Why on earth would you suspect that the handful of incidents that they advertise are a remotely representative sample? Of course the highest profile censorship is going to be agreeable, but we have no idea what lurks below the surface because we have no transparency.
> And that's what's dangerous about them: the filter got removed from broadcasting. People like to talk about filters like they're bad things, but that's not true. They're in fact a vitally necessary function to increase the signal-to-noise ratio (for instance: what is peer review? Answer: a filter). when you don't have filters, ideas spread in proportion to how quickly they can multiply, which isn't a good thing, because a lot of fast-spreading ideas are akin to cancer, and do nothing except weaken or kill the host.
I certainly don't dispute that filters can be good things. I have an issue with such an important filter being operated by a single entity (or a small handful of entities with aligned interests and who act in concert, for those inclined toward pedantry) who is not beholden to the public. Note that "peer review" isn't one guy determining what is going to be considered "science" this year; rather, it's distributed by its very nature. We should strive for social filters that are similarly robust, and distributing the curation among many smaller parties is the most obvious way to go.
> If Twitter's to avoid killing its host, it needs an immune system to filter out those cancerous ideas.
Or we kill Twitter. :) I say this half in-jest, but some people who are positively terrified about the collapse of democracy seem to take it as an article of faith that Twitter deserves to exist. I think there's some happy medium but if we fail to find it dispatching Twitter seems better than where we're heading.