
Facebook relies on editors' judgment for trending news feed, documents show - protomyth
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/12/facebook-trending-news-leaked-documents-editor-guidelines
======
salimmadjd
Given the history of propaganda and how we got into the Iraq war, this is an
area of real major concern for me.

On two different occasions I've noticed a similar behavior on a "trending"
news topic that was not trending anywhere.

Both cases (surprisingly) that caught my eyes, had to do with vilification of
Iran. The first time, I assumed a certain organized PR effort or perhaps it
was naturally trending.

However, the second time (May 9th) [0] it coincided with the Gizmodo's article
coming out. That prompted me to search all major news sites (with the logic
that if it was on some major news sites it will then circulate within FB and
will explain why it was trend).

So I decided to document this, I checked CNN, HuffingtonPost, NYTimes,
WashingtonPost...no mention of an "Iranian missile test" but there was a small
blurb at the bottom of the FoxNew site [1]. Not enough exposure for it to get
the kind of volume to be the top-3 trending story.

[0] [http://imgur.com/UNRBrRu](http://imgur.com/UNRBrRu)

[1] [http://imgur.com/1f13R80](http://imgur.com/1f13R80)

~~~
scholia
Facebook says: "The list of Trending Topics is then personalized for each user
via an algorithm that relies on a number of factors, including the importance
of the topic, _Pages a person has liked, location (e.g.. home state sports
news), feedback provided by the user about previous Trending Topics_ and
what’s trending across Facebook overall. Not everyone sees the same topics at
the same time." (My italics.)

If you're interested in Iran, you will probably see stuff about Iran that
hardly anyone else sees.

I have zero interest in Iran and have never seen anything about it.

~~~
TrevorJ
The problem is what facebook _says_ is at odds with what the leaked documents
purport to show. Trending items, and hand-curated items are not the same
thing, and apparently they have been passing one off as the other which is
problematic.

~~~
jonathankoren
No. It's exactly what the documents say. You see an algorithmic ranking of a
set of curated topics.

I know. I worked on the ranking.

~~~
iamdave
_I know. I worked on the ranking._

Is there any method of validating this claim?

~~~
stoic
Cursory googling would suggest it is valid.

I don't think Zuckerberg is gonna call you and verify his employment.

~~~
colordrops
I think the question is whether there is any way to validate that the code
works as he said, not whether he works at facebook or not.

~~~
narrowrail
You don't have to bet your first-born on it or anything, but on HN there is an
implicit assumption of good faith.

~~~
colordrops
According to who? There is no prescribed and assumed reality for this forum. I
do not change my judgement because you say so.

~~~
narrowrail
You are correct, I should have prefaced my statement with, "I think" or "I
like to believe." I happen to believe cynicism is a seductive methodology,
while sometimes useful. I don't care for FB's hegemony either, FWIW.

~~~
SapphireSun
I'm inclined to agree with you and the implicit assumption of good faith.
However, FB's trend information is an instance of real power and susceptible
to the sort of hiding of capabilities and intentions that implies. It's fair
for people to ask for verification though of course no one is required to
provide it.

~~~
jonathankoren
There is nothing that anyone can say that would "prove" that any system works
as described. Once you start down Conspiracy Road, you never get off it.

All I can say, is why would I possibly lie to defend some minor product at a
billion dollar corporation that I don't even work for anymore?

~~~
colordrops
How do you explain this then:

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/12/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/12/facebook-
trending-news-leaked-documents-editor-guidelines)

------
notliketherest
I've said much about this topic, as you can see in my comments. I've since
thought about what should be done and I've come to a simple conclusion:
Facebook is Mark Zuckerburg's business and enterprise. He can do with it what
he wants, just as any business or enterprise has the right to conduct their
own business. If he wants to use it to push the a globalist and left agenda,
by all means he has the right to do that.

It's up to us, the consumer, to vote with our feet. I haven't used Facebook in
years and I'm certainly glad not to be using it now that this comes to light
as I disagree with it's agenda.

Does anyone have an alternative argument as to why Facebook DOES NOT have the
RIGHT to suppress and promote information based on it's own agenda?

~~~
jbob2000
You know, I really doubt that Mark wakes up in the morning, meets with his
editing team, and says "guys, we need to push the globalist left agenda". The
company is massive, so to say that he has some kind of finger on a "left
agenda" button is way over simplifying things.

~~~
eplanit
There is evidence that he actually does decidedly (and within his rights)
promote the "left agenda". He's been pushing Black Lives Matter within the
company, and anyone who expresses disagreement irks him[1].

[1]
[http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/02/26/467...](http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/02/26/467985384/zuckerberg-
tells-facebook-staff-to-stop-crossing-out-black-lives-matter)

~~~
larubbio
I think if you read that article, he isn't pushing 'Black Lives Matter', but
rather asked employees to stop crossing it out and writing 'All Lives Matter'

His quote from that article explains it

"'Black lives matter' doesn't mean other lives don't. It's simply asking that
the black community also achieves the justice they deserve. We've never had
rules around what people can write on our walls — we expect everybody to treat
each other with respect. Regardless of the content or location, crossing out
something means silencing speech, or that one person's speech is more
important than another's."

There may be other cases of him pushing the "left agenda" but I don't think
the article you link shows it.

~~~
ars
> 'Black lives matter' doesn't mean other lives don't.

Ha! Yes, actually it does mean that. Otherwise you would not single out a
single group as more deserving of life than others.

When you call out a specific thing in your argument, you do that to
specifically exclude other similar items.

~~~
solipsism
> _Otherwise you would not single out a single group as more deserving of life
> than others._

It doesn't say "Black lives matter more than others."

Everyone who understands why it's "Black Lives Matter!" instead of "All Lives
Matter!" also understands why you think it should be "All Lives Matter!", we
just disagree. There's no subtlety to your point, it's blunt and easy to
understand.

The difference is, people who think it should be "All Lives Matter!" don't
understand why we think it should be "Black Lives Matter!". There's a nuanced
point that you don't seem to understand. When you suggest that we're saying
black lives matter more than any other lives, you make it clear that you don't
get it. This is fine, if you stop misrepresenting the intentions of others
they might be willing to explain it to you.

Edit: And by the way, you don't have to _agree_ with it the nuanced point in
order to understand it. So Zuck insisting people not cross out "Black Lives
Matter" is not him pushing that as an agenda -- it's just him showing an
understanding that "Black Lives Matter!" is not the same as "White Power!"

~~~
ars
> Everyone who understands why it's "Black Lives Matter!" instead of "All
> Lives Matter!" also understands why you think it should be "All Lives
> Matter!"

Really? Didn't this slogan arise in the context of a black life trying to
kill, or at least harm, another life? How can they possibly defend such a
person? And to make him the center of this saying?

It's very clear they mean "Black life matters more than other life." If they
meant anything else they would not defend attempted murderers and thugs.

------
Gratsby
This thread makes it seem like the general opinion is that an automatically
generated news feed would be better.

It wouldn't. Not for end users anyways. It would be a marketer's dream.

If you feel like that's the way things should be, write one. Make it popular.
Sell it to Facebook. (And use the money to buy stock in your roommate's new
online marketing firm)

~~~
auntyJemima
That's not the point, most people have the impression that the trending news
is automated and generated by some sort of algorithm. It's highly misleading.
The trends should really be called "Facebook's Top Picks" instead.

~~~
spinlock
Do intelligent people believe this? That's as nieve as thinking hacker news'
front page is determined solely by the up arrow. Or that product hunt isn't
controlled by insiders.

Children believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Is it shocking that
they're wrong?

~~~
joslin01
Are intelligent people the only people worth looking out for?

Trending implies humanity cares about it, which to the lowly average-joe means
humanity cares about it, so s/he should too. This is the part that feels
disingenuous on Facebook's part.

Of course even average-joe knows (though probably can't express) that
everything around him just wants to consume his attention, so I'm also not
overly concerned about it.

------
panic
You can't get away from human judgement. If you stop relying on editors'
judgement, you'll end up with spam and people gaming the system. To fix the
spam, the process of generating the feed will have to be tweaked. The nature
of these tweaks (not to mention the design of the original algorithm) reflects
the judgement of the human programmers.

~~~
newjersey
Doesn't even have to be commercial spam. With classic hits like Santorum and
mission accomplished, I'd think they'd be grateful for a little auditable
curation.

------
dmode
The big problem with this Facebook controversy is the amount of people getting
their news from Facebook. There are a thousands of other places to consume
news, and they do a better job. I almost never click on the Trending topic on
Facebook, because I always that it has been curated/customized based on my
profile. I actually use NYT / Twitter / Washington Post etc. to get news and
trending topics

~~~
lazzlazzlazz
NYT and Washington Post are subject to the same kinds of biases - in fact,
moreso, since what comes up is ultimately in the hands of the executive
editor.

Twitter also likely uses manual curation.

If Facebook improves an algorithmic system augmented with human consensus
(that diffuses the editorial control among a group of curators), it will be
the least biased of all the mentioned systems.

------
rodgerd
Wake me up when any of the people shitting the bed about this have ever
complained about the power wielded by Rupert Murdoch. I might think they were
doing something other than having a tantrum about someone outside their own
echo chamber having any kind of power over the news.

~~~
King-Aaron
This is your 4.50pm alarm clock, waking you up.

There's still a heap of people that cry foul about Murdoch, especially here in
Australia. News Corp has a near-monopoly on the news here, and people do get
vocal about it.

------
red_admiral
I always wondered - I live in the UK and "trending" topics seemed to be a mix
of things that were on the BBC news 3 days ago and obviously promoted content
(large company X releases Y). Completely useless in any case so I tend never
to click in that box.

~~~
morgante
> obviously promoted content

There is absolutely no evidence that you can pay to get into trending.

If there were, it would be a _much_ bigger story than this flimsy article
which is rooted in the editorial judgements of a few contractors.

It really annoys me when these drive-by insinuations about "promoted content"
are made. Digital media companies—including news outlets, Facebook, and
Google—all actually are careful to label anything which is paid placement as
such. All these baseless accusations of unlabeled paid placement do is
undermine the moral standards for labeling paid placement.

If you are going to make extraordinary claims, please bring extraordinary
evidence.

~~~
hrktb
Does there need to be money changing hands to refute promoted content ?

Companies providing perks, quid pro quo services, pre-written news stories and
other non financial advantages are part of the game. None of those would
trigger any of what would be labled as paid placement, but are still promoted
placement.

------
awesomerobot
Just like any news outlet I guess?

Maybe they don't frame it very well but we should probably assume people are
making decisions whether its the people who are building the algorithms or
hand-picking the content... someone's bias is going to work its way into
there.

~~~
dredmorbius
The irony of this story getting carried around various editor-curated news
sites isn't lost on me.

And I'm no fan (or user) of FB.

------
melle
I suspect this doesn't only happen in the trending news feed. From my own
experience: I shared an article by Douglas Roushkof
([https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/12/digital-c...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/12/digital-
capitalism-douglas-rushkoff)) and several of my friends weren't able to see
it, even after they opened my timeline.

------
dcw303
> The company backed away from a pure-algorithm approach in 2014 after
> criticism that it had not included enough coverage of unrest in Ferguson,
> Missouri, in users’ feeds.

This strikes me as interesting, if only because it says something about the
audience of Facebook users.

Sense of community aside, the reason I keep coming back to HN is because I
trust that the audience will upvote stories that are interesting to me.

I guess because Facebook has such wide community demographics, it can't rely
on its users to do the policing.

~~~
spinlock
HN editorializes much more than Facebook.

~~~
r3bl
Yes, but it is known, recognized and appreciated. HN doesn't try telling
people that it's all done by an algorithm.

------
hackuser
I don't see a problem: No software is good enough to do it on its own (AFAIK);
why wouldn't they improve the quality with human editors? Every other news
source does it, AFAIK.

Will there be hearings about Fox News and whether they are biased?

I do have a concern: Facebook isn't a journalism organization, run by
professonal journalists with their priorities, values and expertise. They
could be very manipulative; many News Corp / Rupert Murdoch publications
already do this.

------
tn13
Lawyers, journalists (or in general humanities student) tend to be liberal in
my opinion. You can employ them and expect them to be neutral. Self employed
people, farmers etc. tend to be more conservative generally. You cant employ
journalists and expect them to be neutral. I had always seen facebook's
Trending section as "The Politically Liberal Outrage" section right from the
start. I thought it was "intended to be liberal outrage" to begin with.

Algorithmic trending based on what is popular with human filters to weed out
only NSFW stuff appears to be the way to go forward.

I cant blame facebook. We live in a world where if a company's experimental AI
classified black people as monkeys we somehow think that is racist and make
the company stop those AI efforts.

In reality a truly neutral platform would trend what is really trending, if it
is racist slur so be it because then the media is truly holding mirror to the
society. That is how we might get better. Else everything becomes one large
safe space which is death of intellectual speech.

------
ben_jones
"Self-hosted" social networks using centralized authentication and a public
API allowing for custom web and mobile clients to be built, sold, licensed
etc. Moddable ranking algorithm. Monetize as a PaaS vendor for consumer and
enterprise networks. I'll hold your beer if anyone wants to do it.

------
morgante
Maybe Facebook should just kill trending.

It's raison d'etre is to expose people to stories beyond the narrow bubble of
their news feed. But apparently people don't like the idea of using human
curation to get well-balanced stories in front of readers, so it would be much
better if people only spent time reading cat videos in news feed.

Also, people need to make a clearer distinction between the trending topics
view and news feed. They're separate products with different algorithms
entirely.

------
VikingCoder
PageRank was a huge leap in knowing which web pages were valuable.

I'm disappointed we don't have something similar for detecting authority, and
measuring the opinions of those with authority.

For instance, if there were an article about chess, I would trust Bobby
Fischer and Gary Kasparov to provide the most valuable commentary. If they say
it's great, I'm more likely to read it.

But if there's an article about Jewish business owners, I don't want to see
Bobby Fischer's opinion.

If there's an article about the government providing welfare and social
services, I don't want to see Kasparov's opinion.

How is this not a thing for science, technology, news...?

"This technology article should scare you!" If I see that from Linus Torvalds,
it's going to get my attention. From John McAfee? Not so much.

"Nvidia's latest drivers are terrible." If that's from AnimeFan2004, I don't
care. If it's from John Carmack, holy crap does it deserve my attention.

More importantly, if John Carmack trusts someone about computer graphics, I'll
probably trust them, too. If they trust someone else about computer graphics,
there's a good chance I will, too.

We've gotten used to seeking out the opinion of Rotten Tomatoes, or the old
Siskel and Ebert thumb-based-metric... It's a shame we don't have a browser
extension that brings those metrics to everything we see on the web.

I'm watching the trailer for the new Marvel Civil War movie... and I see a
Pop-Up-Video style bubble informing me that Kevin Smith really liked it.

I'm reading an article about how Facebook is bringing internet, but not really
internet, to India, and I see EFF crapping all over it. Right there - right on
that same web page, because my browser extension brings that content in for
me.

I'm reading an arxiv about gene transfer in plants, and I see experts in the
field saying they question the methodology.

It just sucks to me that we don't have a PageRank for authority on topics...
And we don't have a way to show those scores and opinions, THAT WE TRUST,
stuck to the content.

For instance, I trust Al Gore on Climate Change. Other people probably trust
Donald Trump on Climate Change. It needs to be per-user to determine their
authority-trust links.

Or helping determine our news feed. (To finally relate my comments back to the
topic at hand.)

------
chris_wot
All those people who pooh-poohed those who were concerned with this... Sort of
wonder if your opinion has changed?

Genuine question.

------
sjg007
And Fox News is totally unbiased.

~~~
at-fates-hands
This is probably the worst fucking argument I've ever heard. If you're
dismissing Fox News as being biased, then you need to eject all the rest of
the MSM coverage too; because they're equally biased if not worse. Fuck, MSNBC
doesn't even _try and hide_ the fact they're on the Democratic team, it's
practically their own propaganda tool for God's sake.

I'll gladly take a little news from a source that's not obviously pitching me
the Democratic talking points night in and night out.

~~~
scholia
If you check Politifact
[http://www.politifact.com/](http://www.politifact.com/) you'll find that most
of what Clinton says is mostly true, whereas practically everything Trump says
is mostly false.

Fox, like Trump, doesn't feel the need to tell the truth. MSM (1) generally
does.

(1) For Facebook, MSM means: "BBC News, CNN, Fox News, The Guardian, NBC News,
The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Yahoo
News or Yahoo."

~~~
rdancer
Politifact's parent organization, _Tampa Bay Times_ , is part of the MSM, and
not a third-party watchdog. It is incredible that they have brought fact-
checking into the mainstream, but their ability to have done that is at least
in part thanks to their being a part of it. Anyway, they don't provide stats
grouped by people (EDIT: they do, my bad!).

Fact-checking cannot provide the kind of metric you talk about for rhetorical
devices that are not drily descriptive, such as irony, hyperbole, allusion,
etc. It helps that the readers have a way to look up the facts if they don't
know them, but the analyses need to be read critically, same as the original
statements. It's no good if you distrust one set of people and uncritically
trust another. On what basis? You don't trust the politician, that's good. You
don't trust some media, that's also good. But whoever in the media you choose,
don't trust them blindly, they are just normal people, not superheroes.

Take, for example, this statement: [http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2016/may/...](http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2016/may/08/donald-trump/donald-trump-wrongly-says-
noncitizens-can-vote-whe/) There is no clear-cut right or wrong. Same-day
voter registration puts a pressure on the bureaucracy to be more forgiving and
less thorough; that's a fact. But is that driven by the political elements who
benefit from illegals voting, and do people on either side actually believe
that it has an effect? That's not a factual question, that's a question for a
political debate. Mr Trump's hyperbole captures this with a surprising pith.

~~~
scholia
_> Anyway, they don't provide stats grouped by people, so that assertion is
based on what?_

The certainly do. You can see that Trump is telling the truth 2% of the time
and is mostly true only 6%. Most of his claims are not true.
[http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-
trump/](http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/)

For comparison, Hillary Clinton rates true (23%) or mostly true (27%)
[http://www.politifact.com/personalities/hillary-
clinton/](http://www.politifact.com/personalities/hillary-clinton/)

 _> There is no clear-cut right or wrong._

Trump's claim was analyzed. Independent experts were consulted. It's obvious
why the ruling went against him.

I don't think distinguishing between hyperbole and lies is Politifact's
problem. It's simply calling a lie a lie.

I appreciate that Trump tells lies for political advantage, and that most
politicians do the same. However, Trump is in a different league from Clinton,
just as the NYT is in a different league from Fox News.

~~~
rdancer
My bad; I've edited my comment above accordingly.

> Trump's claim was analyzed. Independent experts were consulted. It's obvious
> why the ruling went against him.

> I don't think distinguishing between hyperbole and lies is Politifact's
> problem. It's simply calling a lie a lie.

When I was growing up in the Eastern Bloc, we looked up to the U.S. for their
people's ability to think critically and to have their own informed political
opinions. I am horrified at your implying that you outsource your thinking. We
used to say, "experts were consulted", "it's obvious", "the ruling went
against him". That's totalitarian language, describing a totalitarian concept.
Why would you throw away your freedom of thought, willingly to boot?

Let me invite you to analyse that statement by Mr Trump and its analysis by
Politfact and my comment above. What is _your_ opinion? Can you give good
arguments for it, and anticipate counter-arguments against it?

~~~
scholia
Nobody is throwing away their freedom of thought, and consulting independent
experts is what journalists do. That's how we work (source: I am one).

 _> we looked up to the U.S. for their people's ability to think critically
and to have their own informed political opinions._

Don't confuse opinions with facts. Opinions are personal and facts are (as far
as possible) universal.

However, I'm unlikely to have a good opinion of someone who says too many
things that are factually untrue, which is the case with Trump and Cruz.

 _> When I was growing up in the Eastern Bloc_

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Eastern Bloc had rulers who could say things
that weren't true and not have those things exposed as lies by the MSM. That's
why we fact-check both Trump and Clinton. That's what democracy is based on.

 _> "the ruling went against him". That's totalitarian language, describing a
totalitarian concept._

No it isn't. There's absolutely nothing totalitarian about it. It's exactly
the reverse.

On the evidence presented by Politifact, what Trump said wasn't true. If you
want to dispute that, you have to disprove the existing information or find
more information that contradicts it.

Merely having an _opinion_ about it adds nothing: it's not worth a damn.

~~~
rdancer
This is not complicated. My opinion (the statement nicely sums up a defensible
political position, and the Tampa Bay Times' assessment is wrong) is based on
the facts they brought to the fore, as well as a few of my own — as any
argument would be —, but I also show my own reasoning:

 _Same-day voter registration puts a pressure on the bureaucracy to be more
forgiving and less thorough; that 's a fact. But is that driven by the
political elements who benefit from illegals voting, and do people on either
side actually believe that it has an effect? That's not a factual question,
that's a question for a political debate. Mr Trump's hyperbole captures this
with a surprising pith._

 _Politifact [...] is [...] not a[n independent] third-party watchdog. [...
Further, f]act-checking cannot provide [data about speakers ' telling the
truth] for [statements using] hyperbole [...]._

Your overarching position seems to be that this stuff is too complicated for
you to reason about on your own, and you need to rely on other (presumably
qualified) people to do some of your analysis (I disagree); Politifact
provides a good unbiased, trustworthy, well-sourced, and most importantly
impartial set of facts (I disagree); and the candidates that have the most
fraught relationship with truth just happen to be those who you oppose
politically (we may agree on that one). That's, I believe, at the core of a
big problem with American journalism: the intellectual trepidation to analyse
facts independently, based on all available evidence, and present a conclusion
that is one's own; in a word, the pretence that a journalist can escape bias
by simply choosing between what others are saying, without ever directly
challenging their reasoning or assumptions.

That is not really important: all I'm asking of you is to present, preferably
without swearing, your own reasoning for why you think Mr Trump gave anything
but an honest answer _on this particular occasion_?

~~~
scholia
_> Your overarching position seems to be that this stuff is too complicated
for you to reason about on your own_

Now you're just being stupid. And insulting.

 _> preferably without swearing_

Since I've shown no propensity to swear so far, I take it you feel your
message is patronizing enough to prompt a swearing response?

~~~
dang
Both of you broke the HN guidelines badly in this trainwreck of a political
flamewar. Please don't do this kind of thing on HN again.

------
fullshark
That's better than simply optimizing for clicks probably.

~~~
jonathankoren
What makes you think it's not?

------
emblem21
News organizations classify themselves as social networks to bypass FCC
regulations, blogs at 11.

~~~
harryh
Exactly which FCC regulations do you think have been bypassed here?

~~~
rdancer
I never imagined there would be any regulation for cable networks content, but
apparently the FCC has come up with a host[1]. The _equal opportunities_ rule
[47 CFR 76.205] and what is left of the _fairness doctrine_ seem to would have
been violated, were Facebook regulated as cable.

[1] [https://www.fcc.gov/media/program-content-
regulations](https://www.fcc.gov/media/program-content-regulations) [47 CFR
76.205]
[https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/76.205](https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/76.205)

------
untilHellbanned
I'm actually serious when I say this a huge opportunity for Twitter. Twitter
has the possibility for so much randomness, which I would say is good for the
health of the world. Its a public free for all. Facebook, as Stratchery [1]
and others have said, facilitates a group think world. You interact with your
friends who all think like you.

I'm an investor in Facebook and no longer one in Twitter, but I can't think of
anything more I'd like than to lose than my money on Facebook.

1\. [https://stratechery.com/2016/the-real-problem-with-
facebook-...](https://stratechery.com/2016/the-real-problem-with-facebook-and-
the-news/)

~~~
hammock
Twitter is already more overt than Facebook about its left-leaning censorship.
Cf. the Trust & Safety Council, shadowbanning tweets and accounts, de-
verifying accounts, and manipulating trending topics in a similar way to
Facebook

~~~
JoshTriplett
I don't know about how Twitter selects "trending topics". But I find it
strange that a "Trust & Safety Council" and other tools to help protect people
could be considered "left-leaning". I'm pretty allergic to politics,
especially politics being injected where it doesn't belong, but I'm just not
seeing the connection there.

~~~
rdancer
It's the other way 'round. Someone has a pragmatic stance on something, and
the SJWs label it as political, and ban it. They also ban or not ban people
because of their politics. It's one thing to ban all politics, another banning
just those you oppose (and bonus if it's just an excuse and the real reason is
money or connections).

You don't have to look further than Twitter for examples of all of the above.

~~~
JoshTriplett
None of what you just said has anything to do with Twitter having a "Trust &
Safety Council", or taking other steps to help users protect themselves.

~~~
rdancer
That's your opinion, and you're entitled to it.

If you want people protected from harassment and bullying, perhaps it follows
that you would enlist the help of some of the more valiant SJWs. After all,
who should know more about bullying than bullies themselves?

