This all seems like a major publicity stunt. We all know that Twitter is filtering users. The question is why they are filtered. There's a clear bias to specifically show right wingers being banned but other independent sources say it is roughly even. I don't want to really see political leanings so much as I want to see the content that caused them to be flagged in the first place. If someone promotes Nazism or some other universally hated sentiment I don't care which party they belong to.
I want to know WHY these people were flagged.
Without that being said I can't read these (and the previous posts) as any more than propaganda. It has a right wing bias and that feeds into a prior narrative but we all know that social media is amazing at causing selection bias. If they really want to show that Twitter's prior policies favored the left wing then they need to show more data and fewer direct examples. There's been this narrative that most employees at Twitter are left wing therefore filters target right wingers but that is naive unless we assume all Twitter employees' voices are equal and equally contribute to the creation of these filters.
This isn't so much whistleblowing as it is propaganda. Musk wants to drive eyeballs and the master of hype is doing what he does best. Lord around a nothing burger and promises the moon. He's just using that right wing prior that many have and exploiting that with selection bias without actually demonstrating that there is a bias.
> 3. Take, for example, Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) who argued that Covid lockdowns would harm children. Twitter secretly placed him on a “Trends Blacklist,” which prevented his tweets from trending.
> who argued that Covid lockdowns would harm children.
Using science or using propaganda? The issue, as I'm trying to make as abundantly clear as possible, is that we still don't know what the offending tweet says. Therefore we cannot actually conclude if the down weighting was appropriate or not. If he said "I have a paper which shows that under lockdown children are performing worse on tests" then I'd be upset. But if he said "The lockdown is harming our children and turning them into literal Nazis" then yeah, I do want that taken down. I'm just unwilling to speculate as to what the tweet actually said. You're putting at lot of trust in The Free Press[0], a new (self admitted) press organization that has little history[1]. In an age of misinformation we have to be constantly asking ourselves "do I believe this information because it is accurate or because it fits my preconceived notions (priors)?" Be critical of these people too. If what they are saying is true, then fair critique, as I've laid out, will roll off of them and truth will be on their side. If they aren't saying what is true, then do we also not have a duty to speak up when we find flaws in their arguments? If you want a free and fair media, we have to be able to criticize and evaluate our internal biases.
[1] Google them. Literally googling "thefp" doesn't come up with them. They do not seem to be associated with the advocacy group The Free Press. And one of their sources has uses MD in their username, claims in the bio that they aren't a doctor and it is their initials, ShellenbergerMS is not a taken username... Looking these individual people up, we do find a specific political bias and not a uniform one like their website claims.
Bari Weiss was a NYT columnist for years, she resigned when her colleagues bullied and harassed her for toeing the party line. She started a substack called Common Sense with Bari Weiss, which she's been sending out daily for the better part of two years now. She apparently has over 250k subscribers, just today she announced they were rebranding that newsletter to the free press, and officially coming out as a media org. (where as before it appeared to be mostly beri weiss with regular guest columnists)
I just checked the Twitter Rules [1], they don't forbid "propaganda".
And I just checked the definition of "propaganda" [2], seems like it includes many things that nobody alleges is against the Rules (for example, any political ad is "propaganda").
This is a bad faith read of my comment and the chain of conversation[0]. Spreading false and dangerous information does in fact violate Twitter's rules. As I've repeatedly said, we can't draw any strong conclusions without knowing the actual post that resulted in the ban. Without that we are just speculating and indulging in our personal biases. Please stop perpetuating this witch hunt and help demand real proof and strong evidence.
[0] I should mention that bad faith responses even violated HN's own rules. Though this is not often used (as evidence by this entire post) but is used to encourage high quality discussions. Let's try to have one.
Simple falsehood doesn't appear to be against the rules either, only deliberate lies/manipulated media are.
> We can't draw any strong conclusions without knowing the actual post that resulted in the ban.
We don't know what the post in question is, because Twitter is not transparent and shadowbans people without telling them why. With no evidence to the contrary, we should presume Dr. Bhattacharya innocent.
> Simple falsehood doesn't appear to be against the rules either, only deliberate lies/manipulated media are.
So Twitter made this claim. FP didn't deny it either fwiw.
> With no evidence to the contrary, we should presume Dr. Bhattacharya innocent.
While I'm a big fan of Blackstone's Ratio you need to recognize that I am not accusing him of anything. He's not on trial here, the FP is. My claim is that these Twitter Files are propagating controversy without providing any substantial evidence. Dr. Bhattacharya is only part of this conversation because YetAnotherNick claimed that the post about him was direct evidence of manipulation. Which, if you read back, I said that this sample is not informative since we do not know what led to the ban. Without that evidence we don't know if Twitter acted in good faith or not.
Again, Dr. Bhattacharya is not on trial. Proof of his innocence would help The FP's argument, so why are they hiding it? The same is true for __every single one of the samples given__. We have ZERO information about the content that was posted that led to the actual down-weighting and bans. Because this information is being _intentionally_ hidden from us we must be suspicious of The FP's motives here. If you visit their website I'm sure you'll find a bias that strongly correlates with the claims they are making here: Twitter devalues right wing voices. Problem is, the claim still has no evidence. Just correlations. But these are not the same thing and that's why people are fighting in the comments. There is absolutely no information given that can allow us to draw accurate _causal_ solutions.
It's kinda ridiculous that 'bad tweets' are hidden so nobody is any the wiser unless they screenshotted it in time. I think it would be better if they were given a frame or put in a different color with a tag like 'user was banned for this tweet.'
I want to know WHY these people were flagged.
Without that being said I can't read these (and the previous posts) as any more than propaganda. It has a right wing bias and that feeds into a prior narrative but we all know that social media is amazing at causing selection bias. If they really want to show that Twitter's prior policies favored the left wing then they need to show more data and fewer direct examples. There's been this narrative that most employees at Twitter are left wing therefore filters target right wingers but that is naive unless we assume all Twitter employees' voices are equal and equally contribute to the creation of these filters.
This isn't so much whistleblowing as it is propaganda. Musk wants to drive eyeballs and the master of hype is doing what he does best. Lord around a nothing burger and promises the moon. He's just using that right wing prior that many have and exploiting that with selection bias without actually demonstrating that there is a bias.