Twitter allegedly deleting negative tweets about United Airlines incident

This may serve as an example of a lot of the things wrong in society. First, as a show of how good faith has broken down. Then, to demonstrate the logical contortions performed by people who are otherwise perfectly capable of critical thinking, but really want to see their mistrust in every institution, or human, be true.

This alleged conspiracy would involve

(a) some rather rapid negotiations for a sum that wouldn't be much below the market value of Twitter,

(b) the believe that now, 24h+ after it broke on Twitter, it has not made the jump to many other distribution channels already, and

(c) the complete idiocy of United and Twitter in thinking such a scheme would not be noticed or, if noticed, would not result in coverage orders-of-magnitudes worse than what they deleted. Oh, and

(d) apparently they forgot to delete the original tweets, which were the one actually being shared.

All that is quite implausible, even though it may be possible. Here's an alternative theory: Twitter has, in an attempt to combat spam, implemented a filter that registers a sudden rise in certain keywords, maybe within a negative context. Once triggered, it throttles new tweets that match automatically, until someone overrides it manually. This system just failed spectacularly, because it had never before seen such an amount of tweets with such an imbalance of sentiment.

I'm not saying that the latter theory is true. I just believe it's much more plausible than Twitter just throwing its business away. And while I don't care much about this specific company, I believe something larger is amiss when every single event is always interpreted in the worst (barely) possible way.

If everyone and everything is assumed to be corrupt, pretty soon that's how it's going to be–either because it doesn't make a difference for the pitchfork-people if I'm really corrupt (or just incompetent/unlucky) so why bother? Or because those with pitchforks don't see problem with becoming corrupted themselves. Everyone is doing it, after all.

So, in an attempt to stem the tide of corruption, people scream for transparency, and everyone is accused, everyone is a subject, everyone is under investigation. That, however, cannot work: a liberal democracy does not have the means to audit and control everyone. A free society, and an advanced economy, is sustained by 98%+ doing the right thing even when nobody is looking. That, and the trust it brings, and the institutions it makes possible, is basically the difference between Canada and Somalia.

So I'll delay my scorn for a day and see what Twitter has to offer, and I'll needle the guy I know there with jokes and watch him turn red, and I'll know that moment of shame is (for him) more of an incentive to do better than a million hateful tweets would ever be.

In short, because they think you'd engage less with Scott Adams' content.

Filter bubbles are an algorithmic attempt to give you the content that you want the most. For example, Twitter might have identified at some level that you like and retweet sports related content more often than political content. Or even further, that you like left-leaning content more than right. So, they'll do everything they can to serve you what they think you want. If it keeps you scrolling, then they make more ad dollars.

All of these nuanced inputs impact what you see on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.

The problem is, there IS a difference between what you want to see and what you should see. Just because you love cat photos, doesn't mean that the NY Times should be filled with them.

If you haven't watched it, I highly recommend this (9 min) ted talk on the topic: https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_b...

Sure... It's like a restaurant spitting in your food.

The shadowbanning and bubbling only started like two years ago. That thing about seeing all replies was changed... I don't know, eight years ago? And that made all the sense in the world and it's in no way censoring or anything... My friends talking to people I don't know is not something I care about. But my friends talking to me and me not seeing it because they are shadowbanned? That's a new low.

Apparently they had something similar (?) happen.

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/wayne-county/201...