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Something particularly concerning about this incident is buried further down in the article. Under the heading "Why Facebook Doesn't Ban Everyone", Lincoln exp

Something particularly concerning about this incident is buried further down in the article. Under the heading "Why Facebook Doesn't Ban Everyone", Lincoln explains how social network theory can identify individuals in networks that are influential. This isn't an exaggeration - basic graph heuristics (such as comparing in/out degree of an individual relative to other parts of the social graph) can easily identify such individuals. Censoring those individuals can have an amplified effect on the graph structure as a whole. For an example of how just a few individuals can make a big difference on graph structure, check out Watts & Strogatz's 1998 paper, Collective dynamics of 'small-world' networks [0][1]. I'd highly recommend reading it - it's very short and easy to understand. Essentially, a small number of connectors connecting with random individuals can seriously reduce the average number of steps to connect any two individuals. If Facebook wanted to stop the spread of a narrative that they didn't like, censoring just these few individuals would make it much harder for information to flow through the graph as a whole, and hardly anyone would notice (since Facebook's only censoring a few people.) Scary. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts–Strogatz_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts–Strogatz_model [1]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9623998/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9623998/

hartator 6y ago
That's interesting. The disgorzation produced by all the bans will probably impact votes for conservatives for a long time despite not censoring that many people indeed.
- AlphaWeaver 6y ago
  Maybe. The outcome of banning "connectors" typically reduces connectedness between cliques, rather than within cliques themselves. (In graph theory, when a group of people are well connected that share similar interests, we typically call that a clique.) When people complain that people are increasingly finding themselves in echo chambers, and that "people don't talk to people from the other side," connectedness across the graph is dropping, while connectedness within cliques remains strong or increases.
- adventured 6y ago
  Of course. The people that claim voter suppression, are the biggest voter suppressors, using all the levers they control. The people that claim to be in favor of free speech, are the most against free speech in practice. The people that claim to be the most tolerant, are in fact the most intolerant by a wide margin. The people that claim to not like war, keep finding an excuse to bomb and topple more countries. The people that claim to care about civil rights, write a major crime bill that hammers civil rights. The people that claim to care about journalism, actually persecute journalists more than any others ever have in US history. The people that claim to care about human rights, demolish human rights with vast, illegal domestic espionage. The people that claim to care about the working poor and the middle class, those with jobs and wages most susceptible to being undercut by cheap labor competition, flood the system with hyper regressive cheap labor to destroy the poor and middle class workers. Next up in the coming years, a new war closer to home. It'll be called the war on domestic terrorism (or extremism, whatever branding works best), again by the people that claim to love human rights. And it'll be as fake as the war on drugs and the foreign war on terrorism, with one goal in mind: to wipe out as many civil liberties as possible (including and particularly going after encryption, privacy, speech/expression). Nothing can stop what they're about to do, unfortunately. And you can be certain that big tech is fully onboard, you can already see that in their behavior, just like they all lined up so nicely for PRISM et al. You know what all of these people - big state, deep state, military industrial complex, big corporate, whatever you call them by, the whole lot of various power interests that are persistent in DC - hated the most about Trump (far more than his character or policies)? His chaos, how he made a mess of everything, made a mess of their system, made it impossible to make progress on their various goals, such as continuing the pursuit of things like banishing encryption. They made almost zero progress on that under Trump, very little got done. It's really difficult to get things done with that much chaos. Well, they've reset the board back to the way they like it, and are about to get back to making big gains again. And when they say it's some powerless clown in a buffalo hat trying to pull a coup, they're actually the ones attempting a power coup - seizing more power, seizing an opportunity to install new levers in place to control people and curtail rights. Never waste a good crisis, as with 20 years ago and the Patriot Act.
DenisM 6y ago
It seems that influence of a link is comprised of their awareness of the cliques discourse and reputation among the clique members. The algorithm on the other hand seems to latch on to traffic. There is a room for a wedge here. Perhaps the algorithm can be defeated by employing a few extra "link" accounts (either sock puppets or simply ardent followers) with a shared reputation (a shared brand). On other words a link between two cliques could be held by a special kind of clique.
sneak 6y ago
It's absolutely terrifying to me that they can do this sort of thing, or selectively censor DMs containing certain links, or from certain people or geofenced places, and it would never make the news. I wrote a few months ago about this sort of danger: https://sneak.berlin/20200421/normalcy-bias/ https://sneak.berlin/20200421/normalcy-bias/ These sorts of communication systems work, until the moment they don't, and we won't receive advance notice.
hertzrat 6y ago
I’m banned from Twitter without explanation. I made an account, followed 3-4 tech celebrities like Paul graham, and posted a single tweet similar to “I finally got pressured into making a dumb Twitter account...” The account got banned for community violations within an hour and my support email said that my requests for support would not be responded to. Years later, I’m working on a video game and I’m worried this will make it hard to do marketing coming up in case my ip got flagged along the way.
- cung 6y ago
  Your account was probably hacked and used for something that broke the rules. I got an email warning of someone trying to change my password within a week of making an account.
  - silexia 6y ago
    I agree with this comment. The article and parent comments probably were doing some scam, either by the people themselves or if they were hacked. Lots of people criticize Facebook all the time and have no issues.
    - hertzrat 6y ago
      You just accused me of being a scammer for creating a Twitter account and making a single tweet and getting banned the same day. What is wrong with you?
      - CompuHacker 6y ago
        I really wouldn't worry about it. Based on the 160 incoming bytes that I've read so far, and a few status bits I've skimmed over, I've determined that they are not in fact a real person. </s>
      - silexia 6y ago
        Many other people, including me, have criticized Facebook on Facebook and other places without being banned. You make a claim, without evidence, that you were banned for publishing criticism. Are you absolutely certain your account was not compromised in another way? How do any of us know that you were not violating their ToS in another way?
staticAnalysis9 6y ago
Your concern seems to ignore that humans are not static agents. They’ll route around black holes. Conversation will not simply stop. It will move to a different platform or, should the network of platforms using HTTP look black holes, where useful into goes in but little useful info comes out, will pivot to a new protocol. The really important infrastructure is the hardware and basic protocols. There’s no reason see the network “inside Twitter” as important. Highly visible, but it’s just one groups choice of what to store in a database. Alternatives can be copy-pasted together in hours by competent groups. Tech is so up it’s own ass these days because it’s measuring inside a few Petri dishes and ignoring the Internet as a concept in and of itself. The internet is not FAANG and Silicon Valley. It’s the hardware everywhere and fundamental protocols. So, yes, the math is right. But the math applies at various scales. For as visible as Twitter and the rest are, they’re not in and of themselves a distributed global network of hardware and routing protocols. They’re black holes in a bigger universe.

hartator 6y ago

That's interesting. The disgorzation produced by all the bans will probably impact votes for conservatives for a long time despite not censoring that many people indeed.

AlphaWeaver 6y ago
Maybe. The outcome of banning "connectors" typically reduces connectedness between cliques, rather than within cliques themselves. (In graph theory, when a group of people are well connected that share similar interests, we typically call that a clique.) When people complain that people are increasingly finding themselves in echo chambers, and that "people don't talk to people from the other side," connectedness across the graph is dropping, while connectedness within cliques remains strong or increases.
adventured 6y ago
Of course. The people that claim voter suppression, are the biggest voter suppressors, using all the levers they control. The people that claim to be in favor of free speech, are the most against free speech in practice. The people that claim to be the most tolerant, are in fact the most intolerant by a wide margin. The people that claim to not like war, keep finding an excuse to bomb and topple more countries. The people that claim to care about civil rights, write a major crime bill that hammers civil rights. The people that claim to care about journalism, actually persecute journalists more than any others ever have in US history. The people that claim to care about human rights, demolish human rights with vast, illegal domestic espionage. The people that claim to care about the working poor and the middle class, those with jobs and wages most susceptible to being undercut by cheap labor competition, flood the system with hyper regressive cheap labor to destroy the poor and middle class workers. Next up in the coming years, a new war closer to home. It'll be called the war on domestic terrorism (or extremism, whatever branding works best), again by the people that claim to love human rights. And it'll be as fake as the war on drugs and the foreign war on terrorism, with one goal in mind: to wipe out as many civil liberties as possible (including and particularly going after encryption, privacy, speech/expression). Nothing can stop what they're about to do, unfortunately. And you can be certain that big tech is fully onboard, you can already see that in their behavior, just like they all lined up so nicely for PRISM et al. You know what all of these people - big state, deep state, military industrial complex, big corporate, whatever you call them by, the whole lot of various power interests that are persistent in DC - hated the most about Trump (far more than his character or policies)? His chaos, how he made a mess of everything, made a mess of their system, made it impossible to make progress on their various goals, such as continuing the pursuit of things like banishing encryption. They made almost zero progress on that under Trump, very little got done. It's really difficult to get things done with that much chaos. Well, they've reset the board back to the way they like it, and are about to get back to making big gains again. And when they say it's some powerless clown in a buffalo hat trying to pull a coup, they're actually the ones attempting a power coup - seizing more power, seizing an opportunity to install new levers in place to control people and curtail rights. Never waste a good crisis, as with 20 years ago and the Patriot Act.

DenisM 6y ago

It seems that influence of a link is comprised of their awareness of the cliques discourse and reputation among the clique members. The algorithm on the other hand seems to latch on to traffic. There is a room for a wedge here. Perhaps the algorithm can be defeated by employing a few extra "link" accounts (either sock puppets or simply ardent followers) with a shared reputation (a shared brand). On other words a link between two cliques could be held by a special kind of clique.

sneak 6y ago

It's absolutely terrifying to me that they can do this sort of thing, or selectively censor DMs containing certain links, or from certain people or geofenced places, and it would never make the news. I wrote a few months ago about this sort of danger: https://sneak.berlin/20200421/normalcy-bias/ https://sneak.berlin/20200421/normalcy-bias/ These sorts of communication systems work, until the moment they don't, and we won't receive advance notice.

hertzrat 6y ago

I’m banned from Twitter without explanation. I made an account, followed 3-4 tech celebrities like Paul graham, and posted a single tweet similar to “I finally got pressured into making a dumb Twitter account...” The account got banned for community violations within an hour and my support email said that my requests for support would not be responded to. Years later, I’m working on a video game and I’m worried this will make it hard to do marketing coming up in case my ip got flagged along the way.

cung 6y ago
Your account was probably hacked and used for something that broke the rules. I got an email warning of someone trying to change my password within a week of making an account.
- silexia 6y ago
  I agree with this comment. The article and parent comments probably were doing some scam, either by the people themselves or if they were hacked. Lots of people criticize Facebook all the time and have no issues.
  - hertzrat 6y ago
    You just accused me of being a scammer for creating a Twitter account and making a single tweet and getting banned the same day. What is wrong with you?
    - CompuHacker 6y ago
      I really wouldn't worry about it. Based on the 160 incoming bytes that I've read so far, and a few status bits I've skimmed over, I've determined that they are not in fact a real person. </s>
    - silexia 6y ago
      Many other people, including me, have criticized Facebook on Facebook and other places without being banned. You make a claim, without evidence, that you were banned for publishing criticism. Are you absolutely certain your account was not compromised in another way? How do any of us know that you were not violating their ToS in another way?

staticAnalysis9 6y ago

Your concern seems to ignore that humans are not static agents. They’ll route around black holes. Conversation will not simply stop. It will move to a different platform or, should the network of platforms using HTTP look black holes, where useful into goes in but little useful info comes out, will pivot to a new protocol. The really important infrastructure is the hardware and basic protocols. There’s no reason see the network “inside Twitter” as important. Highly visible, but it’s just one groups choice of what to store in a database. Alternatives can be copy-pasted together in hours by competent groups. Tech is so up it’s own ass these days because it’s measuring inside a few Petri dishes and ignoring the Internet as a concept in and of itself. The internet is not FAANG and Silicon Valley. It’s the hardware everywhere and fundamental protocols. So, yes, the math is right. But the math applies at various scales. For as visible as Twitter and the rest are, they’re not in and of themselves a distributed global network of hardware and routing protocols. They’re black holes in a bigger universe.