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Twitter “Silenced” Dissenting Voices During Protests in Egypt: Research
- valley-green 7y agoTwitter is so anti-Trump, I’m not surprised they’re doing it to other countries too.
- polityagent 7y agocould you explain the link? In this situation they were apparently silencing anti government voices, which sounds like the opposite.
- FussyZeus 7y agoOr they're just pro-reality.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- primroot 7y agoAlso relevant "Twitter’s ‘head of editorial’ for Middle East is officer in British Army’s information warfare unit" https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/twitter-executive-british-army-officer-psyops-gordon-macmillan-a9127036.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/twitter-exec...
- pjc50 7y agoSounds like the accounts got reported for abusive language. But since the process is opaque, there's no way to know.
- ahbyb 7y ago"abusive language" is such a generic term. I was thinking that if I wanted every critic of mine to shut up I could say I identify as a female and then get them all banned for misgendering me if they ever referred to me as he/him :P
- brenden2 7y agoAlgorithmic censorship has become the new norm. If you have opinions outside the Overton window you will be silently penalized on Twitter, FB, etc, and your posts will silently not appear. You have to go along with the tribe that you've been gerrymandered into or else you'll be silenced. Content is dumbed down everywhere because you can only post things on these platforms which are compatible with advertisers. Big brands don't want to see their ads alongside someone's fringe opinions, thus they have to punish the "bad" content to appease their customers.
- dmix 7y agoPeople love to rah rah this stuff when it helps their ideology then wake up and find they’ve created an even bigger monster. Politicians will change but this type of thing rarely comes back after it’s being given away.
- all2 7y ago> People love to rah rah this stuff when it helps their ideology then wake up and find they’ve created an even bigger monster. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_... No one seems to understand that the monster they want to replace modern society with will consume them first. Any major revolution, once properly entrenched, targets those who started the revolution.
- danharaj 7y agoFirst they came for the socialists. Buddy please read the damn poem. It was about "modern society" purging itself of the kind of people you are criticizing.
- all2 7y agoI think you've missed my point. The quote isn't relevant from a "the socialists will be the first to go" perspective. Its relevant from a "the ideologies that fuel revolution will be the first to go". Also, I'm not seeking to criticize anyone. My goal is to point out that revolution is ugly business that often (not always) eats its own.
- thrower123 7y agoI think incompetence is more likely. It doesn't take much of a ring of accounts flagging an account to get it temporarily suspended. There appear to be thresholds which will automatically suspend an account, pending appeal or review. It's easy enough to have happen if you disagree with certain groups of extremely online people and they take a personal disliking, so it would certainly be within the power of any mildly capable security agency.
- zaphirplane 7y agoI don’t know the specifics here and clearly we can all agree that silencing government opposition views isn’t health. There is a subtly of tweeting this politician or governor is corrupt and we the people don’t like this vs these government pigs are evil and we should burn them. Perhaps dissenting views and aggressive violent tweets can be considered differently?
- vonmoltke 7y agoThe issue is detecting them, accurately, at scale.
- LegitShady 7y agoRemember when people were looking at the Arab Spring and saying "this will be covered on social media more quickly than traditional media" But now it appears new media has become as bad as traditional media but with more influence and less competition. I don't understand why twitter still exists.
- corodra 7y agoRight? Didn't Twitter and other social media platforms lay claim to "helping" voice and organize the people to protest and revolt during the Arab Spring? I remember them being pretty proud of that.
- formalsystem 7y agoI've been closely following the revolution happening in Lebanon and I'll often see a notification like "The following media includes potentially sensitive content" for content like https://twitter.com/encrier/status/1188067004240019456 https://twitter.com/encrier/status/1188067004240019456 Which translates to * Retrieve people's money * Resignation of government * New parliament Thank you Twitter for "protecting" me from being offended. EDIT: I've been getting very angry everytime I see demands for censorship on social media, it's like people forgot they had their own revolution at some point and really needed to communicate what was happening to make it a reality.
- detaro 7y agoGiven it applies to everything they post it seems, could also be that the user set the flag to apply this to all their posts automatically. (I don't think there is a way of telling the difference)
- lonelappde 7y agoWhy would you spend the time to write a comment that takes longer to write than to debunk? https://mobile.twitter.com/encrier https://mobile.twitter.com/encrier
- detaro 7y agoHow does that debunk it? It shows exactly what I describe.
- im3w1l 7y agoIt seems to be only embedded images that show as sensitive. Not the text and not embedded tweets.
- detaro 7y agoWhich is exactly what the matching twitter option does: it marks media you post as "sensitive" and puts the click-through in front of it. Text and retweets aren't media, and you can't enable a filter for them (there is an profile-wide "this profile may contain potentially sensitive content" warning too, but as far as I know that is only applied by Twitter, not a user setting)
- BlueTemplar 7y agoWow, talk about a 180° turn in just a few years!
- aantix 7y agoIt’s as if Twitter’s models are trained to highlight the tweets that agree and are empathetic to the original tweet. Users pile on with the “OMG yes this. This. This!” or “I don’t know why people like this exist “ and the rest of the crew are there to nod their heads. There’s no discussion on Twitter. It’s either pats on the back or one liner screaming matches.