[mattnumbers]

IANAL.

One of the reasons that this feels so novel is that this is an example of ex post facto enforcement. In this case, Twitter is punishing the user for an action performed at a point in time before such an action was punishable. (In fact, I haven't checked - it may have been punishable, but the punishment was not usually enforced, which is a separate issue of selective enforcement.) The US Constitution prevents both Congress and the individual States from passing ex post facto laws that punish individuals for actions committed before such action was illegal. Obviously, private corporations are not bound by the same laws as the government. So, as platforms like Twitter continue to update their policies and enforcement mechanisms in response to issues such as hate, and as these definitions are broadened, cases such as this are likely to become more common.

[smsm42]

Twitter rules are not law, so by law they can do whatever they damn well please. Including banning your account randomly, deleting any tweet they like, or anything in between. Legally, they owe you or any of their users exactly nothing. However, you also owe them nothing - you can stop using Twitter any second. Which I wholeheartedly recommend to everybody. I did it years ago and it's not hard. If you don't like what they're doing - just walk away.

Of course, that doesn't mean we still can't criticize Twitter - but walking away should be the first step.

[floatrock]

Thanks for this description -- yes the tweet was stupid, yes the person could eventually get fired after someone digs it up so twitter was doing them a favor, blahblah none of those other threads are why this is an interesting post this morning. "Ex post facto" is a bit jargoney, but you explained the issue right: the interesting question is how should we feel about retroactive punishments for something that wasn't illegal/against private ToS at the time.

A lot of people my age love The Office, but some of the earlier episodes... well, they haven't really aged well. The show was great at the time, but the first few seasons today would be a giant #MeToo fiasco. Culture changes and moves on, and what was acceptable then probably isn't acceptable now, but that doesn't (shouldn't?) mean Steve Carrel gets blackballed for the comedy he did at the time.

Early Disney cartoons were flat-out racist, but they're still available with a historical context disclaimer that basically says "We disavow everything in here, but it's a greater shame to pretend that this never happened so here it is for the historical record."

One of the most interesting conversations about social media right now I think is how does someone apologize for what they've done, and do it in a genuine and authentic way that can be accepted. When you serve prison time, the idea is you pay your debt to society and move on. With social media, I don't think we've yet figured out how to say "yes, I was a stupid angry person back then but that's not who I am now". Part of the reason is it's really difficult to figure out who's being authentic and who's trying to half-heartedly weasel themselves out of something.

And I don't think you CAN do that on social media because the only way to really make that decision is to know someone in more depth than some multiple of 140 characters. It's a decision that can't be made with the small bite-sized serotonin pings that we've started to define our relationships and judgements around. We've become jacks of all relationships, masters of none.

[goatinaboat]

It’s novel because Twitter doesn’t normally take any action on hate-speech directed at right-wingers, or whites. No wonder this guy is so surprised!