The Twitter Arms, your local.

Recently there has been a spate of people misunderstanding twitter. I hate it when people attempt to mandate what twitter is and isn’t *for* but I think a little thought and debate about how it is in general used is a good thing.

In my mind twitter is very much like going down the pub. It is one of those modern places that manage to cultivate a mixed audience, mates out for a few pints and a chat, the odd suit who is always selling, the TV is on set to a rolling news channel and you might see a celebrity wander in. It is also probably in an area of town that has a certain sort of reputation as every so often someone unsavoury wanders up to the window and tries to tempt you to their palace of porn and trojans.

Most of the time you are there, you’re just having a chat with your social circle about whatever is happening in the world at the time. An actor or writer may wander past and you might say to the person next to you that you thought the last thing they did was great. If you are next to them at the bar when you go to order drinks and catch their eye you might even ask them a question about what they are working on or drop a compliment.

What you wouldn’t do in a real pub is shout across the lounge bar at them “You are a talentless, dull and should never work again” as that would be exceptionally rude. This is seen often in our fictional boozer, twitter, someone wants to say something about someone and includes their username as an ‘at mention’. The person cited isn’t being particularly egotistical by looking at the tweets that mention them, most clients include a column or page for replies and mentions and twitter itself will email you about them. If someone shouted an insult at me across the pub I would be rightly annoyed, so it always strikes me as odd when people are surprised that the tweet they sent saying bad things, about the person whose username they included, gets that person riled and they reply with ire. If you don’t want someone to get pissed off and say angry things to you, don’t shove your ill opinion in their face.

Later on one of your group says something a bit off colour, something not quite PC. The social feedback engine kicks in and it is explained why that isn’t acceptable and that you don’t really want to hear it even if it is what they truly believe thankyouverymuch. As the mood re-lightens some jokes are made around the subject.

This often happens on twitter, for example some racist thug tries to get their followers wound up about something and the reaction from the rest of the crowd is a mixed of informed debate, dismissal and derision. While it can be heart warming to see a topic trending for the opposite reason to the one intended, I do wonder sometimes about how far it can go and how vicious it can get. In situations like this the equivalent in our fictional pub is it ending up as a group of people standing round the person and shouting in their face. However abhorrent these people are there comes the point where they should be left to slink back to their dank slimy pits and left alone.

If a situation like that get out of hand and people start getting threatening then the law might arrive. This is where we have a more complicated problem online than in a physical space. Tone of voice is very effective at helping to communicate how seriously we mean what we say. It helps distinguish proper threats from jokes and sarcasm for example. This is a lot harder to get across in text, especially with a restricted character limit and there have been famous examples of the law not getting this. We need to somehow impress upon the legislators that regulation of ‘speech’ online needs reforming so that the abusers and threat makers are still dealt with but you can’t be banged up for making a joke.

Then someone on the table next to you gets a message from a mate, something is happening on the other side of town. Glancing at the TV there is no mention. More people are hearing about it and the talk is of almost nothing else (apart from the suit who is still trying to see someone his Acme Snake Oil). It is difficult to separate fact from fiction at this point but you instinctively trust some things more than others, because of who said them, or who they say said them.

Twitter comes into its own at times of breaking news, it is much faster than traditional news gathering but this isn’t always positive. While social media (and throughout I imagine this post applies to networks other than twitter) will bring lots information in very quickly it will have been through little corroboration and fact checking. You have to make the judgement call about what to believe and what to scoff at. These days there are lots of journalists out there who bring their experience and training to what they are receiving via twitter and only passing on the bits they think their followers should know. They also apply that information into their work and often will keep twitter informed while waiting for their story to go out. On the other hand there are the standard set of people hanging around being credulous or disingenuous so be careful what you accept as true. After all you wouldn’t believe everything some random stranger told you in the pub would you?

Once again something cool and underground goes mainstream.

This is a guest post from esteemed presentations and speaking expert Olivia Mitchell.

People used to whisper to each other or pass hand-scribbled notes during presentations. Now these notes are going digital on Twitter or via conference-provided chat rooms.

Up until now, this back-channel has been mainly confined to the Internet industry and technology conferences. However, a survey of leadership conferences from Weber Shandwick shows that there is a significant increase in blogging and twittering at conferences.

How to Present While People are Twittering | Pistachio.

The backchannel is dead, long live whatever we will call it now. I questioned a friend the other day when he used the term "Official backchannel" and mentioned that the organisers of the conference had a projected display of the activity that was going on using a specific hashtag. I suppose the name could stick as I was never sure whether the use of the term in a social media sense was borrowing more from the diplomatic term (unofficial/underground communications) or the Psycholinguistics one (the use of a nod, 'yes' and 'uh-huh' to indicate that you are paying attention and the other person should continue to speak) but it seems now that the former use has been seized upon as useful and it has been brought into the mainstream (conferences are opening embassies in twitter, to continue with the analogy) which means that it can actively work as the latter.

As many of you will know I spent my Saturday in a concrete bunker in Bloomsbury at the Convention on modern liberty and blogged and twittered all day. While at some points we would all loved to have what we were saying to be communicated to the panels whether directly or mediated, at other times I am probably glad they couldn't see what I was saying in real time, mainly when I was insulting them. On balance the usefulness of this communication methodology being absorbed probably outweighs the disadvantage of having to refrain from suggesting someone is talking utter rubbish. I mean how cool would it have been for Henry Porter to be able to whisper in David Davis ear on Saturday that he had just misattributed Clarke's Third Law to Robert A. Heinlein.

A load of sanctimonious rubbish

Paul Dacre has told the Society of Editors that the News of the World breaking the Max Mosley story was a moral act and that Mr Justice Eady's judgement was restricting the actions of moralising newspapers such as his own (the Daily Mail).

I have two problems with this:

1. I don't believe we need 'protecting' from people like MM, I completely agree with the judge's point that Mr Mosley could expect privacy for consensual "sexual activities" no matter how unconventional. Just think back to the age when the activities that MM could have been persecuted by the media included such things as gay sex, was that right? No and now we should move forward and get people to understand that no matter how distasteful they might find a sexual practice that if the people involved are happy to do so it is none of their business and not a reason to persecute a public figure.
2. The other thing that I can't bring myself to buy into is that the reporters and editors at the News of the World got this story and thought "this is terrible, we should make an example of this man for moral reasons". I find it more credible that they got the story and thought something along the lines of, what a fantastically embarrassing story, get it out there and watch MM squirm.

The other part of his reported remarks on the subject that caught my eye was "It is the others I care about - the crooks, the liars, the cheats, the rich and the corrupt sheltering behind a law of privacy being created by an unaccountable judge." as I think it re-enforces my second point above. While I think the media should do their best to report on crooks, liars, cheats and the corrupt, why should the rich be a target just because they are rich, when did that become a crime? Does this suggest that what Max Mosley was target for was having more money than the people who were 'reporting' on him?

Comments on comment.

Mark Easton has blogged about some of the background to the Equal Pay act and what the gender pay gap situation is today. This is all of course in reaction to Harriet Harman's plan to allow positive discrimination. It is a reasonably interesting piece of writing, but as ever these days the comments in response to the article are almost more interesting. One that stands out particularly says:

Why does this Government do everything it can to discriminate agaisnt men. Why do they dislike us so much?
The bring in All women-shortlists banning men from standing for Parliament for them;
they fail to do much on the educational underacheievement of boys;
they do nothing about the suicide rate amongst men being three times higher than that of women;
they spend little money on dealing with male cancers;
they do nothing to help male domestic abuse victims;
they do nothing to create a family court system that treats men and women alike;
and now this.
Why do they hate men? — davidstrauss1

I obviously can't offer expert comment on all the sectors David is commenting on (and want to be careful in case I am treading on any personal issues), however I strongly suspect that a great deal of this is perception. In the same way that we get letters to the metro saying that any time a defendant mentions human rights the judge's hands are tied due to the Human Rights Act, because only the cases where it is used successfully are reported we also only ever get to hear the cases in family courts that cause controversy. I have commented on the fact that soon we shall need to make as much fuss about prostate cancer as breast cancer, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't stop caring about the latter. The cancer point, like domestic abuse and suicide rates also has the facet that it often isn't the government at all that is driving these services, the third sector is quite often the major player.

So how much of this is real and how much is due to fourth estate and their *cough* cheerful outlook on the world?

Climate change

I am not going to sit here and try and persuade you in one way or another on the issue of whether a) the climate is changing for the worse or b) if humans are causing it, really you are all intelligent people; you have probably made your mind up as to which side of this very contentious argument you lie. What I would like to share is this video and the viewpoint that if you are not 100% sure if it is happening or not, using an argument along the same lines as Pascal's Wager you should do something about climate change. Whatever little you can.

Darling and Brown, Undertakers, Est MMVII

Does my right hon. friend accept that the policy of nationalisation would lead to a slow lingering death for the jobs of the Northern Rock workers, its assets and Britain's reputation as a major financial services centre, with my right hon. friend the chancellor cast in the role of undertaker — Jim Cousins MP

I agree with my hon. friend. — Alastair Darling MP

Now this is just my own opinion as I am not an economist, but I bet that if they had done this right at the outset it would have done a lot less damage than it will do now. All because Darling and Brown decided that if the bank collapsed due to no fault of the government they would lose votes. So all of us now own a chunk of a bank to try and save this Labour government from losing votes.

Difficult subject

After someone linked to this post about self defence I was set off thinking about rape. This is another of those subjects about which I have doubt and uncertainty; not of course on whether it is evil, but how we get rid of it.

Actually I have even more doubt about if we can. How many more years of civil society and punishment will it take to eradicate it from society?

Sorry for anyone who was expecting anything erudite and informative on the subject but I am stumped basically because while it is utterly evil, all the things that have been suggested so far that are guaranteed to annihilate it are also in their way evil. Obviously (as far as I am concerned) the death penalty is right out. Something else often put forward is castration (in general chemical rather than physical) but will that really help, it will remove the ability but will it extinguish the desire, or will the frustration cause more violence? Life, meaning life, imprisonment is of course an option, well it would be if our prison system wasn't screwed royally, full of the disaffected that several governments have failed to educate. As opposed of course to those deserving of being banged up, the very politians themselves.

Much offal

Justin McKeating at Liberal Conspiracy has posted a quite rude and generalised riposte to the many outraged posts in response to the announcement that the Government is planning on reversing the consent relationship for organ donation. He has one interesting point about making pâté with your entrails instead of donating them, if I thought that a) my liver would be in a fit condition and b) anyone would actually eat it I would suggest this in my will, if I wasn't planning on being a donor (perhaps if there is a halfway house, liver too damaged for transplant but still good enough for making a nice Ardennes I still will).
Instead of just being rude at those opposing this, we should take on their arguments. Most of them are thumping the table and shouting about their rights, now "I'm not a lawyer"^[1] but I have read both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Council of Europe's Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and cannot find anything giving your corpse rights. You don't even have a right to be buried although in this country there is probably some clause in one of the Environment Protection acts that makes your local authority do something with otherwise undealtwith bodies, to stop them making to much of a mess.
While the old legal position boiled down to the old quote

By the common law of England a corpse is not the subject of property nor capable of holding property. It is not therefore larceny to steal a corpse

much was changed in the aftermath of Alder Hey with the Human Tissue Act 2004, but given the list of people who can consent to chopping you up is 14 relations long with a "friend of longstanding" tacked on the end it probably isn't really that difficult to get on with the scalpel. As with much modern legislation built in is the concept that everything is governed by code of practice enacted by the Secretary of State so there may not even need to be primary legislation to bring about the change in the consent methodology.
As an aside, while reading the act, I noted that breaking the law on live organ donation is only subject to a maximum of 51 weeks in prison!

^[1] Although I would like to be, probably not practising, but if I did have 10 grand knocking about and more free time and OU law degree is very tempting.

Opinion of the day

Rather than well thought out comment pieces or just blindly railing at the stupidity of the world and our current government; I thought I would write a few posts based on things I believe, what value you want to place in these 'faiths' is up to you.
The rest of the world should stick a metaphorical finger up at the People's Republic and their "One China Policy". If as postulated the Republic have a referendum vote in 2008 to back the Democratic Progressive Party's resolution for a new constitution, name change and status then key groupings should voice their support. The U.S. has key defence links with the Taiwanese, Russia should be looking to do what it can to keep the PRC in check lest it lose a fair chunk of its far east, the E.U. can't support the independence of Kosovo against the wishes of Serbia and not this? Can they?
For all the talk that the only result of all this is war, would the PRC really risk the loss of all its external trade for a small island? Shame it would take balls of steel or a huge tit for tat veto bargain to get them into the UN though, no matter what you think Resolution 2758 means for Taiwan as opposed to "China".