I think it’s worth digging into that LibsOfTikTok issue, because even the limited information we’ve got is being misinterpreted. It is a real shame that Elon decided to do a selective release.
The text shared was this:
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Site Policy Recommendation
Site Policy recommends placing @LibsOfTiktok ([LTT] 1.3M followers, not verified) in a 7-day timeout at the account level meaning, not for a specific Tweet] based on the account's continued pattern of indirectly violating Twitter's Hateful Conduct Policy by tweeting content that either leads to or intends to incite harassment against individuals and institutions that support LGBTQ communities. At this time, Site Policy has not found explicitly violative Tweets,
which would result in a permanent suspension of the account. This type of enforcement action [repeated 7-day timeouts at the account-level] will not lead to permanent suspension, however: should LTT engage in any other direct Tweet-level violations
of any of Site Policy's policies, we will move forward with permanent suspension.
Assessment
Since its most recent timeout, while LTT has not directly engaged in behavior violative of the Hateful Conduct policy, the user has continued targeting individuals/allies/supporters of the LGBTQIA+ community for alleged misconduct. The targeting of at least one of these institutions
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It’s inaccurate to say that LoTT didn’t violate the rules. LoTT didn’t directly violate the rules. Weiss chose to cut the text off before getting to the description of what happened as a result of LoTT’s tweets.
So at this point you can ask a more nuanced question: what do you do about indirect violations which you believe in good faith have potentially harmful results? Such as, say, bomb threats?
I’m not going to try and answer that here because it’s a really difficult question and I don’t think we’d reach an answer. I will say that I think it’s important to acknowledge that the question itself is reasonable. The Twitter Files fail to acknowledge that.
I will also note that Weiss selectively quoted the text in her screenshot. “Since its most recent timeout, while LTT has not directly engaged in behavior violative of the Hateful Conduct policy…” became “LTT has not directly engaged in behavior violative of the Hateful Conduct policy.” That changes the meaning of the sentence and obscures the question I raised above. I would also like to know if Twitter determined that LoTT directly engaged in such behavior before the most recent timeout; it seems very relevant.
Finally, we have no idea how lopsided the enforcement was because we don’t have the complete dataset. Showing us a handful of cases selected by unclear means is hardly enough data to form conclusions!
