general Trolling and Censorship, could it go to far?

[Xylosian 140]

After years of provocation, Twitter has permanently banned Milo Yiannopoulos from its service.

 

Yiannopoulos, who currently serves as Breitbart.com’s tech editor, has been hailed as a voice of the new “alt-right” movement. As such, he has made a living as a provocateur, continually inflaming tensions between progressive branches of the internet focused on identity politics and the fervently anti-PC segment that constantly trolls it. For years, Yiannopoulous has used Twitter not only to voice his controversial opinions, but to direct his legion of followers (388,042 at the time of this writing) toward his opponents. As a result, he’s been temporarily banned from Twitter a number of times for violating its terms of service and stripped of his verification.

 

But this week he went far. According to Twitter, it was Yiannopoulos who led theharassment campaign against Ghostbusters actor Leslie Jones that inspired the SNL cast member’s decision to leave Twitter. The tweets, many of which targeted Jones for being black and a woman, were the final straw for Twitter, which is taking steps to try to solve its harassment problem.

 

According to the company, the permanent suspension isn’t a matter of speech as much as a matter of behavior — specifically, a violation of Twitter’s rules regarding the targeted abuse of specific users.

 

Here’s the statement, according to a Twitter spokesperson:

 

People should be able to express diverse opinions and beliefs on Twitter. But no one deserves to be subjected to targeted abuse online, and our rules prohibit inciting or engaging in the targeted abuse or harassment of others. Over the past 48 hours in particular, we’ve seen an uptick in the number of accounts violating these policies and have taken enforcement actions against these accounts, ranging from warnings that also require the deletion of Tweets violating our policies to permanent suspension.

We know many people believe we have not done enough to curb this type of behavior on Twitter. We agree. We are continuing to invest heavily in improving our tools and enforcement systems to better allow us to identify and take faster action on abuse as it’s happening and prevent repeat offenders. We have been in the process of reviewing our hateful conduct policy to prohibit additional types of abusive behavior and allow more types of reporting, with the goal of reducing the burden on the person being targeted. We’ll provide more details on those changes in the coming weeks.

 

Yiannopoulos was not available for comment at the time of publication.

 

Buzzfeed

 

Recently an alt-right journalist and tech editor of Brietbart, one named Milo Yiannopoulos, had his Twitter account permanently suspended off Twitter during a conflict with actress Leslie Jones. This isn't the first time Milo has been banned from Twitter as he did back in June, but they reinstated his account a couple days later. Milo is known for his inflammatory behavior on Twitter, which in certain tweets they would go beyond just breaking a couple rules on Twitter. Now there's a lot of info about what happened between Mr. Milo and Ms. Jones, but there's a really good video about the situation made by Paul Joseph Watson who can explain it better than I can.

 

Now the argument being made now about the current status of twitter is free speech and who are they really targeting.

 

 

I find it funny how certain groups of people are able to say obscene things on the same level if not worse than Milo, yet Twitter does nothing about it. Why is that?

 

I would compare this to another incident of criticizing someone on the internet, only to end up having your account taken down. But this time it isn't someone, it was company. A youtuber called InfiniteElgintensity (Elgin Mones) who's known for "critiquing and trolling "bro scientists" ("Exercises in Futility") and ego lifters ("Gym Idiots") to raise awareness about bullshit in the fitness industry.", (excerpt from his about page). He had his entire youtube channel shutdown for criticizing the fitness regimen Crossfit for it's poor form, bizarre exercises, etc. 2 years ago, many of his videos had received copyright strikes from Crossfit on his account in a attempt to silence Elgin, which ultimately led do the shut down of his channel. Ever since then Elgin has his account back up and running again, and contiunes to poke fun and rustle the jimmies of egolifters and Crossfitters. First Source Second Source Elgin's Channel

Was it something he said?

 

Whether or not you find Elgintensity's type of humor genuinely funny or offensive, or Milo's obscene behavior and antics abusive, mean-spirited, cruel, etc. What is your take on this folks? Was twitter in the right to permanently suspend Milo from Twitter, while others are able to pull of the same thing but haven't had the banhammer been brought upon them. 

Edited July 22, 2016 by Xylosian

[Dark Qiviut 22,431]

I don't know about the others, but Milo absolutely deserves to be banned from Twitter. He had a history of being warned by Twitter for violations before, including losing the verification checkmark as punishment. The last violation (initiating and encouraging sexist and racist attacks on Leslie Jones of Ghostbusters 2016) is the nail in the coffin. Milo's disgusting trolling created a threat of Jones's safety and security, and that has no business ANYWHERE, much less on social media.

 

Milo was bad rubbish on Twitter. Good riddance!

[Scrubbed user 3,416]

I wouldn't consider it to be censorship when someone as abusive as Milo is banned from a website. The 1st amendment in the US constitution give the right to freedom of speech, but Twitter is not part of the US government, and they can do as they see fit, as they should.

[honk friend 1,978]

i don't like milo and i absolutely do think he deserved his ban if he was guilty of inciting harassment, but it's slimy as fuck of twitter to block the #freemilo hashtag from trending.

I wouldn't consider it to be censorship when someone as abusive as Milo is banned from a website. The 1st amendment in the US constitution give the right to freedom of speech, but Twitter is not part of the US government, and they can do as they see fit, as they should.

 

I don't have any problem with this idea, but it's why twitter and every other major social media outlet need competition. If twitter is involved in any slimy behavior and I don't want to use their website, what else am I gonna use?

Edited July 22, 2016 by Rowlet

[Shanks 10,816]

I wouldn't consider it to be censorship when someone as abusive as Milo is banned from a website. The 1st amendment in the US constitution give the right to freedom of speech, but Twitter is not part of the US government, and they can do as they see fit, as they should.

Normally I would agree but the problem is Twitter and other social media sites are in bed with the CIA and other government agencies, once this happens this argument falls apart because it sets a dangerous precedent where the government gets an increased stranglehold of media and therefore free speech. In the case of Twitter the OP is correct that Twitter as well as other social media sites have a profound double standard when it comes to abusive behavior. They will often look the other way if SJW's, Black Lives Matter and other left wingers are committing actual abusive behavior but many conservative or libertarians have the book thrown at them often for little more than simple disagreements. I don't think Milo deserved this ban because he didn't harass anyone at least not by any reasonable standard, there were some others involved that unfortunetely did harass the person Milo supposedly did though. Sargon of Akkad did a decent analysis on this recently. He calls for Milo's account to be reinstated, yet also calls out bad behavior that some involved have in fact actually done that would be much more warranted for the ban hammer.

 

 

The far left hates Milo because he is a gay guy who hasn't let them control him. There are several things he says I don't agree with, but I respect him for being a champion of free speech and expression.