10 ms·

"New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach. Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twi

"New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach. Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter. You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from rest of Internet." How is this any different than Elon's stated goals from 3 weeks ago?

rhaksw 4y ago
You're right it's not. I gather if you want to get two sides to talk who aren't talking, i.e. those who support that message vs. those who don't, you need to appeal to both.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  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 assholes all over the political spectrum. But conservatives have made outrage and offensiveness their brand, in recent years. I remember being astonished and disgusted by the gleeful antagonism of Rush Limbaugh back int eh 1990s when conservative talk radio first became A Thing following the Reagan administration's abolition of the 'Fairness doctrine.'
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - rhaksw 4y ago
    > 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 disinformation researcher [2], argues for limits of the reach of certain content. One has blocked the other, so they no longer communicate directly. Five years ago, someone at Twitter might have observed this interaction and decided, "I'm going to secretly action content. That will satisfy both the disinfo labeler and the anti-censorship crowd." Yet in doing so, as we can see, nobody is satisfied. They're still not talking to each other, and they don't understand why. The reason is due to the secrecy built into all of these platforms where an unknown third party is actioning content without anyone involved in the conversation knowing about it. See also Free speech for me--but not for thee : how the American left and right relentlessly censor each other [3] (Nat Hentoff, 1992) [1] https://twitter.com/noUpside/status/1599532506252214272 https://twitter.com/noUpside/status/1599532506252214272 [2] https://www.wired.com/story/free-speech-is-not-the-same-as-free-reach/ https://www.wired.com/story/free-speech-is-not-the-same-as-f... [3] https://archive.org/details/freespeechformeb0000hent/page/n9/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/freespeechformeb0000hent/page/n9...
    - anigbrowl 4y ago
      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.
      - rhaksw 4y ago
        > Ther's no obligation to have dialog with others who are actively threatening to kill you. I never said there was. Even free speech law has limits and may punish such speech. What I advocate is for authors of secretly removed content to be able to discover the removal, because even if the comment is vitriolic, the offending author may perceive the lack of a response as tacit approval of their words. > 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 Left wing extremists are currently saying that words are violence [1]. This is wrong, short of something that "in context, directly causes specific imminent serious harm", a definition from Nadine Strossen [2]. [1] https://archive.ph/1NeiV https://archive.ph/1NeiV [2] https://books.google.com/books?&hl=en&id=whBQDwAAQBAJ&q=in+context%2C+it+directly+causes+specific+imminent+serious+harm https://books.google.com/books?&hl=en&id=whBQDwAAQBAJ&q=in+c...
        ModernMech 4y ago
        > Left wing extremists are currently saying that words are violence [1]. It’s the Republican, Trump-appointed, FBI director’s assessment that extremist right-wing political violence (read homegrown right-wing terrorism) is far and away a bigger problem than left-wing violence. Jan 6 I hoped would have demonstrated that clearly once and for all. After that day, it has become impossible to “both sides” political violence in the US — it really is asymmetrically coming from the right.
MallocVoidstar 4y ago
fdasfdasfads 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
adnzzzzZ 4y ago
A shadowban has the property that it's hidden from the user. Elon seems to want to make these kinds of actions transparent, like, for instance, deboosted tweets being visible as deboosted by their creator/other users, which is a pretty big difference. This difference is already visible in initial intent: Twitter hid what they were doing https://twitter.com/Twitter/status/1022658436704731136 https://twitter.com/Twitter/status/1022658436704731136, while Elon is explicitly saying what he will do.
- veec_cas_tant 4y ago
  That tweet is referencing this[0] blog post. > We do not shadow ban. You are always able to see the tweets from accounts you follow (although you may have to do more work to find them, like go directly to their profile). And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology. It specifically mentions factoring in user behavior: >What actions you take on Twitter (e.g. who you follow, who you retweet, etc) > How other accounts interact with you (e.g. who mutes you, who follows you, who retweets you, who blocks you, etc) How was Twitter hiding this? [0]: https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2018/Setting-the-record-straight-on-shadow-banning.html https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2018/...
  - HappyTypist 4y ago
    Twitter's visibility filtering wasn't based on "Your" User Behavior. It was based on what their moderation team decided to filter or not filter.
    - veec_cas_tant 4y ago
      Sure, there was human involvement. Seems irrelevant to the comment I was responding to - Twitter did not hide that they were deranking some Tweets and there doesn't seem to be any difference between their current policy 'revealed' in the Twitter Files and what Elon proposed.
- threeseed 4y ago
  Problem is that there is a reason shadow bans exist. It prevents nefarious actors from easily probing the limits of their content moderation processes. It really is funny how Musk is just taking Twitter back to the start.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jdminhbg 4y ago
> How is this any different than Elon's stated goals from 3 weeks ago? It is different because Elon's goals are at the level of tweets, and the screenshots here depict action at the level of users.
- agar 4y ago
  Like Kanye West?

rhaksw 4y ago

You're right it's not. I gather if you want to get two sides to talk who aren't talking, i.e. those who support that message vs. those who don't, you need to appeal to both.

anigbrowl 4y ago
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 assholes all over the political spectrum. But conservatives have made outrage and offensiveness their brand, in recent years. I remember being astonished and disgusted by the gleeful antagonism of Rush Limbaugh back int eh 1990s when conservative talk radio first became A Thing following the Reagan administration's abolition of the 'Fairness doctrine.'
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- rhaksw 4y ago
  > 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 disinformation researcher [2], argues for limits of the reach of certain content. One has blocked the other, so they no longer communicate directly. Five years ago, someone at Twitter might have observed this interaction and decided, "I'm going to secretly action content. That will satisfy both the disinfo labeler and the anti-censorship crowd." Yet in doing so, as we can see, nobody is satisfied. They're still not talking to each other, and they don't understand why. The reason is due to the secrecy built into all of these platforms where an unknown third party is actioning content without anyone involved in the conversation knowing about it. See also Free speech for me--but not for thee : how the American left and right relentlessly censor each other [3] (Nat Hentoff, 1992) [1] https://twitter.com/noUpside/status/1599532506252214272 https://twitter.com/noUpside/status/1599532506252214272 [2] https://www.wired.com/story/free-speech-is-not-the-same-as-free-reach/ https://www.wired.com/story/free-speech-is-not-the-same-as-f... [3] https://archive.org/details/freespeechformeb0000hent/page/n9/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/freespeechformeb0000hent/page/n9...
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    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.
    - rhaksw 4y ago
      > Ther's no obligation to have dialog with others who are actively threatening to kill you. I never said there was. Even free speech law has limits and may punish such speech. What I advocate is for authors of secretly removed content to be able to discover the removal, because even if the comment is vitriolic, the offending author may perceive the lack of a response as tacit approval of their words. > 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 Left wing extremists are currently saying that words are violence [1]. This is wrong, short of something that "in context, directly causes specific imminent serious harm", a definition from Nadine Strossen [2]. [1] https://archive.ph/1NeiV https://archive.ph/1NeiV [2] https://books.google.com/books?&hl=en&id=whBQDwAAQBAJ&q=in+context%2C+it+directly+causes+specific+imminent+serious+harm https://books.google.com/books?&hl=en&id=whBQDwAAQBAJ&q=in+c...
      - ModernMech 4y ago
        > Left wing extremists are currently saying that words are violence [1]. It’s the Republican, Trump-appointed, FBI director’s assessment that extremist right-wing political violence (read homegrown right-wing terrorism) is far and away a bigger problem than left-wing violence. Jan 6 I hoped would have demonstrated that clearly once and for all. After that day, it has become impossible to “both sides” political violence in the US — it really is asymmetrically coming from the right.

MallocVoidstar 4y ago

fdasfdasfads 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

adnzzzzZ 4y ago

A shadowban has the property that it's hidden from the user. Elon seems to want to make these kinds of actions transparent, like, for instance, deboosted tweets being visible as deboosted by their creator/other users, which is a pretty big difference. This difference is already visible in initial intent: Twitter hid what they were doing https://twitter.com/Twitter/status/1022658436704731136 https://twitter.com/Twitter/status/1022658436704731136, while Elon is explicitly saying what he will do.

veec_cas_tant 4y ago
That tweet is referencing this[0] blog post. > We do not shadow ban. You are always able to see the tweets from accounts you follow (although you may have to do more work to find them, like go directly to their profile). And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology. It specifically mentions factoring in user behavior: >What actions you take on Twitter (e.g. who you follow, who you retweet, etc) > How other accounts interact with you (e.g. who mutes you, who follows you, who retweets you, who blocks you, etc) How was Twitter hiding this? [0]: https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2018/Setting-the-record-straight-on-shadow-banning.html https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2018/...
- HappyTypist 4y ago
  Twitter's visibility filtering wasn't based on "Your" User Behavior. It was based on what their moderation team decided to filter or not filter.
  - veec_cas_tant 4y ago
    Sure, there was human involvement. Seems irrelevant to the comment I was responding to - Twitter did not hide that they were deranking some Tweets and there doesn't seem to be any difference between their current policy 'revealed' in the Twitter Files and what Elon proposed.
threeseed 4y ago
Problem is that there is a reason shadow bans exist. It prevents nefarious actors from easily probing the limits of their content moderation processes. It really is funny how Musk is just taking Twitter back to the start.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jdminhbg 4y ago

> How is this any different than Elon's stated goals from 3 weeks ago? It is different because Elon's goals are at the level of tweets, and the screenshots here depict action at the level of users.

agar 4y ago
Like Kanye West?