Twitter CEO Dick Costolo Secretly Censored Abusive Responses To President Obama, Says Report (buzzfeed.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BuzzFeed: In 2015, then-Twitter CEO Dick Costolo secretly ordered employees to filter out abusive and hateful replies to President Barack Obama during a question and answer session, sources tell BuzzFeed News. According to a former senior Twitter employee, Costolo ordered employees to deploy an algorithm (which was built in-house by feeding it thousands of examples of abuse and harassing tweets) that would filter out abusive language directed at Obama. Another source said the media partnerships team also manually censored tweets, noting that Twitter's public quality-filtering algorithms were inconsistent. Two sources told BuzzFeed News that this decision was kept from senior company employees for fear they would object to the decision. According to sources, the decision upset some senior employees inside the company who strictly followed Twitter's long-standing commitment to unfettered free speech. A different source alleges that Twitter did the same thing during a question and answer with Caitlyn Jenner.

Comments

First Post...

[bongey]

The following account has been suspended for violating our terms of service of not agreeing with us politically.

Re:First Post...

[pr0t0]

I know you're being funny (it is funny), but in case anyone is thinking otherwise, I doubt this was politically motivated. It was probably just financial self-interest on the part of Twitter. Do you want to own the platform that allows for rational discourse between the leader of a nation and its citizens, or do you want to own the platform that's pretty much just a cesspool of profanity and vitriol?

Hint: you get a lot more advertising revenue for the former.

Re:First Post...

[guises]

People talk all kinds of shit about Obama too, all the time. That's basically what Twitter is for. But if Trump did a high-profile Q&A on Twitter, you can bet it would be censored. At least it would have been prior to this story being published, now it's going to depend on this reaction.

Re:First Post...

[msauve]

"But if Trump did a high-profile Q&A on Twitter, you can bet it would be censored."

It's not clear from your comment - censored on which side of the dialog?

Liberal echo chamber

[Anonymous Coward]

This way they can always point to the comments and say look how many people agree. It's part of a no-negativity culture. Helps hide the truth. Imagine finding out that your post with 1000 likes actually was hated by 100,000 people?

They don't do this for donald trump or any other figures who don't fit he agenda.

Is this really that problematic?

[flopsquad]

I fail to see how silencing the GNAA trolls during a Q&A session is cause for great hand wringing. It didn't say they filtered "conservative viewpoints" or "reasoned criticisms"... they said "abusive responses." And it's Twitter's 1st amendment right to allow abuse (within the confines of the law) or not on their platform.

Re:Is this really that problematic?

[flopsquad]

Your points are well taken. However:

Second, it creates a skewed picture of people's responses. There's no objective definition of what's abusive and what isn't, and besides, I'm sure that certain levels of dislike cannot be expressed without tripping their filter.

Even the most socially unacceptable views can be expressed without being abusive. A poster who is really and truly a white supremacist could easily say, "Just being honest, I disapprove of Obama and it's because he is black." Fine. It's not going to win an NAACP award, but it wasn't abusive.

A poster could likewise say, "I just can't bring myself to vote for Hillary or any other woman." Okay. Evidencing misogyny but not abusive. It's really not that hard, even though the interwebz are flooded with needlessly venomous comments.

Now, should people be forced to hold back their views and say them "nicely" everywhere in society? Hell no, the 1st Amendment protects the noblest and the vilest speech alike.

But--more to your final argument--not only is Twitter under no obligation to be a platform for all such speech, they are also under no obligation to be a statistically valid barometer for national politics. If people are using "likes" on FB and Twitter instead of sound polling data (which itself is of dubious value), it's to their detriment.

The social media consensus was that Trump could never become the Republican nominee, but here we are. That might reflect the user base more than any systemic effort to slant the narrative. Similar echo chambers exist on every axis of the political spectrum, and people hear what they want to hear, to their detriment (if we consider "not properly understanding the reality of a situation" a detriment).

So believe in the hug-box or not. It's not up to Twitter to teach users, during a Q&A with the President, that some people are racists.

The Ministry of Truth in action.

[sethstorm]

They don't protect from abuse or harassment, they just protect the leftist narrative. Anything that challenges it, no matter how trivial, is deemed "abuse" or "harassment" for emotional appeal.

Re:The Ministry of Truth in action.

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't protect from abuse or harassment, they just protect the leftist narrative. Anything that challenges it, no matter how trivial, is deemed "abuse" or "harassment" for emotional appeal.

Ah yes, the rightist narrative, where the left is unable to stomach criticism and deflects, while the right, the right truly never blinds its eyes to criticism, never proclaims itself the martyred victim, and is always, always, able to face reality head-on. That's why you see so much deeply though introspection and consideration from them, why they can show they understand their own thinking so well. It's very humble, thoughtful, so reasoned and considered, that it's obvious how rightful they must be.

And everyone else is wrong. Dead wrong.

Man, I'm drowning in sarcasm here.

Re:Who Cares?

[jcr]

I think the office deserves respect

Fuck that. The office deserves intense scrutiny.

-jcr

The word

[sphealey]

I believe the word the linked poster was searching for was "edited", not "censored". When a private organization chooses what to print and what not to print on its platform that is editing.

sPh

Re:The Eternal Struggle

[bongey]

The problem is Twitter is selectively defining what is hate speech and abuse based on what side of the political spectrum it falls on. Which is far worse than any hate speech or abuse that could be said.

Re:Who Cares?

[rworne]

This was for a twitter Q&A session?

I also am no big fan of the POTUS, but if Twitter was filtering out trolls and other related crap to cut down on the noise, then so be it. I consider it more like moderation rather than censorship.

As long as the filtering was only for "abusive and hateful" messages, I have no problem with it at all. If they were cutting out legitimate but potentially embarrassing questions based on a political agenda, then I do have a problem.

The best way to handle this is to up-front disclose that submissions to the Q&A will be moderated and abusive/hateful messages will be deleted.

Re:Who Cares?

[amiga3D]

You can't scrutinize something without being respectful? Or at least civil?

Seems reasonable to me

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Actually, it seems reasonable to me to filter out abusive and hateful replies, since it's unlikely they'll add much to the discussion.

Are people spouting racial epithets or hurling insults going to encourage any thoughtful responses or materially improve the Q&A session? No, probably not.

I also think that general interaction with the president of your country should be conducted with some decorum by default, but maybe that's just me. Maybe I'm just out of touch.

Even the presidents and politicians whom I can't stand would get some basic civility and respect from me, in some cases the bare fucking minimum. In terms of the president, whether or not I like whoever it is, if we ever meet he/she will get some respect and civility from me.