Pipe bomber Cesar Sayoc Obama harassed, Clinton, and others on Twitter – Quartz



[ad_1]

On Oct. 26, US floridades Florida resident Cesar Sayoc with sending 13 explosive devices to prominent public figures, including forming President Barack Obama and forming Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The internet immediately uncovered Sayoc's social media accounts, which were promptly suspended.

Sayoc's tweets were a hodgepodge of anti-Democrat memes, and included attacks on the folks he targeted: Obama, Clinton, billionaire philanthropist George Soros, representativeDebbie Wasserman Schultz, and Oprah Winfrey, train NFL starColin Kaepernick, and Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg. Sayongo Threatened members of the media, like New York Times reporter Sarah Jeong and MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell, where he tweeted a video of a python swallowing a human with the comment, "This one for you MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell. A promised reply to your threats. We are ready to meet you soon. "" The parse is not easy, it's pretty clear he's attempting to threaten Mitchell.

Rochelle Ritchie, the former Secretary for the Democrats in the House of Representatives, posted a screenshot on Twitter of a tweet from Sayoc just a couple weeks ago threatening with a "nice silent Air boat ride" and that "we will see you 4 sure, hug your loved ones [sic] Home Sayok's account Sayoc's account, and included a screenshot of a message from Twitter saying that Sayoc's tweets did not violate their rules against abusive behavior.

According to Twitter's rules, abusive behavior is "an attempt to harass, intimidate, or silence someone else's voice,"And the company specifically lays out four scenarios that merit Twitter taking action. These include violent threats; abusive slurs, epithets, racist, gold sexist tropes; abusive content that reduces someone to less than human; and content that incites fear. In the case of Sayoc's tweet to Ritchie, the threat is confusing-what exactly does a "nice silent air boat ride" mean? -And the "hug your loved ones" is not a slur clear: Sayoc is, again, attempting to intimidate Ritchie. From The New York Times' review of Sayoc's tweets at politicians, it seems like "see you soon" was a phrase he used often in his threats.

Sayoc's tweets seriously enough.

For years, Twitter has not yet failed to report its commitment to stopping harassment on its platform. Even in cases of fairly clear-cut harassment or intimidation, Twitter is slow to act, or decides not to ban accounts:

Like Sayoc's tweet to Ritchie, many harassers' behavior falls just short of what Twitter traditionally defines as harassment, but is still clamly quite threatening or dangerous. In an interview with Amnesty International, writer Jessica Valenti said that only obvious, Twitter's attention. "That's part of the problem," she added. "Harassers can be savvy and know what they can say that they are not going to get kicked off at a site or not illegal."

For example, writer Sady Doyle reported an account of a threat to a gun, then gloated about how they "won" Twitter's review. When Doyle reported them again for that tweet, Twitter again said they found no violation of their rules, but reversed the decision after the tweet went viral. Twitter engineer at the time apologized for the error, saying the solution is for a Twitter employee to escalate the case internally.

Here's a more personal example. Yesterday, creepy albeit innocuous things at me, like "Hello dear, good to see you," and "Should I take you for a ride?" When I looked at the account, the account only eight tweets were directed at me. This person has not been attacked by me, but I am certainly unsettled by it, since it seems that the only purpose of their account is to bug me. I reported the account, but if journalist Allison Morris's (much worse) experience is any indication, it's unlikely the account will be banned. Morris's harasser Twitter twitter en français Plus, even if Twitter has this person, there's no reason they could not just create a new account.

Twitter has a huge task ahead of it if it's really committed to tackling the issue on its platform. But it certainly could do more. It's been criticized for its own application of its own rules, it is able to do: Twitter is legally obligatory to hide white nationalist and Nazi content from users users users German, German, German,,, that that that that that that that that that that that for that for that .

And ultimately, the question is not just how to get a handle on Twitter harassment, but also how to transfer real-life action. Not every Twitter troll is the next Cesar Sayoc, but how do we know which ones are? And even if we knew, what could we do?

[ad_2]
Source link