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Scott Adams: The Social Media Hive Mind
- devopsproject 10y agoThis is concerning and gives the right some credibility when they claim "fake news" and "censorship".
- pvg 10y agoNo it doesn't because it contains no evidence other than Scott Adams's unsubstantiated (and by this point paranoid) claims he's being censored. What he describes is flaky twitter behaviour that happens all the time. Twitter doesn't censor the overt Nazis and racists and they're singling out Scott Adams? Really?
- coldpie 10y agoScott Adams is kind of a nutbar, this kind of paranoia is right up his alley. He thought Hillary Clinton was going to kill him if he said he was planning to vote against her.
- devopsproject 10y ago> Scott Adams is kind of a nutbar, this kind of paranoia is right up his alley Opinion > He thought Hillary Clinton was going to kill him if he said he was planning to vote against her. An outright lie. There are plenty of things to attack the other side on. Making things up is pretty low.
- coldpie 10y ago> An outright lie. As I said elsewhere before a mod exploded this thread, it was a mistake, not a lie. It doesn't change my material point that Scott Adams is a nutter and this article isn't worth discussing.
- dang 10y agoI don't know what you mean by 'exploded' but mods haven't touched this thread. It has been flagged by users.
- devopsproject 10y agothe mods pruned it to promote civility
- coldpie 10y agoThis: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13590264 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13590264 Used to be a reply to this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13590238 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13590238 It was broken into pieces, or, "exploded" :)
- dang 10y agoAh I see now. You were talking about a subthread of the discussion, not the top-level story as I assumed.
- Nadya 10y agoIt's also not the first time Twitter has censored things. It's been going on for years. The #GamerGate hashtag at one point, for a period of time, returned results for "wine" and "beach". A very mature and cute nod towards "whine and bitch" because a few Twitter workers were closely related to a few prominent "anti-GamerGate" people. This happened in December 2015, I don't remember the period of time it lasted (hours or days). Not to mention certain hashtags were prevented from trending or deliberately removed from the 'Trending' area. #GamerGate at one point was large enough to get any hashtag trending that they wanted. Think of it like /r/The_Donald getting to the front page of Reddit prior to the last algorithm change. It would happen and it would happen every day. Any hashtag that was "obviously #GG" would be removed from the trending list. Any hashtag "hijacked" by #GG would be removed from the trending list. Any tag #GG managed to push into trending would magically disappear not too long after - even though with their numbers they could keep a tag trending for several hours, not just several minutes. E: Also Scott Adams isn't the only one to notice this. Many pro-Trump people have checked their engagement numbers pre-inauguration day and post-inauguration day. Going from consistent 1000+ retweets/favs to < 10 with no change in behavior, just that their tweets are no longer showing in their Follower's feeds and thus no longer receiving interactions.
- dorfsmay 10y agoWhat's the solution? A peer to peer link/text sharing? Tweets in a block chain?
- sharemywin 10y agoblock chain wouldn't scale.
- sharemywin 10y agoI think you have to build out multiple channels to your "audience" email, twitter, facebook, etc.
- dorfsmay 10y agoI think a lot of us do that already, maybe the silver lining of the debacle is that the general public will understand the need for this too. Still, I feel that a generic, simple, non-censored, non-censorable, way to share links and short updates is needed.
- sharemywin 10y agoIf it's like Facebook they throttle anything that's too viral. Then, send you a "boost this post" ad so you can pay.
- sparkzilla 10y agoI have been following Adam's blog through the election and his analyses of the psychological factors behind Trump's rise is IMHO required reading, whether you are for Trump or against.
- seppin 10y agoHis persuasion techniques didn't work to convince a majority of Americans to follow him, as Adam repeatedly said it would. He is doing a victory lap for being 100% wrong
- sparkzilla 10y agoThe object of an election is to win. Trump persuaded the people he was supposed to do to win. Persuading those who don't count is not a winning strategy.
- jasonlfunk 10y agoThe more interesting title of this story: "Scott Adams: Twitter is censoring my tweets."
- splawn 10y ago"Scott Adams: Asserts that twitter is censoring his tweets without evidence"
- ikeyany 10y agoI'm surprised that platforms like Twitter and Facebook aren't seen as de facto utilities, when a certain percentage of the population uses them, and when they're the main method of communication for powerful institutions like corporations and the president. Because when they aren't, you end up with arguments like "If you want free speech, just don't use private platforms". I don't think that's a reasonable argument anymore...those platforms wedged themselves into being a necessity for public figures.
- sparkzilla 10y agoI wish people would stop saying this: If platforms are treated as public utilities they will be under government control and there will be zeo free speech, and there will be no competition. The solution is for the private marketplace to make better products.
- pc86 10y agoNeither Twitter nor Facebook are "the main method of communication" for the President.
- koolba 10y agoOutside of the State of the Union address, I'm not aware of any "main method of communication" for the POTUS. You could argue the press conferences held by the press secretary are one form, but they're not mandated by the Constitution.
- pc86 10y agoI would say the press conferences are the main method as they are from the White House and happen multiple times a day. I don't know that a Constitutional mandate would have anything to do with it.
- ikeyany 10y agoThey're the main method to address the public. But how does the president communicate and interact with the public? Twitter.
- devopsproject 10y ago[citation needed]
- pvg 10y agoI don't think it's asking too much to google trivially verifiable claims. "Clinton supporters have convinced me – and here I am being 100% serious – that my safety is at risk if I am seen as supportive of Trump. So I’m taking the safe way out and endorsing Hillary Clinton for president." -Scott Adams Did you [citation needed] his claims that twitter regularly censors political speech? Because there really is no evidence of that.
- Nadya 10y agoThat's a very different claim than "Clinton will have me killed". It also isn't entirely inconceivable or wrong, as it's actually happened [0]. Maybe after seeing enough videos of physical violence being inflicted against Trump supporters he decided it was best if he wasn't seen as pro-Trump for his own safety? [0] https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=trump+supporter+beaten https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=trump+supporter...
- devopsproject 10y agoPoster claimed Hillary Clinton was going to kill him. Which is different than being afraid of mobs. Spreading obvious lies is part of the problem. We will never be better than the other side if we have to stoop to their levels
- Nadya 10y agoDifferent person responded to you than who made the claim, FYI. You asked for a citation from coldpie and received it from pvg.
- pvg 10y agoThe actual claim was "Scott Adams is kind of a nutbar, this kind of paranoia is right up his alley." I think you should be easily able to convince yourself of that with a little searching.
- splawn 10y agoI know the only reason I never go viral with anything is because of conspiracy... it is the only possibility. /s
- sremani 10y agoScott Adams is already famous, and he is very specific about topics that are throttled, Trump and Climate Change. He may have a point and he may not have a point, but he is not a source to dismiss.
- splawn 10y agoIt is irrelevant how famous he is... if he doesn't have evidence to back up his claim then he is a source to dismiss. In fact, when considering the truth of anything that is my main criteria. Im curious what yours must be.
- sremani 10y agoHis fame matters because he has lot more twitter followers and each tweet has massive feedback in likes etc. a variety data-set than for example me (with 4 followers). That is where I am coming from. The uppity in your post, as if you are the only priest of Truth is confirming what I already suspected.
- splawn 10y agoOh? so he knows how twitter's algo works? cool...
- abledon 10y agoFunny that this is a flagged story on HN
- endorphone 10y agoWhy is that funny? Adams is making an entirely unsubstantiated, and again self-centered, claim: These sorts of things always get flagged. He's done this time and time again -- if an error (which Twitter has many of, and I respect as a consequence of the scale) happens to him, it's a conspiracy. If he isn't at the top of people's feeds, it's a conspiracy. Didn't the people like Adams all claim they were going to go to some alternative Twitter? Why haven't they just done that by now?
- dkonofalski 10y agoAre we sure that the "Tweet Unavailable" message isn't just because a tweet was really popular and the script that's pulling the info didn't get a 503 error or something temporarily when it was pulling the tweet content? Why is it always a conspiracy for something that's explained by something a lot less conspicuous?
- good_gnu 10y agoBreaking News: Twitter is free to not boost his tweets for any reason of their choice or no reason at all in exactly the same way that Fox news is free to only cover things from a conservative point of view. Curiously, you only see Scott Adams complaining about one of these things.
- andrelaszlo 10y agoThere could be so many reasons for tweets becoming unavailable, not related to The World Hates Scott Adams(tm). It appears to happen when you quote someone, then block them, for example. It could also just be a bug. I've seen the "this tweet is unavailable" message tons of times, but never noticed a pattern. If it's true that this is throttling, a tool used to suppress and censor "any content that disagrees with [Twitter's] political views" then that would be interesting but there's nothing in this post that supports this except a strange video. The "great video" makes a lot of claims without any proof. It's mostly a long, super aggressive, homophobic[0], rant. Could it just be selection bias. If you mostly follow aholes on Twitter, and some tweets become unavailable because the quote feature is broken (or something), then it seems like your ahole opinion is being censored? [0]: Uses language like "I'm the worlds biggest faggot", "fat bull dykes", etc.
- dkonofalski 10y agoThis is exactly what I said. The guy in the video seems like the type of personality that would immediately default to "I'm being censored, OH NOEZ!" when a simple technical issue could cause his tweet to show as unavailable. There are any number of reasons that this could happen and the fact that every single piece of info he has is anecdotal and without a pattern is extremely suspect. I mean, this theory could be easily disproved just by showing a left-leaning tweet where it shows as unavailable. This seems like a perfect fit for Occam's Razor.
- sverige 10y agoThe problem with this argument is that there have been hundreds or possibly thousands of accounts removed from Twitter since the election simply for political content. It's not a technical issue, nor is it a secret. It's a purge of content and accounts that Twitter deems offensive because the content and the people who tweet and retweet it are on the opposite side of the political spectrum. And it's not based on a failure to follow community guidelines -- or if it is, those guidelines are very unevenly enforced under the "don't shoot anyone to our left" rule.
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- dvfjsdhgfv 10y agoOh the irony! The fact that this story got flagged basically supports it.
- pc86 10y agoWhy has this been flagged?
- slowhand09 10y agoI'll get spanked here for sure, but he is right. Facebook did it too, got caught, and admitted it. Half of what I read in the collection of comments looks as credible as fake news. FYI I watch CNN AND Fox. Left and right obviously. Regarding political matters, I deem Fox more credible. They show more of the actual info. CNN has been caught multiple times editing at the perfect moment to change the meaning. "You can't add too much water to a nuclear reactor"