Scott Adams: The Social Media Hive Mind | Hacker News Reader

Scott Adams: The Social Media Hive Mind

blog.dilbert.com

38 pointscpr64 comments

I'm surprised that platforms like Twitter and Facebook aren't seen as de facto utilities, when a certain percentage of the population uses them, and when they're the main method of communication for powerful institutions like corporations and the president.

Because when they aren't, you end up with arguments like "If you want free speech, just don't use private platforms". I don't think that's a reasonable argument anymore...those platforms wedged themselves into being a necessity for public figures.

I wish people would stop saying this: If platforms are treated as public utilities they will be under government control and there will be zeo free speech, and there will be no competition. The solution is for the private marketplace to make better products.

Neither Twitter nor Facebook are "the main method of communication" for the President.

Outside of the State of the Union address, I'm not aware of any "main method of communication" for the POTUS. You could argue the press conferences held by the press secretary are one form, but they're not mandated by the Constitution.

I would say the press conferences are the main method as they are from the White House and happen multiple times a day. I don't know that a Constitutional mandate would have anything to do with it.

They're the main method to address the public. But how does the president communicate and interact with the public? Twitter.

And the State of the Union address was delivered in written form to Congress for more than the first century after the Constitution was ratified. Hoover was the last to never give a speech for the State of the Union.

There could be so many reasons for tweets becoming unavailable, not related to The World Hates Scott Adams(tm). It appears to happen when you quote someone, then block them, for example. It could also just be a bug. I've seen the "this tweet is unavailable" message tons of times, but never noticed a pattern.

If it's true that this is throttling, a tool used to suppress and censor "any content that disagrees with [Twitter's] political views" then that would be interesting but there's nothing in this post that supports this except a strange video.

The "great video" makes a lot of claims without any proof. It's mostly a long, super aggressive, homophobic[0], rant.

Could it just be selection bias. If you mostly follow aholes on Twitter, and some tweets become unavailable because the quote feature is broken (or something), then it seems like your ahole opinion is being censored?

[0]: Uses language like "I'm the worlds biggest faggot", "fat bull dykes", etc.

This is exactly what I said. The guy in the video seems like the type of personality that would immediately default to "I'm being censored, OH NOEZ!" when a simple technical issue could cause his tweet to show as unavailable. There are any number of reasons that this could happen and the fact that every single piece of info he has is anecdotal and without a pattern is extremely suspect. I mean, this theory could be easily disproved just by showing a left-leaning tweet where it shows as unavailable. This seems like a perfect fit for Occam's Razor.

The problem with this argument is that there have been hundreds or possibly thousands of accounts removed from Twitter since the election simply for political content.

It's not a technical issue, nor is it a secret. It's a purge of content and accounts that Twitter deems offensive because the content and the people who tweet and retweet it are on the opposite side of the political spectrum. And it's not based on a failure to follow community guidelines -- or if it is, those guidelines are very unevenly enforced under the "don't shoot anyone to our left" rule.

Where's the evidence of that removal, then? The most extensive "evidence" of this is maybe 5 accounts getting removed and for every 5 on the right that got removed, there are 5 on the left. Anecdotes are not evidence.

Found the story for you, conveniently dated today and published by AP so you don't have to wonder if it's fake news.

"Also on Tuesday, Twitter said it's creating a "safe search" feature that removes tweets with potentially sensitive content and tweets from blocked and muted accounts from search results. The tweets will still exist on Twitter if people look for them, but won't appear in general search results.

Twitter is also making some replies less visible so only the most relevant conversations surface."

This is exactly what Scott Adams and commenters above complained about, and what others doubted or dismissed as technical glitches. Turns out it's not a technical problem, it's policy.

Sure, Twitter has the right to do it. But please don't dismiss the serious questions about whether they ought to do it and expect me to take you seriously. To my knowledge, unlike the tweets of Islamic terrorists that caused some of their accounts to be deleted, there has been no violence associated with the speech of the "alt-right". There has been violence on the "antifa" side with associated tweets, but there is no mention in the article of any of those accounts being shut down.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_TEC_TWITTER_ABUSE?...

These 2 things aren't the same at all. The article is talking about tweets being excluded from search results and users being banned from creating additional accounts. Adams is talking about tweets being censored by claiming that they're unavailable when they are. He wasn't talking about either a search or a specific user being banned, only tweets being censored.

From TFA: "The video describes how Twitter gives a fake message that some tweets are no longer available, to discourage you from clicking to them. The tweets still exist, and you can access them by directly clicking the links in the tweets, but most people would not think to do that."

From the article I quoted: "Twitter is also making some replies less visible so only the most relevant conversations surface."

Sounds like the same thing to me.

Way to cherry pick. The article you quoted is talking about search results. That's exactly what I said in my reply to you. You're pretending like they're the same thing when they're not.

You probably won't see this, but Scott Adams and I are not the only ones to notice this. Stay on the right side of the narrative, though; you wouldn't want to run afoul of the powers that be.

https://freedomandfulfilment.com/twitter-censorship-free-spe...

I'll get spanked here for sure, but he is right. Facebook did it too, got caught, and admitted it. Half of what I read in the collection of comments looks as credible as fake news. FYI I watch CNN AND Fox. Left and right obviously. Regarding political matters, I deem Fox more credible. They show more of the actual info. CNN has been caught multiple times editing at the perfect moment to change the meaning. "You can't add too much water to a nuclear reactor"

Oh the irony! The fact that this story got flagged basically supports it.

Breaking News: Twitter is free to not boost his tweets for any reason of their choice or no reason at all in exactly the same way that Fox news is free to only cover things from a conservative point of view.

Curiously, you only see Scott Adams complaining about one of these things.

I have been following Adam's blog through the election and his analyses of the psychological factors behind Trump's rise is IMHO required reading, whether you are for Trump or against.

His persuasion techniques didn't work to convince a majority of Americans to follow him, as Adam repeatedly said it would. He is doing a victory lap for being 100% wrong

The object of an election is to win. Trump persuaded the people he was supposed to do to win. Persuading those who don't count is not a winning strategy.

The more interesting title of this story: "Scott Adams: Twitter is censoring my tweets."

"Scott Adams: Asserts that twitter is censoring his tweets without evidence"

Are we sure that the "Tweet Unavailable" message isn't just because a tweet was really popular and the script that's pulling the info didn't get a 503 error or something temporarily when it was pulling the tweet content?

Why is it always a conspiracy for something that's explained by something a lot less conspicuous?

What's the solution?

A peer to peer link/text sharing?

Tweets in a block chain?

block chain wouldn't scale.

I think you have to build out multiple channels to your "audience" email, twitter, facebook, etc.

I think a lot of us do that already, maybe the silver lining of the debacle is that the general public will understand the need for this too.

Still, I feel that a generic, simple, non-censored, non-censorable, way to share links and short updates is needed.

If it's like Facebook they throttle anything that's too viral. Then, send you a "boost this post" ad so you can pay.

I know the only reason I never go viral with anything is because of conspiracy... it is the only possibility. /s

Scott Adams is already famous, and he is very specific about topics that are throttled, Trump and Climate Change.

He may have a point and he may not have a point, but he is not a source to dismiss.

It is irrelevant how famous he is... if he doesn't have evidence to back up his claim then he is a source to dismiss. In fact, when considering the truth of anything that is my main criteria. Im curious what yours must be.

His fame matters because he has lot more twitter followers and each tweet has massive feedback in likes etc. a variety data-set than for example me (with 4 followers). That is where I am coming from.

The uppity in your post, as if you are the only priest of Truth is confirming what I already suspected.

Oh? so he knows how twitter's algo works? cool...

Funny that this is a flagged story on HN

Why is that funny? Adams is making an entirely unsubstantiated, and again self-centered, claim: These sorts of things always get flagged. He's done this time and time again -- if an error (which Twitter has many of, and I respect as a consequence of the scale) happens to him, it's a conspiracy. If he isn't at the top of people's feeds, it's a conspiracy.

Didn't the people like Adams all claim they were going to go to some alternative Twitter? Why haven't they just done that by now?

Why has this been flagged?

Users clicked 'flag', presumably because stories with more political charge than intellectual interest are off-topic here.

I flagged it because, as great as some of the Dilbert cartoons are, Scott Adams is an unreliable narrator.

This is concerning and gives the right some credibility when they claim "fake news" and "censorship".

No it doesn't because it contains no evidence other than Scott Adams's unsubstantiated (and by this point paranoid) claims he's being censored. What he describes is flaky twitter behaviour that happens all the time. Twitter doesn't censor the overt Nazis and racists and they're singling out Scott Adams? Really?

It's also not the first time Twitter has censored things. It's been going on for years.

The #GamerGate hashtag at one point, for a period of time, returned results for "wine" and "beach". A very mature and cute nod towards "whine and bitch" because a few Twitter workers were closely related to a few prominent "anti-GamerGate" people. This happened in December 2015, I don't remember the period of time it lasted (hours or days).

Not to mention certain hashtags were prevented from trending or deliberately removed from the 'Trending' area. #GamerGate at one point was large enough to get any hashtag trending that they wanted. Think of it like /r/The_Donald getting to the front page of Reddit prior to the last algorithm change. It would happen and it would happen every day.

Any hashtag that was "obviously #GG" would be removed from the trending list. Any hashtag "hijacked" by #GG would be removed from the trending list. Any tag #GG managed to push into trending would magically disappear not too long after - even though with their numbers they could keep a tag trending for several hours, not just several minutes.

Also Scott Adams isn't the only one to notice this. Many pro-Trump people have checked their engagement numbers pre-inauguration day and post-inauguration day. Going from consistent 1000+ retweets/favs to < 10 with no change in behavior, just that their tweets are no longer showing in their Follower's feeds and thus no longer receiving interactions.

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