The author doesn't really propose a solution other than Twitter essentially siding with him and take (what appears to me to be) a political stance. Of course moderating political topics isn’t outside Twitter’s wheelhouse, but this is what you get as a society when you let arbitrary entities arbitrate speech: ambiguity and unclear expectations.

On the one hand, it’s reasonable for the author to expect that Twitter removes clear misinformation from their platform since that’s what they purportedly claim to do. On the other hand doing so would go against a national narrative and piss off lots of Pakistanis. Uh oh.

Maybe Twitter was never about being arbiters of facts and instead just pandering to the popular political narrative of the time? Or maybe they are objective and they’re just trying their best and we’re all human and we’ll do better next time? Regardless, this is the reason people get so frustrated with censorship: it cannot be applied objectively and fairly in every case.

Twitter and social commentary aside: sounds like the author needs political asylum or at least real protection. Twitter is not the right entity to depend on to handle this situation, I fear.

It's a narrative that could get one side kidnapped, tortured, imprisoned for years and potentially killed.

I've seen previous incidents where Facebook and other platforms were nightmare fuel for locals and the platform didn't even have moderators who spoke the local language for purposes of reviewing the issue.

These platforms are thrilled to get millions of new users in various countries then wash their hands of the consequences to those users and their real lives. I don't think criticism of this fact is unreasonable. Locals just want a fair shake similar to what Westerners get in such cases.

I get why this guy wants more, and I can understand the perspective that Twitter has to take into account the context of local countries and which kinds of speech might be dangerous. But can Twitter really adopt an explicit corporate policy that Pakistan isn't allowed to have as much free speech as the rest of the world because it's too violent?

Not all speech is free speech. In the US, there are limitations, such as harmful or offensive content, and this includes speech that is both false and dangerous.

This is not a free speech issue. The OP is being stalked. Fundamentally, stalking is a threat of injury or death, as well as unwanted surveillance by an individual or group, and stalking behavior includes precisely this type of harassment. The OP's life is in obvious danger. This is a criminal issue.

If the OP is in the US, I'd recommend researching how to request political asylum.

Unsolicited advice to all: stay off of any social media unless it includes anonymity. Protect your identity. In the US, only two things can happen to you by participating in non-anonymous social media:

#1) nothing

#2) you get fired

Pakistan has raised the stakes and turned #2 into "you get abducted and killed."

Fuck Twitter. What a shitty platform. If I wanted to effect political change in a third world country, I would found a secret society, secretly install a printing press somewhere, and run it 24/7. That is how you kill fascists.

Again, I do understand that the stakes are higher in the kind of country where people are routinely lynched for blasphemy. But I don't think it's a lack of cultural sensitivity or some blindness to consequences that stops Twitter from applying different standards here! Most Pakistanis would not, I think, appreciate being told that because they live in the wrong country Twitter won't let them speak so freely.

No. I'm the one who said he is being stalked.

> In Pakistan, activists and journalists are routinely picked up (abducted) and tortured by the country's police and secret services. Same happened this time, some of the top journalists and anchors were picked up - some without warrants with fake cases filed post-arrest. Some of these journalists remain under custody till date. These journalists, according to reports, have been stripped and tortured under custody.

> The current Minister for Planning and Development falsely accused me of inciting violence, probably in the hopes of building a false case and narrative against me, when I had only called for people to question their politicians. These people were showing their frustration because I was out of their reach and could not be abducted for the time being. What came from the Minister was maybe an exaggeration or a veiled threat, but what started happening after was more insidious. To start off their harassment campaign against me,

He is definitely being threatened and stalked. It's the abuse of the parody account to defame the OP. That would be all fine and good if not for the regular disappearing of Pakistani journalists and protesters. If anything like this happened in the US, let's say the KKK started disappearing journalists and protesters, once that kind of environment existed, any sort of online shenanigans spotlighting private individuals, slandering and defaming them, if it regularly happened to the disappeared before they disappeared, then it would be a very big deal, investigated, prosecuted, with felonies and significant jail time delivered, even without that particular victim being kidnapped or murdered.

If social medias don't want to sweat the small stuff -- accountability for being the disease vector for genocide, pogroms, and personal vendettas -- then they shouldn't operate in that capacity.

I agree the author’s criticism is fair. My point was a reminder that the expectations here may not live up to reality and it might be best to seek other help. Even if Twitter removes this misinformation, the author will not be safe and will likely, if the story is to be believed, be detained and tortured the minute they step onto Pakistani soil, sadly. I think the reminder that “Twitter can’t make you safe” is a fair and practical one too, despite whether it should have to be that way or not.

To some extent they do see themselves as arbiters of truth, you can get auto-banned if you make a tweet and their AI thinks you're spreading falsehoods about COVID or the 2020 US presidential election. It actually happened to me last year over a completely benign joke and i had to wait about six weeks for a mod to get around to reviewing my appeal before i was allowed back on.

If they really cared about protecting middle-eastern activists they could add "israeli spy" to their list of phrases that get you auto-banned.

Unless you recognize this, and accept that you don’t always get everything you want, then you may be living in a dangerous delusion.

You don’t want to leave Pakistan, and you also presumably don’t want to compromise your principles, and you also want to not be killed for your journalism… perhaps it is wise to consider whether you can realistically have all of these things you want, when the truth is you probably can’t.

All that being said, I don’t fault you for wanting Twitter to do more. But for your own well being you should not consider that the only angle you need to work on here.

My read is that he's in New York, but has family still in Pakistan.

Good point but but he apparently does not even want the relative safety of being able to stay away from Pakistan. We all have family in various places, that’s a given. He could also try to get them out.

Making Pakistan safe for free speech seems beyond optimistic for now.

"Making Twitter safe will not make you safe. It would absolutely be great if Twitter could do more, but the true issue lies elsewhere."

Along with the rest of the reply, this is some 100% GRADE A cynicism right here.

To this cynicism - clearly there's a danger to a named journalist just from the 'offended' party reading the product of their journalism (in this case Twitter posts or posts they distribute via Twitter posts), but if as the OP suggests, the government is using Twitter to produce an erroneous record and public justification for extra-judicial violence against journalists and political foes, and that without this ability to use Twitter to manipulate the narrative surrounding an individual target, they would not be as emboldened to perpetrate the violence against that individual, then the use of Twitter by the harassing party here is clearly enabling violence, moving the risk from a general threat to a political journalist's safety to a clear and present danger to the individual.

Waving proverbial hands at this by noting that journalism can be dangerous if the party that doesn't like it can see your journalism, and therefore, promoting, distributing, or publishing it via Twitter isn't Twitter's problem because the threat arises from the the distribution in general, not the medium, ignores the role the author suggests Twitter plays in the manipulation of the public sentiment towards targeted individuals for the purpose of eliminating a critical level of moral outrage that exists as potential blowback and might otherwise provide some degree of safe cover and prevent the extra-judicial violence the 'aggrieved' wish to subject the target to.

Aslo: I'm surprised Twitter doesn't have rules that restrict the use of "parody" accounts against non-verified (or non-verfiable) accounts. I can't imagine that Twitter in the US hasn't previously been confronted with this issue by high-schoolers bullying and or cyber-stalking peers on Twitter with anonymous "parody" accounts.

Back to the cynicism: "Unless you recognize this, and accept that you don’t always get everything you want, then you may be living in a dangerous delusion.

You don’t want to leave Pakistan, and you also presumably don’t want to compromise your principles, and you also want to not be killed for your journalism… perhaps it is wise to consider whether you can realistically have all of these things you want, when the truth is you probably can’t.

All that being said, I don’t fault you for wanting Twitter to do more. But for your own well being you should not consider that the only angle you need to work on here."

What couldn't this be applied to? Think you're child's school bus operator is being negligent by not installing seat belts? Sure, you complaining might help, but the real fault lies with you for letting her get on the bus.

Think the coal mine you work for is shirking their safety responsibilities? Sure, you can complain, but the real problem is you bring willing to go down that mine.

Think too many 737-Maxes are falling out of the sky? Go ahead and complain, but the real fault is yours for flying.

Danger is just standing over here swinging it's arms (and maybe moving around when you aren't looking), it's not dangers' fault of you get in it's way.

I mostly agree. You have a very good point and make it well.

Especially the part about how a better set of Twitter policies and enforcement against this kind of targeting could help to provide cover for hard hitting journalism and thereby contribute to positive impact by that journalism, helping change things for the better.

Fair enough, although then they could also ban Twitter as some countries do.

My main point was that aside from anything Twitter should do, he should also protect himself. The same point is valid in any of the other examples you listed. I won’t fly on a 737 MAX. I’m not going to work in a coal mine. Etc. Of course I will take some worthwhile risks, each one decided in context. All of us do.

Yes it would be good and helpful not just to this guy but to all journalism and to the general public who benefit from light being shone on stuff, for journalists, or anyone for that matter, to be shielded from this kind of nonsense. Even though it may be easier said than done, Twitter should try to do it to the extent that is workable.

They have lots of rules preventing an individual from harassing others. They don’t seem to have rules preventing an entire system of ideologically corrupt people from targeting a person who wants to call out corruption. Again it’s hard though, algorithmically and at scale.

In the meantime he should take steps to get free from that place.

> Danger is just standing over here swinging it's arms (and maybe moving around when you aren't looking), it's not dangers' fault of you get in it's way.

Absolutely. Of course if an unreasonable danger is intentionally or irresponsibly created by people, then those people are at fault, but the general situation in life is you don’t go around walking off buildings and wondering why there is no safety net. Yeah safety nets are great but they are not always practical. At scale, this safety net on Twitter is tremendously hard to do, although maybe they should make a special effort for problematic situations like zealotry and corruption.

1) You claim these are verifiable lies. From your perspective that is the case as (unless you're a programmed sleeper agent) you're in position to know the truth about whether you're an agent of some foreign government or not. However, from a neutral or 3rd party perspective, this seems a bit like a he-said/she-said kind of case. And from your perspective, disproving this would be hard as you'd seem to have to prove a negative "I'm not an agent" claim, which is kind of hard to do.

2) A personal opinion, but it would probably be very helpful to your case if you can make a clear, bullet-point list of the alleged verifiable lies, who told them and their position in the Pakistani government, and your rebuttal to their claim. I read your piece and checked out your links, but these are all buried under a wall of text that many people won't have the attention span to process given the format.

3) One of the problems with Twitter is that they try and involve themselves in really tough subjective cases of truthiness. I'm not sure that Twitter trying to fact-check and remove what you believe are lies would be the best outcome here. If I were to give a suggestion to Twitter on how to handle this, the best thing Twitter could probably do would be to either temporarily verify him, or create some kind of temporary "At Risk" badge given to a limited number of people in dicy situations like this to bring attention to their cause so they can't be summarily disappeared without a trial.

4) To any journalists reading this, I hope Waqas' story gives you a renewed appreciation for not trusting government claims at face value. Whether his story is true or not, many journalists seem to too often rush to print government claims about anything and everything as gospel. A journalists' job isn't to be a tape recorder for government officials and merely print their quotes, you've got to dive into the background of their claims and consider the other side. If government officials claim X is a foreign agent, you should consider every angle and claim.

It sounds like you believe you're in real danger. If so, you have bigger problems.

You mention the comedian and the journalist, and you try to paint this as a giant conspiracy. But what you've laid out in the article seems like it could easily just be people being morons and taking the government's word for everything.

You also don't even mention what you want Twitter to actually do.

Are they supposed to ban those accounts? Are they supposed to label those Tweets as untrue?

While this sounds like an improvement - and probably what they should do - I don't see how this actually helps with your larger problem of potential life and death...

Your life is still in danger. You haven't changed that situation. You still need to either flee or make plans for your sudden passing.

The platform allows speech amplification. It used to be that lies could run around the world before the truth could get its boots on. Social apps now make this orders of magniture worse...

Rather than moderating content, Twitter could add systems that automatically tame virality (hide a post for n minutes after x retweets/impressions), with bias against new accounts.

I will say that your framing is one that most Westerners will have trouble taking seriously.

It might go over better to document known cases where this pattern occurred and show the similarities. Walk people through it like they are five, so to speak.

I know it's hard to do that kind of objective writing when you are feeling so threatened due to genuine threats, but in my experience that approach works better.

I know you didn't ask for advice. I apologize for my bad habit of trying to be helpful in the only way I know how.

I hope something improves soon.

I don't mean this as an insult against the author, because of course Americans don't have to fear being kidnapped or tortured over it! But I don't think it's right to see this as some kind of hypocrisy.

Sometimes it's different people making the complaints, but weirdly, sometimes I'm not sure it is...

There's nothing strange about that either - Twitter only acts to moderate when it has context and/or gets bad press. It's no surprise that American hot-button issues are the most moderated[1] by Twitter, and less sor for heinous, explicit threats to life in a language spoken by < 1 million speakers halfway around the world, or election misinformation in Kenya. That sort of thing never gets on Twitter's radar, and shouldn't come as a surprise.

1. This is a result of resource constraints, and Twitter's own sense of self-preservation. There is only one jurisdiction that can dissolve Twitter, and is also likely its largest revenue source; naturally, that gets an outsized fraction of Twitter's limited engineer-hours and moderator-hours.

I thoroughly despise Twitter because they bless some issues and not others. Even though I support the end game of what they are trying to do (e.g. in the case of LGBTQ agenda topics), I vehemently disagree with the idea that the means to the end should involve policed speech and controlled narratives. Because that’s what fascists do.

So my problem is actually with Twitter. I pity the author. But I blame Twitter for creating the perception that they support the western rights of all individuals across the globe. Because they don’t, and can’t.

Not really, given that I can see the billions in cash on hand of these social media companies, which they could use to hire real people instead of intentionally neglecting customer service because it isn't a driver of profits, and instead choosing to dump these costs on the taxpayer of the countries that have to clean up the mess via the legal system. Negligence or even incompetence is not a valid excuse for actively facilitating a spectrum of behaviors ranging from harassment (this case) to fomenting populism (US elections) to outright murder (Myanmar).

It's not about the money. Assume you can hire 100,000 people. How would you maintain consistency among all those 100,000 people. You'll get huge variance in the kind of decision making from each of those people.

Then you are going to say, codify it and don't allow variations, which means a program / AI can do a better job, which is what most of these firms are optimizing far.

Unless you have personally solved that issue or have an example of someone solving it, it is literally arm-chair critiquing

  "Assume you can hire 100,000 people. How would you maintain consistency among all those 100,000 people. You'll get huge variance in the kind of decision making from each of those people."

Many would argue they don't even understand the local dynamics of the U.S. It's impossible for twitter to be an arbiter of the truth around the world, and you shouldn't expect them to be. However, I understand that's cold comfort for someone facing the threat of torture, death, or exile from their home, and I think your decision to call out twitter using your own platform to act with respect to your specific circumstances is the right thing to do and really the only way to handle this kind of thing.

Good luck, I hope you stay safe and that the government doesn't succeed in silencing you.

Twitter only seems interested in this job in the countries and on the side of the factions who are politically helpful to Twitter. Twitter wouldn't care about Pakistan unless the State Department told them to care about Pakistan, and they could just as easily enter the fray by labeling the OPs tweets as deceptive and connected to foreign misinformation as they could enter it on the side of preventing his harassment.

So what? This is true of every media gatekeeper and always will be. Again, it's impossible for twitter to keep up with every change in the wind across the entire planet; they can't even do a satisfactory job of it in their own country.

> they could just as easily enter the fray by labeling the OPs tweets as deceptive and connected to foreign misinformation as they could enter it on the side of preventing his harassment.

If this story continues to get exposure this will probably happen, meanwhile there are thousands of other stories of threats and abuse that will go unabated and unheard because it's happening to someone that wasn't lucky enough to go viral. Twitter can only do so much, especially while opposing factions fight them every time they do anything.

Corporations are very clearly none of those things, and generally have lots of disincentive against attempting to fake being any of those things.

The types of "faking it" that very quickly separate the real governments from the corporations & pretenders are "make the laws", "collect the taxes", "run the courts", and "back it with force". If the FBI slaps handcuffs on a Twitter CxO and hauls him off to jail, do not expect Twitter to send in their Marine Corps.

It's just the stated goal - minimising alcohol consumption - is phony and misleading.

If they are supposed to be a public square, a company that is simply meant to offer a technical means of broadcasting your opinions, then we can't also expect them to fight government propaganda, any more than we would expect that of, say, Google Search.

On the other hand, if we want Twitter to be a kind of new media company, than we should indeed hold them to journalistic standards and expect them to cut through government lies wherever they decide to have a presence.

Is your assumption that corrupt governments must be omnipotent, and don't have to make excuses for their behavior in order to maintain support, or at least to prevent riots?

It's a very reasonable request.

One of his complaints is they clearly don't know what the hell is going on in Pakistan and this is a root cause of their mishandling of things.

It is a completely reasonable criticism.

The request for Twitter to help in this case only makes sense if it assumed it will be taken by moderators living outside of Pakistan, who don't have to fear government reprisal for their actions.

They could do something akin to what McDonald's did for the beef industry. It adopted Temple Grandin's list of best practices as its standard and this got adopted by the beef industry because McDonald's buys so much beef.

Currently, these big companies typically have a predatory relationship to such countries, so such countries have no motivation to cooperate. Make them trade partners and things begin to change.

Second of all, Twitter is a bit player in media. Comparing it to McDonald's is absurd. If we were talking about Facebook, this may be a different matter.

Third of all, government relation to media is significantly different to government's relationship to beef. There is no government in the world that wants a bad beef industry, but many many governments that actively want a biased media industry, and are more than willing to sacrifice monetary concerns to achieve this goal. Countries much smaller (at least in population) than Pakistan have actively kicked out platforms like Twitter - see Russia for example.

I will say it again: it is not realistic to expect a foreign media platform to fight government propaganda inside an authoritarian country. Twitter is not the BBC or Reuters, and even those places don't often try to publish in authoritarian countries.

In this case, the guy with the problem is living outside of the country in question. He would still have access to Twitter but the people causing him problems potentially wouldn't.

My personal background includes a parent who grew up in Germany during WW2 and its aftermath, a parent who was a two-time decorated veteran and an ex boyfriend whose political activism cost him 3 years in prison in his youth. He was questioned under torture.

It's other people who insist that is unrealistic to whom I have replied "If they can't handle the task, they do have the option to simply leave this market instead of making excuses about how they have no choice but to go along with (various bad things)."

I'm not impressed with such excuses. A business located outside of a country with serious problems of this sort is not required to operate in that market. If they choose to, they should make an effort to make moderating policies that reasonably account for the fact that people there have issues not commonly seen in someplace like the US.

I'm just talking on a forum on a Sunday afternoon.

Also, what is the equivalent to Temple Grandin's list for moderation of social media?

Sexual assault doesn't typically begin with violent rape. It ends there.

It begins with a million small forms of disrespect.

Political crap follows the same pattern.

If you think it doesn't fucking matter, what the hell do you care how this goes? It matters to him. If you don't care, what's wrong with saying "Twitter should simply do its job, man!"

Wallowing in outrage is pointless as they have to cynically maneuver until they have results. Part of that strategy might involve stirring up people emotionally towards action, but internalizing the martyrdom doesn't achieve anything on its own.

Ironically, this is precisely the type of martyrdom that helps these tech companies strategically in the long term. From their POV, all they have to do is throw a performative bone once in a while and wait for people's outrage rush to ebb away.

> It begins with a million small forms of disrespect.

And? Are you suggesting that "small forms of disrespect" should be treated like violent rape because there's a very vague chance that it might lead there?

1. epmathy and twitter do better

2. empathy and this is what you get with twitter

3. empath and practical advice

You seem to be railing against (2). Personally I find the bone you're picking to really be besides the point. Most everyone is empathizing with the author's struggle. Nobody here is telling the author to go fuck themselves. Nobody is condoning what Twitter is doing. And certainly nobody is disrespecting the author or supporting the misinformation. So your comment really feels like a non sequitur.

I don't know if without Twitter all this would be just as easy, through state controlled media, but what I do know is that Twitter could actually be a tool against this, but is failing to be.

Having a popular media outlet that cannot be coopted for propaganda and used for oppression or harm would be a great thing. Twitter clearly failed to be this, and maybe fails really bad at it where it seems like it could easily be a bit better at it.

Given that limitation, I would argue that the ideal communication medium simply conveys the messages it's given without regard for their contents. What people do with those messages is something that the medium has no power over.

For example, OP mentions how they never allowed him to have a verified badge even though he tried. This very much seems like something Twitter could have done. Now to anyone else, his account seems just as fake as any other impersonating him.

It could also put more effort behind investigating reports like the OP did. And it could also have detection and review processes for any kind of tweet that could be defaming. Accusation of criminal acts, labeling of people, mention of violence, arrest, etc.

Finally, this is the Web 3 era, who knows what mechanism it could find to innovate on that front.

The issue I have with what you say is the ideal communication medium ignores the issues with Twitter, such that it doesn't just simply convey content without regard. It selectively prioritizes, automatically suggests, and promotes certain tweets over others. It also gives very little recourse to people receiving the content to do their own due diligence, or to people who are targeted by the tweets to have a means to provide their counterpoint to the same audience, unless they themselves are just as powerful an actor.

You could imagine a relatively simple feature, any Tweet that mentions someone else by name or Twitter alias, that person should be able to attach a response to them that is shown under those tweets automatically. Twitter wouldn't need to choose the truth, but it gives recourse and mechanisms for the process of truth seeking to take place and for the people being shown the tweet more context and therefore better means to make up their own mind.

Why would that be relevant? The truth and importance of a message can't be entirely determined by its source.

>OP mentions how they never allowed him to have a verified badge even though he tried. This very much seems like something Twitter could have done. Now to anyone else, his account seems just as fake as any other impersonating him.

I fail to see how that would help. OP says they're accusing him of being an agent. That's something that could be done even without a parody account.

>It could also put more effort behind investigating reports like the OP did. Accusation of criminal acts, labeling of people, mention of violence, arrest, etc.

So, no more news on Twitter? No more whistle-blowing? I mean, what if OP actually is an Israeli agent? Or perhaps you would like Twitter to actually investigate whether he is an agent, in which case you're agreeing with me, that Twitter would need to know everything that's going on in the world.

>The issue I have with what you say is the ideal communication medium ignores the issues with Twitter, such that it doesn't just simply convey content without regard. It selectively prioritizes, automatically suggests, and promotes certain tweets over others.

I agree, Twitter is already not the ideal communication medium. I'm saying that adding censoring to the problems you've already listed takes it farther from the ideal, not closer. It's also unreasonable, because it asks Twitter to be the arbiter of truth.

>You could imagine a relatively simple feature, any Tweet that mentions someone else by name or Twitter alias, that person should be able to attach a response to them that is shown under those tweets automatically.

I don't think it's a bad idea per se, but it seems like it would be easy to thwart it. And I doubt it would have helped OP if it already existed. He's not complaining that he can't reply to those tweets, he's complaining that the tweets exist at all.

You said it yourself, not "entirely", implying it is of relevance. If the information comes from the opposing political party, or from a troll farm, or from a different country as to the one the information is about, or from someone known to be against or for something, knowing the source of the information, the bias, and conflict of interests of the source of information is very important to determine your trust in the information.

> I fail to see how that would help. OP says they're accusing him of being an agent. That's something that could be done even without a parody account.

I'm assuming OP feels that not owning the verified account for themselves hurts him in some way and makes it harder for him to defend themselves against the accusations and slandering. The issue I can see in general is that it means other accounts could pretend to be him, and if he tries and respond to some claims, people reading can assume it's not truly him responding.

> So, no more news on Twitter? No more whistle-blowing? I mean, what if OP actually is an Israeli agent? Or perhaps you would like Twitter to actually investigate whether he is an agent, in which case you're agreeing with me, that Twitter would need to know everything that's going on in the world

You can still have all these things, but simply increase your bar for them. Basically, if someone says something that could be defamation or slander, they should show due cause, if they don't, then it doesn't meet the quality bar for Twitter and Twitter doesn't have to accept hosting the content and promoting it to others. One can still self-publish if they want.

The bar for due cause doesn't have to be very high either, you could simply say that justification must be provided, and only minimal assessment of the justification needs to take place, basically just check that a logical reason was provided, not that the reason is good or undeniable, but simply relevant.

    This person is an Israeli agent

    We think this person is an Israeli agent, because they've been spotted talking to Jewish people in New York.

So hopefully I showed how such a process wouldn't impact free speech, nothing gets censored or blocked, but potentially harmful and damaging to other speech is asked to provide a small amount of additional justification for the claims.

> I agree, Twitter is already not the ideal communication medium. I'm saying that adding censoring to the problems you've already listed takes it farther from the ideal, not closer. It's also unreasonable, because it asks Twitter to be the arbiter of truth

I'm not asking for censorship, I'm asking for mechanisms to increase the quality of the discussions and benefit the truth seeking process.

I literally spent like 10min thinking about this and already came up with three possible improvements. Imagine being Twitter and having employees that could have access to all their data and spend much more resources brainstorming on this problem, I'm sure they could come up with even more ideas.

    1. Provide more transparency on the source of the information.
    2. Provide a way for the targets of Tweets to provide their counterpoint.
    3. Increase the requirement for tweets that attack a target to provide justification.

He's complaining that he can't keep up replying to them all. Ya he's also complaining they were posted in the first place, but that's to your point, we're not trying to prevent truth from coming out, but for claims made to have more legitimacy, and for targeted individuals and organizations to have more recourse to defend themselves. All things that actually help distinguish a truth from a lie.

This has to happen in a way that avoids the reader trap. That is, most readers won't go out of their way to fairly evaluate the claims and search for counterpoints or research the bias and conflict of interests, etc.

Take me, I see a tweet, if a reply is posted to it a week later, very likely I don't see that reply. The original tweets message is all I saw and now lives in my subconscious as a data point.

It's things like this that makes it easy to use for propaganda, anytime you can silence your opponents by having more man power then them, like more followers, more people working for you retweeting things, the ability to flood your message over others, it's a system that plays to the benefit of propaganda.

If you're saying that Twitter could attach that information to tweets so readers can judge for themselves, then I have no problem with that. I thought you meant that Twitter should use it to decide whether to remove tweets.

It still seems beyond the capabilities of Twitter, though. It's like asking the telephone company to have journalistic duties over everything that's said on the network. And I suppose the cynical point is, why would Twitter implement any of the changes you propose? Would it improve the site? Sure, but would it translate to any advantages for the shareholders? Is Twitter responsible for quality of the tweets in the platform?

>It's things like this that makes it easy to use for propaganda, anytime you can silence your opponents by having more man power then them, like more followers, more people working for you retweeting things, the ability to flood your message over others, it's a system that plays to the benefit of propaganda.

It sounds like an inherent problem, though. If you're up against someone who can tweet 100 times faster than you because they have more resources, I don't think there's anything Twitter can do against that.

You're saying that omniscience is a necessary condition before Twitter can start doing good in the world, instead of bad? This is a non-sequitur.

> Given that limitation, I would argue that the ideal communication medium simply conveys the messages it's given without regard for their contents. What people do with those messages is something that the medium has no power over.

I would argue that this is ignorant of social psychology. Sunlight isn't the best disinfectant, and people aren't rational non-tribal agents who will all hold hands and sing Kumbaya only if they could have totally unmoderated discourse. Twitter will become an 8chan sewer if your ideology is adopted by them.

No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying perfect knowledge and perfect filtering are necessary for Twitter to avoid being used to oppress and propagandize.

>Twitter will become an 8chan sewer if your ideology is adopted by them.

The way you're saying it assumes that this is obviously a bad thing, while in fact it's a matter of opinion. I personally think the optimal level of moderation in any discussion forum is that which only prevents disruption of the forum's functioning.

That only makes sense if you think that an unmoderated Twitter can't also be used to oppress and propagandize, which is naive.

Revenge porn and harassment has oppressive outcomes. A foreign intelligence agency flooding the zone with misinformation, has the effect of propagandizing.

> the optimal level of moderation in any discussion forum is that which only prevents disruption of the forum's functioning.

There is a theme here of you liking hard categories and arbitrary cutoffs. It suggests to me a rigidity of thought.

> The way you're saying it assumes that this is obviously a bad thing, while in fact it's a matter of opinion.

Of course it's my opinion, what other opinion would I be sharing? I don't want to live in a world where ISIS propaganda is radicalizing millions of people because of free speech purism being applied to a social media company.

So let me get this straight. The only way that the statement "perfect knowledge and perfect filtering are necessary for Twitter to avoid being used to oppress and propagandize" can be true is if "zero filtering would prevent Twitter being used to oppress and propagandize". If you could, please explain how that makes sense.

>There is a theme here of you liking hard categories and arbitrary cutoffs. It suggests to me a rigidity of thought.

OK.

>I don't want to live in a world where ISIS propaganda is radicalizing millions of people because of free speech purism being applied to a social media company.

I think if Western culture offers such a weak argument that it can't compete with such a backwards ideology in a free marketplace of ideas, that it deserves to be trampled by it and forgotten. The worst thing that could be done for ISIS is to give them a megaphone that's as loud as everyone else's.

  "free marketplace of ideas"

No. The Nirvana fallacy would be "since moderating imperfectly doesn't completely eliminate the problem of Twitter being used to oppress or propagandize, no moderation should be applied". Actually I'm saying that a) moderating imperfectly doesn't completely eliminate the problem, and b) no moderation should be applied because inconsistent moderation is worse than no moderation (without this being related to the previous point, but just in general).

>You think you can just shine a light on bad ideas and they'll go away

Actually I'm disputing the idea of "good and bad ideas" in this context. Neither Islamism nor any of the examples you gave are good or bad in an objective sense. The most we can say is that they're more or less successful in perpetuating themselves in time, or that they cause more or less of some specific phenomenon. I described Islamism as backwards and stupid but that's my opinion, not an objective measure. If when given sufficient exposure it would win ideologically then I think it should be allowed to win. I see no reason to prevent this.

>If you want to form a worldview based on social psychology

When did I say that?

  "no moderation should be applied because inconsistent moderation is worse than no moderation"

The consistency of moderation is a spectrum, from very poor to average to excellent.

You're insisting on drawing a rigid binary of "inconsistent" versus "perfectly consistent", and saying that since "perfectly consistent" is impossible, the only alternative is "inconsistent" which is categorically worse than than no moderation by sheer virtue of the binary category that it's assigned to. This is the perfect solution fallacy.

  "Actually I'm disputing the idea of "good and bad ideas" in this context"

It is a binary distinction. Something that's almost completely consistent is not completely consistent, therefore it's inconsistent. I'm not saying it's equally as inconsistent as something that's totally inconsistent, but it is inconsistent. Maybe you're interested in measuring the degree to which things are consistent, but I only care about whether they're consistent.

>the only alternative is "inconsistent" which is categorically worse than than no moderation by sheer virtue of the binary category that it's assigned to. This is the perfect solution fallacy.

It's not, and I will tell you why: in my opinion, an okayish criterion that's applied consistently is better than a good criterion that's applied inconsistently. The best compromise is the one where all the parties are left equally dissatisfied. And why is that? It's because it's easier to convince everyone that one is being fair than that one is taking the optimal course of action.

>Right, so if literal authoritarian Islamists became the dominant paradigm and Sharia was imposed on you by force you have no problem with it simply because that's what won in the marketplace of ideas.

That depends on what you mean by "have no problem". Would I think everyone is completely stupid and possibly seek to move to some place else? Yes. Would I take any steps at all to prevent that, beyond possibly arguing against such ideas? No.

>this is nihilistic moral relativism

I'm a moral nihilist, yes. That is to say, I reject that idea that morality exists, at least by some interpretations of the word.

>I know you conservative types don't really believe in moral relativism, it's probably just disingenuous posturing because you know right-leaning opinions tend to be banned more often in social media in the current moment, so it's helpful to adopt a stance on censorship that seems more principled and logically consistent. The left did this in the 1960s. If it was just ISIS propaganda being banned and nothing else I know I wouldn't be hearing any of these nihilistic relativistic arguments.

1. I have no idea where you got that I'm conservative, but of all the labels I would apply to myself, that's not one of them.

2. There's no point in continuing if you're going to unilaterally ascribe beliefs to me and assume ulterior motives. You can just imagine how it's going to go and pretend that you're correct.

A corollary of this opinion is that a good criterion that's applied with 99.99999999% accuracy is worse than a mediocre criterion that's applied with 100% accuracy. That is an absurdity which comes from forcing the real world to fit into rigid binary categories.

> It's because it's easier to convince everyone that one is being fair than that one is taking the optimal course of action.

Perceptions of fairness isn't my primary objective. My primary objective is to make life better for myself and the people I care about. Yes, that's not an objective ideal, morality isn't objective, we agree on that.

> Would I take any steps at all to prevent that, beyond possibly arguing against such ideas? No.

> I'm a moral nihilist, yes.

> [don't] unilaterally ascribe beliefs to me

I withdraw the moral nihilist comment, because I've realized you can't be that, given that you're prescriptively arguing for no moderation as being superior to moderation. That means there is some moral system there that you're not disclosing, since without some moral assumptions you would not be able to argue for one possibility being superior to another. Regarding your political beliefs, I was presuming more than assuming them. If you're not arguing from some tribal culture war motivation, then I find your opinions to be bizarre and can't understand the system of principles or axioms that they come from.

That's not an absurdity. There's no contradiction in those statements. You simply disagree because you have different priorities from me.

>I withdraw the moral nihilist comment, because I've realized you can't be that, given that you're prescriptively arguing for no moderation as being superior to moderation. That means there is some moral system there that you're not disclosing

Like I said, it depends on the interpretation of the word. If you're using the word "morals" to refer to a system of values (i.e. a set of relative importances that are assigned to things) that inform people's decisions, then yes, I believe in those, obviously.

>If you're not arguing from some tribal culture war motivation, then I find your opinions to be bizarre and can't understand the system of principles or axioms that they come from.

What do you find bizarre about the following?

* In any system involving multiple people, fairness is of utmost importance to maintain stability and cohesion. Unfair treatment causes conflict and divisions.

* No idea should be silenced. The acceptance that some ideas should be silenced and others not inevitably leads to conflict regarding the rationale itself and whether it's applied fairly, and may lead to a slippery slope. On the other hand, if absolute free speech is in effect no one can legitimately complain that they're being treated unfairly.

There are also more practical reasons to oppose censorship in all its forms, such as the Streisand effect.

Take any crime, such as murder. It is impossible to ban and punish murder perfectly fairly. Some inconsistencies and unfairness is guaranteed. That doesn't mean we should stop enforcing all criminal sentencing just because it's not perfectly fair.

You bring up the social consequences of perceived unfairness and the Streisand effect. These are social psychology arguments which you've previously said you're not looking at. Well it's good that you're taking social psychology seriously because that's the focal point of this, and I refer back to the previous things I've said on that.

It's not. What's impossible is to determine with 100% certainty who committed a murder. But if you start from the assumption that you correctly know who committed a murder, you can administer a fair sentence quite easily. For example, you could punish all murders equally regardless of circumstances, but it's possible even if different sentences may be applied.

Censorship is completely different.

First, it's not completely obvious that the mere utterance of an idea is something that should be prevented or punished.

Second, the unfairness of censorship comes from the fact that the utterance of only some ideas is prohibited. Well, why those and not others? That is to say, given that ideas don't arise in a vacuum, but are the products of minds, why are some people being punished by being prevented from expressing themselves just for their ideas while others aren't? It's not like (extrajudicially) murdering some people is legal and murdering others isn't.

Third, murder (and, to a lesser extent, crime in general) is an exceptional occurrence. It's not something that's happening trillions of time per day. For something that happens so frequently, it's inevitable that policing will be inconsistent to the point that one violation will be punished and another not, even though they're exactly equivalent.

>These are social psychology arguments

These are common sense arguments. The idea that fairness is important is as old as trying to decide what to have for lunch.

This is again you trying to fit reality into neat, hard, rigid categories. You think murder sentencing can be "fair" and "consistent", but censorship can only be "unfair" and "inconsistent". Binaries that only exist in your imagination and don't exist in the real world. Categorical thinking is bad, and I suggest you read my post on this kind of thinking: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32674580

Murders, just like any other crime or just like spoken words, aren't homogeneous. Premeditated murder and torture is different to a spontaneous unplanned murder. Judges and juries are subjective, and will come to different sentences for the same crime. Juries are imperfect, and will convict some innocent people or let some guilty people off by sheer accident. There is lots of unfairness here. And it's necessary unfairness, because we accept that systems can be desirable even if they aren't perfectly fair.

> First, it's not completely obvious that the mere utterance of an idea is something that should be prevented or punished.

> Well, why those and not others?

We've already been over this. I am not a moral relativist or moral nihilist. I will advocate to ban strings of words that have a non-trivial probability of causing stochastic terrorism or genocide, by the same logic that we choose to ban direct calls to violence. You are not a moral nihilist either, because you presumably are happy that theft is illegal, despite the fact that your opinion on that is purely subjective, as are all political and moral opinions.

> Third, murder (and, to a lesser extent, crime in general) is an exceptional occurrence. It's not something that's happening trillions of time per day.

This isn't relevant. Drink driving and petty theft happens many times a day but it's a crime for a good reason. And if it weren't a crime, it may happen much more often.

I think that murder sentencing can be fair. It's not, but murder is not something that should go unpunished either way.

I think censorship is not and has never been fair. Not only that, historically the point has been the opposite: to oppress. I think "well-intentioned censorship" like you propose is so easy to pervert that it's worse than nothing.

>We've already been over this.

And we're going over it again because the first time around you apparently found my viewpoint incomprehensible.

>I am not a moral relativist or moral nihilist. I will advocate to ban strings of words that have a non-trivial probability of causing stochastic terrorism or genocide

But you're not alone in the world. While you're happy to have those strings banned and none others, other people will want to use the same systems that were put in place in order to ban strings, to ban some strings that you may not care about one way or another, and others that you think should not be banned.

>by the same logic that we choose to ban direct calls to violence

I don't think calls to commit crime need to be banned. I don't think shouting fire in a crowded theater need to be banned. It's one each person to act accordingly in each situation, and not be moved to action by the first idiot who says something stupid. If the justification for censorship of ideas is censorship of calls to violence, I'm fine with having none.

But see what I mean? If I tell you "I'm not opposed to banning calls to violence" I'm opening the door for you to come back with "well, then what about these other strings that have similar effects?" Do you not see how the same can be done to you?

>This isn't relevant.

It is relevant. Unlike crime, which most people at most rarely feel like committing, almost everyone has an opinion that someone else would find objectionable and would rather they didn't voice.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy

I have not said this, and I do not think it. What I actually said is that I wish twitter would do a better job, you've managed to somehow invert that.

Nobody wanted Facebook to stop a genocide in Myanmar. They just wanted Facebook to not serve the role of actively encourage that outcome.

“But what if the stand they take is opposite the one you think they should take? How would you like that?”

I wouldn’t, I’d badger them to take my position. Hopefully I’d succeed, and if I didn’t, I’d join a long line of people who were right but unsuccessful. So it goes, life sucks sometimes.

OTOH - is there any large real-world corporation which has ever gotten itself into a sustained info-war conflict with a well-armed and angry nation state, for the purpose of protecting one "ordinary" person from that nation state? I'm guessing "no".

So it's rather dismissive and disrespectful to characterize him as an ordinary person with scare quotes no less.

If these platforms feel unable to moderate fairly due to fear of foreign governments, perhaps they should tuck tail and keep their pussy selves out of the conflict entirely.

I'm not impressed with an argument of "We want the money involved but we can't make any meaningful effort to actually enforce the rules we claim we have. Your country is too tough for my sissy self to man up in. I still want the money though."

No, I am not arguing that your idealism is morally wrong. I am arguing that the real world very often functions in ways which bear little resemblance to your ideals. No amount of idealism about "the gutter should have been stronger, and the ladder more stable, and..." will change the fact that my brother fell off a roof when young. Nor erase the injuries which he sustained. When I or people I care about are interacting with gutters and ladders, I stay very alert, and strive for "zero idealistic thoughts".

And - this sad state of affairs is nothing new. Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, The Brass Check, and other works (about the deep and systematic moral failings of corporations, journalists, etc.) over a century ago.

I'm not an idealist. I'm a pragmatist.

But the internet allows businesses to operate virtually in de facto war zones. This is getting people killed when the business tries to act like they don't need to account for that fact.

If they physically went into a war zone to sell products and it was getting people killed, would that merit a "Too bad, so sad. Gotta make money, doncha know. Can't be worried about niggling details like not getting our customers cavalierly killed."

The general trend is that, when in doubt, Twitter should cover its own ass. I would like to see a standard of "When in doubt, don't run over pedestrians with your tank."

Surely a company can come up with some best practices that err in the right direction here. Or maybe that's expecting too much of the best of the best of the best, sir!

That's a broad and unsupported claim. I'm not aware of any evidence being a journalist previously gave you some sort of immunity / corporate protection against totalitarian states that has now gone away.

Twitter has taken the correct action here.

If CDA 230 were taken away, I wouldn’t be surprised if common carrier laws fell as well. The telephone companies can listen to all phone calls, so they may need to editorialize (mute, disconnect, report to police) on various illegal calls.

I'm not talking about "some kind of appeal to emotion". This is about human rights in a fascist regime. At some point you have to take a stance. There is so much twitter could have done better. The first step would be to take this serious.

The likes of twitter, facebook, uber, amazon, ... have made the world worse for the sake of their shareholders and you are complicit. I'm sure your salary is fine though.

Perhaps a 3rd option is to go on the attack, and find some angle from which to sue Twitter?

> In Pakistan, activists and journalists are routinely picked up (abducted) and tortured by the country's police and secret services. Same happened this time, some of the top journalists and anchors were picked up - some without warrants with fake cases filed post-arrest.

Twitter removing the fake claims won't stop the ISI or whoever from kicking his door in, if/when he returns to Pakistan.

Going back to Pakistan at this point would mean basically picking how you want to go out. Either by defending your life in one last moment before a corrupt government takes your down, or letting them beat you in prison and slowly watch your soul and fighting spirit wither away in prison until you die. I presume if that's how they wanted to go, they would have been doing this journalism inside Pakistan right now.

https://youtu.be/3jFNJtjm-wI

In that case you need to arrange for the violent overthrow of the current (ie since ~5 months ago) Pakistani government. The absence/removal of malicious libel from twitter, even if twitter were non-evil enough to bother doing that, will not prevent you from being kidnapped and tortured.

You want to go back to your country and not be killed on the spot, you organize a coup there, not whine on Twitter or to it. Whines don't do shit, it's that simple.

Seems kinda unrealistic after the gov’t accused you of inciting violence.

Sueing twitter isn't likely to go far. Twitter doesn't have responsibility for their users' speech (with some very specific exceptions that don't include libel or defamation), and doesn't have a legal obligation to operate its moderation system. I don't think there's much to pursue there, unless there's something very unusual in the TOS.

You'd need to sue the people making the claims, but there's jurisdiction issues; if the alleged corruption of the government of Pakistan is the case, suing in Pakistan would seem to be unlikely to result in the desired outcome. On the other hand, a court in the US, where the OP resides, may not be willing to assert jurisdiction over speech by someone in another country, and the speaker is unlikely to participate in a US case.

In any event, such a case is likely to take years, which doesn't address the immediate nature of this issue. But I don't know how Twitter could really evaluate truthfulness of claims like these.

This entire thing isn’t twitters fault any more than it is WiFi’s, DNS, or TCP’s.

I respectfully disagree. TCP or DNS or WiFi or other technologies are merely means to achieve some result. A tool.

Twitter, like most services, is also built using various technologies and tools. But its main distinguishing property is that it has a large number of users who, for various reasons, are interested in what some other users have to say. Creating such social connections is its main goal.

Now, one might use e.g TCP to spread hate speech all over the internet. But apart from computers dropping these packets, almost no real person will be listening.

Contrast that with a Twitter account that has ~10k followers. If the hate speech is spread from there, it can get a lot of audience very quickly.

Twitter is one of many enablers and hosts of large online communities of people. As such, it should have, in my opinion, some responsibility regarding what goes on within these communities. At a minimum, it should disallow the dissemination of hate speech, actively seek and remove it and block the users who repeatedly spread it.

That being said, it might be difficult to precisely define what constitutes a hate speech and what not. But Twitter should at least be trying.

The hate speech itself is of course the sole responsibility of whoever created it.

Twitter is, however, fully responsible for allowing it to be spread.

Without a major communication channel which enables this hate speech to reach massive audiences, it would most likely remain isolated to a small number of people. And it probably would not evolve into a hate _action_.

The people behind this hate speech could of course reach to some dodgy places and hire professional mercenaries who might do the dirty jobs for them. But that is risky for them because their true identity might be revealed to the authorities or they might be betrayed or worse.

So what they do instead is they use a public channel, as big as they could find, like Twitter, to reach out to everyone who might be interested to answer their calling. They are counting on the possibility that maybe some psychopath with the will and abilities to do whatever they ask for will just go and do it.

The important part is that Twitter is used here as a communication medium without which the hate speech spreaders would have no major audience to pass their hate onto. The fact that they are allowed to do so absolutely is Twitter's responsibility.

From the article: the author is asking to have false, defamatory content removed.

> That’s the police or justice system’s job.

That is not an available option to the author of this article. The author is alleging that false posts are being made to lay the groundwork for the author being detained and tortured by the local justice system.

The author is asking to have content that he says is false removed.

>The author is alleging that false posts are being made to lay the groundwork for the author being detained and tortured by the local justice system.

Since the tweets may be used as an excuse to have him detained, removing them will do nothing, because the government could just as easily use a different medium for the same purpose. Twitter can't prevent someone who can and wants to kidnap you from kidnapping you.

To say "well, thus and such comedian is connected to the regime, that's why he has tweeted about me," well, what level of investigation is Twitter supposed to do that they a) disprove the allegations lobbed at OP (working for RAW provocateurs) and b) are able to support the allegation against the comedian's intent, and thus prove that the whole interaction is as the OP says it is?

Doing so goes beyond moderation, it goes beyond fact checking, it's nearly at the level of a personal background check or a trial.

What is being asked of Twitter seems totally outside the realm of what a social media company should be doing. It seems like OP wanted to do the right thing, to speak truth to power, but is now realizing that power was listening.

An account that publicly exposes your identity is not the right place to antagonize people with machine guns if you are not willing to take on personal risk, and that has nothing to do with moderation policies.

This is nonsense. That's like letting someone use your gun to shoot someone because they'd be able to find a gun somewhere.

They should immediately act on takedown notices, for example in the case of revenge porn, but are not a private replacement for law enforcement.

That doesn't mean a corporation should be exempt from criticism when it does the wrong thing despite fulfilling that minimum burden. Laws are inadequate, and have loopholes.

Example: A corporation could literally make it its mission to funnel all profits into buying dirty coal and burning it for no reason whatsoever. There's nothing illegal about this in many countries.

  "They should immediately act on takedown notices, for example in the case of revenge porn, but are not a private replacement for law enforcement."

How could Twitter verify that claim? Who should they trust? If someone was indeed hired by another foreign agency, they might as well deny it for that persons own safety.

The same information war could be playing out on WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook or other networks, TV, radio, newspapers.

It would be good to be more clear on both sides. Did they appoint you or did you associate in any form? Are they an independent org or a government agency? Maybe there were multiple accusations you are rolling into one?

Twitter is a US company and therefore it makes sense that they would approach diplomacy from a US-worldview.

It certainly is a shame that people can makeup lies about someone and create a targeted campaign against that individual, but to people on the outside it can be difficult to play referee. Elon Musk proved you can call someone a pedo without any repercussions. This is the guy that claims he is going to take over Twitter in support of free speech. The proper venue to resolve harassment and defamation campaigns is usually the courts, unless you are getting threats and I think that is a much clearer violation of the ToS that is actionable.

I'm not assuming that they are. They may very well in fact not be, but they are an American-based company with a mostly functional legal system so that is the rules they go by. I for one thing it would be much more dangerous for Twitter to play judge, jury and executioner but it seems like that is almost what you're advocating for here.

> It's also an inversion of morality. You're putting 100% of the onus onto the small time individual to correct the issue, and 0% of the onus onto the large corporation that actively facilitated the harassment in the first place by engineering viral mechanics that encourage mobbing.

I don't see how Twitter encourages mobbing. They have privacy controls and you can also block people. If someone is making threats those can be reported to Twitter. Evidenced-base coordinated campaigns can be considered conspiracy and reported as such. Saying things you don't like isn't a conspiracy. Telling people where you live so they can harm you is strictly against their ToS.

Sometimes standing up for and defending yourself takes utilizing the rights given to you by law the best you can. The more you practice it the better you get at it. It isn't on a company to have to get involved in disputes on a public forum that are civil in nature unless they feel that there is a sign of physical danger to the individuals by letting it continue, and even then in there yes rightfully so there are legal remedies to report these types of violations.

> It isn't on a company to have to get involved in disputes on a public forum that are civil in nature unless they feel that there is a sign of physical danger to the individuals by letting it continue

Your worldview is that it's fine for corporations to create market failure[1] as long as they are not breaking the law, and then they shouldn't be expected to pay for it or make a good faith attempt to fix it.

I view this as wrong, because there are many things that cause tremendous harm despite being legal. The law has loopholes and is incomplete, the justice system has friction and access issues, and so on. The law should just be the minimum bar.

You already intuitively accept this in your personal life. If I was your neighbor, I could study all the noise ordinance laws and pollution laws, and figure out a way to make your life a living hell without technically breaking any law. You would obviously want me to not do this, despite the fact that I wasn't breaking any law.

Twitter could make many systemic reforms to make conversation healthier without any risk of a slippery slope into censorship. It's not just about putting a human in the loop in order to be "judge, jury and executioner". They could change the social and amplification mechanics. They refuse to do this on purpose. Quite the opposite. They pioneered some of the mechanics that put us into this ditch as a society.

I'd also add that it isn't just about moderation of edge cases. It's also about their neglect to enforce basic things such as preventing clear harassment or impersonation or revenge porn in a timely fashion.

You also have no answer for people with no access to the legal system aside from "tough luck". I don't accept it that someone should need tens of thousands of dollars in order to pursue defamation action in order to fix an injustice that Twitter actively encouraged.

If you truly believe that there is nothing Twitter can do, then they should at least give up more of their cash to the governments of the countries in which they operate in order to refund the taxpayer for the additional cost burden that they've imposed onto the judiciary and society at large. Otherwise it's just theft by indirection.

[1] Externalities such as facilitating populist revolutions, genocide, harassment and financial scams.

> I don't see how Twitter encourages mobbing.

Look at Amber Heard's last Tweet. As odious as her character may be, Twitter has facilitated her harassment by not giving her an option to disable quote retweets. The viral mechanics that Twitter has created has compounded that and magnified it. That's why you putting all the onus onto the victim and judiciary (taxpayer) to sort it out is an inversion of morality. The facilitator of the victimization gets to profit off it while the victim pays the cost.

Social media specifically lends itself to widespread and high frequency libel, fraud, threats, and other illegal acts. What "material world" information manages to do so at a similar rate?

And why does it matter if the total number of messages exceeds our ability to read them? People don't sue over an aggregate of messages but for individual messages. If there are too many people suing then the courts will simply take longer and longer until an equilibrium point is reached.

For those who do not know, PTI owned and operated largest bots and trolls network who habitually abused people who ever would disagree with them. Consider them TRUMP supporters like mentality people in Pakistan

It is clearly wrong that people should be subjected to any abuse/torture/coordinated campaigns regardless of party associations. But forgive me for not being completely empathetic when anyone claims to have become a victim of these campaigns starting around the time of "the coup a few months ago".

I've reported many open bigots calling for violence against the group(s) and/or people they hate. Twitter used to ban people for promoting violence. They don't anymore. Not a single one of the posts or accounts I've reported in the past few months has been banned unless they reached a threshold of other reports that triggers an automatic ban.

Moderators either aren't doing their job or don't exist anymore.

Interesting that this person's conception of free speech allows him to call a parliamentary no-confidence vote a "coup", but doesn't allow government-aligned forces to say he is inciting violence.

Being anti-israel against an illegal Apartheid occupation has nothing to do with being antisemitic.

It's far more likely that they'll start labeling tweets with "This tweet was posted by a probable agent of a foreign government for the purpose of sowing discord."

That said I know this can be abused just like dmca take down notices. It’s truly arduous to balance and context matters which in turn requires godly number of man hours.

But no, I would not expect Twitter to be responsible in the same way I wouldn't blame a brand of honey for my murder if that's what my murderer had had for breakfast. There are two parties in this: this dude and the Pakistani Gov, Twitter is just a communications channel - it could just as easy be WhatsApp or TikTok or Facebook or HN.

I suspect that the balance is negative for most countries and that is why we cannot expect better moderation.

Might be right, and it's absolutely awful if these folks are being unjustly detained and tortured.

Yet, I think it's more complicated than the author would lead us to believe. It's also fascinating how this kind of unrest is unfolding all around the world.

> blah blah blah there are insane people in my country who will kill people based on tweets

This is a problem of people and not Twitter. Those are in the west too and growing especially in America. The problem is dumbed down people who believe stuff on the internet. And idiots who react to things, like a white/black shooting a black/white. There is a solution to this: going to jail for murder. Even boomers in the 90s knew not to believe anything online. Twitter has about a million problems with it and lack of moderation certainly is not one of them.

You cannot reasonably ask Twitter to moderate for your locale's social and violent reactionary issues. That implies they need to hire a huge amount of people for every locale in every country and just gives Twitter more monopoly as another company would have to invest a billion dollars to do that before they can even get off the ground. You have just created this idea that storing 100 bytes of text on a server is now a thing that requires billions of dollars of up front investment to do. This is another issue: People are fucking stupid and expect companies to have some "responsibility" now (despite the fact that product quality is at an all time low and they somehow have no issue with that). This is also just conceding that companies are some kind of god (they really aren't. Twitter is a dog shit website that can't go more than one second without showing the text "undefined" in an important field on the page).

Ironically, the people who demand so called justice by moderating more and more shit online (Unreal Engine now has voice analytics to report you to the police or whatever the fuck built right in), are just as bad as the people who foster misinformation against people. We are heading into an era of micro justice which just means the amount of malpolicing will grow in proportion. The end result of constantly trying to solve micro injustices is AI making sure humans don't do anything "bad" and you will literally be unable to involuntarily move your arm a certain way without being punished. There is not even a philosophically correct definition of justice in law. It's literally a bunch of dudes amending a global ruleset to solve the latest problem, based on wildly varying rationales from people each with entirely different value systems.

It's actually hilarious how short sighted and oblivious statements like "it should be illegal to post misinformation online" are. You aren't a mature responsible adult or whatever you think you are. You are just reacting to something in the most straight forward way with no thought about the consequences. It's doubly hilarious for insinuating that posting things online is a big issue that we should focus law on. It's actually pretty fucking obnoxious actually, I'm sick of every thing I do online for the last 20 years being policed by hall monitors tunnel visioned on whatever social injustice issue of the day.

Couldn't we find a solution that doesn't require the violent death of a person?

This reminds me of HN. You get banned if you say a bad word. You get banned eventually no matter what unless you're a white collar self censored silicon valley drone with ultra-safe opinions like "the C language should be deprecated after a mere 70 years". You get rate limited if you get too many downvotes in the given time slot. Random IPs are blocked for no reason and the login screen is just a blank page. You get shadowbanned so you don't even know you're banned. All for basically nothing, as HN is basically like 2000s forums but with slightly better discourse and consistency of moderation (and worse in other ways).

This idea that we should have some sort of epidemiologically correct moderation policy on the internet is also bullshit. Moderation on the internet started off as, annoying, childish, 40 year old sysadmins who ban anyone they don't like, SJWs who ban anyone who is "the enemy", right wing equivalent of SJWs who do the same thing, rule fetishists (people in the UK who think insulting the queen or showing the middle finger should be illegal), etc. The idea started off with these selfish / idiotic reasons. Once questioned, they are forced into a corner where they can only rationalize moderation as an epidemiological tool. "Yeah, if we just delete these 1 million posts it's a net gain".

The only reason lack of moderation on big copmany's websites even come up is because they're big companies and they have egg on their face for any slight mishap (or what public perceives as a mishap). It's the most stupid fucking shit.

Leave Twitter. Try one of the mastodon instances, instead. Be anonymous.

To me, both the effects of and responses to Mr. Ahmed's tweets seem to show that Twitter can be used to promote change and get your voice to the masses. It just doesn't distinguish between "good" change/voices and "bad" change/voices.

> I feel Twitter should have protected me, instead of protecting the henchmen of a facist regime bent upon silencing critics.

The West no longer deserves its reputation for fighting fascists. Quite the opposite, in fact.