I don’t understand somebody’s reasoning here: it is not news so it is not true.
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The Twitter Files Part 2: Twitter's Secret Blacklists
171–180 of 580 posts
Re: The Twitter Files Part 2: Twitter's Secret Blacklists
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
DMCA and court orders in the US. Many more in other countries.
Re: The Twitter Files Part 2: Twitter's Secret Blacklists
#173Quoted post unavailable.
The 4 stages.
It's not happening.
It's happening, but it's equally applied.
It's not equally applied and that's a good thing.
We already knew about it. Why is this news?
Re: The Twitter Files Part 2: Twitter's Secret Blacklists
#174Why 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…
> 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?
No one is. These Twitter Files are just building on a right wing prior of them being shadow banned. But they have yet to demonstrate that right wingers are specifically targeted. They don't show why these accounts got flagged (the crux of the issue and none of this means anything without demonstrating this knowledge) but just show prominent right wingers that did get flagged. We just get left with more questions. Do prominent left wingers also get flagged? Do prominent left wingers act in ways that would similarly be flagged? Is flagging biased? (I'm sure it is, but lets' measure it)
It is a common statistical manipulation through leading someone to causal conclusions via selection bias (sometimes called "malinformation"). While not directly said these tweets (and the previous ones) are targeted to make the reader believe that Twitter silences right wing voices. This may very well be true, but they have yet to provide strong evidence of this. Just samples. Problem is, we don't know anything about the distribution of samples so we have no means of determining if they are cherry-picked or not.
Re: The Twitter Files Part 2: Twitter's Secret Blacklists
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> Abusive and spammy behavior. When abuse or manipulation of our service is reported or detected, we may take action to limit the reach of a person's Tweets. Learn more about actions we take, including temporary and permanent account suspensions, and limiting account functionality. https://twitter.com/ashleyfeinberg/status/160101566099344998...
By all means, everyone, feel free to be pendatic about the language here, and deferring to their weasels words, in the direct light of the documentation that has been released, because you agree with the editorial direction. It has been SPECIFICALLY revealed that they frobbed the knobs when they didn’t like what was being posted, while admitting that their own policies weren’t being triggered, and they had no justification.
Re: The Twitter Files Part 2: Twitter's Secret Blacklists
#176Why 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.
Their user agreement says they may limit visibility of tweets. Is their moderation, transparent, no. do they promise that it will be? Also no. I'm fairly sure my own account has some visibility limits on it and has done for ages, but I don't think about it much.
Re: The Twitter Files Part 2: Twitter's Secret Blacklists
#177Discrimination 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.
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 you literally believe these people whoever they may be are actual textbook definition fascists? If so, why?
Re: The Twitter Files Part 2: Twitter's Secret Blacklists
#178Why 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.
they literally had a press conference about most of these features in 2018
Re: The Twitter Files Part 2: Twitter's Secret Blacklists
#179I 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 get lumped under the term "shadow-ban" and that your definition is very narrow. It reinforces your position so I understand why you're defining it as such but it's not very convincing to anyone who doesn't share your position. Of course, that's assuming you're genuinely interested in persuasion instead of yelling into the echo chamber.
I do agree with your points about this not being a surprise and how some are over-exaggerating the severity of these leaks but I'm also slightly concerned over how blase "hackers" here on this site are treating the news. All around us are these huge, easy-to-abuse, global influence platforms with cozy backchannels to the most powerful bureaucratic state (US govt) that we've ever seen. And yet many comments I've seen so far are along the lines of, "No worries, this stuff happens all the time and is totally normal and okay. Move along now!" I would have expected more skepticism, cynicism and backlash from this crowd. Am I wrong?
Re: The Twitter Files Part 2: Twitter's Secret Blacklists
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it’s that Twitter denied that they did for years When ? I haven't seen any evidence of this.
First hit on google: https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2018/Setting-t...
Unless I’ve missed something there’s still no evidence of Twitter shadow banning users. Weiss incorrectly calls a bunch of things “shadow banning” but not anything the matches the actual accepted definition.