Twitter says "Hey, if X, then Y." Babylon Bee says "Yeah, ok." Babylon Bee does X, and experiences Y. They are not victims, and there is no "violation of free speech" here.
Unless the ToS specifically calls out misgendering, then the slight of hand here is the presumption that all misgendering is hate speech. Looks like Twitter may have decided that this isn't the case.
But once you look into the reasons behind every ban you will see the subtleties that surround this discussion.
There is a reason that content moderation has been classed as the world's toughest problem.
On my HN this is cache invalidation and/or naming things.
Just an observation :)
I hope it is more balanced from now on. Now is when we will be able to see if Elon delivers on his words.
We will see how it goes.
Neither will Musk, most likely. Im sure we will be regaled with "unappreciated subtleties" about why tweeting about his private jet flights is a no no.
He could've gotten a lighter sentence if he just accepted the plea deal! Do you understand how silly this sounds.
Moreover, they awarded Rachael Levine "Man of the Year" as a parody because they are a parody website that is right-leaning. Of all the things you could class as so-called "transphobia" this is what you choose? They never deserved to be banned. Additionally, I can go, right now, to Twitter and find a literally gold mine of rule breakers who lean far left that seem to never get touched. Strange, that.
I personally am excited for the reckoning. Twitter is absolute disaster and hopefully the left leaning bad actors get the bans they have deserved since 2016. I've read absolutely disgusting things, especially regarding white people ("white"-phobia in your terminology?) that should be banned and in many times investigated by the FBI. Hopefully we see those bans come down soon. There's a huge difference between Parler and what gets banned on Twitter. To the point you could consider Twitter a very good approximation of Parler for the left. It's time these bad actors get the bans they deserve.
I think a more reasonable argument is that people should be allowed to present themselves how they want without prejudice, but that there are still some undeniable facts about the world. Clearly there are people who want to have this discussion and silencing one side of the discussion doesn’t resolve it. It just causes the tension to fester. Get it out in the open and the truth will come out.
The comparison seems apt because while the magnitude of the punishment is out of proportion the refusal to yield to orthodoxy by taking the simple way out is similar.
And they didn’t which means they’ve earned gobs of respect because of their principled and dignified stance to refuse to be bullied. They won and showed the world you don’t have to lick the boots of elitist corporate oppressors.
It has 400 million users. By all other definition it is a public space
From last week proof that they weren't banned: https://web.archive.org/web/20221019005155/https://twitter.c...
You left that very important part out.
Babylon Bee felt attacked and refused to delete the tweet, so they just left their own account locked.
It’ll be fun to watch though, as someone that’s never valued the site.
Twitter is already a cesspit of toxicity because of the lack of free speech. This won't make it any worse.
It's strange you would take the side that limiting bigotry, racism, homophobia, and transphobia is what creates toxicity.
1A rights apply to GOVERNMENT INTERFERENCE in your expression.
There is no "lack of free speech on Twitter," nor do they owe anyone unrestricted freedom to spread disinfo and hate speech.
Welcome to hell, Elon:
https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/28/23428132/elon-musk-twitt...
I'm convinced that the collapse of sensible political discussion happened for two reasons: The Internet gave every dumbass a megaphone, and the rise of Twitter removing all nuance from the discussions.
I imagine this is a repetition of what every single article in a mainstream outlet has insisted will happen for months, rather than an insight.
I think it’s a valid hypothesis. I’ve been on the internet long enough to know that places with no rules end up toxic. Heck, I participated in kuro5hin long after it turned into whatever the hell it turned into after the initial honeymoon period grew stale. And the tail end of people using usenet for actual discussion, rather than piracy… I’ve seen the chans too.
It’s a repeating pattern; toxicity takes over, attracts more toxicity and drives out any attempts at normal discourse, this accelerates until you’re left with either a toxic trollfest or the whole thing just dies or both. Musk is either going to turn Twitter into one of those, or he’s going to have to moderate effectively. I find all the “but free speech!” stuff very naive. Fine principle, but it kills online communities.
Feel the difference? Transgender people should be absolutely the butt of jokes, that's how you include them, but then don't go around denying, mocking and invalidating them. Without some semblance of good faith you are not a joker, but a propagandist.
Then the Babylon Bee would publish "After Dismissing Warnings From His Mother, Tucker Carlson's Face Is Now Stuck That Way", which is hilarious since I knew before clicking the link which face it would be.
They make fun of everybody.
-- https://babylonbee.com/news/after-dismissing-warnings-from-h...
It's as harmful as The Onion. Which is to say, not.
I think The Onion is funny, but the bee is funnier. They're even better at mocking themselves than any of their haters are: https://babylonbee.com/news/babylon-bee-writers-struggling-t...
If Twitter doesn't want them to make those kinds of jokes on their platform, Twitter is free to tell them they can't make those jokes there. That doesn't stop the Babylon Bee from making those jokes.
And, if Twitter has changed their mind, Twitter is free to tell them that they can now make those jokes on the platform.
This is how the marketplace of ideas works. Twitter is a participant in that marketplace. If you want to say things on their platform, you have to follow their rules.
It sounds like a technology problem if you dig deep enough. Somehow flipping moderation from banning people outright(except for illegal content and spam) to categorizing the content by possible triggers, then letting people subscribe to certain moderation lists that hide things they don't want to see. As long as it's optional on the listener's end, it's not censorship.
Also, they're not even funny. Maybe because their function is not to make you laugh.
[1]: https://twitter.com/ErinInTheMorn/status/1582492801190674432
[2]: https://www.damemagazine.com/2022/03/15/trans-people-are-in-...
There's also a lot more history as well. Elon has done a [serious] interview with the Babylon Bee before [1] and also propped them on Twitter [2]. When they were banned he contacted the head of the site to confirm they had been suspended, and even mentioned to him that he might have to buy the site to fix their behaviors. [3] That was just before he ran the poll on Twitter, seeing whether people viewed the site as supporting free speech or not. [4]
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvGnw1sHh9M
[2] - https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1331698780073320449
[3] - https://twitter.com/SethDillon/status/1511325246967660547
[4] - https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1507259709224632344
What a power move. That sounds like a struggle session.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Levine
Honestly I would agree with Babylon Bee if it would be just for satire, like giving a funny award to a transgender woman, I get it, but they are not in it for the jokes, they are in it for the truth as they say, and you can't have it both ways. Christians telling intolerant jokes is joke in itself, but the problem is that they take their jokes seriously.
“There are only two genders. Test” And links to medical papers on myocarditis.
Two things that would get you banned quick.
I believe Babylon Bee should've been suspended not because of any moral issue but because Twitter was not a governmental entity, and thus had any right to set policies as preconditions for its users' use of the service. No existing social media company is a public communications carrier. I wouldn't argue for the DNC having a right to have a Parler account, either.
I'm a poor choice to defend being transgender to those who choose to be biased against it, because I dislike being placed in the position to argue. I just don't see it as fruitful because recent science seems to suggest it's useless: people don't change their mind about things they view as political unless personally affected by a one-on-one interaction.
I found these [1][2] to be a far better argument scientifically. Sociologically, I find the concept's existed forever and a day, such as one of the Roman emperors, the historical role of eunuchs and two-spirits, or even more quiet acceptances in families. It's not new. What's new is that the focus that was first on black people and then on gay people has been shifted to transgender people (although certainly the first two groups still suffer persecution - but are not now the continual topic of the Republican Party's admonitions and legislation).
As for a lot of what's controversial, it's never been before. Name changes have been a routine legal process for decades now. And, honestly, it's not a matter of asking for anything special in 99.9% of situations, it's just a matter of treating someone with respect and kindness, or at least with the absence of hostility.
My own personal feelings are not really relevant, but I will say briefly, for what it's worth, that everything inside me tells me I am a woman - and I am a self-perceptive person and have done a lot of self-questioning since I realized. The phrase 'misgendering' is a nice, obscure term - what it is, is actively, hostilely choosing to call someone something that hurts them. If you were a male and not the epitome of machismo, do you remember being a child and being called the feminine version of your name on a playground as a taunt? In many cases, most found that effective in hurting them. Why? You were being misgendered.
I'm merely presenting all of the above because no one else trans has appeared in this thread yet. I don't really wish to "fight" the position but I do feel responsible for presenting a viewpoint alternate to everything that's been discussed here already.
Using a powerful tech tool to shut off one side of a debate has led to young girls being injured for life trying to compete with men in sports like volleyball. Or cutting their breasts off when they are 15 because there is no other side to argue against it.
Your second paragraph uses the rhetorical device of an appeal to extremes.
Further, these "young girls" are trans boys/men who are becoming something in strong contrast to who they are. I know we disagree conceptually on that, but I would advocate that aside from the parent, the child, and the doctor, neither the state nor anyone else has standing to involve themselves in that decision.
You believe they should have been suspended because they could have been? What gibberish.
This is very much a moral issue. The fact that Twitter isn't a governmental entity is irrelevant. They have a huge platform with a corresponding influence on our culture and debate. Everyone accepts this or we wouldn't have just watched three years of arguments about COVID misinformation.
Congress, not Twitter.
Advertisers are the most conservative group in any ecosystem and they have plenty of other options for their advertising spend. Twitter will be no different.
Americans like to make a big deal about wokeness but the concept doesn't really resonate in other countries and Twitter is a global business. So it will be interesting to see how Musk reconciles these dynamics.
Having your brand name / logo displayed next to content that arouses negative emotions - i.e. anger, fear, contempt, etc - does the opposite of that. Why would I as an advertiser pay money for something that is the opposite of what I want?
Just to be clear, you're using "conservative" in the "risk averse" sense and not the more common political sense, right?
From last week: https://web.archive.org/web/20221019005155/https://twitter.c...
Even if something has changed and the title is correct, there's no source given for this assertion at the link provided. I'm flagging this submission since it doesn't contain any new information and it violates the HN guidelines wrt editorialized titles.
edit/add: Now that twitter is private, they don't have to publicly disclose mdau or revenue right? It will be interesting to know if Musk's changes grow or shrink twitter.
It isn't a satire website. It's a bigotry website that hides behind satire. They're the bully in school who knows how to play the faculty to make their targets look like the aggressor but grown up and far past any excuses.
