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Twitter allegedly deleting negative tweets about United Airlines incident

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Re: Twitter allegedly deleting negative tweets about United Airlines incident

#171
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seems like we are going full steam into a dystopian society Gonna have to roll my eyes pretty hard at this. These are privately owned servers, they can delete whatever content they want off of them, if you don't like it, you're totally free to host your own server and content.

So what alternative do you propose? 99% of users are on those platforms. Moving everyone to a different platform is almost impossible.

It's worth pointing out that some of the aforementioned platforms are specifically popular because of the curated content that they allow. You're on a platform now that effectively limits and controls the material. For example, it's a particular reason why some people like 4chan, while others dislike it.

Re: Twitter allegedly deleting negative tweets about United Airlines incident

#172

Why is everyone so outraged about this, I mean twitter is a private company...

Sure, private companies can do what they want with their own platform, blah blah blah. But there's no law against being outraged at a private company. Just because something is legal doesn't mean I forfeit all rights to be mad about it.

My previous comment was supposed to be sarcastic, guess I failed.

Re: Twitter allegedly deleting negative tweets about United Airlines incident

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They claimed it was overbooked but that has not been substantiated with any evidence other than the company making that claim and using it to pre-empt those passengers in favor of their dead-headers. The proof that they are bullshitting is that the passengers were already on board when suddenly the plane was declared overbooked. Which to me sounds like UA using an excuse to bump passengers off a flight they are alrea…

Sure I agree it is just a claim. But they overbook most flights, so it isn't really hard to believe. They could have paid some other passengers already to not board, prior to deciding that they wanted to fly the crew and needing to pull more passengers. That leaves the overbooking claim as misdirection, which isn't any better than a lie that they were overbooked, but it's a different situation. (sorry about the edit…

Overbooking does not include non-paying passengers that were not confirmed before the flight. Those passengers had confirmed seats and boarding passes and were in fact already on the plane (as was their luggage). In my experience - which is limited, but I've flown quite a bit over the years - overbooking always involved other paying passengers, never crew.

Re: Twitter allegedly deleting negative tweets about United Airlines incident

#174
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why they need to feel the pain from consumer backslashs. Just look how ridiculous the Pepsi outrage did become.

And look at how quickly everyone forgot about it

What outrage? Serious question, I wasn't even aware there was one recently.

Re: Twitter allegedly deleting negative tweets about United Airlines incident

#175
post #142

Surprised that people here are taking this at face value. Why would Twitter remove these tweets from random users while leaving the vast majority of negative tweets in place? No proof has been given. Indeed, this Jay Beecher's allegedly deleted tweet is visible as far as I can tell: https://mobile.twitter.com/dancow/status/851808188567388161 edit: To be fair, Beecher says that my tweet refers to tweets he sent out af…

Surprised that people here are taking this at face value. Really?

Yes. Many people here have had IT experiences where laypersons swear their computer spontaneously did something ridiculous as if the computer was out to commit personal malice. And HN users generally are skeptical of the Internet media's ability to understand and write about technical concepts, especially when click bait is on the line. And there are more than a few users who understand how Twitter's massive data output would make such an alleged Tweet culling to be hilariously insignificant, given the investment of engineering time to execute such a pathetic conspiracy.

Sure, there's a lot of hate for Twitter and for large companies in general. But this kind of claim, without actual evidence (nevermind motive), is a pretty Wilde one, even for HN. Guess it can't be flagged off the front page now without confirming fears of a massive coverup.

Re: Twitter allegedly deleting negative tweets about United Airlines incident

#176
post #5
post #3

Assuming this is true (which I don't believe it is), why would they do this? I doubt UAL is paying them enough in advertising dollars to justify something like this. This isn't like silencing/promoting selective political speech where the personal ideals of the heads of the company are being pushed forward. Unless Dorsey really likes flying United.

Even if it's not intentional, they may have some algorithms that "throw the baby out with the bathwater" as the saying goes. We're already seeing Google's recent "extremism curation" hit a lot of youtubers that shouldn't be anywhere close to being impacted by it, and yet they still are. If Google's DeepMind/Brain AI can't properly curate this sort of stuff, I can't imagine Twitter is any better at it. After governmen…

I am curious about DeepMind/Brain's role in the curating search results. Would you mind explaining more?

Also, I am not sure I understand your reference to Youtube. Is this specifically about Youtube recommended videos in the sidebar?

Re: Twitter allegedly deleting negative tweets about United Airlines incident

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And look at how quickly everyone forgot about it

What outrage? Serious question, I wasn't even aware there was one recently.

Look up "Pepsi Riot Commercial".

There was a brief and short-lived outrage against Pepsi for a distasteful commercial where a (generic, but people attribute it to BLM) riot was ended by giving a police officer a can of Pepsi.

Or at least, that's what I gathered from reading about it on random comments from unrelated threads on Reddit because I'm out of the loop myself.

E:

Twitter? Meant Reddit. Unimportant change.

Re: Twitter allegedly deleting negative tweets about United Airlines incident

#179

This is true. I just checked mine from last night and it's gone. I have posted a new one. Let's see if it stays.

Without a link to your new tweet this coming from an account that was made just to post this comment does not carry a lot of weight.

Re: Twitter allegedly deleting negative tweets about United Airlines incident

#180
post #142

Surprised that people here are taking this at face value. Why would Twitter remove these tweets from random users while leaving the vast majority of negative tweets in place? No proof has been given. Indeed, this Jay Beecher's allegedly deleted tweet is visible as far as I can tell: https://mobile.twitter.com/dancow/status/851808188567388161 edit: To be fair, Beecher says that my tweet refers to tweets he sent out af…

My tweet from last night is gone. It's not "alleged".
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