What the hell is twitter for?

Ben Dan,

I don't want to take this thread too off the rails, but the point I was trying to make is that internet privacy and censorship (self or otherwise) are two unrelated things. In my original post I was saying there is no such thing as true anonymity on the internet. There just isn't.

You changed the argument that lack of privacy meant self censorship using wikipedia and others as an example, which isn't true. Like I said before wikipedia and others were NOT anonymous. 

Twitter is very much not anonymous and even google makes it very easy to read other people's tweets even if you are not on twitter (you just need the google twitter add-on and they show up when you search a topic).

All I was saying is that Twitter is a very public venue and you shouldn't say things just because you think they are funny, or you think you have the protection of being anonymous. What you write goes out into the world, and can be connected to you very easily even if you use a fake name and a gmail e-mail address.   

Self-censorship is an entirely different argument, and doesn't really belong in this thread.

As for twitter, I got a job through it, so yeah, I think it's pretty helpful sometimes!

Hello again Borkya:

I'm not sure if we're on the same page or not, but it probably doesn't really matter. Hope you don't mind if I try to clarify things a bit more, just for the sake of a better understanding of the terms we're using and the conditions they describe.

You wrote:

You changed the argument that lack of privacy meant self censorship using wikipedia and others as an example, which isn't true. Like I said before wikipedia and others were NOT anonymous.

I don't really think I changed the argument. When you said one should "Treat the internet as if your grandmother will read everything you say!," that was what I considered self-censorship, and which also fits the definition at Wikipedia.

As regards wikileaks, contributions are, in fact, anonymous. From wikipeida:

WikiLeaks is an international non-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers.

You summed up with:

All I was saying is that Twitter is a very public venue and you shouldn't say things just because you think they are funny, or you think you have the protection of being anonymous. What you write goes out into the world, and can be connected to you very easily even if you use a fake name and a gmail e-mail address.  

Self-censorship is an entirely different argument, and doesn't really belong in this thread.

I'm sorry to say that it still seems to me that you are making an argument for self-censoring [you shouldn't say things just because you think they are funny; you aren't anonymous; and you may suffer the consequences of what you say], while arguing that I have somehow derailed the thread by mentioning self-censorship.

Maybe the definition I gave of self-censorship before was unclear (to you or me), so I'll look up other ones now. Here are a couple more.

From Cambridge dictionaries:

control of what you say or do in order to avoid annoying or offending others, but without being told officially that such control is necessary

From Macmillon

a decision not to say or write something because it might cause problems or offend someone

The definitions I've now provided from 3 sources seem to agree with my understanding of the meaning of self-censorship. You gave what appears to me to be an excellent example of self censoring when you said

I never explictely say bad things about a past employer. It's just dumb if you do.

If you have nothing bad to say, of course it's not editing oneself. However, you recommended that other not say anything bad about their previous employers (asshole businessmen who run English language training centers comes to mind), and assert that to do so is "dumb." On the surface this looks like an argument for "self-censorship".

I gather at this point that you may have a different definition of self-censoring, but I'm not sure what it is. Your definition may be very accurate, as words nearly always have multiple meanings. I am clearly using one meaning of the word, but am not sure what meaning you are using. Perhaps you can clarify.

Further, I don't see how I derailed the topic, and apologize anyway if it feels as if I had. It was certainly not my intent. I was merely trying to have a civilized discussion about a topic at hand.

Oh, and a codicil. When I speak against self-censorship I'm not advocating anyone posting misinformation, anything cruel, lies and whatnot. I would just prefer to live in a world where people didn't have to be too afraid to be honest, tell the truth, stand up for what's right, even if it's just to, for example, list some of the ways a previous employer has violated labor laws set down by the government of China. [incidentally, I stay well clear of Chinese politics, as there's little I could do about anything if it bothered me, could only get myself in a world of hurt, and find that if I want to make a difference in China I can do it best by helping my students. I might go after the American government for their wrongdoings, however. Fix one's own country's problems first, then worry about other places, so to speak.]

Finally, perhaps we could just "agree to disagree" on our definitions and whatnot, chalk it up to some minor but temporarily irreconcilable difference in perspective. Later on I may have an epiphany and come around to your way of seeing things, but in the interim I'm still pretty lodged into my own version of reality.

No offense intended, and to quote our Chinese friends, "Hope you have a happy everyday!"

how do you get a job off Twitter, Borkya? Just curious..

how do you get a job off Twitter, Borkya? Just curious..

I caught a tweet about them advertising for a job, I applied and got it! I wouldn't have heard of it any other way (this was pre-china, and had nothing to do with coming here.)

So who do y'all recommend I follow? I've been enjoying tweeting about the things I see in Beijing and using it to share interesting articles…but I'm mostly tweeting to an empty auditorium, I fear.

What are you in to? Search for it.  I've  found a lot of the websites and blogs I visit already have a Twitter presence, and following them has led me on to other things.  You'll see other people's tweets re-tweeted (god that sounds horrible) and Twitter will recommend stuff to you too. Suck it and see.

I miss twitter........ 

and going onto VPN is a pain in the ass!