Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Twitter Files Part 2: Twitter's Secret Blacklists

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 580 posts

Re: The Twitter Files Part 2: Twitter's Secret Blacklists

#81

Post by dotnet00 »

NaturalPhallacy wrote: post #46

Quoted post unavailable.

I feel like HN is pretty close to being the most balanced 'techie' social platform I've come across. I very often see discussions here which surprise me in that talking about them on Twitter, Reddit (in a similar community) etc would handily get your post deleted/banned/hidden. One that comes to mind is discussions about vaccine effectiveness data without either polarized extreme being dominant (ie no one acting like it's a sin to even question it and no one acting like it's some secret plot to spread autism for some reason).

Re: The Twitter Files Part 2: Twitter's Secret Blacklists

#82

Post by rhaksw »

anigbrowl wrote: post #78
rhaksw wrote: post #24

Twitter calls it "visibility filtering" [1] Facebook gives mods a "Hide comment" button [2] TikTok calls it "visible to self" [3] [4] Truth Social does it [5] [6] [7] Reddit shows all removed comments to authors as if they're publicly visible [8] Open source tools are built to do it [9] [10] Textbooks advocate "disguise a gag or ban" [11] I call it Shadow Moderation [12]. The system intentionally does not show users…

> .win domain lol, you had me going for a moment there.

It's my blog's domain, which I got for $2/year, what's wrong with that? We should turn up our nose at everyone who bought the cheapest domain?

Interesting you bring this up though because tweets mentioning .win domains still get shadow removed, even today with the new owner.

This Tweet [1] only appears when directly linked. It does not appear beneath its parent [2] for anyone but me.

[1] https://twitter.com/rhaksw/status/1594103021407195136

[2] https://twitter.com/TheFIREorg/status/1594078057895063553

Re: The Twitter Files Part 2: Twitter's Secret Blacklists

#85

Post by dotnet00 »

krapp wrote: post #29
rhaksw wrote: post #24

Twitter calls it "visibility filtering" [1] Facebook gives mods a "Hide comment" button [2] TikTok calls it "visible to self" [3] [4] Truth Social does it [5] [6] [7] Reddit shows all removed comments to authors as if they're publicly visible [8] Open source tools are built to do it [9] [10] Textbooks advocate "disguise a gag or ban" [11] I call it Shadow Moderation [12]. The system intentionally does not show users…

>If there is now wide understanding that this happens everywhere, maybe we have a chance to build a platform whose express goal is to not withhold censorship actions from the author of the content. I want to know what rock people have been living under all this time, that this sort of thing is news to them.

I think to a lot of people who pay attention to this sort of thing (eg the crowd already familiar with tools like reveddit) might not be a shock but it is a rare case of it being admitted in clear terms with specific examples which correspond to the sorts of claims that are often dismissed as rumors by third parties. While not anywhere near as high profile, it's kind of like how anyone who was paying attention probably had a decent idea of the kind of surveillance governments might be engaging in, but it was still a big deal when Snowden released the documents making it undeniable.

As the thread says, Twitter used a bit of trickery by calling it "visibility filtering" so they could lean on the technicality that "we do not shadow ban", because they too preferred to leave in some plausible deniability.

Re: The Twitter Files Part 2: Twitter's Secret Blacklists

#87

Post by dang »

quyleanh wrote: post #64
NaturalPhallacy wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Topic is being downvoted/flagged, I assume. Normally HN loves tech company drama. And there are screenshots of twitter accounts from the employee/moderator tooling. It's super interesting stuff, even just technically.

It's appeared on #27 and then be flagged. Just wow HN.

It's just the normal up-and-down of sensational submissions on HN. The 'wow' factor is a function of the attention you're paying to it.

Re: The Twitter Files Part 2: Twitter's Secret Blacklists

#88

Post by scifibestfi »

scifibestfi wrote: post #2

"Take, for example, Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) who argued that Covid lockdowns would harm children. Twitter secretly placed him on a “Trends Blacklist,” which prevented his tweets from trending." What. Why?

"Still trying to process my emotions on learning that @twitter blacklisted me. The thought that will keep me up tonight: censorship of scientific discussion permitted policies like school closures & a generation of children were hurt."

https://twitter.com/DrJBhattacharya/status/16010379837793894...

Re: The Twitter Files Part 2: Twitter's Secret Blacklists

#90

Post by belltaco »

rhaksw wrote: post #75
belltaco wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This outrage is hilarious coz HN shadowbans people too. Which increases site quality which is why all the complainers are on here.

Transparently removing content is the normal way to moderate a forum. This research [1] suggests it reduces mod workload because users learn the rules. Discourse doesn't secretly remove content and is popular. It isn't accurate to say secrecy increases site quality. No such qualitative study has been done. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/duwdco/should_mode...

That's talking about article submissions, not comments. Couldn't read the PDF because the link is broken.

More than 95% of the time I see a flagged account on HN, they post complete garbage that leads to more flaming replies if not removed promptly. HN has a very limited set of moderators, like one or two, who cannot police every comment 24/7.

>Discourse doesn't secretly remove content and is popular.

Popular where? In corporate and niche business use cases? What are some public Discourses that allow everyone to post?

Post reply on HN