Twitter locked my account (again) for an obvious joke | Hacker News Reader

Twitter locked my account (again) for an obvious joke

lapcatsoftware.com

56 pointsvalleyer113 comments

The “delete tweet” dialogue has always struck me as hilariously dystopian. They could do it themselves, but it has to be a voluntary act of self censorship. You may be welcomed back to civilization and our good graces if you delete the wrongthink, brother.

> but it has to be a voluntary act of self censorship

Probably the next step will be to ask you to whip yourself ten times for a bad tweet, just for good measure.

The Fallout 76 moderation at one point offered unbanning users if they would write a 300-word essay explaining why cheating is wrong, IIRC.

They learnt from the best Maoist practices!

Repeat after me: 2+2=5

There are 4 lights!

Nope. 2+2=22 as explained in this (strangely relevant) video:

https://youtu.be/Zh3Yz3PiXZw

“We’ll need you to recant that statement”

Psychologically, it'll probably get the response Twitter is looking for. It will make people behave.

It does look like an abuse tactic to me though. It is completely rejecting the idea that your opinion of what you said could have merits that Twitter doesn't see - the dynamics that that is calling on are pretty gross. In a relationship; such behaviour is a red flag.

Very much like governments demanding people consent to unwanted medical procedures under threat of being banned from work, education, and participation in society. Very dystopian.

Repent! Repent! Repent!

This appears to be the slippery slope of freedom of speech we spoke about when people on Twitter were clapping when various people got banned. Enjoy the bed you made for yourselves.

> Individually, you can take steps to own your content, like I've done here by publishing my own blog on my own domain and a publicly accessible RSS feed.

If you have something to say - anything at all - then please setup alternative ways to say it. The number of things being censored is only increasing, we are yet to see any relaxation in free speech. Something you say jokingly today is almost guaranteed to get you banned in 10 years time when political feelings change and context is removed.

> Yet in the end it doesn't matter, because RSS readership is very low nowadays compared to social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. You can try to be decentralized, but if your decentralized content isn't linked on the big centralized networks, it might as well not exist.

This is very true. I think we need to do more to make RSS accessible to the average person (read: non-tech people). Obviously big-social media giants are diametrically opposed to this idea, as RSS is somewhat decentralized and they make their money by being a centralized platform.

For a while now I have been thinking about an RSS-based social media platform with opt-in personalized censorship... The idea being to re-use existing (and well supported) technologies, rather than re-design everything. One thing I can't really think of how to handle elegantly is comments/replies between multiple platforms - every solution I can think of involves inventing something new. If anybody has ideas on this I would definitely be interested to hear them.

>This appears to be the slippery slope of freedom of speech we spoke about when people on Twitter were clapping when various people got banned. Enjoy the bed you made for yourselves.

I don't know which people you are talking about specifically or who was clapping, but the slippery slope also goes the other way -- when moderators are afraid to ban people for potentially abusive language then it's very easy for the discourse to start slipping and become toxic. Even if you disagree with twitter's stance, please do your part to ensure that doesn't happen, we all deserve a place where we can be treated respectfully and have intellectually stimulating conversations.

>Something you say jokingly today is almost guaranteed to get you banned in 10 years time when political feelings change and context is removed.

I don't understand what the issue is here, if this is talking about twitter, you can just delete an old tweet if it's upsetting people later. The article even shows how twitter has a process to let you delete the tweet and restore your account.

> [..] when moderators are afraid to ban people for potentially abusive language then it's very easy for the discourse to start slipping and become toxic.

I think it really depends on what the purpose of your forum actually is. Perhaps that's the problem - people go to these platforms for different reasons. In my opinion, Twitter is not a place for intellectual discussion and debate, the format itself encourages quick and low-depth hot-takes. And don't get me started on the Tweet numbering...

> [..] we all deserve a place where we can be treated respectfully and have intellectually stimulating conversations.

I don't think we fundamentally do. It would of course be nice and it's something I personally want - but I don't think it's something I deserve. I accept that some things will offend me, and that's okay. If I don't want to see it, there are many options available.

> I don't understand what the issue is here, if this is talking about twitter, you can just delete an old tweet if it's upsetting people later.

In theory, but you have "cancel culture" where something is taken entirely out of context and judged with modern sentimentality, rather than in the context it was written. Also it should be okay to openly disagree with your past self and not have the re-write history, it shows personal progress.

> The article even shows how twitter has a process to let you delete the tweet and restore your account.

"Let you" - it didn't seem like there was much of a choice if the person wanted to continue using the service.

My original point about a better social media still stands anyway, I believe censorship should be opt-in. "I don't want to see X content" - sure, here's your wall with X content removed. "I don't want to talk to Y" - sure, here's everything with Y removed.

This has always been how Twitter operated.

It is in no way a result of last years debate, as the mentioned tweet did in fact break their rules.

While the author meant it as a jest, it nonetheless was actually encouraging self harm.

> it nonetheless was actually encouraging self harm.

Uh, no it wasn't.

I cannot see it any other way. If I encourage you to inform yourself how to amputate yourself, then I'm indirectly telling you to do said thing.

He didn't actually mean it like that, but you need to look at the tweet he responded to in order to get that.

Contextual humor doesn't really work on Twitter where you're unlikely to actually see the surrounding tweets

My account was locked a few months ago for saying that a US Senator had “strong Gargamel energy.” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I keep reporting comments across the web that says someone or whole groups of people should be killed.

Response sadly varies a bit with who said it and who they wanted dead.

Is there any study showing that twitter following or like count or whatever translates into more sales for businesses? The way I see it, Twitter is just a super loud minority that doesn't represent at all the general population.

Sever your leg, please. It's the greatest day.

(Can't wait for the Homestar Runner fans to be sent to Twitter jail for quoting that.)

>"Orwellian power of the big tech companies"

If we're debating which dystopian fiction [0] is the metaphor for the abuse Twitter ML is inflicting on you, I suggest With Folded Hands (1947) [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_takeovers_in_popular_cultur...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_Folded_Hands

> abuse Twitter ML

This is not ML doing it, but legions of underpaid Indians, and North Africans.

The later are mostly needed, and recruited because of EU antiterrorism censorship. (Do terrorists never speak anything other than Arabic?)

These days, usually also English or various European languages, and they wave this flag https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Flag_of_...

I can recommend With Folded Hands.

I think I listened to it on Audible, there is a bunch of anthologies of short SF stories.

It is not long, but it is for sure scary. Scary when you look outside and you start seeing similarities.

Soon the only safe thing to tweet will be cat pics. Unless you have a decent sized following getting the attention of a large company is impossible.

"To have an account in a social network is not a human right"

There's an argument for it to become a right if the social network intentionally tries to displace other channels of communication and forbids interoperability.

Or a computer or a job or clothes. But they are a requirement for society.

And yeah, "It is not a human right to be an internet user" in general.

The human right to basic fairness and reason is generic and applies to everything.

There is nothing magical about social media web services that means it's ok to abuse and discriminate there vs anywhere else.

It also doesn't require a "human right" to say "hey this sucks". That is a valid thing to observe and discuss regardless if the complainer has any special legal rights being violated.

Actually I wonder if that would not fall under Article 27 of UN's Universal declaration of Human Rights:

"Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits."

At some point when you get 'mistakenly' kicked off Twitter for the nth time, there has to be a point where you just go fuck this and either throw up your own site or move to mastodon.

If Twitter blocks your account in the morning, Twitter is an asshole. If Twitter blocks your account all day...yeah Twitter is still an asshole.

I have no real point to the article itself, but since the OP says it's the 4th time they had their account locked. I wonder if people who get their account locked are more likely to get it locked more than once?

I'm curious if there is a tendency some people have in their style of humor or topics that leads to a much higher likelihood of being flagged?

I suppose I'm not presenting any data here, but of course? I mean anyone who publishes anything approaching dark humor is going to be closer to the line than something like a children's cartoon twitter account.

> Individually, you can take steps to own your content, like I've done here by publishing my own blog on my own domain and a publicly accessible RSS feed.

Let's not forget Mastodon exists. It has a much smaller reach than Twitter, but the more Twitter does this kind of things, the more it will become attractive.

For a social network, that's a horrible name. Sounds more like a Heavy Metal band.

You're not wrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(band)

Is free speech in the US absolute?

I am wondering if a site can say "only praise of politician X allowed, what is praising is at our discretion"

Or "no women allowed"?

If so, cannot Twitter have their own rules about what is correct and what is incorrect?

Free speech in the US isn't absolute, but the Constitution prevents the government from banning most types of speech. By contrast private companies are free to ban anything they want on their platforms, for any reason or no reason at all. Whether it's morally right for powerful tech companies to use that power is another question entirely.

The first submission of this post in July only has a single comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27921133

Install your own mastodon instance or join an existing one. That would be much more better than naive complains on centralized social networks driven by venture capitals.

I spent a dozen hours looking at Mastodon, trying to find a quick-spin-up solution. It ain't easy to toot.

Finally went with Jekyll and github page, just to get down short bits here and there.

They permanently suspended my account because I made a joke about a chocolate fountain to a parody account of Biden's dog due to the insensitive nature of the account's tweet (something about the Texas ice storm DURING the statewide outage that left my family without power for a week). So much fun sleeping in your car because there are no hotel rooms and it's 42 degrees inside your house.

Is it a free speech issue? No, it's an asshole issue, and I guess there's enough assholery to go around for everybody.

> I appeal to the internet to publicly shame Twitter and get my account unlocked.

Nah dude, GLWT.

The passing of Norm MacDonald (may he rest in peace) means that such dark humor no longer has a leg to stand on.

clearly not if you follow the author's advice

Most companies including Twitter, Reddit, HN, etc want to control speech and ban an increasingly large number of accounts (or shadowban when they don't have a spine).

I personally knew a man who got Facebook permaban for 1. Having a long beard, 2. Simply speaking Arabic while in company of armed men in camo going on a hunting trip

No amount of appeals helped him

Hunting game or apostates?

No, simply a few ex-Saudis who rebased to Canada, and were avid hunters

As usual with these posts, I don't really find this convincing, that joke is not obvious to someone who doesn't know this person. The tweet can very easily be misinterpreted by someone who does not get the joke. Please keep in mind that this is not just a Twitter thing, many decentralized communities may also not want to host jokes about self-harm or suicide.

Saying you'd exchange a body part that you can technically live without for something is a pretty common metaphor to the point where I'd say it's not glorifying self harm.

The tweet that got the account locked was a reply to the first one presented: "@craigmod There may be a video on how to cut off your leg"

That is obvious sarcasm. I really think that Twitter is trusting too much on NLP for automating those checks and not humans. Because machines are particularly bad at grasping sarcasm.

Its funny, because if you report obvious self harm or violence content in Spanish Twitter does nothing (like vaccines don't work, inject chlorine yourself, kill the president, organize a coup).

(Edited: typos)

It may be obvious to you, but for someone not familiar with this person's type of humor, it might not be so obvious. Please consider that if you find yourself making sarcastic jokes in the presence of strangers and they are giving you funny looks. (It's happened to me more than once)

I'm sorry that happens on Spanish Twitter, that's really unfortunate and it sounds like not a fun place to discuss things.

Believe it or not, there are reasons to perform amputations other than suicide and self-harm

Sure, but that is not made clear from the joke.

When there's a range of possibilities I don't think it makes sense to automatically assume ill-intent. Especially if you're going to willfully ignore context that proves otherwise. That's like one step away from Twitter banning knife companies because their advertisements promote self-amputation

I think there is some confusion here, it's not that there is assumption of ill-intent. It's just the possibility that it could be interpreted that way. From the perspective of a moderator being on the safe side, I could see how they have to always assume that a reader will ignore context, not willfully but by accident.

Edit: Imagine you owned a knife company, would you use the contents of this tweet in an ad? I personally would not.

I think it’s obvious to an everyday English speaking person, this is a take on a regular saying, like “costing an arm and a leg” or “sell my firstborn” or something. Though if I were this Twitter person, I would definitely avoid any metaphors involving things like this if they’ve been banned or whatever so many times.

Still, as an average person, it isn’t taken as anything but a riff on a saying.

Yes, the thing is that Twitter is also accessible to people who are not everyday English speakers.

Interesting - so from the perspective of a non-english speaker, would you say that a phrase like 'that cost an arm and a leg!' is likely to offend you?

I can't answer that question because I am a native English speaker, but I can say, I would probably not use that phrase around non-native English speakers. It's confusing and could be misinterpreted. Generally one would want to avoid using idioms like that when trying to cross a language barrier.

The problem with that is that the person's intent isn't to cross the language barrier.

Many languages have idioms involving body parts like this. In French it's couter les yeux de la tete, similar in Italian where it's costare un occhio della testa. One in Mandarin that means something different is 削足适履, about cutting your feet to fit your shoes.

I get that idioms don't always translate well (some actually do, especially literal ones that are less referential like cost an arm and a leg) but I'd be careful before invoking misunderstanding with theoretical groups of non-english speakers.

And yet, all of those could be misinterpreted by someone who is not familiar with that.

>I'd be careful before invoking misunderstanding with theoretical groups of non-english speakers.

If you're being cautious (as is common for a large website to do) then this is totally backwards -- you would actually need to be careful with invoking understanding when it comes to theoretical groups of non-english speakers. You can't start by assuming that everything that is said is going to be understood perfectly (Though I really wish that was possible, it would make it a lot easier to teach math, physics, history, etc).

Yes, because in other languages things costs less body parts. In Spanish, for example things just costs an eye or a kidney.

Spanish -> literal translation

Me costó un ojo -> it costs me an eye

Me costó un riñón -> it costs me a kidney

(Edited for format)

let's stay on track here.

that expression is an idiom. other languages have idioms that native english speakers would find weird.

as far as the tweet that started all this, it sounded too serious in my opinion.

kanye west (not sure if it was him who said it first) was correct with this one: adding an emoji would have sent a clearer message. blink blink smiley face or something.

Do native English speakers need to renounce their idioms to accommodate people who barely speak English then?

Sure. Have you learned a new language recently? If you haven't, it's an illuminating experience -- usually you don't start with the idioms until you have a really strong grasp of the basics and of some other advanced forms.

I am not a native English speaker. In fact, I learned English very late in life. And I don't think you have to pretend you are talking to the whole world all the time and restrict yourself to simple English.

I don't understand, there's no pretending -- On Twitter, you are effectively talking to the whole world. Anyone in the world can click on your tweets and see what you're saying. If you want to have a broad reach, then minimizing the use of complicated words and language can absolutely help. That doesn't mean you can't discuss complex things, it just means being more deliberate in the way it's discussed.

So first, let's get the ad hominem out of the way. I speak 2 languages fluently in addition to my native language after living in 4 countries throughout my life, so don't patronize me.

Then, your argument is so silly that I wonder if you're just being contrarian for the sake of it. By your logic, anyone speaking language A should make sure to dumb it down as much as possible, make it extremely basic to make sure that anyone in the world who doesn't have a good grasp on language A can understand it unambiguously.

First of all, I don't owe you anything. If I decide to type a tweet in Italian, or Russian or whatever I don't have to accommodate you. If you don't understand the language, you're clearly not my target audience. Even though you can click on my tweet to read it doesn't mean that I need to make sure someone who doesn't understand the language can read it.

Second, this is a total disservice to people learning the language to not use idiom and common constructs. These are expressions people use in real life, if they are serious about wanting to learn a language they want to be exposed to them.

The joke is completely understandable to anybody that speaks Spanish too. In fact, many languages have idioms about exchanging body parts for something.

I don't see the solution, should we self-censor all humor to the point of the lowest common denominator?

> that joke is not obvious to someone who doesn't know this person

The internet must be a scary place for these hypothetical persons you pretend to know.

The internet IS a scary place. Statistically, most of the content viewed on the internet is written by outlier individuals.

https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most...

Please avoid making these type of snarky comments with (incorrect) assumptions about me. A better way to phrase it would be to ask which persons I know like this, to which I could give a pretty universal response: children. You wouldn't expect a child to understand an adult joke. Sure, some do, but many don't -- they have to learn just like you and I did about what people's attitudes are and when they are joking or not.

Children are not supposed to be on twitter, though.

I believe children ages 13-17 are able to use twitter.

That's a special subset that are generally seen as competent enough to see and hear more adult material in order to better prepare for adult life. So actually, there's a real argument to let them see a twitter joke like this. They have less overall protections than a child under 13 for a reason.

I don't understand why you are saying that or what that has to do with the conversation. Please imagine a schoolteacher going into a classroom on the first day of school and saying with a straight face to students "I am going to show you a video on how to cut off your leg" or something like that and then not explaining that it's a joke. My original point is not if any given child is competent enough to see the joke or not, but that it could be misinterpreted.

There is no reason for random Twitter users to comport themselves as school teachers. All your comments are assuming some strict level of etiquette that most people don’t care about. Nor should those that care to present themselves that way relate to ban-able offenses.

Sorry if I wasn't clear, I don't think Twitter users need to comport themselves as school teachers. Twitter (and also Hacker News) requires you to conduct yourself to a certain level of etiquette in order to use the service, and some of that may be similar to the way a school teacher would behave -- in either case, you may be in the presence of 13 year olds that could be upset by your comments. I don't get why you are saying some people don't care about that etiquette -- that doesn't matter, agreeing to the etiquette is required to use the service, if you are using the service then it's agreed upon that you care about it.

> Please imagine a schoolteacher going into a classroom on the first day of school and saying with a straight face to students "I am going to show you a video on how to cut off your leg" or something like that and then not explaining that it's a joke.

You seem to be confused. Where does "a video on how to cut off your leg" come into this? The tweet was about willingness to give up a leg to be able to access the tutorials. A more appropriate equivalent would be imagining a schoolteacher going into a classroom on the first day of school and saying with a straight face to students "I am going to show you a video you would gladly give up your right leg to see."

> I believe children ages 13-17 are able to use twitter.

Based on all research available so far Social networks make the life of teenagers worse. So your belief is not supported by anything.

Just from my own experiences on the net as a teen where jokes about self-harm and suicide were extremely common -- One of those reasons could be because social media is not doing enough to protect children from this type of toxic content. Obviously the deleted tweet here is on the "could be harmless" end of the spectrum of that though.

Luckily children under 13 are not allowed to use twitter

> that joke is not obvious to someone who doesn't know this person.

It's more like observational humor - it may very well be true. Some people might not find it funny, but it's not advocating for anything.

Now, we should invent a new way to speak. Each of us needs something that removes ambiguity and includes only short, easy to pronounce words. We will find it easy not to accidently say the wrong thing. Such that the right things will flow almost unconciously. People will be more free knowing communication can happen without having to overthink it. Eutopia would be soon to follow. Anyway, just a thought. K

I understand what joke you are trying to make, but I would say the real problem here is the exact opposite: a lot of tweets that I see end up being more ambiguous because of the brevity and lack of context. So it seems what you describe is actually already happening and is one of the main problems with microblogging, and is probably what caused this person's tweet to get flagged.

Yes, I agree. Trying to fit meaningful, full thoughts into 1xx characters is part of the problem.

Btw I worked (too) hard on that one, even encoding a message :)

It's a very obvious joke, but can only be understood if you read both tweets, the original and the reply.

Person 1: 15 year old me would have cut a leg off for access to youtube. Person 2: there's probably a video on how to cut your leg off!

Person 2 gets banned, Person 1 was the first to mention cutting his leg off.

I can't see how this isnt an obvious joke, no matter what language you speak.

The very fact that they don't know what the speech means, is exactly why they have no business trying to control it.

> The tweet can very easily be misinterpreted by someone who does not get the joke. [...] [M]any decentralized communities may also not want to host jokes about self-harm or suicide.

The end effect of this is that it reduces speech to the lowest common denominator.

Software and mods who are given 5 seconds to pass judgement on something don't have the capacity to properly assess things so it's easier to just default to banning.

If Jonathan Swift were alive today, he's be permabanned from Twitter for promoting eating Irish babies.

I wonder if the "well they're a private company" brigade of mostly-newfound libertarians will ever concede that lots of private companies are heavily regulated for the good of society. My guess is yes, the second they are on the receiving side of discrimination and unfairness.

The pure libertarian position here is "they have a right to do this, but it is a bad idea".

Twitter is working in one of the purest free-markets imaginable. There is simply no barrier to entry around the market of serving 140 character strings on the internet. If they aren't a good steward of their niche they will be replaced and no government regulation is needed.

> The pure libertarian position here

What do you mean by "here"? That you are a pure libertarian and have this position?

> is "they have a right to do this, but it is a bad idea".

What does "it's a bad idea" mean? That it is detrimental to twitter, or that it's detrimental to others?

> Twitter is working in one of the purest free-markets imaginable. There is simply no barrier to entry around the market of serving 140 character strings on the internet. If they aren't a good steward of their niche they will be replaced and no government regulation is needed.

That's not true at all. User base and network effects give huge advantages to incumbents.

Here as in "here, in this comment thread". If you want to argue that it is a good idea for Twitter to censor jokes in the public square then go ahead. But that argument just is not sustainable. The future will have jokes in it, no matter how humourless Twitter tries to be.

Okay so if that is the pure libertarian position here, what does "it's a bad idea" mean exactly?

The pure libertarian definition of that is that it is detrimental to twitter. I'm wondering how that is.

Who do you think is benefiting from banning this tweet? It is completely mundane, harmless and disinteresting. Threatens nobody. Deleting it just riles people up and upset Mr. Johnson to nobody's gain.

Compare it with a good moderation system, like HN, where a comment gets greyed out by mass opinion, then everyone moves on. Twitter already has a great mechanism to achieve that called "ignoring the stupid tweet".

Banning it was a bad idea. The moderator wasted their time, Mr. Johnson was upset and nobody has come away better off.

I don't know who benefits and I don't purport to know. Maybe he said other things they disliked (e.g., was critical of China or Saudi or Nike) and they were looking for an excuse to ban him. Maybe their moderation system is crap. I don't know.

You were the one who said it was a bad idea. I actually don't think you actually know enough to make that statement, but if it such bad things continue on there, why haven't they been out-competed?

Ah, I see. I didn't actually think it was a bad idea, I personally think it is not an important enough tweet to matter. I said the pure libertarian position is that it is a bad idea. Libertarianism prizes freedom of speech and unnecessarily blocking someone from expressing themselves (unless there is a really good reason!) is deviating form the pure position.

I've made some arguments but you're right; I can't actually know.

That's not a pure libertarian view, here or elsewhere. The pure libertarian view is that if it is a net benefit to twitter (including where less expenditure on moderation outweighs the costs of poorer quality of moderation), then it's a good idea.

The recent strange new throng of libertarian converts who parrot the "it's a private private company" line must adhere to this because they don't even pretend to entertain the suggestion that censorship, unfairness, or discriminating who may use their service could possibly have any downsides to society.

> The pure libertarian view is that if it is a net benefit to twitter (including where less expenditure on moderation outweighs the costs of poorer quality of moderation), then it's a good idea.

That isn't a libertarian view. Libertarianism centres around freedom (ie, liberty). Twitter is going to do the thing that most benefits themselves regardless of what political system is in play; so libertarianism doesn't really have anything to say about it. Libertarianism simply argues that Twitter should have very wide latitude to act - especially with respect to their own property if it is the right wing branch of libertarianism. But the pure position doesn't care at all if Twitter is doing things that do or do not benefit Twitter. And although it is good that Twitter has liberty, whether Twitter's subsequent actions are good or not is up for discussion.

In this case, Twitter should be free to operate their service however they want (and that is the most important freedom). But banning people without an excellent reason is still a bad idea, libertarianism has valued the free flow of ideas since its inception and banning people from a platform cannot promote that.

> That isn't a libertarian view.

Yes it is.

> Libertarianism centres around freedom (ie, liberty).

Libertarianism centers around the individual. Which is why it disagrees with the notion that a private person or group should be regulated even if that might increase net liberty in society as a whole.

> The pure libertarian view is that if it is a net benefit to twitter (including where less expenditure on moderation outweighs the costs of poorer quality of moderation), then it's a good idea.

> Libertarianism centers around the individual. Which is why it disagrees with the notion that a private person or group should be regulated even if that might increase net liberty in society as a whole.

Please explain how the second proposition makes the first libertarian.

How I read it is: Libertarianism limits regulation, and thus doesn't prevent the extreme capitalist view of optimizing cost of operation, but in itself, Libertarianism doesn't say: "seek profit by all means".

Or is your definition not precise enough?

> There is simply no barrier to entry

There's an incredibly high barrier to entry: a powerful network effect.

A network effect won't protect them when they eventually screw up and start banning their own star content creators. If they haven't already. Their power of moderation can only be exercised if thought leaders agrees they are good moderators.

Network effects aren't magic. If an opinion is banned on Twitter then the network that supports it will have to form somewhere else.

But if they have been and are doing what is already considered a "bad idea" and the market is totally free with no significant barrier to entry, why haven't they long ago been out-competed by others who do not engage in this bad idea behavior?

Because they've historically been doing a pretty good job? Because most Twitter users really like Twitter's moderation? Competitors are already growing at breakneck pace and we just haven't seen it come through into conventional wisdom?

How am I meant to know I'm not an oracle. But displaying tweets is literally the easiest thing that is done on the modern web after displaying a small static site. There is absolutely no libertarian argument that everyone deserves to have their tweet put up with a "Twitter" logo next to it. There is no need at all for regulation here.

You can argue that forcing Twitter to host tweets is a good idea, but that is going to be damn tricky to square with libertarianism. If this market is an example of high barriers to entry then there is no such thing as low barriers to entry. I could probably put up a mastodon instance over a weekend, all the technical work has already been done.

So you don't know why it might be, except that you are very certain it is not because of any barrier to entry in the market and you insist there are no barriers despite there being very obvious ones.

Not very convincing. Pretty wild theory really.

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