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Algorithmic 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 pos

Algorithmic 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 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. 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 ago
    First 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 ago
      I 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.
      - yorwba 7y ago
        The poem really doesn't work from a "the revolution eats its own" perspective. It's about Nazis getting rid of their political enemies, not about revolutionaries purging their own ranks.
        catalogia 7y ago
        > "It's about Nazis getting rid of their political enemies, not about revolutionaries purging their own ranks." "Revolutionary" is a word I would reserve for people I agree with, but it should be noted that the Nazis purged their own ranks. "Political enemies" and "their own ranks" are not even remotely mutually exclusive. Rather, the later is a subset of the former. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives (Note also that poet in question was originally a Nazi, until he realized he'd be targeted by them too.)
        yorwba 7y ago
        Yes, the Nazis also purged their own ranks, but the groups listed were all external political enemies. If the poem were worded in the first person as "First we came for ...", it would serve better to illustrate your own group turning against you rather than it being some third party you don't dare speak out against.
        all2 7y ago
        Nazi == National Socialist German Workers' Party So... why would a socialist party first target socialists? The people who started the thing are the ones getting targeted.
        colejohnson66 7y ago
        I can’t reply to the dead post, so I’m commenting here: I see this confusion a lot, and I don’t understand it. North Korea is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and its clearly not democratic. China claims to be communist when they’re not.
eternalban 7y ago
Blaming "Big brands" for what could also be concerted effort by the owners of these "Big brands" and their friends to affect control over political speech. Blaming advertising gets tiresome. It is a device, not the cause, of "dumbing down" of Western discourse and curtailing of free political speech. If you insist that it is "advertising" that is the cause of this malaise, then you must agree that "advertising" is not compatible with modern free democtratic societies and needs to be made illegal.
- Sessions 7y ago
  If you insist that it is 'advertising' that is the cause of this malaise, then you must agree that 'advertising' is not compatible with modern free democtratic societies and needs to be made illegal That's a leap. A quote that's always stuck with me: "It's important to recognise one of the catastrophist's rhetorical moves: Stories of doom thrive on turning a tension into an incompatibility." It's more useful to think of the conversation we're having as the ongoing negotiation of a long-standing tension, with social media providing a new wrinkle.
zozbot234 7y ago
It's not just advertisers, it's any sort of controversy whatsoever. Monopoly platforms and walled gardens (FB, Twitter, YouTube etc.) don't want to deal with controversy, so they'd much rather silence such opinions. Federated or decentralized platforms are the only way to get sustainable freedom of expression on the web.
- Jd 7y ago
  I think that's only half true. If you were following the controversial social media engagement by the Trump campaign, it was clearly established that having two emotionally invested warring sides on either side of an opinion is a huge driver for platform engagement. So I think to some extent these platforms need highly contentious trending topics to be "relevant."
coldtea 7y ago
And not even society's at large Overton window. It could be the "setting the tone" minority (pundits, influencers, journalists, etc) Overton window...
- NotAnEconomist 7y ago
  It absolutely is. We've seen from CNN and Google that their views don't match society at large, and they're happy to use their positions of influence to "correct" society. That's what caused CNN's ratings to collapse, and Google to face both a lawsuit (PragerU) and investigation (from Congress). Did either stop them? Of course not -- they know better than you! (If anyone wonders why my posts are dead -- it's because HN employs the same kind of Overton censorship, under the guise of policing tone.)
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
It's not just the magical algorithms of twitter and facebook. This shows up with simpler algorithms that are nearly just "count upvotes." If I say something outside the overton window here, it's going straight to the bottom. I think its a feature of any algo that tries to help you not have to read the impossible 100% of things happening. It has to sort by something.
- BlueTemplar 7y ago
  But at least it's other people, rather than a supposedly neutral company doing it...
BlueTemplar 7y ago
Begging the question as to why websites like Twitter have still not been banned in democratic countries...
- jakeogh 7y ago
  It's a walled garden of strong control. The rules are whatever they say they are. Delete that post and go stand in the corner. Quazi-dictatorships are excellent at supressing minority thought. Majority rule countries will have no problem with Twitter.
  - BlueTemplar 7y ago
    They should have a problem with private companies not only becoming communication infrastructure, but then doing censorship !
    - jakeogh 7y ago
      It's not like the approved opinions are going to get censored. Like FB it's a preception managment platform, they dont need to be honest or even pretend to be neutral. The dogma they push will constantly be "not doing enough". The social managment class is more than happy with that situation. It's a form of Strategy of Tension. More laws(rules to follow) is not a fix, that's the brier patch. I think many of the problems go back to copyright law if one games it out; limiting exposure to necessary information. Even obtaining news footage archives is difficult. Removing their ability to prevent re-broadcast would fix many things. Tip-toeing around on fair use is a serious limit on critical speech.
      - BlueTemplar 7y ago
        Yes, copyright terms should be set to be (as it once was) to be 14 years, renewable against a fee once. > Like FB it's a preception managment platform, they dont need to be honest or even pretend to be neutral. If it's a platform (and platforms, IMHO, go against the very spirit of the Internet), then they should be forced by law to be neutral.
vonmoltke 7y ago
> Algorithmic 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. Algorithmic censorship, and demand for it, is the problem. However, that has nothing to do with Overton windows. The issue is the prioritization of recall over all else. Various groups (e.g., popular outcry, Legal) demand that as much actual abusive content as possible be flagged and suppressed or removed. In their view, falsely flagging content is acceptable collateral damage as long as the real bad stuff gets caught as well. The precision in classification isn't there to enforce an Overton window even if that was the goal.
- Mountain_Skies 7y ago
  Sometimes their opinion of what constitutes real bad stuff isn't shared by society at large outside of their particular ideological group. It almost always boils down to punishing wrong think where some self anointed group gets to decide for everyone what is permissible thought. The really stupid part in all of this is the belief that these tools can't be taken away from them and used against them. History shows such power shifts can happen quickly and often with terrible results.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- 50656E6973 7y ago
  Social media algorithms of course influence the Overton Window. It doesn't matter if the developers are consciously conspiring to do it or not; algorithmic bias is naturally inherent.
  - vonmoltke 7y ago
    I'm not meaning to suggest that algorithms don't have unconscious (WRT their designers) biases. I'm saying the algorithms used for compliance and compliance-adjacent tasks skew very heavily towards recall, resulting generally in poor precision. In many cases, the precision is so low that it overwhelms any conscious or unconscious bias in the algorithm.
ipython 7y ago
I am flabbergasted at these sorts of posts. You can find posts from all parts of the political spectrum on Twitter. If there was truly "censorship" based on political stance it wouldn't be the cesspool that it is already. What I don't get is this sort of discourse on a site filled with developers. If you don't like the established platforms, why don't you just create your own? The entire end-to-end vision of the Internet is still alive and well.
sacrificedcapon 7y ago
It isn't just social media. Google's censorship of their search results predates censorship on social media by a few years. It feels like a century ago, but traditional media and the elites attacked Google until Google gave in on censoring google news and google search. Also, I think we distract ourselves when we blame "advertisers" for censorship. After all the top advertisers in the US are also the major media players - Comcast, AT&T, P&G, Disney, Charter, Verizon. https://www.adbrands.net/us/top-us-advertisers.htm https://www.adbrands.net/us/top-us-advertisers.htm So these media companies use their massive platforms to manipulate and control the public, they also use their advertising money to manipulate and control ( indirectly and directly ). It isn't "advertisers", it is major mass media companies trying to control and influence new media. As has always happened, whether it is cable, radio, telegraph, etc.

dmix 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. 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 ago
  First 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 ago
    I 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.
    - yorwba 7y ago
      The poem really doesn't work from a "the revolution eats its own" perspective. It's about Nazis getting rid of their political enemies, not about revolutionaries purging their own ranks.
      - catalogia 7y ago
        > "It's about Nazis getting rid of their political enemies, not about revolutionaries purging their own ranks." "Revolutionary" is a word I would reserve for people I agree with, but it should be noted that the Nazis purged their own ranks. "Political enemies" and "their own ranks" are not even remotely mutually exclusive. Rather, the later is a subset of the former. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives (Note also that poet in question was originally a Nazi, until he realized he'd be targeted by them too.)
        yorwba 7y ago
        Yes, the Nazis also purged their own ranks, but the groups listed were all external political enemies. If the poem were worded in the first person as "First we came for ...", it would serve better to illustrate your own group turning against you rather than it being some third party you don't dare speak out against.
        all2 7y ago
        Nazi == National Socialist German Workers' Party So... why would a socialist party first target socialists? The people who started the thing are the ones getting targeted.
        colejohnson66 7y ago
        I can’t reply to the dead post, so I’m commenting here: I see this confusion a lot, and I don’t understand it. North Korea is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and its clearly not democratic. China claims to be communist when they’re not.

eternalban 7y ago

Blaming "Big brands" for what could also be concerted effort by the owners of these "Big brands" and their friends to affect control over political speech. Blaming advertising gets tiresome. It is a device, not the cause, of "dumbing down" of Western discourse and curtailing of free political speech. If you insist that it is "advertising" that is the cause of this malaise, then you must agree that "advertising" is not compatible with modern free democtratic societies and needs to be made illegal.

Sessions 7y ago
If you insist that it is 'advertising' that is the cause of this malaise, then you must agree that 'advertising' is not compatible with modern free democtratic societies and needs to be made illegal That's a leap. A quote that's always stuck with me: "It's important to recognise one of the catastrophist's rhetorical moves: Stories of doom thrive on turning a tension into an incompatibility." It's more useful to think of the conversation we're having as the ongoing negotiation of a long-standing tension, with social media providing a new wrinkle.

zozbot234 7y ago

It's not just advertisers, it's any sort of controversy whatsoever. Monopoly platforms and walled gardens (FB, Twitter, YouTube etc.) don't want to deal with controversy, so they'd much rather silence such opinions. Federated or decentralized platforms are the only way to get sustainable freedom of expression on the web.

Jd 7y ago
I think that's only half true. If you were following the controversial social media engagement by the Trump campaign, it was clearly established that having two emotionally invested warring sides on either side of an opinion is a huge driver for platform engagement. So I think to some extent these platforms need highly contentious trending topics to be "relevant."

coldtea 7y ago

And not even society's at large Overton window. It could be the "setting the tone" minority (pundits, influencers, journalists, etc) Overton window...

NotAnEconomist 7y ago
It absolutely is. We've seen from CNN and Google that their views don't match society at large, and they're happy to use their positions of influence to "correct" society. That's what caused CNN's ratings to collapse, and Google to face both a lawsuit (PragerU) and investigation (from Congress). Did either stop them? Of course not -- they know better than you! (If anyone wonders why my posts are dead -- it's because HN employs the same kind of Overton censorship, under the guise of policing tone.)

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago

It's not just the magical algorithms of twitter and facebook. This shows up with simpler algorithms that are nearly just "count upvotes." If I say something outside the overton window here, it's going straight to the bottom. I think its a feature of any algo that tries to help you not have to read the impossible 100% of things happening. It has to sort by something.

BlueTemplar 7y ago
But at least it's other people, rather than a supposedly neutral company doing it...

BlueTemplar 7y ago

Begging the question as to why websites like Twitter have still not been banned in democratic countries...

jakeogh 7y ago
It's a walled garden of strong control. The rules are whatever they say they are. Delete that post and go stand in the corner. Quazi-dictatorships are excellent at supressing minority thought. Majority rule countries will have no problem with Twitter.
- BlueTemplar 7y ago
  They should have a problem with private companies not only becoming communication infrastructure, but then doing censorship !
  - jakeogh 7y ago
    It's not like the approved opinions are going to get censored. Like FB it's a preception managment platform, they dont need to be honest or even pretend to be neutral. The dogma they push will constantly be "not doing enough". The social managment class is more than happy with that situation. It's a form of Strategy of Tension. More laws(rules to follow) is not a fix, that's the brier patch. I think many of the problems go back to copyright law if one games it out; limiting exposure to necessary information. Even obtaining news footage archives is difficult. Removing their ability to prevent re-broadcast would fix many things. Tip-toeing around on fair use is a serious limit on critical speech.
    - BlueTemplar 7y ago
      Yes, copyright terms should be set to be (as it once was) to be 14 years, renewable against a fee once. > Like FB it's a preception managment platform, they dont need to be honest or even pretend to be neutral. If it's a platform (and platforms, IMHO, go against the very spirit of the Internet), then they should be forced by law to be neutral.

vonmoltke 7y ago

> Algorithmic 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. Algorithmic censorship, and demand for it, is the problem. However, that has nothing to do with Overton windows. The issue is the prioritization of recall over all else. Various groups (e.g., popular outcry, Legal) demand that as much actual abusive content as possible be flagged and suppressed or removed. In their view, falsely flagging content is acceptable collateral damage as long as the real bad stuff gets caught as well. The precision in classification isn't there to enforce an Overton window even if that was the goal.

Mountain_Skies 7y ago
Sometimes their opinion of what constitutes real bad stuff isn't shared by society at large outside of their particular ideological group. It almost always boils down to punishing wrong think where some self anointed group gets to decide for everyone what is permissible thought. The really stupid part in all of this is the belief that these tools can't be taken away from them and used against them. History shows such power shifts can happen quickly and often with terrible results.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
50656E6973 7y ago
Social media algorithms of course influence the Overton Window. It doesn't matter if the developers are consciously conspiring to do it or not; algorithmic bias is naturally inherent.
- vonmoltke 7y ago
  I'm not meaning to suggest that algorithms don't have unconscious (WRT their designers) biases. I'm saying the algorithms used for compliance and compliance-adjacent tasks skew very heavily towards recall, resulting generally in poor precision. In many cases, the precision is so low that it overwhelms any conscious or unconscious bias in the algorithm.

ipython 7y ago

I am flabbergasted at these sorts of posts. You can find posts from all parts of the political spectrum on Twitter. If there was truly "censorship" based on political stance it wouldn't be the cesspool that it is already. What I don't get is this sort of discourse on a site filled with developers. If you don't like the established platforms, why don't you just create your own? The entire end-to-end vision of the Internet is still alive and well.

sacrificedcapon 7y ago

It isn't just social media. Google's censorship of their search results predates censorship on social media by a few years. It feels like a century ago, but traditional media and the elites attacked Google until Google gave in on censoring google news and google search. Also, I think we distract ourselves when we blame "advertisers" for censorship. After all the top advertisers in the US are also the major media players - Comcast, AT&T, P&G, Disney, Charter, Verizon. https://www.adbrands.net/us/top-us-advertisers.htm https://www.adbrands.net/us/top-us-advertisers.htm So these media companies use their massive platforms to manipulate and control the public, they also use their advertising money to manipulate and control ( indirectly and directly ). It isn't "advertisers", it is major mass media companies trying to control and influence new media. As has always happened, whether it is cable, radio, telegraph, etc.