re: #103 Charles Johnson

Not to mention twitchy.com, whose entire reason for existing is to incite right wing pile-ons on Twitter.

This mass targeted abuse tactic seems to be almost exclusively a right wing thing - I don’t know of any liberal Twitter user who does this.

On a highly related note

Florida Woman Sues Twitter for Giving ISIS a Platform

…Tamara Fields, a Florida woman whose husband was killed in a lone wolf terrorist attack in Jordan, has filed a lawsuit against Twitter, accusing the company of supporting the spread of ISIS by enabling ISIS leaders to recruit and fundraise on its platform. She’s suing for damages.

“Without Twitter,” the suit alleges, “the explosive growth of ISIS over the last few years into the most-feared terrorist group in the world would not have been possible.”

As a company, Twitter strictly forbids users from threatening or promoting terrorism, but that change came only last year when Twitter expanded its definition of “violent threats.” And the company depends on its user base to report such activity, a practice that Fields takes issue with in the suit.

Fields is not only seeking damages in the suit. She’s also urging the court to enter an order declaring that Twitter has violated the Anti-Terrorism Act. If Fields wins, this could be a precedent-setting lawsuit, making Twitter accountable not only to governments looking to contain terrorist speech online, but also liable to families affected by that activity. It would also, no doubt, have implications far beyond Twitter, putting tech companies across Silicon Valley on warning.