Twitter Shadow Bans Turkish Presidential Candidate • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter Shadow Bans Turkish Presidential Candidate

#31

Post by chuckadams » Tue, Sep 02, 2025, 4:37 PM UTC

foxglacier wrote: post #12

stivatron wrote: post #2

They have to follow the law of the country as tyrannical as it is like they did in Brazil. I hope one day they say fuck it.

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?

They took a pretty good stab at it in 1948: https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...

Re: Twitter Shadow Bans Turkish Presidential Candidate

#32

Post by dmix » Tue, Sep 02, 2025, 4:39 PM UTC

nashashmi wrote: post #5

Elon has bragged about shadow banning posts in the interview with don lemon. Apparently twitter has been the most important public town square… to manipulate. Thank you.

Which interestingly was almost exclusively far right accounts. He shadow banned 3-4 and kicked a few others off X premium (so they don't get paid for tweets). Which X claimed was for spamming him and others after they disagreed with him over supporting H1B visas. But he's definitely not a neutral actor so who knows. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/04/23/business/elon...

Re: Twitter Shadow Bans Turkish Presidential Candidate

#33

Post by idiomat9000 » Tue, Sep 02, 2025, 4:40 PM UTC

socrates1998 wrote: post #25

[flagged]

Its more a auction house for selling the western public any opinion. The irony beeing that all those unsavoury characters, autocrats, islamo-facists can push their stories with the rest rented out to lobbies. Resulting in public places with no public.

Re: Twitter Shadow Bans Turkish Presidential Candidate

#34

Post by loeg » Tue, Sep 02, 2025, 4:41 PM UTC

socrates1998 wrote: post #25

[flagged]

Twitter is still the best of the twitter clones.

Re: Twitter Shadow Bans Turkish Presidential Candidate

#35

Post by 8200_unit » Tue, Sep 02, 2025, 4:42 PM UTC

[flagged]

Re: Twitter Shadow Bans Turkish Presidential Candidate

#36

Post by FirmwareBurner » Tue, Sep 02, 2025, 4:42 PM UTC

declan_roberts wrote: post #30

socrates1998 wrote: post #25

[flagged]

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

[flagged]

Re: Twitter Shadow Bans Turkish Presidential Candidate

#37

Post by FredPret » Tue, Sep 02, 2025, 4:42 PM UTC

ronsor wrote: post #17

FredPret wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then X just gets banned in said country

This is acceptable.

Now that country goes from having limited access to having none at all - seems worse.

If you don't like X (understandable) then it's much better to not visit it voluntarily than by a top-down block

Re: Twitter Shadow Bans Turkish Presidential Candidate

#38

Post by ayhanfuat » Tue, Sep 02, 2025, 4:43 PM UTC

NewJazz wrote: post #20

roughly wrote: 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…

Can you source this claim because Twitter turned a lot of heads when it didn't comply with content restrictions elsewhere in the Mediterranean and faced website blocks (that they retained Moxie to help circumvent)... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Ara...

It was indeed more selective before Elon https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/04/27/tw...

Re: Twitter Shadow Bans Turkish Presidential Candidate

#39

Post by aa_is_op » Tue, Sep 02, 2025, 4:44 PM UTC

[flagged]

Re: Twitter Shadow Bans Turkish Presidential Candidate

#40

Post by FirmwareBurner » Tue, Sep 02, 2025, 4:44 PM UTC

dmix wrote: post #32

nashashmi wrote: post #5

Elon has bragged about shadow banning posts in the interview with don lemon. Apparently twitter has been the most important public town square… to manipulate. Thank you.

Which interestingly was almost exclusively far right accounts. He shadow banned 3-4 and kicked a few others off X premium (so they don't get paid for tweets). Which X claimed was for spamming him and others after they disagreed with him over supporting H1B visas. But he's definitely not a neutral actor so who knows. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/04/23/business/elon...

>But he's definitely not a neutral actor so who knows.

Which other billionaire media moguls are neutral actors? Rupert Murdoch? Ted Turner? Jeff Bezos?

None of them are, because the value of media is based on its ability to control public opinion and influence elections. Otherwise none of the guys I mentioned at the top would be in that business.

"If you don't follow media you're uninformed, if you do you're misinformed."