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Twitter hides Donald Trump tweet for “glorifying violence”

(twitter.com)
1061 points danso | 5 comments | 29 May 20 07:24 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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partiallypro ◴[29 May 20 15:16 UTC] No.23350905[source]▶
Twitter is well within the rights to do this, but I have seen tweets from blue check marks essentially calling for violence and Twitter didn't remove them. So, does that mean Twitter actually -supports- those view points now? If Twitter is going to police people, it needs to be across the board. Otherwise it's just a weird censorship that is targeting one person and can easily be seen as political.

Everyone is applauding this because they hate Trump, but take a step back and see the bigger picture. This could backfire in serious ways, and it plays to Trump's base's narrative that the mainstream media and tech giants are colluding to silence conservatives (and maybe there could even be some truth to that.) I know the Valley is an echo chamber, so obviously no one is going to ever realize this.

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phailhaus ◴[29 May 20 15:41 UTC] No.23351291[source]▶
Eh? Do you have any examples? This is nothing new, Twitter has been applying this standard to tweets for a very long time (it's part of their ToS!). It usually results in deleting your tweet or an outright ban. The only difference here is that they've kept the tweet up since they deem it to be in the public's interest.
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formalsystem ◴[29 May 20 15:44 UTC] No.23351347[source]▶
https://twitter.com/RaheemKassam/status/1266340243134963712

EDIT: Scroll down a bit, the original poster made their account private a few moments ago

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augustt ◴[29 May 20 15:54 UTC] No.23351470[source]▶
Damaging property is not violence.
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1. NikolaeVarius ◴[29 May 20 16:15 UTC] No.23351835[source]▶
It literally is part of the definition https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/violence
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2. adrianmonk ◴[29 May 20 16:56 UTC] No.23352413[source]▶
In this case, doesn't Twitter's definition of violence matter more than the dictionary's definition? Here it is:

> Glorification of violence policy

...

> You may not threaten violence against an individual or a group of people. We also prohibit the glorification of violence.

(https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/glorification...)

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3. Simulacra ◴[29 May 20 17:16 UTC] No.23352687[source]▶
What if a person said it as opinion: Looting has the potential to initiate shootings. Are we looking at an opinion, an observation, or glorying violence.
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4. joshuamorton ◴[29 May 20 18:39 UTC] No.23353849{3}[source]▶
If I said that, it's an observation. If the chief of police said that, it's an implied threat. This is because I don't have the power to initiate shootings, while the chief of police does. There is a power differential, and statements can be viewed in the context of the person making them.

This is why phrases like "we should nuke them from orbit", which might be calls to violence if made by a head of state, are generally seen as satire, because there's no chance of me actually nuking someone from orbit. Context matters.

5. adrianmonk ◴[30 May 20 19:19 UTC] No.23363834{3}[source]▶
If some hypothetical person said it as an opinion or an observation, you'd have to look at Twitter's policy and try to understand the spirit of the law. Threats are a direct form of pro-violence speech, and glorifying violence is an indirect form of pro-violence speech, so it seem to cover a spectrum to me.

But whichever way they interpret it, all that really matters when it comes to fairness is that they are consistent.

If we look at a very non-hypothetical person named Donald Trump, he wrote "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" immediately after "I won't let that happen" and "the Military" and "we will assume control". Without context, the words could be just an opinion or observation, but in the context he used them, that's not a reasonable interpretation. You don't mention sending in the military (who have guns, obviously) and then mention shooting as a total non sequitur in the next sentence.

If somehow improbably he meant it to be an opinion or observation, he phrased it terribly, and Twitter is within their rights to interpret it how he wrote it.