Twitter CEO Promises to Crack Down on Hate, Violence and Harassment • Page 2

Nazis want genocide. Leftists, generally, aspire to a world in which people are free from hunger and oppression. There’s no commonality between them. Moreover, all violence is not equal. The violence of a Nazi that wants to create a world purged of anyone that isn’t white is distinct from the violence of, say, a black man that strikes out against a system that seeks to subject him to second-class citizenship.

 

Yeah, I give up. I didn't say both sides are bad. I didn't say both sides are equally bad. I simply said the rules need to be put in place to eliminate the incredibly real hate of the right, as well as the Trolls that flood both sides of the discussion.

 

I'm respectfully bowing out of this discussion because it does not portend good things for (or from) me.

 

i feel like the "both sides" thing is more of a means for distracting everyone from actually changing anything at this point tbh

 

Yep. Trump did it and it worked.

Nazis marched in Charlottesville where they killed a woman again just last week.

 

Meme culture and quick-tempered people who can’t turn off their devices and walk away have made a lot of people trolls regardless of their politics. Twitter is just a breeding ground for both of the causes.

 

The only good nazi is a dead nazi

 

I am here for any and all Starship stripper references.

 

I ain’t even gonna edit it. I’m just gonna let it live on in infamy.

Maybe autocorrect imagined an awesome Verhooven mashup sequel to Starship Troopers and Showgirls?

 

Love this site to no end, but some of the cynical editorializing and insistence on pushing people's comments into arguments they were never making is upsetting. Not to mention, villainizing the right may be warranted (and a good way to vent), but I don't think it's a productive way to affect systemic change with online harassment. Just because one side doesn't have nazis doesn't mean online harassment is a one-sided issue.

 

Sure, but when people are equivucating the side with nazis and the side fighting against said nazis I think it's fair to point out they're wrong.

The way I see it right now is that theres a moral crisis in the country right now and not picking a side IS picking a side. Standing in the middle telling everyone just to get along isn't helping.

 

Where do libertarians fit in on this?

 

I agree that it isn't helping but the decision isn't also binary. There are many factors as to why people don't pick a side. Someone who is isn't far left or far right would probably not want to pick a side, some can't be activist because they are occupied with other things in life, some just do not like politics at all and don't want to get involved, etc..

I would say the second and last ones fit me. Sure, I side with the left when it comes to nazi rallies, but i'm busy finishing my master's degree and don't have time to repost or search out 50 political tweets a day or to be an activist. I also wouldn't say i'm "far-left" just because I happen to dislike Nazis just like how I wouldn't say i'm vegan just because I don't eat red meat or wear fur.

 

I respectfully stepped down from the previous argument, and have attempted to just stay out of further comments in this thread, but I never ONCE equivocated the two sides (let me again point out that we're still discussing 'sides' instead of the particular issues at hand). I'm a liberal, and it goes without saying that I despise any sense of racism, homophobia, sexism, etc, but I never drew a line connecting every dot from the left to the right, nor did I say "Everyone should just get along". It's complete bullshit to start stuffing arguments into others' mouths when we're all just discussing something through keystrokes, knowing nothing about what the other actually does in the real world to try and constitute change.

God forbid someone point out that the powers that be at Twitter have done a piss-poor job monitoring the actions taking place in their forum, without solely laying the blame on one side. Human beings, in general, have a long way to go. You don't have to be on 'the right side' or 'the wrong side' to be wrong. You can condemn someone's actions without aligning yourself with the worst actions of their opposition.

 

Not picking a side in the debate of white supremacy is picking a side, yes. But using inflammatory, anti-right rhetoric in a debate that could be productively navigated without partisan bias (i.e. Online harassment - the topic of this post) in my mind does no good. I think it's frustrating when people on both sides leverage divisive language in what could otherwise be a pretty unified argument.

Beyond that - I don't think anyone on this forum was trying to say nazis and anti-nazis are the same. Loose language was misconstrued to give people an excuse to shift the focus to a political one. I think Twitter's steps are, at the least, worthy of our benefit of the doubt. Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but in the face of a company taking concrete steps to address a real issue, cynicism does nothing productive in my opinion.

 

I would love to know what (and who) some of you consider “far-left”

 

......Antifa?!

 

To me, “far left” describes someone who is an elitist with their leftist politics. They belittle anyone who isn’t extreme and even view themselves as morally superior to someone who is left but not far-left. They will group any conservative as far-right and wouldn’t mind harassing them vocally or physically over something like disagreeing about communism. It’s a mentally that everyone has to be 100% with them. 99.8% with them won’t cut it and at that point they are basically seen as an enemy.

Same for far-right, just replace “far left” with “far right” in the above.

 

Again, that is not the dispute. Someone asked for an example of a far-left group. A group that imposes violence, even towards bystanders who have no political/societal state in the argument, regardless of their own justification, is imposing violence plain and simple. This has nothing to do with hating racism. I'm referring even to straight, white male members of Antifa who were causing material and personal damage in Evergreen College.

 

This is my whole point here. You don't have to be extremist in your views to have your views. My views aren't validated by how much I hate something or someone. My violent actions cannot be justified because of how extreme my beliefs are. We're becoming far more divided with rhetoric like this, and you're creating straw-men by putting up these arguments that were never stated in the first place.

 

I think Antifa has a mix of extremists and non-extremists just like any group. I’ve met really grounded people who said they considered themselves as Antifa. I’ve also read about some Antifa members not liking others who are not for communism, but that is just hearsay. By beliefs alone (minus communism) I would say I fit the definition of Antifa.

 

That's totally fair, and I would believe that. It's also much easier to say that then to say that an extremist far-right hate group has grounded members, simply because they are built on hate whereas groups like antifa were built on reaction and revolution to counteract that hate. When groups like that start carrying out actions that get them labeled by the media and the general public as 'extremist' then we're on a slippery slope, which is all I was getting at previously. The whole issue at the top of this thread was regarding twitter hate and trolls, which does indeed occur across the board. It shouldn't be a political discussion though, like others were suggesting. The bottom line is the hate and vitriol should be removed from a platform like twitter, and this includes the account of our sitting President.

 

Terrifying that we have actual real life people in here that are buying into the “far left is just as bad as far right!” narrative and somehow poorly attempting to justify it. Also lol @ the antifa comparison, was waiting for someone to drop them in the discussion