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Comment by TheRealDunkirk | Hacker News Reader

It’s not the fact that these systems exist, it’s that Twitter denied that they did for years, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

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> Twitter denied that they did for years

You yourself literally posted a link from 4 years ago that demonstrates the opposite of this claim. How is this comment so high? I feel like I'm at a UFO convention and people just want to believe.

> people just want to believe

Accurate. There’s a strong contingent of folks here that believe “the leftists” are oppressing them and “Twitter silences our voices” is a big part of the conspiracy theory.

Musk is throwing fuel on the fire, because he also just wants to believe.

We've had two releases of documentation that prove what you are mockingly-dismissing here, and you pretend that it's still all in people's heads. What am I missing?

They don't prove that. This reasoning is like saying the law oppresses men because they are disproportionately convicted of violent crimes.

Don't read anything into this, but can you see the next step here if you replace "men" with "black men"? Is this actually the point you want to make?

I don't see how that changes anything except to make the analogy politically fraught and easier to derail. The logic remains the same. Certainly, conservatives have no problem with the logic if you modify the analogy as you have suggested.

My only point that as with anything (and especially with crime statistics), "it's just not that simple" and nuance matters, in the sense that (in the modified analogy), to say at least some systemic racism doesn't exist in the way the prison stats play out seems naive at best, it seems similarly naive to assume there's no bias in this case as well.

Obviously nothing is "just that simple", if that's your only point so be it, but that isn't telling us much since this is true of literally everything.

> My only point that as with anything (and especially with crime statistics), "it's just not that simple" and nuance matters,

If this is actually your point then you are supporting root's argument, not rebutting it. Root was pointing out poor causal relationships determined from lack of recognition of confounding variables. You just listed another (substantially more famous) example of such a relationship.

That was such a bad faith argument/read that I don't even know where to begin.

The hilarious part too is that the same contingent also ignores the screenshots showing that the "Libs of Tiktok" account had special rules around moderating it. So much for "silencing conservative thought" (if you can call that Twitter account "thought").

@libsoftiktok is not a left-wing account. The name is derogatory

That's the point. The special rules were "don't moderate this account at all without getting high level approval".

I would like to see some actual numbers. I am sure they have enough data that could either prove this claim or not.

And I think everyone here is hung up on the literal definition of shadow banning, and not the CONCEPT of monkeying with people's posts without their knowledge or awareness. It's the same thing, and I feel like everyone wants to give them a pass because of pedantry.

Their user agreement says they may limit visibility of tweets. Is their moderation, transparent, no. do they promise that it will be? Also no. I'm fairly sure my own account has some visibility limits on it and has done for ages, but I don't think about it much.

I think it's largely a disagreement on definitions - tweet 7 in the thread even hints at this:

>>>7. What many people call “shadow banning,” Twitter executives and employees call “Visibility Filtering” or “VF.” Multiple high-level sources confirmed its meaning.

My definition of "shadow banning" (or hellbanning) is that the user's tweets/posts are not visible to anyone except them; Twitter was not doing that. Twitter was clear in saying "oh, we limit visibility, don't allow certain things in trending topics, etc." and apparently some people think of that as shadow banning.

> Abusive and spammy behavior. When abuse or manipulation of our service is reported or detected, we may take action to limit the reach of a person's Tweets. Learn more about actions we take, including temporary and permanent account suspensions, and limiting account functionality.

https://twitter.com/ashleyfeinberg/status/160101566099344998...

By all means, everyone, feel free to be pendatic about the language here, and deferring to their weasels words, in the direct light of the documentation that has been released, because you agree with the editorial direction. It has been SPECIFICALLY revealed that they frobbed the knobs when they didn’t like what was being posted, while admitting that their own policies weren’t being triggered, and they had no justification.

> It has been SPECIFICALLY revealed that they frobbed the knobs when they didn’t like what was being posted, while admitting that their own policies weren’t being triggered

Where was this revealed? I saw Bari Weiss claim it happened but the screenshot she posted as evidence specifically says the account violated their policies.

It's literally in the same thread!

https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601020845224128512

I guess you're reading this and saying that "indirect" violations are the same thing as direct, i.e., defined, violations? Is that what's happening? People downvoting me are being absolute pedants about the definition of "shadow banning," and then just give this part a pass and say it's fine?

I guess this is the world we live in now, in every respect. There's so much STUFF going on, and so much written about the stuff, that people can choose to focus on whichever half they want, and find plenty to support their position. But I still live in a world where the general IDEA is the main thing, and Twitter has been shown to do things outside of their stated policy. And, sure, as someone else pointed out, they're allowed to do whatever they want. But they didn't have to hedge and lie about it.

they literally had a press conference about most of these features in 2018

> Twitter denied that they did for years

twitter has denied what for years? if you're implying they denied they moderate, delete, or derank content, this is absolutely not true.

> it’s that Twitter denied that they did for years

When ? I haven't seen any evidence of this.

First hit on google: https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2018/Setting-t...

Unless I’ve missed something there’s still no evidence of Twitter shadow banning users. Weiss incorrectly calls a bunch of things “shadow banning” but not anything the matches the actual accepted definition.

Limiting reach is not the same as shadow banning which has a specific meaning.

"Limiting reach" is what Twitter users think shadowbanning is. I've seen major accounts declare that, because less people are retweeting them than they think is normal, they must be shadowbanned. Obviously, if they were actually shadowbanned, nobody would be retweeting them.

That's not a good definition. If I have 0 followers I have very limited reach. You need a consistent definition. No one thinks downweighting content is shadowbanning either (unless that weight is 0, but then we're back to the normal definition).

That's not shadow-banning

They fucked up and admitted it (what algo is infallible?)

The fuckup wasn't targeted, it was algorithmic, and it affected both sides of the isle.

Your link literally demonstrates the opposite of your claim.

This seems to say what they did wasn't how Twitter defines shadow banning.

https://twitter.com/bendreyfuss/status/1601019554980761600?s...

Reminds me how certain governments redefined mass surveillance then denied it.

Is it really redefined though? iirc it's how Reddit also implements shadow bans, no one else can see your messages other than you, to you it looks normal.

And the systems were overwhelmingly used to throttle one type of political viewpoint.

Indeed and here is their tweet saying they do not

https://twitter.com/twitter/status/1022658436704731136?s=46&...

Isn't there a fiduciary duty to be honest with their investors?

It's generally assumed investors can read. https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2018/Setting-t...

Musk went through with the deal because he couldn't prove Twitter lied to investors, so I see no reason to trust him now.

Fiduciary duty is a responsibility to act in someone's best interests (the investors in this case)[1]. The requirement to not make misleading statements affecting investors is a different requirement [2].

To the substance of your statement, they don't shadow ban, so that's not a misleading statement. The fact that a lot of people take an extremely broad view of what shadow banning is doesn't change that. Twitter actually define shadow banning in the link in the tweet you posted, and explain what they do and why that's not shadow banning.[3]

[1] Very good explanation here https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042915/what-are-som...

[2] Not to "misrepresent" material facts, which is a form of securities fraud https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/misrepresentation.asp

[3] The original link is down but I found it in the internet archive. https://archive.vn/m4bT4

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