6 ms·

I was disappointed by this article and how it omitted the fact that Twitter hardcoded how references to Russia's invasion of Ukraine should be downranked. http

I was disappointed by this article and how it omitted the fact that Twitter hardcoded how references to Russia's invasion of Ukraine should be downranked. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35410841 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35410841

GenerocUsername 3y ago
I don't know when this dataset was published from, but there was def a time when Ukraine news was beyond saturation.
- phailhaus 3y ago
  Because if he's going to claim to be the internet's town square, he can't pick and choose topics that he's personally 'tired of'.
- madeofpalk 3y ago
  It's the sort of thing I would expect on a highly opinionated Hacker News (iirc like how posts about Apple have a penalty applied to them to counteract massive usual interest in them), but less so on something more general audience like Twitter. I'm not really looking to twitter to say "Actually, we've all heard a bit too much about Tennis". I don't want Twitter's timeline to have an editorial voice.
  - whimsicalism 3y ago
    All social media algo timelines have an editorial voice. Otherwise, you would exclusively be seeing engagement bait.
    - simplotek 3y ago
      > All social media algo timelines have an editorial voice. Sorry, that's a bullshit excuse. Russia's invasion of Ukraine was hardcoded to be downranked like DMCA violations and high toxicity content. This has zero do to with "editorial voice" or other bullshit excuse. This was a blatant attempt to smuther any reference on what Russia is doing to Ukraine.
      - whimsicalism 3y ago
        I was simply responding to the comment that was made.
      - pastacacioepepe 3y ago
        You have basically all traditional and social media pushing pointless and rushed news about Ukraine, a good part of which turn out to be incorrect later in time. Can we at least have one "safe space" where we don't have to constantly hear about death and glorification of weapons? Especially since we've never talked about Yemen or Syria with the same intensity.
        matthewdgreen 3y ago
        I heard plenty about what was happening in Syria, much of which also involved untargeted Russian brutality waged against civilians. Happy to link you to some of the articles about “barrel bombs” if you don’t remember them.
        whimsicalism 3y ago
        I followed the Syrian war heavily and the suggestion that its coverage was comparable to the coverage Ukraine got is not true and I think we all know it is not true.
        matthewdgreen 3y ago
        I think we can both agree that the heavy degree of reporting in Ukraine is a good thing.
        pastacacioepepe 3y ago
        This must be the peak passive aggressive. Dare to explain why that is a good thing?
        pastacacioepepe 3y ago
  - luckylion 3y ago
    If I recall correctly, Twitter has explicitly said before that they do rank topics very differently because otherwise Justin Bieber would be trending all day, every day.
    - simplotek 3y ago
      Twitter's source code does not ban Justin Bieber content as if it was DMCA violations. That's not it.
  - pastacacioepepe 3y ago
    Or maybe they try to avoid the kind of discussion that more often than not degenerates into low quality/bot content or outright flamewars. On the other end of the spectrum, FB allowed war posts urging violence against Russian. Thanks but I prefer to not be subjected to constant hate speech and the militarization of any discourse. Try to visit reddit these days, it's become a cesspool of war propaganda and military glorification.
    - takeda 3y ago
      Whatever they did, they quickly removed that piece of code when it was pointed out. Similarly as they removed the piece code that was categorizing tweets posted by Elon or one of both US political parties.
matthew9219 3y ago
[dead]
paulpauper 3y ago
If I had to guess it's because it gets poor engagement and would crowd out other topics due to the popularity of the topic.
- simplotek 3y ago
  If that was remotely true then why wouldn't the topic be handled at the training level? Instead, Twitter is censoring references to Russia's invasion of Ukraine through the same mechanism used to kill DMCA violations. This is not an approach motivated by "engagement".
  - xwdv 3y ago
    Training is a waste of time when you know exactly what you want to block.
  - hathawsh 3y ago
    HN did the same thing with Bitcoin when it was soaring in value. I remember the front page felt like it was 90% Bitcoin. I was grateful that HN added an exception, bringing the discussion back into balance.
    - blitzar 3y ago
      However, I am unaware of a public position HN has taken in relation to "free speech absolutism" or denounced the moderation of content as "proof that the woke mind virus has infected peoples brains"
theteapot 3y ago
That HN artcile is "[flagged]". Reading the comments I think it's because there is no analysis of what "UkraineCrisisTopic" actually means or does? Author seems to just grep code base for "Ukraine" then draw what conclusion fits narrative.
- ROTMetro 3y ago
  Versus the push that we should draw the conclusion that it's a nothing burger? It definitely highlights that Twitter is happy to categorize and treat Ukrainian content differently which is insightful to know.
  - theteapot 3y ago
    > Versus the push that we should draw the conclusion that it's a nothing burger? What push? Conclude what you want, preferably based off available evidence. > It definitely highlights that Twitter is happy to categorize and treat Ukrainian content differently which is insightful to know. Not really. That particular analysis AFAICT, highlights the term UkraineCrisisTopic occurs in the twitter algo code base somewhere.
  - nightpool 3y ago
    It's not trying to detect all Ukrainian content, it's in a section of the codebase related to manual flag penalties, so it's probably just one category of public misinformation warnings that twitter can apply to accounts promoting misleading or propagandistic information. see e.g. https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-tackle-ukraine-conflict-misinformation-with-warning-labels-2022-05-19/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-tackle-ukraine-co...
  - marginalia_nu 3y ago
    Why is it one or the other? I'd argue we shouldn't conclude anything until we know for something a fact.
joshxyz 3y ago
This is quite nuanced. Damned if you do: people will question your political stance. Damned if you don't: you'll lose a lot of users who uses twitter for various reasons other than politics and warfare. People that just want to relax and unwind, be entertained, and plug into the matrix. Seriously though I think a better UI for muting topics would be a better user interface than hardcoding these things. In twitter you can mute topics but you gotta dig through the settings first.
- takeda 3y ago
  I think if you don't (boost or demote) is generally perceived better than if you actively interfere. They could simply provide option to block tweets with specific hashtags (or maybe they already do, I don't use twitter), and I think everyone would like that.
  - joshxyz 3y ago
    yes they allow muting tweets with certain words that you provide, but it is burried deep in settings.

GenerocUsername 3y ago

I don't know when this dataset was published from, but there was def a time when Ukraine news was beyond saturation.

phailhaus 3y ago
Because if he's going to claim to be the internet's town square, he can't pick and choose topics that he's personally 'tired of'.
madeofpalk 3y ago
It's the sort of thing I would expect on a highly opinionated Hacker News (iirc like how posts about Apple have a penalty applied to them to counteract massive usual interest in them), but less so on something more general audience like Twitter. I'm not really looking to twitter to say "Actually, we've all heard a bit too much about Tennis". I don't want Twitter's timeline to have an editorial voice.
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  All social media algo timelines have an editorial voice. Otherwise, you would exclusively be seeing engagement bait.
  - simplotek 3y ago
    > All social media algo timelines have an editorial voice. Sorry, that's a bullshit excuse. Russia's invasion of Ukraine was hardcoded to be downranked like DMCA violations and high toxicity content. This has zero do to with "editorial voice" or other bullshit excuse. This was a blatant attempt to smuther any reference on what Russia is doing to Ukraine.
    - whimsicalism 3y ago
      I was simply responding to the comment that was made.
    - pastacacioepepe 3y ago
      You have basically all traditional and social media pushing pointless and rushed news about Ukraine, a good part of which turn out to be incorrect later in time. Can we at least have one "safe space" where we don't have to constantly hear about death and glorification of weapons? Especially since we've never talked about Yemen or Syria with the same intensity.
      - matthewdgreen 3y ago
        I heard plenty about what was happening in Syria, much of which also involved untargeted Russian brutality waged against civilians. Happy to link you to some of the articles about “barrel bombs” if you don’t remember them.
        whimsicalism 3y ago
        I followed the Syrian war heavily and the suggestion that its coverage was comparable to the coverage Ukraine got is not true and I think we all know it is not true.
        matthewdgreen 3y ago
        I think we can both agree that the heavy degree of reporting in Ukraine is a good thing.
        pastacacioepepe 3y ago
        This must be the peak passive aggressive. Dare to explain why that is a good thing?
        pastacacioepepe 3y ago
- luckylion 3y ago
  If I recall correctly, Twitter has explicitly said before that they do rank topics very differently because otherwise Justin Bieber would be trending all day, every day.
  - simplotek 3y ago
    Twitter's source code does not ban Justin Bieber content as if it was DMCA violations. That's not it.
- pastacacioepepe 3y ago
  Or maybe they try to avoid the kind of discussion that more often than not degenerates into low quality/bot content or outright flamewars. On the other end of the spectrum, FB allowed war posts urging violence against Russian. Thanks but I prefer to not be subjected to constant hate speech and the militarization of any discourse. Try to visit reddit these days, it's become a cesspool of war propaganda and military glorification.
  - takeda 3y ago
    Whatever they did, they quickly removed that piece of code when it was pointed out. Similarly as they removed the piece code that was categorizing tweets posted by Elon or one of both US political parties.

matthew9219 3y ago

[dead]

paulpauper 3y ago

If I had to guess it's because it gets poor engagement and would crowd out other topics due to the popularity of the topic.

simplotek 3y ago
If that was remotely true then why wouldn't the topic be handled at the training level? Instead, Twitter is censoring references to Russia's invasion of Ukraine through the same mechanism used to kill DMCA violations. This is not an approach motivated by "engagement".
- xwdv 3y ago
  Training is a waste of time when you know exactly what you want to block.
- hathawsh 3y ago
  HN did the same thing with Bitcoin when it was soaring in value. I remember the front page felt like it was 90% Bitcoin. I was grateful that HN added an exception, bringing the discussion back into balance.
  - blitzar 3y ago
    However, I am unaware of a public position HN has taken in relation to "free speech absolutism" or denounced the moderation of content as "proof that the woke mind virus has infected peoples brains"

theteapot 3y ago

That HN artcile is "[flagged]". Reading the comments I think it's because there is no analysis of what "UkraineCrisisTopic" actually means or does? Author seems to just grep code base for "Ukraine" then draw what conclusion fits narrative.

ROTMetro 3y ago
Versus the push that we should draw the conclusion that it's a nothing burger? It definitely highlights that Twitter is happy to categorize and treat Ukrainian content differently which is insightful to know.
- theteapot 3y ago
  > Versus the push that we should draw the conclusion that it's a nothing burger? What push? Conclude what you want, preferably based off available evidence. > It definitely highlights that Twitter is happy to categorize and treat Ukrainian content differently which is insightful to know. Not really. That particular analysis AFAICT, highlights the term UkraineCrisisTopic occurs in the twitter algo code base somewhere.
- nightpool 3y ago
  It's not trying to detect all Ukrainian content, it's in a section of the codebase related to manual flag penalties, so it's probably just one category of public misinformation warnings that twitter can apply to accounts promoting misleading or propagandistic information. see e.g. https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-tackle-ukraine-conflict-misinformation-with-warning-labels-2022-05-19/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-tackle-ukraine-co...
- marginalia_nu 3y ago
  Why is it one or the other? I'd argue we shouldn't conclude anything until we know for something a fact.

joshxyz 3y ago

This is quite nuanced. Damned if you do: people will question your political stance. Damned if you don't: you'll lose a lot of users who uses twitter for various reasons other than politics and warfare. People that just want to relax and unwind, be entertained, and plug into the matrix. Seriously though I think a better UI for muting topics would be a better user interface than hardcoding these things. In twitter you can mute topics but you gotta dig through the settings first.

takeda 3y ago
I think if you don't (boost or demote) is generally perceived better than if you actively interfere. They could simply provide option to block tweets with specific hashtags (or maybe they already do, I don't use twitter), and I think everyone would like that.
- joshxyz 3y ago
  yes they allow muting tweets with certain words that you provide, but it is burried deep in settings.