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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

#371

Post by anigbrowl »

rhaksw wrote: post #360
anigbrowl wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there might be a reason two sides aren't talking. Conservatives: Rope, tree, journalist: some assembly required Fuck Joe Biden Fuck your feelings These are all t-shirt slogans you can buy at conservative political events, and they're quite widespread rather than exceptional. Also conservatives: Why am I being shadow banned, this is viewpoint discrimination! To be clear, there are obnoxious people and outright…

> I think there might be a reason two sides aren't talking. Both sides can certainly find a reason not to speak to each other. The left claims the right is hateful, the right claims the left is obscene. It's always been like that, with one having the power to censor the other. Here's an example [1]. One side, a well known entrepeneur/investor, is arguing for no censorship, and the other side, a well known disinformat…

Interesting though these points are (and I'm familiar, as I am personally acquainted with DiResta), I think you are looking at this issue in too abstract a manner.

Ther's no obligation to have dialog with others who are actively threatening to kill you. Don't owe them a conversation or even a hearing.

I don't disagree with your characterization that 'the left claims the right is hateful, the right claims the left is obscene.' But there is a clear qualitative difference between the two sides in terms of the willingness to insinuate, actually issue, and finally carry out death threats, and it's not a wholly new phenomenon. I put it to you that the people who are amused by and choose to promote messages like 'rope, tree, journalist: some assembly required' do not actually give a shit about free speech but are opportunistically employing the grievance for political leverage.

Get back to me on this when the right stops openly calling to murder people on such a frequent basis and I'll be happy to consider it in more abstract terms. I see why you're concerned about this, but having extensive first hand experience of political violence I think shadow bans are a relatively minor issue by comparison.

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

#372

Post by anigbrowl »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #243
anigbrowl wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> .win domain lol, you had me going for a moment there.

Did you really just judge a blog you didn’t read on their TLD? That’s petty.

No. I read it and then I made fun of the TLD.

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

#374

Post by veec_cas_tant »

bavell wrote: post #207
godelski wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

If this[0] is accurate, then 99.7% of political contributions made by Twitter employees went to Democrats in 2022. Is it unreasonable to suspect people on the right are targeted more often than the people on the left? Wouldn't that be the default assumption and the opposite position would need evidence to prove otherwise? [0] https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598829996264390656?s=20&...

It isn't an unreasonable leap for people in our position with very limited information, but it is still just a guess. It's a shame that both of these reporters, with eyes inside the machine, seem to want to HINT that there is systemic bias without providing any supporting evidence.

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

#375

Post by rhaksw »

Dracophoenix wrote: post #365
rhaksw wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There may be some wires crossed here. Reddit does show all removed comments to the people who wrote them as if they're not removed. I built Reveddit to reveal this. You can lookup a random user with this link [1]. There's a 50% chance they have a removed comment in their recent history, and chances are they weren't told that it was removed. > To other accounts however, there is no indication that the comment was ever…

This may be tangential to the topic at hand, but thank you for carrying the torch for true transparency on Reddit.

Thanks for your support! I think it's self evident that transparency is a better idea, at least the case of content moderation. The other way, full control via opacity, doesn't work out. You have to remove what you don't like, then remove comments that discuss what was removed, and so on.

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

#376

Post by rhaksw »

fzeroracer wrote: post #330
rhaksw wrote: post #24

Twitter calls it "visibility filtering" [1] Facebook gives mods a "Hide comment" button [2] TikTok calls it "visible to self" [3] [4] Truth Social does it [5] [6] [7] Reddit shows all removed comments to authors as if they're publicly visible [8] Open source tools are built to do it [9] [10] Textbooks advocate "disguise a gag or ban" [11] I call it Shadow Moderation [12]. The system intentionally does not show users…

Shadowbans have existed for literally 40+ years. There have been multiple forums, platforms, channels, BBSes which try to make an egalitarian system where moderation is clear and transparent. These systems all universally fail because it fails to function at scale or it becomes easily gamed by bad faith posters or it falls apart because you get the truly fixated and toxic posters that tear your community apart. The p…

You're right the existence of shadow bans is old, but you're wrong that it's critical for a forum. Discourse doesn't use it, and Mastodon I believe is reviewable. So was Usenet. Kill files were controlled by users.

Also, Reveddit is used extensively on Reddit without subreddits falling apart. Mods of many groups will often link it to provide transparency into their work.

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

#377

Post by oska »

Here's a hint to a further revelation for those who continue to pretend that the Twitter Files are a 'nothingburger'.

Ian Miles Cheong :

> So here’s a question for @elonmusk and @bariweiss: were any political candidates — either in the US or elsewhere — subject to shadowbanning while they were running for office or seeking re-election?

Elon :

> Yes

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1601123235755487233

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

#378

Post by sangnoir »

harry8 wrote: post #366
sangnoir wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At Twitter's volumes, lifting of restrictions manually doesn't scale. Speaking as an outsider: how I would design it would have the lifting of restrictions being automated and set up at the time restrictions are applied (set on a timer or deletion of an offending tweet). Lifting of restrictions manually would be far less frequent than applying them. With that in mind, I get the distinct impression that the LoTT accou…

"Kid gloves" seems like a reasonable inference to me. There are sufficiently prominent cases where scaling doesn't matter a damn, eg the decision to suspend or not the president. Taibbi claimed there was a lot of back-channel manual intervention going on from both repubs and dems for manual intervention. One would imagine there was a lot also not from partisan politics. Back channel who you know seems like one of the…

> There are sufficiently prominent cases where scaling doesn't matter a damn, eg the decision to suspend or not the president

Does @LoTT belong to such distinguished company? I don't know, but I know this is not an instance of Twitter "silencing the voices on the right" despite the context of the reporting

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

#379

Post by veec_cas_tant »

hyperdunc wrote: post #290
wesleywt wrote: post #240

The problem with these "Twitter Files" is that it is being released in the form of "bombshells" when in reality they are exposing nothing. But by doing it in the form of a bombshell the right wing is making it look like they have been oppressed all these years, when it is their voices that are mostly promoted on these platforms.

Either you're kidding, or you're so far left that everything else looks right wing.

Can you post a quick breakdown of what is actually being revealed? I'm honestly shocked that anyone at least a bit technically literate didn't understand the types of tools social media companies use.

Elon and others seem to be pitching these releases as huge bombshells about conservatives being silenced. I haven't seen any evidence for that claim at all. The most detailed analysis we've got so far was a spreadsheet of employee political donations. Maybe they are building up to it?

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

#380

Post by Merovius »

bavell wrote: post #179
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,…

> 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…

> 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?

I don't think you are wrong. I do think this is a powerful tool, that should be scrutinized. But I also can't think of any better alternative. So, in the meantime, ISTM that talking about how it's talked about (as a great conspiracy and revelation, when it's well-known and the best known solution to a problem we have) seems the right way to go about it.

And note that not so long ago Musk himself said that this solution is what he wants for Twitter¹.

I just think when talking about the "Twitter Files", the more interesting story is how Musk is spreading disinformation and propaganda to increase his own wealth and power and how supposed journalists are uncritically helping him do it.

[1] https://twitter.com/whstancil/status/1601020232994201601

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