The Babylon Bee's Twitter account is no longer suspended
twitter.comInteresting, I wonder if they bulk unsuspended a bunch of accounts, or if they're doing it selectively. If they're bulk doing it, they must have a way to differentiate between suspended bots and suspended people. realdonaldtrump is still suspended but I imagine that one is coming back.
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.
Their account was never banned and could always be viewed. There's nothing in this post that indicates anything has changed.
From last week: https://web.archive.org/web/20221019005155/https://twitter.c...
This is correct. It's really disappointing to see a blatantly false fact being widely accepted as true on HackerNews.
Thanks for this detail.
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.
Right, AFAIK they were prevented from posting by one of those interstitials demanding that they delete a specific tweet in order to access their account. Still no new posts from the account so presumably that is still the case.
A thorough teardown of Babylon Bee's loose relationship with reality from an actual biblical scholar/talking wolf: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V3p1Ip4g4U
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.
Why was it suspended in the first place?
Here's the article: https://babylonbee.com/news/the-babylon-bees-man-of-the-year...
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
It was locked, in a process where they force you to explicitly admit your tweet broke the rules before you can get your account back. There's more context here: https://babylonbee.com/news/twitter-has-shut-down-the-bee
> in a process where they force you to explicitly admit your tweet broke the rules before you can get your account back.
What a power move. That sounds like a struggle session.
It’s exactly what it is. It is designed to humiliate you and to warn others. This has been the progressive playbook the last 10 years. It’s the same playbook the Chinese communists used as well as the Spanish Inquisition and other authoritarian movements.
... but is this response, itself satire?
I would also appreciate a source that is not a satire article created by an involved party.
I agree. It's not particularly funny, and the "bird and bee" visual is the closest thing to satire I can find here.
Adm. Levine stayed in a potentially unhappy marriage for 25 years for sake of their 2 kids, or possibly developed genitourinary cancer and leveraged it to do a public service and lead and include transgendered folks.
Not particularly funny. I read it as a tacit admission of guilt.
They selected Rachel Levine as their pick for "Man of the Year", although she is a transgender woman. Babylon Bee says that she is a man, and the truth cannot be hate speech.
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.
In that link, why doesn't Wikipedia mention the subject's "Born" name, like they do with others who change their name? Natalie Portman, Teller, Elton John, just to name a few.
Wikipedia's name policy is to include names that someone was notable under.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Biog...
This includes trans individuals, such as Chelsea Manning or Elliot Page, who have their birth name in their respective articles. For some reason, these Wikipedia editorial decisions are extra controversial around trans people, so Wikipedia has a MOS section to explicitly address this in the case of biographies of trans people:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Biog...
Elton John was notable as Reginald Kenneth Dwight?
His career started in 1962 as RD and he legally changed his name to EJ in 1972. I think 10 years of being a reasonably famous musician under a name is notable, no?
By that logic, this is a rather impressive and notable CV, the majority of which was pre-transition:
https://www.hhs.gov/about/leadership/rachel-levine.html
ADM Levine was a Professor of Pediatrics and Psychiatry at the Penn State College of Medicine. Her previous posts included: Vice-Chair for Clinical Affairs for the Department of Pediatrics, and Chief of the Division of Adolescent Medicine and Eating Disorders at the Penn State Hershey Medical Center.
The notability requirement is specifically for transgender and non-binary individuals.
This is not true either. The "Presumption in favor of privacy" section, especially the "Privacy of names" part might interest you:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_livin...
There's two separate concerns:
1. Privacy of names in general
2. Treatment of people who have changed their names.
For #2 there is a specific rule dealing with deadnaming:
> If a living transgender or non-binary person was not notable under a former name (a deadname), it should not be included in any page (including lists, redirects, disambiguation pages, category names, templates, etc.), even in quotations, even if reliable sourcing exists. Treat the pre-notability name as a privacy interest separate from (and often greater than) the person's current name.
Ah yes, I think I misunderstood what you meant by the notability requirement. AFAIK there are no cis people with pre-notability name changes covered under the privacy interest guidelines.
Isn't that, itself, bias? Why wouldn't Muhammad Ali receive the same consideration, given that he considered his birth name representative of racial oppression?
1. Ali specifically is moot since he won an Olympic Gold Medal (and his first professional world championship) under his birth name.
2. If calling black Muslims by their birth names were currently used as a way of signalling racism, then I suspect WP would adopt a policy for that as well.
As has been noted, Admiral Levine had significant accomplishments under her birth name. The point is, Ali isn't even granted the possiblity of having his birth name unexposed, because ONLY transgender and non-binary individuals are eligible for non-exposure.
> For some reason, these Wikipedia editorial decisions are extra controversial
Because there is a significant group of people who will insist on using a trans person's birth name even if it's no longer correct, being deliberately hostile but trying to hide behind a thin veil of plausible deniability.
Because Wikipedia tends to err on the side of respecting the wishes of the subject. For a less political example, CPG Grey's page doesn't have his legal name or photo despite them being pretty easy to find.
If someone legally changes their name, that would indicate to me that the subject wishes to be known by the new name. Yet Wikipedia will still list the birth name.
People change their names all the time when they get married or immigrate and have no problem with their birth name's being available. I don't think it's fair to make a blanket statement about this.
And some trans people "have no problem with their birth name being available," even if they have stopped using it. "Blanket statement," and all that...
>Because Wikipedia tends to err on the side of respecting the wishes of the subject.
Unless that subject is right wing.
Wolf Blitzer:
>Wolf Isaac Blitzer (born March 22, 1948) is an American journalist, television news anchor, and author who has been a CNN reporter since 1990, and who currently serves as one of the principal anchors at the network.[1] He is the host of The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and until 2021, served as the network's lead political anchor.
Seems fine, right?
Tucker Carlson:
>Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson[5] (born May 16, 1969) is an American television host, conservative political commentator and author who has hosted the nightly political talk show Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News since 2016.
But Tucker is labelled conservative.
Founder Larry Sanger: "Wikipedia is Badly Biased" https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/
And you don't have to be right wing to see this. I'm a registered Pacific Green.
You've confused Tucker Carlson for a journalist. It's a mistake sufficiently common that his lawyers have had to explain in court that he is an entertainer and his words are to be taken as opinion. Journalists and entertainers are generally held to different standards, especially in court. A better comparison would be to Rachel Maddow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Maddow
>Rachel Anne Maddow (/ˈmædoʊ/ (listen), MAD-oh; born April 1, 1973) is an American television news program host and liberal political commentator.
Maddow has used the same defense against litigation as Carlson. The 'conservative/liberal' tag is applied when a person is described as a political commentator.
>You've confused Tucker Carlson for a journalist.
Having the same bias as Wikipedia isn't evidence of their impartiality.
I'm sorry if that sentence made you think you had enough information to assess my political leanings, and I'm even more sorry if I gave the impression that I care about the politics of TV personalities. I'm strictly speaking in terms of how Wikipedia describes people on television. I may as well have said "You've confused Wolf Blitzer for a political commentator," as Wikipedia doesn't classify him that way, and he's never represented himself that way in court.
I've got no problem with your characterization of Carlson, but do you honestly believe Blitzer is an objective arbiter of truth?
I don't, and I think this myth among so many in "news" media has done more to misinform people than any of the pundits who are honest about their biases. See also, Dan Rather and Brian Williams.
I never said anything about believing the news. Wikipedia labels the political leanings of people they identify as political commentators, and they don't label the political leanings of people they identify as journalists.
In this case, both Maddow and Carlson have used the argument in court that a reasonable person would not take what they say as fact. Regardless of our personal opinions about him or his employers, Blitzer has not made that claim.
If we're trying to ascertain whether Wikipedia is biased in how it describes people on television, comparing a political commentator to a journalist is not going to be a very instructive example. Comparing to another political commentator is going to be more useful. I'm not making any assertions about how I feel regarding these people.
Wikipedia's editing policy is to only include the birthname in the article if the individual was famous/well-known with it prior to changing it -- otherwise it's considered a privacy issue.
Rachel Levine is listed as an explicit example of this in their guidelines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Gend...
Actors don't change their name because they're changing their identity, actors often act under a different name because they are required to have a unique name to participate in certain organisations (e.g: screen actors guild). An actor may be known as Natalie Portman but who knows what's on her passport? Transgender people are typically changing their identity, which is a different process.
In some cases, it is only a professional identity, and their legal name is unchanged. But others do change their legal name, and Wikipedia still mentions the birth name. Same with married women who take a spouse's name.
> Transgender people are typically changing their identity
This is not a thing that is possible, although the idea that it could be has lead to at least a few transgender women claiming in court that they are innocent of the crimes they committed before their new name and presentation.
Because "Wikipedia Is Badly Biased" according to founder Larry Sanger: https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/
He thinks Wikipedia is biased because it describes (correctly) that "alternative medicine" is bullshit? And also he is a climate change denier? Why is he not complaining that there is bias against the flat earth people on wikipedia? Sorry, "scientific minorities". This article proves nothing other than the author is useless.
I read the article and I must have missed where it's stated that he is a climate denier or that alternative medicine is or is not bullshit. Those are just two of several examples where he tries to show the lack of neutrality.
Truth and satire are intertwined in a special way that makes satire be so powerful. Also Babylon Bee said they were satirizing USA Today as listing her as a top woman of the year.
They did it because of her accomplishments, not for being a transgender woman. There is an important difference.
I understand the satire on some level, she was a man, she only transitioned later in her life, so of course there is always a question of whether you have to be born a woman to be a woman, did these people born into the wrong body, can someone be a woman if you find her look uncanny and so on. There is a lot to work with here.
What I don't understand is the malice, the cultural war insisting that she is a man, which means that she shouldn't be allowed to be a woman, no matter what. In fact conservatives often go the length and argue against the very existence of transgender people, offering violence as a solution.
I have no problem with trans people, but making someone like Rachel Levine woman of the year on the basis of her accomplishments does ignore something important. Namely that a lot of the 'woman of the X' awards are meant to inspire or encourage women in fields they are discouraged from, and that having been perceived as a male for a lot of her career meant that Levine didn't experience early career sexism and that some of her accomplishments may not have been possible for a cis woman. My mother is about Levine's age, and she wasn't allowed to go to college for what she wanted because it wasn't appropriate for girls (engineering). If the only way you can succeed as a woman/the only way you can get accolades is to be perceived as male for most of your career, that is DISCOURAGING, not ENCOURAGING. I feel similarly about Caitlyn Jenner's awards.
Whereas it would be perfectly appropriate to give such an award to a woman who transitioned earlier and would have faced similar difficulties in career progression as cis women.
ETA: This also differs by generation. Levine and Jenner's generation denied a lot of opportunities to AFAB people. Excluding cis women who are now in their 60s from science growing up and then celebrating woman scientists who were only/partially allowed the career because they were in the closet is...odd.
The question is whether a wrong (discrimination of women) can be fixed with another wrong (discrimination of transgender women) or should we just do what's right in the first place.
The entire point is that we shouldn't build artificial obstacles anymore. The conservatives are obsessed with who's what color and gender, what they are doing in the bedroom or in the hospital, but we don't have to. None of this should matter, not for an engineering job, not for anything. The entire cultural war is completely pointless. Conservatives say that they are doing it for the sanctity of the family and normalcy, just like Putin is saying that he is doing it to protect Russia.
Going forward, you're absolutely correct. I would have fewer objections to a Gen Z trans woman being woman of the year in 20-30 years, because odds are she could have transitioned young enough to be subject to sexism in her career and therefore yes, we should celebrate her overcoming that obstacle, just as we would a cis woman.
Also I have no problem with trans women receiving awards where they didn't have advantages for being AMAB.
> None of this should matter, not for an engineering job, not for anything.
It does now, though, and it has for the majority of the lives of people under the age of 20-25. Cis women Levine's age HAVE experienced oppression. Erasing that is also bad. Trans rights (and queer rights in general) have progressed quickly enough that this change has happened within one lifetime, so things get a bit weird.
I've seen something similarly in gay spaces, actually, as a cis lesbian. Younger people seem to think that those of us who were old enough to live in an openly homophobic society should just...stop being affected by that. It doesn't work that way.
> The entire cultural war is completely pointless.
I mean, I agree, but I can't talk to other lesbians without trans women being the center of discussion so. Now we get trolling from everybody. It's exhausting.
I don't get the logic. Just because older women have experienced discrimination it doesn't mean that older trans women should too. I'm sure Levine had her fair share of obstacles too, but it shouldn't be up to some oppression olympics to decide who deserves what and when.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppression_Olympics
> Now we get trolling from everybody
I don't know what are you talking about, but feminist lesbians with anti-trans, gender-critical perspectives tend to be loud. They must be the sexual minority equivalent of kicking away the ladder after I got mine.
Of course not. But trans women who were in the closet for most of their lives or who didn't know being trans was an option had DIFFERENT oppressions than cis women or trans women who were able to be themselves at a younger age. And being AMAB did matter a lot more when Levine was growing up. Levine could get a credit card, for example. Levine, as a future scientist, wouldn't have had her teachers and parents telling her that her interests were inappropriate due to her sex or gender (now, she might have internalized the messages that girls received, which might have affected her, but those things would not be said to her directly and she didn't experience things like having a greater difficulty being published due to her gender until she transitioned).
A lot of awards for women are there to celebrate women who accomplish things in the face of obstacles and giving them to women who have not experienced THOSE obstacles is counter to the point. Similarly, Caitlyn Jenner was not discouraged from being athletic growing up whereas a cis woman was, so no, she didn't have to struggle for her fame in the same way a cis woman athlete from that generation would have.
Imagine giving a trans man who transitioned as a middle aged adult an award for being a man in a woman dominated profession (Like a nursing association declaring him 'man of the year' or something). That trans man would not have been discouraged from that path because of how he was born.
Basically, the logic is that the award isn't actually just about gender (despite being called 'man of the year' or 'woman of the year') - the award is 'person of gender X who did cool thing Y because cool thing Y is notable from gender X/rare from gender X'.
A lot of trans activists have a severe case of presentism where they react as though all of recent history should be looked at as though these things happened in 2022. They also like to strip context from things. Like it or not, Levine, as someone born in 1957, received advantages for being AMAB (from how OTHER PEOPLE treated her - I have no idea how she conceived of herself most of her life, that's private). Did she get ALL the advantages a cis man would get? No. But she also wasn't disadvantaged in the same way a cis woman would have been. Levine would never have had to worry about planning pregnancies/being fired for getting pregnant, would never have had to worry about procuring an abortion pre-Roe, would not have to worry about landlords refusing to rent to unmarried women, would not have grown up knowing she was limited to the 'Female' section of the 'Help Wanted' ads (which were still a thing when she was growing up).
It very much depends on the award. Levine's accomplishments are partially helped by her being AMAB, which is what makes an award for them kind of...gauche.
A non trans related example would be giving a cis lesbian (I am one) an award for balancing being a successful careerwoman and a mother. Like yes, obviously we can do that, but we don't have society or partners expecting us to do any of the domestic labor due to our sex/gender (since we're both women). So such a woman wouldn't have had to overcome the expectation she do the bulk of the parenting/household tasks. Awarding her that when she got to sidestep one of the major difficulties just reinforces that those difficulties are insurmountable. Does that make sense?
> I don't know what are you talking about, but feminist lesbians with anti-trans, gender-critical perspectives tend to be loud. They must be the sexual minority equivalent of kicking away the ladder after I got mine.
Basically, good luck having a space to discuss lesbianism without being overrun by both TERFs and newly out/chronically online pre-op trans women who want to make the entire space about trans issues. (I'm not making any statement about whether those people belong: lesbian trans women are lesbians). We can't have a space to discuss something like the difficulties in dating when your dating pool is minute without having TERFs shriek about trans women and some trans women bringing up girldick out of insecurity every 2 seconds. Both sides use us as a validation machine and I'm sick of it.
This is relevant because I don't get to step away from the culture war. It keeps invading the communities and groups I'm a part of against my will, and it's not always conservatives or TERFs doing it.
I kind of understand your perspective now. An award honoring women could be less appropriate for people who only transitioned later in their life, since they basically newcomers to being a woman. Though there are also awards that are for women, but for specific things, like flying the longest distance this year. Sport awards on the other hand can be problematic, because transgender women typically outperform women and by a lot.
This is a complicated issue I guess. One one hand it feels like maybe we don't need women-only awards, on the other hand women deserve a special recognition. I guess it should be up to the people giving the award. USA Today for example gave 12 people Women of the Year award in 2022, Dr. Rachel Levine was only one of them, she just kind of overshadowed everyone else because the controversy equals clicks.
> It keeps invading the communities and groups I'm a part of against my will
I don't know how it is for the lesbians, but for gay men you won't find an uncontested space, unless you go deeper into specific preferences. People are different, they want different things, like some people are into older people, bigger people, cross-dressing people, submissive people, more serious, less serious, not serious at all. There are millions of pet peeves, and the dating pool is about fighting your way through them. Nobody would notice an invasion by transgender men, just throw them on the pile. A lot of gay man are insecure, especially older people, nothing new there. I guess it's different for lesbians, or maybe it's just your communities, I don't know.
It is complicated and context dependent. Like awarding Laverne Cox an actress of the year/woman of the year award or giving Eliot Page an actor of the year award doesn't engender the same annoyance on my part since acting as a career is open to both sexes so Laverne would genuinely be 100% standing on her acting chops.
I do hope that eventually there's no need for identity specific awards and honestly, I find them a little condescending myself. But they matter to a lot of women I speak to.
The primary difference in spaces is that as a 34 year old lesbian, I can tell annoying, insecure, or assholeish cis baby or older insecure lesbians to knock it off. I can't tell trans lesbians that because then I'm transphobic (this has happened). They like to have it both ways: They want to be treated like any other lesbian until it's pointed out that they're ignoring social protocol, then they want special treatment. Ironically, TERFs do the same thing. Call out their trolling and then it's 'I can be here, I'm a lesbian!'
Gay men are less worried about group cohesion and more open about conflict than lesbians are. Both TERFs and insecure trans women take advantage of cis woman socialization unfortunately.
> The conservatives are obsessed with who's what color and gender, what they are doing in the bedroom or in the hospital, but we don't have to. None of this should matter, not for an engineering job, not for anything.
Tell me again, which side is establishing “affirmative action”?
> In fact conservatives often go the length and argue against the very existence of transgender people, offering violence as a solution.
This is just factually incorrect.
Nobody denies people exist that identify as trans. Some people deny the identity is accurate, but no major conservatives are denying gender dysphoria is a thing. Are you seriously suggesting denying a self identity is denying the existence of that person?
Conservatives also are not calling for violence against trans people.
Please stop with this rhetoric. You are acting like the conservatives of your imagination that you are bashing.
I'm seriously suggesting that denying someone's place in society is denying their existence, yes.
Conservative government officials, media commentators and militias are regularly attacking transgender people with real-life consequences. It's not just legislative attacks and information campaigns, but harassment and violent attacks.
It's a culture of hate, and there is no excuse for it, and it should be called out.
>I'm seriously suggesting that denying someone's place in society is denying their existence, yes.
What do you mean denying someone's place in society? Are there are bunch of conservatives denying jobs to trans people or something?
You are being too hyperbolic.
>Conservative government officials, media commentators and militias are regularly attacking transgender people with real-life consequences. It's not just legislative attacks and information campaigns, but harassment and violent attacks.
Please show me conservatives physically attacking or advocating for the physical attacks against trans people.
Harassment is more of a subjective thing. Some people think the Babylon Bee's satire is harassment. I don't think it is. I also don't see any genuine harassment. Please provide examples.
>It's a culture of hate, and there is no excuse for it, and it should be called out.
I have yet to see any hate. Please show me some examples.
Source: the entire conservative media from Fox News to Breitbart, social media, the paper below comparing left-wing, right-wing and Islamist political violence, anti-LGBTQ violence and attacks on pride festivals, anti-abortion violence, shooting sprees, bombings, the Capitol attack, MAGA Republicans and Trump himself, QAnon, white supremacists, militias, incels.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2122593119
https://www.adl.org/research-centers/center-on-extremism
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2022/01/05/a...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-abortion_violence
Causal racism + transphobia + xenophobia + scientific illiteracy + the impact font = conservative memes
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheRightCantMeme/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communiti...
> I have yet to see any hate.
You have, it's everywhere. Just drop in any of these words (gender study, transgender, sea level rise, climate change, sustainable development, liberal, Democrat, socialism, feminism, globalism, women's rights, representation, diversity, science, education, racial justice, critical race theory, mainstream media, vaccine, Hunter Biden, George Soros) as a bait to anywhere on conservative spaces and watch the hate flow.
I think you are confusing things. Being critical of things is not hate. If that is your definition then sorry to tell you but we aren't working with the same definitions.
No point of debating when you think saying Hunter Biden committed crimes is the same as hate.
Violence has been happening much more from the left when it comes to topics you brought up.
There is significantly more violence on the pro abortion side. Look at all the prolife institutions that were damaged and destroyed. It is peanuts against the pro choice facilities. And to top it off some of them were attacks by leftists to frame the right.
Huge amount of racists crap written on walls and stuff have been hoaxes written by the group targeted. Look at Buba Wallace and Jussie Smollett. Look at the the rise in hate crimes against Asians. It isn't exactly happening from a common Trump demographic.
The left has been leading in violence and hate. Regardless the violence and hate is quite minimal. If all you see is hate and violence then you need to get off the internet and as the kids say touch grass.
Is watching Fox News or Newsmax counts as touching grass? Many of my sources touched grass and came to the opposite conclusion than you.
Criticizing Hunter Biden is not specifically hate, but then again people are not criticizing him, they are spreading conspiracy theories about him. It is yet to be proved that he committed any crime, but his privacy has been already thoroughly violated. Steve Bannon famously said that he doesn't feel good about it, but they are in war. Hunter's entire life was on that laptop, and it was straight up weaponized. Now he is a subject to many QAnon conspiracy theories, and fictional retellings.
> Look at all the prolife institutions
You mean anti-abortion institutions? There are barely any sources for violence against them. I don't think most people know about them. You don't see people attacking churches either. Anti-abortion violence is frequent, it's everywhere, it's a serious issue.
>Is watching Fox News or Newsmax counts as touching grass?
It is the exact opposite. I think this proves my point that you need to get out.
Please provide me some Fox or Newsmax links promoting hate and violence though. I would be interested in seeing what you call violence and hate.
>Many of my sources touched grass and came to the opposite conclusion than you.
I was suggesting you touch grass not people you listen to.
>Criticizing Hunter Biden is not specifically hate, but then again people are not criticizing him, they are spreading conspiracy theories about him.
Conspiracy theories are not hate or violence.
>It is yet to be proved that he committed any crime, but his privacy has been already thoroughly violated.
Not violence or hate. I don't think the repair shop should have gone through the laptop, but it did become the repair shops property after Hunter failed to pick it up.
>Steve Bannon famously said that he doesn't feel good about it, but they are in war.
I don't care what he says about feeling good. Regardless he didn't say kill Hunter or whatever you think conservatives are saying.
>Hunter's entire life was on that laptop, and it was straight up weaponized. Now he is a subject to many QAnon conspiracy theories, and fictional retellings.
Again, not violence or hate.
>You mean anti-abortion institutions?
No. I mean organizations that help people who are not aborting. Providing diapers, money, doctor's services are not anti abortion.
>There are barely any sources for violence against them.
Perhaps you should check what happened after Dobbs.
>I don't think most people know about them.
Most people don't know about the violence and destruction they are experiencing.
>You don't see people attacking churches either.
It doesn't happen often, but it did happen quite a lot after Dobbs. Also Canada had a lot of Churches burned a while back.
>Anti-abortion violence is frequent, it's everywhere, it's a serious issue.
Like I said, touch some grass. You need to get off the internet and talk to real people if you think it is frequent. Spending too much time on the internet skews your mind and causes you to think things are getting so bad in the world. Things aren't perfect, but violence is relatively low and things are OK.
> violence is relatively low and things are OK
[1] disagrees with you.
[1] https://prochoice.org/national-abortion-federation-releases-...
> disagrees with you
Good for them.
The problem with crap like that is saying that praying outside an abortion clinic is considered harassment which is considered violence. They say if people are outside that scares people from going into the clinic which means they are blocking access. It is nonsense.
Second, some of the attacks outside of clinics were from pro abortion people. That site is bias and making it look like they were all pro lifers.
Nothing you are saying invalidates these studies. It's not especially hard to run into this kind of hate out in the streets either, and if you are running an abortion clinic you pretty much have to deal with it on a daily basis.
While we were talking a conservative man went to Nancy Pelosi's house looking for her and attacked her husband with a hammer. This was just one of the many high-profile incidents that occurred since the attack on the US Capitol.
This is a pattern. It's a culture of hate as I said, just in the United States alone at least 10 million people is fuming with hate, ready to snap on a moment's notice thanks to conservative media riling them up with conspiracy theories.
Things are not okay at all. The United States came close to the brink on January 6, 2021. The conservatives and their idea of a Christian theocracy checks all the marks of fascism, and they are not going to abandon it. History likely won't repeat itself verbatim, but it can sure rhyme, and a lot of people will be worst for it.
Please just stop. The person who attacked Pelosi's husband was a leftist.
https://nypost.com/2022/10/29/paul-pelosi-attacker-david-dep...
You need to get outside and stop going on the internet so much.
I don't see where that article provides any evidence for "The person who attacked Pelosi's husband was a leftist.", if anything it suggests the opposite.
Edit: ok, spent the few minutes tracking down an archive copy of the mentioned blogs, and ranting about "climate hysteria", "why colleges are becoming Cults", "communism is a revolution sponsored by wallstreet" and "Groomer schools" doesn't seem like usual leftist talking points.
None of those are necessarily right wing views.
Many average liberals agree with all of those. I consider liberals to be leftists, I know there is contention on that label though.
I hold a more strict view than most people on what is right wing which may be causing my different view. I consider all liberals including classical liberals to be left wing.
I would mention that "San Francisco pro-nudist activist Gypsy" isn't exactly a very right wing sort of position.
He was also a hemp jewelry maker.
At best he was in the center in common American parlance.
Hate speech is a construct. Not only does this construct not exist in US law, it cannot exist because it violates the 1st amendment.
Surely the truth can be hate speech. For example, a statement like “I hate X and I call on my followers to organize and commit against X” would surely be hate speech even if it’s true.
First of all there is no such thing as "hate speech." This particular statement would expose you to charges of incitement of violence because you would be giving a direct order to your subordinates to "organize and commit [crimes, I assume] against x." The hate part has nothing to do with it.
One is a statement of fact. Another is an opinion with a call to action.
My Twitter feed is full of
“There are only two genders. Test” And links to medical papers on myocarditis.
Two things that would get you banned quick.
What people and/or topics do you follow to get these things? I follow things related to tech, economics and comics; and the ads seem to stay topical to those things.
Yeah, I'm seeing a big uptick in myocarditis stuff too. That's despite being very selective about who I follow; it's showing up in the replies. The disinfo crowd (not just on that topic) is off to an even quicker start than I expected. Just in time for the midterm elections, too. :(
Myocarditis in young men below the age of 18 from the vaccine is real and verified. This was even shown by the CDC during the ACIP meeting for the bivalent booster. It's roughly about 1 in 5000 chance of getting myocarditis, and about 1/3 of the patients are still suffering from it 90 days after diagnosis.
I'm sure it is real, but that's not the point. A fact can be true but still be amplified far beyond its actual significance relative to other things that are also true, and that seems like what's happening here. I'm seeing a lot of people citing the exact same highly-dubious articles, which takes us further from figuring out the empirical truth on a complex set of issues. Those citations are also often accompanied by other claims on other topics (or even simple abuse), also familiar but unrelated except for ideological affiliation.
I'm not saying there's any kind of conspiracy - no coordination is required here - but there definitely seems to be a zeitgeist of people taking out pent-up frustration on their political opponents today. And it's clearly happening right here as well, though FWIW I don't consider your own comment to be part of that. You raised a perfectly valid point; others, not so much.
censorship attenuates the truth to its true significance.
-Some powerful newspeak there bud
>I'm sure it is real, but that's not the point.
Please don't deny The Science. You sound like an antivaxer.
>A fact can be true but still be amplified far beyond its actual significance relative to other things that are also true, and that seems like what's happening here.
So? If something is true who cares if a lot of people talk about it and like the content? It doesn't appear to be artificially inflated so it is just a lot of people talking about it.
> Please don't deny The Science.
I'm not denying anything. In four short words I explicitly accepted my interlocutor's claim. Please don't misrepresent.
> You sound like an antivaxer.
Empty insults aren't helpful either, or allowed by guidelines. When they're obviously contrary to reality, they're actually laughable. I mean, really? This is the level of counterargument you have to offer?
> If something is true who cares if a lot of people talk about it and like the content?
Strawman. This isn't at all about who talks about or likes the content. It's about attempts to mislead people, even if no actual untruth is uttered. Even the law, which is usually pretty strict about requiring proof of wrongdoing, recognizes that omission and misrepresentation can be equivalent to actual untruth. My "good guy with a gun" example makes the same point elsewhere in this thread. When a person or group of people goes around Twitter citing the same weak study about myocarditis and vaccines a hundred times, they're trying to inflate its actual significance relative to dozens of stronger papers on all sides of that same issue. They're using it to instill fear, not to inform. When done for an ideological purpose, as it often clearly is, that's disinformation.
Please note that I'm not trying to prove or disprove any point about vaccines or myocarditis. Go have that poo-flinging contest somewhere else. Consistent with the topic of this submission, I'm trying to address the issue of an uptick in certain tactics that people on all sides use, which pollute public discourse and make all of our lives worse. It's really sad that every one of the responses has only illustrated more of the same problem.
>I'm not denying anything. In four short words I explicitly accepted my interlocutor's claim. Please don't misrepresent.
>Empty insults aren't helpful either, or allowed by guidelines. When they're obviously contrary to reality, they're actually laughable. I mean, really? This is the level of counterargument you have to offer?
I was being sarcastic.
Antivaxxers say "I'm sure the virus is real" or "I'm sure the booster will protect us this time".
I should have been more clear. I assumed it was obvious with capitalizing "The Science".
>Strawman. This isn't at all about who talks about or likes the content. It's about attempts to mislead people, even if no actual untruth is uttered.
So what is the solution. We can't know the motives of people when they say truthful stuff. Should we suppress truthful things when it becomes too popular because somebody may abuse the truth?
The reason why people are so heavily pushing myocarditis is because we were told the vaccines were completely safe and anybody who disagrees is an antivaxxer conspiracy theorist. This is just incorrect.
>Even the law, which is usually pretty strict about requiring proof of wrongdoing, recognizes that omission and misrepresentation can be equivalent to actual untruth.
I haven't seen any misrepresentation or omission on this subject (not that I have looked much). Every post I have seen have talked about young men having the issue not everybody.
>My "good guy with a gun" example makes the same point elsewhere in this thread. When a person or group of people goes around Twitter citing the same weak study about myocarditis and vaccines a hundred times, they're trying to inflate its actual significance relative to dozens of stronger papers on all sides of that same issue. They're using it to instill fear, not to inform. When done for an ideological purpose, as it often clearly is, that's disinformation.
That is just not the definition of disinformation. Disinformation must be false information.
You are also just making massive assumptions about people's motives. How would you like if I did the same to you? The only reason why you are saying this topic is disinformation is because you want young boys to die from myocarditis. See how dumb that is?
If you're going to call something "disinfo," that thing should at a minimum be required to be untrue.
Maybe you don't understand what disinformation is. It's not just about saying things that are factually untrue, because that's easily countered. More often it's about changing the interpretation or emphasis to promote a preferred narrative and/or create an illusion of popular support. Other times the goal is just to sow confusion or conflict.
For example, consider how "good guy with a gun" incidents are covered by the media. Some would say they're inappropriately suppressed in mainstream news. Others would say they're inappropriately celebrated in niche news or entertainment. I'm not here to say which is right, but both could be considered disinformation. They're trying to shift the narrative toward an ideological position, regardless of actual truth or proportionality.
So no, I don't agree that something must be untrue to be called disinformation. Presenting it that way is itself kind of treading the line.
There is a difference between an instance of an individual person sharing a true idea to convince others, and an organization which claims to report the news but selectively reports true news for propagandistic purposes.
For what it is worth, I am a trans person.
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.
Parler would let the DNC on their site because it supports open debate.
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.
If Parler supported open debate, then the phrase "banned from Parler" would not yield the search results it does.
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.
It's quite worrying to me that Lia Thomas is much more well known than Rem'mie Fells.
> I believe Babylon Bee should've been suspended not because of any moral issue but because Twitter was not a governmental entity
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 shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech."
Congress, not Twitter.
Freedom of speech exists as a philosophical concept outside of the 1st amendment. The 1st amendment is simply the application of that concept to the American constitution.
Do you consider anything moral that doesn't violate the law?
Umm, I didn't even mention free speech.
I imagine this will do a speed run of unbanning -> turning into a cesspit of toxicity because ‘free speech’ -> lots of people leave because it’s so unpleasant.
It’ll be fun to watch though, as someone that’s never valued the site.
> turning into a cesspit of toxicity because ‘free speech’
Twitter is already a cesspit of toxicity because of the lack of free speech. This won't make it any worse.
I mean, you don't have free speech here either. Mods will absolutely come in and remove content and ban you for many of the same things Twitter will.
Not entirely untrue, but the difference is that here, if someone posts "I really hate [group of people] and I wish they'd die" it's generally considered breaking the rules, but on twitter whether or not this statement breaks the rules depends on what group of people you targeted.
Yeah, citation needed here. If you feel that different groups are participating in the same TOS violations, but only one set of groups is experiencing consequences for it, you may want to reassess your assumption in the first clause.
HN doesn’t have the best track record on this one, with people publicly defending intentionally harmful speech and downvoting and reporting dissenting voices.
Look no further than this same thread where people argue that twitter simply enforced their TOS and people get downvoted whereas others are publicly arguing that they should be able to make fun of minorities (read make shitty remarks and pass them off as jokes wink wink nudge nudge). It’s all a dog whistle.
Yeah this is the thing I don't get. If you don't like the terms, then don't agree to them. If you agree to them, then you lose all right to complain when they hold you to your word in my opinion
Citation needed. Can you find a tweet that says that, report it and tell if me it's found to have violated the rules?
I see leftists in my communities getting banned all the time.
Here's a compilation from verified accounts only: https://i.imgur.com/nkN539Q.png
Vast majority of these accounts were never banned and many of the tweets are still up today.
The text is so blurry that it's unreadable.
Edit: Although apparently someone else was able to. Maybe imgur is giving a different image to mobile? I tried with both Firefox and chrome on Android.
imgur has taken to sometimes redirecting image links to the website instead of the file itself. For me, clicking the link twice worked to get the full 5000x5000 image.
I'll take a look when I'm not on mobile. My guess is that I'll say many of these should be deleted.
Took a look at these.
Some should be deleted. "End white people" is arguably a call to violence akin to what gets the right banned.
Some lack context. The first one, for instance, still exists but it's a reply to a tweet that doesn't. It's possible this is sarcasm.
Some are clearly in bounds, like, what's Jack May's tweet saying that should be against the rules? (Third column). Or Lena Dunham arguing that we're not causing the extinction of white men? Or someone saying, "can you cite a recent example of a figure expressing racism against white people?"
And then there are all the "I hate white people" comments. Personally we're likely to disagree about them. I think it's important to contextualize history and who has power when you moderate. Punching up is different than punching down, in my opinion. It's different to say "I hate the wealthy" and "I hate the poor". "I hate a minority" is different than "I hate the majority [who have a history of being oppressors]". I think it's really tacky for these folks to tweet this, and it's not something I'd tweet, so for me it falls into a grey area. I can reasonably see your argument that these are the same as, e.g., "I hate gay people" because it's expressing hate based on identity.
If Twitter went the way of saying "expressing hate towards an group based on traits they cannot control is against the rules" I'd say that I don't think that's nuanced enough, but I could live with it.
Thanks for sharing a source, it was interesting to dive in here.
Funny, I was expecting you to come up with some contrived justification as to why racism is totally different depending on what race it's against, like all leftists do, and you did exactly that.
I disagree, I believe racism, discrimination, and prejudice are all separate concepts.
Prejudice is the internal feeling that another group is inferior. Nearly all of the tweets above exhibited prejudice.
Discrimination is acting on that prejudice. Feeling someone is inferior is one thing, acting on it is a notable different thing. Again, nearly all the tweets there were discriminatory. No disagreements from me.
Here's where we'll disagree:
Racism is discrimination with social power. There's a clear difference between a weak, powerless group discriminating and a powerful group discriminating. In both cases, the discrimination is absolutely wrong. Discrimination against white folks is wrong. But it's clear there is some type of discrimination against a race where the powerful impact the minority disproportionally. Sentencing of criminals, for instance.
The phenomenon of disproportionate impact absolutely exists, but we can disagree whether that should be the definition of racism. That's fine. If you believe racism is "any discrimination based on race", then yes, these tweets would be racist. If you believe "racism is discrimination based on race with a systemic power imbalance", then no, most of these tweets are not racist.
I believe both definitions are valid and cultural. I'm happy to engage with your definition if it's different. Both definitions are in common use, and obviously clash, but I think it's useful to say, "which definition are we using, and using that definition, would these tweets be racist?"
There's no need for you to throw jabs or make sweeping generalizations. We, you and I, can chat politely about this.
Nonwhite races have plenty of power.
History and data disagrees. When did Redlining end in the US, is it likely that people who suffered it now have less wealth, or passed on less wealth to their children?
What about sentencing for prison? Or discipline in school? Or rejection of job applications? All of which have favorable outcomes for white people.
The point is that white folks benefit from systemic advantages (usually).
Anecdotally, I find the discussions here to be far less aggressively stress inducing and rude than the rest of the web
I mostly agree, until I try to politely share any opinion about socialism, anarchism, gender, or speech when it comes to how those things intersect tech. Whew, do I get a lot of hateful comments here.
Mods here are really great.
Obviously (IMNSHO) Twitter must be a little less strict than a niche forum, but it would be a great start for Twitter if they were as balanced as HN is: here you get a talking to or a ban if you deserve it - regardless of what side you belong to.
On Twitter it seems you can get away with some amazing things (haven't I seen death wishes?) if you are clearly left leaning.
I think, but I do not have the data, that there is plenty of left speech that is banned on Twitter.
I mean left as in, not Democrat (which Americans seem to think is a lefty party), but actual leftists discussing socialism and anarchism theory. And not even the autocratic leftist stuff (which sucks. Leftist dictators suck), just like every day "we should tax more and build social housing and stop evictions" leftists.
I'm a member of NAFO. I've spent a lot of time on Twitter the last 8 months.
I've not seen signs of this: on the contrary we have had to work hard to get Twitter to ban the worst of the worst (e.g. socialist accounts who argue openly for military attacks on Ukrainian civilians far from the front lines - or even worse).
It would be great if the same Twitter that finds it OK to throw out Babylon Bee for having fun with a government official would also be consistent enough to throw out tankies that more or less (you should see some of the things I have seen) argue for genocide of Ukrainians.
Same goes for hate speech against Jews, it is amazing what some people can get away with on Twitter.
Yeah, fuck tankies. Fuck antisemitism. What you describe should be banned as well.
I guess it depends on which side you believe is more toxic.
It's strange you would take the side that limiting bigotry, racism, homophobia, and transphobia is what creates toxicity.
Except both sides say the same things in different ways. The side that limits bigotry, racism, homophobia, and transphobia (as you say)... explicitly promotes bigotry against ideas they don't hold dear (alt-right, etc), racial prejudice, glorification of transgender and homosexual values.
I don't care what you practice, just don't shove it in my face and tell me to love it.
> I don't care what you practice, just don't shove it in my face and tell me to love it.
Then you better do the damn same.
> explicitly promotes bigotry against ideas they don't hold dear (alt-right, etc)
The alt-right is specifically a hate group. They're defined by their racism and bigotry. This is a prime example of "you want to censor us because you disagree" being claimed in bad faith.
You're familiar with the Paradox of Tolerance, right? There's no way you're not, it gets brought up in every thread that talks about censorship.
> I don't care what you practice, just don't shove it in my face and tell me to love it.
Nobody is trying to tell you to love it.
What they ARE doing is trying to get homophobes and transphobes to stop accusing them of being groomers. Stop treating them like degenerates. Stop trying to restrict their rights. Stop trying to allow discrimination against LGBT.
They don't want you to LOVE it, they want you to merely ACCEPT it.
Regarding Paradox of Intolerance: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance#What_Popp... See section "misuse"
A valid refutation, if a little weak.
I think the last paragraph of the "What Popper actually Said" section is just as important to note:
> It makes sense, doesn't it? Free speech is all fine and dandy, but let's stretch that to the limit. A and B are promoting their ideologies. A-ism is based on reasoned arguments — they may not yield correct conclusions, or they may, but A is speaking in good faith. B-ism is based on calls to violence and insurrection. If both are afforded the right to speak freely, modelling things out, B will necessarily inflict violence, or threats of such, on A — but violence and violent threats have the effect of silencing others, which indirectly impedes their right to speak freely — you are not 'free' to speak if someone will hurt you for doing so! Thus, free will is replaced with coercion, and society suffers as a result.
A line in speech has to be drawn somewhere. There's a difference among "I hate $RACE", "I hate $RACIAL_SLUR", "Someone needs to deal with the $RACIAL_SLUR problem", and "I want to kill $RACIAL_SLUR".
The first two on their own are not violent, and they're not written to stoke violence, but a person that sees as a lot of that content who agrees with it may eventually decide to escalate to violence.
The latter two are easily considered calls to violence, which even most free speech advocates might not agree with. The most aggravating thing about the people that post that kind of content is the blindingly obvious bad faith claims that "Oh, I don't mean we should solve the problem by KILLING them!" or "Well, I'd never ACTUALLY kill someone".
It's extremely easy to say "Well until the murder happens, no crime has been committed" when you're not the target.
There is a line drawn somewhere, through two centuries of judicial precedent: https://www.freedomforuminstitute.org/about/faq/which-types-...
Namely (for this case); true threats, fighting words, soliciting crime and/or imminent lawless action. The last two are in clear violation of this principle (3. soliciting crime 4. imminent lawless action), and whether or not speech is in violation of that can be determined in court. When people advocate "free speech" they're really advocating freer speech, as circumscribed by exceptions to the first amendment.
For the first two, the "[not written to cause violence but may cause it by misinterpretation]" argument is a problem to me. Intent matters, the writer is not responsible for nut jobs. Calls to violence & coercion are already impermissible by the law. I absolutely support these rules in real life.
It gets difficult when you consider that anonymity online means people will behave worse, since they have no reputation to protect or real-life consequences (just look at 4chan). Social media is not a great platform for Popper's 'reasoned debate', yet >48% of Americans receive news from it. Persistent, non-anonymous comments raise other problems, since it's a new phenomenon that everyone can essentially know every view you've ever expressed and attempt to get you punished for it. It's tricky, and I see the censors' point somewhat. I'd err on the side of free speech with a mechanism like anonymous accounts can't interact with verified, real humans. This should reduce bigotry & hate to the level experienced in real life (or perhaps lower), which is protected speech, but not what a reputable person would ever say.
Social media to me, really has become a public square - where politicians campaign, news orgs post articles, people & activists have discussions. 500 million tweets are sent per day. Once most discourse moves to these platforms, it should be necessary to allow controversial views, even if it is a private company. As such, censorship of "possibly false" information shouldn't be permitted, especially when this has been at the request of government officials, and some of it has later been confirmed true.
There are no 2 sides. I'm not from US and do not follow US politics (in a way it is possible while browsing anglophone internet). But started using Twitter more after Trump was banned. Suddenly my feed was filled mostly with non-political stuff. I was not following anything political before but everyone had urge to comment on lies stated by president of the USA. The guy was just low quality shit-stirring. It was not bearable.
Stopping people from stating facts and forcing them to respect the emperor's new clothes by force creates toxicity, yes.
> stating facts
And exactly what facts are you stating?
Usually when people complain that they're not allowed to just "state facts", it's statistics being used to justify racism. And of course, most of the time, those statistics are highly misleading.
Which facts, specifically. Please go on the record.
Nice try! I assume you're a distraught twitter user because this feels like an exchange that would happen there.
So you are unwilling to say what, specifically, you believe in and instead prefer to gesture vaguely.
And nope, I'm not a Twitter user. I was, until about 4 years ago. Not a Facebook user either. I was, until about a decade ago. I don't think either are particularly healthy places.
>Which facts, specifically. Please go on the record.
This is incitement.
LOL. Incitement of "to have a discussion we need concrete opinions".
The issues is who gets to define what is phobia. Anything you say can be misconstrued as a phobia somewhere in the world.
I agree with your first sentence but completely disagree with the second one
It will only become worse for those who benefited from Twitter’s censorship.
I had to think a minute, but I agree with you. Lots of unmoderated free speech will make Twitter worse for ordinary folks, who don't want to be spammed with ads, but also an assortment of porn, aggressive politics bot and weirdos.
> who don't want to be spammed with ads, but also an assortment of porn, aggressive politics bot and weirdos.
Are we talking about the same website here? Because twitter has been full of this for many years. Maybe you just don't notice it because the content in question is politically agreeable to you.
There has never been a point on twitter where you couldn't repeatedly accuse a person of sucking Putin's cock after every single tweet they made, and no point when you had to attempt at all to conceal your association with organized, named groups who coordinate this outside of twitter.
That being said, Musk relies on government contracts and subsidy for almost every aspect of his empire, so I don't see any changes coming.
The "ergonomics" and incentives of Twitter do seem to encourage all-or-nothing, ignoring or dogpiling, on something. See the "Main Character of the Day" phenomenon.
I don't understand how people keep conflating First Amendment Constitutional rights with the additional layer of "this is a private platform, we prefer not to have it overrun with assholes that make it really unpleasant for everyone else."
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.
You confusion stems from conflating 1A and freedom of speech. It's reasonable to expect a corporation of Twitter's influence and size to recognise this particular human right.
This! So much...
No body is owed a platform.
I grew up in the 80s you had to be a news personality or famous to reach people.
Echo chambers weren't a thing because the chamber was your neighbors and some of them would probably laugh in your face at crazy things or slap you if it's offensive.
When you can join groups where you know it's safe to say whatever, you will, and you'll be emboldened and think that's how everyone thinks she it's dangerous to operate in the world with that level of group think, especially if the group values ignorance and conformity(fascism) over free thought, expression, and diversity.
Most people would also laugh at you if you said you're demiromantic bunnygender.
And yet many Twitter users are acting like they are entitled to being provided a safe space away from what they consider to be "disinfo" and "hate speech" by Elon. Why is this?
ever been to 4chan?
I think you're correct. The example of the Heat Death of Usenet seems relevant. If you don't trim spam and annoyances, people leave. I think Musk's Twitter will be an interesting test, if Musk allows enough unfettered speech.
I expect that Twitter will at the very least trim crypto scam spam, especially bots that impersonate Musk himself. Would be funny if this issue stays unsolved.
Both Reddit and Twitter were basically free for alls until 2015 or so. Their user numbers were growing strongly. So I don't buy the whole offensive speech is going to drive off users angle. Spam is a different story, but Elon Musk has never said he is going to allow that.
I'll hazard a guess that since Reddit is at least vaguely self-selected topical, it's possible to evade a lot of the stuff any particular user doesn't like. I personally read some technical reddits, some palaeontology redits, and a few "metro" reddits that are near where I live. I've never seen the amount of puzzlingly irrelevant ads, bots, spam, racism and fascism I regularly saw on Twitter (I've deleted my account).
For Twitter, you get what the algorithm selects for you. Clearly that algorithm has some cut-outs for advertising, and particular accounts, and after that, I won't hazard a guess. But it's not topical the same way subreddits are.
Why not allow spam? Surely the marketplace of ideas should be as free and open as possible?
Holy shit ban this troll
Hardly. The point I'm making is that any platform with user supplied content must have moderation of some speech. No platform can exist totally unmoderated at Twitter's scale.
So then the discussion is about where you draw the line, what speech you permit and what speech you prohibit. Apparently, there is a community of folks who believe Twitter should allow racism on the platform, despite it currently being disallowed. I think it's more than fair to say, "if you are allowing speech most people would find offensive and was previously banned, how far are you willing to push that needle?" Bigotry is one thing, but what else is on the table?
Elon Musk has repeatedly indicated he believes in free speech and the marketplace of ideas. I think it's more than fair to ask what his limits are.
Twitter will inevitably return to its current state. Gettr, Parler, and Truth Social all quietly discovered this lesson and had to figure out moderation and started banning users.
Welcome to hell, Elon:
https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/28/23428132/elon-musk-twitt...
You know what would be sweeter than shadenfreud? For Elon to find a way to make it a bit easier for people to understand each other. Maybe it's unlikely but it doesn't seem impossible, and I'd rather root for that success.
Eliminating the character limit would help. It allows people to include nuance and encourages more in-depth discussion, rather than trying to fit an "own" in 280 characters or less.
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 will do a speed run of unbanning -> turning into a cesspit of toxicity because ‘free speech’ -> lots of people leave because it’s so unpleasant.
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.
Not sure why you are being downvoted, it's a very reasonable hypothesis.
I ended up with 0 points, so balanced reactions overall :)
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.
Babylon Bee seems pretty harmless. I find right wing humor to be fairly low-IQ, but they should be able to joke about trans women without getting banned. I'm a recovering alcoholic and bipolar, so I have to put up with jokes about drunks and manic street preachers. Why should trans get a pass? Heck, I even tell jokes about drunks and manic street preachers myself.
A closest analogy would be the Babylon Bee making a joke about how you are not bipolar, it's all just in your head, or a satire about researchers trying to cure bipolar disorder instead of cancer, a real disease, and those would be fine, but then they would insist that it is true, your bipolar disorder is made up, and the CEO of Babylon Bee would go on Tucker Carlson's show and they would laugh about you being a whiny, lazy leftist making up things because you never had a strict parent to beat some sense into you.
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.
>> the CEO of Babylon Bee would go on Tucker Carlson's show and they would laugh about you being a whiny, lazy leftist
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...
Yeah, once, lightheartedly, in jest. These comical masterpieces are on the front page every other day.
https://babylonbee.com/news/man-pretending-to-be-woman-visit...
"OMG OMG OMG Mr. President, how aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrree you? EEEEEEEEEE!" said pretend woman Mulvaney in a perfect impression of a totally normal woman. "I'm so, so, so, so, so, so excited to talk to you about important issues concerning very, very young little girls just like me!"
Meanwhile this one is just shamelessly pushing conservative misinformation. They even call for action at the end suggesting a propaganda book for children from the Libertas Institute, a libertarian think tank.
https://babylonbee.com/news/the-top-15-greatest-threats-to-d...
Yes I feel that because there are people close to me who think I manipulated the psychiatrist to get the diagnosis to excuse my behavior. They feel I am smart enough to do that. They can't experience what it is like to be me so they can't know and I excuse them for that. I use Jesus' phrase "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing" to get through it.
>Babylon Bee seems pretty harmless.
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...
From what I read here, they throw punches at transsexuals, and write some light hearted jokes about conservatives. It's mild. Probably an excuse so they can claim to joke about both sides without genuinely doing it.
They should be able to joke about anything. There are no sacred cows. If someone doesn’t like their humor then don’t read it. Don’t follow them.
They are allowed to joke about anything. They just aren't allowed to joke about anything anywhere.
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.
Twitter is free to set up their moderation policy as it sees fit, but at the same time public is free to criticise Twitter for said moderation policy and the way it's applied. The fact that they can ban Bablylon Bee (under current law) doesn't mean that everyone should just shrug and accept it.
> but at the same time public is free to criticise Twitter for said moderation policy and the way it's applied
I certainly never argued that the public should not be allowed to criticize Twitter.
> If you want to say things on their platform, you have to follow their rules.
This implies that rules set up by social media sihes are sacred and shôldn't be questioned.
> > If you want to say things on their platform, you have to follow their rules.
> This implies that rules set up by social media sites are sacred and shouldn't be questioned.
It simply does not imply that.
Then they shouldn't have agreed to not joke about that stuff in the first place
Where in the terms does it say you can't make this joke? The enforcement of these things have been completely arbitrary.
https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hateful-condu...
Key part being the last sentence here:
"We prohibit targeting others with repeated slurs, tropes or other content that intends to dehumanize, degrade or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category. This includes targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals."
Perhaps Twitter does arbitrarily enforce punishment for intentional misgendering. Doesn't change the fact that Babylon Bee shouldn't agree to those terms in the first place if they have no plan on adhering to them.
It’s satire. They aren’t harassing anyone, they’re making a joke about a public person. It’s a joke and it’s completely different than “targeted misgendering”.
It's satire that's making fun of transgenderism. It would only work as satire that isn't intentionally misgendering if it was mocking conservatism's refusal to accept someone's gender. Which is absolutely not what they're doing
You’re confusing aesthetics and taste with harassment and targeted misgendering.
If you don't like Twitter prohibiting transphobia, don't use Twitter?
Just because you have to put up with jokes doesn't make it right. Those people get it all the time and it adds up. While you might be comfortable with it others are not. Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9n_UPyVR5s and tell me you don't see the parallels
I'm a big fan of "right to listen", so people with different comfort levels can all be more comfortable. It's as unfair for people with low comfort levels for jokes to make everyone else uncomfortable with overbearing censorship as it is to constantly be bombarded with triggering jokes. People should have the right not to have to deal with reading stuff they don't want to. People should also have the right to not be censored, and anyone who wants to read those jokes should be able to. These two issues don't have to be in conflict, theoretically.
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.
Jokes about alcoholics and bipolar people aren't usually part of a political campaign (willing or unwilling) to get them barred from many parts of public life[1] or fuel other genocidal ambitions[2].
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-...
Perhaps you are unaware that many recovering alcoholics choose to remain anonymous because revealing it would be damaging to their career. I don't tell people I'm bipolar under my real name because I noticed it scares people and they pull away from being friends with me. So don't tell me how trans women are more special than me.
Communicating your stigmas is optional, and rarely does anyone with institutional power demonize you or even attempt to de-facto ban you from public life for it.
I am extremely obviously trans, I can't opt out of being beaten up because some conservative talking head said people like me are all pedophiles. And if the GOP had their way I'd be illegal anywhere a 10 year old could be as "inherently sexual".
It is not optional. I have to out myself as well. Any time I start getting in a serious relationship with someone I have to sit them down to have "the talk" about me being a recovering alcoholic and bipolar. It's usually a relationship killer.
Let's be honest, you have a better chance of finding love than I do. I've been single for 10 years.
Look, I don't want to fight. I just want to use humor to ease my pain. Humor is good for that. What's wrong with a joke about a trans woman?
Nothing is bad with jokes about trans people inherently.
But as I already said, these are meant to tease your disgust reflex more than provoke laughter.
I'd recommend looking up some trans comedians. Not that I think you need to be trans to make jokes about us, but it certainly seems to help go beyond the typical "X identifies as Y" one joke format that is so prevalent in conservative comedy and certainly the Babylon Bee that collecting permutations of it has its own subreddit.[1]
> I'd recommend looking up some trans comedians
Will do. That sounds interesting. Thanks for engaging and Godspeed.
Politicians aren't using alcoholics as boogie-men.
Great, they should have never been banned to begin with.
Fully disagree. They publicly mocked a trans person, in clear violation of the TOS that all users agree to as a condition of use of the platform. They were then temporarily suspended, as clearly laid out in the TOS.
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.
>They publicly mocked a trans person, in clear violation of the TOS
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.
Well, Elon changed the TOS. He can now make shit you like against the TOS. You can't rely on unelected rich people to determine speech even if they make decisions you like
I don't think the parent argued that it was compliant with the TOS, he's more likely saying that the TOS was inappropriate and is glad that's been corrected.
Lots of people are publicly mocked on Twitter everyday. What makes "trans" people so special?
The difference is a highly engaged set of authoritarian activists who will assassinate your character and get you fired. Other groups don't have the equivalent of a Red Guard to enforce their ideology or religion.
I’m pretty sure trans people are a protected minority in most jurisdictions. So you are wrong. The judicial system has evaluated that—for some valid reason; according to our laws—mocking trans people is worse then mocking cis people.
> "I’m pretty sure trans people are a protected minority in most jurisdictions. So you are wrong. The judicial system has evaluated that—for some valid reason; according to our laws—mocking trans people is worse then mocking cis people."
lol I don't know what "jurisdiction" you're living in, but "mocking trans people" is in no way a legal matter in the U.S. I can mock "trans" people as much as I want and there's not a damn thing you or the government can do about it as long as I am doing it on my own dime and on my own time.
I don’t think you can—or at least there are limits, I’m pretty sure targeted harassment is a crime, and I think targeted harassment against a protected minority approaches a hate crime. So mocking trans people is definitely a more serious issue then mocking cis people.
None of this is true in America
DARVOism, illustrated.
I mean, if you purposefully misgender a cis person on Twitter, the same rule applies. Not sure what your issue is
Regardless of dictionary definitions, when judged by the tone and context of common use, "cis" is primarily a slur which is used to de-legitimize and insult the people it is directed at. Of the people who are ostensibly "cis", exceptionally few will choose to self-describe using that word. Kindly refrain from using it.
The only people who would have cis used to "delegitimize" them would be ones who are saying something innacurate about trans people and are being told that they do not have relevant frame of reference for that comment.
Describing cis as a slur is... Wow.
Slurs are made by context, tone, and perception by the target. I have never been called "cis" except by people with antagonistic tones trying to get a rise out of me. Furthermore the overwhelming majority of the roughly two billion English speakers around the world who aren't trans do not self-describe as "cis".
It's a slur.
> I have never been called "cis" except by people with antagonistic tones trying to get a rise out of me.
I can tell you from personal experience that this says more about you than the word.
The majority of people in my circle would self describe as cis, and most people I interact with would self identify as cis if the meaning was explained to them.
That's more about your social circle than everyone's elses tbh. On twitter I've almost exclusively used as mild derogative
I've only heard it been used as an insult.
> I can tell you from personal experience that this says more about you than the word.
Backhanded insults like this won't convince me that I'm wrong. On the contrary, it shows me that you do intend to insult and that the word is in fact a slur.
I did intend to insult you slightly with that phrase, I apologize. I was hotheaded and in the wrong for that.
However, it is not an insult at cis people, but people who behave in a way that would get cis used in a conversation against them - which usually takes place in a circumstance where someone who is not trans is telling someone who is trans that they know more about their life than the person in question.
The reason cisness is relevant here is because much like I as a white person will never be able to _fully_ understand a black persons lived in experience, a non-trans person will never be able to _fully_ understand a trans persons experience, and it is _incredibly_ frustrating being told something that is objectively false, and having people who misunderstand the situation being in charge of your situation.
It was created for a couple of purposes:
- Add an unnecessarily complex psuedo-intellectual layer to the discussion in order to catch normal people off guard and make them feel "uneducated" so that they can be "educated".
- Decouple the idea of normal from heterosexuality, which is, frankly, normal due to it being the most common state for of existence for people.
Overall it is a purposeful attack on the status quo. In summary, "cis" as a term is unnecessary.
> Decouple the idea of normal from heterosexuality
Um, no, other than arguably being wrong on the broad kind of motivation in either case, you seem to have also confused the word “cisgender” (or “cis” for short) with the word “heterosexual”.
Transgender people can be heterosexual or homosexual or asexual or any other sexuality, and the same is true of cisgender people; having a term to refer to people who do not deviate from the until-recently-in-our-society culturally obligatory stereotypical relation of gender identity and sex characteristics at birth does nothing to reduce heteronormativity of language compared to just referring to them as “normal” (and then, depending on context, elaborating further on the axis of normality and possibly whose norms are being referenced), to the extent that having a word does that, its the word for people who don’t deviate from the until-recently-in-our-society culturally obligatory stereotype of sexual preference for partner gender based on their own gender.
But, independent of undermining the norms involved, its sometimes useful to be have a convenient concise term, which both “cisgender” and “heterosexual”, in their respective domains, provide.
Nope. You can be a man or a woman. Or you, in a very minority case, might be trans. The point is that there is absolutely no need for the "cis" identifier.
The obvious response is that that that shouldn't result in a ban either. There's a right not to be physically threatened, but there is and should not be no right to not be offended.
I agree. The marketplace of ideas and opinions should be protected to the greatest extent possible. Restrictions should be limited to things such as actual threats, doxxing of private information, and illegal content.
Otherwise, allow people to use the block, mute, and unfollow buttons as they see fit as a form of personal moderation.
"Cis" people dont care about being misgendered.
Sure I’d hate it if you called me a TexanLady instead of a TexanFeller. But I will defend your right to call me names. Speech that offends someone doesn’t imply speech that shouldn’t be allowed.
Even if that is true—and it isn’t—a platform is under no obligation allow it, and most don’t (including HN).
I've been called a sissy on many an occasion. That is in fact, being misgendered, and I cared a lot when I was young. I no longer care about being mocked and I reject gender norms in general, but I'm just old enough to just realize a bully being an asshole is a tale as old as time.
I realize though that it isn't always on option for people. This can be much more challenging if it's in the workplace, or when people are younger and social acceptance is more important.
I think the trans movement would be helped massively if we just focused on that being anti-trans is just being bullying. The focus on edge-cases and ontology and essentialism of gender makes the debate much more muddy.
>I've been called a sissy on many an occasion.
That's just an insult.
The prevalence of "Real men don't do $THING" would suggest you are incorrect.
a simple example: people who get mocked for being bald don't typically get killed for their baldness. People who get mocked for being trans ARE FREQUENTLY killed for their transness. We don't need to protect bald people from mocking, because the consequences are minimal. We need to protect trans people from mocking because the consequences are _maximal_.
trans people are an endangered (in the most literal sense) minority that is not doing anything to hurt others and yet is frequently targeted for many heinous things. Thus, they are special and need our protection.
>FREQUENTLY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_killed_for_bein...
I see single digits per year. Worldwide. What is your definition of frequently?
If you know of more cases with reliable sources then perhaps the article should be expanded.
While Wikipedia is of course not the most exhaustive source, it ranks quite high in Search Engines.
For many people it is frequently their sole source of information for such issues, which is why I see merit for people who know more than I do about the issue to make the necessary edits to expand the article.
I don't see why you think that everyone should be blamed for what a handful of others do. Their crimes are not my crimes. That's not the way a free society works.
Also, mocking "trans" people is not a gateway to murder. I mock "trans" people all the time and I've never murdered one or even thought about doing so.
It's very easy to say this at a high level.
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.
It's easy to see this at a low level too.
> the world's toughest problem.
On my HN this is cache invalidation and/or naming things.
It is indeed. But my experience from what I saw from Twitter was a clear bias towards certain... authoritarian ticks? u know. It is a private company anyway, just mentioning the had those. They could do whatever.
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.
Just coz it's hard to do it well doesnt mean they were trying to do it well.
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.
Transphobia is pretty clearly against twitters rules. They weren't really banned, they were locked out until they deleted their tweet. All they had to do was delete the tweet.
> all they had to do is delete their tweet
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.
While I agree that the Bee should never have been banned, the answer to this problem is less censorship, not more. It sounds like you are calling for people who have different ideological views from you to be banned, but that is not how a healthy society should function.
There are already tools you can use on Twitter and other platforms to ignore content you don’t want to see (mute or block, for example). Banning someone should only be done in extreme circumstances like if someone is breaking the law or making literal calls to violence.
> It sounds like you are calling for people who have different ideological views from you to be banned, but that is not how a healthy society should function.
It only sounds this way because I targeted the left here. I only did that because it’s Twitter. I would rather have the extremes removed from the platform regardless. It’s already enough of a mess as it is.
You and me both.
The argument that a person can be a different gender than the one that all their physical biology points to is absolutely not an open-and-shut case. I know many people believe that it is, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t valid opposing arguments. To me, that means that you shouldn’t be banned for contesting the idea of transgenderism.
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.
> To me, that means that you shouldn’t be banned for contesting the idea of transgenderism.
While I'm mixed on the ban, this is a mischaracterization of what they were banned for. They were banned for misgendering a specific person not questioning transgenderism. There is a significant distinction between questioning an idea and targeting a specific person.
Toleration is a funny thing isn't it? If you have a problem with transgenderism how much do you need to support it to be tolerant? If you have a problem with people who have a problem with transgenderism how much do you have to support them to be tolerant?
There are great yard sticks to this question in theory "I tolerate everything except intolerance. Your right to swing your arms stops when they come into contact with someone's nose." In practice though it's always easy - on every side - to pick out the things we don't like and decide that they're violent or intolerant.
Everyone is tolerant of the things they like - and they ask everyone to join them in that if they like those things or not.
I see what your saying here, and it might be a relevant discussion in a different context, but here it's really not. If they wrote a deep thoughtful article about Rachel Levine, but simply misgendered her because they don't believe in trans people for religious or whatever reasons it'd be worth asking " If you have a problem with transgenderism how much do you need to support it to be tolerant?". But they didn't. The entire point of their post was to misgender her. Not misgendering her didn't require showing any kind of support for transgenderism, it simply required... doing nothing. Instead they deliberately singled out an individual person to mock for being transgender.
If this was some random trans Rachel from Boring, Oregon, I'd call this a clear case of bullying and say the ban was 100% justified and shouldn't remain, but I think there is a much, much higher bar when the target is a government official or celebrity. But that doesn't change the fact that the entire point was singling out an individual for mockery.
Sure. But Twitter has said "we want to make sure that we have trans voices on our platform, so in the interest of a broader marketplace of ideas, we're going to say no to one particular idea - making fun of trans people, who typically face a much higher level of violence, rejection, discrimination, and hate than most".
If Babylon Bee makes a joke about trans people how is that removing trans voices from the platform? If making a joke about a group is the same as encouraging violence or whatever then you can't make any jokes about people.
Why would I stay on a platform that lets people berate me? Independent of what my identity is?
It's just a shitty experience.
If you think trans people shouldn't be allowed to be berated online then why not ban berating of Trump or whites? Why should their experience on Twitter be a "shitty experience"?
Regardless, you didn't answer my question: "If Babylon Bee makes a joke about trans people how is that removing trans voices from the platform?"
People voluntarily leaving is not removing voices.
> People voluntarily leaving is not removing voices.
This is naive. If a Klan bar doesn't literally throw out Black people, they still are preventing Black people from being there by making the environment so unpleasant they cannot remain.
You could make that argument about any group that has a large amount of critics. Congress, for example, has an approval rating under that of trans people.
I propose Twitter bans anybody who "berates" a politician. If we don't do that then Twitter is allowing the environment to be too unpleasant for one the most marginalized groups out there.
Why would my plan be bad, but yours good?
Just because there is an environment that is too unpleasant for some people to remain in, doesn't mean that environment should change to conform to the wants of that person. People who are sensitive to sound can't go to some loud bar and demand everybody stop making noise. (Well they could demand it, but nobody will care). The bar isn't forcing the person to leave by not lowering the volume.
Partly due to power imbalance. Congresspeople are not typically subject to routine violence just because they are congresspeople. They aren't typically dealing with a healthcare system that is actively hostile to them. They don't have high levels of homelessness, abuse, and suicide.
Additionally, congresspeople are public figures - being satirized is part of the social contract when you become a public figure.
And congresspeople have power. Lots of power. Saying that an average congressperson and an average trans person are equal is just not true.
If you pulled out another minority group with little power, your rule might be more agreeable.
> Congresspeople are not typically subject to routine violence just because they are congresspeople.
…why do you think politicians have bodyguards?
> They aren't typically dealing with a healthcare system that is actively hostile to them.
Not doing unnecessary cosmetic surgery is not “actively hostile”.
A) It's not just surgery, there's the difficulty in getting HRT.
B) For some trans people, the surgery is necessary from a quality of life perspective and a reduction of dysphoria.
C) It varies by country. In the US, the medical system is actively hostile to everyone (but especially trans people). In the UK, the requirements to just get HRT as a legal adult are insane.
>Partly due to power imbalance. Congresspeople are not typically subject to routine violence just because they are congresspeople.
Congressmen are attacked all the time. They have assassination attempts all the time. The average trans person doesn't need protection, but the average congressman does.
>They aren't typically dealing with a healthcare system that is actively hostile to them. They don't have high levels of homelessness, abuse, and suicide.
Healthcare is absolutely not hostile to them. Doctors are being threatened with firing (or may have been fired?) if they don't use the correct pronouns.
I do agree that trans people have higher levels of homelessness, abuse and suicide, but I don't think it is relevant.
>Additionally, congresspeople are public figures - being satirized is part of the social contract when you become a public figure.
Having a public social media account makes you a public person in a sense. If you don't want public attention don't make a public account.
>And congresspeople have power. Lots of power. Saying that an average congressperson and an average trans person are equal is just not true.
Seeing how a trans person was able to get a company that has something like 10% of the internet going through them (Cloudflare) to remove a site I would say trans people have a massive amount of power.
>If you pulled out another minority group with little power, your rule might be more agreeable.
I think we should have consistent rules regardless of how much power a person has. Should politicians not have the right to a trial because they are powerful? Of course not. Rules should be uniform.
Doesn't this make it a race to see how everyone can be like the peasants in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
"Help Help I'm being oppressed! Come see the violence inherent in the system!"
You understand that the joke there was that the peasants were being oppressed, and the king was totally blind to it, right?
Galileo wasn't really under house arrest. All he had to do was recant.
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.
Babylon Bee isn't under house arrest. This analogy is absurd. They weren't allowed to target hate towards a specific, named individual on their Twitter account. Everything else they were saying was more or less ok.
And they still had plenty of other outlets, including their very successful website.
This is like a single book publisher telling Galileo, "we won't print this one page, but the rest of the book is ok".
If I recall correctly, they were suspended for saying that that specific named individual one man of the Year award.
That doesn't seem very hateful, although it may seem derisive. There is a difference.
Did it go beyond that?
It's hateful in the sense that it's very derisive in the culture of the target and Babylon Bee has a large enough audience that the individual is likely to receive targeted threats as a result.
Reach and influence are important, because they impact the magnitude of what a derisive comment can do to a target.
You saying, "lol, man!" In your living room has no reach, it won't cause harm. The Bee saying it has huge reach, and when aimed at a specific minority individual can lead to serious harm.
> derisive in the culture of the target > the individual is likely to receive targeted threats as a result.
Obvious and simple solution here:
1. Allow people to say whatever offensive jokes they want.
2. Keep banning the actual problem: those who make the targeted threats.
The entire concept of "incitement" is ridiculous. We have agency. Nobody can force me to go threaten someone. Go after the ones who commit actual harm, not the ones who make jokes.
This is true for you and me, but when we're dealing with the laws of large numbers I can guarantee there are folks who are not able to understand that these are "just jokes".
Looking at what the families of Sandy hook victims suffered at the hands of mentally ill viewers of Alex Jones is heartbreaking. When you have an audience of millions, I believe you have a responsibility to be intentional about what you publish, because you know that someone might take you very seriously and do awful things.
Sure, we can catch the people who make threats often enough, but the damage has already been done. It's far better to ask folks to be considerate and intentional about who they target, rather than try and sweep up the wreckage of someone's life after the fact.
None of these authoritarian excuses matter. They can say what they want about who they want now.
Moderation is not authoritarianism.
If you use moderation as a tool to push your ideology, sure it is.
If your ideology is printed in the rules before you enter, and you agree to respect those rules before entering, and the rules are things like "don't target individuals with racism, transphobia, homophobia, etc" it's really not authoritarianism.
I can't yell in a library, the librarians aren't authoritarian. I know going in that libraries aren't the place for that.
Except Twitter does allow racism against whites. So its rules are not “don't target individuals with racism”, but “don't target non-white people with racism”, which sends a clear ideological message. Same with other demographics.
They targeted a public person who exists at the upper echelons of power and privilege. For a group of people so obsessed with comedy only “punching up” it’s ironic to see the justification.
Did they target her or did they target the idea of being trans?
> where he serves proudly as the first man in that position to dress like a western cultural stereotype of a woman
> We have still chosen to give the award as his self-identification has no bearing on the truth
If you attack a successful member of a minority group based on their minority you still aren't punching up, sorry.
> Did they target him
Her.
Gah, but thanks
They didn’t have to say their tweet was wrong right? Just that it violated their rules, which it did
> All they had to do was delete the tweet.
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.
A joke about trans people is not transphobia. If somebody makes a joke about white people is that whitephobia?
A joke about trans people may or may not be transphobia. There's a ton of context to consider - who is telling the joke, whi is the punchline, etc.
But this case was not that. This case was specifically targeting a specific individual and making fun of them being trans. That's absolutely transphobia.
>A joke about trans people may or may not be transphobia.
That is good. A lot of people don't agree.
>who is telling the joke,
Not true.
>whi is the punchline, etc.
Maybe. The problem is the inconsistent standards on that. Punch lines that are anti white or anti male aren't considered sexists or racist, but anti trans ones are.
We need a consistent standard and we don't have it.
>But this case was not that. This case was specifically targeting a specific individual and making fun of them being trans. That's absolutely transphobia.
That was not the case. They were parodying the newspaper or magazine that said Levine was the woman of the year.
The right of free speech doesn't apply to a private company. A company has every right to dictate what services it will provide and the conditions for using those services. It is not a public communications carrier.
This is to conflate (as so often) the USA's legal/constitutional codes with the principle of free speech. That principle has to do with promoting criticism of ideas, and preventing the suppression of criticism. The US codes are (just) one instance of a way to support that principle. The principle applies to all criticism, and all suppression of criticism.
Musk after banning @elonjet in 3 minutes
> It is not a public communications carrier.
It has 400 million users. By all other definition it is a public space
Weird how this idea is only getting traction now that Elon owns Twitter, and not when they were censoring everything right of Mao.
And for the same reason Musk has a right to unban them, so what are you complaining about?
They were never banned only suspended, and there's nothing in the link to indicate that they've been un-suspended from posting.
From last week proof that they weren't banned: https://web.archive.org/web/20221019005155/https://twitter.c...
They were suspended with a little Maoist struggle session setup that they were required to go through to repent their sins, and included is an admission that they were sinners for doing it, in order to get their account back.
You left that very important part out.
They had to delete the tweet which awarded a specific named transwoman "man of the year award". The tweet was cruel identity-based harassment and not worthy of defense, but it for some reason seems to have radicalized a certain segment of the tech elite. In fact it may very well have been the inciting event that led to Musk's purchase of twitter.
Anyway, having to delete your harassment tweet in order to keep tweeting is not a Maoist struggle session
Twitter could have just deleted it for them. But no, they literally went to the trouble of building and testing code where you have to delete your own tweet, and part of doing is to so admit that what you did was "wrong". This is a textbook Maoist struggle session.
I don't know, sounds more like a Christian process than a Maoist one.
What were they banned for? Looking through the content, I don't see any of the egregious hate speech or incitement of violence that we've seen in other bans like Trump.
They gave a trans woman their man of the year award and tweeted about it. Twitter said misgendering is against their rules and blocked the account until they deleted the tweet.
Babylon Bee felt attacked and refused to delete the tweet, so they just left their own account locked.
I'm not sure if they felt 'attacked'- more that they were standing up for their right to do what they do (satire) without being censored and giving into the censorship by deleting the tweet. The 'mis-gendering' in this case was absolutely truthful in a scientific sense, thereby making their point that truth being somehow harmful in today's society. Whether you agree that's a 'good' point or not it seems to fall squarely in the area that should be open for public comment.
It's not "absolutely true in the scientific sense", except at the "I have an understanding of high school level biology and sociology" sense.
Sex and gender are both significantly more complex than just chromosomes, genitalia, or organs. If you are interested, I'm happy to dive into a good faith discussion of where the science actually falls.
Matter of opinion.
I wouldn't deliberately misgender someone just to be a jerk, but the idea suite you're referencing was a niche viewpoint 7 years ago or so.
It's kind of incredible to go from there to "this is a settled mandatory philosophical viewpoint and disagreement is banished" in such a short time.
If it was a niche viewpoint 7 years ago (which I would quibble with, given third gender and trans people have existed for millennia across many cultures, just not commonly in modern America), then great, we've seen science advance.
We used to think that being gay was a mental disease. We now recognize it as something that many animals have as a part of their population, including humans. 20 years ago, being gay was like, pretty much not accepted in public and the science was developing.
Trans identities are coming a bit later, but we're still learning and developing our models.
I am all about being nice to people who live their lives however, but the idea of "gender" as a fluid philosophical concept distinct from sex is super squishy.
It's massively overstating things to call it "settled science" or even "science" at this point. It's philosophy in theory and public opinion in practice.
Science: this phenomenon exists and people exist who've had these experiences. That's a factual statement.
Politics: you must talk and think about the phenomenon in these proscribed ways. That's an ideological statement.
When I talk about fluidity of gender, or gender distinct from sex, I start with well accepted terms.
Consider: you would probably agree with me that a butch tomboy and a valley girl fashionista are both women. But they represent different extremes on what we, socially, agree femininity is. We might say the butch woman is less feminine than the valley girl.
Likewise, we'd typically say Clint Eastwood is more manly than, say, Bill Gates. A similar spread of "manliness" for men.
If we're on the same page so far, we're comfortable with the idea that gender has a spectrum - two separate spectrums, one for men and one for women. I don't need you to agree that they intersect at all, just that the concept of "manliness" and "femininity" are not single points in their respective genders.
Now let's look globally. Are the same spectrums universal? In the Middle East, east Asia, Russia, central Africa, and Polynesia... Does feminity look the same?
I'd argue no. A hijab or niqab might evoke feminity in some parts of the world but not in others. Following this, there must be a social component to feminity and manliness. And this component is not genetic. So there must be "something" that exists that's a social construct related to sex.
What should we call this social construct, assuming we agree there is no chromosomal need to wear a niqab?
Academically, gender has evolved to be the word that describes the cultural expectations placed on men and women. These expectations allow for some flexibility for culture and personality.
If you are comfortable with this so far, and we can agree on the above, I'm happy to dive into the fluidity, non-binary, and forget separation of gender and sex as a follow on discussion. But if we disagree about the above, we should sort that before moving on.
My beef is with taking a particular set of social norms and calling it "settled science", then going a step further and banning alternate views.
I'm not even saying I have a problem with those norms, I like everyone, I just think it's an overreach.
That's fair! Science is never settled, in any field. It might be better to say something like, "the current consensus is tilting towards gender as a social construct, and sex being more complex than 'XX or XY'"?
Social norms are inherently non-scientific in their motivation.
It's an accurate observation to say that higher-income liberals tend to think this way and enforce these norms but the norms themselves are in the realm of culture and politics.
Similarly, it's accurate to say conservatives tend to think people who flout traditional gender norms matched to their genetics are weirdos. Not scientific on their part either.
Social sciences aim to be descriptive, reflecting the understanding of cultures.
But also, gender is beyond just US liberal and conservative. Plenty of cultures around the world and throughout recorded history have had third genders and trans people, and they were not considered "weird". I believe sociologists are attempting to review human behavior across all spans and across cultures and compare even to animals (there are recorded instances of animals fulfilling reversed gender roles for their species).
"gender" as a term on its own is used very confusedly by a lot of people, but there's a simple definition that makes things clear: "gender == sex". The trick is that "gender" disambiguates that you mean "sex as it relates to a social context" instead of "sex as it relates to a biological context".
Where this all gets cleared up is that you should use more specific terms such as "Gender norms", "gender presentation", etc. Someone of the male gender can present as very feminine, but that doesn't make them a woman. It is not bad that their gender presentation is at odds with the gender norms expected of their gender, but their gender is not fluid and doesn't change. Only their gender presentation.
I realize I'm probably tilting at windmills here, but if everyone realized that gender is simply sex as it relates to social contexts and got more specific with their terminology, there'd be a lot less talking past each other.
Gender doesn't equal sex, though. My non binary friends are very much equipped with penises or vaginas.
There's a wide variety of genders in the rest of the world as well. While this is a newer concept in American and Western cultures, there are non male, non female genders dating back to mesopotamia.
My point is just that more specific terminology should be used. Your friends have nonbinary gender presentation, but that doesn't make their gender something other than male or female.
And sure, there's historically been a wide range of gender roles, norms, and expectations, but there's only ever been two genders.
Ahh yes the good ol' let me talk down on someone with their "elementary" level of knowledge is always a great way to start a "good faith discussion".
EDIT: Intersex does not turn the male/female binary into a "spectrum".
I didn't talk down. Genuinely, high school biology teaches us that there are two sexes XX it's a woman, XY it's a man. That's literally what we learn.
It's only after you dive into the science at a collegiate level or higher that you learn there's a small percentage, maybe 1-2% of people, for whom this binary understanding is not a good model.
I'm not saying it's bad to only have a high school understanding, just that it's an incomplete understanding.
You may not have intended to talk down. But it came across that way...
Apologies! Text is difficult. If I did a poor job, I'm open to suggestions on how I could have rephrased (and if I can still edit the post, I'll try to do so).
It wasn't so much the words - the words were fine. It's the assumption that "I know real biology, and you must not".
That's fair, but if you tell me there's a simple biological definition of sex, odds are pretty good you have a relatively simple model.
>Sex and gender are both significantly more complex than just chromosomes, genitalia, or organs.
Everyone reading this needs to look up John Money. The founding father of "sex and gender are different".
What happened to Reimer was a travesty, and an affront to human decency on all levels.
That doesn't change the truth that gender and biological sex are both characteristics of the human experience - usually they line up, and sometimes they don't.
>That doesn't change the truth that gender and biological sex are both characteristics of the human experience - usually they line up, and sometimes they don't.
I think it does, as that's the foundation of the notion. Prior to that, they were completely interchangeable and authors would use "gender" to mean "sex" where it was considered more crass to say "sex". Gender is just a euphemism for sex.
You have causality backwards.
It was believed that since they were not the same thing it would be possible to safely raise someone as an arbitrary gender despite that not being the case.
The failure is in that both gender and sex are biological characteristics, and at that point in time Money believed that gender was strictly social - which is _clearly_ inaccurate.
In short - Reimer was forced into the life of being a trans person, despite having been born cis.
Why not assume there are many readers here who are interested in good faith discussion and just go ahead and post a summary of the science?
Typically because that could be a long post, and it might not be what the parent wants too engage with.
I like to invite folks, rather than make assumptions about their preferences. The invitation is open to the community, of course!
The only real discussion to be had is that you and I mean (very) different things when we use the word "woman".
For sure. I've had this discussion many times with many people.
I'd argue that most women, in fact probably 99% or more, fall into a fairly straightforward definition - two X chromosomes, raised to behave like whatever their society expects from women. (I think we can agree that "woman" might have different cultural/social expectations depending on where they were raised? E.g. in some parts of the world a niqab or hajib is expected, for instance.)
But there exists a small group of people who don't fit in with that definition. They might have been born with a penis but two XX chromosomes, they might have been born without functional ovaries or an abnormal set of genitalia.
They might have been born with XY chromosomes but never developed a penis.
These folks are intersex, and are often raised as women.
I would say, in these cases, that we might agree that they are women - their chromosomes might not always be XX, but all their features and body development and social upbringing in the world suggests that they are women.
Then we come to another group. A group whose bodies are functionally male but who feel a deep revulsion at being a man.
But before we dive in to that case, are you comfortable with the other two cases and have any disagreements about the 99% or intersex cases?
You're using intersex ppl and the very real issues they have faced to then push gender ideology (your transition at the end to "A group whose bodies are functionally male but who feel a deep revulsion at being a man"). That's exploitative of intersex people but is sadly consistent with gender ideologues always trying to piggyback on other group's issues (e.g. the attempt to piggbyback on the struggles that same sex attracted people have faced).
I'm starting a discussion about the definition of women and men, first by discussing cis people, then introducing the idea that the simple label doesn't always apply, and if there is agreement, I planned to discuss trans and non binary identities.
The goal is to explain that it is not as simple as XX or XY, not to say trans and intersex people face the same challenges.
You are aware that trans individuals have been part of the LGBT movement feom the beginning, even back before AIDS when it was the GLBT movement, right?
I didn't say anything about your so-called 'LGBT movement'. I talked about 'the struggles that same sex attracted people have faced', struggles that span millennia and cultures. Your so-called 'LGBT movement' is highly western culture oriented (particularly US American / New York culture, see the other commenter's reference to Stonewall), historically recent and ideologically constructed. That is very different to my formulation, which is non-ideological, non-identitarian and consequently universally inclusive (for all same sex attracted people).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_history
Trans people have spanned history, and much like people who experience same-sex attraction have experienced a variety of acceptance and rejection based on the culture at the time.
In what way is this piggy backing? In addition, as far as western contexts pre-GLBT, both transgender and same sex attracted people have been related since pre-nazi Germany and both were persecuted by the Nazis (to be clear, this is not an invitation to invoke Godwin's Law, nor me comparing you to a Nazi. It's just an example of a case where gay and trans individuals have been joined together).
E: Fixed spelling and expanded second paragraph.
Yeah, fuck, Stonewall was instigated by trans women, lesbians, and eventually gay men fighting back against oppression together. The Ball scene has always had a trans component.
To say that gender issues are piggybacking on homosexual issues is revisionism, full stop.
Not really, no.
Sex, scientifically, is determined by the kind of gametes an organism produces in sexual maturity. Males produce small sex cells, females produce large sex cells. There is no overlap among mammals (i.e. human sex is “binary”)
Gender is a concept made up by feminists with no consistent definition, use mainly to confuse.
What about humans who produce no gametes? Are they sexless?
Those usually still have most of the body features for producing certain gametes, they just aren't functioning.
Yes. For organisms that aren't capable of sexual reproduction, it doesn't make sense to talk about sex.
So if these humans were raised as men or women, we should stop calling them that and... Use non gendered pronouns like it or they?
Which restrooms should they use?
If you think gender is confusing, maybe you should consider that the problem is *you*?
Do it.
Are there peer reviewed papers or something on Arvix that explicitly dive into the "beyond high school level of biology" where sex is not defined at the cellular level (wrt Autosomes)? I am not interested in debating the sociological version, to be perfectly honest.
It's important to remember we're discussing the margins. The XX, XY definition is functionally good enough for nearly all cases.
But there exist people whose sex doesn't work into that model.
Consider some 46 XX intersex people. In these cases, outside conditions (typically an endocrine imbalance in the mother) leads to the development of a penis, and the loss of a vagina. These children may be raised as boys. Similarly, some XY people are born with autosomal defects that prevent them from effectively processing testosterone into dihydrotestosterone. As a result, their bodies develop into what we would consider typically female. They are often raised as girls.
There are dozens of conditions similar to these.
"XX male syndrome" might be one example of specifically what you are looking for - people who are scientifically discussed as male despite having XX chromosomes, a typically female karotype. It can be caused by autosomal origins
Ultimately, we cannot remove the discussion of sociological science from biology, because we make choices for kids in these cases. And those choices differ depending on culture. The US preferentially gives intersex people male gender, while Saudi Arabia does the opposite, even for the same conditions. In this way, even biological sex has some social component.
And if you want to make that argument, fine. But when people are banning those who disagree, I will reflexively side with those banned and against the people doing the banning, whether or not I agree with them.
They don’t have the right to say hateful things about someone on someone else’s platform. They had a privilege, which was conditionally revoked.
Saying "the Earth is round" is hateful from the perspective of flat earthers. Would you apply the same logic equally and make it an offense to satirize this particular belief?
Or to bring it full circle, I doubt the Bee would petition to get someone banned for satirizing "God" or saying "God is not real". If they did, we would call it out too.
Yes, obviously Twitter got to decide which hateful statements were prohibited and which were not.
You can trust Twitter and activists to make those decisions all you like. But don't expect people to stand by and accept that as an acceptable solution to societies problems.
Because you're making these zero-transparency and zero-due process systems fill this role. Which is naive and idealistic in the worst ways.
I would probably believe in these exact things when I was an ill-formed and very socially concerned 16 year old, but I can't honestly take that position today. The only people I see taking this position are people willing to gamble for today for short term gains of their pet ideologies while ignoring long term harm.
Like satirists posting pictures of Muhammad?
If Twitter was the government of the United States and subject to first amendment restrictions, you would have a point.
Let's say you have a big nose and you're out on the town attending a comedy club.
A comedian gets up during his stand up routine and comments on your big nose, which you're sensitive about and wish no one would comment on, since you've always wanted a small, delicate nose, and in fact you've scheduled surgery to 'fix' it.
After they comment on your nose you loudly protest and ask the comedian to cease, since you really don't think the nose represents the true 'you.'
Is it 'hate' for the comedian, against your wishes to continue to make jokes that night, and in fact, he finds the whole exchange (and you) so funny that he incorporates the exchange into all his routines going forward?
I'd argue that it is maybe a bit rude, but it is exactly why we have people like comedians- they are the court jesters for our society, they point out when our good intentions turn into pathologies and give us room to reflect on progressive and regressive overreach.
Taking that out of the public sphere removes a good chunk of society's ability to make course corrections.
> The 'mis-gendering' in this case was absolutely truthful in a scientific sense,
Except:
A) Gender != biological sex.
B) Even biological sex has a lot more shades of grey
C) Even if the Bee were referring to biological sex, it would be Male/Female of the year, not Man/Woman.
D) It's the Bee. Everyone knows the intent.
> A) Gender != biological sex.
What makes you thing they weren't talking about biological sex?
> B) Even biological sex has a lot more shades of grey
Which are not applicable in this case, since the sex of the individial in question is inambiguous.
C) Even if the Bee were referring to biological sex, it would be Male/Female of the year, not Man/Woman.
A man is defined as an adult male.
> D) It's the Bee. Everyone knows the intent.
Yes, the intent of satire is to make fun of absurd situations.
> What makes you thing they weren't talking about biological sex?
Biological sex is unrelated to the topic at hand, unless of course they were working on some genetics homework, or working on a eugenics project I suppose.
> Which are not applicable in this case, since the sex of the individial in question is inambiguous.
Is it - where do you draw the line? If it's production of gametes, what if she doesn't? If it's hormonal balance, she's now biologicaly female. If it's presence/absence of a penis/vagina, she could have either. If it's X/Y chromosomes, she could be XY, XXY, XX[0], or chimeric.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/XX_male_syndrome
More importantly, in what way does her biological sex impact her public influence? I certainly hope her chromosomes or genetalia have little to no impact on her public life.
> A man is defined as an adult male.
From Trans Man in Webster: Definition of trans man
: a transgender man : a man who was identified as female at birth
Making it acceptable per webster to use singular man/woman for a trans individual.
> Yes, the intent of satire is to make fun of absurd situations.
That's The Onion. The Bee is propaganda wrapped up in "it's just a joke bro". The Onion punches both ways, the Bee doesn't.
Satire only counts if you make fun of both sides? Is Stephen Colbert a propagandist too?
From the guidelines:
> Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create accounts routinely. HN is a community—users should have an identity that others can relate to.
I'm on main and will be willing to continue this discussion when you or someone else comes back with yours/theirs.
E: And if you or someone else _isn't_ willing to come back and attache their name to that statement, I guess you understand the point.
> Biological sex is unrelated to the topic at hand
So is hormonal balance or whatever you use for defining gender. Why do we care about gender at all?
> Is it - where do you draw the line?
When a person's body has all typical characteristics of a specific sex, then it's unambiguously that sex. Otherwise, they can rightfully identify as intersex, but that has nothing to do with transgenderism, where the body is unambiguous and only the mind seems to differ (and that's only considering people with gender dysphoria, aka “truscum”, and not those that are doing it for other reasons).
> From Trans Man in Webster: Definition of trans man
: a transgender man : a man who was identified as female at birth
If politically motivated people create a dictionary entry, then it agrees with them. What a surprise.
The word “assigned” is nonsense. The doctor doesn't flip a coin to determine the sex. The sex is observed.
> The Onion punches both ways, the Bee doesn't.
The Bee makes fun of conservatives too quite often.
> So is hormonal balance or whatever you use for defining gender. Why do we care about gender at all?
Gender is defined by the person who is experiencing it. More specifically, gender is clearly biological to an extent (source: every trans person, as well as Reimer who was discussed elsewhere in the thread), but tends to represent itself with various social norms for a given gender (see: Various trans and third gender people across history, who align with gender roles not matching their birth sex).
Gender is relevant here due to that second section - it impacts how one sees and interacts with the world.
> When a person's body has all typical characteristics of a specific sex, then it's unambiguously that sex. Otherwise, they can rightfully identify as intersex, but that has nothing to do with transgenderism, where the body is unambiguous and only the mind seems to differ
The point is that far more people could be defined as 'intersex' then are, and many people who could have any of the conditions I listed above and not realize it. As there is no biological definition that doesn't need an exception to match many people who would be traditionally considered male or female, trying to argue this point is meaningless.
A simple Male/Female model is Good Enough for most peoples understanding, but is fundamentally flawed.
> If politically motivated people create a dictionary entry, then it agrees with them. What a surprise.
This argument can be used to dismiss anything, and thus cannot prove anything. Do you have other examples of political motivation here, or is it just that it is political because it disagrees?
> The word “assigned” is nonsense. The doctor doesn't flip a coin to determine the sex. The sex is observed.
Sex is observed, and gender is assigned based on sex. Usually, this matches up just fine. Sometimes, it doesn't.
> (and that's only considering people with gender dysphoria, aka “truscum”, and not those that are doing it for other reasons).
Truscum != people who have gender dysphoria. Truscum == Trans people who believe that you require gender dysphoria to be trans _and_ try to prevent other trans people from seeking treatment based on that belief.
> The Bee makes fun of conservatives too quite often.
Of eight articles on their landing page, four articles clearly attack the left from the headline, one could ambiguously attack either, but becomes clearly about the left in two paragraphs, One appears to be about the Bee itself - but actually is anti-left, and two appear to be benign "haha people funny[0]".
[0] "Batman In Hospital After Gotham Thugs Realize They Can Attack All At Once Instead Of Just One At A Time" was subscriber only, but "Man Celebrates 40th Birthday With Finely-Aged, Single Malt Bottle Of Advil " made me actually laugh.
E: Trimmed bad copy at the bottom and some spelling errors/phrasing.
E2: Should note, the description of the Bee's articles is accurate as of time of writing and time of this edit. Presumably this will change eventually.
Language is moving towards a disambiguation between male (as a kerotype or body plan) and man (as a social concept of what it is to be 'manly' in that society.)
This evolution of language has been very rapid in some circles, and slow in others, but everyone uses it to some degree.
For example, when people say, "Be a man!" Or "man up!", they aren't saying, "show your adult male body".
They are saying, "meet our standards for what a man in our culture is!" Mulan's famous song, "I'll make a man out of you" has nothing to do with chromosomes or penises. It has everything to do with the social side of the term "man".
So at the very least, the word man is ambiguous and could mean adult male or it could mean someone who is manly in behavior.
> Language is moving towards a disambiguation between male (as a kerotype or body plan) and man (as a social concept of what it is to be 'manly' in that society.)
No, some people are artificially trying to create this distinction. In normal speech, “man” and “male” are pretty much interchangeable.
> For example, when people say, "Be a man!" Or "man up!", they aren't saying, "show your adult male body".
They're saying “show properties that are traditionally associated with males”. These stereotypes have to place in modern society and I find it appalling that the people who claim to want equality are continuing to perpetuate them.
This is the person - https://www.hhs.gov/about/leadership/rachel-levine.html
My hot take is that it's OK to mock senior government officials, actually.
>My hot take is that it's OK to mock senior government officials, actually.
Mocking senior American government officials is the most protected speech in the country, in fact. I do it liberally an encourage others to. It's the most fundamental part of holding them accountable.
Is all mocking fair game? I mean, I hard agree with you, but I think there are things that are gauche or hurtful to mock. Like, I think Obama was a bad president and there are plenty of mock worthy things there, but depicting him and Michelle as apes is beyond the pale for me. Mock his policies, mock his affect, mock his social behaviors in other countries, hell, mock his tan suit. But to bust out racist memes? I dunno... I think that sucks.
Michelle Obama is fairly tall (5'11") and has a masculine jawline. I'm black and I LOL'd the first time I saw her called a Wookie (probably in the dumpster fire comments section of ZeroHedge). I mean, take a look: https://starsunfolded.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Michell...
Alicia Keys or Keri Hilson she ain't....
If she were an absentee First Lady and less proactive, I could totally see someone calling her "Sasquatch" (a big mythical ape-creature rarely captured on camera) as a criticism and I'd be ok with that.
Babylon Bee attacked a high-profile trans public servant in a way meant to (IMO) provide commentary on society's approach to trans issues and the implications for biological females? I'm ok with that too. I think some comedian, maybe Bill Burr or Andrew Schulz, had a similar bit: "Men are so awesome we're even better at being women than actual women. That's why a Man[Bruce Jenner] is Woman of the Year[Caitlyn Jenner], in his first year as a woman." or something to that effect.
For some context, and why some believe that Babylon Bee's suspension was the catalyst for Musk buying Twitter:
Twitter is the defacto online public square for a great number of people in politics, journalism, academia and many other fields.
Twitter's TOS was, for whatever reason, deliberately written to disenfranchise half the voter base, half the country more or less by making it so simply expressing deeply held political or religious views would get half of them banned.
"half the country" overstates things. Roughly 40% of Americans believe that trans rights are good, roughly 30% believe they are bad, and 30% are undecided.
I'd argue that if Twitter has a liberal bias, it reflects the mostly majority opinions. (Speaking as a leftist whose friends are constantly banned for trivial nonsense, Twitter also hates the left. Not the Democrats, they aren't leftist.)
What the 40% figure your citing might represent and what 'woke inc' are actually pushing in legislature and in medicine are most certainly two very different things.
“Trans rights are good/bad” is a very vague statement. What exactly did the survey ask?
> felt attacked
No, they were attacked.
Those are not mutually exclusive. One can feel attacked when they are or aren't actually attacked. One can feel not attacked, even if you are.
You act on the feeling.
Nobody should ever be banned for violating the TOS of a private entity/s.
It'll be very interesting to see what advertisers stick around through all this mayhem.
Very few.
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.
Many of the biggest advertisers aim to create positive brand associations with their campaigns.
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?
> Advertisers are the most conservative group in any ecosystem
Just to be clear, you're using "conservative" in the "risk averse" sense and not the more common political sense, right?
I am not American. So conservative in the classic definition.
Majority of advertisers still try to appeal to the broadest demographic possible.
Conservative political views means essentially the same thing everywhere.
I think the classic conservatives are a dying breed. Alt-right conservatives generate outrage, and clicks and views. They add an irreverent touch to an otherwise kind of boring ideology. They "say it like how it is". They make it cool.
I don't like it, but seeing it grow all over the world makes me think that's the reason why.
If this is currently mayhem then the past was clearly chaos.
You can expect the Donald to be unbanned. You can also expect twitter to become the same cesspool that truth social is.
Trump is in a weird position though that he can't come back to Twitter without sabotaging any value or investment he put into Truth Social since just about the only value in Truth Social is that Trump is on it.
If he doesn't return to Twitter by the end of the year and simply leave everyone who invested in Truth Social holding the bag, I'll eat my hat.
I think it depends how much utility he sees in continuing his victim narrative.
It won’t be the first time he sank an investment. Truth be told (hah), truth social has little to no value as the main demographic is generally very poor with little disposable income, and the main content is just propaganda and dog whistling.
I think the real value in owning a social media company or newspaper is in the influence, not advertising revenue. If it turns a profit, then all the better, but I don't think that's what motivates rich people to own media.
In other words, the propaganda and dog whistling is the whole point.
I'm fascinated to see what the result will be. It's always interesting to watch public figures struggle between two different but almost equally important incentives.
Trump said he would never go back to twitter. It is well known, and without a single counter-example, that what he says always true. Therefore, it is moot to even discuss this possibility.