Twitter Will Start Hiding Tweets That 'Detract From the Conversation' (slate.com)

Yesterday, Twitter announced several new changes to quiet trolls and remove spam. According to Slate, the company "will begin hiding tweets from certain accounts in conversations and search results." In order to see them, you'll now have to scroll to the bottom of the conversation and click "Show more replies," or go into your search settings and choose "See everything." From the report: When Twitter's software decides that a certain user is "detract[ing] from the conversation," all of that user's tweets will be hidden from search results and public conversations until their reputation improves. And they won't know that they're being muted in this way; Twitter says it's still working on ways to notify people and help them get back into its good graces. In the meantime, their tweets will still be visible to their followers as usual and will still be able to be retweeted by others. They just won't show up in conversational threads or search results by default. The change will affect a very small fraction of users, explained Twitter's vice president of trust and safety, Del Harvey -- much less than 1 percent. Still, the company believes it could make a significant difference in the average user's experience. In early testing of the new feature, Twitter said it has seen a 4 percent drop in abuse reports in its search tool and an 8 percent drop in abuse reports in conversation threads.

Comments

Cool

[Mr D from 63]

Twitters new group think reinforcement feature!

Re:Cool

[another_twilight]

One of the most effective ways to enforce group think is to introduce user moderation, and slashdot was basically the place that invented it. Just sayin.

I disagree.

The way user moderation is implemented at Slashdot seems to allow contrary opinions to exist. Nothing is modded below -1, so dogpiling is mitigated and even -1 comments are sometimes replied to. Nothing is modded over +5, so positive comments all top out to the same amount - there's no fighting for 'most votes'.

You'll still see strongly differing opinions with positive moderation in threads - something that doesn't seem to happen to the same degree on other sites.

I've yet to see evidence of collusion or deliberate suppression of ideas. I've seen mods that looked like '-1 disagree' but more often I see negative moderation for posts that are flamebait, offensive, trollish or offtopic. If you have an unpopular opinion, stating it in a way likely to attract criticism is a great way to play the victim. Rather than taking care to express yourself clearly and risking being unsuccessful in convincing people to change their minds, it's easier to be deliberately confrontational and then claim any negative response is part of 'group think'.

Re:Cool

[apoc.famine]

There are two major issues with /. modding. Or three. The first is that sockpuppeting still happens, although the random mod point distribution does help with that. The second is that it doesn't seem like many people metamoderate, and that system is broken and showing me unmoderated posts 3/4 of the time when I go anyway.

The last problem is that it seems that a lot of bad mods get done by the twitchy tweeters and redditors who dive into an article shortly after it's posted, and then hack and slash, close the tab, and move on. Over the next few hours, days and even weeks those mods get reversed into what seem more sensible mods, but it takes the thoughtful slow old folks some time to get to it.

During all that time, the modding is slowly going from frothing angst towards reasoned discussion, but the earlier people hit an article, the worse the moderation tends to be. I think if the metamodding was fixed and people actually took the time to do it, that would go away somewhat faster.

Re:Cool

[Austerity Empowers]

How is having a different opinion make one a snowflake?

There is a pretty clear distinction between censoring contrary opinions and removing blatant troll posts. Of course it's up to the users to make sure that's actually happening.

It starts with not swearing incoherently, threatening violence, insulting people and insisting on opinions that have no factual support. If you can do those things and you get censored, probably you're on a platform that needs to be abandoned.

Re:Cool

[another_twilight]

sockpuppeting still happens

It does, but I'm not sure that it's widespread enough to have anything more than the occasional, minor impact. The effort to stamp it out, completely, is likely to do more to distort discussion than the sockpuppets themselves. I'd go so far as to say that there are posters whose posts make more of a difference than the moderation of even a fairly dedicated sockpuppet.

it doesn't seem like many people metamoderate, and that system is broken and showing me unmoderated posts 3/4 of the time when I go anyway.

There have been times, years ago when there were more posts and metamoderation was new, when I'd be shown posts from weeks back and everything was moderated. That I'm seeing posts only a day old and many unmoderated suggests to me that most moderated posts are being metamoderated. I'm not seeing unmoderated posts being offered for meta moderation as broken, but a sign that the system is very healthy. I've no proof either way, 'though.

To be fair, I've no real evidence to back any of this up. Your observations match mine, but I attribute cause differently.

When an article is fresh there are fewer posts. It takes time for a range of posts to be made that will attract the attention of different mods. Time-zones differ and so there will always be an effect that sees moderation take place over a day or so. As more people moderate, you'll see a regression to the mean lead to a fairly even distribution of moderation. In short, a skewed distribution of moderation is not unusual for a new article and isn't necessarily a sign that there's anything wrong with the system.

Re:Cool

[tinkerton]

/. moderation is still community moderation. It has its own flaws but it's very different from extra moderation from above. The moderation from above means other players can put their finger on the balance, in a manner which is not transparent and the lack of visibility can be tuned at will till it's full censorship.
As long as there is a setting for it there will be a feedback mechanism where if too many people switch off the setting then it is relaxed. But the feedback mechanism can be obfuscated so that people rarely know what they're missing.

he main factor in all this is control, and I expect that to tighten.

Rather than taking care to express yourself clearly and risking being unsuccessful in convincing people to change their minds, it's easier to be deliberately confrontational and then claim any negative response is part of 'group think'.

I agree, but it does not describe the situation well. it is harder for unpopular opinions to avoid confrontation since you're sticking your neck out against the vocal majority and at the same time groupthink will pounce on any sign of confrontation, uh, alism. When a discussion goes offtopic then the unpopular opinion can easily be flagged as offtopic, The moderation system can't be expected to work well when people are swept up in a general mood of say, anticommunism or mccarthyism, or currently russiantrollism. That's not an argument against the moderation system, it's just about being aware of the limitations. Unpopular opinions have to work quite hard to avoid confrontation, while those going along with the dominant opinion can afford to be very sloppy.

Re:Cool

[Wootery]

No, they're quite different. On reddit, there's no upvote ceiling, and the highest scoring comments rise to the top. On Slashdot, the earliest comment is always shown at the top.

Slashdot's approach has the advantage that downvotes don't bury dissenting posts as much, but it can mean that a low-quality post steers the whole conversation.

Incidentally, on boths sites there are idiots who downvote stuff they disagree with, but I'd say it happens more on reddit. I suspect Slashdot's 'mod points' feature deserves some credit here. On reddit, any account can vote, and there's no protection against people using sockpuppet accounts to vote multiple times.

Translation

[duke_cheetah2003]

Twitter will be censoring certain users and accounts from appearing prominently in any feeds, unless explicitly searched for.

Which is fine, I'm all for stepping on the trolls, but then I remembered, censorship is bad, even in this situation. Who decides what gets published and what gets buried? That's what bothers me.

If it's an algorithm, then I gotta ask, who wrote the algorithm? Explain it to us, in all the gritty details, because otherwise, it's just censorship based on some unknown criteria. Censorship is bad enough, but censorship without an obvious target? Scary.

Re:Translation

[AHuxley]

Re "Who decides what gets published"
SJW.
Brands, sjw, cults, faith groups, nations, celebrities will be ensuring any mention of topics they don't approve of will be set as distracting.
Only conversations they approve of will be allowed.
Write a negative comment about a movie? No more social media after that negative review.
Mention a nations human rights.. Social media will correct that comment thanks to tourism ads.
No negative reviews of brands that buy ads.
Faith groups will report any blasphemy about their teachings. No history about religion on social media.
Support one side of politics and every comment is approved.
Support another side of politics and that conversation will be removed.
Discover who funds a politically active NGO? That news is not going to be part of the conversation.
Under new social media censorship rules everything will always be approved and correct.

Under the guise of helping we can only harm

[SirAstral]

O yea, this won't be abused at all. Everything starts off as some wacky form of good intentions. Soon after, someone with no so decent intentions gets their mitts on the controls and then people start wondering how it all happened.

Oh well, score 1 for the echo chamber at least!

A stronger "silicon valley" ideological bubble

[drnb]

Twitters new group think reinforcement feature!

Seriously. Silcon valley liberals think silencing non-politicallycorrect non-leftist posts will help their side? They will just reinforce their leftist bubble of estrangement from the rest of the country and this will possibly lead to even greater election defeats.

Prior to the 2016 election I had some arguments with friends in that bubble. Trying to explain to them that the "blue wall" of the industrial states was nonsense. That many blue collar "democrats" are moderate non-ideologues who are not necessary loyal to the party, they have a certain independence. All things being equal a democratic candidate may have an advantage but if a republican candidate can deliver a "better" message to them they will consider voting for the republican candidate. Ex: the "Reagan Democrats". But no, to the silicon valley types the blue wall was impenetrable, no one could ever vote for a republican, no one could ever let economic fears and concerns be their deciding factor. And on election day they learned how wrong they were.

This twitter feature will just silence those outside the bubble, and those inside the bubble will hear fewer "warnings" from outside and have an even deeper sense of false security in the future.

Re:A stronger "silicon valley" ideological bubble

[Antique Geekmeister]

> Seriously. Silcon valley liberals think silencing non-politicallycorrect non-leftist posts will help their side? They will just reinforce their leftist bubble of estrangement from the rest of the country and this will possibly lead to even greater election defeats.

Not in their bubble of self-reinforcing, self-approval. Silencing criticism, making it seem as if it is entirely from outside detractors, is commonplace among the most self-righteous groups of both the left and the right wing. I'm old enough to remember the Vietnam War protests and the original hippies, They had many excellent points and reasons for social protest, much as modern social justice warriors do. The very best of them welcome speech from their political opponents, speech to expose reality and real policies and the real issues that underlie people's concerns. But there are those in their political movements who seek to silence their opponents, who treat dissent as a sin.

I was recently pointed to this example of where it went extremely wrong, where "liberal" professor M.A. Click called for violence against a reporter for covering a political event in a public space.

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

She was eventually fired, I think justly, for her behavior. This is what I would hope for when a student or faculty calls for violence to stop free speech and, in this case, the freedom of the press to cover news events in a public space.

Thinking further: David Brin described an idea in his book "Earth", a policy that required people on the Internet to see opinions other than their own to re retain their right to vote. A brilliant heroine in the book tuned the necessary filter to receive the most _outrageious_ of the disagreeing postings, to keep her mind and her atttitudes fresh. I admit that I found the policy to be very tempting. Exposure to opposing opinions or opposing data is vital to science and to engineering. It is very easy for a subtle skew in the data being gathered or presented to reinforce an unjustified belief. It's why I appreciate acquaintances of distinct religions, nationalities, or political beliefs. They provide perspective that people just like myself could not provide.

Re:A stronger "silicon valley" ideological bubble

[drnb]

Do you realise you are doing pretty much exactly what you are criticising? "Silicon valley liberals" do this, think that etc. Exactly what you criticised your friends for doing with people in the industrial states.

You'd have a point if I were as mistaken about the nature of the consensus in silicon valley as they are about the nature of the consensus in the industrial states. Certainly there are individuals of various opinions but regional leanings are identifiable. Here is an unfordable truth for you to ponder, the partisan determination of offending posts by facebook, youtube, etc in recent history.

Can we please, everyone, stop doing this? Stop with the 'they did it first, so it justifies me doing it'?

No such argument was made. The simple argument is that twitter likely can not be trusted to make the determination on offending posts, no more than facebook or youtube, and local culture has a lot to do with this failing.

Re:A stronger "silicon valley" ideological bubble

[drnb]

You'd have a point if I were as mistaken about the nature of the consensus in silicon valley as they are about the nature of the consensus in the industrial states

I see. It's OK when you do it because you're correct in your sweeping generalisations and attribution of characteristics of a group to an individual. Thank you for illustrating my point.

Your point is false. Other than my friends that I referred to, people whose politics I know quite well, I referred to the consensus of a large group, not an individual. A group that through their content removal at facebook and youtube well establishes their political leaning in the domain we are speaking of.

Re:A stronger "silicon valley" ideological bubble

[Jane Q. Public]

Mr. Antique Geekmeister:

First, please do us a favor and learn Slashdot's formatting features so we know what are actually quotes and what are not.

Thinking further: David Brin described an idea in his book "Earth", a policy that required people on the Internet to see opinions other than their own to re retain their right to vote. A brilliant heroine in the book tuned the necessary filter to receive the most _outrageious_ of the disagreeing postings, to keep her mind and her atttitudes fresh. I admit that I found the policy to be very tempting. Exposure to opposing opinions or opposing data is vital to science and to engineering. It is very easy for a subtle skew in the data being gathered or presented to reinforce an unjustified belief. It's why I appreciate acquaintances of distinct religions, nationalities, or political beliefs. They provide perspective that people just like myself could not provide.

Don't get me wrong; I loved "Earth" as a novel. However, there are several things wrong with this idea.

The first is the assumption that listening to what we, as a civilized society, know to be ideological garbage. Like strong Socialism (or one my say "Communist wannabes").

That is an experiment that failed so often, so consistently, and so horribly, throughout the 20th century, it's a surprise there are still hangers-on like Venezuela and (to a slightly lesser extent) China in the 21st. Venezuela as a political entity is in its death throes, and I think China will start to decline soon as well.

The reason I bring this up is: you might be amazed at just how much NON-valuable, ideologically crazy stuff there is out there in social media. Twitter included.

Trying to listen to the most extreme alternate views will not refresh your mind; it will destroy your faith in humanity.

Intellectual diversity is a great thing. But accepting (for example) young-Earth Creationists and their ideas into your circle of friends will not, in general, make you a better person.

Re:A stronger "silicon valley" ideological bubble

[serviscope_minor]

Thinking further: David Brin described an idea in his book "Earth", a policy that required people on the Internet to see opinions other than their own to re retain their right to vote. A brilliant heroine in the book tuned the necessary filter to receive the most _outrageious_ of the disagreeing postings, to keep her mind and her atttitudes fresh. I admit that I found the policy to be very tempting.

The thing is that idea fails for exactly the same reason communism, libertarianism and unregulated capitalism fail: it does not take into account that people are crap. I mean sure if everyone wasn't crap and all other opinions were well researched, locically coherent and grounded in some kind of facts then that would be a fine policy.

The problem is that other people's "opinions" also include the "perspective" that I ought to be murdered becuase I'm part of some evil, secret world controlling cabal.

Race to maximum fragility

[poity]

By operating at a lower threshold for offense-taking than your opponents, and reporting them at a greater rate than they do you, you can leverage the apparent functional criteria of Twitter's "anti-troll" algorithm to your own ends. The race to maximum fragility has begun. Shed your tears freely and rest not those report buttons, as they are ammunition in the war for visibility.

Re:Race to maximum fragility

[sinij]

I am deeply offended by your violent words meant to marginalize my beliefs in not getting offended. You should be euthanized (without any pain, I am not a monster) for this!

How Internet Fighting Works

[Anonymous Coward]

How Internet Fighting Works courtesy of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

I still remember...

[DeplorableCodeMonkey]

When Instapundit was suspended for tweeting that if your car is surrounded by "protesters" on a highway you need to get out of there even if it means running some of them down. Meanwhile, on the "black" side of Twitter, you can post all sorts of threatening things because you're part of the "oppressed class" and according to progressive lore, racism is only possible if you have power (which only whites and honorary whites like certain types of Asians have).

So by "detracting from the conversation" I think he means things like posting hatefacts back at whiny activists and celebrities who think it's 1930s and they're the courageous anti-Fascist opposition when the only organized and regimented organizations using violence to stifle politics are on their side.

Re:The "uncomfortable" truth is trolling

[Kjella]

Confronting a leftist with an "uncomfortable" truth is trolling. Seen it many times, the accusation is a defensive reaction to dismiss the "uncomfortable" thoughts, to avoid having to respond on the merits.

Left, right, sideways... there's more than one axis and more than Democrats and Republicans. I'll admit that when I was younger I thought a lot of people were trolling, you can't seriously mean that. But the older I get the more I realize that people do see things very differently, if you're kind we have different opinions and viewpoints if you're mean there's many with a very warped view of reality. Particularly the people who think if something is not working, you need to do more of it or you're not doing it right. It's like ideology precedes the facts, because it's not working you can't be doing it right because if you did it'd work. Prime examples are capitalism and socialism.

Please Ignore This Post

[Anonymous Coward]

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a5fb da7d b08a 536f
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cfb0 9479 7764 053f
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5559 c69f 84a0 41b2

Re:The "uncomfortable" truth is trolling

[drnb]

Your use of 'leftist' drew the flamebait flag. It has nothing to do with the content and everything to do with form.

No, it has to do with the uncomfortable truth. If we were discussing an organization with strong rightward leaning and I used the term "fake news" would you have a problem? Are you denying that twitter is likely to have a very left leaning employee base? Are you denying we have seen similar leanings and bias when facebook and youtube recently attempted the removal of offending posts?

Again, my point is demonstrated. An uncomfortable truth is offensive to some. The uncomfortable truth is the leaning of various silicon valley companies.

But then, perhaps I'm a 'leftist' and my reaction is just a justification for not being able to deal with your uncomfortable idea.

A crack in the bubble. ;-)

Re:The Noisy 1%

[apoc.famine]

One time on one forum that I kick myself forever for having forgotten, they did group shadowbanning for trolls. Big PSA not to feed the trolls, and then shadowbanned a whole lot of them.

What happened? The trolls essentially got their own forum, trolling each other, and it appeared to them that the PSA was amazingly effective. Normal users didn't reply to them, but other trolls did, and they did all sorts of trolling of each other. Because they still got replies, and didn't know who was shadowbanned and who wasn't, it took awhile for some of them to figure out what was going on. So underneath this quiet, sedate forum, a frothing troll fest was lurking, and if you were too much of a troll on the surface forums, you'd suddenly find yourself sucked into the cesspool.

The problem was that the cesspool was vastly more entertaining than the surface forums, which rather defeated the point.

Twitter is Dead

[Elias Israel]

With this and recent changes to their API access, Twitter has basically affirmed that it is meant for celebrities and big companies, and that everyone else should just talk to their *own* friends. The lack of viable answers for individuals and small companies, other than "shut up, create content for us, and pay us to tell anyone about it" is pathetic to the point of being corporate suicide. Close your account, Twitter is over.