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Twitter Shadow Bans Turkish Presidential Candidate

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101–110 of 209 posts

Re: Twitter Shadow Bans Turkish Presidential Candidate

#101
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What other moral standard is there besides laws? Is it that the laws of non-tyrannical countries should override those of tyrannical ones? How do you decide tyrannicalness? Or should internet companies decide what should be allowed in other countries despite those countries and their populations disagreeing? Great firewalls are the solution when nobody can agree with each other across borders but that's a pity.

> What other moral standard is there besides laws? To be honest, you could restrict your compliance to only the laws of the country you're based in. American companies follow American laws, etc. Then move your company to where you most agree with the laws.

And when your company has an office in that country, or prominent employees have family in that country?

Re: Twitter Shadow Bans Turkish Presidential Candidate

#102
post #97

I continue to be skeptical of hanging hopes for 'free speech' on expecting free-as-in-beer, ad-supported, privately owned websites to actively promote the things that you write. Irrespective of how Musk's overall social media posturing portrays "free speech" -- X is the only one whose speech matters and they are apparently choosing to 'speak' in ways that don't support him. They are technically doing this guy a favor…

How is purchasing advertisement any more safe from free speech suppression than posting on X/Twitter, Instagram or similar? You're still subject to algorithms, and because advertisment goes through a private entity, they can instil arbitrary restrictions with some amount of effort.

Re: Twitter Shadow Bans Turkish Presidential Candidate

#103
post #8

I am not an Elon or X fan, and I don’t think this is Good, but Twitter’s policy pre-X to comply with national content laws was to geo-block content when a government demanded it be blocked. I don’t recall if the algorithmic shadow-ban was in that toolkit pre-X as well, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Again, I don’t think this is a good outcome, but it’s not substantially at odds with what Twitter pre-Elon would’ve done…

Old Twitter was selective in what countries it would take orders from because it would consult with the administration on a weekly basis and be told what to do. Social media explicitly changed their policies to allow for the advocacy of violence against Russians (only), which is insane.

I have no idea how people could delude themselves into thinking that was a better situation, especially during a Trump presidency that has been deporting and excluding people for speech, but it's impossible to understand the movement Democrat's value system at any particular moment.

It's of course sad that we have to rely on Mr. Free Speech Oligarch in order to debate subjects from positions that consistently poll majorities of the electorate, but I'd rely on China, Russia and Iran to talk about my problems with the US government, too. They openly hate free speech, they just support the freedom of that sort of speech (until the US likes them again.) It's the US that is desperate to abandon what is almost literally its Prime Directive and main differentiator from the rest of the world. We are popularly sovereign. We are not ruled by God through His current anointed representative bloodline, with a Parliament as a customary intermediary (which is actually a frozen conflict.)

How many years are we away from a POTUS directly passing rule to their child or spouse? We've gotten awfully close multiple times in the past couple decades. Will Democrats finally be happy that dumb people don't get to vote anymore? Do we pass from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire again, propelled by the righteous complaints of slaves and farmers about a decadent, narcissistic, do-nothing elite?

Re: Twitter Shadow Bans Turkish Presidential Candidate

#105
post #8

I am not an Elon or X fan, and I don’t think this is Good, but Twitter’s policy pre-X to comply with national content laws was to geo-block content when a government demanded it be blocked. I don’t recall if the algorithmic shadow-ban was in that toolkit pre-X as well, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Again, I don’t think this is a good outcome, but it’s not substantially at odds with what Twitter pre-Elon would’ve done…

Twitter regularly banned political figures globally following government pressure. X is more consistent in applying bans regionally rather than banning accounts from the platform entirely. Post-acquisition they've expressed that they choose to do that because they deem it to be preferable to having the entire network banned in certain countries. It probably has more to do with the financial incentives than with a value judgement, but either way there's no reasonable alternative, so I find it disingenuous to frame it as evidence of Musk's dishonesty, regardless of the fact that there are other instances where moderation policies were changed arbitrarily that actually do constitute evidence of that. I understand that some people flag any comment that isn't sufficiently critical of Musk and his companies regardless of their validity, which makes it tempting to parenthesize any "softball" comment to express loyalty to the tribe, but with regards to their compliance with government censorship it's unwarranted.

Re: Twitter Shadow Bans Turkish Presidential Candidate

#106
post #85
post #8

I am not an Elon or X fan, and I don’t think this is Good, but Twitter’s policy pre-X to comply with national content laws was to geo-block content when a government demanded it be blocked. I don’t recall if the algorithmic shadow-ban was in that toolkit pre-X as well, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Again, I don’t think this is a good outcome, but it’s not substantially at odds with what Twitter pre-Elon would’ve done…

imo the bigger talking point is that Twitter post-acquisition has been working pathetically to curb organic buzzes in favor of manufactured trends, even harder than its previous left-leaning management. Effect of that being observed in Turkish politics is a downstream issue to that. Twitter's strict "fun wins" algorithm of past seem like it had been a major driver in e.g. Arab Spring.

The idea that a large company has ever "leaned left" in any real sense is a bit ridiculous.

Re: Twitter Shadow Bans Turkish Presidential Candidate

#107

[flagged]

How do you measure viable? Twitter is still the best place to hear and read about breaking news.

Nah, it's been altered to point to his biases. Just like he has with Grok. He represents the opposite of free speech

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/technology/elon-musk-grok...

Re: Twitter Shadow Bans Turkish Presidential Candidate

#108
post #89

The problem here is primarily Erdogan and secondarily Musk.

The world might have people like Erdogan hold less powerful positions if large social platforms like Twitter didn't enable populism and suppression so easily.

Okay, half a point.

However, Twitter wasn't instrumental in getting Erdogan elected in 2003.

TV/Radio has been his thing:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-13746679

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/30/turkey-closes-...

Re: Twitter Shadow Bans Turkish Presidential Candidate

#109
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your argument exactly? The world is worse so we should be OK with that?

Exactly that thing Twitter is doing now was one of the main contributors to the world getting worse. That they and all their other competitors have been doing since then. Free-speech Twitter was either an accident or had a very quick change of mind. And either way, expecting centralized platforms to be of any use here is deeply misguided.

Free speech Twitter was the result of a company that had a single business: moving Tweets to people. Musk and Zuckerberg have many interests globally, and picking fights with governments doesn’t serve those interests. Don’t cheer when a billionaire with global business interests buys a (relatively) independent media property and claims he’s bringing “free speech” because (even if he wasn’t defining the term in a distorted way to benefit his interests) he literally could not do that in a meaningful way, he’s too entangled elsewhere.

Re: Twitter Shadow Bans Turkish Presidential Candidate

#110
post #52
post #8

I am not an Elon or X fan, and I don’t think this is Good, but Twitter’s policy pre-X to comply with national content laws was to geo-block content when a government demanded it be blocked. I don’t recall if the algorithmic shadow-ban was in that toolkit pre-X as well, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Again, I don’t think this is a good outcome, but it’s not substantially at odds with what Twitter pre-Elon would’ve done…

I happened to be in Istanbul during the Gezi Park uprising in 2013. I didn't participate in the protests, but I did manage to wander into the wrong place at the wrong time and got teargassed pretty good and hard. I sheltered from the gas and the water cannons and the soldiers with a group of protestors overnight and got to learn from them firsthand. They were using Twitter extensively to coordinate and to find out wh…

> Free-speech Twitter no longer exists.

This is ironic on a posting discussing shadow bans.

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