I got suspended from Twitter for bullying Mr T. The future is stupid.

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I was a kid in the 80's, and The A-team was a must-watch. Now I think about it, living in a very white Australia, Mr T was possibly the first black guy I ever saw. It was either him or Junkyard Dog, the wrestler.


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I had this exact card from 1986. If I'd kept it, it'd be worth $3 now.

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Junkyard Dog sadly left us in 98, but Mr T is alive and well, and posting on twitter.

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Reminded me of this cameo, inspiring a young Chris Evans (Capt America) in Not another teen movie - 2001


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"Believe in the ball; and throw yourself."

Scrolling through the replies, I found nobody had quoted his line back to him yet, so I dropped it in; and was rewarded with a 12 hour suspension from Twitter for Promoting or encouraging self harm.

Which explains why I hadn't seen the quote from anyone else and makes me wonder how many others had the exact same experience.
Does Twitter consider him the target of a bullying campaign?
Is he wondering why so few people have ever mentioned that cameo?
If I suggest you really throw yourself into a role or activity; would that likewise trigger a suspension?
Is this the same AI that's on the cusp of taking over?

There's still a 7 year old boy in here; who's awestruck at this incredible technology, which lets me sit in my house and actually talk to the real Mr T; but there's also an adult disappointed to have this technology so poorly governed.
Maybe my expectations were unrealistic, like when I got the Mr T shampoo, which failed to actually give me a mohawk.

I can appreciate why a social media company needs to do these things; for better or worse they're held responsible for what happens on their platform.


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Imagine if the post office was held responsible for the content of postcards they delivered.
Tweets are public though. I wonder if a solution might be to empower Mr T to hide responses; even letting him choose keywords or phrases he'd like to auto-hide. Put him in charge of the filter.
He'd still see them, but they'd be private, like a postcard.

I'm excited to see what becomes of Project Blank, and wondering what direction the LEO guys are planning to take it.
Will it be a clone of Twitter, with similar auto-deletion and suspension? If so, could another condenser step in as an uncensored version?
All the things they won't show you on Project Blank.
Project Blank after dark.

My thinking, is that each original author should be able to request specific content be hidden, and each condenser should make a decision on whether or not to honour that request.

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Me thinking about Optimus Prime in 1985



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I pity the fool that twitter has become as well. My favorite was "Mr.T - Be somebody or be somebody's fool" as seen below. I learned a lot from that VHS tape, but here's the YouTube video:

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That takes me back. I hadn't seen it before, but that editing; and the outfits. Take me back. Also, let's never go back :)

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The message sure rings true though, "If you ain't gonna be somebody, you're gonna be somebody's fool" - Be careful out there, LOL

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Your thinking makes sense. I personally hate censorship. We have way too much of the tech censoring what folks say. I would offer my uncensored reply... but in this case, it is not much different. LOL Blessings.

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It's a strange, new world. I imagine it like a billboard on the wall at the local shop. How much or how little, if at all, does the shopkeeper censor what can be posted? If the whole point of the billboard is to giving locals a chance to inform other locals; then he shouldn't touch it at all.
Ultimately that should be up to the owner; as its his wall, but it muddies the waters a little if council won't grant shop licences to anyone else, and won't let billboards be posted anywhere else.
Online we have alternatives.

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I pitty the fool
lol but for real though why anyone still uses these platforms beyond spamming and collecting them for your business is beyond me. These platforms have turned into complete garbage.

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I don't think they've changed that much. They were just a lot prettier when they were shiny and new, and we hadn't dealt with them for long.
The cracks are starting to show now though.

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On the F word book I once lightheartedly said, "You people are so full of shit." No angry tone in my mind. Just acting the same way I'd be with my friends and family while we're sitting on the deck shooting the shit over cold drinks and food. It didn't even occur to me that in under two minutes I'd be receiving a notification from team zucker, and they wanted to tell me my words were deleted because I was acting superior and being hateful.

Robots take everything literally.

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Ah, but what if you had said "You are overflowing with human excrement" instead? Doesn't have quite the same ring to it but I wonder if the bots would have noticed then...

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Tone doesn't translate into text at all well. Hence the proliferation of smiley faces. If you know the crowd, and they know you; then there's a lot more goodwill to give your words context. Robots don't do context, and treat us all as if we were strangers. Mr T and I might be strangers, but he wouldn't have taken that quote as an incitement to throw himself off a bridge or in front of a train, because he understands context.

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Context is important. Intention as well. Satire and comedy in general is taking a beating these days. That's sad because I feel it's an important artform.

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Most of us are 7 years old inside, but I am not brave enough to post a picture of him.

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Look at that glorious hairdo. I really should try the mohawk now Mum's not in charge.

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(Edited)

So now you are in the good company of the other T. Also suspended.

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I was back in 12 hours. Chester Cheeto's still in the naughty corner.

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(Edited)

Mr T. Man, he was a staple of my childhood. And Junkyard Dog. Ah, the glorious 80s.

I'd blame it on bad programming and the company being overly-cautious and so making the filters too broad. But maybe those two things are what is going to lead to problems with AI in the future. I like your proposed ideas for a solution. Unfortunately I think Twitter is beyond taking suggestions from anyone but themselves.

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They operate in pretty much every country in the world, so the legal minefield is daunting. They likely have far less scope to make these calls than what we expect. Also the shifting landscape over time. Maybe things we readily say to each other now, will at some point in the future be considered bullying; and twitter held liable for not anticipating that and clamping down earlier?

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Facebook just let me know they've had to remove an old post I shared, for encouraging self harm.

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

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Gotta love the FB algorithm. Protecting us from humor and memes—thank you, FB.

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

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Joys of automated blanket responses that have absolute zero idea about context -_-

And they can't let people be responsible for what they want shown on their own profiles/'feeds because then they'd probably start rejecting all the ads or something (because we totally don't noscript/adblock them out anyway).

Was that really you in 1985? AWW XD

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That's all me. You can literally see how white Australia was, in this photo.

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"The future is stupid."

Well, at least part of the future is stupid. I think the future comes in at least two parts, a lot like a blockchain fork. You have the stupid (e.g. Steemit-type) future and then you also get the smarter (e.g. Hive-type) future.

My fascination of late is epiphanies about the Kingdom of God that I've been gleaning as I read the NT in Greek... I think if Jesus/God's gathered people (aka "the church") can begin to better understand the intent of the Kingdom, and that there really is One and Only ONE rightful ruler in the universe, the stupid fork side of the future along with all its pretend rulers will continue to lose traction.

I'm also sure I've missed a lot around here over the last year or so, and I have a lot of catching up to do! But probably more than anything, I've missed the community feeling. Thanks again for saying "Hey!" :)
😄😇😉

@creatr

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Were you

a. Drunk
b. Experimenting
c. Letting your kids have a go
d. Doing me a favour? or
e. Has that strategy ever actually worked before?:

https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=b65d300dbdfcc775ce8259e1f8ba912a2ce953c2&ref=revisesociology

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I actually only just got the Oaken Behemoth
That was his first outing. Very expensive (12 mana) and mine's only level 2. Guess I need a little more practice.
So you've given him a 0% win rate :)

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Ah so you were experimenting with Last Stand! It's a glorious thing to do, sacred Llama mage is my fave summoner.

I've got the Oaken on my to buy list, interesting card, kind of like Kralus for Life, which is an awesome card for those lowish mana battles.

Although I think the Oaken is one for higher mana caps!

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Yes, I begrudgingly agree. I have an Archmage Arius, so Double attack type cards, (and cards with Double-strike) tend to catch my eye.
Might save the Behemoth for High mana matches, then summon with AA.

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Ah yes nice summoner that one, did you get lucky? Wasn't that a mystery card a while back?

The only time I tend to use double strike deliberately is melee only!

There's a lot of high-mana competition out there.

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Yes, I got him in a mystery potion. Pretty happy with that. I bought my PJ and didn't bother too much with the Dricken.
I got my vigilator maxed out pretty quickly after I pulled AA. Had a lot of fun with those two.

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AA and PJ are just well out of my price range.

I like the Vigilator, I also like Scale Doctor, I think he's a very underrated card IMO, with the right rule sets and combos he's a must play IMO!

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This is a pretty surreal story. Like I know Mr. T from back in the day, and I vaguely knew he was still 'up to stuff', and I'd heard that Twitter's becoming more and more extreme in both their userbase and their responses... but wow.

And reading this now really highlights my latest doodle-post on Free Speech & Censorship.

Dang. Anyway, I appreciate your thoughts on it, and like that you conclude with a nod to Project Blank.

I don't really know much about it, but the concept sounds cool, and I'm psyched to see how it plays out. Thanks for sharing this, even I'm late to the reading-party. 😆

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Thanks, mate; and congratulations on all of your recent success here.
Excellent demonstration for newcomers. If you're talented and put in the work, there's a bright future here.

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

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Aw, thanks, totally appreciated.

I was raised to 'give my all' no matter what I'm doing, and it's always served me well. I'm thrilled if it demonstrates anything positive for newcomers. :)

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(Edited)

lol.. You and I had the same haircut in 1985. I was busy collecting Garbage Pail Kids that year.

By the way, did you guys have Mr. T cereal over there? (I'm in the US) It was my favorite for the 5 minutes it was being made.

I remember one time we went camping and I was in such a hurry that I left my Mr T cereal in the bowl filled with milk. When we got back, the rancid smell was awful, and my sis poured it out in the sink. But she noticed that the cereal was still crunchy. We make jokes about it for years about how his cereal pitied other weaker cereals that got soggy.

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No, we never got the cereal. That's some incredible structural integrity.
Makes me wonder if you ever digested the stuff, or if it's still in there.

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haha! Yeah dude, it's still breaking down in my gut.

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Great story, crap experience

I've often thought it'd be nice to have the option to categorise comments you receive on social media into different tabs

Starting with just vanilla "Comments" on the left, working horizontally to the right

Next one could be "Ignorance"

"Glowing Praise"

"Stupidity"

"Hatred"

"Unknown"

"Constructive Criticism"

"Spam"

etc

Any custom category you could want. So YOU, the account owner, can exercise your judgement and organise comments received any way you like

Have it so just one comment column is visible at a time

Could take a lot of work for some public figures due to the volume of interaction, but the whole thing would be optional as well. Simply an alternative to the current design convention

Someone doesn't like how you've categorised their comment? They can choose to delete or bury it on the front-end

The delete part wouldn't work here on Hive obviously, but you get the idea

It could be interesting and even fun

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This is very insightful. I got trapped in binary thinking. Hide/display.
Upvote/downvote, on/off.

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