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Analysis of Twitter algorithm reveals Twitter down-ranks tweets about Ukraine
- joenathanone 4y agoInstead of being a bastion of free speech it really seems like what goes at Twitter is all up to what is most pleasing to Elon at any given moment, hypocrisy at its finest. The implication of decisions like this could be lives lost and oppressive regimes defacto boosted.
- dingusdew 4y ago[dead]
- electric_mayhem 4y ago[flagged]
- monkeynotes 4y ago> Free speech for my folks and downranking for the wokes. Twitter files show it was simply the reverse before Elon. If you think that a private company like Twitter is going to be unbiased you have more faith in humanity than I do. Whatever the CEO they are going to have opinions about who to promote and who to bury.
- cubancigar11 4y agoDingusdew you are [dead]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- monkeynotes 4y agoFree speech doesn't mean equity in voice amplitude. Saying that modulating the amount of Ukraine chatter could lead to lives lost, oppressive regimes is hyperbole at best, and plain reactionary. Ukraine tweets are negative about Ukraine as much as they are positive, and I for one am tired of seeing the absolute clusterfuck that is armchair war mongers going at it 24/7.
- klyrs 4y ago> Free speech doesn't mean equity in voice amplitude. While I agree with that completely, the "free speech absolutist" narrative that was pushed in support of Musk is that far-right talking points were getting downranked, that platforms should be neutral to "political opinions." In Texas, this notion has been enshrined into law.
- transcoderx 4y agoYeah that must be why he published the algorithm, to strengthen his grip on public opinion, and exploit the open source community to further his path to world domination.
- Zigurd 4y agoElon goes vatnik
- FpUser 4y agoThis vatnik helped a lot with Starlink. Even if he is generic jerk a gratitude is due just for that.
- awb 4y agoDictators can make the trains run on time. Doesn’t mean we owe them gratitude.
- cubancigar11 4y agoThat is not comparable to providing starlink. Also, and this might be uncomfortable to know buta lot of people don't want to be bombarded with propaganda war on the internet. Most people browse internet to escape their hard reality. It makes perfect sense to decrease visibility if it is artificially being heightened.
- SXX 4y agoIf only it was technically possible to make a button like "Show me less on topic of X". Too bad platform like Twitter had to make some tough decision for it's users since they can't be trusted to decide what to read on their own.
- cubancigar11 4y agoBtw, my karma is taking a hit by taking a normal view. But you are very right. This is totally the fault of social media companies but I am sure they are responding to market forces. It isn't that too far in past when I used to open facebook and see my friends' activities. Then they had advertisers, then they had activists shaming advertisers, then they had automatic filters. My solution to this that I am sure eventually we will agree as a society, is to have a public list of filters and public list of algorithm applying that. It might even be regulated by government in future. But all that is too far in the future.
- shantara 4y agoAh, yes… The “free speech”
- suumcuique 4y agoThis article is very uninformative. What’s the evidence this “safety label” is being used in an improper way and not for example Russian state propaganda or some of the extremely violent war footage?
- SXX 4y agoBoth violence and hate tweets have it's own categories. Also all other filters on the list have very unambiguous names. It is UkraineCrisisTopic and not UkraineCrisisMisinfo. PS: All filter names: DoNotAmplify, CoordinatedHarmfulActivityHighRecall, UntrustedUrl, MisleadingHighRecall, NsfwHighPrecision, NsfwHighRecall, CivicIntegrityMisinfo, MedicalMisinfo, GenericMisinfo, DmcaWithheld, HatefulHighRecall, ViolenceHighRecall, HighToxicityModelScore, UkraineCrisisTopic, DoNotPublicPublish
- suumcuique 4y agoProgrammers being bad at naming things isn’t very damning. Add to that this guy made a few 1000 enemies with inside info with his hamfisted management, it would be leaked to the press 5 minutes after he orders it. Btw this class seems to be for spaces not tweets and a quick search for Ukraine in TweetSafetyLabels in the same package turns up no results, really shoddy writing.
- WinstonSmith84 4y agoI noticed that too, but it's likely we are not seeing the whole code base. "the algorithm", despite being possibly at the heart of many "interesting" things, is likely just one out of many other "modules" of the Twitter platform. Also while it was just rumours so far, various well known Tweeter tweeting about this war have been complaining since last November that their tweets had suddenly much less engagements. This is just too much of a coincidence.
- awb 4y ago> Programmers being bad at naming things isn’t very damning You’re right. But Musk was hosting Twitter polls, posting memes and proposing territorial borders and conflict resolution that seemed to be much closer to the Russian view than the Ukrainian view. So you’re right that more info is needed, but Musk inserted himself into this topic in a way that raised a few eyebrows.
- graeme 4y agoUkraine war is one of my major interests. Not long after the takeover I found it 10x harder to see the people I followed who tweeted about Ukraine. One notable vignette: Elon Musk called the Crimean handover “Kruschev’s mistake”. That’s a very specific statement steeped in Russian revanchism. * One has to know Crimea used to be part of Russia * One has to know Kruschev handed it over to Ukraine in the 1950s for an anniversary * One has to believe this was wrong * One has to ignore voting at Ukraine’s independence suggesting the inhabitants at the time wished to be part of Ukraine and not Russia It suggests the comment was inspired through talking to a Russian revanchist. One would not get this interpretation from, say, Wikipedia.
- Muromec 4y agoYep, he shares those unmistakingly Russian takes once is while and they should come from somewhere. Wild guess would be some Russians hired to work in Space-X or another instance of gazprom money funneled through a son living in London investor types.
- Convolutional 4y ago[flagged]
- Ralfp 4y agoWhat are YOU doing about this? Are YOU letting your reps know this matter is important to YOU? Are YOU raising this issue with YOUr American friends?
- Ralfp 4y agoMusk is part of Twitters alt-right pipeline, and this pipeline is contrarian to western trends by default. West supporting Ukraine makes them support Russia as default, not because they like Russia (only fringe alt-righters think Russia is better place to live than the West). I don’t think he is a vatnik as some here have said, but one of the memes going around the bubble is „think for yourself, question everything”. This makes him think that Russian aggression has some justification simply because „things are never what they seem” or „things are never black and white”.
- SXX 4y agoIf someone curious here is the line on GitHub: https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm/blob/7f90d0ca342b928b479b512ec51ac2c3821f5922/visibilitylib/src/main/scala/com/twitter/visibility/models/SpaceSafetyLabelType.scala#L39 https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm/blob/7f90d0ca342b92... UPD: here is link to main branch without specific commit. Line is still there, it's not some fake or something: https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm/blob/main/visibilitylib/src/main/scala/com/twitter/visibility/models/SpaceSafetyLabelType.scala#L39 https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm/blob/main/visibilit...
- awb 4y ago> This commit does not belong to any branch on this repository, and may belong to a fork outside of the repository. Never seen this before. Why would a commit to a fork show up on the original repo?
- rjh29 4y agoIt is in the original repo: https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm/blob/main/visibilitylib/src/main/scala/com/twitter/visibility/models/SpaceSafetyLabelType.scala#L39 https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm/blob/main/visibilit... The problem is, the branch 'main' and its contents will change over time, so GP linked to a 'permalink' of the exact commit hash instead.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
- bmarquez 4y agoWas this algorithmic change made before Elon's purchase or afterwards? The article doesn't say. Considering that the Ukraine conflict has been going on since 2014 it would be nice to get more info before bringing out the pitchforks.
- esperent 4y agoWhy? If it's true then pitchforks are due. Doesn't really matter who ordered it, what matters is who's in charge right now and whether they can be forced into action.
- bmarquez 4y agoBecause many of the HN comments (at the time of posting) were talking about Elon and his possible motives, but if he didn't make the change then that's not relevant.
- SXX 4y agoLet's be honest nobody gave a damn about Ukraine or any of any of occupied territories before 24th February 2022. Though we can't know if it was added in 2022 before of after Elon actually took control over company.
- hyperhopper 4y agoNot at all. The takeover of crimea was a pretty big deal and I know a lot of my friends also watched the 111 part vice documentary "Russian roulette in Ukraine" and have been talking about it.
- Izkata 4y agoI assume they meant [state]occupied, not [event]occupied. In which case I agree with them - I heard a lot about it as it happened, then nothing in the years between.
- 34679 4y agoJudging by the comments here, it would be easy to assume most of you are already in favor of war with Russia. Russia is not "the good guy". Neither are we. Any action that promotes war between the two is an action that also promotes widespread death and destruction across the entire planet. Maybe down-ranking Ukraine tweets have hushed the war drums to a degree, maybe not. But there is a justification that does not include supporting Russia.
- popilewiz 4y agoIt doesn't change the fact that there is already a war going on that is taking tens of thousands of lives. Coverage and awareness is important.
- belltaco 4y ago>Russia is not "the good guy". Neither are we. The standard both sides are the same argument with black and white thinking. No mention of shades of grey or nuance.
- ncallaway 4y agoHow could you possibly square that logic with any of Musk’s comments about free speech?
- dotty- 4y agohttps://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1593673339826212864 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1593673339826212864
- 0xDEF 4y agoRussia losing its political objectives in Ukraine is not an existential threat to Russia so there is no reason they will escalate to nukes. The Russian political elite are enjoying their luxurious lives in Moscow. Many of their children and grandchildren live in the West. They are not going to destroy the planet just because they will a smaller slice of Ukraine than they had hoped for. It is interesting that "Russia will nuke the whole world" fear mongering is only coming from the people who want Russia to win.
- deltree7 4y agoIt downvotes UkraineCrisis (not just Ukraine) Considering the massive propaganda operations from both Russia/Ukraine, it's actually not a bad flag. Sure Ukraine is the good guy, but if you think that Ukraine doesn't run propaganda, you are completely naive.
- progrus 4y agoWell, calling it a “crisis” is Russian NLP, too.
- washadjeffmad 4y ago[flagged]
- SXX 4y agoEvery national state have propoganda.
- deltree7 4y agoYes and I don't want that to pollute my timeline
- smk00 4y agoThis code is for TWITTER SPACES, not for home timeline ranking.
- pseudo0 4y agoIs this really surprising? Nation-state actors and their proxies on both sides are constantly trying to astroturf Twitter. It's particularly awkward since the Ukrainian side seems to have a more effective disinformation program (eg. NAFO, Snake Island, the Ghost of Kiev, etc). It would be politically dangerous to crack down hard on that type of disinformation though, so all Twitter can do is turn down the volume for the topic in general.
- SXX 4y agoWould it also be okay if Twitter would turn down the volume of some of political topics in US or in whatever country you live in? Might be instead it should let you decide what topics are you interested in?
- calderknight 4y agoYou're not really engaging with your parent's point, which is about misinformation. Would it be OK if Twitter allowed misinformation about the miltary operations in the Ukraine to run rampant? Would it be OK if Twitter censored pro-Ukranians (because they share a lot of misinformation)?
- SXX 4y agoWar is not COVID-19 with bunch of anti-vaxxers running around. Twitter can't possible tell what is misinformation in a war.
- calderknight 4y agoNot sure how this is meant to relate to my comment
- aftbit 3y agoIMO yes it would be totally OK if Twitter allowed misinformation (on almost any topic) to run rampant. How did we get into the position of expecting a platform that explicitly gives microphones to a huge variety of people to then turn around and police those people to make sure they're not saying false things? What happened to "trust nothing you hear and only half of what you read"? Determining what is true and what is false is not the job of the platform, but the reader.
- progrus 4y agoThis is because Russian accounts started calling the fight a “crisis” instead of a “war” so people would perceive it differently.
- nottorp 4y ago... but is it malice, incompetence or simply tweets about Ukraine don't generate as much "engagement" as cat photos?
- salawat 4y agoFor those really interested in the actual techniques being employed: Twitter repo + relevant visibility tweaking code at: https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm/tree/main/visibilitylib/src/main/scala/com/twitter/visibility/rules https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm/tree/main/visibilit... Still reading through it myself, but if I'm properly distilling the gist out of this, it seems they've implemented an "iptables for tweet visibility" through which the server sends instructions to the client to then run a rules engine against to drop tweets or specifically throttle engagement. So... if I'm right, and this is the real kick in the teeth from my perspective; they aren't even doing the hard work on their side to sift through the datastream and drop things on their side. They're instead programming your hardware to do their gaslighting/censorship/filtering for them. Dumb pipe for them, but you're left burning cycles on your phone/client/whatever to hide their material for them. Corollary being that with a sufficiently misbehaving client, one ought to be able to reconstitute an unfiltered stream to get a more accurate representation of the awfulness of those around you instead of only seeing what Twitter wants you to see. It also means that server-side, there may actually be nothing preventing using a sufficiently misbehaving client from repurposing the Twitter backend as a Command & Control layer. In fact, one may even be able to compose several account provisioning/deprovisioning/visibility primitives to ensure no normal client would see anything, while the message nevertheless gets through. It's technically auditable, but if I put on my blacker hat; I miiiiight see a few ways to get up to some difficult to follow mischief if the system as posted is truly representative of what is there. May do dome net traffic analysis to see if I can figure out where the request is that would return the hypothetical ruleset to be consumed by the client. Not entirely convinced the engine is entirely client side, as that would have tipped their hand much longer ago I'd think. Not sure til I actually audit the full codebasr. Yet another reason I've never quite been brave enough to pull the trigger on hosting a system like this for anyone but those I personally know and trust. After a certain point, probability goes to 1 that somepne is going to find a way to repurpose something nice no matter the level of good intention into something horrible. I like to think of it as a more abstract form of Rule34. If you build an information transfer system, someone will use it for something illegal somewhere. Of course, even if I'm totally wrong, odds are that if I'm seeing the potential here, there is a smarter, less ethical version of me with a goatee that's already picked it apart and os likely actively exploiting it.