Announcing the Twitter Trust & Safety Council

[snoopdoggydog]

On Twitter, every voice has the power to shape the world. We see this power every day, from activists who use Twitter to mobilize citizens to content creators who use Twitter to shape opinion.

To ensure people can continue to express themselves freely and safely on Twitter, we must provide more tools and policies. With hundreds of millions of Tweets sent per day, the volume of content on Twitter is massive, which makes it extraordinarily complex to strike the right balance between fighting abuse and speaking truth to power. It requires a multi-layered approach where each of our 320 million users has a part to play, as do the community of experts working for safety and free expression.

That’s why we are announcing the formation of the Twitter Trust & Safety Council, a new and foundational part of our strategy to ensure that people feel safe expressing themselves on Twitter...

https://blog.twitter.com/2016/announcing-the-twitter-trust-safety-council

https://about.twitter.com/safety/council

 

[zippy]

On Twitter, every voice has the power to shape the world

Do people really believe that rubbish ?

 

[noxibox]

speaking truth to power

Whose power? The power of a small vocal group to shut down debate and free speech?

 

[HDS]

TL: DR A council to censor any non-PC viewpoints.

 

[NarrowBandFtw]

And so a new era dawns as the ministry of truth finally gives birth to newspeak ...

 

[RaptorSA]

"On Twitter, every voice has the power to shape the world"

Riiiight, actually, taking a physical putrid steamy dump in a bucket makes way more actual difference to the world

 

[Knyro]

Do people really believe that rubbish ?

"On Twitter, every voice has the power to shape the world"

Riiiight, actually, taking a physical putrid steamy dump in a bucket makes way more actual difference to the world

You two are being seriously naive. How many people have been fired because of twitter? How many major movements have been spawned and propagated there? Twitter and Facebook have brought things like the soapbox and public shaming into the 21st century, with serious, real-world consequences. Even politicians take advantage of the power of social media.

Social networking allows ideas and values to spread like wild fire, these are the seeds for overall cultural change, instead of the change taking decades/centuries they'll happen much quicker now.

 

[OrbitalDawn]

You two are being seriously naive. How many people have been fired because of twitter? How many major movements have been spawned and propagated there? Twitter and Facebook brought things like the soapbox and public shaming into the 21st century, with serious consequences.

Social networking allows ideas and values to spread like wild fire, these are the seeds for overall cultural change, instead of the change taking decades/centuries they'll happen much quicker now.

And stuff like the Arab Spring, EuroMaidan protests etc.

 

[OrbitalDawn]

Whose power? The power of a small vocal group to shut down debate and free speech?

TL: DR A council to censor any non-PC viewpoints.

And so a new era dawns as the ministry of truth finally gives birth to newspeak ...

lol @ the molehill mountaineering.

> Private company takes steps to stop abuse on its platform
> ERMAHGERD 1984! Censorship!

 

[NarrowBandFtw]

lol @ the molehill mountaineering.

> Private company takes steps to stop abuse on its platform
> ERMAHGERD 1984! Censorship!

Did you say the same about the possibility of private companies breaking privacy laws to comply with orders from the NSA before Snowden laid it all bare?

It doesn't take much to see it is a slippery slope, hell even here on MyBB I've seen people shout censorship as mods remove relatively tame posts. Who guards the guards? Now increase MyBB about a million-fold and imagine how many diverse opinions are now being "moderated" by a select few, do you seriously doubt some valid opinions will effectively be censored simply because they don't fit the views of the one with the ban hammer?

 

[RaptorSA]

You two are being seriously naive. How many people have been fired because of twitter? How many major movements have been spawned and propagated there? Twitter and Facebook have brought things like the soapbox and public shaming into the 21st century, with serious, real-world consequences. Even politicians take advantage of the power of social media.

Social networking allows ideas and values to spread like wild fire, these are the seeds for overall cultural change, instead of the change taking decades/centuries they'll happen much quicker now.

So far the "change" I've seen coming from the likes of Twitter etc. have all been about as facile as the mentality of people who take words way too seriously.

Social media tends to give voices to people who shouldn't have one.... as Hitchens used to say: “Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay.”

 

[HDS]

lol @ the molehill mountaineering.

> Private company takes steps to stop abuse on its platform
> ERMAHGERD 1984! Censorship!

Look at the council members. GLAAD, dangerous speech, femfreq. So please, this has ****all to do with abuse and everything to do with trying to curb criticism.

 

[Knyro]

So far the "change" I've seen coming from the likes of Twitter etc. have all been about as facile as the mentality of people who take words way too seriously.

There was nothing facile about the Arab Spring. Social media was a big part of the Obama campaign, in a time when a black US president was near unthinkable.

Even now in SA just look at the fallout kicked off by the Penny Sparrow debacle. It pretty much killed the momentum #ZumaMustFall was gaining, and even that started on social media.

Social media tends to give voices to people who shouldn't have one.... as Hitchens used to say: “Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay.”

On that we can agree, but even if they shouldn't have a voice you can't ignore the real-world effects.

 

[OrbitalDawn]

Did you say the same about the possibility of private companies breaking privacy laws to comply with orders from the NSA before Snowden laid it all bare?

Relevance?

Is Twitter breaking the law en masse?

It doesn't take much to see it is a slippery slope, hell even here on MyBB I've seen people shout censorship as mods remove relatively tame posts. Who guards the guards? Now increase MyBB about a million-fold and imagine how many diverse opinions are now being "moderated" by a select few, do you seriously doubt some valid opinions will effectively be censored simply because they don't fit the views of the one with the ban hammer?

I don't see how it is, and the chicken littles aren't doing much to present that case.

Twitter has no obligation to provide anyone a platform for abuse, which is unfortunately a large problem for any social media platform. If you feel that they're censoring things they shouldn't be you're welcome to not use the service and make that point.

 

[NarrowBandFtw]

Relevance?

Relevance being it would help me understand if you were previously so quick to consider something absurd that has subsequently been proven to be a fact it may explain why you are so quick now to state calls of censorship are absurd. (if that is what you did, that is how I read it)

Twitter has no obligation to provide anyone a platform for abuse, which is unfortunately a large problem for any social media platform. If you feel that they're censoring things they shouldn't be you're welcome to not use the service and make that point.

Absolutely agreed on all of this, Twitter should however expect to be called out on lying to its already shrinking userbase, I don't believe for a single second this measure is about "trust & safety", but rather it is about covering their own a$$ess from any potential backlash from the PC brigade.

They would still be well within their rights to take this action if covering their a$$ess is indeed the intent, no problem there, I just do not appreciate being lied to.

 

[RaptorSA]

On that we can agree, but even if they shouldn't have a voice you can't ignore the real-world effects.

I'm not ignoring them, I'm very much annoyed by most of these "effects".
Unfortunately, it seems that social media spreads stupid way more efficiently than the internet used to spread information

 

[OrbitalDawn]

Look at the council members. GLAAD, dangerous speech, femfreq. So please, this has ****all to do with abuse and everything to do with trying to curb criticism.

And many, many others, including

Bit of a red flag for me to put groups that are likely to get online abuse on the council. Can't have the ref playing the game, so to speak.

But by all means, boycott Twitter if you feel they're censoring criticism.

/shrug

 

[OrbitalDawn]

Relevance being it would help me understand if you were previously so quick to consider something absurd that has subsequently been proven to be a fact it may explain why you are so quick now to state calls of censorship are absurd. (if that is what you did, that is how I read it)

Well, that was never a particularly far-out claim, considering the kind of technology we're talking.

I also don't think Twitter would get away with censorship very easily. Tweets don't really disappear, ever.

There's even a website dedicated to politicians' deleted tweets:

http://politwoops.sunlightfoundation.com/

Absolutely agreed on all of this, Twitter should however expect to be called out on lying to its already shrinking userbase, I don't believe for a single second this measure is about "trust & safety", but rather it is about covering their own a$$ess from any potential backlash from the PC brigade.

They would still be well within their rights to take this action if covering their a$$ess is indeed the intent, no problem there, I just do not appreciate being lied to.

I don't think it's an either/or situation. There's a commercial benefit behind a move like this, anyway. Many users were moving away from the platform because they felt abuse wasn't taken seriously enough by Twitter. It's something of a blight of social media/the internet generally. So by addressing it more forcefully they're trying to keep their client base happy.

They're taking a calculated risk that the users (including very influential people) they will keep or draw will be more valuable than the people who get stopped from dishing out abuse or those who boycott because they perceive it to be censorship.

 

[zippy]

Posted on twitter that I took a dump after lunch. The world will never be the same

 

[HDS]

And many, many others, including

Bit of a red flag for me to put groups that are likely to get online abuse on the council. Can't have the ref playing the game, so to speak.

But by all means, boycott Twitter if you feel they're censoring criticism.

/shrug

Including? Your sentence was cut off. I don't use twitter, snot going to boycott what I don't use .