Jon Del Arroz told Facebook readers today that Twitter has permanently suspended him for violating the platform’s rules.
JDA published a screencap of Twitter’s suspension notice which indicates the ban is permanent unless he successfully appeals it.
[Thanks to James Davis Nicoll for the story.]
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Whomp whomp.
Of course, no matter how he behaves, it’s always the other guy at fault.
As far as I and others can tell there is no “support team”. My guess is that it’s nothing more than another algorithm.
And they do not give the actual rules, or reasons. Someone in a group I’m in was jailed for talking about beating cancer.
I guess the term “science fiction grand master” is not protected, then. jda continues to have delusions of adequacy.
:@mark: are we looking at the same post? The reason for the ban is in bold right below the words “specifically, for”
You can disagree with the ruling but it seems quite clear on what grounds he was banned lol.
Without any prior context, a human support team looking at that singular tweet might decide to overturn the ban (if he eventually gets through to one) but his long history of acting like a complete jackass might work against him here.
Twitter can banned a former president; what makes this “prominent local author” believe he deserves better treatment?
All I know is, this is bad news for the Democrats!
I have a nagging suspicion that this is a case of “the single tweet we’re shown is but the straw” and the permaban looked at the entire body of work.
…do you mean to tell me that after everything this dude did, twitter permabanned him for that?
So noted
Chris S. Says I guess the term “science fiction grand master” is not protected, then. jda continues to have delusions of adequacy.
What happened to World’s leading Hispanic SF author which was what he’d laying claim to? And what the Hell is a science fiction grand master anyways? He’s like some damned guppy saying that it’s really a shark.
Click
Depends on you definition of “for that” – A single tweet usually is not enough for a permaban, he did get several warnings in the past (usually with temporary bans), so eventually it was one tweet too many.
(I remember one time reporting a harrassment account and I got “We couldnt find anything objectionable” about half a dayx later. 8 month after that I got another email “Because of youre report we have banned XYZ”. So sometimes its slow, but usually its a matter of number of reports. As was the case with a certain ex-president)
I seem to remember that he used a range of different Twitter display name. But I wonder why he changed from” The Leading Hispanic Voice in Science Fiction”?
peer says Depends on you definition of “for that” – A single tweet usually is not enough for a permaban, he did get several warnings in the past (usually with temporary bans), so eventually it was one tweet too many.
A single tweet can get you banned permanently but not generally unless a lot of folks really, really complain about it. I don’t think that happened here. I think the automatic system logged more than enough serious violations against him that he got a permanent ban. And no, I don’t he’s got any chance of successfully getting it overturned.
Twitter like Facebook is a Really Big System. Almost everything that happens is done by so called smart systems. When JDA and the like rail against the human overlords of those companies they just don’t get it as they’ve met over our future AI Overlords. Ain’t life grand?
Well, hell. That’s some nice news to get up to in the morning.
(And before somebody comes along and whines, just wait till it’s you, my answer is that if I ever spout the same hateful nonsense as JDA, I would hope Twitter would ban me as well.)
Bonnie McDaniel says Well, hell. That’s some nice news to get up to in the morning.
(And before somebody comes along and whines, just wait till it’s you, my answer is that if I ever spout the same hateful nonsense as JDA, I would hope Twitter would ban me as well.)
Well I think you’re one of the nicest folks here. And as proof of that, I’d like to send you some Really Great Chocolate. Just send me your postal address
here and I’ll send it along as soon as the weather cools down somewhat.
JDA changes his Twitter handle every couple of months as the mood strikes him. He adopted grand Master originally to mock SFWA’s pick of Nalo Hopkinson as Grand Master. Then he moved on to some other handles before coming back to this one.
He adopted grand Master originally to mock SFWA’s pick of Nalo Hopkinson as Grand Master.
Because of course he did.
Mike Glyer says JDA changes his Twitter handle every couple of months as the mood strikes him. He adopted grand Master originally to mock SFWA’s pick of Nalo Hopkinson as Grand Master. Then he moved on to some other handles before coming back to this one.
Well I can’t use the language here that I like to use to describe that action as it’d get this comment removed from here. What a, well, I can’t say that either. He’s a throughly nasty person through and through without a redeemable characteristic to him without any doubt.
While this won’t impact my personal Twitter experience, I hope it makes Twitter more pleasant for many of the authors and fans that I follow and interact with on Twitter.
’bout time.
@clpolk Look, they got Capone on tax evasion. Sometimes it doesn’t really matter what they got someone for as long as they got them.
tsk tsk
Bonnie McDaniel, I grant thee the internet for the day.
No lesson learned by troll, alas. Just more hate. Nice things are not to be for us, etc. Well, mend your ways, please pretty please. I’d like to live in a world of nice people.
And,.no, I don’t think that’s too much to ask. It takes more effort to be mean and cruel than to be kind. I swear it does. Trolls, you’re not as funny out here as you sound inside your head.
I’m not sure why he decided to blame my husband for the ban, but this is the proudest I’ve been of Andrew this week.
“It’s a bold strategy, Cotton. Let’s see if it pays off for ’em” – dodgeball
I wonder how many people on Twitter have used the term “whitey” in a racist way and haven’t been permabanned? I’m going to take a stab and say hundreds of thousands. That’s a low ball. Just my subjective estimate.
Less than one hour.
Anyone who thinks Jon Del Arroz was banned over a single tweet must have no idea of how he’s acted on social media.
Del Arroz has behaved badly on Twitter for years. Jim C. Hines wrote two blog posts about it. I’ve posted several times to defend a SF pro after reading everything he said to her using @ replies. His conduct was deeply offensive and he continued to contact that person after being told it was unwanted and needed to stop.
So when I read today that he was kicked off Twitter, my reaction was that it’s about damn time.
Miles, with all love and respect that you are due, go jump in a lake.
@Paul Weimer by a curious coincidence, I spent all last week doing just that! Lake Sutherland is lovely this time of year (there were a couple of smokey days but we didn’t let it spoil our fun). Swam and kayaked every day. Saw a beaver swimming with a hefty stick in his mouth, saw a bald eagle take a lake trout, my littlest learned the back stroke. It was a little slice of paradise.
Apart from that, do you have any substantive rebuttal to my point, or just more G-rated insults?
What’s he supposed to rebut? You haven’t made any substantive claims against his ban.
I imagine suspensions are likely for a first(/second/third/fourth/fifth) offence. Our dear least significant major nuisance, on the other hand, has enjoyed committing many previous offences. Eventually, if you keep playing stupid games, you’re going to win the stupid grand prize.
Consequences, actions, etc.
May he have much joy of it.
@Miles Carter–Honestly, sincerely, I rarely see “whitey” used the way the n-word is. I’d say it’s comparatively rare.
And no one who has been paying attention to his behavior thinks JdA was banned over a single tweet. He just reached the “straw that broke the camel’s back” point, is all.
Are you more impressed by insults that aren’t G-rated? I’m not.
I don’t follow JDA on Twitter so I don’t know what else he’s done. My point is that the reason (apparently) given by Twitter for the permaban is his use of the racist term “whitey” which I have encountered on Twitter many, many times and I deeply doubt those other people who used it got permabanned. In other words, I doubt JDA got banned for that but for some other reason. For what, I don’t know. My whole and entire point.
Maybe he deserved it, I dunno. I leave such decisions to those of you who follow him on Twitter.
Actually we don’t know why he was permanently banned as we don’t have the letter that Twitter sent him when they did so. So any and all suppositions as to why he got banned are just that — suppositions. Certainly we’ll never know the actual reasons why Twitter took the final step and did this.
Even on communities much smaller than Twitter, site moderation is opaque by necessity. When moderators explain the full basis for a decision, it just leads to arguments. Nobody accepts that they are being moderated for valid reasons. (I am speaking from experience. All you get for explaining a moderation decision to the moderated is endless drama.)
In Del Arroz’s ban, we’ve only seen is one message from Twitter about one tweet. We’re not being shown the history of moderation warnings he received. We haven’t seen all of his tweets that moderators deleted.
If you read the Hines posts and click his screen captures, you’ll see multiple examples of objectionable behavior by Del Arroz. He treated a lot of people badly and it caught up to him.
rcade says If you read the Hines posts and click his screen captures, you’ll see multiple examples of objectionable behavior by Del Arroz. He treated a lot of people badly and it caught up to him.
If my earlier assumption about smart agents is correct, than the number of bad acts by him simply caused an algorithm to weight heavily against him. No human had to get pissed and say that’s enough, It was just the software agent reaching a point of no return for him. And that’s why I doubt he’ll get a reversal of that ban as I expect that it’s a software agent that he’ll be appealing to as I’m betting that’s who filters all appeals. Meet the New Boss, it’s got a silicon mind.
rcade writes: Even on communities much smaller than Twitter, site moderation is opaque by necessity. When moderators explain the full basis for a decision, it just leads to arguments.
The one site I know that is pretty open about moderation decisions, is rpg.net, but they also have some very clear, rigid (and some say draconian) violation policies. And even they don’t talk that much about the back-scenes decision making, just why a person was banned. Of course they don’t use algorithms, and the stress on their people is incredible.
Fun fact: I was half asleep when I heard the news, so at first I was all “What did Jon Delarosa do to get in trouble with Twitter?”
Well, this is of course why Gab and…uh…that other one* exists. They can take their balls and go home to there and be very happy.
*I can’t for the life of me remember what the other one was called. It was super big for like ten minutes? For some reason all I can think of is “Napster” and I KNOW that’s not right.
@RedWombat–
I think you’re thinking of Parler.
Harold Osler: Let’s not exhibit the illogical behavior of explicitly quoting here language that deserves to get people banned from social media.
In case you wonder where your comment went.
I remember back in the day on TrekBBS they had a whole section of discussion entirely on Moderator decisions and people arguing and hashing out what should never have been public. So you had people going, “I never said that he should kill himself, I simply said that people LIKE him should WANT TO kill themselves, ergo I should not have been given a three-day ban.”
You never see something quite as sociopathic as people trying to logic twist why their toxic-attack was REALLY just an innocuous comment and they can’t IMAGINE why anyone would take it wrong.
Marshall Ryan Maresca says You never see something quite as sociopathic as people trying to logic twist why their toxic-attack was REALLY just an innocuous comment and they can’t IMAGINE why anyone would take it wrong.
I had a reviewer on Green Man who wrote a review that personally attacked Jane Yolen. That was the days that staffers put reviews up themselves. I removed it, asked the staffer why he did it and he said that he had a perfect right to do so as no one was sacred. That was his last review for us.
Jane who checked our site religiously saw it before it was removed it. She was not at all amused. Chocolate and profuse apologies ensued.
@MikeGlyer
I apologize.
But I do happen to like those two words as opposed to the “Q” one used now.
JDA so desperately craves attention that he’s already posted a 2-hour video online about being banned by Twitter with the comments here on screen for over half an hour.
Mike Glyer says JDA so desperately craves attention that he’s already posted a 2-hour video online about being banned by Twitter with the comments here on screen for over half an hour.
Figures he’d be ripping off the commentary here. But two hours of video? Really? No one’s that interesting. And certainly not him who defines boring at its very best.
@ Cat “The student has become the master”
That’s longer than it took to type those comments.