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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

#501

Post by anigbrowl »

rhaksw wrote: post #382
anigbrowl wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it 'needs' to be done secretly so much as big companies cannot be bothered to get into fights over every moderation, and find i more economical to avoid legal liability by not saying anything at all. They don't bind themselves with any promises to do so in their user agreement (which is naturally tilted fully in their favor, since their most avid users are not their customers, as such), and a calculated…

> I don't think it 'needs' to be done secretly so much as big companies cannot be bothered to get into fights over every moderation And then you get into a situation where it can be alleged that a whole political ideology, half the country, has been sidelined by your secretive work. Short term, that worked for awhile. It is not a long term strategy. > you're not a customer Users are part of the product. Lying to them…

I guess you've never tried to say something that the majority didn't want you to say

I've been jailed twice, stabbed, kicked in the head, had my ribs broken, and hit with a wide variety of chemical agents, at the hands of both police and mobs, all while engaged in non-violent political activity. To me, you sound naïve, at best.

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

#502

Post by camel_Snake »

propogandist wrote: post #443
afavour wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re running some tired schtick here. How is what I said “fake news”? If Musk opened up DM access to two non-employees that is a huge legal liability. You haven’t actually countered that point with anything, you’ve just waffled. You’ve also not explained why an audience like HN is incapable of discussing multiple issues in a discussion forum. Do you really think everyone here is so dumb? Let’s be real here: you don…

https://twitter.com/ellagirwin/status/1601084794288640000 the new head of twitter trust & safety notes she provided screenshots of the internal service to the journalists please continue trying to distract with the fake news; the liberal house of cards are falling down and I’ve got my popcorn out

> "Our team was given extensive, unfiltered access to Twitter's internal communications and systems"

One of the journalists in question. Also the wording in your tweets leaves some wriggle room:

> For security purposes, the screenshots requested [...]

Are we going to get some transparency from Twitter about exactly what tools/communications were accessible by the journalists in question? Otherwise this seems to be an exact repeat of what Twitter has already been doing for years, except now it's a private company and accountable to only one absurdly rich individual.

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

#503

Post by anigbrowl »

rhaksw wrote: post #390
anigbrowl wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. I don't assume I have any rights other than vis-a-vis the government. I've dealt with a lot of corporate bullshit from tech companies, it's an annoyance but I just handle it and don't make a career out of whining about it as some do. I've been arrested and kept in jail overnight on false charges for being a political activist, people complaining about being in Twitter or facebook jail don't impress me much (espec…

Presumably you eat at restaurants whose food you like and buy hardware whose quality you like. It's the same with social media. You can give attention to systems you support and share information about them. The alternative you propose sounds like cowering to company overlords. And where are you that it is illegal to be a political activist?

I live in the good old USA, where I have the privilege to be a member of the underclass.

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

#505

Post by roflyear »

bavell wrote: post #179
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,…

> 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…

Elon wants to do this very thing. He wants bad actors to not be promoted and instead he wants for people to have to go to their profile.

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

#506

Post by Georgelemental »

godelski wrote: post #500
Georgelemental wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Using science or using propaganda? I just checked the Twitter Rules [1], they don't forbid "propaganda". And I just checked the definition of "propaganda" [2], seems like it includes many things that nobody alleges is against the Rules (for example, any political ad is "propaganda"). [1] https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules [2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/propaganda

This is a bad faith read of my comment and the chain of conversation[0]. Spreading false and dangerous information does in fact violate Twitter's rules. As I've repeatedly said, we can't draw any strong conclusions without knowing the actual post that resulted in the ban. Without that we are just speculating and indulging in our personal biases. Please stop perpetuating this witch hunt and help demand real proof and…

Simple falsehood doesn't appear to be against the rules either, only deliberate lies/manipulated media are.

> We can't draw any strong conclusions without knowing the actual post that resulted in the ban.

We don't know what the post in question is, because Twitter is not transparent and shadowbans people without telling them why. With no evidence to the contrary, we should presume Dr. Bhattacharya innocent.

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

#507

Post by yonaguska »

rhaksw wrote: post #370
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…

> "deliberately making someone’s content undiscoverable to everyone except the person who posted it, unbeknownst to the original poster." This happened to my tweet here [1]. It doesn't show up under the parent tweet [2]. It appears to be some sort of domain-based shadow filtering. It's probably because of the cheap .win domain I bought for $2. Why would Twitter censor that link? One could speculate it was because pat…

I just want to thank you for creating reveddit.

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

#508

Post by darkpatterns »

root_axis wrote: post #442
TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've had two releases of documentation that prove what you are mockingly-dismissing here, and you pretend that it's still all in people's heads. What am I missing?

They don't prove that. This reasoning is like saying the law oppresses men because they are disproportionately convicted of violent crimes.

Don't read anything into this, but can you see the next step here if you replace "men" with "black men"? Is this actually the point you want to make?

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

#509

Post by quadrifoliate »

hintymad wrote: post #499
quadrifoliate wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are using phrases like "blacklisting doctors" and "censorship" while discussing (essentially) a message board that is used to sell advertisements. I don't think that's a reasonable position. Twitter is a private company that wants to sell advertisements by enabling people to have happy conversations. Fundamentally, they are going to optimize for that, and not whatever high-minded ideals of censorship that we hold…

> If a scientist is yelling about mysterious conspiracies and causing arguments "Mysterious conspiracies" by who? By the moderators who couldn't spell mitochondria or couldn't tell the difference between gene vs allele? Insults aside, didn't history give us so many "conspiracies" that turned out to be true? Like Heliocentrism，like climate change (in case people forgot how many people denied the climate change decades…

> I mean, how can Twitter's moderators, many of whom could barely understand college-level STEM or any subject, be so sure that they are on the right side of the history?

They don't need to be, in order to preserve the peace on their platform (for whatever definition of peace).

If you start yelling about mitochondria or climate change at Disneyland, you will be unceremoniously ejected for disturbing the peace at the Magic Kingdom. On the other hand, you can yell about mitochondria or climate change to your heart's content in the local town square all you want, courtesy of the First Amendment.

I don't understand why people think that Twitter, a private company, should be more like the town square than Disneyland.

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

#510

Post by NaturalPhallacy »

anigbrowl wrote: post #383
NaturalPhallacy wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So since their concerned have been proven justified, they don't get to talk about them because of their tone when they first raised the concern? They weren't crying wolf. They were right the whole time, which honestly justifies the howling to me.

Sorry, I don't agree with your premise. When I see a quantitative analysis backing up conservatives' claims that they're unfairly discriminated against, I'd consider it valid. And yes, I do have a problem with their tone. Conservatives are way overdrawn at the good faith store, having made a years-long habit of hyping things up. This example is from 2005: https://zfacts.com/zfacts.com/metaPage/lib/Weekly_Standard_M..…

It doesn't require your agreement to be true: https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601007575633305600
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