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Twitter Is 'Rethinking' Its Service, and Suspending 1M Accounts Each Day (washingtonpost.com)
Twitter's CEO told the Washington Post he's "rethinking" core parts of Twitter:
Dorsey said he was experimenting with features that would promote alternative viewpoints in Twitter's timeline to address misinformation and reduce "echo chambers." He also expressed openness to labeling bots -- automated accounts that sometimes pose as human users -- and redesigning key elements of the social network, including the "like" button and the way Twitter displays users' follower counts. "The most important thing that we can do is we look at the incentives that we're building into our product," Dorsey said. "Because they do express a point of view of what we want people to do -- and I don't think they are correct anymore."
Dorsey's openness to broad changes shows how Silicon Valley leaders are increasingly reexamining the most fundamental aspects of the technologies that have made these companies so powerful and profitable. At Facebook, for example, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has commissioned a full review of his company's products to emphasize safety and trust, from mobile payments to event listings.... In recent months, Twitter has made several changes to promote safety and trust. It has introduced new machine learning software to monitor account behavior and is suspending over a million problematic accounts a day.... Dorsey said Twitter hasn't changed its incentives, which were originally designed to nudge people to interact and keep them engaged, in the 12 years since Twitter was founded.
Dorsey's openness to broad changes shows how Silicon Valley leaders are increasingly reexamining the most fundamental aspects of the technologies that have made these companies so powerful and profitable. At Facebook, for example, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has commissioned a full review of his company's products to emphasize safety and trust, from mobile payments to event listings.... In recent months, Twitter has made several changes to promote safety and trust. It has introduced new machine learning software to monitor account behavior and is suspending over a million problematic accounts a day.... Dorsey said Twitter hasn't changed its incentives, which were originally designed to nudge people to interact and keep them engaged, in the 12 years since Twitter was founded.
Ban conservatives right in time for the elections. Obvious politically motivated FANGS and li'l sidekicks are obvious.
2) The social media sites have always pushed a liberal agenda.
3) They are just more open and brazen about it now.
4) If someone thinks "Good. They should", don't get too comfortable. They'll be coming for you next. Always happens.
The President is a special case and everyone with two connected brain cells is aware of that. Kick him off and a third of the country follows him someplace that doesn't censor opinions, like GAB.AI. That's about the most insanely stupid thing Twitter could possibly do. They have no significant competition now, why would they go and create competition by fiat?
The second Twitter makes the calculation that it won't hurt them significantly, rest assured Trump will be shown the exit.
--- Mercutio was right.
Setting politics aside for the duration of this post...
Twitter is doing its utmost best to destroy what little utility is left on the platform. I logged in yesterday for the first time in a couple weeks (which shows you where I’m at with Twitter nowadays). Right at the top was the annoying “in case you missed it” section, which I routinely flag “see less often” but continues to show up every time I log in. But then, below that, something new - two blocks, each containing numerous posts, where two accounts I follow had been mentioned by other random accounts or had been liked by other random accounts. THEN, below that, were now two paid advertisements in a row - and each one is significantly larger than has been the norm, since the advertisement (aka “promoted”) thing started.
So, at that point I’m roughly five or six page scrolls down - and I haven’t even hit my actual timeline!
Oh, and “notifications”... I’ve got about a hundred unread notifications. I stopped checking those months ago because Twitter started shoving random crap in there. It used to be that section only included stuff you’d actually want to get notified about, like new followers or direct messages. Now, any real notifications are buried in a sea of garbage posts.
It used to be that Twitter was the best place for breaking news, which was the only reason I got on the platform at all. But now, it’s basically worthless. I know they need to monetize somehow, but destroying the platform’s actual utility isn’t going to make them more money.
#DeleteChrome
Oh look, a slippery slope fallacy. So tired.
Conservatives and their never ending persecution complex are hilarious
It's like looking at the tabloids in the checkout at a grocery store... even the most hardened cynical intellectual will do it. It's just human interest, and oodles of delicious gooey drama.
Trump knows how to play an audience, and somehow comes out with most of what he wanted in the first place. Like him or hate him, he knows what he is about, and he has all of us tuning in like to a soap opera.
Alternative Right.
The government has done this before: if your private property acts like a public space, it can be regulated like a public space.
Really interesting stuff, whichever side you come down on in this issue.
In my view, most of this drama could have been avoided by retaining common carrier status to webhosts and making an antitrust case against Google. If we did it Microsoft, we should do it to this new company which is doing the same stuff that Microsoft did.
Alternative Right.
I remember when Conservatism was something about principles and standards. Now it's just an appropriated slogan for treasonous criminals like Donald Trump to shit on with his nazi scumbag Twitter following of disillusioned cucks.
their stock in trade is eyeballs. They need to ban phony eye balls or they'll get sued by their shareholders for inflating user numbers. That's literally all this is.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
4) No, Conservatives aren't being silenced - nazi faggots posing as Conservatives are getting a taste of what they deserve - hanged for treason.
And here we have a perfect example of gaslighting. Telling someone their experiences are not what they saw in an attempt to make them think their own beliefs are crazy.
Youtube and facebook are pretty strong about removing right leaning items.
Dare to state that maybe we shouldn't chop off parts of infant penis? That's anti-semetic you nazi!
Some people encrypt by using rot-13 twice. I prefer the more secure method of using rot-1 a total of twenty six times.
Today, "fascist" and "anti fascist" is like "flammable" and "inflammable."
Underrated post. Their current system has way too many false positives.
Reduce "echo chambers"? What are you gonna do show me twitts from the other end of the political spectrum? Show me twitts of people I don't actually follow?
Maybe what I want is an echo chamber. I thought the point of Twitter was to follow people whose posts you find interesting.
Also I think they block people way too easily: I've seen blocks for twits you can hardly find controversial and that weren't attacking anyone. In addition now there's talk of preventing people who have been blocked before from opening new accounts. One unfair block and you're out forever?
Do they really think that's a good idea?
You can read all about it at Amerika.org.
Daily rants about the fall of Rome 2.0 and the denialists who empower it...
Alternative Right.
Interesting that that legal decision is on the same basis as requiring that bakery to make a cake supporting gay marriage:
"the views expressed by members of the public in passing out pamphlets or seeking signatures for a petition thus will not likely be identified with those of the owner."
The same argument was made in the cake case, that no-one would reasonably assume the message was by or endorsed by the baker so they couldn't refuse on those grounds.
Somewhat odd that you would now support this line of reasoning, given your views on its application to the bakery.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
In case you need a translation, "safety and trust" means "censoring viewpoints that don't agree with those of Silicon Valley's progressive billionaire class".
I do hope they get on with it, though: the more they censor, the more irrelevant and disliked they make themselves.
This.
For every motherfucker out there with a computer, there's another motherfucker out there with a computer. ~ © 2018 CaptainDork
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
It used to be that Twitter was the best place for breaking news, which was the only reason I got on the platform at all. But now, it’s basically worthless.
The only thing left on twitter worth reading is Internet of Shit's feed: http://twitter.com/internetofshit,
Dusty Smith. Just for saying the word "Bitch". WTF?! #FreeDusty
I'm really surprised at the slashdot take on this.
We had this discussion here a long time ago. It was argued endlessly and Slashdot as a community was strongly convinced that all information should be free. And online services are not responsible for user content. Remember that? It was very, very important that online services like Slashdot avoid getting in the business of taking editorial control over user generated content. Because right-wing types kept threatening to either regulate offensive speech or hold internet companies liable for offensive and/or slanderous content.
Apparently the Slashdot community has collectively lost their minds. Are we really forgetting the "hands off" tradeoff that was made to keep these companies exempt from being held responsible for user-posted content?
And yet here we are, with politicians loudly agreeing that the big user-generated-content companies should exercise editorial control over the content on their platform. In many cases these are the exact same politicians who crafted the policy that allowed the internet to have Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. People like Chuck Schumer, Nancy Peloci, etc. were there when the policy was created. Their fingerprints are all over it, so they know full well that deciding which political views are acceptable negates the deal, opening these platforms up to liability for the user generated content they publish.
When they started with their "truth commission" ideas back in 2015/16 I thought this was obvious. It should be painfully obvious by now. But somehow the passage of time has allowed everyone to forget the terms of the deal. I wonder if they'll rue the day they chose to follow this path, or if everyone will somehow forget the deal and craft a new world where you can exercise editorial control over content and yet not be liable for that content.
The only problem with this is that if you had grown up in Germany in the 1930s you saluting hitler and calling for the extermination of Jews and Gypsies. Whether you want to end white privelege or end Jewish privelege largly depends on where you were born.
Also these so called right wingers would be supporting communism if the had grown up in Belarus in the 70s. Our most deeply held convictions are an accident of birth. Please dont hate someone for being born in a differnt part of the country from your enlightened self.
You misunderstand the law and the reasoning by the court. The baker is making art, it is not a public space. Compelling an artist to create something that is fundamentally against their ethos is a 1st amendment violation. On the other hand, social media has become a "public space" because of the large number of people that go there to exchange ideas, politics, points of view, and so on.
Om, nomnomnom...
"It's a beautiful thing, the Destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word, which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take ‘good,’ for instance. If you have a word like ‘good,’ what need is there for a word like ‘bad’? ‘Ungood’ will do just as well – better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of ‘good,’ what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like ‘excellent’ and ‘splendid’ and all the rest of them? ‘Plusgood’ covers the meaning or ‘doubleplusgood’ if you want something stronger still. Of course we use those forms already, but in the final version of Newspeak there'll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words – in reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston? It was B.B.'s idea originally, of course," he added as an afterthought.
I think you may be misreading the law there. Since the bakery is forced to issue the cake as a statement, there is a one-to-one correspondence between the bakery and the message.
The point is that if a space is open to all, and people transact things there which are not directly related to the output of the owner, it is a public space. The analogue would be going into the bakery and holding up a sign demanding gay marriage or transgender preschool teachers.
Alternative Right.
In both cases, free speech is preserved. The artist is not made to state something as if it were his opinion, but neither is social media, because there is no expectation that users will represent the company.
Alternative Right.
The "anti-fascists" seem to have authoritarian tendencies.
Then again, Antifa was a project of the Communist Party, so it is not entirely surprising that they endorse Utopia by violence and suppression.
In the meantime, American voters cannot distinguish between:
They randomly call the above "fascist," and lump them in together, despite their being some crucial differences.
Alternative Right.
I'd be happy if Twitter and all social-media companies simply enforced their rules universally. If I post something incendiary, a flagrant violation of the rules, I get suspended/banned--as it should be. Donald Trump or Alex Jones or any "celeb" does it, and it is just A-OK with them--because ad revenue. No, I'm sorry, but screw that. The rules apply to all, or they should apply to none. Hell, look at that moron Logan Paul and what he did on Youtube...he was given a slap on the wrist and that was it. But other accounts were whole-sale deleted by them for doing far less...again because of ad revenue. Enforce the rules or do not have any. That is the only way. Nobody should be above the law. Not me, not my mother, not the President, not Kim Kardashian, ... nobody.
It's pretty funny watching someone whose hatred for Trump is all-consuming try to paint other people as Captain Ahab.
People who excel at the use of language have always pushed a liberal agenda.
FTFY.
It's not a 100% correlation, but people who work primarily with the written word always lean to the left within their own political group.
Less use of the written word: resource sector jobs (agriculture, mining, forestry, fisheries), service jobs (front line), and joyous singalongs in giant barns with stained glass windows.
Just watch what happens when a Baton Rouge conservative acquires too much gift of gab:
Rod Dreher's Monastic Vision — May 2017
I'm liberal, I guess, judging by how I read the whole damn thing—as I tend to do most of the time.
Apparently up to 3 or 4 left leaning accounts get banned too out of each million "bad" accounts....