Britain First among accounts thrown off Twitter

[cupid_stunt]

There's a bit about the new rules, linked from the above report, here:

The new rules will target abuse, hateful conduct and threats of physical harm. One of these rules will forbid the promotion of organisations that promote violence against civilians either on Twitter or offline in the real world. This is likely to be used against accounts which support Isis. It is not clear whether it will be used to censor accounts run by violent members of the left-leaning ‘Antifa’ movement or used exclusively against right-wing organisations.

Read more: Twitter ‘purge’ could shut down lots of people’s accounts today | Metro News

 

[BigTom]

Britain First basically exists because of Facebook. Obviously it plays into existing attitudes etc but it wouldn’t have got anywhere at all without Facebook and the way that Facebook works; it would have died years ago. Social media is an important medium.

If you include things like 4chan, Reddit and other forums, it's massively important in the growth and form of the alt right too

 

[J Ed]

Love to have right-wing Silicon Valley oligarchs who go to work on a skateboard police what is and isn't acceptable in politics.

 

[krtek a houby]

Someone who really should know better said this weekend that a football mate of his was a 'nice guy' but 'unfortunately' National Front'.

This shit is creeping back.

Fuck apologists and those who espouse casual racism. How can anyone have a mate who's NF and not be in any way conflicted?

 

[chilango]

Manter I don’t think it’s fair, or correct, to label redsquirrel an apologist for fascism. It really isn’t.

 

[bimble]

I think twitter doing this for their own reasons, they were losing a lot of people because of their refusal to act on reports of (what the reporters considered) abusive content.

 

[butchersapron]

Oh fuck you're one of them! Sorry, I don't interact with apologists. 'Material conditions' as an excuse for fascism- fucking hell, this is exactly the reason social media is toxic- all sort of bullshit gets spouted.

Presumably then you'd argue for the banning of redsquirrel from urban75 for the above post?

 

[Sweet FA]

Oh fuck you're one of them! Sorry, I don't interact with apologists. 'Material conditions' as an excuse for fascism- fucking hell, this is exactly the reason social media is toxic- all sort of bullshit gets spouted.

You've got this wrong.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

Oh fuck you're one of them! Sorry, I don't interact with apologists. 'Material conditions' as an excuse for fascism- fucking hell, this is exactly the reason social media is toxic- all sort of bullshit gets spouted.

Are you suggesting that ‘material conditions’ had nothing to do with the rise of the far right in 1930s Germany?

 

[JuanTwoThree]

It's just whack-a-mole. Fascism will never go away but it needs a good whack whenever and however it pops up. BUF, League of Empire Loyalists, BNP, NF, EDL, whatever. They get seen off. Each to their own: if you are young and fit enough you can chase fascists off the streets. Older, you can deny them a platform the way you choose. Whack!

I really don't want to hear any talk about 'free speech' or 'hear them out and their arguments will fall apart'.

Whack, whack, whack. It's always worked and it will again.


ETA I'm talking about the UK, I must add.

 

[ska invita]

Are you suggesting that ‘material conditions’ had nothing to do with the rise of the far right in 1930s Germany?

what is the reason for a far right win in Austria the other day?

 

[extra dry]

As a society cutting them off/sweeping them under the carpet doesn't make the problems/idologies go away.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

what is the reason for a far right win in Austria the other day?

The EU, immigration, contracting standards of living and liberalism masquerading as the left.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

^^ that’s a guess btw but I doubt it’s wide of the mark.

 

[love detective]

when you think about it, people who do cancer research to understand what produces it and thus put society in a better position to combat it, are just apologists for cancer really

 

[ska invita]

The EU, immigration, contracting standards of living and liberalism masquerading as the left.

material conditions are always a factor in everything, but there's also nonmaterial ideology in the mix. From what i can tell the main reason for the win is the whipping up of racist sentiment during a refugee crisis. There is no material justification for Austrians of all people to vote for a party with Nazi roots. They're voting with their eyes wide open

 

[Magnus McGinty]

material conditions are always a factor in everything, but there's also nonmaterial ideology in the mix. From what i can tell the main reason for the win is the whipping up of racist sentiment during a refugee crisis. There is no material justification for Austrians of all people to vote for a party with Nazi roots. They're voting with their eyes wide open

Yes fascists will capitalise on things that divide the working class. Mass immigration at a time of contracting living standards is a spectacularly bad idea. It will also present itself as an alternative to the status quo.

 

[chilango]

material conditions are always a factor in everything, but there's also nonmaterial ideology in the mix. From what i can tell the main reason for the win is the whipping up of racist sentiment during a refugee crisis. There is no material justification for Austrians of all people to vote for a party with Nazi roots. They're voting with their eyes wide open

Of course there are material conditions* that created an climate where the far-right can win elections.

Across the West people can see the material security and stability of the post-War consensus vanishing into the past. Fuck, UKIP explicitly campaigned on this. Trump did too.

And this is both the w/c and the m/c.

*not justifications.

 

[ViolentPanda]

material conditions are always a factor in everything, but there's also nonmaterial ideology in the mix. From what i can tell the main reason for the win is the whipping up of racist sentiment during a refugee crisis. There is no material justification for Austrians of all people to vote for a party with Nazi roots. They're voting with their eyes wide open

I think you're forgetting that a nation's history tends to inform non-material ideology(s) in that nation. Austria's history - even as an empire - is tale after tale of colonial arrogance and racism. That high-handed behaviour informs their ruling class just as the UK's colonial history informs the UK's ruling class.

 

[Nivag]

Twitter updated me about this, their initial response was there wasn't problem when I reported the account for publishing hate/harmful material and wouldn't anything about it.

 

[MightyTibberton]

I report accounts all the time and sometimees I get updates confirming that they've broken the rules, but then I go and take a look and they're almost always tweeting merrily away still! This isn't border-line stuff by their rules either - accounts dedicated to pushing out actual nazi thought to 10s of thousands of followers.

There you go.

Twitter is more visible in this respect, I think, but Facebook might be an even bigger breeding ground of extremist content.

 

[Doctor Carrot]

Isn't this a bit pointless though? Won't they just crop up again under another account? Seems a bit like when the BPI tried to block all the torrent sites and all associated mirrors, new ones just pop up again. I don't agree with just switching them off but I do agree with deleting them, or anyone for that matter, for posting an outright hateful tweet. That should just be standard. I don't go on Twitter but do look around various pages on Facebook. Toxic barely begins to cover it.

Be interesting to see how this all plays out. There seems to be a bit of a backlash growing against all social media. Not just for the toxicity of what passes for debate on there or for the tons of fake news on it but for other reasons, like shortening attention spans, undermining face to face communication and so on.

 

[8ball]

Blocking cunts is all when and good til the blockers clock you for a cunt.

 

[MightyTibberton]

Isn't this a bit pointless though? Won't they just crop up again under another account? Seems a bit like when the BPI tried to block all the torrent sites and all associated mirrors, new ones just pop up again. I don't agree with just switching them off but I do agree with deleting them, or anyone for that matter, for posting an outright hateful tweet. That should just be standard. I don't go on Twitter but do look around various pages on Facebook. Toxic barely begins to cover it.

Be interesting to see how this all plays out. There seems to be a bit of a backlash growing against all social media. Not just for the toxicity of what passes for debate on there or for the tons of fake news on it but for other reasons, like shortening attention spans, undermining face to face communication and so on.

Probably, but I should imagine it's an annoyance to create a new email address and a new account and to lose all your followers. And in the end they ban people by IP address I believe, which is even more annoying to get around. And for the actual organisations, once they're banned they are in trouble because unless they can use a consistent name they'll never build up a following.

They do just go elsewhere though. From Twitter to Gab, from Facebook to VK, a Russian (but of course!) site. . .

 

[Yossarian]

They do just go elsewhere though. From Twitter to Gab, from Facebook to VK, a Russian (but of course!) site. . .

Yep, they do end up elsewhere - but it seems like for a lot of people attracted to these groups, part of the appeal of engaging with them on Facebook is the neverending supply of outraged left-wingers to mock.

When they're booted back to the fringes of the Internet where they belong, the more casual followers are likely to drift away, leaving the more hardcore alone to bicker and fall out with each other endlessly.

 

[Gromit]

Probably, but I should imagine it's an annoyance to create a new email address and a new account and to lose all your followers. And in the end they ban people by IP address I believe, which is even more annoying to get around. And for the actual organisations, once they're banned they are in trouble because unless they can use a consistent name they'll never build up a following.

They do just go elsewhere though. From Twitter to Gab, from Facebook to VK, a Russian (but of course!) site. . .

Will they need to leave FB?!

I’ve reported any number of far right posts and FB have done nothing about it.

Report a female nipple though and it’s gone in an instant I’m told.

Priorities eh!

 

[Dogsauce]

TBH a lot of 'left wing' twitter stuff is annoying drivel anyway, so if that goes in the bin too I won't be shedding too many tears. If Twitter can go back to just being kittens, sarky commentary about telly stuff and wry tales of dating misadventure I might start paying attention to it again.

 

[ska invita]

I think you're forgetting that a nation's history tends to inform non-material ideology(s) in that nation. Austria's history - even as an empire - is tale after tale of colonial arrogance and racism. That high-handed behaviour informs their ruling class just as the UK's colonial history informs the UK's ruling class.

i hear that, and yes racism has a history which like all histories is driven by material
dynamics. My point though is racism and ethno-nationalism is now an enduring state of mind, that easily crosses all class and personal-material boundaries.

my feeling is that if 2008 crash hadn't happened and euro living standards hadn't deteriorated, but the domino of wars across north Africa and the middle east did we would still be getting this far right surge.

there are no doubt other factors at play here, but those two (the crash & war/refugees) are the two biggest/easy to identify.

 

[19force8]

Yes fascists will capitalise on things that divide the working class. Mass immigration at a time of contracting living standards is a spectacularly bad idea. It will also present itself as an alternative to the status quo.

In the UK, fascists have always organised around opposition to immigration, even at times of rising living standards. Immigration itself doesn't divide the working class, right wing and ruling class propaganda does that.

 

[19force8]

I think you're forgetting that a nation's history tends to inform non-material ideology(s) in that nation. Austria's history - even as an empire - is tale after tale of colonial arrogance and racism. That high-handed behaviour informs their ruling class just as the UK's colonial history informs the UK's ruling class.

It's also worth remembering the post WW2 political settlement in Austria. It was treated as a victim of Nazi aggression, not a perpetrator, and the political class that governed until 1965 had some pretty nasty history.