Twitter CEO Dick Costolo Secretly Censored Abusive Responses To President Obama, Says Report (buzzfeed.com) 308
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BuzzFeed: In 2015, then-Twitter CEO Dick Costolo secretly ordered employees to filter out abusive and hateful replies to President Barack Obama during a question and answer session, sources tell BuzzFeed News. According to a former senior Twitter employee, Costolo ordered employees to deploy an algorithm (which was built in-house by feeding it thousands of examples of abuse and harassing tweets) that would filter out abusive language directed at Obama. Another source said the media partnerships team also manually censored tweets, noting that Twitter's public quality-filtering algorithms were inconsistent. Two sources told BuzzFeed News that this decision was kept from senior company employees for fear they would object to the decision. According to sources, the decision upset some senior employees inside the company who strictly followed Twitter's long-standing commitment to unfettered free speech. A different source alleges that Twitter did the same thing during a question and answer with Caitlyn Jenner.
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I know you're being funny (it is funny), but in case anyone is thinking otherwise, I doubt this was politically motivated. It was probably just financial self-interest on the part of Twitter. Do you want to own the platform that allows for rational discourse between the leader of a nation and its citizens, or do you want to own the platform that's pretty much just a cesspool of profanity and vitriol?
Hint: you get a lot more advertising revenue for the former.
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It's not clear from your comment - censored on which side of the dialog?
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He did a Q&A on reddit, and it felt very eh.. smarmy. As in: only softball questions ever floated to the top.
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Who Cares? (Score:4, Interesting)
As an avid anti-Obama person I can't say that I really care. As much as I think he's been a poor excuse for a president, almost as bad as his predecessor, he's still the President of the United States. I think the office deserves respect even if the person holding it doesn't. If people can't express their displeasure without nasty, obscene and abusive language then I feel Twitter should censor them. If they want to practice their first amendment rights it is not incumbent upon Twitter to allow them a platform for it.
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Did you just say the "F" word [youtube.com]?!
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Re:Who Cares? (Score:4, Informative)
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He seems like he can hand it out about as well as he takes it.
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Why would you call Hilliary psychotic? Corrupt and dishonest as hell but she seems sane enough. I'm not that sure about Trump although his psychosis might just be an act.
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Re:Who Cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't scrutinize something without being respectful? Or at least civil?
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If only we had an objective standard for "respectful" or "civil" that was applied equally.
Alas there is a very clear double standard which our media helps enforce.
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Alas there is a very clear double standard which our media helps enforce.
Great point. They go out of their way to create drama...without it, nobody pays attention.
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Intense scrutiny doesn't, and criticism doesn't require disrespect, or hateful language. Foulmouthed tweets and posts don't convince anyone who wasn't already in your camp. Point to evidence, explain your position, debate w/o a chip on your shoulder. Then you (not you specifically JCR) might be able to sway some opinions. I have several friends who I disagree with politically, and we have lively discussions, but at the end of the day, we can still be friends and respect each other because we're civil.
Re:Who Cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
This was for a twitter Q&A session?
I also am no big fan of the POTUS, but if Twitter was filtering out trolls and other related crap to cut down on the noise, then so be it. I consider it more like moderation rather than censorship.
As long as the filtering was only for "abusive and hateful" messages, I have no problem with it at all. If they were cutting out legitimate but potentially embarrassing questions based on a political agenda, then I do have a problem.
The best way to handle this is to up-front disclose that submissions to the Q&A will be moderated and abusive/hateful messages will be deleted.
Re:Who Cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, very not news. IMO if you're doing a sponsored Q&A with a VIP and you don't moderate it, you're just trolling for trolls. And what VIP is going to say yes to you? Of course you better moderate.
I'm not a VIP, and I wouldn't agree to something like that as a published event if they didn't even have ushers. Even a waiter in a restaurant is going to kick people out if they're hurtling abuse at other diners.
Like at a baseball game; you can shout whatever you want at the umpire. If you're sitting near the front in an identifiable spot and you shout clearly offensive stuff at the VIPs during intermission events, you might very well get kicked out of the stadium. This is to be expected.
And no, when you're providing a service you don't really need to warn people that if they're abusive or hateful to other participants, they might get kicked out. That is really basic and obvious.
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I've listened to people rant and rave about US presidents since LBJ. Everyone of them had people that said they were "the worst ever." I mostly agree with you but seriously W. Bush was a bad leader. His response to almost everything was awful. I really resent Bush more because I voted for him the first time around. I hoped he would do better but he ended up being a disaster. How can someone claim to be a conservative and grow government like that?
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The office has no respect for its duties, the nation, the nations citizens, or itself.
Respect has to be earned.
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Uncle Tom Obama is far, far worse than the Shrub, the Shrub had no idea what he was doing and it was Darth Cheney that was the real president. Uncle Tom Obama knows exactly what he is doing and the real negative outcomes of those actions. So that actions are taken with full intent, with knowledge and understanding of how severe those outcomes really are, which makes him far, far worse than the Shrub. You are comparing an idiot drug addict to a constitutional professor, the greater your awareness of the out
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W and Bill stoners? Sure, but Obama? I'm not so sure about that.
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Not sure about "stoner", but he's certainly admitted he inhaled...
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10... [nytimes.com]
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That's not a substantial criticism of President Obama (although there are many), because everyone does things in high school they later regret.
Liberal echo chamber (Score:4, Insightful)
This way they can always point to the comments and say look how many people agree. It's part of a no-negativity culture. Helps hide the truth. Imagine finding out that your post with 1000 likes actually was hated by 100,000 people?
They don't do this for donald trump or any other figures who don't fit he agenda.
Get FOX news' dick out of your mouth, AC. (Score:2)
Donald Trump isn't POTUS.
He hasn't earned any respect at all.
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Let’s set the facts straight.
1: A CEO’s role (in a publicly traded firm) is to MAKE MONEY.. Jobs just happen to be incidental to that. (ie: we need to expand, and we can’t automate everything.. or the cost to automate would be too high, so we hire people... but if we can get them cheaper, lets do so.. which includes H1B’s, chopping salaries as much as possible, and in the case of Donald.. constant law suits and stiffing those he has a financial obligation to). The president is behol
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If you can't tell the difference between being blatantly offensive, and a "no-negativity culture," then you're probably not adding anything of value that would be lost if you get tossed out for reasons you claim to not understand. There has to be a minimum bar where if you don't at least have enough "theory of mind" to understand why people don't consider shouting obscenities to be constructive, then they aren't going to want to listen to you anymore.
You don't have any right for me to care what you have to
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Oh my goodness.. can people really be this stupid.
No where in the article (I know.. READING THE ARTICLE.. what a concept?) did they say anything about moving "negative" or "critical" comments to the president. They removed "abusive" and "hateful" speech..
There is a difference between someone saying "Your policies are the worst and taking the country into the toilet" vs. "you f**king ni**er c**t, just die why don't you" One is being critical and complaining about the president.. and one is just plain rude
Twitter doesn't filter, they said so (Score:5, Informative)
Our users now send a billion Tweets every four days—filtering is neither desirable nor realistic. With this new feature, we are going to be reactive only: that is, we will withhold specific content only when required to do so in response to what we believe to be a valid and applicable legal request.https://blog.twitter.com/2012/tweets-still-must-flow
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This is not a left -vs- right issue -- I would hope that there is some kind of filtering in place regardless of the politics.
LOLOLOL didn't check the news in a few years, eh?
When I was a kid, what you said was true. Now? Not even close! Currently, one side won't even agree not to make death threats. False equivalency is a pretty hard sell this year.
Is this really that problematic? (Score:5, Insightful)
They wouldn't silence their own friends. (Score:2)
Given prior reputation with Twitter being aligned with the SOCJUS left, they'd let GNAA go nuts.
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AC addressed it above in that it doesn't paint a realistic picture of how much folks approve or disapprove of the man in general. As stated, if your post is liked by 1000 people then you believe what you've said is popular and accepted. Without knowing that 100,000 absolutely loathe what you've said, you have no way of knowing that your " truth " is somewhat skewed.
The same thing happens with MSM. Flavor X spends their entire time gushing over their candidate while bashing the opposition. Due to their
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Their mistake was hiding the fact that they did it, if they had just been open and said "this is a moderated Q&A session" there would be no cause to complain.
By not being open they have just give the conspiracy theorists more to work with.
Well, if by "work with" you mean, "show themselves to be aligned with racist twitter trolls."
I don't think many legit, hardworking conspiracy theorists are going to get twisted up over social media companies being private companies, or trying to make their services look good during public events. That is just obvious stuff that any minor cynic will automatically expect, conspiracy theorists would be suspicious if you said it wasn't the way things happen.
The people grousing are the ones who see the word "Oba
Re:Is this really that problematic? (Score:4, Insightful)
Second, it creates a skewed picture of people's responses. There's no objective definition of what's abusive and what isn't, and besides, I'm sure that certain levels of dislike cannot be expressed without tripping their filter.
Even the most socially unacceptable views can be expressed without being abusive. A poster who is really and truly a white supremacist could easily say, "Just being honest, I disapprove of Obama and it's because he is black." Fine. It's not going to win an NAACP award, but it wasn't abusive.
A poster could likewise say, "I just can't bring myself to vote for Hillary or any other woman." Okay. Evidencing misogyny but not abusive. It's really not that hard, even though the interwebz are flooded with needlessly venomous comments.
Now, should people be forced to hold back their views and say them "nicely" everywhere in society? Hell no, the 1st Amendment protects the noblest and the vilest speech alike.
But--more to your final argument--not only is Twitter under no obligation to be a platform for all such speech, they are also under no obligation to be a statistically valid barometer for national politics. If people are using "likes" on FB and Twitter instead of sound polling data (which itself is of dubious value), it's to their detriment.
The social media consensus was that Trump could never become the Republican nominee, but here we are. That might reflect the user base more than any systemic effort to slant the narrative. Similar echo chambers exist on every axis of the political spectrum, and people hear what they want to hear, to their detriment (if we consider "not properly understanding the reality of a situation" a detriment).
So believe in the hug-box or not. It's not up to Twitter to teach users, during a Q&A with the President, that some people are racists.
The Ministry of Truth in action. (Score:4, Insightful)
They don't protect from abuse or harassment, they just protect the leftist narrative. Anything that challenges it, no matter how trivial, is deemed "abuse" or "harassment" for emotional appeal.
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Some of us long-timers are only slightly to the right of Leon Trotsky. We just don't feel motivated to spout off about it as much.
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As a conservative, I would just like to point out to you that you're posting from your AC safe space. Stop hiding.
The word (Score:4, Insightful)
I believe the word the linked poster was searching for was "edited", not "censored". When a private organization chooses what to print and what not to print on its platform that is editing.
sPh
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That tired old "it's only censorship when the government does it" nonsense is getting annoying. Private corporations can and do censor, too.
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You have to log in to have a lawn. You're just a homeless cowherd, making a mess on grandpappy's lawn. I shout at you to get off of it, but I think he's napping. Or dead, it gets hard to tell at his age.
Quora does something similar (Score:4, Interesting)
I used to think Quora was cool, but there was a day that they started censoring replies to Hillary Clinton's answers to question (well, probably her staff's answers).
I read through her answers and found one of them to be particularly deceitful...beyond normal political spin. So I replied with a stern but thoughtful and truthful post. I did not engage in ad hominem or say anything derogatory. I was clearly not trolling and the follow-up discussion under my thread was outstanding.
After about an hour, the post disappeared without a trace. No communication to say that the post was flagged or in violation of their terms of service. I've seen very edgy and far more provocative pieces stand in comparison to what I wrote.
It's become clear that they were only interested in being a mouthpiece for Clinton and her platform. Quora was unwilling to communicate about the censorship despite my repeated attempts to contact them, even to employees who had previously reached out to me. It was utter silence. Since then, I've seen extended invitation to the liberal side of the political aisle to promote their "answers" (read: agenda) into the feeds of their readers. They're supposed to be interest and preference driven, but oddly enough I get all of Clinton's rhetoric despite having signed up for math and science subjects.
Anyway, I know that Quora isn't Twitter, but it is alarming how hard these social media companies feel compelled to censor the dissent against their prospective. What are they afraid of? I also find it disgusting that they act so anti first amendment in the country and culture that allowed them to thrive. Flaming hypocrites, all of them.
Seems reasonable to me (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, it seems reasonable to me to filter out abusive and hateful replies, since it's unlikely they'll add much to the discussion.
Are people spouting racial epithets or hurling insults going to encourage any thoughtful responses or materially improve the Q&A session? No, probably not.
I also think that general interaction with the president of your country should be conducted with some decorum by default, but maybe that's just me. Maybe I'm just out of touch.
Even the presidents and politicians whom I can't stand would get some basic civility and respect from me, in some cases the bare fucking minimum. In terms of the president, whether or not I like whoever it is, if we ever meet he/she will get some respect and civility from me.
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Surely there were ways to run the same event without lying about what they were doing.
Slashdot has it figured out, ask for questions, collect and collate them all, pick the best ones that the staff wants to have and then pose them to the guest.
Twitter could do that with having a handful of people then re-post the questions so they are "live" and it's quick off the cuff answers not some cynical slick think tank response.
They didn't. Not because they couldn't, but because they didn't want to. They CHOSE t
Secretly (Score:2)
That's the problem.
Re: Secretly (Score:2)
From a moral viewpoint, agreed.
From an entertainment angle, however, can we get one good day *without* news about 'twitter' or 'tweeting'? Seriously, Slashdot, I come for news that matters, not looney tunes news.
Who cares, twitter is a fading echo of 2000 (Score:2)
Blame the public (Score:2)
We used to have a much freer and diverse web until about 7 years ago. We had separate social media platforms for everything from blogging to photo sharing to music. And we had (still have) the open RSS standard to combine feeds from various sources.
And yet people voted for a monolithic, closed web with Facebook and Twitter. 2 easy chokepoints that can be shut down at a whim, as seen in Turkey with the recent coup. Even if Slashdotters personally don't use these services, the vast majority of people do, and
wow (Score:2)
Filtering for everyone! (Score:2)
Can they apply this to everyone's account by default, with an opt out option? That would maintain freeze peach (everyone can see your tweets if they opt in) and make the platform nicer (people can avoid abuse trivially).
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he is the President of the USA and for that alone deserves at least some basic level of respect.
Fuck you. He signed extensions of the PATRIOT act multiple times. He deserves no more respect than any other power-grubbing scumbag who ever held that office.
-jcr
That's what Democrats do. That is why I voted for Obama, twice. That is why I am going to vote for Hillary.
Have a policy that we don't like? Guess what, we have a policy you don't like. Maybe we can compromise, and take the stuff you hate most out of my policy, and the stuff I hate most out of your policy, and pass them both together. That's what happened with Patriot Act under Obama. He agreed to water it down and keep parts of it, in exchange for other stuff that the Republicans Congress wouldn't other ag
Re: Honestly don't see the problem (Score:2)
Renewing the Patriot Act doesn't qualify as neglecting to do something. It's an active affirmative move. It involves the same amount of paying attention to what he was signing it as vetoing it.
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Really only congress can roll back the power grabs. Obama at least put a stop to torture, but it won't make a difference to the next president unless Congress acts.
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No President in history has, and no General has ever asked for or recommended, a wartime policy where persons engaged in combat are excepted from being shot depending on what passport they have, are believed to have, or might have since you haven't searched them.
You're talking about people overseas in war zones. Nobody cares what fucking passport they have; if you go to war, you might die. If you go to war with the United States, you might die at the hands of US military equipment. That has absolutely fucki
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You're talking about people overseas in war zones
Yemen was not a war zone that the US was participating in on the ground. The U.S. citizen(s) killed there was actively sought out and assassinated. Now, you can argue that that jackass was actively planning attacks on the U.S. I won't disagree with that. But, at some point there should have been a judge/jury (even in absentia) unless his death was required to prevent an imminent attack. And even then, the evidence should be required to be presented to the public to prove it wasn't an abuse of power.
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Oooooh, the "teleprompter" attack. Not so popular since the 2016 Republican primaries when all the candidates were observed using Teleprompters extensively (as do all high-level executives and politicians). Still, one would have thought it would have been dropped after President Obama demolished the House Republicans in the 20-on-1 health care mini-debate. Takes some learnin' I guess.
sPh
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He got it for not being Bush. Contrary to some of the comments here, he's largely succeeded at that.
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Not really sure how memorizing a speech is somehow better than reading it. You do know that he could in principal memorize speeches written by others or put a speech written by himself on the teleprompter.
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Maybe I'm crazy, but weren't the great public speakers of the past capable of speaking extemporaneously? Perhaps they may have been written at some point or they may have had notes, but by and large they spoke freely and weren't just reciting line for line a speech as if it was a script.
And I think the best were capable of speaking truly extemporaneously with no notes or written prep? I suppose these were a different kind of speaking that wasn't as dependent on the relentless recitation of "facts" that co
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Now, that was funny. You made a valid point, and weren't even abusive that time. Bravo.
Re:The Eternal Struggle (Score:5, Insightful)
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Do you have any evidence for this?
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And yet, they seem to have no problem in continuing to allow ISIS to recruit through their tool. Ah, but it was more important to filter out trolls, right?
Re:Trolls are a danger to a free society (Score:4, Informative)
If you abuse a right, you risk having it taken away from you
No, you don't. Rights aren't privileges. The right to free speech is inalienable.
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To add to this....distasteful, controversial and unpopular speech is exactly the type of speech you most want to protect.
With changing years, and opinions...you never know when the speech YOU feel is right and the most important, will be the one that the masses try to suppress.
It isn't the easy going, popular and non-controversial speech that needs protection.
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If you abuse a right, you risk having it taken away from you
No, you don't. Rights aren't privileges. The right to free speech is inalienable.
Wow, so nobody has ever been put into a concentration camp? Or been enslaved? Or forced into prostitution? And all those school girls kidnapped by Boko Haram was just another lie?
Rights are taken away from people all the time.
Rights violated everyday, not removed the first da (Score:3)
Every single day that someone was in a concentration camp, their rights were being violated. That would not be true if the government removed their rights on day 1. The government didn't create their human rights, so the government can not remove them - the government, or anyone else, can only *violate* your rights.
The Constitution doesn't say "the government must *grant*" new rights, it says the government "shall not infringe" THE right of .... "The right of free speech, not "a" right of free speech - the
Rights violated repeatedly is real-world (Score:3)
> you should certainly recognize that you are not describing a real-world concept, and it could be argued that you are ipso facto wrong
I'm describing the fact that rights are violated repeatedly. That's very real-world.
A slave has their rights violated every day. If we don't take action, their rights will be violated again tomorrow. That's real world.
If you think that that a slaves rights were *taken away*, then their rights are no longer being violated. You would say "they were enslaved, and that's
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I agree with you in principle, but the reality is different. Ask a guy in prison how his inalienable rights to "be secure in his person, houses, papers, and effects," "peaceably assemble," or vote are working out for him.
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People with androgen insensitivity syndrome are XY but will develop externally as completely female.
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And sorry, but the idea that a dude can say "I feel in my heart and soul that I'm a woman makes me a woman" is just nuts. That would be like me saying "you know, I feel in my heart and soul that I'm a real dragon, therefore that makes me one". It's just silly, and believe it or not, there are people who actually do this. They call themselves otherkin and they think that they actually, really, truly are nonhuman animals, including fictitious animals.
First, you're not sorry. Second there's kind of a differenc
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For what's it's worth, you're (probably) being hypocritical. We're talking about people's perceptions here--what it is they think and feel. You cannot dictate that. Saying "well, that's different" is stating that you believe one group's (transgender) feelings to be valid, while another group's ("otherkin," or whatever) are not, simply because you're sympathetic to the first group. The reality is that both groups have the same issues.
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Remember, the consciousness is in your brain, not in your dick.
I'm not sure that is the case here - this guy is obviously thinking with his dick. (I know, so what else is new?)
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Are you sure?
I've yet to meet any straight guys who have said they would date a transgender person.
Because I've run into many who would, maybe because you can't tell just by looking. We're everywhere, and unless you're gay, you've almost definitely gotten turned on by at least one of us without even knowing.
And that's not counting internet pr0n.
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epigenetics is the study of cellular and physiological phenotypic trait variations that result from external or environmental factors that switch genes on and off and affect how cells express genes
From the time the sperm and egg meet, epigenetics are part and parcel of development.
Also, you obviously are one of those mouth breathers who lumps in trans people with pedophiles, since you just did, so why should anyone take you seriously?
You don't get to dictate what is morally wrong for others. If it does no harm, it's simply none of your damn business, and there can be no moral argument made against it
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If you were face to face with Obama at a town hall and started calling him a "communist gay ni**er muslim", the crowd, liberal or not, would run you out of the building, and rightly so.
What you won't be, because this is a free country, is convicted of a crime for doing it.
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If you were face to face with Obama at a town hall and started calling him a "communist gay ni**er muslim", the crowd, liberal or not, would run you out of the building, and rightly so.
What you won't be, because this is a free country, is convicted of a crime for doing it.
LOL how cute, somebody whose been in a cave all year and doesn't know about Trump rallies!
No, actually, right now only liberal SJWs would even ask you to stop.
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You know what? This is what happens when you put your speech in the hands of a private owner. They can take their liberties with what's in their control. Isn't really anything you can do, other than put your message into another channel of communications.
Same thing happened when I wrote a letter to the editor. They had the nerve to publish it, but without any of the swear words or offensive zingers I had carefully included. I had to take my letter to a more appropriate forum, and shout it at the sky.
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Well, if I had a social media website I wouldn't really care about alliterate content from write-only morons who don't know censorship from speech. Me not reprinting what you said because it offended me? That is my speech not yours.
Notice that when you say something offensive to twitter, and they don't republish it... not only did nobody arrest you, nobody even tried to stop you from saying it! They just didn't reprint it. Wow, thinking is hard, words are so hard!
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The problem is that offense should also require intent. If you're feeling offended, you should be certain that the "offending" party meant it as such. If I say Redskin, as in the football player, and someone takes it as offensive, that's their problem. If I said the same word as in "dirty drunk redskin", then we have an issue.
If someone says something you don't like, ask them to stop it in your presence. If they don't, THEN you're being offended...otherwise you've simply got a chip on your shoulder, and