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X Purges Prominent Journalists, Leftists with No Explanation
- bluefishinit 3y agoWhy is this flagged and why can't I vouch for it?
- rsynnott 3y agoThe Elonites don't care for this sort of thing, as it makes Dear Leader look a bit silly.
- bluefishinit 3y agoDo they have the power to make a HN submission un-vouchable?
- greyface- 3y agoSubmissions become vouchable once flagkilled, not once flagged.
- bluefishinit 3y agoThat's interesting, what's the difference between the two? Is there any recourse to reviving a flagged article like this?
- greyface- 3y agoI don't know the exact thresholds, but [flagged] happens at some # of flags, and [dead] happens at a higher # of flags. [flagged] are de-ranked, but not made invisible or unavailable for replies like [dead] are. I guess the recourse would be upvoting - I think those counteract flags in terms of ranking. I don't know if that would do anything to remove the [flagged] display, though.
- hn1986 3y ago@dang, do you have any solutions for Musk related articles being flagged constantly? Clearly someone is trying to abuse the flag process. Does being flagged affect it getting on the frontpage or any effect?
- mariusor 3y agoWhy do you think that democratic flagging needs a solution?
- AlbertCory 3y ago> democratic flagging how is it "democratic" when a few people can kill an article they don't agree with? "democratic" would be upvotes & downvotes canceling each other out, which we already have.
- greyface- 3y ago> "democratic" would be upvotes & downvotes canceling each other out, which we already have. Submissions can't be downvoted; we don't already have that.
- mariusor 3y agoWell, if you feel a flag is underserved you can vouch for the submission/comment. I think a vastly smaller number of vouches is needed to unflag something than the number of flags it took to flag it. I know there's the downside of not being able to vouch for something until it got buried, but even so I think the end-result is reasonably democratic.
- AlbertCory 3y agoI searched the FAQ for the word "vouch" and got zilch. Explain to me the utility of flagging as opposed to simply downvoting (I'm talking about comments, not submissions). especially, why is there no accountability for it? Are there "frequent flaggers" who should sometimes have their flagging privileges revoked?
- mariusor 3y agoMaybe some people just searched for the accounts on twitter, found them, and concluded that Vice is either mistaken, or jumped to premature conclusions.
- daily-ritual 3y agoWew lad. So much for "free speech"
- bediger4000 3y agoWhere is the Free Speech Absolutist outrage? What happened to the answer to bad speech is more good speech? Can I conclude that both of those positions are by and large rhetorical shams?
- raxxorraxor 3y agoNo shams and the inevitable and predictable result of people not advertising the wiser position. That people are silent should come to no surprise and some might even revel in that the tables have turned on some platforms. I expect the majority to just bang their heads into the nearest table though. Ironically it was defenders of freedom of speech and expression that were threatened with consequences. > journalists and leftist pundits usually you can be one of these but rarely both at the same time.
- philipov 3y ago>> journalists and leftist pundits > usually you can be one of these but rarely both at the same time. I didn't parse this as referring to only one person, so there's no "at the same time" here.
- kelseyfrog 3y ago> They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The next part talks about how they fall silent when pressed hard, but that was before the internet. Now they slip back, disappear, and re-emerge elsewhere. We don't even have the pleasure of their silence.
- k33n 3y agoIronically, it is the Trump supporting types that seem to really enjoy explaining their positions. Left wingers cannot handle being pressed hard -- particularly in a corporate setting -- about things like DEI and other matters they are unwilling to cede. Press me as hard as you want! I can defend my positions easily and without getting emotional.
- chatmasta 3y agoArticle is 404 for me.
- toomuchtodo 3y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20240109154748/https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d948x/x-purges-prominent-journalists-leftists-with-no-explanation https://web.archive.org/web/20240109154748/https://www.vice.... https://archive.today/lvZbT https://archive.today/lvZbT
- airjtliajert 3y agoYou mean the born-rich thin-skinned man-child is not a "free speech absolutist" and is actually opposed to free speech? I am shocked.
- kibwen 3y agoAnyone who unironically calls themselves a "free speech absolutist" needs to go meditate under a waterfall for a few years on what the point of free speech is, and what the consequences and implications of that are.
- mindslight 3y agoCare to elaborate your point? I wouldn't label myself a "free speech absolutist" (seems like blowhard posturing), but my belief in freedom of speech does have an absolutist framing (it's a natural right flowing from computational enfranchisement plus the existence of cryptography).
- smoothjazz 3y agoThat's beyond ridiculous. Ken Klippenstein is a great journalist and definitely should not be suspended.
- etchalon 3y agoI'm glad the free speech platform is here to protect us from speech it doesn't like.
- kibwen 3y agoI'm glad that Elon's free speech brigade is here, as usual, to censor this discussion by flagging it to death.
- bla3 3y agoI parsed this as (X Purges Prominent Journalists), (Leftists with No Explanation) at first and was pretty confused. If that should happen to anyone else, it's supposed to b (X Purges Prominent Journalists, Leftists) (with No Explanation).
- paxys 3y agoThis has been happening since the day Musk took over Twitter (here's one from December 2022 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/technology/twitter-suspends-journalist-accounts-elon-musk.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/technology/twitter-suspen...). There are always people (including a large chunk on HN itself) who will come up with more and more elaborate excuses for his purges and maintain that he is all about free speech and neutrality. I'm sure same will happen for this one. Edit: as expected, this post has been flagged.
- apapapa 3y agoflagging is wayyy too easy on HN... I bet admins have extreme flagging powers too
- enterprise_cog 3y agoThey do afaik. I wish flagged posts showed who flagged them at least. If there was manipulation or coordinated acts to flag submissions, it would be a lot easier to figure out.
- brador 3y agoOr replace user id with a hash, that way one could identify patterns without premature witch hunts.
- f38zf5vdt 3y agoIs there a database somewhere that keeps track of all the flagged threads on here so we can see what gets censored on a regular basis? It would be fun to k-means cluster it and see what is verboten to HN users or staff.
- nathanaldensr 3y agoYou're assuming the post was flagged in an effort to hide the alleged truth of the story. It's more likely it was flagged because it's political in nature. Change it to "Journalists, Rightists" and I'd flag it, as well.
- ThisIsMyAltAcct 3y agoPreparing for election season.
- lreeves 3y agoThere's a theory that it's a bunch of bans for anyone critical lately of Bill Ackman - see https://twitter.com/Esqueer_/status/1744724937313837177 https://twitter.com/Esqueer_/status/1744724937313837177
- badrequest 3y agowhat a great platform for free speech when you can get banned for angering a billionaire
- mobiuscog 3y agoI was going to ask who Ackman was (yeah, I don't keep up with the twitterati) and I find he's someone who fits with Elon very well: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/jan/03/bill-ackman-billionaire-attacks-claudine-gay-harvard-twitter-x https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/jan/03/bill-ackma...
- rsynnott 3y agoBill Ackman?! Who on earth cares enough about _Bill Ackman_ to white-knight him with Twitter bans? Up until you mentioned him I'd completely forgotten he even existed.
- drcongo 3y agoElon Musk
- greenie_beans 3y agohe's trending because of the harvard plagiarism stuff, he was one of the annoying ppl on twitter about it. but apparently ackman's wife plagiarized too? idk the facts, just the headlines, i choose to ignore all that stuff bc culture war makes for bad political action
- atticora 3y agoAckman went after Gay for permitting Harvard antisemitism, which didn't get her removed. Others went after her for plagiarism, which led to her resignation. So other others went after Ackman's wife for plagiarism as a way to hurt the others. Ackman declared that family was out of bounds and that he will retaliate by doing a plagiarism review of the whole MIT faculty and the journalists who went after his wife. If this conflagration continues ... it may have a positive effect on reducing plagiarism. But since LLMs can easily reword text, the plagiarism wars are more about the past than the future. Because now the plagiarism of concepts rather than phrases is cheap and easy and far less detectable. Perhaps plagiarism review can move to detection of shared sequences of concepts rather than words.
- themusicgod1 3y agoThey should have left for the fediverse long ago. http://b4hntuy3fimfh2227vf4f74emnya7p35i5brtqujs6leqvtclfwvjbqd.onion/jointhefedi.html http://b4hntuy3fimfh2227vf4f74emnya7p35i5brtqujs6leqvtclfwvj...
- aaomidi 3y agoMost of them already have accounts on the fediverse too.
- themusicgod1 3y agoanyone got a list of recent-purged-from-X left-leaning journalists fedi accounts?
- themusicgod1 3y ago[work in progress, if you see any others let me know] @zei_squirrel@mastodon.social
- dzhiurgis 3y agoIf they did - why my NZ feed stinks like communist kolkhoz?
- hereme888 3y ago[flagged]
- dadjoker 3y agoSo funny to watch everyone screaming about this, when pre-Musk many many conservative accounts were suspended merely for things like daring to question COVID "vaccine" efficacy (see: Alex Berenson), or making a humorous post about a transgender (see: Babylon Bee). And that is just the tip of the iceberg. There are lists of many medical doctors who were suspended for legitimate COVID paranoia criticism, while leftist accounts were free to spew violence and hatred (see: Antifa, BLM). Where were all these people then? Or, to quote Orwell, were some accounts/people more equal than others?
- kibwen 3y ago"I have been censored for my conservative views!" "Holy shit, you were censored for wanting low taxes?" "No." "Ok then, you were censored for wanting deregulation?" "No, lol." "So which views, then?" "Oh, you know the ones."
- throwaway0x4 3y ago[flagged]
- kibwen 3y agoDid the sound of the point make an audible "whoosh" as it passed you by?
- throwaway0x4 3y ago[flagged]
- hereme888 3y agoExactly. No hit pieces by MSM then. Hail Twitter for shutting up those conservatives. And now, predictably, you and I get downvoted by the logic of "tolerant" extremists.
- noahlt 3y ago[flagged]
- kibwen 3y agoI think it's sad that "conservatives" seem to think that they're persecuted when in fact the "previous regime" bent over backwards to accommodate them and amplify their voices. "In separate discussions verified by Motherboard, that employee said Twitter hasn’t taken the same aggressive approach to white supremacist content because the collateral accounts that are impacted can, in some instances, be Republican politicians. The employee argued that, on a technical level, content from Republican politicians could get swept up by algorithms aggressively removing white supremacist material. Banning politicians wouldn’t be accepted by society as a trade-off for flagging all of the white supremacist propaganda, he argued." https://www.vice.com/en/article/a3xgq5/why-wont-twitter-treat-white-supremacy-like-isis-because-it-would-mean-banning-some-republican-politicians-too https://www.vice.com/en/article/a3xgq5/why-wont-twitter-trea...
- hereme888 3y agoI see very little "white supremacist" content on twitter. But I see plenty of "black supremacist" content that doesn't get banned. Few dare even mention black supremacist or racism on behalf of blacks against whites.
- manuelabeledo 3y ago> I see very little "white supremacist" content on twitter. I'm not sure if you say this because there is indeed "little", or because there is "not enough".
- hereme888 3y agoSeriously? Do I come across as one? I'm reporting what I see. That's all.
- kypro 3y agoI would give it at least 24 hours to see if these suspensions are legit. My understanding is that X does still suspend where they detect spam, illegal activity, etc. It's possible these accounts were all linked to something that got flagged up somewhere. It's possible (not saying this is what happened though) that this is just mistake and their accounts will be reinstated shortly. Or maybe Elon did personally ban these journalists. If it turned out he didn't though I think a lot of you guys need to reconsider your biases.
- tensor 3y agoIt's not bias when it's based on a pattern of past behaviour. Perhaps you need to reconsider why you are unable to accept this.
- pixxel 3y ago[flagged]
- mariusor 3y agoNot op, but I'm sure that not everyone watches everything that goes down on Twitter to be able to notice a "pattern of past behaviour".
- happytoexplain 3y agoTrue, but, 1. Musk is vocally anti-liberal (or really, vocally anti-things-associated-with-liberals, and vocally anti-other-things too), and 2. He expresses it in an antagonistic/mocking way. Those two things combined are enough that it is reasonable to criticize him when a bias appears to occur. Of course, critics must be careful not to be too unreasonable. But such behavior as his is antithetical to big trust-based systems (e.g. moderation of large, entrenched social platforms), so it's important to criticize people in his position for commiting his behaviors, and to be critical/suspicious of moderation under his purview when there's a question of bias (this is the same criticism the right made, in not so many words, of pre-Musk Twitter, and which I don't think was totally unreasonable then either, though I do think the circumstances are far from perfect mirrors of each other).
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- TheAceOfHearts 3y agoIt looks like Elon's claims of being a free speech absolutist don't go very far, if this article is to be taken at face value. The most disappointing part for me is the lack of transparency. Didn't Elon talk about including explanations for why people were banned or why they had restricted reach? We can only speculate about why these people were banned because Twitter doesn't provide a public explanation. Were these people verified (paying) users as well? IMO, that would make it even more egregious.
- fuzzbazz 3y agoIt seems like the CTO was made aware of the situation and 15 minutes later the accounts were un-suspended. [1] https://nitter.poast.org/elonmusk/status/1744766353494376749 https://nitter.poast.org/elonmusk/status/1744766353494376749 Probably some automated system or mass report (speculating, of course).
- throwaway0x4 3y ago[flagged]
- bluefishinit 3y agoConsequences for what?
- throwaway0x4 3y ago[flagged]
- mariusor 3y agoDo you have any specific examples of that from these specific people? I feel like you're arguing a point that nobody tried to make.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- throwaway0x5 3y ago[dead]
- wtfwhateven 3y agolol
- throwaway0x5 3y ago[dead]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mindslight 3y agoBy that useless definition, everyone everywhere always has freedom of speech.
- mariusor 3y agoJust as a side note, I'm making this comment about an hour after the submission and maybe two after the article was written and I can find all of those people on twitter. Most of them have recent comments about being back.