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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

#131

Post by threeseed »

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…

> without proposing or creating an alternative

They have an alternative in mind. It's called unfettered free speech.

Problem for Twitter is that advertisers aren't interested in a fancier 4chan.

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

#132

Post by propogandist »

afavour wrote: post #68
Jun8 wrote: post #49

There must be a ton of ex (or current) Twitter employees on HN: can one of you verify if the user management tool shown in the photos is an actual thing and provide more information on how it works? As another sibling comment states, other platforms also do similar things. It's easy how such systems get started and evolve. In fact, given the severe downvoting I see on this and similarly polarizing threads on HN, I th…

It is, and none of this is new information, given this article from 2020: https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgxd3d/twitter-insider-acces... A more pressing question, IMO: one of the screenshots shows a “direct messages” button. Does Weiss and/or Taibbi have unrestricted access to read users DMs right now?

why do you want to distract readers with BS like access controls imposed on the journalists?

the head of twitter security testified to Congress how twitter had poor security controls and audibility across the company. If that button does allow ability to read DM, Twitter employees have surely abused that for ages without repercussions.

Let’s stay focused on the important details rather than worrying about established journalists exposing the power the former twitter employees wielded to sway public opinion

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

#133

Post by someNameIG »

smoldesu wrote: post #45
foolinaround wrote: post #38

Discrimination as alleged by conservatives but pooh-poohed as others as merely delusional is now clearly proved. How can tech self-regulate itself, or should there be external agencies who would watch the growing power of tech companies? and who would watch them? Decentralization never seems to take off, so we seem to be left with these existing players like twitter, meta, google ...who are de-facto monopolies....

> How can tech self-regulate itself Would it be a stretch to suggest 'the government'?

Outside of removing things like CSAM wouldn't it be illegal for the government to tell social media how it must moderate?

I'm from the US though so not an expert or it's laws.

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

#134

Post by user3939382 »

jacobsenscott wrote: post #63
foolinaround wrote: post #38

Discrimination as alleged by conservatives but pooh-poohed as others as merely delusional is now clearly proved. How can tech self-regulate itself, or should there be external agencies who would watch the growing power of tech companies? and who would watch them? Decentralization never seems to take off, so we seem to be left with these existing players like twitter, meta, google ...who are de-facto monopolies....

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.

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

#135

Post by anigbrowl »

scifibestfi wrote: post #8
IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, first of all, “tweets” don’t “trend”. Terms do. So this description feels off, already. Next, I wonder, but don’t care enough to look it up, if this guy is adequately summarized by only mentioning his concern for children? Screw that, I did look him up: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Bhattacharya#COVID-19_pa... . He was one of the people behind the “Great” Barrington Declaration and, kn the early months of…

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.

The Great Barrington Declaration was signed by almost a million doctors

You're off by an order of magnitude and then some. Also, none of the numbers they do claim are verifiable. https://gbdeclaration.org/view-signatures/

You know, when you make a specific claim like that it's really worth the 30 seconds it takes to check it again to verify your memory is correct.

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

#136

Post by sigsergv »

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.

The main issue here is not that shadowban exist but fact that twtter officials explicitly denied its existence.

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

#137

Post by layer8 »

adnzzzzZ wrote: post #59
michaelgrosner2 wrote: post #21

"New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach. Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter. You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from rest of Internet." How is this any different than Elon's stated goals from 3 weeks ago?

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…

The OP twitter thread doesn’t seem to be describing shadow banning.

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

#138

Post by jdminhbg »

veec_cas_tant wrote: post #19
IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A “secret blacklist” that’s been known forever, or at least for two years: https://twitter.com/dancow/status/1601017194456186881?s=20&t...

Here is an announcement from 2018[0]: >“It’s shaping up to be one of the highest-impact things that we’ve done,” the chief executive, Jack Dorsey ,said of the update, which will change how tweets appear in search results or conversations. “The spirit of the thing is that we want to take the burden off the person receiving abuse or mob-like behavior.” > The new system will use behavioral signals to assess whether a Tw…

> The updated algorithm will result

These screenshots are about actions taken by Twitter employees, not an updated algorithm.

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

#139

Post by hintymad »

The American philosopher John Rawls had this interesting concept "Veil of Ignorance"[1]. It basically says that only when you don't know who you are will you think clearly about the social justice. That is, pick whichever principles you think the society should stick to, but do so only when you don't know in which position you'll end up being. So, you can think that the justice is killing the damn riches so you can live in one of those water-sideproperties, but what if you turn out to be one of the riches? You may think that it's only fair to let poor people survive by themselves, but then you will be surprised if you are born in a struggling family. Or hypothetically, you may think it's totally fair to ban the hell of this damn Dr. Jay Bhattacharya because apparently he's spreading misinformation, until one one day you find that you are shadow banned on Twitter for warning people of climate change simply because the employees there didn't believe in climate change. So, yeah, unless we believe that all dominant companies will always be run by Californian-like lefties or our life will never be impacted by right-wing organizations or policies, this Twitter file things should concern us.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position

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

#140

Post by rhaksw »

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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