Ah, I always figured flagging put it in be a queue for review by a mod. Didn't know it happens automatically.
For some reason people seem to be assuming that more lately (i.e. that "flagged" means mods did it). I'm not quite sure how to correct that notion. I suppose we could hyperlink "[flagged]" to an explanation...but would people click? It's not as if this isn't in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html . Explanations don't seem to help much.
Many are confusing "censorship" with "content moderation". The difference is very important. Censorship is when you are prevented from publishing on your own platform. Content moderation is when a platform owner choses what can be published on theirs. Twitter decided they did not want their platform used to spread what they considered to be Russian disinformation and propaganda, but they in no way prevented the NY Po…
Content moderation is a form of censorship. Censorship isn't always bad. You can look up the history of the term if you want (hint: it shares the same origin as the term "census"). A closely related phenomenon to the pathological applications of censorship is the abuse and redefinition of language for political purposes like what you're doing.
The NY Post doesn't own the copyright to the photos it is publishing. Imagine if someone stole your laptop and published all your photos.
I hope someone can step in and do to the Post what Peter Thiel did to Gawker.
I fear Taibbi is right, the suppression by Twitter, irrespective of the merits and veracity of NY Post's report, will now normalize all kinds of behavior by platforms of all kinds big and small. Which will then incentivize governments to take on the platforms. This also raises issues of unequal treatment - say the NY Post report was factually wrong - why pick on the NY Post only? Why not the hundreds of other "news o…
I think delaying the story until it could be somewhat verified is reasonable. I actually read it minutes after it was posted on the NY Post and my first thought was that it sounded like it shouldn’t have been published. I literally thought they’d retract it.
I think the internet is breaking into various niche groups. I fully expect there soon to be completely partisan social networks. That’s probably the best way to deal with this.
The liberal wing was upset that state and non state actors influenced the 2016 election by manipulating social media. Now, Twitter is working to suppress some content that they believe is a repeat attempt — the October surprise if you will. I don’t have strong opinions on whether it’s right or wrong, but I don’t think this is a scandal. Twitter is a private company. You don’t have a constitutional right to write what…
You make valid points and I don't know why are you downvoted. But Twitter is not a journalism play, it is a platform play and purported to be neutral. If there is blatant supression then they will antagonize atleast 50% of Americans which would be terrible for their bottom line.
"Platforms" and "publishers" are not actually legal categories, not mutually exclusive, and any sorting of Twitter into one of those categories happened entirely in your head. Twitter also doesn't specifically call itself "neutral" (some "publisher" comes to mind doing that far more).
Many are confusing "censorship" with "content moderation". The difference is very important. Censorship is when you are prevented from publishing on your own platform. Content moderation is when a platform owner choses what can be published on theirs. Twitter decided they did not want their platform used to spread what they considered to be Russian disinformation and propaganda, but they in no way prevented the NY Po…
Content moderation is a form of censorship. Censorship isn't always bad. You can look up the history of the term if you want (hint: it shares the same origin as the term "census"). A closely related phenomenon to the pathological applications of censorship is the abuse and redefinition of language for political purposes like what you're doing.
That is a really loose definition of censorship. Most dictionaries say it is the "prohibition or suppression" of content, which I don't think a content moderation is. It requires trying to stop the spread of the content itself, not just the content on a particular medium.
So this would make censorship a form of free speech. We've reach a contradiction, so there must be an error in the chain of reasoning. My money is on "content moderation is a form of free speech" being wrong.
My money is on content moderation being censorship.
If content moderation is censorship, then you are arguing that if I ask you to say something out loud and you don't say it, you are censoring me.
Free speech is a moral principle. Content moderation decisions can adhere to this principle or not. Removal of viagra bot spam from a blog comment section is a clear example where content moderation adheres to the principles of free speech. Removing content on a platform like Twitter simply because the Silicon Valley elitists/leftists that run Twitter don't like it is not in keeping with the principle of free speech…
"Content moderation" is about the speech someone running a website is willing to participate in. Requiring them to publish everything their users post would be what's called "coerced speech", which happens to be single biggest no-no of the legal concept of freedom of speech.
Forcing someone to say something against their will is considered far worse than preventing someone from saying something they want to say. That's how "warrant canaries" work: the government can stop you from disclosing the court order you received. But they cannot force you to continue saying that you never received such an order.
I'm definitely not one closed off to this story, I think it's important. That said I think "we" tend to forget that platforms like Twitter are private companies, we don't really have a "right" to post anything to them.
Now if the government had ordered this moderation, that's where the idea of rights and first amendment comes into play.
If we're not happy about the moderation we don't have to use the moderating platform.
Ah, I always figured flagging put it in be a queue for review by a mod. Didn't know it happens automatically.
For some reason people seem to be assuming that more lately (i.e. that "flagged" means mods did it). I'm not quite sure how to correct that notion. I suppose we could hyperlink "[flagged]" to an explanation...but would people click? It's not as if this isn't in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html . Explanations don't seem to help much.
It wouldn't explain a recent change, but the label "flag" does imply calling something to someone's attention, and that someone would presumably be a moderator. Whether or not not stories are killed immediately by flagging (and it makes sense to me that they are), would it be reasonable for a moderator to eventually review everything that is flagged, or at least everything flagged by more than one person? I don't have a good sense of what the volume would be, but I think it would lead to better results than allowing a tiny number of of users to suppress stories without administrative review.
Content moderation is a form of censorship. Censorship isn't always bad. You can look up the history of the term if you want (hint: it shares the same origin as the term "census"). A closely related phenomenon to the pathological applications of censorship is the abuse and redefinition of language for political purposes like what you're doing.
The NY Post doesn't own the copyright to the photos it is publishing. Imagine if someone stole your laptop and published all your photos. I hope someone can step in and do to the Post what Peter Thiel did to Gawker.
My understanding is that it is Gnews that is publishing these photos, not NY Post. NY Post is publishing screenshots of emails.