Earlier quoted context omitted.
Users flagged it.
This post has got 75 upvotes in the last 1 hour. Surely there must be some merit to keeping it up.
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The Twitter Files Part 2: Twitter's Secret Blacklists
191–200 of 580 posts
Re: The Twitter Files Part 2: Twitter's Secret Blacklists
#192Why is anyone surprised that the major/globally operating social media companies have extensive internal systems for controlling the content that appears via their platforms? Irrespective of whether or not you agree with individual decisions, the fact that such systems exist should not be a surprise. These companies operate within legal frameworks across multiple jurisdictions that have endless variations of restrict…
It’s not the fact that these systems exist, it’s that Twitter denied that they did for years, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Indeed and here is their tweet saying they do not
https://twitter.com/twitter/status/1022658436704731136?s=46&...
Isn't there a fiduciary duty to be honest with their investors?
Re: The Twitter Files Part 2: Twitter's Secret Blacklists
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Outside of removing things like CSAM wouldn't it be illegal for the government to tell social media how it must moderate? I'm from the US though so not an expert or it's laws.
DMCA and court orders in the US. Many more in other countries.
True. Still nothing about banning or shadow banning though, or even needing to tell users they do so.
Re: The Twitter Files Part 2: Twitter's Secret Blacklists
#194Incredible, how openly twitter gas-lights users when it comes to policy enforcement.
I mean, that's not news, is it? Virtually every social network does that (even HN shadow bans people). (Not saying it's right, only unsurprising.)
> even HN shadow bans people
HN also gives you an option to see this content in your account settings (showdead = yes).
Re: The Twitter Files Part 2: Twitter's Secret Blacklists
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
> so you know clearly if you’ve been shadowbanned A shadowban that the user clearly knows about sounds like an oxymoron.
I assumed shadow banning was invented for forums to hide low quality users without giving them a signal to create a new account.
But when they do eventually figure it out, they end up hoping from one newly created account to another. Unless using new accounts are prohibitively expensive, and they usually aren't, then you'll end up just replacing one problem with another.
The correct way to moderate is to be civil and treat "low quality" users as human beings. Reserve inhuman bans for inhuman users (bots).
Re: The Twitter Files Part 2: Twitter's Secret Blacklists
#196I have been responsible a bit of content moderation myself, and interacted with mods on various forums. It's possible that this is responsible for some of my views, summarized here. - The "secret" aspect of all this can be largely ignored. Twitter is under no obligation to tell its users exactly how their Tweets are moderated. I am sure most moderation tools are secret, including whatever Twitter (or for that matter,…
> I don't think Weiss understands what "shadow ban" means. It means that you post Tweets, but no one ever sees them. None of the practices she describes amount to what is usually described as a shadow ban or a hellban. Preventing a post from showing up in trends or searches is not a shadow ban. Google SafeSearch does not "shadow ban" explicit images or links. Colloquially, I think many information suppression tactics…
> Colloquially, I think many information suppression tactics get lumped under the term "shadow-ban" and that your definition is very narrow. It reinforces your position so I understand why you're defining it as such but it's not very convincing to anyone who doesn't share your position. Of course, that's assuming you're genuinely interested in persuasion instead of yelling into the echo chamber.
Reasonable criticism. I suppose Twitter representatives have probably used this same definition to squirm out from questioning before, and it's not a great look. Although siblings comment are pointing out that Twitter did define it as identical to what I'm saying in a blog post; so at least they are consistent in what they were saying pre-Musk.
On the persuasion front – I'll give it a try!
I think the reason that Twitter hid behind the narrower definition of a shadow ban is to avoid saying the harder-to-stomach truth that "information suppression tactics", as you put them, are essential to content moderation. Think about this – is HN's (supposed) voting ring detector an "information suppression tactic"? Is flagging posts? Why is Bari Weiss not posting breathless stories about them? I think the only difference is that zero people in Weiss's circle use this orange web site. I would love to be convinced otherwise, though.
> All around us are these huge, easy-to-abuse, global influence platforms with cozy backchannels to the most powerful bureaucratic state (US govt) that we've ever seen. And yet many comments I've seen so far are along the lines of, "No worries, this stuff happens all the time and is totally normal and okay. Move along now!" I would have expected more skepticism, cynicism and backlash from this crowd. Am I wrong?
No, but I think we had our moment of outrage around widespread surveillance by the US government in 2013 and the years after it. Also, almost none of Weiss's or Taibbi's breathless revelations are about intervention by the US government – a few are about the Democratic Party and most are about Twitter itself. The only response that I see by a sitting Government official anywhere is to suggest that the Twitter ban on a story is against the 1st Amendment [1].
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Re: The Twitter Files Part 2: Twitter's Secret Blacklists
#197I have been responsible a bit of content moderation myself, and interacted with mods on various forums. It's possible that this is responsible for some of my views, summarized here. - The "secret" aspect of all this can be largely ignored. Twitter is under no obligation to tell its users exactly how their Tweets are moderated. I am sure most moderation tools are secret, including whatever Twitter (or for that matter,…
> I don't think Weiss understands what "shadow ban" means. It means that you post Tweets, but no one ever sees them. None of the practices she describes amount to what is usually described as a shadow ban or a hellban. Preventing a post from showing up in trends or searches is not a shadow ban. Google SafeSearch does not "shadow ban" explicit images or links. Colloquially, I think many information suppression tactics…
I agree that colloquially it's definition can be looser depending on context, but it's in bad faith that Weiss[0] quotes Twitter's then Head of Policy and Trust as saying Twitter doesn't shadow ban people when in the very blog post[1] she's quoting they clearly define shadow banning as, "deliberately making someone’s content undiscoverable to everyone except the person who posted it, unbeknownst to the original poster."
[0]: https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601013855697588224
[1]: https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2018/Setting-t...
Re: The Twitter Files Part 2: Twitter's Secret Blacklists
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
> so you know clearly if you’ve been shadowbanned A shadowban that the user clearly knows about sounds like an oxymoron.
I’m not sure I agree. Perhaps it’s an issue with the definition of “shadowban”, but I understood it to mean “you tweet, but no one sees”. Letting a user know that their account is in this state for this_reason actually seems like an improvement to me, not an oxymoron.
It's your definition that is misunderstood, not the oxymoron.
> Shadow banning, also called stealth banning, hellbanning, ghost banning or comment ghosting, is the practice of blocking or partially blocking a user or the user's content from some areas of an online community in such a way that the ban is not readily apparent to the user
Re: The Twitter Files Part 2: Twitter's Secret Blacklists
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not the fact that these systems exist, it’s that Twitter denied that they did for years, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
This seems to say what they did wasn't how Twitter defines shadow banning. https://twitter.com/bendreyfuss/status/1601019554980761600?s...
Reminds me how certain governments redefined mass surveillance then denied it.
Re: The Twitter Files Part 2: Twitter's Secret Blacklists
#200I have been responsible a bit of content moderation myself, and interacted with mods on various forums. It's possible that this is responsible for some of my views, summarized here. - The "secret" aspect of all this can be largely ignored. Twitter is under no obligation to tell its users exactly how their Tweets are moderated. I am sure most moderation tools are secret, including whatever Twitter (or for that matter,…
> I don't think Weiss understands what "shadow ban" means. It means that you post Tweets, but no one ever sees them. None of the practices she describes amount to what is usually described as a shadow ban or a hellban. Preventing a post from showing up in trends or searches is not a shadow ban. Google SafeSearch does not "shadow ban" explicit images or links. Colloquially, I think many information suppression tactics…
Twitter used a similar definition to GP of shadow-bans previously, when it became clear that some accounts might not show up in search results:
https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2018/...