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So, uh, the latest Twitter Files just dropped. This one is about Trump and his removal.
Taibbi claims the following.
Twitter post-Trump-ban was now willing to carry forward a policy of "the president can be banned" no matter what.
At least 1 executive did not consider Trump's tweets in isolation i.e they considered the context surrounding the man, his policies, and supporters as well, and they were discussing this with Gadde.
Trust and Safety team members were meeting with the FBI and DHS regularly during this time period.
Twitter was actively engaging in fact-checking against some class of tweets (the particular example is whether Trump's claim about a rigged election would count as a violation if the supporting facts were wrong).
Twitter was aware that they would not necessarily look good if it came out that they were partnering with the FBI/DHS to evaluate misinformation.
In my opinion, this one is somehow even weaker than the first reveal. Most of this was already known through other sources, it just gives additional information to existing claims about bias. Nothing new was revealed, which is now an argument many are using to claim that this is all a waste of time.
I'm totally down to believe that Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi had to post their reveals on Twitter, but the theatrical nature of the reveals is, in my opinion, actively hurting whatever points they want to make. The discussions are increasingly becoming about how the information is being handled over what, if anything, is being shown to us.
Huh? Maybe in the "it's not happening, and if it is, it's a good thing" sense. Wikipedia is still calling Twiiter shaddow-banning a "conspiracy theory" (even as they admit it turned out to be true). Hard evidence comes out that it was in fact happening, and you go "pff, everyone knew that"?
What's your definition of "shadow-ban"?
According to urbandictionary
And according to Twitter
So, what accounts is it alleged Twitter shadow banned, according to either its own or the pre-Twitter-Files definition? As far as I can tell the actions Twitter is alleged to have taken are:
De-boosted some accounts such that their content would not appear in one's timeline, but could still be viewed if they went to the posting account directly (i.e. not shadow banned) and;
Hid some accounts from auto complete in the search bar, but which could still be viewed if one navigated directly to the posting account (i.e. not shadow banning).
As far as I can tell this new post-Twitter-Files definition of shadow banning as any kind of limit of an accounts reach is entirely invented for the purpose of claiming Twitter lied about not shadow banning people (in the same blog post where they are extremely clear about what they mean by shadow banning).
The second one you quoted is fine, with the caveat that it doesn't have to be undiscoverable to everyone.
And as far as I can tell, insisting that to meet the definition of "shadow-banning" content has to be made 100% undiscoverable is entirely invented for the purpose of claiming twitter hasn't lied about shadow banning people.
I disagree. I've been around the web for a middling long time. Been banned and shadow banned and so on... rather often in my teenage years. I still kept getting banned well into my thirties.
Honestly I forgot how many times I got permabanned from somewhere. I mean, when you find out you can make dignified, reasonable Americans absolutely lose their temper and go ape by posting at them about 13/50, twin studies and race and IQ, it gets rather tempting to do so. (the psychological reasons why I did so are rather clear in hindsight)
Got several months-long bans on SSC and motte. So, I have extensive experience with being on the wrong end of moderation.
A shadow ban is that you and only you can see what you post. This has been, unless my memory is fake, the understood definition for at least a decade if not more.
If you're logged out you can't see what you post.
It's relatively trivial to spot - you get zero interaction, you log into Tor and you can't see yourself.
You could do a search and this is what would come up. Reddit does it to content it doesn't like. I've ran into it numerous times while posting on the old motte about Reddit policy team being composed of very spooky people.
So, technically, twitter isn't shadow banning.
Perhaps we could use the term 'throttling' here?
In practice, having all your responses being hidden under "more replies", having a search suggestion ban means, that only people who follow you or who are very thorough will see your content or replies.
It's not as strong as a shadow ban, but it definitely limits your reach and influence. It is Twitter putting its thumb on the scale under the banner of 'fighting hate'.
It was also something most right wing accounts I followed were subject to. People like Nick Land, 0hp Lovecraft (still has a search suggestion ban), Steve Sailer etc.
Unless you followed them, you'd have a hard time seeing their activity.
Very easy to be banned on reddit subs. Not even race/HBD stuff. Just ideological disagreement.
True, however, in my twenties I often got banned for simply just being too spicy or just too unhinged. I'm not the world's most reasonable person once I get going, and especially if caffeine and alcohol are involved.
I generally avoid combining the two, as it's very likely I come up with what they call a 'powerful take' and if you do that on a US libertarian forum, you're out.
E.g. that "ackshually, some amount of misogyny is good because a healthy dose of it counteracts the women-are-wonderful effect and thus cuts down on harmful, manipulative behavior of women, thus enhancing societal health".
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See my post above, more subtle forms of shadowbanning like Twitter uses have been called "shadowbans" for many years. Including by the shadowban.eu site that everyone used to check.
I did a search and all 3 of those accounts used the term "shadowban" that way years ago:
https://twitter.com/Outsideness/status/934264497639899136
https://twitter.com/Outsideness/status/1184531291741577217
https://twitter.com/Steve_Sailer/status/1588375202953854976
https://twitter.com/Steve_Sailer/status/1192976470802460673
https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1311276706553094146
People on Twitter talking about shadowbanning were referring to the Twitter form of shadowbanning, not the too-obvious Reddit method.
Twitter has something like 5 levels of shadowbaning. The worst is being totally ghosted on the site. Or having all your comments be hidden in 'show more' , or search result ban. Most people who think they are shadowbanned are not , but rather think they are because their tweets seem to be getting less engagement. but this can be due to many reasons, such as posting links or hashtags or embedded tweets instead of text/pictures, which do the best. Tweets with links are throttled compared to plain text, video, or pictures.
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I agree. However:
But that's the linguistic ambiguity the censorious are exploiting. We should perhaps rectify it ?
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