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

471–480 of 580 posts

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

#471

Post by godelski »

veec_cas_tant wrote: post #374
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&...

It isn't an unreasonable leap for people in our position with very limited information, but it is still just a guess. It's a shame that both of these reporters, with eyes inside the machine, seem to want to HINT that there is systemic bias without providing any supporting evidence.

> It isn't an unreasonable leap for people in our position with very limited information

No, this is exactly WHY it is unreasonable. This is how conspiracy theories work. Humans want causal understandings but they have limited information and their imaginations fill in the gaps. If you have little information you should also have low confidence. Look around here at how many people are certain of conspiracy. Look in the Twitter thread too. Much of what people are saying is highly unreasonable and this is not healthy for us as a community.

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

#472

Post by bonzini »

rhaksw wrote: post #414
bonzini wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They explicitly say they don't shadowban people . Pattern matching for moderation is a completely different thing.

The public is still going to interpret that as shadow moderation of people's content.

Shadowbanning people means banning people, it's obviously separate from moderation of individual tweets. AFAIK the only subreddit that has banned me was the_donald, but I can obviously have my content removed if I post to a news subreddit from domains they consider unacceptable.

It is honestly silly to be surprised. Any community with just a few thousand users will ban entire domains, it's not surprising that they resort to banning entire TLDs at the billion user level.

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

#473

Post by tmaly »

drewbug01 wrote: post #403
godelski wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Twitter denied that they did for years You yourself literally posted a link from 4 years ago that demonstrates the opposite of this claim. How is this comment so high? I feel like I'm at a UFO convention and people just want to believe.

> people just want to believe Accurate. There’s a strong contingent of folks here that believe “the leftists” are oppressing them and “Twitter silences our voices” is a big part of the conspiracy theory. Musk is throwing fuel on the fire, because he also just wants to believe.

I would like to see some actual numbers. I am sure they have enough data that could either prove this claim or not.

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

#474

Post by kyleblarson »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #154
rswail wrote: post #120

Why 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.

And the systems were overwhelmingly used to throttle one type of political viewpoint.

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

#475

Post by r00fus »

threeseed wrote: post #109
adnzzzzZ wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A shadowban has the property that it's hidden from the user. Elon seems to want to make these kinds of actions transparent, like, for instance, deboosted tweets being visible as deboosted by their creator/other users, which is a pretty big difference. This difference is already visible in initial intent: Twitter hid what they were doing https://twitter.com/Twitter/status/1022658436704731136 , while Elon is explicitly…

Problem is that there is a reason shadow bans exist. It prevents nefarious actors from easily probing the limits of their content moderation processes. It really is funny how Musk is just taking Twitter back to the start.

He's going to speedrun learning moderation from "first principles". And we get to watch him learn (just like when he started banning people who changed their handle to mock him).

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

#476

Post by Georgelemental »

philjohn wrote: post #422
scifibestfi wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's a Dr. and a Stanford professor of medicine. The Great Barrington Declaration was signed by almost a million doctors. They were warning about the harm lockdowns would do to kids and they were correct. Even if they weren't, this would still be unacceptable.

Sounds like appeal to authority, a logical fallacy.

Exactly, you can't trust any authority (Twitter moderation team included) to determine truth for you.

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

#477

Post by Georgelemental »

michaelgrosner2 wrote: post #23
sergiotapia wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of that is irrelevant. Twitter had a secret blacklist. Gross behavior from a gross company.

Why is that gross? It's their speech to decide what they want to promote or not promote. Why are you anti-free speech?

Not when the platform (a) benefits from network effects that make it immune from private sector free market competition (b) actively colludes with government officials

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

#478

Post by jacobsenscott »

theonething wrote: post #177
jacobsenscott wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

So I see the term fascist being thrown around against conservatives frequently on sites like Reddit and I just chalk it up to people on sites like that not really knowing what the term means. HN to me is different. I fully expect people to understand and mean what they say here. So I'd like to know from a fellow HNer what exactly do you mean by calling "these" people fascists and who exactly are these fascists? Do yo…

> a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.

Lets take Trump, since you asked for a specific example. Certainly this criteria applies to Trumpists be definition, libs of TT, etc:

[x] America first (nationalism)

[x] Attempts to discredit elections and strong arm state officials (centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader)

[x] Build the wall (severe economic and social regimentation, racist)

[x] Muslim ban (severe economic and social regimentation, racist)

[x] Undermining the free press (forcible suppression of opposition)

[x] January 6th (forcible suppression of opposition)

[x] Telling the Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by...Somebody's got to do something about antifa and the left" (forcible suppression of opposition, racist)

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

#479

Post by alexandre_m »

philjohn wrote: post #421
oska wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment seems to me to be full of bad faith. > use an actual journalistic process There is a journalistic process being followed - two established journalists have been given comprehensive access to internal files and are documenting what they have found, while putting their discoveries in context. Elon is also promising that these files will be released publicly for other journalists and the interested public t…

Handpicking journalists, and then laying down requirements for them to follow, vs something like the Panama papers where every news agency was granted access. Those things are not the same.

Elon is smart, he's making all these news on Twitter to increase user engagement on his platform.

I'm pretty sure he'll release this publicly à la "wikileak" to everyone after the exclusivity on Twitter has worn off.

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

#480

Post by Georgelemental »

telaelit wrote: post #335
Khaine wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

libsoftiktok has not ben actively shutting down children's hospitals. They have been reposting public information from the hospitals that they find objectionable, such as encouraging young children to have life altering surgery, that has been stopped in other countries because of the potential for harm[1]. There readers have also expressed outrage at the objectionable activities and raised concerns with whoever would…

Exactly what I’m saying, Libs of TikTok has been using their followers to direct hate and violence towards the LGBTQ+ community and as a result they’ve put children’s lives in danger by shutting down hospitals. Twitter’s advertisers don’t want to be associated with such hateful conduct. I’m glad we agree.

Do you have an example of them advocating for or encouraging violence against anyone?
Post reply on HN