Twitter quietly edited its hateful conduct policy to drop transgender protections

Musk says his own tweets might be labeled under new hateful conduct policy.

See full article...

 

[Demosthenes642]

Oh, I see, yeah that has nothing to do with Ars.

I was just trying to explain the general value of Twitter over the years even though it has never actually been a great traffic driver. It's been seen as a "media water cooler". Also, imo, it can easily be an echo chamber. Like any tool it's got up and downsides.

But I'm really speaking in broad terms about the past decade, obviously the calculations are all shifting quickly after Musk bought it.

How about a subscriber option for no twitter linkage? I'd expect that folks who are paying Ars trust in the sourcing at least at first blush and if they want to investigate they can turn the option off and see for themselves... It would be nice to at least have the option of not driving views or traffic to a hive of scum, villainy, and bigotry.

 

[Aurich]

Considering Code Nast owns reddit, a site with whole pages dedicated to transphobic garbage. Something tells me that management isn't too concerned about transphobia on Twitter.

I'm not defending reddit. Not a big reddit fan myself tbh. I just want to note that reddit isn't actually owned by Condé Nast (it's a little more complicated than that, we still put a disclaimer at the end of every story about them for transparency, see today's story about reddit and AI APIs for example).

Nothing they do has any bearing on anything we do, there is zero connection.

 

[omarsidd]

Freedom of (hate) speech. Great, Elmo. On-brand for his new far-right bigot image.

 

[aerogems]

I'm not answering officially here for Ars, just making a personal observation as someone who's been embedded in online journalism for decades:

It would be incredibly poor reporting, by any organization, to not link to original sources. If a statement of newsworthy note is made on Twitter then it should be linked. And not just screenshotted, actually linked.

I was just reading that Tech Dirt piece about Dell Cameron being banned and was very frustrated that they embed screenshots without links. I couldn't even find the original Mastodon post Dell made about his ban made until a colleague linked me.

(Edit: here's that Mastodon link btw if anyone else wants it: https://journa.host/@dell/110227348408885700 )

I should always be able to see the original source, and verify it, and dig further. Screenshots are not reliable, and do not provide context.

Regardless of Elon Musk being an asshole, Twitter's policies, or anything else, we and everyone else should maintain our professional standards as reporters. Linking to sources, stating facts reliably, and not letting personal vendettas or biases affect the ability to do that. Which doesn't mean people can't call out Musk, but it can be done professionally.

On a personal level people of course can avoid Twitter, but reporters have a vital role in our society and democracy and should uphold certain standards.

I know you said you weren't responding on behalf of Ars or anything, but maybe something to kick around in the orbiting HQ is to just have text links instead of embedding the tweet. Still includes the original source, but doesn't drive traffic to a site that promotes hate and bigotry the same way an embedded tweet does. You can then quote the relevant text from the tweet or include a screen capture if there's a chance it may get deleted or something.

 

[whitetigersx]

Question: Is there a difference between not linking to a source directly on twitter and not linking to the raw audio from an interview so we know the context from quotes? I cannot verify nor dig further on any quote in any news article on Ars that was provided via email or audio just like I would not be able to with a screenshot of a Tweet. The technology is different but the principle of digging further is the same.

Availability?

 

[Aurich]

FYI, Aurich has made it clear in the past that "FTFY" posts are unacceptable.

Yes, please don't edit people's posts. I saw that edit, and I let it pass because I'm trying to use my limited time in these comments to address people where I can, but really, just leave people's quotes alone and respond in your own words below please.

 

[EvilClaire]

More useless whining about words. I'm with Chris Rock: "Words hurt...if you write them on brick." People are fuckin babies nowadays.

So, since I've come out on Ars once before, I'll do it again... As a woman with transition experience and today alone, there were no less than 25-ish news and "news" articles that came across my feed that were specifically trans related. There was one that was positive.

As it's been years since I've transitioned, I've built a pretty thick skin for ignorant comments, misinformation, hateful speech and so on. At some point it sure would be nice to turn on the internet and find a space, any space, that isn't disparaging my community and family, calling us groomers, degenerates, and worse.


How about these two words? Report and ignorance. It may not do anything but those two words did make me feel good.

So yes, words have meaning and yes, they cause harm... If you didn't believe this, you wouldn't have been a giant human baby and cried your little rant.

 

[aerogems]

groomer is a good identifying word

Ever notice how the people who like to use that word in derogatory ways are always posting photos of themselves surrounded by small children?

 

[Deleted member 845110]

How about a subscriber option for no twitter linkage? I'd expect that folks who are paying Ars trust in the sourcing at least at first blush and if they want to investigate they can turn the option off and see for themselves... It would be nice to at least have the option of not driving views or traffic to a hive of scum, villainy, and bigotry.

Brave browser will let you block social media tracking as well as embedded fecal matter such as tweets and Facebook posts, without requiring any ad blocking if you don't want it. I haven't looked into it myself (am using Brave to do exactly that, so no need) but I'm sure there are extensions and/or filter lists for just about any Chromium-based browser, and probably others, too.

As an added bonus you can give Google the finger, too, by directing Brave to ignore the fuck out of any and all AMP links. It'll just go directly to the actual page, bypassing AMP entirely.

 

[Aurich]

I know you said you weren't responding on behalf of Ars or anything, but maybe something to kick around in the orbiting HQ is to just have text links instead of embedding the tweet.

My own feeling on embedded tweets is basically the way I feel about covering Bad People™. We will often get comments along the lines of "why are you giving this person attention?" The answer is always "because it's news". Ignoring them will not make them go away or change what they did. Our job is to often shine the light on them.

Embedding a tweet is really the best way to show the content. It has all the context, and the link. Everyone can see it. I doubt it drives any more clicks than a link, and doesn't provide Twitter with ad revenue.

Doesn't mean we can't discuss it internally, but I think just journalistically speaking it's the most responsible approach.

 

[daveishereagain]

groomer is a good identifying word

Bigot is even better.

 

[Demosthenes642]

Yes, please don't edit people's posts. I saw that edit, and I let it pass because I'm trying to use my limited time in these comments to address people where I can, but really, just leave people's quotes alone and respond in your own words below please.

That's fair, I certainly won't defend an FTFY. Edited to rescind my faux pas, lesson learned. Apologies.

 

[Deleted member 845110]

Yet more Musk hate from the fast becoming echo chamber Ars...... Do all you left wing liberals actually ever listen to yourselves and just HOW ridiculous you sound? Obviously not. I strongly suggest you all properly research the Nazi party (which was socialist left wing through and through - again do some ACTUAL research, greatest con of all all time the left selling Nazi's as right wing). You are all heading exactly the same way. The woke brigade of the US is the laughing stock of the the world. Y'all really need to wake up to reality - right now you have all drunk way too much koolade to even function on a normal human premise.

Ashley Belanger - perhaps you should be writing for political sites rather than a tech site, just how biased are you? No, no...... I dont need to ask..... totally is the answer, you have NO clue about balanced or non-partisan do you. Yet another left wing moron, just like the vast majority posting here...... ala the echo chamber. Good luck with that....... When are you going to turn that into a gas chamber I wonder, for the people that have a different opinion to you..... Sounds like most of you want that already. You should be asking yourselves why you have the opinions and beliefs you do...... its called prgramming.

Musk is merely starting to dismantle the programming regime that you have been programmed by to protect.

Whether you like it or not - Musk is for free speech and all you who are critical of Musk are not for free speech. Please stop to actually think about what that says about you and what your thinking processes are.

On the topic of thought processes; yours need rebooting and recalibrating to match reality, fam.

 

[Aurich]

I'm checking out for the night, so won't be responding to more comments right now. Just as an FYI I have forwarded on several comments as examples of the conversation being had here internally, and we'll continue to discuss what makes sense for us.

 

[ibad]

You can take the Boer out of Apartheid, but you can't take Apartheid out of the Boer, it seems.

Such CEO skills! Just a few months and Twitter is a steaming pile. Wonder if we'd already be on Mars is SpaceX wasn't held back by this clown.

 

[123username]

Twitter users and advertisers are all complicit at this point.

 

[excognita]

As someone who deals with this on a daily basis, I must sadly report that even the previous restrictions had no effective enforcement. I've filed tens of reports on the basis of misgendering, deadnaming, or existential skepticism about trans folks (which boils down to misgendering), and they've only decided to act on one of them. This is consistent with my experience on other social media platforms. It's exhausting.

 

[dikbozo]

YARTDT.
Yet Another Reason To Dump Twitter.
Come on, join the majority. Feel the peace.

 

[SirOmega]

I'm going to join the small choir asking:

1. When is Ars erasing their official Twitter presence(s)?
2. Are you somehow contractually obliged to maintain a presence on the site?

I read some defending of staying on the platform in a thread yesterday, but come the hell on, people. Get off Twatter, Ars, or you'd better start fielding some seriously exemplary defensive pieces, post god damn haste.

Because for journalists, it seems to be really hard to quit twitter. Unless you're NPR or PBS or CBC, and you're getting pushed around by the chief twat.

A bunch of them need to start a mastodon instance and start posting officially over there. Just have a journalist and journalism (sorry, Fox News) hub to follow the content and set a wind-down policy to get off twitter. If they ban journalists and news companies for announcing they're going someone else, they get to paint him as a hypocrite who wants "free speech" but not when its not in his favor.

Whenever I check twitter these days (not often, and not logged in as my user account to keep their MAUs up) its all a bunch of RWNJs in the timeline with their crazy shit.

 

[AmanoJyaku]

Yep. Trump led the way in showing them it's just fine to openly be a fascist.

You left out an important word: "again"

 

[numerobis]

Oh, I see, yeah that has nothing to do with Ars.

I was just trying to explain the general value of Twitter over the years even though it has never actually been a great traffic driver. It's been seen as a "media water cooler". Also, imo, it can easily be an echo chamber. Like any tool it's got up and downsides.

But I'm really speaking in broad terms about the past decade, obviously the calculations are all shifting quickly after Musk bought it.

Twitter in the past, Reddit, Facebook all had the same feel of becoming Nazi bars, but they could be talked to regarding the paradox of tolerance, brought to some level of reason, and they all took some action. Maybe only because they worried about financial outcomes, but if greedy fucks move the needle in the right direction for the wrong reason I’m OK with that in the end.

Musk bought Twitter specifically to turn it into his own personal Nazi bar.

I think that makes it a lot more dangerous to anyone acting like it’s business as usual, versus historical links to social media.

 

[aerogems]

My own feeling on embedded tweets is basically the way I feel about covering Bad People™. We will often get comments along the lines of "why are you giving this person attention?" The answer is always "because it's news". Ignoring them will not make them go away or change what they did. Our job is to often shine the light on them.

Embedding a tweet is really the best way to show the content. It has all the context, and the link. Everyone can see it. I doubt it drives any more clicks than a link, and doesn't provide Twitter with ad revenue.

Doesn't mean we can't discuss it internally, but I think just journalistically speaking it's the most responsible approach.

Not saying don't cover topics, just change the way you cite sources within the article. But, in any event, just my unsolicited 2₵ so do with it what you will.

 

[Ninja Puffin]

Another offensive in Musk's (now Twitter's) ongoing war on journalism.

If it means journalists spend less time on Twitter, it would probably be a good thing for journalism. Even before Musk, reporters' addiction to Twitter has been making the quality of American journalism decline for the past several years.

 

[EvilClaire]

Why have Republicans decided it’s open season on trans people? They’ve unleashed a Blitzkrieg of hateful laws in the last couple of months.

This has been plotted since marriage of two same sex people was made legal… We are or we’re a tiny community “you” probably never knew or even thought about. It was convenient for them to turn us into a bogeyman of sorts. Made hate easier.

 

[xoe]

Honestly, I feel like this whole fiasco could be a great study on just how much people are willing to put up with before they make somewhat simple changes (like leaving the site). Even if the things they are putting up with are very fundamentally different from what they view as morally correct. I know plenty of people who disagree with this stuff have left, but I also see a ton of people that still use Twitter and hate what Musk has done. And I'm assuming they still use it just because they always have.

It reminds me (but it's distinct from) that time that trans and Jewish people almost universally asked people to not buy a certain game that they felt supported bigotry against them and the result was largely a lot of people deliberately being vocal about how much they enjoyed the game in question, how they felt that the concerns were unjustified, with some content creators going out of their way to review the game even though it was not a game they would typically play or give any attention.

 

[xoe]

This has been plotted since marriage of two same sex people was made legal… We are or we’re a tiny community “you” probably never knew or even thought about. It was convenient for them to turn us into a bogeyman of sorts. Made hate easier.

Simple, they have nothing to offer with regards to policy that makes the lives of their constituents any better so they create fictional problems them address them with legislation. These fictional problems are deliberately concocted in a way that encourages their constituents to perceive their fellow citizens as the source of all their problems, distracting them from the true causes of the problems in their lives, the politicians and those that lobby them.

 

[AmanoJyaku]

Rules where people get to determine the speech of others are wrong. No one has a right to not be offended.

They can choose to act on that speech however they like as well, as no one has a right to no repercussions from their speech either.

But making a social media company the arbiter of expression is wrong.

This is the correct move.

In other words: Nazis have a right to chat about Nazi things. Got it.

 

[balthazarr]

Was going to say words to the same effect.

Transphobia is a backlash against other LGBT+ rights. It's a thin end of the wedge issue for fascist scum. If they can marginalise Trans people they can then move on to eroding the rights of gay people and other minorities.

Furthermore, Advertisers that hook their wagon to the shitshow that is Twitter under Musk are explicitly stating they care more about money than human rights.

Of course they care more about money... they care more about money than anything else.

They only appear to care about other issues, because they're concerned that not appearing to care about issue X will deleteriously affect the bottom line. At the end of the day, it always boils down to money.

 

[Snarky Robot]

For what little it's worth, I support Ars getting off Twitter (or at least not using it as a major method of sharing content and getting eyeballs). If literal "1488" accounts are getting platformed as promoted tweets, it's irresponsible to both benefit from, and provide benefit to, a place willing to accept that money without any sort of actual moderation. I doubt Aurich has the ability to determine that personally, so I do appreciate him at least addressing the topic. If there are better avenues for feedback to the people who DO make those decisions, however, I think it would be beneficial to give that information to people.

As for the linking directly, is it possible to put links in hovertext or do like the image credits at the top of the page? It would seem to me that either of those would be a middle ground. You'd provide people the potential to see it, but would not make driving traffic to Twitter the primary way of providing that content. I totally get the need to link and provide sourcing. I just think there's a way to do that that takes into account the real, demonstrable harm that Twitter is causing and refuse to participate.

 

[daveishereagain]

Simple, they have nothing to offer with regards to policy that makes the lives of their constituents any better so they create fictional problems them address them with legislation. These fictional problems are deliberately concocted in a way that encourages their constituents to perceive their fellow citizens as the source of all their problems, distracting them from the true causes of the problems in their lives, the politicians and those that lobby them.

Hello, 1930's Germany calling.

 

[Asvarduil]

This has been plotted since marriage of two same sex people was made legal… We are or we’re a tiny community “you” probably never knew or even thought about. It was convenient for them to turn us into a bogeyman of sorts. Made hate easier.

It's easy to hate what you don't know. Which, is why they focus on suppressing the existence of LGBT+ groups. If no one knows you're out there, they can't empathize* with you!

Also, it's totally on-brand for them to mis-bogey-gender you. You're a bogeywoman, not a bogeyman! But that's also inconvenient for them since that'd make them want to dance with you and not do a bigotry. Can't have that.

*: Dammit phone. I meant use empathy, not enhance something's attributes.

 

[aerogems]

Spoiler: Bigotry and Hate Speech

Yet more Musk hate from the fast becoming echo chamber Ars...... Do all you left wing liberals actually ever listen to yourselves and just HOW ridiculous you sound? Obviously not. I strongly suggest you all properly research the Nazi party (which was socialist left wing through and through - again do some ACTUAL research, greatest con of all all time the left selling Nazi's as right wing). You are all heading exactly the same way. The woke brigade of the US is the laughing stock of the the world. Y'all really need to wake up to reality - right now you have all drunk way too much koolade to even function on a normal human premise.

Ashley Belanger - perhaps you should be writing for political sites rather than a tech site, just how biased are you? No, no...... I dont need to ask..... totally is the answer, you have NO clue about balanced or non-partisan do you. Yet another left wing moron, just like the vast majority posting here...... ala the echo chamber. Good luck with that....... When are you going to turn that into a gas chamber I wonder, for the people that have a different opinion to you..... Sounds like most of you want that already. You should be asking yourselves why you have the opinions and beliefs you do...... its called prgramming.

Musk is merely starting to dismantle the programming regime that you have been programmed by to protect.

Whether you like it or not - Musk is for free speech and all you who are critical of Musk are not for free speech. Please stop to actually think about what that says about you and what your thinking processes are.

Who are you trying to convince? There something you maybe have been secretly wanting to tell everyone? Are you secretly jealous when you see a girl wearing a cute top? Do you stare longingly at that pair of red pumps in the store window? Maybe you wander through the women's lingerie section in stores, and wonder what it'd be like to wear those silk panties for a day. Go ahead, we won't judge you here based on any of that here. We will judge you for long posts full of self-loathing masquerading as culture warrior bullshit though.

 

[Asvarduil]

Who are you trying to convince? There something you maybe have been secretly wanting to tell everyone? Are you secretly jealous when you see a girl wearing a cute top? Do you stare longingly at that pair of red pumps in the store window? Maybe you wander through the women's lingerie section in stores, and wonder what it'd be like to wear those silk panties for a day. Go ahead, we won't judge you here based on any of that here. We will judge you for long posts full of self-loathing masquerading as culture warrior bullshit though.

So I had the opportunity to try to wear high heels recently as a silly moment with Cass.

Holy crap was it a leg workout. I'm sincerely surprised heels aren't used for leg training. My ankles feel ripped AF after that.

 

[balthazarr]

Ever notice how the people who like to use that word in derogatory ways are always posting photos of themselves surrounded by small children?

They're just protectors of the children, don't you see. PROTECTORS. /s

 

[Urist]

Who are you trying to convince? There something you maybe have been secretly wanting to tell everyone? Are you secretly jealous when you see a girl wearing a cute top? Do you stare longingly at that pair of red pumps in the store window? Maybe you wander through the women's lingerie section in stores, and wonder what it'd be like to wear those silk panties for a day. Go ahead, we won't judge you here based on any of that here. We will judge you for long posts full of self-loathing masquerading as culture warrior bullshit though.

Ehhhhh.... please dont do this. As much as I get the sentiment of wanting to dunk on a bigot, painting them as closeted or suffering from disphoria is not a good way to do it. It just makes queer people the butt of a tasteless joke, insinuates that being queer is something inherintly shameful and blames them as sources of their own oppression.