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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

#291

Post by gnicholas »

It seems like the dispute here is around the definition of "shadowban". We can all agree it includes situations where the user posts and 0 other people see the post.

Twitter admits to limiting visibility of posts.

So the dispute becomes a spectrum/threshold question. Most people would say that if 10% of the people who would normally see your posts get to see them, that's pretty shadowban-y. And most people would agree that if 90% get to see your posts, that's more like "limiting visibility" than shadowbanning.

The key questions are: (1) to what extent was visibility reduced, and (2) at what threshold should we consider "limiting visibility" to be tantamount to a shadowban?

There are also indirect effects to consider: if your posts are shown to only 60% of the people of a normal post, then you will get fewer RTs and fewer new followers in the long run. So consistent "visibility limitation" has a compounding effect that could substantially slow your account growth and reach over time.

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

#292

Post by michaelmrose »

user3939382 wrote: post #134
jacobsenscott wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

“The people I disagree with politically can have free speech in the mediums that have the least reach while my political tribe will freely exercise our speech on the mediums with the most reach” is a bad faith argument I keep hearing from fake leftists who are really hardline authoritarians.

The mediums which have the most reach have the most reach explicitly because they have less spam porn hate and crazy. If twitter gets more "democratic" more crazy, more hateful, less desirable and less popular shall we suggest the next big platform welcome an equal number of undesirables?

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

#293

Post by tptacek »

bavell wrote: post #288
tptacek wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Right, Twitter provided their own definition which delicately tiptoes around the unsavory issue and Weiss expanded the definition to suit her own self-interests. How does that make what "most people" would consider not matter? Seems like a non-sequitur to me but maybe I'm not understanding your point.

Because the thread is about Weiss's claims. If you want to talk about how Twitter's definition of shadow-banning is problematic, or their moderation practices in general, start another top-level thread.

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

#294

Post by amanaplanacanal »

scifibestfi wrote: post #88
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...

I don’t know how other people think about this, but in my mind there is a large difference between censoring and not promoting, and the trends blacklist feels more like the latter.

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

#295

Post by smrtinsert »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #121
scifibestfi wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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...

[flagged]

Let's not let numbers, humanity and sound judgement get in the way of a good conspiracy yarn.

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

#296

Post by somenameforme »

epakai wrote: post #272
Zuiii wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Ban evasion was a thing long before shadow bans. I've seen persistent users disrupt IRC channels for years, maybe decades. You can't reason with or befriend somebody who holds a grudge that long. Moderators will just have to deal with the problem repeatedly. Shadow bans at least minimize recurrence by taking away the immediate feedback.

IRC generally has no barriers to account registration while Twitter generally requires a phone number. In the former bans are meaningless, in the latter they pose in an insurmountable hurdle to all but organized and funded campaigns. The real problem with shadowbans is "us" - humans. Shadowbans are a great tool for helping to minimize the impact of things like literal spammers and scammers, but it's also a tool that's great for minimizing political dissent, creating false impressions of the popularity (or not) of various concepts, or generally grossly manipulating and distorting public discourse.

As public online discourse becomes a more engrained part of normal society, shadowbans may even end up being an action that, in and of itself, end up being regulated and controlled. Shadowbans can help create a better and freer society for everybody, but they can also be used to create a dystopia. In some ways it's akin to a real world weapon. A firearm can be used to uphold and protected great values, but it can also be used to impose horrific ones.

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

#297

Post by hyperdunc »

Online platforms should not be allowed to moderate content according to whim or unwritten bias.

If a piece of content is moderated, it should remain in place and be clearly labeled with an explanation from the TOS.

Exceptions: If the moderated content is spam it can be collapsed. If it's illegal, it can be removed.

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

#298

Post by ajvs »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #121
scifibestfi wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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...

[flagged]

So instead it's better to stunt children's development with lockdowns and give them early heart attacks with jabs? Regardless of yours or my position however, this debate shouldn't have been censored in the first place.

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

#299

Post by croes »

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…

Isn't near zero visibility the norm for most users?

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

#300

Post by seo-speedwagon »

rhaksw wrote: post #140
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,…

> The "secret" aspect of all this can be largely ignored. I bet you would not like for your comment here to be secretly removed. In fact, many users are shocked to discover when this happens, as I share here [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33916519

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