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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”

#341

Post by bastawhiz »

oska wrote: post #168
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.

I'm a Free Speech advocate. What I hoped Elon would do is stop the permanent banning of people from the platform and the removal of tweets. He appears to be at least somewhat delivering on that hope. Having a tweet 'deboosted' rather than completely removed and the tweeter also permanently removed is a substantial improvement.

> He appears to be at least somewhat delivering on that hope.

Unless they're pretending to be him (or advertisers) for a joke on Twitter, in which case they seem to very quickly get banned.

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

#343

Post by naasking »

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…

> 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

No, he has said that he wants people to be able to set their own filters. So no or few top-down filter policies, but more bottom-up filter policies.

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

#344

Post by somat »

oska wrote: post #161
attentive wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freedom to "yell into the void" isn't really a freedom of speech. They might as well post-it on the bathroom walls.

Your 'yelling into the void' here is every yell being recorded and kept, every person who has a link to a recording being able to hear it, every person who follows a chronological playback of your yells being able to hear them all, etc, i.e. there is no 'void'.

Yelling into the void is the central mechanism of twitter and platforms like twitter. I is why when I joined a mastodon server the whole thing felt so weird to me, I was expecting irc. Whom am I talking to? No one and every one. You yell into the void and hope someone is listening.

Note that the same could be said for any mass publishing platform, posting a web page is also yelling into the void. or publishing a book or writing a newspaper article.

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

#345

Post by oska »

bastawhiz wrote: post #341
oska wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a Free Speech advocate. What I hoped Elon would do is stop the permanent banning of people from the platform and the removal of tweets. He appears to be at least somewhat delivering on that hope. Having a tweet 'deboosted' rather than completely removed and the tweeter also permanently removed is a substantial improvement.

> He appears to be at least somewhat delivering on that hope. Unless they're pretending to be him (or advertisers) for a joke on Twitter, in which case they seem to very quickly get banned.

This is not being banned for what you say, however controversial (i.e. prevention of free speech). This is being banned for pretending someone else is saying something. Such bans are not a free speech issue. Fraud is fraud.

(As for the joke angle, twitter has decided it's too risky to allow humour that relies on brazen impersonation. Parody accounts that are clearly indicated as such are still allowed.)

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

#346

Post by elgenie »

TheLoafOfBread wrote: post #39

So free speech absolutist is starting to adapt rules which are roughly similar to Twitter's current rules. And those rules are existing for a reason, rules don't popup from a thin air. What a surprise... Now he will figure out that the bloat of microservices and employees was there also for a reason.

The dude rolled in with an understanding of the space one would expect of a college sophomore doing just OK in an interview for a PM internship, but is somehow expecting everyone to be amazed by his keen insight.

Being an engineer / content moderator in an environment where there's a guy constantly introducing chaos via idiotic "Couldn't we just…?" mandates can't be fun.

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

#347

Post by ziml77 »

root_axis wrote: post #266
nomel wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It appears that three of these that you listed, which are the most silencing, will no longer be used (assuming legal content): post removals, temporary bans, permanent bans. I don't understand how the new policy is "status quo", if this is true. That's a very significant change of policy.

Nothing that Elon said suggests that twitter will no longer issue bans or remove posts. In fact, we know that permanent bans are still in place, and he will obviously continue to do both.

In place and just as arbitrary as ever. Just this morning someone I follow had an 18+-only alt account of theirs suspended when they blocked a minor who was following that account.

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

#348

Post by stale2002 »

phphphphp wrote: post #284
saurik wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...so they could be removed entirely and this problem would remain. Which problem? Seriously: the only legitimate problem I know of is that Twitter gives artificial reach to things via algorithmic engagement. They literally send me push notifications for tweets their algorithm thinks is interesting. If you retweet something some asshole says and I don't like it, I should probably just unfollow you because you could…

My point is that the algorithms used by Twitter did not create the problem of bad tweets having reach. Elon could turn off every piece of engagement-hacking functionality within the Twitter system and it would not solve the problem. The algorithms just exist to eek out better engagement numbers. Twitter provides reach to speech. You cannot remove reach from Twitter without rendering Twitter useless. Pre-Elon Twitter…

> Twitter provides reach to speech. You cannot remove reach from Twitter without rendering Twitter useless.

You absolutely can.

The way that it is still useful, is if instead of being perma-banned for a bad tweet, instead an account just has that tweet only prioritized.

That way, the bad stuff is stopped, without draconian ban policies destroying your account.

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

#349

Post by mhh__ »

phailhaus wrote: post #40

Oh great, more unaccountable black-box "algorithms" that invisibly classify your tweets. Machines can't detect satire, they don't understand nuance or context, they don't understand tone. This will affect platform speech in strange ways as people naturally attempt to evade the algorithm. Twitter needs a dislike button. Every social media platform needs a mechanism for explicit negative feedback. Yes, people will use…

Humans (especially on HN where it's semi-illegal) are also sometimes bad at detecting satire.
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