
Twitter “Silenced” Dissenting Voices During Protests in Egypt: Research - pulisse
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/meghara/twitter-egypt-protests-accounts-suspended
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formalsystem
I've been closely following the revolution happening in Lebanon and I'll often
see a notification like

"The following media includes potentially sensitive content" for content like
[https://twitter.com/encrier/status/1188067004240019456](https://twitter.com/encrier/status/1188067004240019456)
Which translates to

* Retrieve people's money

* Resignation of government

* New parliament

Thank you Twitter for "protecting" me from being offended.

EDIT: I've been getting very angry everytime I see demands for censorship on
social media, it's like people forgot they had their own revolution at some
point and really needed to communicate what was happening to make it a
reality.

~~~
detaro
Given it applies to everything they post it seems, _could_ also be that the
user set the flag to apply this to all their posts automatically. (I don't
think there is a way of telling the difference)

~~~
lonelappde
Why would you spend the time to write a comment that takes longer to write
than to debunk?
[https://mobile.twitter.com/encrier](https://mobile.twitter.com/encrier)

~~~
detaro
How does that debunk it? It shows exactly what I describe.

~~~
im3w1l
It seems to be only embedded images that show as sensitive. Not the text and
not embedded tweets.

~~~
detaro
Which is exactly what the matching twitter option does: it marks _media_ you
post as "sensitive" and puts the click-through in front of it. Text and
retweets aren't media, and you can't enable a filter for them (there is an
profile-wide "this profile may contain potentially sensitive content" warning
too, but as far as I know that is only applied _by Twitter_ , not a user
setting)

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brenden2
Algorithmic censorship has become the new norm. If you have opinions outside
the Overton window you will be silently penalized on Twitter, FB, etc, and
your posts will silently not appear. You have to go along with the tribe that
you've been gerrymandered into or else you'll be silenced.

Content is dumbed down everywhere because you can only post things on these
platforms which are compatible with advertisers. Big brands don't want to see
their ads alongside someone's fringe opinions, thus they have to punish the
"bad" content to appease their customers.

~~~
vonmoltke
> Algorithmic censorship has become the new norm. If you have opinions outside
> the Overton window you will be silently penalized on Twitter, FB, etc, and
> your posts will silently not appear. You have to go along with the tribe
> that you've been gerrymandered into or else you'll be silenced.

Algorithmic censorship, and demand for it, is the problem. However, that has
nothing to do with Overton windows. The issue is the prioritization of recall
over all else. Various groups (e.g., popular outcry, Legal) demand that as
much actual abusive content as possible be flagged and suppressed or removed.
In their view, falsely flagging content is acceptable collateral damage as
long as the real bad stuff gets caught as well.

The precision in classification isn't there to enforce an Overton window even
if that was the goal.

~~~
50656E6973
Social media algorithms of course influence the Overton Window. It doesn't
matter if the developers are consciously conspiring to do it or not;
algorithmic bias is naturally inherent.

~~~
vonmoltke
I'm not meaning to suggest that algorithms don't have unconscious (WRT their
designers) biases. I'm saying the algorithms used for compliance and
compliance-adjacent tasks skew very heavily towards recall, resulting
generally in poor precision. In many cases, the precision is so low that it
overwhelms any conscious or unconscious bias in the algorithm.

------
primroot
Also relevant "Twitter’s ‘head of editorial’ for Middle East is officer in
British Army’s information warfare unit"
[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/twitter-
exec...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/twitter-executive-
british-army-officer-psyops-gordon-macmillan-a9127036.html)

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LegitShady
Remember when people were looking at the Arab Spring and saying "this will be
covered on social media more quickly than traditional media"

But now it appears new media has become as bad as traditional media but with
more influence and less competition.

I don't understand why twitter still exists.

~~~
corodra
Right?

Didn't Twitter and other social media platforms lay claim to "helping" voice
and organize the people to protest and revolt during the Arab Spring? I
remember them being pretty proud of that.

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aantix
It’s as if Twitter’s models are trained to highlight the tweets that agree and
are empathetic to the original tweet.

Users pile on with the “OMG yes this. This. This!” or “I don’t know why people
like this exist “ and the rest of the crew are there to nod their heads.

There’s no discussion on Twitter. It’s either pats on the back or one liner
screaming matches.

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pjc50
Sounds like the accounts got reported for abusive language. But since the
process is opaque, there's no way to know.

~~~
ahbyb
"abusive language" is such a generic term.

I was thinking that if I wanted every critic of mine to shut up I could say I
identify as a female and then get them all banned for misgendering me if they
ever referred to me as he/him :P

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BlueTemplar
Wow, talk about a 180° turn in just a few years!

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thrower123
I think incompetence is more likely. It doesn't take much of a ring of
accounts flagging an account to get it temporarily suspended. There appear to
be thresholds which will automatically suspend an account, pending appeal or
review.

It's easy enough to have happen if you disagree with certain groups of
extremely online people and they take a personal disliking, so it would
certainly be within the power of any mildly capable security agency.

~~~
zaphirplane
I don’t know the specifics here and clearly we can all agree that silencing
government opposition views isn’t health. There is a subtly of tweeting this
politician or governor is corrupt and we the people don’t like this vs these
government pigs are evil and we should burn them. Perhaps dissenting views and
aggressive violent tweets can be considered differently?

~~~
vonmoltke
The issue is detecting them, accurately, at scale.

