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“Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

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Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#331

Post by ropeladder »

phphphphp wrote: post #142
boole1854 wrote: post #105

Many commentators seem to think this is a sudden, recent backpedaling from a previous absolutist view on free speech. However, Musk has been promoting the "freedom of speech" vs "freedom of reach" distinction for a while, at least months before his takeover, including describing how such a policy should be implemented at Twitter. Here's one example quote from June, 2022: “I think there’s this big difference between f…

That analogy doesn’t really fit with the model of Twitter. If we are using the town/time square example, what Elon is describing is the digital version of putting a noise-cancelling box around the people saying “bad” things so that nobody can hear them. A message spreads on Twitter because individuals on Twitter amplify it (with engagement, retweets etc.) which is itself a form of speech: if you say something bad, an…

Anyone's ability to broadcast on Twitter is only as far as the system dynamics of Twitter and its users allows them. Retweeting is not some pure expression of speech that needs to be "free", it is limited already shaped and limited by all kinds of incentives and technological particularities (character limit, anyone?).

I think media should function to encourage speech that balances social and individual utility. That is, speech that has important protection from powerful actors like the government and CEOs, but also that incentivizes true and useful information, in all the nuance that is necessary to actually understand the world. (Obviously entertainment is useful as well.)

But engaging lies are not a form of speech I value, and equating the current operation, or slightly-more-permissive version of it, of an overwhelmingly constructed forum (i.e. Twitter and it's retweet system) with "free" speech doesn't make much sense.

Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#333

Post by ecshafer »

georgeg23 wrote: post #306
krick wrote: post #302

I'm not using twitter (and not going to), so please explain, what that means, exactly. So, let's say it is decided by Musk&co that X (written by xxx) is a hateful Tweet. - I am a follower of xxx. Will I see it? - I specifically go to twitter.com/xxx. Will I find X on that page? - X is a reply to a popular thread I'm reading right now. Will I see X? So, what exactly being "deboosted" means on Twitter? It just won't ap…

I've discovered that if you tweet the name "Michael Griffin" + "Elon" (or "Musk"), nobody will see your tweet organically unless they search for it directly. Michael Griffin is an important person in Elon's real (non-mythical) history that he'd probably rather you not know about, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career

Isn't it more possible than something nefarious that no one is interested and the twitter algorithm just doesn't think people will care so its downranked in searches?

Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#334

Post by danans »

heavyset_go wrote: post #265
danans wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My guess is that they see twitter as the central online hub of anti-capitalist ideology Then joke is on them because the far right is also anti-capitalist, but in the form of ethnonationalist socialist authoritarianism (Yes, there are many shorter names for that). Or perhaps they're actually on board with that approach since they have found that an increasingly pluralistic democracy does not serve their interests.…

> Then joke is on them because the far right is also anti-capitalist It might look like anti-capitalism, but time and time again, the far right's "problem" with capitalism is actually a problem with the results of liberal democracy in capitalist societies. They very much want capitalism, but not a corrupted form of it. They feel that capitalist liberal democracy rewards the wrong people, like allowing what were once…

> They very much want capitalism, but not a corrupted form of it.

Let me clarify and demonstrate that we basically agree. The difference is inclusivity vs exclusivity.

They want exclusive socialism - as in guaranteed high base living standards - for an ethnic elite, built on the labor and deprivation of an subservient ethnic underclass working natural resources that the ethnic elite hold own over.

There will still be those who own more capital and less, but importantly they will be limited to the ethnic elite.

There are plenty of historical examples of this: slave economies in the Americas, extractive colonialism, apartheid, Jim Crow and so many other examples.

I would agree that liberal capitalist democracy runs counter to all of those goals, because it is (at least in-theory) inclusive.

Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#335

Post by kevingadd »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #298
phphphphp wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s how Twitter works already — that’s how the “filter bubble” concept is able to exist, you’re only exposed to things in your self-selected bubble. What Elon is describing (as I understand it based on the limited information provided) is restricting reach within your network, i.e: you tweet something bad, the tweet won’t show up on your followers feed.

> you tweet something bad, the tweet won’t show up on your followers feed As far as I can tell, this is already how Twitter works. I have plenty of people I follow who I almost never see tweets from anymore in my timeline, but if I go to their accounts directly I can see they are saying a lot of things. People call it being shadowbanned.

Are you using the chronological timeline? If you're using the algorithmic timeline, this can happen even if a user isn't shadowbanned. Facebook does this too.

Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#336

Post by ReptileMan »

minimaxir wrote: post #7

Note that this is the dictionary definition of shadowbanning, which is the primary thing the free speech advocates on Twitter were hoping Elon would stop Twitter from doing.

It depends how it is implemented. If I go to your profile and see all of your tweets - i am fine with them not being on my time-line

Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#337

Post by kevingadd »

nomel wrote: post #197
SoftTalker wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just ditch the algorithms. Go back to what twitter was in the beginning: you see the tweets of people you follow. That's it.

I don't want purely that, because I end up drowning in uninteresting tweets from everyone I follow. I want to see notable tweets, from the people I follow, because I don't care if they're eating a sandwich. I also want to see tweets I would find notable/interesting, from people I don't follow, if I knew they existed. An algorithm would help with that suggestion. What I really want is Spotify's "Discover Weekly", and…

The combination of the new Circles twitter feature with the non-algorithmic timeline is a good attempted remedy for this - people can share their niche tweets only with circles which allows filtering which audiences they're for. It has problems, but multiple people I follow have successfully started using them to make their main timeline less cluttered.

Having people's tweets obliterated by a new Algorithm(tm) because it decided they are bad definitely doesn't feel like a good fix for the issue.

Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#338

Post by a1369209993 »

root_axis wrote: post #178
commandlinefan wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> those rules are existing for a reason If they had applied the rules consistently, they'd be reasonable enough, but they never did or even particularly tried. I don't have any hope that Elon will, either, though.

"apply the rules consistently" is like "unbiased journalism", it is an impossible standard that literally nobody adheres to. Further, anyone claiming intentional bias in moderation behavior is just making it up because there are thousands of moderation decisions made every day, the details of which they are not privy to.

> "apply the rules consistently" is like "unbiased journalism", it is an impossible standard that literally nobody adheres to.

Yes, but some claim to do so while deliberately doing the opposite, while others say they're bad at it while actually trying. Corporations (such as Twitter) are exclusively toward the former end of the spectrum.

Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#339

Post by kevingadd »

nomel wrote: post #200
root_axis wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's very reasonable but it's also the status quo prior to Elon buying twitter. Elon openly attacked twitter for its moderation policies and made a public spectacle about big tech censorship and styled himself as "free speech absolutist" in his own words. Now that Elon's own money is on the line he's completely done a 180 and is using the exact same reasoning to defend his moderation policies as did his detract…

> but it's also the status quo prior to Elon buying twitter. Wasn't the status quo to ban accounts completely, due to individual tweets, rather than hide individual tweets? This seems much much more permissive.

Enforcement was historically quite lax, especially for public figures. It's quite common to see a tweet which is just a screenshot of the "we locked your account until you delete this bad tweet" popup that someone got for posting something horrible, and the screenshot (containing the post that got them actioned!) doesn't get deleted. It takes a lot of boundary pushing to get your account nuked unless you get targeted by DMCA notices or you REALLY piss off someone with connections.

Re: “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted and demonetized”

#340

Post by nomel »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #248
nomel wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want purely that, because I end up drowning in uninteresting tweets from everyone I follow. I want to see notable tweets, from the people I follow, because I don't care if they're eating a sandwich. I also want to see tweets I would find notable/interesting, from people I don't follow, if I knew they existed. An algorithm would help with that suggestion. What I really want is Spotify's "Discover Weekly", and…

That's clearly part of the disagreement. Some people want to think and decide for themselves what to like and follow while others want private corporations/algorithms do some of that thinking for them. Or at least narrow down the choices, which is effectively the same thing.

> private corporations/algorithms do some of that thinking for them

When Spotify's Discovery Weekly gives me a playlist, it's giving me songs I've never heard before, that it thinks I'll like. The decision if I like them is completely my own. Spotify's recommendations aren't thinking for me. If I had more time to listen to a thousand random songs a day, I might stumble across their recommendations. But, their recommendations aren't thinking for me, they're just categorizing and skipping most of the garbage* related to my dislikes.

* Spotify has 80 million songs. If I listened to the first 10 seconds of every song, for 8 hours a day, it would take me over 70 years.

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