not only objected to that as a totalitarian infringement of the First Amendment at the time, but who used the spector that kind of thing on the Internet (even though the actual rules they were opposing proposed nothing of the kind) as an argument against Open Internet regulations up through, well, the debate over the desirability of Net Neutrality that is still active, are exactly the faction—often the same individuals—complaining that private actors are choosing not to relay their speech today.

737min• 6 years ago

This really seems like an overreaction that is overshadowed by weightier events. Hope they reconsider..

layoutIfNeeded• 6 years ago

They’ll move over to Parlor I guess.

CapitalistCartr• 6 years ago

GoDaddy booted AR15.com, it's becoming clear the FAANG companies are flexing their power. If you're not on the corporate approved list, get across the tracks. I'm appalled at the extremist stuff, such as Parler hosted, but this path is lined with primroses.

spothedog1• 6 years ago

GoDaddy is a FAANG?

selectout• 6 years ago

Flywheel A2 AccuWeb Nexcess GoDaddy

kgin• 6 years ago

It is very surprising to see this happen without an order from a court or law enforcement.

Traubenfuchs• 6 years ago

This is the world the fools who cheered when Trump was banned from twitter and when parler was banned from all clouds desired.

Twitter shuts down account of Sci-Hub

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