
Defining Public Interest on Twitter - lexapro
https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2019/publicinterest.html
======
6cd6beb
>We're not going to delete it but we're going to algorithmically prevent
discovery

Tech monoliths like facebook, google, and twitter are starting to show very
obvious political biases.

If we push them to be equitable to differing opinions, they basically get to
continue enforcing their own political biases because we can only ever do
blackbox testing. God knows what the backend is doing.

If we push them to own their biases try to get more platforms representing
differing political opinions, we create admitted echo chambers and further
polarize a political climate (in the USA) where we're already arguing whether
communists or nazis are trying to destroy the country.

This is a complex problem without an easy solution but it's not unreasonable
to bet twitter is going to abuse this new feature to either allow people they
like to blatantly violate the rules (without actually algorithmically demoting
the tweets, people will ignore the notice) or effectively shadowban people
they don't like without explaining why a tweet doesn't follow the ToS until
the subject matter is out of the news cycle.

~~~
TheHypnotist
On the other hand:

If your political stance violates the TOS that is enforced on non-public
offical users, is it really "political bias"? Maybe you should rethink your
politics if bullying, inciting violence, and inciting hate speech is part of
your position.

~~~
mfatica
I've seen far more on the left calling for bullying, inciting violence, and
inciting hate than the right.

~~~
taborj
Oh good, I'm not alone in seeing this trend. The left seems to have a more "if
you're not with us you're against us" stance.

------
DSingularity
Critical. I applaud them taking leadership here. I feel like the climate of
the internet has us in a nasty quagmire where these companies are find
themselves in a “damned if they don’t but perhaps double-damned if they do”
kind of impasse. So kudos to twitter for actually trying.

I really hope they create a system whereby the public can audit their
decisions and deliberations.

------
rrggrr
This is one big reason Twitter hasn't been (and may not be) acquired. Who
needs this headache and expense?

This isn't as disturbing as Vimeo's takedown of Project Veritas, or the bias
exposed in their video, but the trend is seriously alarming.

~~~
matchbok
Project Veritas is nonsense. Nothing they have ever reported has been factual.
Good on them for removing it.

~~~
eanzenberg
I never understood the blind obedience towards Google vs. pretty much every
other tech company. Is it historical?

------
chipperyman573
>When a Tweet has this notice placed on it, it will feature less prominently
on Twitter, and not appear in [...] Timeline when switched to Top Tweets

Oh good, another reason to always sort chronologically (until Twitter removes
the ability to do so)

------
orblivion
Why the special treatment for politicians? I could imagine Elon Musk or Jeff
Bezos saying something edgy and of similar significance.

~~~
creaghpatr
Elon already has the SEC getting on him for his tweets, I imagine they would
go after Bezos too. Both would face shareholder lawsuits for anything
sufficiently controversial, so it probably doesn't need to be as much of a
priority for Twitter.

~~~
Fjolsvith
Okay what about celebrities? Charlie Sheen has tweeted some far out stuff.

------
creaghpatr
>When a Tweet has this notice placed on it, it will feature less prominently
on Twitter, and not appear in:

>Safe search >Timeline when switched to Top Tweets >Live events pages
>Recommended Tweet push notifications >Notifications tab >Explore

Getting out in front of the 2020 election, I see. Better conform to Twitter's
code of conduct if you want to maximize reach!

Edit: Good time to get to know who will be making the decisions on throttling
exposure- do not cross these groups!
[https://about.twitter.com/en_us/safety/safety-
partners.html](https://about.twitter.com/en_us/safety/safety-partners.html)

~~~
simion314
Do you have a better solution? I am honestly thinking on how would I solve the
problem where I own a popular social network or forum/subreddit, I want to
prevent it to become a shit place, so I would like to put some rules like HN
and other communities have , how can I prevent the situation where people will
call me as censoring them on my own community? My only solution would be to
ban political discussion completely and implement some hard punishment for
people that don't respect the community rules of conduct even banning the bad
actors.

~~~
creaghpatr
I actually think it's a great compromise, but I do wish users could see which
Trust and Safety partner determined each violation on a tweet by tweet basis.

I.e. Twitter in partnership with [GLAAD; ADL; etc] determined this tweet
contained [violation]. Then we could quantify, drill down and get some great
insights.

~~~
taborj
That's an excellent idea, actually. Transparency is key in these situations.

------
ng12
I'm confused. What's an example of a tweet from a government official which
breaks the rules but deserves to be kept up?

~~~
slg
Threatening violence is against Twitter's rules and yet world leaders have
threatened war on Twitter. Those tweets deserve to stay up because they have
public value, but Twitter needs some concrete policy on why a world leader
saying they will "obliterate Iran" is different than a random person saying
they will assault another random person. I am not sure this policy is a good
answer to that, but they needed to do something.

~~~
djrogers
> a world leader saying they will "obliterate Iran"

It's also worth noting that saying they _would_ "obliterate Iran" under a
specific set of circumstances is completely different from saying they _will_
"obliterate Iran".

One is an (admittedly blunt) form of diplomatic and political threat, the
other is a statement deliberately taken out of context to make someone look
worse than they already do.

~~~
slg
I disagree. One of the primary aspects of many threats is defining the
specific criteria that would lead to violence. The point of a threat is
usually not to actually inflict the violence but instead to use that
possibility of violence as a motivation for changing behavior. It is roughly
equivalent to preemptive terrorism. I therefore don't see how putting
qualifications on the threat of violence should be enough to circumvent the
rules. I would still expect to get in trouble for saying "I will kill you if
you ever state that political opinion again" even though the threatened party
could easily avoid any fear of violence by simply refraining from stating that
opinion.

------
m3kw9
When a offensive twit with 1 million plus followers that gets news about why
it was not moderated, this will shut up those high horse talkers.

------
6cd6beb
>We're not going to delete it but we're going to algorithmically prevent
discovery

Tech monoliths like facebook, google, and twitter are starting to show very
obvious political biases.

If we push them to be equitable to differing opinions, they basically get to
continue enforcing their own political biases because we can only ever do
blackbox testing. God knows what the backend is doing.

If we push them to own their biases try to get more platforms representing
differing political opinions, we create admitted echo chambers and further
polarize a political climate (in the USA) where we're already arguing whether
communists or nazis are trying to destroy the country.

This is a complex problem without an easy solution but it's not unreasonable
to bet twitter is going to abuse this new feature to either allow people they
like to blatantly violate the rules (without actually algorithmically demoting
the tweets, people will ignore the notice) or effectively shadowban people
they don't like without explaining why a tweet doesn't follow the ToS until
the subject matter is out of the news cycle.

------
creaghpatr
1 point by creaghpatr 1 minute ago | parent | edit | delete [-] | on: Twitter
adds labels for tweets that break its rule...

>When a Tweet has this notice placed on it, it will feature less prominently
on Twitter, and not appear in: >Safe search >Timeline when switched to Top
Tweets >Live events pages >Recommended Tweet push notifications >Notifications
tab >Explore

Getting out in front of the 2020 election, I see. Better conform to Twitter's
code of conduct if you want to maximize reach!

Good time to get to know who will be making the decisions on throttling
exposure- do not cross these groups!
[https://about.twitter.com/en_us/safety/safety-
partners.html](https://about.twitter.com/en_us/safety/safety-partners.html)

~~~
dang
Please don't cross-post like this. Repetition lowers the signal/noise ratio.
Also, it makes merging the threads a nightmare.

------
CapricornNoble
Migrate to an alternative app, such as Parler, ASAP.

~~~
judge2020
Why does this decision change anything? They've been allowing rule-breaking
material from politicians for a while, they just now let the user know and
prevent the rule-breaking content from spreading.

~~~
CapricornNoble
I guess it shouldn't change when one migrates off of Twitter: the action
should be undertaken regardless.

------
Jerry2
In the past few years, Big Tech has gone full Orwellian. I fear for our
future.

~~~
anarchy8
This is hardly a serious example of being Orwellian. Out of all the good
examples, this isn't one of them.

------
malvosenior
No company should be attempting to define what's in public interest.
Especially not Twitter. There's huge information asymmetry not to mention that
they've already demonstrated themselves as being not even remotely politically
neutral.

