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Comment by tjs8rj | Hacker News Reader

They claimed to not moderate on the basis of political opinion but recent leaks reveal that's false.

No, the "leaks" did not reveal that Twitter was moderating on the basis of political opinion. They revealed that right wingers have a larger amount, in absolute terms, of moderation actions leveed against them.

But it could be the case that the side that uses "groomer" as a casual insult, surrounds drag shows armed with AR15s, propagated revenge porn of a political opponent's son, and follows a former President who's openly demanding the suspension of the US Constitution is actually just engaged in more TOS-violating behavior.

It could also not be the case, too, for what it's worth. But we don't know which is true given what's been revealed by the "leaks."

What we do know, for absolute certain, is that Musk's moderation behavior is nowhere remotely close to the free speech/public town square utopia that he pitched to the world. And hey, no one said it needed to be! Well, no one but he.

It actually did not. What it showed was that there was a lot of internal process around the banning of higher profile accounts and that they in fact had standards. If political opinion was the driver Trump would have been banned a lot earlier than he was.

Anybody who's worked content moderation at scale (like, products with 100+M users) would read the description and nod along understandingly. I think they did favor some democratic narratives, but personally I feel like that's the perogative of the company.

That's fair, but even so what I found admirable is mostly the restraint. If it had been me I would have wielded the ban hammer a lot more freely. Ditto HN by the way.

And I'm saying that as the former moderator of a 1M+ active accounts community.

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