Musk says X will address shadowbanning ‘soon,’ | Hacker News Reader

Musk says X will address shadowbanning ‘soon,’

techcrunch.com

3 pointsrhaksw5 comments

Bare notice [1] should take zero time to implement. Just show users the true status [2]. Reasons for removal can come later. Right now everyone is still in the dark, and it's a year after acquisition.

It is way too easy to shadowban on social media. Some mods are not only brazen about shadowbanning, they also suggest digital IDs would be a substitute [3].

However, once we move to digital IDs, I doubt shadowbanning will go anywhere. Just like we pay for ads on cable TV, shadowbanning will always be a thing. Don't fall for the line, "we'll stop when X happens."

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrZs-A0ETjY&t=2603s

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e6BIkKBZpg

[3] https://twitter.com/rhaksw/status/1689887293002379264

How far have we come from a reductive "they did it to me so it's bad" Musk to "it's so complicated I'll tell you when I can, trust me" Musk.

It was always complicated. It's very hard to see how sacking 75% of the workforce made it better.

Is there any reason to believe his ground truth problem was rightist libertarian nuts, sexual abusers, trolls and Nazism got shadowbanned and now, he can't escape the "why" part?

For one thing, reading Yoel's comments in the article, he now sees all the existing systems that made the shadowbannimg work. At least according to the words attributed to the former head of safety there, it IS complicated.

> At least according to the words attributed to the former head of safety there, it IS complicated.

Yoel is talking about telling people WHY their content was actioned. Such removal reasons are not categorized according to Twitter's rules, they are stored in free-form text notes. So sure, assigning a rule to each of those would take time.

But it should take zero time to place a "demoted or removed" status on content so that the account owner can see its true status.

> Twitter, however, still stores “a lot of enforcement metadata in free-text notes attached to user accounts,” [Yoel Roth] noted. (This system is called Guano, because everything at Twitter had a cutesy bird name, he mentioned as an aside.)

> “A human can understand and act on them, but if you wanted to provide automated user notice of account status, you need them in some structured format.”

Do GDPR/CCPA-jurisdictioned users have a right to access their Guano notes? Has anyone submitted a "right of access" request for them?

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