I’ve never been a big fan of Taibbi. But all the things you’re mentioning are characteristic of his journalistic style, which made him famous in his coverage of Wall Street back in 2008. It’s uncharitable and filtered through a fundamental distrust of moneyed corporations, but I’ve never heard it described as “unhinged.”
And I’m not sure “unhinged” is an appropriate description. For example, while “internal lingo” may be common, isn’t it also fair to observe that much corporate internal lingo is pretty Orwellian? Similarly, as to your second point, is it unreasonable to draw an inference that Twitter is doing what some agency wants it to do, when the agency asks Twitter to do something and then Twitter does it?
I think the biggest thing that chafes at people is that Taibbi is meant to be uncharitable and distrustful of big corporations. But he's not. He's charitable and trustful of the current management of Twitter. It's the exact opposite of speaking truth to power. The old twitter was a set of weak, fragmented, individuals doing their best and getting absolutely excoriated for it constantly. Now the company is run by the richest man on earth beholden to no one, and he faces literally no skepticism from Taibbi (although it looks like Weiss is about to break).
Musk has been at the helm of Twitter for five minutes and has done nothing of consequence. The previous management played a major role in US politics for years. It had a major impact on a U.S. presidency and suppressed true information that could have significantly impacted a Presidential information. Taibbi is entirely correct to focus on what happened before and not on Musk’s mean tweets.
Orwellian does not just mean changing terms or using euphemisms. It is about terms that make the expression of undesirable thoughts actually impossible. Do any of the scare-quoted terms do this? I can't see any.
The term "Orwellian" in describing language comes directly from the properties of Newspeak.
"Orwellian" can mean other things when describing state power or surveillance technology, but in this context it is being used to describe language so the connection to Newspeak is the relevant one.
No, "Orwellian" means almost the opposite: Winston and Julia are perfectly capable of thinking dissident thoughts, despite being immersed in Ingsoc. "Orwellian" refers to dominating people to the degree that you can force them to use the words you specify and make them say things that they know aren't true.
Orwell, from "Politics and the English Language" [0]:
> Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Petain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive.
> Orwellian does not just mean changing terms or using euphemisms. It is about terms that make the expression of undesirable thoughts actually impossible. Do any of the scare-quoted terms do this? I can't see any.
Per [1]:
"Orwellian" is an adjective describing a situation, idea, or societal condition that George Orwell identified as being destructive to the welfare of a free and open society. It denotes an attitude and a brutal policy of draconian control by propaganda, surveillance, disinformation, denial of truth (doublethink), and manipulation of the past [...]
The label in this context doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
In the context of authoritarian states and surveillance technology that definition matches. But this is specifically about language and jargon. Even if we decide that my definition is nonsense, it is clear that using terms like "escalation" internally isn't "a brutal policy of draconian control by propaganda."
> Even if we decide that my definition is nonsense, it is clear that using terms like "escalation" internally isn't "a brutal policy of draconian control by propaganda."
Sure, innocuous sounding words like "rendition" would never be reappropriated as code for something more sinister, right?
Seems to me that innocuous sounding jargon actually makes Orwellian doublethink much easier to swallow. Like a frog in a slowly heated pot of water, you get exposed to and acclimatize to progressively more problematic uses of power until you simultaneously believe that you are a patriot upholding citizen's rights while routinely violating them.
I'm not really sure why you think this process can't happen in a private company.
The problem for me was never that Twitter had their own in-house term for shadowbanning. It was that they obfuscated and hid behind the term in order to avoid accusations of shadowbanning. It's like saying "this is not a sub sandwich, it's a hoagie!"
> There is a very well understood definition for shadowbanning - only the poster can see their own posts.
Except that's not how most people understand the term. Terminology is defined by its usage, so if you're in the minority of how this term is used, you've lost. We already had this debate about hacker/cracker over 20 years ago. Hacker is still here, so get used to the broader meaning of shadowbanning.
verb: shadowban -
block (a user) from a social media site or online forum without their knowledge, typically by making their posts and comments no longer visible to other users.
Yes, which matches exactly what Twitter did, and which is how most people understand the term. Or did you miss the part where they delisted some accounts from being discoverable by search.
The way Twitter defines shadowban is more narrow than that.
"
We do not shadow ban. You are always able to see the tweets from accounts you follow (although you may have to do more work to find them, like go directly to their profile).
"
They literally wrote a blog post about it 4 years ago[1]. This wasn't hidden.
Anyone who is "shocked" by Twitter's definition of shadow banning (which, in my opinion aligns with what I posted anyways) is doing performative outrage of an insincere nature.
Twitter is free to invent whatever narrow definition of shadowbanning they want, and we are free to call out their obfuscation for the bullshit it is.
Language is about effective communication. Right now we're all trying to have an important conversation about relevant social issues which requires a common understanding. You cited the common understanding, I pointed out how Twitter engaged in practices covered by that common understanding, and that should be the end of that. Can we move on now?
Instead of bikeshedding over this irrelevant minutae, engage with the actual substance of the discussions, like whether they should shadowban in the way they've been doing it, whether there should be limits to moderation policies for online public squares, what the guidelines for censoring speech should look like, whether to deplatform people entirely or merely deprioritize their speech, etc.
They don't prevent people seeing tweets of anyone. If you follow soneone you see their tweets, if you dont follow them but gonto their profile you see their tweets.
Tweets are universally publically viewable. The policies they use are not secret.
Trying to start a conversation about their secret shadowbanning policy is a dead end as the policy is not shadow banning and it is not secret.
And still you persist. Go read the definition you provided again. Then read my immediate reply where I pointed out they delisted people from search. That is literally a case where Twitter was "making their posts and comments no longer visible to other users" and they did so "without their knowledge".
That is shadowbanning by your own definition, and each ban was not disclosed and thus done in secret, because that's what it means to be shadowbanned.
There is a perfectly obvious interpretation of the language being used to describe this situation, and all you're doing is adding noise because people aren't using terms in the way you want while ignoring the substance. That's textbook bad faith arguing, which ironically is what you were accusing the original poster of doing.
> That is literally a case where Twitter was "making their posts and comments no longer visible to other users" and they did so "without their knowledge".
This continues to be incorrect: their posts are visible to anyone on the internet and show up to their followers. The only thing twitter is not doing is having their algorithm highlight them to people who weren’t following them or participating in a conversation with them. That doesn’t fit any common definition of shadow-banning.
> This continues to be incorrect: their posts are visible to anyone on the internet and show up to their followers
No, I don't know how many times I have to repeat this: if you use Twitter's search to try to find a delisted user on Twitter, you can't find them. Sometimes you can't even @ them. This fits the general definition of shadowbanning that the other poster provided, wherein their content cannot be found using Twitter, thereby that qualifies as being shadowbanned on Twitter.
The fact that you can sometimes find that content via other means is totally irrelevant.
> No, I don't know how many times I have to repeat this
Your frustration stems from angrily telling people something is wrong based on your misunderstanding of a term. You’re welcome not to like the practice or lobby against it but you’re just signing up for frustration trying to get everyone to switch to your redefinition.
> You’re welcome not to like the practice or lobby against it but you’re just signing up for frustration trying to get everyone to switch to your redefinition.
It's not my redefinition, it's literally the definition the other poster provided which they discovered via Google, and the application of that definition matches how thousands of tech and laypeople are using it in this conversation, and how the media is covering it. But, you do you.
Finally, I'm not sure where your ability to surmise my emotional state based only on text comes from, but I think it needs some tuning.
The argument seems to be that what the FBI is doing is more or less analogous to you clicking the report button, which hardly makes you a shadowy figure controlling Twitter if they act on your report.
> The argument seems to be that what the FBI is doing is more or less analogous to you clicking the report button
Weekly meetings between the FBI and top Twitter executives is "akin to clicking the report button"? Name one other Twitter user that had this privilege. I think that's a pretty strong sign that you're trying to stretch this analogy too far.
It is very clearly an improper purpose. The FBI is trying to suppress 1A protected speech by reporting the tweets. The FBI is not allowed to suppress 1A protected speech. Imagine there was a button that would delete a Tweet and anyone could press it. Just because anyone could press the button would not make it legal for the FBI to press it.
> It is very clearly an improper purpose. The FBI is trying to suppress 1A protected speech by reporting the tweets. The FBI is not allowed to suppress 1A protected speech. Imagine there was a button that would delete a Tweet and anyone could press it. Just because anyone could press the button would not make it legal for the FBI to press it.
I keep seeing this, and I'm confused every time I see it, because speech on a private platform isn't protected by the first amendment.
Twitter can always say no to the feds (and other governments) in re: far more onerous and demanding requests than just an agent clicking a Report button, and in fact with far more official processes you can see the stats where they actually do just that. https://transparency.twitter.com/en/reports/removal-requests...
> I keep seeing this, and I'm confused every time I see it, because speech on a private platform isn't protected by the first amendment.
It is protected from the government. Of course, Twitter can decide to censor whatever they want, but if the government was threatening either Twitter or individuals on the platform, over protected speech, eg. criticizing the president, that would certainly implicate the 1A.
The government simply asking, with no implied threat, seems to be OK [1]. But, I don't think it builds confidence amongst the citizens if they were seen doing this very often.
Thanks for bringing some actual legal citations and interpretations to this discussion. Most of this thread appears to be a lot of handwaving about the constitution.
I can also say no to the feds if they ask me to assassinate someone but it doesn’t mean they aren’t breaking a law by asking me.
Would be a crazy constitutional loophole if the govt simply needs to ask citizens to censor each other (1a), steal their neighbors guns (2a), tell husbands to prevent their wives from voting (19a), etc.
If these censorship request were about bomb threats or something that’s one thing, but they are mostly just spicy political takes. FBI needs to stay in their lane.
Twitter’s data model stores Tweets as a stream of records. When you delete a tweet, it stores another record which consumers are required to honor saying that the first record’s ID was deleted.
Twitter’s internal tools still have all of that data. In most cases the Internet Archive also does, too, which is how people have confirmed that, for example, the tweets in the famous “handled” email were nudes in violation of the non-consensual policy with no overriding news value.
Personal accounts in your own time and not in any way as a representative of the US govt, and tax payer dollars aren’t paying for my time? Seems more reasonable to me. Especially if it isn’t a regular thing. a good question for a court to decide.
Perhaps it’s not a 1A issue when the FBI clamps down on a corporate platform, but it reminds me of how fascist states operate, not a democratic republic.
In the end the public political discourse needs to move away from corporate run forums. Not sure about Mastodon, but I’m hopeful future iterations of online forums will be more decentralized again.
A government whose representatives frequently rail against big tech companies, call for regulation, and drag executives in for hearings, "politely requests" something to be removed. It's pretty easy to see that Twitter might think that saying no has consequences.
Furthermore, the FBI is a police force. They have no business searching Twitter for content to remove unless that particular content is involved directly in the investigation of and filing of criminal charges.
What case did they rule that? It seems pretty routine that they get in contact with newspapers for this purpose so I'd be at least a little surprised to learn that it's been ruled unconstitutional but they're just flagrantly doing it anyway.
So if they contact the WSJ and try to get them to spike a story that's fine, but if they tell Twitter "we think you should remove these tweets for violating your policies" that's not? I would love to see what the case is because I can't understand how that would make sense.
But they can't contact Twitter and express their opinions?
The government routinely speaks to news papers about the government opinion on articles and how they are wrong. That's not censorship. Holding a figurative pistol to someones head and say "change this line" is censoring and supressing free speech.
Of course they can express their opinions. But it's not black and white.
The Twitter Files already has a statement from a Congressperson that Twitter's actions with the Hunter laptop will "result in a blood bath" during Congressional hearings.
If the 800 lb gorilla that is the US government is threatening a "blood bath", do you really have a choice when they ask for your "cooperation"?
Right, so instead of exposing themselves legally they do an end run of telling Twitter to ban and writing smear campaigns. Which is they did to Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford and Dr. Martin Kulldorff of Harvard.
> Twitter can always say no to the feds (and other governments)
In practice, can they? Leave out the part about other governments for a second, just consider the US govt
If you're doing moderation at twitter and Yoel Roth is above you, are you going to tell the FBI to screw off? Especially considering Roth is (apparently, according to Taibbi) meeting regularly with them. From a job security standpoint, how do you think the average white collar employee will behave?
I have worked at another organization (hosted server provider) where I was in contact with the FBI and other law enforcement.
There's a world of difference between what was shown they did at twitter by noting things that were "worrisome" or against a reasonable site's ToS and forcing anyone to take things down.
I have told agents that certain materials were acceptable and that we would take no action. Not much they could do there without an actual warrant.
i'd probably just do whatever the fbi wanted so as to save myself a possible hassle. which is the point: the fbi can fuck with me. to say, "well, the fbi is just reporting stuff" ignores that the fbi has power. power is something people seem to have an odd tendency to ignore.
> power is something people seem to have an odd tendency to ignore.
Indeed, just as you seem to ignore Twitter’s power. They are protected from the FBI by the Constitution and the courts, and they have the money (read: power) to actually enforce those protections had they felt threatened or coerced by the government. The FBI may have power but they are not all powerful, not even close.
Except it's not clicking the report button. See the FBI could have a special agent assigned to clicking the report button instead of directly emailing Twitter asking for the removal of things that are in some cases obvious jokes.
And I’m not sure “unhinged” is an appropriate description. For example, while “internal lingo” may be common, isn’t it also fair to observe that much corporate internal lingo is pretty Orwellian? Similarly, as to your second point, is it unreasonable to draw an inference that Twitter is doing what some agency wants it to do, when the agency asks Twitter to do something and then Twitter does it?