James Woods Is Correct That Twitter Shouldn't Have Blocked His Account, But Still Hypocritical On Free Speech
from the you're-no-free-speech-martyr-jimbo dept
I think we've made our general feelings about James Woods perfectly clear. After all, he's the guy who sued an anonymous Twitter user for a somewhat mild comeback that referenced cocaine usage (leaving aside that Woods himself had tweeted very similar hyperbolic tweets suggesting people he was arguing with were on crack). In the middle of that lawsuit, the (still) anonymous tweeter died, leading Woods to gloat about "winning" the case and about the guy's death. Suffice it to say, Woods is -- in our opinion -- a terrible human being. Suing someone for being mildly critical of you is bad. Gloating over their death takes you up a few notches to being a horrible human being.
That said, when Woods' own free speech is attacked via a similarly bogus defamation lawsuit over his own tweets, we didn't support the plaintiff just because it was against Woods. We noted, instead, that we hoped he won the case -- and he did.
Now Woods is in another situation, where -- somewhat incredibly -- he's trying to make himself out as a free speech warrior. It seems that Twitter suspended his access to his account because of a meme he had tweeted. It was what appeared to be a fairly obvious satirical fake meme urging men to stay home on election day to let women's vote have more weight. Woods admitted that it was "not likely" to be real, but still noted "that there is a distinct possibility this could be real." First of all, there was no such distinct possibility. Second of all... none of it makes any sense. The meme is completely nonsensical no matter what your views on these issues are.
But, for this tweet, Twitter has suspended Woods, arguing that the meme violates its terms of service because it: "has the potential to be misleading in a way that could impact an election." It is, of course, fairly obvious how we got here. During the 2016 election, there were a bunch of memes -- some of which appear to have been placed deliberately by state actors seeking to influence our election -- that were actual attempts to suppress the vote. The various social media players, including Twitter, have been under great pressure (including from Congress) to try to avoid a repeat of such things in 2018. And thus, they created a rule against images that have "the potential to be misleading in a way that could impact an election." Then, that rule is handed off to one of the hundreds or thousands of content moderators working for Twitter, and they have basically a few seconds to review the tweet and say "does this break the rule?" If you look at the rule and the tweet... and nothing else... it's not hard to see why you'd choose the option that says "yup, he violated the rule."
Of course, this is entirely lacking in context -- and even as Woods is too silly to recognize that there's zero chance that this is real. And there is similarly zero chance that anyone reading Woods' feed would look at this meme and say "oh, right, sure, I'm not going to vote now." But, as professor Kate Klonick discussed in our recent podcast, you can't write "understand the context" into the rules. It's literally not possible. So you can only expect these low wage content moderators to follow the rules as written, no matter how silly the potential results. And, applied literally, that tweet violates that rule -- even if that leads to a totally ridiculous outcome.
This is why we keep trying to point out that moderating content at scale on these platforms is a case where it's impossible to do it well. There will be lots of "mistakes" like these, because there's no other way.
That's not to say that someone at Twitter shouldn't fix it. But, it's still tricky. If Twitter changes the ruling on this, then people will claim that it's not following its own rules... and (yup) a bunch of people will get angry again.
In the meantime, Woods is ridiculously trying to turn himself into a free speech martyr over this.
“Free speech is free speech — it’s not Jack Dorsey’s version of free speech,” Woods said, referring to Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey.
Dude. You sued an anonymous troll for a mild bit of criticism on Twitter. You don't get to whine about a lack of "free speech" on Twitter without basically all of us calling you a total fucking hypocrite.
Woods, not surprisingly, also seems to have no clue how content moderation on internet platforms works:
He noted that his original tweet was reposted by his girlfriend on Friday and had been retweeted thousands of times by Sunday. His girlfriend’s account wasn’t locked, which he said was proof that he’d been singled out because of his large Twitter following.
No, dude. It just means that someone reported your tweet, but no one reported your girlfriend's. Twitter isn't proactively scanning every single tweet. It's just if someone reports it, then it goes through the process. In this case, since tons of people hate follow Woods to see what crazy statement he's going to make next, it shouldn't be that surprising that someone "reported" that tweet -- and then the process described above happened.
But Woods just keeps going on a tear about his free speech apparently being suppressed... and something about knives and pillows.
“The irony is, Twitter accused me of affecting the political process, when in fact, their banning of me is the truly egregious interference,” Woods said. “Because now, having your voice smothered is much more disturbing than having your vocal chords slit. If you want to kill my free speech, man up and slit my throat with a knife, don’t smother me with a pillow.”
Woods said if he deletes the tweet, it would force him to watch his step with everything he says in the future, chilling free speech.
Let's just stop for a moment and recall that Woods sued another Twitter user for a mild criticism in the midst of one of Woods' many Twitter fights and then gloated when that guy died, initially making it appear that he had "won" the lawsuit, rather than having it closed due to the death of the defendant, and then later happily saying he hoped that the dead defendant died screaming Woods' name in agony. And now he wants to whine about the "chilling" effects of Twitter saying he can't tweet? Come on.
Anyway, yes, it's silly that Twitter suspended Woods' account, and the company should probably reverse that decision, even if it's totally understandable how it came about. But none of that changes Woods being a total free speech hypocrite and a really awful human being.
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Filed Under: content moderation, free speech, hypocrisy, james woods
Companies: twitter
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The most surprising thing...
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Silly But
"Something" was done.
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On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
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…in an on-the-record interview with news media that can be read and shared by anyone.
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Really??
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Re: Really?? -- HEY, "AndD"! Back for 2nd comment after 4 years!
ODD.
I haven't stopped noticing the zombies (like "bobwyzguy" with 61 month gap), but this "account" is even ODDER.
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Re: Re: Really?? -- HEY, "AndD"! Back for 2nd comment after 4 years!
Lol, Blue.
If this guy is a zombie**, then he is from YOUR team since he is being overly critical of Techdirt's editorial choices...just like you!
** For the record, I don't think anyone who comments infrequently is a zombie, nor is there any grand conspiracy going on here. I was just talking down at a level you might understand, Blue.
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Re: Re: Re: Really?? -- HEY, "AndD"! Back for 2nd comment after 4 years!
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Re: Really??
If you ever find yourself wondering, "Should I post a comment to make sure everybody knows how much I don't care about the thing this article is about?" the answer is "No." It's always "No."
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Re: Re: Really??
So next time you are wondering "Should I post a comment to make sure everybody knows how much I don't care about the post this person just made?" the answer is "No." It's Always "No."
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I called myself a faggot over a year before I was timed out for it, b/c some group of assholes mass reported me to get me timed out... b/c they thought I was someone else they dislike.
And I remained suspended b/c trust and safety didn't look at anything other than the word faggot & assume I was threatening or demeaning others.
I have every right to say the word faggot, so does everyone else. (I often correct them that it's Mr. Faggot to you)
When someone sends a message of they are going to kill my faggot ass... well that clearly is over the line. If you hate the word you can filter out ever having to see it, but instead people run to teacher crying.
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I have a problem with this, only in that Woods is an opportunistic liar. He claims it was for the meme, but I've never seen a screenshot of the twitter time out letter.
Shocking his GF was able to post the same thing, I thought those under 13 weren't allowed to have accounts. (Creepy man hit on 16 yr olds, don't look at me like that.)
I grow weary og the insanity of the right screaming 'mah free speech!!!' invoking the 1st amendment like it some how applies to businesses.
Twitter's system is perfectly tuned to be abused & they seem to not give a shit about fixing it b/c it would be hard to take back 'wins' from people who demanded the final say in who can talk.
If Woods was locked out for this meme, that is stupid & twitter needs to remove that employee.
(Shades of multiple stupid employees unable to process the word faggot directed at oneself just flipping out about the word.)
If you don't like Mr. Woods, fucking block him.
Getting him a timeout does nothing but add fuel to the fire, and this bullshit tit for tat crap is getting annoying.
Gang reporting should get those doing it a time out, especially if they didn't actually follow Mr. Woods just answered the call to whine.
We really need to stop being children demanding the teacher put someone else in timeout, grow the fsck up & accept he can tweet what he wants even if it offends you... if you don't who is going to listen when you get timed out for offending someone else?
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If happened to anyone you didn't hate, you wouldn't hedge.
You're not even being consistent, you're just signaling your own virtue. -- On a safe small portion of the ongoing corporate censorship.
But though for sake of consistency you stick up for James Woods, where's your support for Alex Jones? Infowars with tens of millions followers was "de-platformed" by the dozen most major, recently shunned by Paypal too. NO FREE SPEECH FOR JONES, EH?
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Re: If happened to anyone you didn't hate, you wouldn't hedge.
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Re: If happened to anyone you didn't hate, you wouldn't hedge.
On any given day they happily wipe their asses with the Bill of Rights.
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Re: Re: If happened to anyone you didn't hate, you wouldn't hedge.
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Re: Re: If happened to anyone you didn't hate, you wouldn't hedge.
Liberals are on the left.
Who likes a big heaping scoop of cognitive dissonance?
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Re: Re: Re: If happened to anyone you didn't hate, you wouldn't hedge.
Liberals are only left of center. I am a "Classic Liberal" I don't agree with universal health care and I don't think government should have any say in anyone's marriage at any time, the government should only be involved enough to determine if the people getting married are all at the age of majority and sound mind. I also don't think government has any right to say what you can or cannot put into your body either, but I am also agree with government putting people who intentionally murder others on death row.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: If happened to anyone you didn't hate, you wouldn't hedge.
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Re: Re: If happened to anyone you didn't hate, you wouldn't hedge.
but people are often seeking to conflate them all.
But it has been my experience that everyone wants to wipe their ass with the Bill of Rights when their politics are involved, except the libertarians... they tend to be more consistent with their support.
The Left/Democrats/Liberals of today are more than happy to assume guilt upon accusation depending on who is being accused and who is doing the accusing.
Kinda like the whole Bill Clinton/Brett Kavanaugh thing. There is some clear hypocrisy going on from both sides of the isle here.
The confirmation comity has no requirement that Ford show proof she was assaulted, they can refuse to confirm Brett just because he looks too white or black if they like.
Neither does the comity have any requirements to investigate the claims.
I am betting that if the Prez was Hillary and her candidate was up for a SCOTUS seat and someone accused them of the same there would be pretty much an entirely backwards song and dance compared to what we are seeing now.
No matter what, the Party comes before country, before constitution, before decency for the vast majority of all folks.
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[PSA]
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And this thing about James Woods.. its a shame. I've seen all his movies and I liked them all. Can't we all just get along? I PLAN to stay home and not vote just to say thanks to James for hours of prime entertainment he has given us all.
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Apples and oranges
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