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Twitter Shadow Bans Turkish Presidential Candidate

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151–160 of 209 posts

Re: Twitter Shadow Bans Turkish Presidential Candidate

#151
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Keep in mind that Pre-2016 Twitter was markedly looser in enforcement than 2016-2022 Twitter which was increasingly run by legal and moral busybodies sensitive to the fallout of the Arab Spring, and habituated to government pressure (see Twitter Files). If anything, Twitter under Musk is a continuation of that trajectory for Rest-Of-World, but with special exemptions and protections for English language countries and…

Personal awareness of, uh-huh

Re: Twitter Shadow Bans Turkish Presidential Candidate

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that Pre-2016 Twitter was markedly looser in enforcement than 2016-2022 Twitter which was increasingly run by legal and moral busybodies sensitive to the fallout of the Arab Spring, and habituated to government pressure (see Twitter Files). If anything, Twitter under Musk is a continuation of that trajectory for Rest-Of-World, but with special exemptions and protections for English language countries and…

> (see Twitter Files) Can you clarify where in the Twitter Files it says that things were run by “legal and moral busybodies”? From what I recall the “Twitter Files” were just big dumps of innocuous records that rarely (if ever) contained any sort of narrative. The “story” of what they meant was entirely constructed by folks that pretty transparently set out with the intention of making Musk look good (eg Matt Taibbi…

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Re: Twitter Shadow Bans Turkish Presidential Candidate

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Elon will continue to mess with the algorithm until he gets his political goals. Twitter/X has open sourced their algorithm ( https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm ). So what do you mean by “mess with the algorithm”? And how do you characterize the extreme moderation (AKA censorship) practiced by old Twitter? For example when they banned a sitting president on the flimsiest reasoning, that even their own blog po…

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If you’re claiming it’s not open source, cite your source. I certainly could be wrong and am open to that possibility. But from my searching, I don’t see something saying it’s not open source. I posted that link since it was linked to from a news article on this topic (not because I analyzed it).

> I advise you to save some Flavor Aid for your next informed uninformed opinions

Was this personal attack necessary?

Re: Twitter Shadow Bans Turkish Presidential Candidate

#155
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

He didn't say it was good, he said it was the best. To counter his point, you would need to provide a sufficient alternative. I'm pointing this out because if there is one, I'd be interested in it as well. For now, I'm just browsing HN, Reuters, and AP every morning.

Reddit

Re: Twitter Shadow Bans Turkish Presidential Candidate

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All material facts are correct - but let's also remember that the world in 2013 doesn't exist anymore. In 2013, the authoritarianism was not on the rise. Arab Spring gave people hope. Gezi people were not only protesting, but also enjoying their uprising, singing, dreaming. Today - all of that is gone. Most western democracies succumbed to levels of authoritarianism. Let alone the number of active wars and conflicts…

> but let's also remember that the world in 2013 doesn't exist anymore Yep. In 2013 the social networks all found out that they can sell censorship to governments all over the world and their users wouldn't even notice it.

That is not what happened. The world has changed for the worse and the social networks are the products of their time.

Re: Twitter Shadow Bans Turkish Presidential Candidate

#157
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.

Counter argument is free-speech twitter created the world of today with unchecked distribution of conspiracy theories, hate speech and fear of other. I am not arguing for censorship, but it is factually wrong that it is censorship that brought us here. The world change before Twitter.

Re: Twitter Shadow Bans Turkish Presidential Candidate

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Counter argument is free-speech twitter created the world of today with unchecked distribution of conspiracy theories, hate speech and fear of other. I am not arguing for censorship, but it is factually wrong that it is censorship that brought us here. The world change before Twitter.

> unchecked distribution of conspiracy theories, hate speech and fear of other

No distribution going on the mainstream social networks today is unchecked.

(Except for Watsup, Signal, and the ones like them.)

Re: Twitter Shadow Bans Turkish Presidential Candidate

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

If you’re claiming it’s not open source, cite your source. I certainly could be wrong and am open to that possibility. But from my searching, I don’t see something saying it’s not open source. I posted that link since it was linked to from a news article on this topic (not because I analyzed it). > I advise you to save some Flavor Aid for your next informed uninformed opinions Was this personal attack necessary?

You still ask for evidence that their recommendation algorithm is not actually not open-source, despite that I just presented to you that the last so-called “open-source” commit was made almost 800 days ago.

To summarize, you believe that because X once called X’s algo open-source, that it must be open-source (“unless proven otherwise”) in the comment section of an article that (again) explains that Twitter censors any unwanted opinions for self-interest.

I think the Flavor Aid remark was entirely warranted.

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