Someone at Reuters had a shot of the imagination kool-aid this morning:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUKSEO348936
I think articles of this nature are silly...some reporter decides to write down some fantasies about what could happen given such and such circumstances....it's not really journalism.
Makes you wonder who the reporter is rooting for.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Monday, February 2, 2009
Censorship and twitter...
Recently I read the post on Mashable about the Astrospace twitter meltdown:
http://tinyurl.com/bob6x4
One thing that bothered me was the comment that Twitter allows pornographic and racist tweets:
"One point to note is that there is no policing of racist or pornographic accounts, no filtering of content or advisory notices whatever. Very many people on Twitter spout uninformed, racist, bigoted and disrespectful remarks and there is nothing to stop them."
While this is true, I would like to know what the author believes should be done about tweets of this nature. There's no way for Twitter to monitor every comment that gets posted, and even if they did, who's to define what's offensive?
That leaves the problem of censorship: one of the beauties of Twitter is that you can say whatever you want. Free speech, even for the dumb. If people don't like what you say they won't follow you, simple as that. For Twitter to start to monitor "offensive" content removes one of their website's best features.
I think it should be solved democratically: when a user posts tweets that could be offensive, it should be rated as such , with tags (such as racist, pornographic, violent, etc.). Users can then decide on their own whether or not they want to view that kind of material, blocking racist materials but viewing violent content, etc.
Right now Twitter doesn't have alot of features as far as filters go, and is actually a fairly barebones application (I'm always surprised at how few configuration options there are). Feel free to disagree with me on this one.
Thoughts?
http://tinyurl.com/bob6x4
One thing that bothered me was the comment that Twitter allows pornographic and racist tweets:
"One point to note is that there is no policing of racist or pornographic accounts, no filtering of content or advisory notices whatever. Very many people on Twitter spout uninformed, racist, bigoted and disrespectful remarks and there is nothing to stop them."
While this is true, I would like to know what the author believes should be done about tweets of this nature. There's no way for Twitter to monitor every comment that gets posted, and even if they did, who's to define what's offensive?
That leaves the problem of censorship: one of the beauties of Twitter is that you can say whatever you want. Free speech, even for the dumb. If people don't like what you say they won't follow you, simple as that. For Twitter to start to monitor "offensive" content removes one of their website's best features.
I think it should be solved democratically: when a user posts tweets that could be offensive, it should be rated as such , with tags (such as racist, pornographic, violent, etc.). Users can then decide on their own whether or not they want to view that kind of material, blocking racist materials but viewing violent content, etc.
Right now Twitter doesn't have alot of features as far as filters go, and is actually a fairly barebones application (I'm always surprised at how few configuration options there are). Feel free to disagree with me on this one.
Thoughts?
Hello world!
I am a student at LeTourneau University, majoring in Aeronautical Science, professional flight (yes, learning to be a pilot)
I will be posting blogs on misc. stuff that crosses my mind that exceeds the 140 character limit of twitter.
I will be posting blogs on misc. stuff that crosses my mind that exceeds the 140 character limit of twitter.
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