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The Twitter Files Part 2: Twitter's Secret Blacklists

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

#261

Post by tptacek »

somenameforme wrote: post #257
adamwk wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 poste…

Would most people consider an account shadow banned when it can post as normal, yet its post are secretly set to have near zero visibility? The answer is self evident. Twitter tried to redefine shadowbanning to something they do not do, and then put out a post saying they don't shadowban. That is engaging in extremely bad faith. Using the definition as normally understood, is not. There was a post on Hacker News when…

It doesn't matter what "most people" would consider, because Twitter provided their definition of the term at the time. People disagree about all sorts of terms, and that's totally fair, but what Weiss is doing is retconning her own personal definition of the term on Twitter's policy statements, which were unambiguous. She is, in turn, being unambiguously dishonest.

It's interesting how selective people are about the supposed Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.

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

#262

Post by bavell »

snowwrestler wrote: post #254
bavell wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this[0] is accurate, then 99.7% of political contributions made by Twitter employees went to Democrats in 2022. Is it unreasonable to suspect people on the right are targeted more often than the people on the left? Wouldn't that be the default assumption and the opposite position would need evidence to prove otherwise? [0] https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598829996264390656?s=20&...

Yes, it is unreasonable. This is not how companies work. The personal preferences of employees are not what govern the operations of their employer.

Sure would be easier if the world was that black and white but unfortunately there are a lot of gray areas employees encounter which are left up to their subjective judgement.

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

#263

Post by dibt »

tedunangst wrote: post #117

I think it's funny that the outrage tourists also managed to be angry that libs of tiktok was also put on a "no action" whitelist. They're not even reading the disclosures; they're just screaming. https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601018810495995904

What are you saying? LibsOfTikTok didn't have a blanket protection. It required the special group to sign off on any action.

Who's angry? Who's not reading what disclosures? What are they angry about?

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

#264

Post by scifibestfi »

adamwk wrote: post #197
bavell wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 poste…

Do they have anything about how they were blacklisting accounts, unbeknownst to the original poster?

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

#265

Post by AustinDev »

belltaco wrote: post #220
bavell wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this[0] is accurate, then 99.7% of political contributions made by Twitter employees went to Democrats in 2022. Is it unreasonable to suspect people on the right are targeted more often than the people on the left? Wouldn't that be the default assumption and the opposite position would need evidence to prove otherwise? [0] https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598829996264390656?s=20&...

[flagged]

Source? Most mass shootings were related to gang violence last I checked.

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

#266

Post by seanhunter »

paul7986 wrote: post #192
TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #154

Earlier 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.

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?

Fiduciary duty is a responsibility to act in someone's best interests (the investors in this case)[1]. The requirement to not make misleading statements affecting investors is a different requirement [2].

To the substance of your statement, they don't shadow ban, so that's not a misleading statement. The fact that a lot of people take an extremely broad view of what shadow banning is doesn't change that. Twitter actually define shadow banning in the link in the tweet you posted, and explain what they do and why that's not shadow banning.[3]

[1] Very good explanation here https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042915/what-are-som...

[2] Not to "misrepresent" material facts, which is a form of securities fraud https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/misrepresentation.asp

[3] The original link is down but I found it in the internet archive. https://archive.vn/m4bT4

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

#267

Post by pcwalton »

somenameforme wrote: post #221
quadrifoliate wrote: post #125

I 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,…

Yes, the secrecy does matter. I think can immediately think of two big reasons: 1) We should censor for how things are said, instead of what is said. When censorship is carried out secretly it will inevitably trend towards abuse. One of the examples given in these leaks is that @DrJBhattacharya [1] was secretly put on a trends blacklist because of what he was saying. He's a well spoken doctor and Stanford epidemiolog…

> We should censor for how things are said, instead of what is said.

No, there are certain topics that are simply outside of the bounds of acceptable discourse. For example, Holocaust denial is inherently uncivil and should be off limits from every general discussion forum, regardless of the wording the denier chooses to use.

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

#268

Post by mandmandam »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #253
mandmandam wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Overall, I don't really see too much that would cause me to gasp with horror. I didn't "gasp", but, silently blocking an esteemed scientist is indeed horrible. He, and who knows how many others, presented sensible analyses against extended lockdowns in schools. This dissenting view, like with the lableak theory, was systematically blocked from ever reaching journalists eyes, and thus from reaching parents minds. Th…

> The dissenting view, like with the lableak theory, was systematically blocked from ever reaching journalists eyes, and thus from reaching parents minds. I would hope that journalists conduct their research through better means than solely reading Tweets. That would be an exceptionally lazy standard, one which would merit a failing grade for a high school paper. That being said, "systematically blocked from ever rea…

> I would hope that journalists conduct their research through better means than solely reading Tweets.

That's not a good reason to suppress scientists tweets.

Also, many of the best journalists of the past decades have been loudly warning of being shadowbanned, supressed, deranked etc.

> I don't think anyone would administer web forums if the government started telling them how they could and could not moderate posting.

A large part of these Twitter reveals show just how much government connections pushed extreme "moderation" (read: censorship) of specific issues.

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

#269

Post by scifibestfi »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #125

I 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,…

She explained in the thread:

What many people call “shadow banning,” Twitter executives and employees call “Visibility Filtering” or “VF.” Multiple high-level sources confirmed its meaning.

“Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels. It’s a very powerful tool,” one senior Twitter employee told us.

“VF” refers to Twitter’s control over user visibility. It used VF to block searches of individual users; to limit the scope of a particular tweet’s discoverability; to block select users’ posts from ever appearing on the “trending” page; and from inclusion in hashtag searches.

All without users’ knowledge.

“We control visibility quite a bit. And we control the amplification of your content quite a bit. And normal people do not know how much we do,” one Twitter engineer told us. Two additional Twitter employees confirmed.

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