Will Twitter NOW be Regulated because of Taliban?

[Cow Poke]

Twitter has steadfastly resisted criticism that the Taliban is allowed to ues the platform to communicate and coordinate their takeover of Afghanistan.

Twitter's rationale has been "they haven't broken any rules" (Like Trump has).

It's sounding like this may be the breaking point for Congress to step in and regulate Twitter.

Twitter says Taliban can stay on platform if they obey rules

[Cow Poke]

More from same source...

“Why on God’s green Earth does the Taliban spokesman have an active Twitter account but not the former President of the United States?,” Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) tweeted Sunday. “Who’s [sic] side is the AMERICA BASED Big-Tech companies on?”


Horrifying tales of ‘forced marriages’ emerge in Taliban-held areas


By contrast, Facebook has promised to enforce its ban on accounts that praise, support or represent the Taliban on all its platforms — including Instagram.

“The Taliban is sanctioned as a terrorist organization under US law and we have banned them from our services under our Dangerous Organization policies,” a Facebook spokesperson told CNBC.

A spokesperson for the encrypted chat app WhatsApp, which is also owned by Facebook, told Vice News that while “we do not have access to the contents of people’s personal chats; however, if we become aware that a sanctioned individual or organization may have a presence on WhatsApp, we take action.”

[rogue06]

[...]

Horrifying tales of ‘forced marriages’ emerge in Taliban-held areas

An indication of how the Taliban will be protecting women's rights as they promised they would.

[Cow Poke]

An indication of how the Taliban will be protecting women's rights as they promised they would.

No, they promised they'd be a kinder gentler Taliban.

[KingsGambit]

The only regulation I support for Twitter is banning it.

Not really. That's obviously against the principles of a free and liberal society. But I sincerely think it's terrible for society. It forces people to eliminate nuance and to distill arguments to 140 characters or less. It incentivizes misspellings, chatspeak, and emojis in place of words, resulting in degradation of language and literacy. And the atmosphere is one of snarkiness and witch hunt. I have zero regrets about not using it.

[Mountain Man]

The only regulation I support for Twitter is banning it.

Not really. That's obviously against the principles of a free and liberal society. But I sincerely think it's terrible for society. It forces people to eliminate nuance and to distill arguments to 140 characters or less. It incentivizes misspellings, chatspeak, and emojis in place of words, resulting in degradation of language and literacy. And the atmosphere is one of snarkiness and witch hunt. I have zero regrets about not using it.

It's more a symptom than the cause. I think the internet in general has fostered a lot of that sort of behavior. I read an article years ago that said that humor is the currency of the internet, that everybody is trying to get a laugh, and success is measured by how many "likes" your comment receives. That seems to have been the entire premise behind the creation of Twitter.

[KingsGambit]

It's more a symptom than the cause. I think the internet in general has fostered a lot of that sort of behavior. I read an article years ago that said that humor is the currency of the internet, that everybody is trying to get a laugh, and success is measured by how many "likes" your comment receives. That seems to have been the entire premise behind the creation of Twitter.

I've spent some time wondering whether, on balance, the Internet has been good or bad for humanity. Obviously it's done a great deal of good, but at what social cost? (And to be fair, some of these things aren't just blamable on the Internet; sociologists have also long blamed television for people spending less time engaging with their neighbors/communities).

Of course, since it is here, we might as well use it for what good we can.

[KingsGambit]

Back on the original topic: Facebook was heavily stung by criticism that it stood by as government officials from Myanmar openly indicted genocide for a long period of time (reportedly because they had a shortage of Burmese speaking moderators), so it's disheartening to see Twitter going in this direction.

[rogue06]

It's more a symptom than the cause. I think the internet in general has fostered a lot of that sort of behavior. I read an article years ago that said that humor is the currency of the internet, that everybody is trying to get a laugh, and success is measured by how many "likes" your comment receives. That seems to have been the entire premise behind the creation of Twitter.

Simultaneous humorless woke scolds wage a war on humor itself finding virtually everything offensive. Even a number of famous comics have been so far unsuccessfully complaining about the chilling effect this is having on comedy.

[Starlight]

The only regulation I support for Twitter is banning it.

Not really. That's obviously against the principles of a free and liberal society. But I sincerely think it's terrible for society. It forces people to eliminate nuance and to distill arguments to 140 characters or less. It incentivizes misspellings, chatspeak, and emojis in place of words, resulting in degradation of language and literacy. And the atmosphere is one of snarkiness and witch hunt. I have zero regrets about not using it.

I started out with that view. And as a regular writer of long posts, the idea of 140 characters seemed awful to me.

However, the more I've used twitter, the more positive my view of it has become! (Note: I don't actually post on it myself, I just read other people's posts) It's really easy to get a quick feel for the ranges of viewpoints on a subject, and then dive a bit deeper into a particular view if you want to. People link to longer articles on it regularly, so it's not like the 140 characters stops them writing longer pieces - twitter then itself just serves as a useful index or table of contents.

Amusingly though, quite a high percentage of the people I follow on twitter, who I think post really useful content, themselves whine about twitter, so LOL.