Twitter’s New Tool to Crack Down on Politically Incorrect Language
Twitter’s New Tool to Crack Down on Politically Incorrect
Language
By William Hicks | 2:57 pm, February 15, 2017
Twitter has launched a new way to punish users for bad
behavior, temporarily “limiting” their account.
Some users are receiving notices their accounts are
limited for 12 hours, meaning only people who follow them can see their tweets
or receive notifications. When they are retweeted, people outside their network
can’t see those retweets.
Some speculate these limitations are automatic based on
keywords, but there is no hard evidence.
This would be fine if this was used uniformly to clamp
down on harassment, but it appears to be used on people, simply for using
politically incorrect language.
Take for example the Twitter user @Drybones5 who got his
account limited after using the word “retarded.”
He claims he got his account limited directly after
saying retarded twice. The first time he called a Nintendo policy adding paid
extra content to their new Zelda game retarded.
The next time he called someone a retard who called him a
retard first.
Another user @faggotfriday (kind of surprising he hasn’t
gotten banned yet) got his account limited after using fag in the British
sense, meaning cigarette.
Another user claims his account was limited after calling
Senator John McCain a traitor.
It’s not surprising or unreasonable, the limiting feature
would be applied to the n-word, but it can go into effect even when the word is
used in a context which was not targeting anyone.
In this case the n-word was used in reference to a
statement Chris Cuomo made. It seems that using the n-word in reference to a
quote could cause an account to get limited.
Twitter appears to be using this feature to police
problematic language that is not necessarily targeted harassment. So much for
being the “free speech wing of the free speech party.”
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