7 ms·

> 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

by 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
- tptacek 4y ago
  It's not reasonable criticism, because Twitter provided their definition of "shadow-ban" at the time, and it's unambiguously not what Weiss is talking about. You can disagree with the definition Twitter chose, but you can't retcon your own definition onto Twitter's policy statements.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - bavell 4y ago
    I'll be frank - I couldn't give a rat's ass about Weiss or Taibii. I'm not familiar with them and they're obviously trying to squeeze as much juice out of this story as they can. However, I see a lot of people here dismissing the wider and (imo) more valid complaints about veiled moderation tactics by beating up these two and calling it a day, case closed. I don't care what specific narrow definition twitter chose on a whim in some blog post and I'm not concerned with strictly "shadow-banning". The fact is, these global influence platforms are easy to subvert by immensely powerful interests (state actors, billionaires, etc) and the power we're placing in these people's hands is incredible, way beyond what any authoritarian dictator of yesteryear could even dream up. And when how the sausage is made is ever so slightly exposed, it's dismissed and hand-waved away. What could go wrong?
    - tptacek 4y ago
      The thread is about the false claims Weiss is making, not about your own opinions on moderation. What you should do, if you want to share those, is start a new top-level thread on this story. I'm sure what you have to say is germane to the story. It's just not germane to the thread you're commenting on.
      - bavell 4y ago
        OP made many points and I responded to one in particular with my opinion. Seems germane to me, although point taken about starting a top-level thread for better visibility/discussion.
adamwk 4y ago
I agree that colloquially it's definition can be looser depending on context, but it's in bad faith that Weiss[0] quotes Twitter's then Head of Policy and Trust as saying Twitter doesn't shadow ban people when in the very blog post[1] she's quoting they clearly define shadow banning as, "deliberately making someone’s content undiscoverable to everyone except the person who posted it, unbeknownst to the original poster." [0]: https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601013855697588224 https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601013855697588224 [1]: https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2018/Setting-the-record-straight-on-shadow-banning https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2018/Setting-t...
- somenameforme 4y ago
  Would most people consider an account shadow banned when it can post as normal, yet its post are secretly set to have near zero visibility? The answer is self evident. Twitter tried to redefine shadowbanning to something they do not do, and then put out a post saying they don't shadowban. That is engaging in extremely bad faith. Using the definition as normally understood, is not. There was a post on Hacker News when this blog was released: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17623306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17623306 One post there sums it up pretty well: Is it just me? Did I just read a blog post that said “We don’t do this thing I’m going to explain how we do the thing we don’t do.”
  - tptacek 4y ago
    It doesn't matter what "most people" would consider, because Twitter provided their definition of the term at the time. People disagree about all sorts of terms, and that's totally fair, but what Weiss is doing is retconning her own personal definition of the term on Twitter's policy statements, which were unambiguous. She is, in turn, being unambiguously dishonest. It's interesting how selective people are about the supposed Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.
    - bavell 4y ago
      Right, Twitter provided their own definition which delicately tiptoes around the unsavory issue and Weiss expanded the definition to suit her own self-interests. How does that make what "most people" would consider not matter? Seems like a non-sequitur to me but maybe I'm not understanding your point.
aidenn0 4y ago
Twitter used a similar definition to GP of shadow-bans previously, when it became clear that some accounts might not show up in search results: https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2018/Setting-the-record-straight-on-shadow-banning.html https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2018/...
Merovius 4y ago
> 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? I don't think you are wrong. I do think this is a powerful tool, that should be scrutinized. But I also can't think of any better alternative. So, in the meantime, ISTM that talking about how it's talked about (as a great conspiracy and revelation, when it's well-known and the best known solution to a problem we have) seems the right way to go about it. And note that not so long ago Musk himself said that this solution is what he wants for Twitter¹. I just think when talking about the "Twitter Files", the more interesting story is how Musk is spreading disinformation and propaganda to increase his own wealth and power and how supposed journalists are uncritically helping him do it. [1] https://twitter.com/whstancil/status/1601020232994201601 https://twitter.com/whstancil/status/1601020232994201601
notacoward 4y ago
> It reinforces your position so I understand why you're defining it as such The same could be said of Weiss or (by implication) you. "Shadow banning" sounds scary, which is precisely why people are flinging it around carelessly but also precisely why they shouldn't.
dogleash 4y ago
>I'm also slightly concerned over how blase "hackers" here on this site are treating the news There's a long standing phenomenon where the people working in tech have more visibility (or just insight) to witness business models slowly taking more and more advantage of the end user over the course of years, and don't notice that they've slowly hollowed out the standards they think they still hold. For example: we all just sorta accept that some of our friends and relations work - or want to work - at places like Facebook and Google. There's so many of them that we wind up treating it like a morally neutral job or are seen as a weirdo. When a layperson talks about their standards/expectations, they haven't had their barometer worn down over the years. All they hear back from those of us is in the know is some version of the "I'm not touching you" game. "No we'd never do X, we do a lot of things that are in the same category you place X. Things that bother you for the same reason you don't like X. Things that would make you seethe if the tech wasn't impenetrable to you. But we'd never, ever, X." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_HBmZuJlHs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_HBmZuJlHs
roflyear 4y ago
Elon wants to do this very thing. He wants bad actors to not be promoted and instead he wants for people to have to go to their profile.
lazyeye 4y ago
If the rules are not being applied equally across the political spectrum then your comment is simply obsfucation and misdirection. Completely missing the point.
- howinteresting 4y ago
  To the extent that rules don't get equally applied by social media platforms, they're generally biased in favor of the right. However, the right, due to its inherent animus for large sections of society, breaks the rules so much more often and so much more egregiously (eg Babylon Bee) that actual enforcement decisions are applied against the right more often.
  - lazyeye 4y ago
    Nonsense. You just define the rules such that this is the conclusion ("everyone that disagrees with me is a nazi etc...")
    - howinteresting 4y ago
      The rules used to prohibit deliberate misgendering, which any reasonable person would regard as cruelty to a marginalized group. The right (such as the Babylon Bee) disproportionately engages in this action, so it used to get banned more for this. This is also why anti-trans actions by right-wing state governments in the US have been consistently shut down by the courts (e.g. [1]). There is no evidence to support their actions -- they're driven by sheer animosity. Nothing "nonsense" about this. The way the right plays the refs is by claiming that the fact that the right gets banned disproportionately ipso facto means that the rules are biased. That's what's "nonsense" here. [1] https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/bongo-productions-llc-et-al-v-lawrence-et-al-opinion-granting-plaintiffs-motion?redirect=legal-document/bongo-productions-llc-v-lawrence-decision https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/bongo-productions-llc-et... > Although at least one key supporter of the Act in the General Assembly justified its requirements in relation to supposed risks of sexual assault and rape, there is (1) no evidence, in either the legislative record or the record of this case, that there is any significant problem of individuals’ abusing trans-inclusive restroom policies for that purpose and (2) no reason to think that, if such a problem existed, the mandated signs would address it.

by bavell 4y ago

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

tptacek 4y ago
It's not reasonable criticism, because Twitter provided their definition of "shadow-ban" at the time, and it's unambiguously not what Weiss is talking about. You can disagree with the definition Twitter chose, but you can't retcon your own definition onto Twitter's policy statements.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- bavell 4y ago
  I'll be frank - I couldn't give a rat's ass about Weiss or Taibii. I'm not familiar with them and they're obviously trying to squeeze as much juice out of this story as they can. However, I see a lot of people here dismissing the wider and (imo) more valid complaints about veiled moderation tactics by beating up these two and calling it a day, case closed. I don't care what specific narrow definition twitter chose on a whim in some blog post and I'm not concerned with strictly "shadow-banning". The fact is, these global influence platforms are easy to subvert by immensely powerful interests (state actors, billionaires, etc) and the power we're placing in these people's hands is incredible, way beyond what any authoritarian dictator of yesteryear could even dream up. And when how the sausage is made is ever so slightly exposed, it's dismissed and hand-waved away. What could go wrong?
  - tptacek 4y ago
    The thread is about the false claims Weiss is making, not about your own opinions on moderation. What you should do, if you want to share those, is start a new top-level thread on this story. I'm sure what you have to say is germane to the story. It's just not germane to the thread you're commenting on.
    - bavell 4y ago
      OP made many points and I responded to one in particular with my opinion. Seems germane to me, although point taken about starting a top-level thread for better visibility/discussion.

adamwk 4y ago

I agree that colloquially it's definition can be looser depending on context, but it's in bad faith that Weiss[0] quotes Twitter's then Head of Policy and Trust as saying Twitter doesn't shadow ban people when in the very blog post[1] she's quoting they clearly define shadow banning as, "deliberately making someone’s content undiscoverable to everyone except the person who posted it, unbeknownst to the original poster." [0]: https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601013855697588224 https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601013855697588224 [1]: https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2018/Setting-the-record-straight-on-shadow-banning https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2018/Setting-t...

somenameforme 4y ago
Would most people consider an account shadow banned when it can post as normal, yet its post are secretly set to have near zero visibility? The answer is self evident. Twitter tried to redefine shadowbanning to something they do not do, and then put out a post saying they don't shadowban. That is engaging in extremely bad faith. Using the definition as normally understood, is not. There was a post on Hacker News when this blog was released: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17623306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17623306 One post there sums it up pretty well: Is it just me? Did I just read a blog post that said “We don’t do this thing I’m going to explain how we do the thing we don’t do.”
- tptacek 4y ago
  It doesn't matter what "most people" would consider, because Twitter provided their definition of the term at the time. People disagree about all sorts of terms, and that's totally fair, but what Weiss is doing is retconning her own personal definition of the term on Twitter's policy statements, which were unambiguous. She is, in turn, being unambiguously dishonest. It's interesting how selective people are about the supposed Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.
  - bavell 4y ago
    Right, Twitter provided their own definition which delicately tiptoes around the unsavory issue and Weiss expanded the definition to suit her own self-interests. How does that make what "most people" would consider not matter? Seems like a non-sequitur to me but maybe I'm not understanding your point.

aidenn0 4y ago

Twitter used a similar definition to GP of shadow-bans previously, when it became clear that some accounts might not show up in search results: https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2018/Setting-the-record-straight-on-shadow-banning.html https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2018/...

Merovius 4y ago

> 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? I don't think you are wrong. I do think this is a powerful tool, that should be scrutinized. But I also can't think of any better alternative. So, in the meantime, ISTM that talking about how it's talked about (as a great conspiracy and revelation, when it's well-known and the best known solution to a problem we have) seems the right way to go about it. And note that not so long ago Musk himself said that this solution is what he wants for Twitter¹. I just think when talking about the "Twitter Files", the more interesting story is how Musk is spreading disinformation and propaganda to increase his own wealth and power and how supposed journalists are uncritically helping him do it. [1] https://twitter.com/whstancil/status/1601020232994201601 https://twitter.com/whstancil/status/1601020232994201601

notacoward 4y ago

> It reinforces your position so I understand why you're defining it as such The same could be said of Weiss or (by implication) you. "Shadow banning" sounds scary, which is precisely why people are flinging it around carelessly but also precisely why they shouldn't.

dogleash 4y ago

>I'm also slightly concerned over how blase "hackers" here on this site are treating the news There's a long standing phenomenon where the people working in tech have more visibility (or just insight) to witness business models slowly taking more and more advantage of the end user over the course of years, and don't notice that they've slowly hollowed out the standards they think they still hold. For example: we all just sorta accept that some of our friends and relations work - or want to work - at places like Facebook and Google. There's so many of them that we wind up treating it like a morally neutral job or are seen as a weirdo. When a layperson talks about their standards/expectations, they haven't had their barometer worn down over the years. All they hear back from those of us is in the know is some version of the "I'm not touching you" game. "No we'd never do X, we do a lot of things that are in the same category you place X. Things that bother you for the same reason you don't like X. Things that would make you seethe if the tech wasn't impenetrable to you. But we'd never, ever, X." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_HBmZuJlHs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_HBmZuJlHs

roflyear 4y ago

Elon wants to do this very thing. He wants bad actors to not be promoted and instead he wants for people to have to go to their profile.

lazyeye 4y ago

If the rules are not being applied equally across the political spectrum then your comment is simply obsfucation and misdirection. Completely missing the point.

howinteresting 4y ago
To the extent that rules don't get equally applied by social media platforms, they're generally biased in favor of the right. However, the right, due to its inherent animus for large sections of society, breaks the rules so much more often and so much more egregiously (eg Babylon Bee) that actual enforcement decisions are applied against the right more often.
- lazyeye 4y ago
  Nonsense. You just define the rules such that this is the conclusion ("everyone that disagrees with me is a nazi etc...")
  - howinteresting 4y ago
    The rules used to prohibit deliberate misgendering, which any reasonable person would regard as cruelty to a marginalized group. The right (such as the Babylon Bee) disproportionately engages in this action, so it used to get banned more for this. This is also why anti-trans actions by right-wing state governments in the US have been consistently shut down by the courts (e.g. [1]). There is no evidence to support their actions -- they're driven by sheer animosity. Nothing "nonsense" about this. The way the right plays the refs is by claiming that the fact that the right gets banned disproportionately ipso facto means that the rules are biased. That's what's "nonsense" here. [1] https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/bongo-productions-llc-et-al-v-lawrence-et-al-opinion-granting-plaintiffs-motion?redirect=legal-document/bongo-productions-llc-v-lawrence-decision https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/bongo-productions-llc-et... > Although at least one key supporter of the Act in the General Assembly justified its requirements in relation to supposed risks of sexual assault and rape, there is (1) no evidence, in either the legislative record or the record of this case, that there is any significant problem of individuals’ abusing trans-inclusive restroom policies for that purpose and (2) no reason to think that, if such a problem existed, the mandated signs would address it.