7 ms·
United States Senate Committee Testimony of Twitter's Acting General Counsel
- Boothroid 9y agoThe consolation is that the internet probably has far less influence on voters than Twitter etc. would have you think.
- Knufen 9y agoI don't think you could be more wrong. Edit: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v489/n7415/full/nature11421.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v489/n7415/full/nature1...
- Boothroid 9y agoOne reference only does not an argument make.
- Knufen 9y agoWell considering that you made the original claim, the burden of proof is on you. A simple Google search will also show you are wrong.
- Boothroid 9y agoThe article isn't accessible so I cannot examine the methodology. Have you read it in full?
- gruez 9y agohttps://sci-hub.io/10.1038/nature11421 https://sci-hub.io/10.1038/nature11421
- Boothroid 9y agoDoesn't your link infringe copyright? 'Sci-Hub is a website with over 62 million academic papers and articles available for direct download.[2] It bypasses publisher paywalls by allowing access through educational institution proxies.'
- blakes 9y agoSo I assume that no reference makes even less an argument?
- erdle 9y agoFrom abstract: "The effect of social transmission on real-world voting was greater than the direct effect of the messages themselves, and nearly all the transmission occurred between ‘close friends’ who were more likely to have a face-to-face relationship. " So people that already were most likely aligned ideologically.
- teraflop 9y agoNote that, contrary to what the HN title implies, Twitter doesn't say it specifically targeted those hashtags or hid them entirely. The testimony mentions them as examples of tags that were associated with a significant number of bot/spam tweets.
- SrslyJosh 9y agoIndeed. The title is misleading. From the PDF: "In the two months preceding the election, around 57,000 users posted approximately 426,000 unique Tweets containing variations of the #PodestaEmails hashtag. Approximately one quarter (25%) of those Tweets received internal tags from our automation detection systems that hid them from searches. As described in greater detail below, our systems detected and hid just under half (48%) of the Tweets relating to variants of another notable hashtag, #DNCLeak, which concerned the disclosure of leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee. These steps were part of our general efforts at the time to fight automation and spam on our platform across all areas."
- creaghpatr 9y agoI'm interested to know how they determined half of all #DNCleaks tweets were spam and how that compares to other trending topics both political and apolitical. Seems like they are hiding behind the anti-spam stance without detailing how their system determines that. Removing almost 50% of communication on a topic is a pretty dramatic step, especially during an election.
- teraflop 9y agoYes, but it would be an equally dramatic step to leave their normal anti-spam system in place, but then specifically exempt a particular hashtag from filtering. But of course you're right; the core problem is that the filtering process itself is completely opaque and inscrutable. We just have to take Twitter's word that it doesn't introduce explicit or implicit biases.
- spdustin 9y agoIn my experience analyzing these sorts of things for my skunkworks project, the "source" (client or app) and too-quick-to-be-human retweet brigades are dead giveaways, and I'd imagine they're part of this algorithm. I also started tracking "visual hashes" of avatars (blurred and reduced to a 32x32 grid) in an effort to find re-used or stock profile pics, which has shown some promise as a spammer/bot/brigade signal. As well, existing known signals such as "user with default background color" or "no verified email address" could be part of it. For example, IFTTT was recently shown to be used by a pro-Trump "retweet brigade" attempting to boost the "Uranium One" campaign with old "RT-style" retweets that look like new tweets but all have the same text. That group wasn't terribly smart, since they all looked the same, and were broadcast in relatively short order by hundreds of accounts. I know these are guesses; Twitter likely won't ever share their secret sauce recipe.
- microcolonel 9y agoAs a Twitter lover, it's been a real letdown to see them sacrifice objectivity and fairness at the altar of political correctness. The platform is so seriously broken by their attempts to censor things they deem unpleasant. I have tried my best to turn off all of their content filtering features, but they still sometimes censor replies to my own replies. You can sometimes see the actual number of replies to a tweet next to the reply button, but can not actually see them at all. At the same time, they have not done anything to reduce certain types of spam, such as the repeated reply chains under the President's tweets, which can so easily be identified as spam by the fact that they are unrelated to the parent, and appear in the same order under a number of parent tweets. It's a total mess. Added: I went back to find an example of the spam chains to reply to Srslyjosh, but I'm pleasantly surprised that they seem to have finally eliminated them. I withdraw that specific criticism I guess.
- SrslyJosh 9y agoSounds like somebody's butthurt about all the mean tweets directed at Orange Shitler.
- microcolonel 9y agoNo, the pro-Trump ones are just as annoying. Regardless of the opinion the chains take, it is annoying that they have nothing to do with the specific tweet.
- sctb 9y agoYikes, would you please not comment like this on Hacker News? We're shooting for a very different kind of discourse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- fhood 9y agoThey did not suppress those tags because of "political correctness" but rather used those as an example of tags associated with unusually high levels of spam.
- ohashi 9y ago"Before the election, we also detected and took action on activity relating to hashtags that have since been reported as manifestations of efforts to interfere with the 2016 election. For example, our automated spam detection systems helped mitigate the impact of automated Tweets promoting the #PodestaEmails hashtag, which originated with Wikileaks’ publication of thousands of emails from the Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s Gmail account. The core of the hashtag was propagated by Wikileaks, whose account sent out a series of 118 original Tweets containing variants on the hashtag #PodestaEmails referencing the daily installments of the emails released on the Wikileaks website. In the two months preceding the election, around 57,000 users posted approximately 426,000 unique Tweets containing variations of the #PodestaEmails hashtag. Approximately one quarter (25%) of those Tweets received internal tags from our automation detection systems that hid them from searches. As described in greater detail below, our systems detected and hid just under half (48%) of the Tweets relating to variants of another notable hashtag, #DNCLeak, which concerned the disclosure of leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee. These steps were part of our general efforts at the time to fight automation and spam on our platform across all areas." Relevant portion based on title. Part of an anti-spam effort.
- cabaalis 9y agoI've never understood Twitter's "anti-spam" effort. The only "spam" I've ever seen on twitter is when someone I am following likes another tweet, or it tells me I should follow someone because someone I'm following follows them. I'm not interested in either of those suggestions. I'm only interested in what the exact account I'm following tweets or retweets, because I decided to follow it. It seems to me that if the system worked as intended, I would see none of this mess because I'm not interested in following the bots. They can tweet away all they want, hundreds of thousand of them, to crickets. I would venture to say that the "spam" is less of a problem for what users really want and more of a problem for their efforts that try to increase user retention/engagement and therefore ad rev.
- bdcravens 9y agoFor a long time if I posted something that the general public would be interested in (say, containing "iPhone") I'd get @ mentioned by a spam account for a related scam ("free iPhone!") or an unrelated spam for a "dating" site by an account with an NSFW profile pic.
- harryf 9y agoSo Twitters explanation seems to be "Posts related to #PodestaEmails and #DNCLeak appeared to be being generated by automated systems and were therefore handled as spam" > Before the election, we also detected and took action on activity relating to hashtags that have since been reported as manifestations of efforts to interfere with the 2016 election. For example, our automated spam detection systems helped mitigate the impact of automated Tweets promoting the #PodestaEmails hashtag, which originated with Wikileaks’ publication of thousands of emails from the Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s Gmail account. The core of the hashtag was propagated by Wikileaks, whose account sent out a series of 118 original Tweets containing variants on the hashtag #PodestaEmails referencing the daily installments of the emails released on the Wikileaks website. In the two months preceding the election, around 57,000 users posted approximately 426,000 unique Tweets containing variations of the #PodestaEmails hashtag. Approximately one quarter (25%) of those Tweets received internal tags from our automation detection systems that hid them from searches. As described in greater detail below, our systems detected and hid just under half (48%) of the Tweets relating to variants of another notable hashtag, #DNCLeak, which concerned the disclosure of leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee. These steps were part of our general efforts at the time to fight automation and spam on our platform across all areas.
- jaytaylor 9y agoI noticed this during that time and reported on my observations [1]. I'm glad to see there is a followup inquiry, even if it's over a year later. The core issue I had back then still seems unclear. When I noticed the oddity, the #DNCLeak hashtag was being hidden / censored (at 3 tweets / sec), and during the same time the pro-democrat hashtag #RNCinCLE was trending strongly (at 12 tweets / min). In this document, is twitter saying it was simply their spam detection and prevention efforts that caused the #DNCLeak to be hidden (and not any ulterior or political motives)? [1] http://scala.sh/twitter-censorship-20160724/ http://scala.sh/twitter-censorship-20160724/
- mjcl 9y ago> pro-democrat hashtag #RNCinCLE What? That was the official hashtag, being promoted by Twitter [1]. [1] https://imgur.com/a/7SX7j https://imgur.com/a/7SX7j
- kadenshep 9y agoCan an admin/mod or whatever change the title? It's blatantly disingenuous if not out right dishonest.
- plandis 9y ago“United States Senate Committee Testimony of Twitter's Acting General Counsel” seems accurate to me. Why do you think this is a dishonest title?
- patrickg_zill 9y agoIf they had taken similar action against the provably bot-ridden tags of some of the pro-Hillary hashtags... they would have mentioned it in an effort to appear fair and balanced. It's a case of "the dog that didn't bark" showing up their actions: Twitter has shown they are biased.
- kadenshep 9y agoOr maybe, now hear me out, there wasn't a reason or motive to have bots propagate pro-Hillary hashtags. Almost seems too simple to be true.
- mnglkhn2 9y agoAnd the polls bear your assertion out: everyone was pro-Hillary and she was winning by a landslide. No need for bots on Twitter or other shenanigans.
- patrickg_zill 9y agoMore like "too simple to be believed"... and easily seen on Twitter, by examining tweeters of Hillary's tweets and noticing that for instance, 10 or more accounts that simultaneously retweeted all had precisely the same number of tweets, in the thousands, and less than 10 followers apiece. More accessible, however, is simply to notice that the testimony was being given to a government where the House, Senate, and Presidency are all Republican. If Twitter could have shown their even headedness, they would have done so.
- kadenshep 9y agoYou're just making stuff up, which is far worse than anecdotal data by itself.
- patrickg_zill 9y agoWilful blindness doesn't suit you. You can very easily find plenty of mainstream media news articles about Hillary's million plus fake followers, and you can look at election era tweets and retweets yourself.