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I have been responsible a bit of content moderation myself, and interacted with mods on various forums. It's possible that this is responsible for some of my vi

I have been responsible a bit of content moderation myself, and interacted with mods on various forums. It's possible that this is responsible for some of my views, summarized here. - The "secret" aspect of all this can be largely ignored. Twitter is under no obligation to tell its users exactly how their Tweets are moderated. I am sure most moderation tools are secret, including whatever Twitter (or for that matter, HN) uses today. - There are aspects of user privacy that are important (e.g. how user data is gathered, where is it stored, whether it complies with various data governance regulations) which would be interesting, but have been largely ignored by these Tweets so far. - I don't think Weiss understands what "shadow ban" means. It means that you post Tweets, but no one ever sees them. None of the practices she describes amount to what is usually described as a shadow ban or a hellban. Preventing a post from showing up in trends or searches is not a shadow ban. Google SafeSearch does not "shadow ban" explicit images or links. - All companies have hierarchies of escalation. It is not surprising to me that there is a "top people" level of escalation in the form of SIP-PES that Weiss mentions. In fact, I'm reasonably sure something similar probably exists at Twitter today, consisting of Musk and some close advisors. They might even be using the exact same group! - A lot of the discussion Weiss quotes as if it's top-secret information seems to show...individuals behaving reasonably while struggling with the extremely hard problem of content moderation at scale? Roth and others seem to be essentially saying, "We don't want to kick these users off the platform. Maybe if we limit their reach a bit, we won't get them inciting howling mobs that target and disturb other users?" Post-Musk Twitter seems to be struggling with the same thing, as the Kanye West debacle shows. Overall, I don't really see too much that would cause me to gasp with horror. All I can really see is a company that never grew to Facebook scale trying to grapple with its content moderation problem without having the resources or perhaps temperament to hire hundreds of cheap content moderators like Facebook does.

rhaksw 4y ago
> The "secret" aspect of all this can be largely ignored. I bet you would not like for your comment here to be secretly removed. In fact, many users are shocked to discover when this happens, as I share here [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33916519 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33916519
- quadrifoliate 4y ago
  Reddit and HN are...not Twitter? Guess which one of the three is regularly used by Taylor Swift. The big difference is that Twitter links are routinely used by journalists and such who will notice and specifically call out Tweets as being deleted. A shadow ban / hellban on Twitter would be much more easily noticed by the media. On the other hand, no one in the media to a rounding error cares about shadow bans on Reddit or HN.
  - rhaksw 4y ago
    Ah right, only Taylor Swift and journalists matter. Nevermind where the next Taylor Swift and journalists come from. The platforms will decide for us!
    - quadrifoliate 4y ago
      Twitter is not "deciding" anything for you. Platforms like Truth Social and Mastodon exist. The next Taylor Swift and journalists are free to use them. In fact, many have! It's going to be some Mastodon instance in my case, but not saying it couldn't be Truth Social for you or other folks that think they do a better job at content moderation than Twitter does. This is more productive than holding up Twitter's (admittedly imperfect) content moderation as part of some thought-molding conspiracy.
- seo-speedwagon 4y ago
  - Eleison23 4y ago
bavell 4y ago
> I don't think Weiss understands what "shadow ban" means. It means that you post Tweets, but no one ever sees them. None of the practices she describes amount to what is usually described as a shadow ban or a hellban. Preventing a post from showing up in trends or searches is not a shadow ban. Google SafeSearch does not "shadow ban" explicit images or links. Colloquially, I think many information suppression tactics get lumped under the term "shadow-ban" and that your definition is very narrow. It reinforces your position so I understand why you're defining it as such but it's not very convincing to anyone who doesn't share your position. Of course, that's assuming you're genuinely interested in persuasion instead of yelling into the echo chamber. I do agree with your points about this not being a surprise and how some are over-exaggerating the severity of these leaks but I'm also slightly concerned over how blase "hackers" here on this site are treating the news. All around us are these huge, easy-to-abuse, global influence platforms with cozy backchannels to the most powerful bureaucratic state (US govt) that we've ever seen. And yet many comments I've seen so far are along the lines of, "No worries, this stuff happens all the time and is totally normal and okay. Move along now!" I would have expected more skepticism, cynicism and backlash from this crowd. Am I wrong?
- quadrifoliate 4y ago
  > Colloquially, I think many information suppression tactics get lumped under the term "shadow-ban" and that your definition is very narrow. It reinforces your position so I understand why you're defining it as such but it's not very convincing to anyone who doesn't share your position. Of course, that's assuming you're genuinely interested in persuasion instead of yelling into the echo chamber. Reasonable criticism. I suppose Twitter representatives have probably used this same definition to squirm out from questioning before, and it's not a great look. Although siblings comment are pointing out that Twitter did define it as identical to what I'm saying in a blog post; so at least they are consistent in what they were saying pre-Musk. On the persuasion front – I'll give it a try! I think the reason that Twitter hid behind the narrower definition of a shadow ban is to avoid saying the harder-to-stomach truth that "information suppression tactics", as you put them, are essential to content moderation. Think about this – is HN's (supposed) voting ring detector an "information suppression tactic"? Is flagging posts? Why is Bari Weiss not posting breathless stories about them? I think the only difference is that zero people in Weiss's circle use this orange web site. I would love to be convinced otherwise, though. > All around us are these huge, easy-to-abuse, global influence platforms with cozy backchannels to the most powerful bureaucratic state (US govt) that we've ever seen. And yet many comments I've seen so far are along the lines of, "No worries, this stuff happens all the time and is totally normal and okay. Move along now!" I would have expected more skepticism, cynicism and backlash from this crowd. Am I wrong? No, but I think we had our moment of outrage around widespread surveillance by the US government in 2013 and the years after it. Also, almost none of Weiss's or Taibbi's breathless revelations are about intervention by the US government – a few are about the Democratic Party and most are about Twitter itself. The only response that I see by a sitting Government official anywhere is to suggest that the Twitter ban on a story is against the 1st Amendment [1]. ---------------------------------------- [1] https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598838041371516929 https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598838041371516929
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mandmandam 4y ago
> Overall, I don't really see too much that would cause me to gasp with horror. I didn't "gasp", but, silently blocking an esteemed scientist is indeed horrible. He, and who knows how many others, presented sensible analyses against extended lockdowns in schools. This dissenting view, like with the lableak theory, was systematically blocked from ever reaching journalists eyes, and thus from reaching parents minds. The harm done to an entire generation of children is very real. The opportunity cost from wasting vaccinations in children is very real. The discussion was warped, and the narrative was rammed down people's brains. There are second-order effects with that kind of brain power-washing at mass scale. This wasn't an isolated incident either. Literally millions of posts were removed and shadowbanned to various degrees. No one at any of these companies has suffered any semblance of accountability in any form.
- raydev 4y ago
  > silently blocking an esteemed scientist is indeed horrible My understanding is that anyone using the chrono timeline could still his tweets as they happened. Twitter deciding not to promote his tweets in the algo timeline seems far away from blocking.
- tptacek 4y ago
  - mandmandam 4y ago
    Yes, that's the one. Are you implying that he's not esteemed? He is. He was right about lockdowns on school children having huge potential for harm. And it was very, very wrong to censor such posts. And again, this was far from an isolated incident. Millions of posts were removed, tens of millions were shadowbanned, delisted, deranked, hidded, supressed, etc. Views questioning natural origin, official policy, vaccinating children or school lockdowns were smeared as anti-science and sinister... The irony might be funny if it wasn't so harmful.
    - pcwalton 4y ago
somenameforme 4y ago
Yes, the secrecy does matter. I think can immediately think of two big reasons: 1) We should censor for how things are said, instead of what is said. When censorship is carried out secretly it will inevitably trend towards abuse. One of the examples given in these leaks is that @DrJBhattacharya [1] was secretly put on a trends blacklist because of what he was saying. He's a well spoken doctor and Stanford epidemiologist, but he publicly spoke against the political measures being taken against COVID, such as lockdowns. So he was blacklisted. That's just so incredibly wrong, and enabled only by secrecy. 2) Again with the goal of adjusting how things are said, instead of what is said: If you think somebody is an idiot, saying that accomplishes absolutely nothing besides sending discourse to the level of a dumpster dive at a cheap seafood joint on a hot summer day. By contrast, engaging in good faith and simply discussing the topic not only keeps the conversation healthy, but might even actually change some minds. Secretly censoring the shitposter does not really encourage him to engage in a more productive fashion, because he may not even realize he's behaving a way that's not really considered acceptable, let alone attempt to correct it. --- Literal spam is a different topic, and I think conflating the two is disingenuous. Doing things like blacklisting doctors because of what they say has little to do with banning somebody trying to impersonate other accounts and spamming 'give me 1 and I'll give you 2' crypto scams. [1] - https://twitter.com/DrJBhattacharya https://twitter.com/DrJBhattacharya [2] - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/04/briefing/american-children-crisis-pandemic.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/04/briefing/american-childre...
- quadrifoliate 4y ago
  You are using phrases like "blacklisting doctors" and "censorship" while discussing (essentially) a message board that is used to sell advertisements. I don't think that's a reasonable position. Twitter is a private company that wants to sell advertisements by enabling people to have happy conversations. Fundamentally, they are going to optimize for that, and not whatever high-minded ideals of censorship that we hold dear to our hearts. If a scientist is yelling about mysterious conspiracies and causing arguments on the site, they will use whatever least harmful tool is available to them to shut up said scientist. It's certainly possible that Musk-owned Twitter will similarly pivot to selling advertisements for MAGA hats and guns or whatever; and censor all talking points that run counter to their views. This would also be a reasonable course of action for them, and many of us have prepared our migrations away from the site in case this happens.
rideontime 4y ago
> I don't think Weiss understands what "shadow ban" means. She very well may understand, but is assuming (correctly) that her audience does not.
- spoils19 4y ago
  Who is her audience and why do you think her assumption is correct?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
tayo42 4y ago
causi 4y ago
Twitter is under no obligation to tell its users exactly how their Tweets are moderated. Twitter has no legal obligation to do so. I think a lot of people would hesitate about engaging with a platform that actively has its thumb on the scale. I would really rather not have the thought in the back of my mind that invisible, unaccountable forces are the reason my views aren't popular, not that I'm an asshole with stupid opinions.
- sulcate 4y ago
  Well, in that case, I have some unfortunate information for you about Facebook, Instagram, hackernews, and much more.
- HDThoreaun 4y ago
  > I think a lot of people would hesitate about engaging with a platform that actively has its thumb on the scale. I think a lot of people would hesitate about engaging with a platform that doesn't actively have its thumb on the scale. Those platforms exist, they are abandoned.
scifibestfi 4y ago
She explained in the thread: What many people call “shadow banning,” Twitter executives and employees call “Visibility Filtering” or “VF.” Multiple high-level sources confirmed its meaning. “Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels. It’s a very powerful tool,” one senior Twitter employee told us. “VF” refers to Twitter’s control over user visibility. It used VF to block searches of individual users; to limit the scope of a particular tweet’s discoverability; to block select users’ posts from ever appearing on the “trending” page; and from inclusion in hashtag searches. All without users’ knowledge. “We control visibility quite a bit. And we control the amplification of your content quite a bit. And normal people do not know how much we do,” one Twitter engineer told us. Two additional Twitter employees confirmed.
wa_throwaway 4y ago
WhatsApp has a similar internal dashboard for moderation/managing abuse. WhatsApp is E2E encrypted, so it's entirely based on visible user-actions. I'm sure Snapchat, TikTok, Tumblr, YouTube, Pornhub end others that have any moderation tools are in the same boat. There is no smoking gun here, despite the breathlessness from some quarters (including Musk himself[1]). That "Show DMs" link did send chills down my spine though, sometimes I forget Twitter DMs are not E2E encrypted. This has a lot in common with Mudge's whistle-blowing case: there is nothing tangible to those familiar with the arts, but it appears to be (or ends up being) red meat "Aha!" gotcha material for those who have never worked in similar environments. 1. Which begs the question: does he really think Twitter's mod tools are unusual, or is he feigning ignorance for some reason known to him?
- rhaksw 4y ago
  > I'm sure Snapchat, TikTok, Tumblr, YouTube, Pornhub They do, I list some here [1] > There is no smoking gun here Secretive moderation being common doesn't make it normal or right. It's certainly not widely known. For example, I was on a podcast from Aug. 24 this year talking about shadow moderation [2], and the host says around 27:50 that Twitter is not doing this, only excepting "the algorithm". His point, I believe, was that humans were not manipulating content, and I agreed that I was unaware if that was happening. Plus, if the use of such secretive tooling were widely known, there would be no need to keep them secret. The claim has always been that secretive moderation is used to deal with spam. Yet, spammers are the most likely to check the visibility of their content. So the net effect is that secretive censorship hurts genuine individuals the most. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33916414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33916414 [2] https://www.wholewhale.com/podcast/what-is-shadow-moderation-how-is-it-silencing-speech/ https://www.wholewhale.com/podcast/what-is-shadow-moderation...
  - sangnoir 4y ago
    > So the net effect is that secretive censorship hurts genuine individuals the most. From first principles, the moderators would not consider shadow-banned individuals as 'genuine'. Since you brought up the subject of spammers - whats your take on email spam transparency, and the use of spam folders? should MTAs (like GMail or Exchange server), in the interest of transparency, immediately reject messages categorized as spam rather than accepting and quietly placing them in the spam folder, never to be read by a human? This would absolutely solve the problem where emails from genuine users end up being blackholed in the spam folder.
yucky 4y ago
> Preventing a post from showing up in trends or searches is not a shadow ban. Google SafeSearch does not "shadow ban" explicit images or links. Safesearch is an adjustable setting, is that really a good analogy for this?
naasking 4y ago
> - The "secret" aspect of all this can be largely ignored. Twitter is under no obligation to tell its users exactly how their Tweets are moderated. Sure, but maybe they should have some obligation? Maybe the people "gasping in horror" at this information actually did have more expectations around transparency and impartiality than you did, and maybe they're right to have those expectations? > I don't think Weiss understands what "shadow ban" means. It means that you post Tweets, but no one ever sees them. None of the practices she describes amount to what is usually described as a shadow ban or a hellban. Preventing a post from showing up in trends or searches is not a shadow ban. Google SafeSearch does not "shadow ban" explicit images or links. You're splitting hairs. Laypeople take shadow banning to be various forms of suppression. This is the same as the hacker/cracker debate of 20+ years ago. Terms are defined by their usage, and once laypeople start using a term in a slightly incompatible way to how you've understood it, you've already lost. Overall I don't quite get HN sometimes. Lots of people are saying this is no big deal, that every site will have secrete blacklists, that every site does moderation and suppresses things, and so on, so what's the problem? Isn't it obvious that the way you do things can matter? For instance, most techy people I've spoken to think that no-fly lists are problematic. Why were you put on a no-fly list? How can you petition for a review of your status if you think your placement was unjust? Who gets to decide who goes on that no-fly list? Is there any periodic review of such decisions to ensure there is no systemic bias or that the no-fly list isn't being abused for personal or political ends? There are many documented examples of people being targeted using the no-fly list for political reasons, for instance. All of these questions apply to secret suppression lists at social media companies. If Twitter is to become a central place critical to democratic discussion, as Musk has stated is his intent, these questions are then just as relevant as the government deciding who can and cannot fly. The tweets Weiss posted have a number of examples of politically motivated suppression, and you shouldn't so causally dismiss that. Combined with Taibbi's thread showing the government had some active involvement in moderating content, this is setting up a troubling precedent. This is a conversation that needs to take place.
phendrenad2 4y ago
> The "secret" aspect of all this can be largely ignored. Twitter is under no obligation to tell its users exactly how their Tweets are moderated Let's play a hypothetical game. If restaurants were under no obligations to tell you what ingredients were in their food, but some did anyway, would that change your restaurant eating habits? If so, how?
pablok2 4y ago
If we had insight about why the restrictions were applied, it would likely be more alarming. But this response in particular is a product of desensitized, you can't argue that morals and views have shifted even if you were a mod at some point, especially now e.g. post-Covid, post-Trump.

rhaksw 4y ago

> The "secret" aspect of all this can be largely ignored. I bet you would not like for your comment here to be secretly removed. In fact, many users are shocked to discover when this happens, as I share here [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33916519 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33916519

quadrifoliate 4y ago
Reddit and HN are...not Twitter? Guess which one of the three is regularly used by Taylor Swift. The big difference is that Twitter links are routinely used by journalists and such who will notice and specifically call out Tweets as being deleted. A shadow ban / hellban on Twitter would be much more easily noticed by the media. On the other hand, no one in the media to a rounding error cares about shadow bans on Reddit or HN.
- rhaksw 4y ago
  Ah right, only Taylor Swift and journalists matter. Nevermind where the next Taylor Swift and journalists come from. The platforms will decide for us!
  - quadrifoliate 4y ago
    Twitter is not "deciding" anything for you. Platforms like Truth Social and Mastodon exist. The next Taylor Swift and journalists are free to use them. In fact, many have! It's going to be some Mastodon instance in my case, but not saying it couldn't be Truth Social for you or other folks that think they do a better job at content moderation than Twitter does. This is more productive than holding up Twitter's (admittedly imperfect) content moderation as part of some thought-molding conspiracy.
seo-speedwagon 4y ago
- Eleison23 4y ago

bavell 4y ago

> I don't think Weiss understands what "shadow ban" means. It means that you post Tweets, but no one ever sees them. None of the practices she describes amount to what is usually described as a shadow ban or a hellban. Preventing a post from showing up in trends or searches is not a shadow ban. Google SafeSearch does not "shadow ban" explicit images or links. Colloquially, I think many information suppression tactics get lumped under the term "shadow-ban" and that your definition is very narrow. It reinforces your position so I understand why you're defining it as such but it's not very convincing to anyone who doesn't share your position. Of course, that's assuming you're genuinely interested in persuasion instead of yelling into the echo chamber. I do agree with your points about this not being a surprise and how some are over-exaggerating the severity of these leaks but I'm also slightly concerned over how blase "hackers" here on this site are treating the news. All around us are these huge, easy-to-abuse, global influence platforms with cozy backchannels to the most powerful bureaucratic state (US govt) that we've ever seen. And yet many comments I've seen so far are along the lines of, "No worries, this stuff happens all the time and is totally normal and okay. Move along now!" I would have expected more skepticism, cynicism and backlash from this crowd. Am I wrong?

quadrifoliate 4y ago
> Colloquially, I think many information suppression tactics get lumped under the term "shadow-ban" and that your definition is very narrow. It reinforces your position so I understand why you're defining it as such but it's not very convincing to anyone who doesn't share your position. Of course, that's assuming you're genuinely interested in persuasion instead of yelling into the echo chamber. Reasonable criticism. I suppose Twitter representatives have probably used this same definition to squirm out from questioning before, and it's not a great look. Although siblings comment are pointing out that Twitter did define it as identical to what I'm saying in a blog post; so at least they are consistent in what they were saying pre-Musk. On the persuasion front – I'll give it a try! I think the reason that Twitter hid behind the narrower definition of a shadow ban is to avoid saying the harder-to-stomach truth that "information suppression tactics", as you put them, are essential to content moderation. Think about this – is HN's (supposed) voting ring detector an "information suppression tactic"? Is flagging posts? Why is Bari Weiss not posting breathless stories about them? I think the only difference is that zero people in Weiss's circle use this orange web site. I would love to be convinced otherwise, though. > All around us are these huge, easy-to-abuse, global influence platforms with cozy backchannels to the most powerful bureaucratic state (US govt) that we've ever seen. And yet many comments I've seen so far are along the lines of, "No worries, this stuff happens all the time and is totally normal and okay. Move along now!" I would have expected more skepticism, cynicism and backlash from this crowd. Am I wrong? No, but I think we had our moment of outrage around widespread surveillance by the US government in 2013 and the years after it. Also, almost none of Weiss's or Taibbi's breathless revelations are about intervention by the US government – a few are about the Democratic Party and most are about Twitter itself. The only response that I see by a sitting Government official anywhere is to suggest that the Twitter ban on a story is against the 1st Amendment [1]. ---------------------------------------- [1] https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598838041371516929 https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598838041371516929

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

mandmandam 4y ago

> Overall, I don't really see too much that would cause me to gasp with horror. I didn't "gasp", but, silently blocking an esteemed scientist is indeed horrible. He, and who knows how many others, presented sensible analyses against extended lockdowns in schools. This dissenting view, like with the lableak theory, was systematically blocked from ever reaching journalists eyes, and thus from reaching parents minds. The harm done to an entire generation of children is very real. The opportunity cost from wasting vaccinations in children is very real. The discussion was warped, and the narrative was rammed down people's brains. There are second-order effects with that kind of brain power-washing at mass scale. This wasn't an isolated incident either. Literally millions of posts were removed and shadowbanned to various degrees. No one at any of these companies has suffered any semblance of accountability in any form.

raydev 4y ago
> silently blocking an esteemed scientist is indeed horrible My understanding is that anyone using the chrono timeline could still his tweets as they happened. Twitter deciding not to promote his tweets in the algo timeline seems far away from blocking.
tptacek 4y ago
- mandmandam 4y ago
  Yes, that's the one. Are you implying that he's not esteemed? He is. He was right about lockdowns on school children having huge potential for harm. And it was very, very wrong to censor such posts. And again, this was far from an isolated incident. Millions of posts were removed, tens of millions were shadowbanned, delisted, deranked, hidded, supressed, etc. Views questioning natural origin, official policy, vaccinating children or school lockdowns were smeared as anti-science and sinister... The irony might be funny if it wasn't so harmful.
  - pcwalton 4y ago

somenameforme 4y ago

Yes, the secrecy does matter. I think can immediately think of two big reasons: 1) We should censor for how things are said, instead of what is said. When censorship is carried out secretly it will inevitably trend towards abuse. One of the examples given in these leaks is that @DrJBhattacharya [1] was secretly put on a trends blacklist because of what he was saying. He's a well spoken doctor and Stanford epidemiologist, but he publicly spoke against the political measures being taken against COVID, such as lockdowns. So he was blacklisted. That's just so incredibly wrong, and enabled only by secrecy. 2) Again with the goal of adjusting how things are said, instead of what is said: If you think somebody is an idiot, saying that accomplishes absolutely nothing besides sending discourse to the level of a dumpster dive at a cheap seafood joint on a hot summer day. By contrast, engaging in good faith and simply discussing the topic not only keeps the conversation healthy, but might even actually change some minds. Secretly censoring the shitposter does not really encourage him to engage in a more productive fashion, because he may not even realize he's behaving a way that's not really considered acceptable, let alone attempt to correct it. --- Literal spam is a different topic, and I think conflating the two is disingenuous. Doing things like blacklisting doctors because of what they say has little to do with banning somebody trying to impersonate other accounts and spamming 'give me 1 and I'll give you 2' crypto scams. [1] - https://twitter.com/DrJBhattacharya https://twitter.com/DrJBhattacharya [2] - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/04/briefing/american-children-crisis-pandemic.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/04/briefing/american-childre...

quadrifoliate 4y ago
You are using phrases like "blacklisting doctors" and "censorship" while discussing (essentially) a message board that is used to sell advertisements. I don't think that's a reasonable position. Twitter is a private company that wants to sell advertisements by enabling people to have happy conversations. Fundamentally, they are going to optimize for that, and not whatever high-minded ideals of censorship that we hold dear to our hearts. If a scientist is yelling about mysterious conspiracies and causing arguments on the site, they will use whatever least harmful tool is available to them to shut up said scientist. It's certainly possible that Musk-owned Twitter will similarly pivot to selling advertisements for MAGA hats and guns or whatever; and censor all talking points that run counter to their views. This would also be a reasonable course of action for them, and many of us have prepared our migrations away from the site in case this happens.

rideontime 4y ago

> I don't think Weiss understands what "shadow ban" means. She very well may understand, but is assuming (correctly) that her audience does not.

spoils19 4y ago
Who is her audience and why do you think her assumption is correct?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

tayo42 4y ago

causi 4y ago

Twitter is under no obligation to tell its users exactly how their Tweets are moderated. Twitter has no legal obligation to do so. I think a lot of people would hesitate about engaging with a platform that actively has its thumb on the scale. I would really rather not have the thought in the back of my mind that invisible, unaccountable forces are the reason my views aren't popular, not that I'm an asshole with stupid opinions.

sulcate 4y ago
Well, in that case, I have some unfortunate information for you about Facebook, Instagram, hackernews, and much more.
HDThoreaun 4y ago
> I think a lot of people would hesitate about engaging with a platform that actively has its thumb on the scale. I think a lot of people would hesitate about engaging with a platform that doesn't actively have its thumb on the scale. Those platforms exist, they are abandoned.

scifibestfi 4y ago

She explained in the thread: What many people call “shadow banning,” Twitter executives and employees call “Visibility Filtering” or “VF.” Multiple high-level sources confirmed its meaning. “Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels. It’s a very powerful tool,” one senior Twitter employee told us. “VF” refers to Twitter’s control over user visibility. It used VF to block searches of individual users; to limit the scope of a particular tweet’s discoverability; to block select users’ posts from ever appearing on the “trending” page; and from inclusion in hashtag searches. All without users’ knowledge. “We control visibility quite a bit. And we control the amplification of your content quite a bit. And normal people do not know how much we do,” one Twitter engineer told us. Two additional Twitter employees confirmed.

wa_throwaway 4y ago

WhatsApp has a similar internal dashboard for moderation/managing abuse. WhatsApp is E2E encrypted, so it's entirely based on visible user-actions. I'm sure Snapchat, TikTok, Tumblr, YouTube, Pornhub end others that have any moderation tools are in the same boat. There is no smoking gun here, despite the breathlessness from some quarters (including Musk himself[1]). That "Show DMs" link did send chills down my spine though, sometimes I forget Twitter DMs are not E2E encrypted. This has a lot in common with Mudge's whistle-blowing case: there is nothing tangible to those familiar with the arts, but it appears to be (or ends up being) red meat "Aha!" gotcha material for those who have never worked in similar environments. 1. Which begs the question: does he really think Twitter's mod tools are unusual, or is he feigning ignorance for some reason known to him?

rhaksw 4y ago
> I'm sure Snapchat, TikTok, Tumblr, YouTube, Pornhub They do, I list some here [1] > There is no smoking gun here Secretive moderation being common doesn't make it normal or right. It's certainly not widely known. For example, I was on a podcast from Aug. 24 this year talking about shadow moderation [2], and the host says around 27:50 that Twitter is not doing this, only excepting "the algorithm". His point, I believe, was that humans were not manipulating content, and I agreed that I was unaware if that was happening. Plus, if the use of such secretive tooling were widely known, there would be no need to keep them secret. The claim has always been that secretive moderation is used to deal with spam. Yet, spammers are the most likely to check the visibility of their content. So the net effect is that secretive censorship hurts genuine individuals the most. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33916414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33916414 [2] https://www.wholewhale.com/podcast/what-is-shadow-moderation-how-is-it-silencing-speech/ https://www.wholewhale.com/podcast/what-is-shadow-moderation...
- sangnoir 4y ago
  > So the net effect is that secretive censorship hurts genuine individuals the most. From first principles, the moderators would not consider shadow-banned individuals as 'genuine'. Since you brought up the subject of spammers - whats your take on email spam transparency, and the use of spam folders? should MTAs (like GMail or Exchange server), in the interest of transparency, immediately reject messages categorized as spam rather than accepting and quietly placing them in the spam folder, never to be read by a human? This would absolutely solve the problem where emails from genuine users end up being blackholed in the spam folder.

yucky 4y ago

> Preventing a post from showing up in trends or searches is not a shadow ban. Google SafeSearch does not "shadow ban" explicit images or links. Safesearch is an adjustable setting, is that really a good analogy for this?

naasking 4y ago

> - The "secret" aspect of all this can be largely ignored. Twitter is under no obligation to tell its users exactly how their Tweets are moderated. Sure, but maybe they should have some obligation? Maybe the people "gasping in horror" at this information actually did have more expectations around transparency and impartiality than you did, and maybe they're right to have those expectations? > I don't think Weiss understands what "shadow ban" means. It means that you post Tweets, but no one ever sees them. None of the practices she describes amount to what is usually described as a shadow ban or a hellban. Preventing a post from showing up in trends or searches is not a shadow ban. Google SafeSearch does not "shadow ban" explicit images or links. You're splitting hairs. Laypeople take shadow banning to be various forms of suppression. This is the same as the hacker/cracker debate of 20+ years ago. Terms are defined by their usage, and once laypeople start using a term in a slightly incompatible way to how you've understood it, you've already lost. Overall I don't quite get HN sometimes. Lots of people are saying this is no big deal, that every site will have secrete blacklists, that every site does moderation and suppresses things, and so on, so what's the problem? Isn't it obvious that the way you do things can matter? For instance, most techy people I've spoken to think that no-fly lists are problematic. Why were you put on a no-fly list? How can you petition for a review of your status if you think your placement was unjust? Who gets to decide who goes on that no-fly list? Is there any periodic review of such decisions to ensure there is no systemic bias or that the no-fly list isn't being abused for personal or political ends? There are many documented examples of people being targeted using the no-fly list for political reasons, for instance. All of these questions apply to secret suppression lists at social media companies. If Twitter is to become a central place critical to democratic discussion, as Musk has stated is his intent, these questions are then just as relevant as the government deciding who can and cannot fly. The tweets Weiss posted have a number of examples of politically motivated suppression, and you shouldn't so causally dismiss that. Combined with Taibbi's thread showing the government had some active involvement in moderating content, this is setting up a troubling precedent. This is a conversation that needs to take place.

phendrenad2 4y ago

> The "secret" aspect of all this can be largely ignored. Twitter is under no obligation to tell its users exactly how their Tweets are moderated Let's play a hypothetical game. If restaurants were under no obligations to tell you what ingredients were in their food, but some did anyway, would that change your restaurant eating habits? If so, how?

pablok2 4y ago

If we had insight about why the restrictions were applied, it would likely be more alarming. But this response in particular is a product of desensitized, you can't argue that morals and views have shifted even if you were a mod at some point, especially now e.g. post-Covid, post-Trump.