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Come on, you almost can't view any conservative candidate's picture in france without having to "view sensitive contents", it's ridiculous.

colpabar 5y ago
The last time I tried creating a twitter account, I was immediately presented with a set of recommended people to follow, which included Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. I'm sure there were more, but those were the first three it showed me, and I did not bother to look at any more. I don't want to follow any politicians, but that seems pretty obviously one sided. I wish people would just recognize that, and recognize that it isn't "right-wing" to do so. It twitter recommended new users to follow Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio, and those were the only recommendations they saw without clicking "view more", would anyone question whether that was biased or not?
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  presumably this recommendation is based on who most other people follow. That's a systemic effect.
  - 1337shadow 5y ago
    Not with the French liberals, they are really not popular, but still they are suggested for no reason.
    - beaconstudios 5y ago
      they are really not popular in France, or on twitter? Presumably, twitter promotes content that's popular on twitter, and twitter skews liberal.
- smachiz 5y ago
  OK, so the recommendation engine is liberal? I don't know how the recommendation engine works, but Barack Obama is the most followed account on twitter I think, so can see how they'd suggest that... But if the recommendation engine is anything like their recommended tweets, I think they intentionally show you the other side always. I see tons of garbage view points that I don't agree with almost exclusively when I view a tweet. Without knowing anything about your tracking cookies and however else they 'enrich' what they know about you, it's tough to say why you got the recommendations you did. If you signed up based on a tweet from a democrat so you could engage by telling them they're wrong, maybe they assumed you like other democrats. If your complaint is that Twitter is an outrage inducing platform by design, I would absolutely agree. But that isn't an ideological bent. It just wants you to engage, and the fastest and easiest method is to make you mad.
  - sillysaurusx 5y ago
    Is it so hard to believe that the recommendation engine is liberal? It’s true of HN too. It’s not a bad thing, the same way that Fox News being conservative isn’t a bad thing. It just is what it is. These are major news sites. News always has a bias. It’s important to identify, for one’s own sake. It’s not even particularly hard to bias an AI algorithm. It’s arguably the default.
    - smachiz 5y ago
      Not hard to believe - younger people make up the bulk of their audience, and probably the bulk of HN that trend more liberal. That's a reflection of the userbase though, not necessarily of Twitter or HN's views. I would bet most LPs are more conservative - if only in private.
  - OrvalWintermute 5y ago
    >If your complaint is that Twitter is an outrage inducing platform by design, I would absolutely agree. But that isn't an ideological bent. It just wants you to engage, and the fastest and easiest method is to make you mad. I don't think we can say with any honesty that Twitter is a clone of Fox's Three talking heads, comprised of a good looking moderator with a leftwinger, and a rightwinger duking it out. Twitter has been censoring, moderating, editorializing, and shadow-banning a large amount of conservatives, Libertarians, and also, moderates/centrists, and leftwingers that are posting contrary to the establishment narratives. By turning into more of an ideological echo-chamber it initiated the birth of conservative and other competitors, of which gettr appears to be leading the race with competitors like parler, truthsocial, gab, and others falling behind. Am surprised there are not shareholder lawsuits yet against Twitter's Officers for violating fiduciary responsibilities. Maybe they are prioritizing influence over eyeballs & economics?
  - nonethewiser 5y ago
    "I see tons of garbage view points that I don't agree with almost exclusively when I view a tweet." Perhaps because you're on the fringe.
- Spooky23 5y ago
  I'd question the intelligence of anyone or anything who recommended following the musings of Ted Cruz. And that's coming from someone who grew up in a family deeply engaged in county-level republican politics. If it were 2009, and Twitter was pushing Al Gore and ignoring George Bush, I'd see it differently. But it's 2022, and the toxic & polarizing aspects of many individuals make a perceived endorsement problematic for mainstream consumers.
- lobocinza 5y ago
  I get tons of recommendations for right wing politicians on my country. Trying to make sense of the recommendations is trying to extract meaning from a novel written by a monkey. It's a waste of time. Just block that section with your favorite ad blocker and live happily thereafter.
- nonethewiser 5y ago
  It's not propoganda if it affirms your worldview.
smachiz 5y ago
I don't live in France and don't follow their politics..... Do you believe that Twitter's Terms of Service have an ideological bent? Do you believe that Twitter's Terms of Service are being applied when they shouldn't against conservative politicians in France? Do you believe that Twitter's Terms of Service are only used against Conservative politicians - and do you have examples of Tweets that were actioned for conservatives and counterexamples that were not actioned for liberal politicians?
- 1337shadow 5y ago
  Yes, because every time I open twitter, the first posts I see are from people whom I have no connection with, who are celebrating about the current president, and it's not the trendy ones #MacronGate #McKinseyGate #AlstomGate #AlphaGate and so on.
smileybarry 5y ago
You can go into your account settings and disable sensitive content warnings, content filtering and reply filters (the ones that put some messages in "more replies").
- 1337shadow 5y ago
  I'm sorry, a picture of a non naked dude shouldn't be marked as sensitive without a clear ideology.
  - lovich 5y ago
    Non naked dudes should probably stop making their images be associated with a clear ideology. You seem to be under the impression that Twitter needs to treat everyone as neutral when the people in question are ideological themselves
    - nonethewiser 5y ago
      You're talking about Biden right?
      - lovich 5y ago
        I’m talking about everyone. Unless Twitter or other companies are bound to treat everyone neutrally by force of law then both their actions and inaction when it comes to ideological figures will have an ideological effect. Twitter cannot stand by and remain neutral while it has free will
  - smileybarry 5y ago
    If an account posts (other) media that repeatedly gets flagged (by many reports) as "sensitive", their other media is auto-flagged as sensitive. You're seeing that side effect. Either way, my intention was to say: you can disable these quality filters, Twitter isn't forcing you down an ideology with no opt-out. On that note -- many of these are based on user reports: if accounts get too spammy they get put in "other replies", if they're regularly inflammatory they (might) be put in "other replies" + sensitive content, etc. But again, you can turn this filter off and see all replies together, media normally, etc.
Barrin92 5y ago
Given that we're talking about people like Éric Zemmour who are mainstream candidates in French Conservative politics now despite being literally convicted for inciting racial hatred several times that says more about the state of French politics than it says about Twitter's moderation policies. That's a general theme with these 'I got banned, how overly sensitive!' stories. 95% of the time you don't need to scroll long until you find some genuinely vile stuff. I honestly cannot figure out how anyone who behaves even half-civilized ends up being banned by any of these platforms, it's kind of wild how much garbage you can post.
- 1337shadow 5y ago
  You can't believe? Then why does even twitter admit it?? https://www.lefigaro.fr/medias/twitter-plusieurs-comptes-lies-a-eric-zemmour-et-marine-le-pen-suspendus-pendant-une-heure-20220304 https://www.lefigaro.fr/medias/twitter-plusieurs-comptes-lie... "By mistake", that's twitter's version of the story, so, there goes some new information for you, sorry if it's crushing your beliefs. As for the long story: EZ was convicted for saying that most insecurity comes from immigrants, which is actually true when you look at the Calonge file - you just have to be part of the police or work in defense to see it, and France forbids ethnical statistics so people can't be made aware publicly about that, except by syndicalist cops such as Bruno Attal. The conviction is purely political and EZ should have appealed but he was just a journalist at the time and preferred to consider this conviction a medal of honnor. Nonetheless, he didn't have twitter at the time, he has twitter since he's a candidate, and his account is completely clean, so is the GZ party's, but those were closed "by mistake" by twitter according to twitter itself, and since then, their content is systematically marked sensitive, for absolutely no reason.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - forty 5y ago
    It is important not to confuse correlation and causation though (I mean even if your speculation that most insecurity* comes from immigrants was true). Also EZ have made it very clear that he doesn't have that much problems when immigrants are white and christian (even recently when discussing immigrants from Ukraine) so it's not like he is really hiding that everything he says about immigrants is really about non white and Muslim people. * Not exactly sure what insecurity means exactly. I feel it's often used to mean "the feeling ignorant people have when they see foreigners" in which case you might be right :)
kergonath 5y ago
They are not “conservative”. Zemmour is an impression of a conservative from the 1930s by someone who’s never read a history book, and le Pen is anything but a conservative. A xenophobe, sure, but her manifesto does not look like anything conservative beyond the appeal to the Fatherland. The only conservative candidate is Pécresse, and she is not “sensitive”, because she’s never been convicted for hate speech or inciting violence.
- 1337shadow 5y ago
  Right, when pecresse is defending against laicity, next to Mohammed Heniche who as later involved in the samuel paty murder, she's "conservative", way to go.
  - kergonath 5y ago
    Well yeah. Non-religious conservatives are an oddity, she’s right (ha!) at home.

colpabar 5y ago

The last time I tried creating a twitter account, I was immediately presented with a set of recommended people to follow, which included Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. I'm sure there were more, but those were the first three it showed me, and I did not bother to look at any more. I don't want to follow any politicians, but that seems pretty obviously one sided. I wish people would just recognize that, and recognize that it isn't "right-wing" to do so. It twitter recommended new users to follow Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio, and those were the only recommendations they saw without clicking "view more", would anyone question whether that was biased or not?

beaconstudios 5y ago
presumably this recommendation is based on who most other people follow. That's a systemic effect.
- 1337shadow 5y ago
  Not with the French liberals, they are really not popular, but still they are suggested for no reason.
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    they are really not popular in France, or on twitter? Presumably, twitter promotes content that's popular on twitter, and twitter skews liberal.
smachiz 5y ago
OK, so the recommendation engine is liberal? I don't know how the recommendation engine works, but Barack Obama is the most followed account on twitter I think, so can see how they'd suggest that... But if the recommendation engine is anything like their recommended tweets, I think they intentionally show you the other side always. I see tons of garbage view points that I don't agree with almost exclusively when I view a tweet. Without knowing anything about your tracking cookies and however else they 'enrich' what they know about you, it's tough to say why you got the recommendations you did. If you signed up based on a tweet from a democrat so you could engage by telling them they're wrong, maybe they assumed you like other democrats. If your complaint is that Twitter is an outrage inducing platform by design, I would absolutely agree. But that isn't an ideological bent. It just wants you to engage, and the fastest and easiest method is to make you mad.
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
  Is it so hard to believe that the recommendation engine is liberal? It’s true of HN too. It’s not a bad thing, the same way that Fox News being conservative isn’t a bad thing. It just is what it is. These are major news sites. News always has a bias. It’s important to identify, for one’s own sake. It’s not even particularly hard to bias an AI algorithm. It’s arguably the default.
  - smachiz 5y ago
    Not hard to believe - younger people make up the bulk of their audience, and probably the bulk of HN that trend more liberal. That's a reflection of the userbase though, not necessarily of Twitter or HN's views. I would bet most LPs are more conservative - if only in private.
- OrvalWintermute 5y ago
  >If your complaint is that Twitter is an outrage inducing platform by design, I would absolutely agree. But that isn't an ideological bent. It just wants you to engage, and the fastest and easiest method is to make you mad. I don't think we can say with any honesty that Twitter is a clone of Fox's Three talking heads, comprised of a good looking moderator with a leftwinger, and a rightwinger duking it out. Twitter has been censoring, moderating, editorializing, and shadow-banning a large amount of conservatives, Libertarians, and also, moderates/centrists, and leftwingers that are posting contrary to the establishment narratives. By turning into more of an ideological echo-chamber it initiated the birth of conservative and other competitors, of which gettr appears to be leading the race with competitors like parler, truthsocial, gab, and others falling behind. Am surprised there are not shareholder lawsuits yet against Twitter's Officers for violating fiduciary responsibilities. Maybe they are prioritizing influence over eyeballs & economics?
- nonethewiser 5y ago
  "I see tons of garbage view points that I don't agree with almost exclusively when I view a tweet." Perhaps because you're on the fringe.
Spooky23 5y ago
I'd question the intelligence of anyone or anything who recommended following the musings of Ted Cruz. And that's coming from someone who grew up in a family deeply engaged in county-level republican politics. If it were 2009, and Twitter was pushing Al Gore and ignoring George Bush, I'd see it differently. But it's 2022, and the toxic & polarizing aspects of many individuals make a perceived endorsement problematic for mainstream consumers.
lobocinza 5y ago
I get tons of recommendations for right wing politicians on my country. Trying to make sense of the recommendations is trying to extract meaning from a novel written by a monkey. It's a waste of time. Just block that section with your favorite ad blocker and live happily thereafter.
nonethewiser 5y ago
It's not propoganda if it affirms your worldview.

smachiz 5y ago

I don't live in France and don't follow their politics..... Do you believe that Twitter's Terms of Service have an ideological bent? Do you believe that Twitter's Terms of Service are being applied when they shouldn't against conservative politicians in France? Do you believe that Twitter's Terms of Service are only used against Conservative politicians - and do you have examples of Tweets that were actioned for conservatives and counterexamples that were not actioned for liberal politicians?

1337shadow 5y ago
Yes, because every time I open twitter, the first posts I see are from people whom I have no connection with, who are celebrating about the current president, and it's not the trendy ones #MacronGate #McKinseyGate #AlstomGate #AlphaGate and so on.

smileybarry 5y ago

You can go into your account settings and disable sensitive content warnings, content filtering and reply filters (the ones that put some messages in "more replies").

1337shadow 5y ago
I'm sorry, a picture of a non naked dude shouldn't be marked as sensitive without a clear ideology.
- lovich 5y ago
  Non naked dudes should probably stop making their images be associated with a clear ideology. You seem to be under the impression that Twitter needs to treat everyone as neutral when the people in question are ideological themselves
  - nonethewiser 5y ago
    You're talking about Biden right?
    - lovich 5y ago
      I’m talking about everyone. Unless Twitter or other companies are bound to treat everyone neutrally by force of law then both their actions and inaction when it comes to ideological figures will have an ideological effect. Twitter cannot stand by and remain neutral while it has free will
- smileybarry 5y ago
  If an account posts (other) media that repeatedly gets flagged (by many reports) as "sensitive", their other media is auto-flagged as sensitive. You're seeing that side effect. Either way, my intention was to say: you can disable these quality filters, Twitter isn't forcing you down an ideology with no opt-out. On that note -- many of these are based on user reports: if accounts get too spammy they get put in "other replies", if they're regularly inflammatory they (might) be put in "other replies" + sensitive content, etc. But again, you can turn this filter off and see all replies together, media normally, etc.

Barrin92 5y ago

Given that we're talking about people like Éric Zemmour who are mainstream candidates in French Conservative politics now despite being literally convicted for inciting racial hatred several times that says more about the state of French politics than it says about Twitter's moderation policies. That's a general theme with these 'I got banned, how overly sensitive!' stories. 95% of the time you don't need to scroll long until you find some genuinely vile stuff. I honestly cannot figure out how anyone who behaves even half-civilized ends up being banned by any of these platforms, it's kind of wild how much garbage you can post.

1337shadow 5y ago
You can't believe? Then why does even twitter admit it?? https://www.lefigaro.fr/medias/twitter-plusieurs-comptes-lies-a-eric-zemmour-et-marine-le-pen-suspendus-pendant-une-heure-20220304 https://www.lefigaro.fr/medias/twitter-plusieurs-comptes-lie... "By mistake", that's twitter's version of the story, so, there goes some new information for you, sorry if it's crushing your beliefs. As for the long story: EZ was convicted for saying that most insecurity comes from immigrants, which is actually true when you look at the Calonge file - you just have to be part of the police or work in defense to see it, and France forbids ethnical statistics so people can't be made aware publicly about that, except by syndicalist cops such as Bruno Attal. The conviction is purely political and EZ should have appealed but he was just a journalist at the time and preferred to consider this conviction a medal of honnor. Nonetheless, he didn't have twitter at the time, he has twitter since he's a candidate, and his account is completely clean, so is the GZ party's, but those were closed "by mistake" by twitter according to twitter itself, and since then, their content is systematically marked sensitive, for absolutely no reason.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- forty 5y ago
  It is important not to confuse correlation and causation though (I mean even if your speculation that most insecurity* comes from immigrants was true). Also EZ have made it very clear that he doesn't have that much problems when immigrants are white and christian (even recently when discussing immigrants from Ukraine) so it's not like he is really hiding that everything he says about immigrants is really about non white and Muslim people. * Not exactly sure what insecurity means exactly. I feel it's often used to mean "the feeling ignorant people have when they see foreigners" in which case you might be right :)

kergonath 5y ago

They are not “conservative”. Zemmour is an impression of a conservative from the 1930s by someone who’s never read a history book, and le Pen is anything but a conservative. A xenophobe, sure, but her manifesto does not look like anything conservative beyond the appeal to the Fatherland. The only conservative candidate is Pécresse, and she is not “sensitive”, because she’s never been convicted for hate speech or inciting violence.

1337shadow 5y ago
Right, when pecresse is defending against laicity, next to Mohammed Heniche who as later involved in the samuel paty murder, she's "conservative", way to go.
- kergonath 5y ago
  Well yeah. Non-religious conservatives are an oddity, she’s right (ha!) at home.