Why the special treatment for politicians? I could imagine Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos saying something edgy and of similar significance.
Defining Public Interest on Twitter
21–30 of 80 posts
Re: Defining Public Interest on Twitter
#22>We're not going to delete it but we're going to algorithmically prevent discovery
Tech monoliths like facebook, google, and twitter are starting to show very obvious political biases.
If we push them to be equitable to differing opinions, they basically get to continue enforcing their own political biases because we can only ever do blackbox testing. God knows what the backend is doing.
If we push them to own their biases try to get more platforms representing differing political opinions, we create admitted echo chambers and further polarize a political climate (in the USA) where we're already arguing whether communists or nazis are trying to destroy the country.
This is a complex problem without an easy solution but it's not unreasonable to bet twitter is going to abuse this new feature to either allow people they like to blatantly violate the rules (without actually algorithmically demoting the tweets, people will ignore the notice) or effectively shadowban people they don't like without explaining why a tweet doesn't follow the ToS until the subject matter is out of the news cycle.
Re: Defining Public Interest on Twitter
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which of Twitter's rules do you think are inappropriate? https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules
It's not that they're inappropriate, it's that they will be enforced selectively.
I do think the impact of this will be overstated, in the big picture. The vast majority of Americans (and people) don't use Twitter. An editorial tag from twitter isn't really going to change the impact of a tweet in my opinion, other than limiting its exposure on Twitter itself.
But it would be hilarious if news orgs use this as a cue to give trigger warnings when they quote a tagged tweet. "Warning: the tweet we are about to show you violates Twitter's trust and safety rules; hide your children before we reveal what [prominent public figure] tweeted!"
Re: Defining Public Interest on Twitter
#24Why the special treatment for politicians? I could imagine Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos saying something edgy and of similar significance.
Elon already has the SEC getting on him for his tweets, I imagine they would go after Bezos too. Both would face shareholder lawsuits for anything sufficiently controversial, so it probably doesn't need to be as much of a priority for Twitter.
Re: Defining Public Interest on Twitter
#25This is one big reason Twitter hasn't been (and may not be) acquired. Who needs this headache and expense? This isn't as disturbing as Vimeo's takedown of Project Veritas, or the bias exposed in their video, but the trend is seriously alarming.
Project Veritas is nonsense. Nothing they have ever reported has been factual. Good on them for removing it.
Re: Defining Public Interest on Twitter
#26>We're not going to delete it but we're going to algorithmically prevent discovery
Tech monoliths like facebook, google, and twitter are starting to show very obvious political biases.
If we push them to be equitable to differing opinions, they basically get to continue enforcing their own political biases because we can only ever do blackbox testing. God knows what the backend is doing.
If we push them to own their biases try to get more platforms representing differing political opinions, we create admitted echo chambers and further polarize a political climate (in the USA) where we're already arguing whether communists or nazis are trying to destroy the country.
This is a complex problem without an easy solution but it's not unreasonable to bet twitter is going to abuse this new feature to either allow people they like to blatantly violate the rules (without actually algorithmically demoting the tweets, people will ignore the notice) or effectively shadowban people they don't like without explaining why a tweet doesn't follow the ToS until the subject matter is out of the news cycle.
Re: Defining Public Interest on Twitter
#27In the past few years, Big Tech has gone full Orwellian. I fear for our future.
Re: Defining Public Interest on Twitter
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not that they're inappropriate, it's that they will be enforced selectively.
So what is the alternative here? Allow everything from copyright infringement to threats of violence to child porn? That is what I don't get about the complaints of these companies censoring users. Every mature government has already agreed that completely unlimited free speech is not a good thing as speech can infringe on the rights of others. We are just debating about where exactly the line is now. You are free to…
If a world leader with 100k+ followers tweets out child porn and Twitter just tags it with a warning instead of removing it I agree that would be extremely controversial!
Re: Defining Public Interest on Twitter
#29In the past few years, Big Tech has gone full Orwellian. I fear for our future.
This is hardly a serious example of being Orwellian. Out of all the good examples, this isn't one of them.
Re: Defining Public Interest on Twitter
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
So what is the alternative here? Allow everything from copyright infringement to threats of violence to child porn? That is what I don't get about the complaints of these companies censoring users. Every mature government has already agreed that completely unlimited free speech is not a good thing as speech can infringe on the rights of others. We are just debating about where exactly the line is now. You are free to…
If a world leader with 100k+ followers tweets out child porn and Twitter just tags it with a warning instead of removing it I agree that would be extremely controversial!
Twitter reserves the right to remove any Tweet. Those three examples were specifically used as a progression of severity and I would imagine we would all approve of Twitter removing the last example.
However the change to the policy that Twitter is detailing here isn't really about deleting tweets. This policy creates a middle ground for tweets that break the rules but shouldn't be deleted. Someone could even make the argument that middle ground gives Twitter the flexibility to censor less.