X -Where Twitter goes to die.

[neonzx]

Twitter was hijacked, so it all works.

[Volkonski]

This may create havoc.

I seem to recall that some years ago when Facebook was trying to increase moderation it limited use of the word "breast". Many posts by breast cancer groups were deleted raising howls of anger from the breast cancer community.

How will Twitter find and vet these "trusted figures with a track record of accurately flagging harmful posts"?

As Twitter "aggressively" eliminates harmful posts may it very well delete posts from Trump loving RWNJs that are now a big part of its fan base? I don't mind those posts being deleted. The RWNJs will.

Twitter moderators turn to automation amid a reported surge in hate speech
New head of trust and safety Ella Irwin says Elon Musk is urging Twitter ‘to take more risks’ in the wake of mass layoffs

Reuters
Sat 3 Dec 2022 03.09 GMT

Elon Musk’s Twitter is leaning heavily on automation to moderate content according to the company’s new head of trust and safety, amid a reported surge in hate speech on the social media platform.

Ella Irwin has told the Reuters news agency that Musk, who acquired the company in October, was focused on using automation more, arguing that Twitter had in the past erred on the side of using time and labour-intensive human reviews of harmful content.

“He’s encouraged the team to take more risks, move fast, get the platform safe,” she said.

On child safety Irwin said Twitter had shifted toward automatically taking down tweets reported by trusted figures with a track record of accurately flagging harmful posts.

Twitter is also more aggressively restricting abuse-prone hashtags and search results in areas including child exploitation, regardless of potential impacts on “benign uses” of those terms, she said.

“The biggest thing that’s changed is the team is fully empowered to move fast and be as aggressive as possible,” Irwin said.

Her comments come as researchers reported a surge in hate speech on the social media service, after Musk announced an amnesty for accounts suspended under the company’s previous leadership that had not broken the law or engaged in “egregious spam”.



https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... ate-speech

[neeneko]

This may create havoc.

I seem to recall that some years ago when Facebook was trying to increase moderation it limited use of the word "breast". Many posts by breast cancer groups were deleted raising howls of anger from the breast cancer community.

Something I have learned from a career in AI... AI automation should never be used for anything important... and that includes moderation.

Unfortunately, Musk is enamored with the hype around AI, so it will probably be some kind of NLP system with special deep learning sauce.

[RTH10260]

Left-Wing Voices Are Silenced on Twitter as Far-Right Trolls Advise Elon Musk
Elon Musk appears to have outsourced decisions about who to ban from Twitter to the platform’s right-wing extremists.

Robert Mackey, Micah Lee
November 29 2022, 6:20 p.m.

ELON MUSK CLAIMS to be “fighting for free speech in America” but the social network’s new owner appears to be overseeing a purge of left-wing activists from the platform.

Several prominent antifascist organizers and journalists have had their accounts suspended in the past week, after right-wing operatives appealed directly to Musk to ban them and far-right internet trolls flooded Twitter’s complaints system with false reports about terms of service violations.

As the Los Angeles City Councilmember Mike Bonin noted on Twitter, the suspended users include Chad Loder, an antifascist researcher whose open-source investigation of the U.S. Capitol riot led to the identification and arrest of a masked Proud Boy who attacked police officers. The account of video journalist Vishal Pratap Singh, who reports on far-right protests in Southern California, has also been suspended.



https://theintercept.com/2022/11/29/elo ... tifascist/

[Dr. Caligari]

One of the replies:

Elliot Silverman
@ESilverman80
2h
Replying to
@AkivaMCohen
Akiva,
Speaking as someone who practiced law for 42 years, most of that time doing commercial litigation, this is the single best demand letter I have ever seen.

[raison de arizona]

Bad enough having Musk in charge of these things. Now with Ngo? Chilling.

[noblepa]

Off Topic

I think Microsoft won because of price, plain and simple. In 1993 I wanted a computer. I could get one for $500, an IBM clone with Windows 3.1, or I could get an Apple computer for $2,000. It was a better computer, but I couldn't afford it. So I, and many other Earthlings, bought $500 computers.

And y'all know there was a huge lawsuit, yesno? Apple tried to sue its way to total permanent monopoly.

Off Topic

You are speaking of the mouse pointer lawsuit over XOR technicology? I give the cult credit for trying to hoodwink the general public, but the tech bros knew better. You can't patent XOR.

And Air "Fryers" are a trademark/patent case that never happened -- just saying --

.

Off Topic

And, a lot more software was available for the Intel/Windows based PC's, due largely to IBM's decision to publish the APIs for free. Apple charged huge licensing fees to write software for their computers. IBM also made the hardware interface public, meaning anyone could build sound cards, modems, etc. When the MAC first came out, you could void your warranty by opening the case for any reason or by attaching a non-Apple printer.

There is a story that, when the MAC was in final stages of development, there was a design meeting, attended by Jobs. Someone pointed out that there was no external communications port, such as modem, and asked how people would transfer files from one Mac to another (knowing that primtive LANs were around, even then). Allegedly, Jobs slid a floppy disk across the table. And, initially, MACs formatted diskettes differently than IBM PCs did.

I do not believe that Jobs was the creative genius behind Apple's innovations. He was a showman of the first order, but I question his "vision" or his technological accumen.

[bob]

If I see one more hardware wars* reply in the Twitter thread, I will name and shame you ... ON TWITTER.


* Did I just invite yet another threadjack?

[raison de arizona]

Entirely too long video at link.

NEWS James Woods says he plans to sue Democrats: ‘They ruined my career’

During an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show this Friday, actor James Woods promised to sue the Democratic National Committee over a Twitter thread posted by journalist Matt Taibbi about the Twitter’s handling of the Hunter Biden story.

“Celebrities and unknowns alike could be removed or reviewed at the behest of a political party,” Taibbi tweeted while sharing an internal communication that included a James wood tweet apparently sent to Twitter’s content moderation team “from the DNC.”

Speaking to Carlson, Woods said that he would be suing the DNC over the claim and said “these very people” were responsible for destroying his career.

“I can guarantee you one thing more than anything else you’ll ever hear in your life: I will be getting a lawyer. I will be suing the Democratic National Committee no matter what,” Woods said.

“Whether I win or lose, I am going to stand up for the rights that every American – not a so-called celebrity. I’m not a celebrity — I’m hardly recognizable anymore because my career has been destroyed by these very people,” he said.

https://deadstate.org/james-woods-says- ... my-career/

Seems like if he suffered damage from something TWITTER did, he might sue TWITTER. But what do I know?

[Suranis]

James Woods is unrecognizable because he's old now. The DNC isn't responsible for that. Nor are they responsible for his inability to keep his mouth shut.

Spoiler - I like a lot of James Woods movies. Decent actor in his day. His biopic on Roy Cohn "Citizen Cohn" portrayed him as really freaking slimey so he didnt avoid Right wing figures and wasnt afraid to show them as assholes.

[p0rtia]

What????

[Phoenix520]

I hope he does sue. I’ve never liked his movies, I never went to see one in the theater. He should sue me for contributing to him not being a celebrity.

[bob]

Seems like if he suffered damage from something TWITTER did, he might sue TWITTER.

Section 230. Besides New Twitter is Woods' BFF.

* * *

I’ve never liked his movies, I never went to see one in the theater.

I liked his early work, when he was actually trying and not just phoning it in for paychecks.

[Suranis]

I liked his early work, when he was actually trying and not just phoning it in for paychecks.

Ya I haven't seen much of his later stuff so that's probably a fair comment.

[Foggy]

So he's suing over all the jobs he lost since the DNC reported his tweet, huh?

Do we even know if Twitter deleted it?

[RTH10260]

He seems to tweet at this moment still

https://twitter.com/RealJamesWoods/stat ... 9390252033

James Woods @RealJamesWoods

Friends, I am a bit inundated by media requests at the moment.

Given the serious nature of the revelations coming from the president’s son’s laptop, I am reserving comment until my attorneys have fully evaluated the scope of the potentially actionable offenses. #TWITTERGATE
10:52 PM · Dec 3, 2022

► Show Spoiler

and the replies in the thread are totally full of all our well known rwnj loonies

[RTH10260]

Folks - it's time to check your Soros emergency package

https://twitter.com/theRealKiyosaki/sta ... 3789961218

therealkiyosaki @theRealKiyosaki

Why Silicon Valley’s WOKE fear MUSK: Musk is an entrepreneur. He does not need a job or money. He beat BIG BANKS with PAYPAL. He beat DETROIT with TESLA. He beat NASA with SPACEX. And he will beat COMMUNIST censorship with TWITTER. Thank you and GOD bless ELON MUSK.
2:36 PM · Dec 3, 2022

► Show Spoiler

[RTH10260]

Long threadreader tweet, images not carried over, remainder under spoiler in case interested

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598822959866683394

Matt Taibbi Profile picture
Matt Taibbi
Twitter logo
23h • 40 tweets • 9 min read
1. Thread: THE TWITTER FILES
2. What you’re about to read is the first installment in a series, based upon thousands of internal documents obtained by sources at Twitter.
3. The “Twitter Files” tell an incredible story from inside one of the world’s largest and most influential social media platforms. It is a Frankensteinian tale of a human-built mechanism grown out the control of its designer.
4. Twitter in its conception was a brilliant tool for enabling instant mass communication, making a true real-time global conversation possible for the first time.
5. In an early conception, Twitter more than lived up to its mission statement, giving people “the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.”
6. As time progressed, however, the company was slowly forced to add those barriers. Some of the first tools for controlling speech were designed to combat the likes of spam and financial fraudsters.
7. Slowly, over time, Twitter staff and executives began to find more and more uses for these tools. Outsiders began petitioning the company to manipulate speech as well: first a little, then more often, then constantly.
8. By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: “More to review from the Biden team.” The reply would come back: “Handled.”
Image
9. Celebrities and unknowns alike could be removed or reviewed at the behest of a political party:
Image

► Show Spoiler

10.Both parties had access to these tools. For instance, in 2020, requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were received and honored. However:
11. This system wasn't balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right. opensecrets.org/orgs/twitter/s…
Image

Twitter Profile: Summary
Twitter organization profile. Contributions in the 2022 cycle: $185,267. Lobbying in 2022: $970,000. Outside Spending in the 2022 cycle: $0.
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/twitte ... D000067113
12. The resulting slant in content moderation decisions is visible in the documents you’re about to read. However, it’s also the assessment of multiple current and former high-level executives.
Okay, there was more throat-clearing about the process, but screw it, let's jump forward
16. The Twitter Files, Part One: How and Why Twitter Blocked the Hunter Biden Laptop Story
17. On October 14, 2020, the New York Post published BIDEN SECRET EMAILS, an expose based on the contents of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop:

Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad
Hunter Biden introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine in…
https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/email-rev ... an-to-dad/
18. Twitter took extraordinary steps to suppress the story, removing links and posting warnings that it may be “unsafe.” They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto reserved for extreme cases, e.g. child pornography.
19. White House spokeswoman Kaleigh McEnany was locked out of her account for tweeting about the story, prompting a furious letter from Trump campaign staffer Mike Hahn, who seethed: “At least pretend to care for the next 20 days.”
Image
20.This led public policy executive Caroline Strom to send out a polite WTF query. Several employees noted that there was tension between the comms/policy teams, who had little/less control over moderation, and the safety/trust teams:
Image
21. Strom’s note returned the answer that the laptop story had been removed for violation of the company’s “hacked materials” policy: web.archive.org/web/2019071714…
Image

Distribution of hacked material policy
We don’t condone attempts to compromise or infiltrate computer systems for malicious purposes.
https://web.archive.org/web/20190717143 ... -materials
22. Although several sources recalled hearing about a “general” warning from federal law enforcement that summer about possible foreign hacks, there’s no evidence - that I've seen - of any government involvement in the laptop story. In fact, that might have been the problem...
23. The decision was made at the highest levels of the company, but without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, with former head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde playing a key role.
24. “They just freelanced it,” is how one former employee characterized the decision. “Hacking was the excuse, but within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn’t going to hold. But no one had the guts to reverse it.”
25.You can see the confusion in the following lengthy exchange, which ends up including Gadde and former Trust and safety chief Yoel Roth. Comms official Trenton Kennedy writes, “I'm struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe”:
Image
26. By this point “everyone knew this was fucked,” said one former employee, but the response was essentially to err on the side of… continuing to err.
Image
27. Former VP of Global Comms Brandon Borrman asks, “Can we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy?”
Image
28. To which former Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker again seems to advise staying the non-course, because “caution is warranted”:
Image
29. A fundamental problem with tech companies and content moderation: many people in charge of speech know/care little about speech, and have to be told the basics by outsiders. To wit:
30. In one humorous exchange on day 1, Democratic congressman Ro Khanna reaches out to Gadde to gently suggest she hop on the phone to talk about the “backlash re speech.” Khanna was the only Democratic official I could find in the files who expressed concern.
Image
Gadde replies quickly, immediately diving into the weeds of Twitter policy, unaware Khanna is more worried about the Bill of Rights:
Image
32.Khanna tries to reroute the conversation to the First Amendment, mention of which is generally hard to find in the files:
Image
33.Within a day, head of Public Policy Lauren Culbertson receives a ghastly letter/report from Carl Szabo of the research firm NetChoice, which had already polled 12 members of congress – 9 Rs and 3 Democrats, from “the House Judiciary Committee to Rep. Judy Chu’s office.”
Image
34.NetChoice lets Twitter know a “blood bath” awaits in upcoming Hill hearings, with members saying it's a "tipping point," complaining tech has “grown so big that they can’t even regulate themselves, so government may need to intervene.”
Image
35.Szabo reports to Twitter that some Hill figures are characterizing the laptop story as “tech’s Access Hollywood moment”:
Image
36.Twitter files continued:
"THE FIRST AMENDMENT ISN’T ABSOLUTE”
Szabo’s letter contains chilling passages relaying Democratic lawmakers’ attitudes. They want “more” moderation, and as for the Bill of Rights, it's "not absolute"
Image
An amazing subplot of the Twitter/Hunter Biden laptop affair was how much was done without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, and how long it took for the situation to get "unfucked" (as one ex-employee put it) even after Dorsey jumped in.
While reviewing Gadde's emails, I saw a familiar name - my own. Dorsey sent her a copy of my Substack article blasting the incident
Image
There are multiple instances in the files of Dorsey intervening to question suspensions and other moderation actions, for accounts across the political spectrum
The problem with the "hacked materials" ruling, several sources said, was that this normally required an official/law enforcement finding of a hack. But such a finding never appears throughout what one executive describes as a "whirlwind" 24-hour, company-wide mess.
Image
It's been a whirlwind 96 hours for me, too. There is much more to come, including answers to questions about issues like shadow-banning, boosting, follower counts, the fate of various individual accounts, and more. These issues are not limited to the political right.
Good night, everyone. Thanks to all those who picked up the phone in the last few days.

[Suranis]

Well that's a great pile of shite. Its amazing how make people somehow "pick up the phone" to sketchy sources, and somehow "confirm" bullshit narratives the Right has been failing to make traction with for years.

[p0rtia]

Okay I am up to speed. Any my vocabulary has increased.

https://www.thebulwark.com/no-you-do-no ... n-twitter/

No, You Do Not Have a Constitutional Right to Post Hunter Biden’s Dick Pic on Twitter
Elon Musk and Matt Taibbi’s First Amendment follies.
by Tim Miller
December 3, 2022 3:32 am

While normal humans who denied Republicans their red wave were enjoying an epic sports weekend, an insular community of MAGA activists and online contrarians led by the world’s richest man (for now) were getting riled up about a cache of leaked emails revealing that the former actor James Woods and Chinese troll accounts were not allowed to post ill-gotten photos of Hunter Biden’s hog on a private company’s microblogging platform 25 months ago.

Now if you are one of the normals—someone who would never think about posting another person’s penis on your social media account; has no desire to see politicians’ kids’ penises when scrolling social media; doesn’t understand why there are other people out there who care one way or another about the moderation policies surrounding stolen penis photos; or can’t even figure out what it is that I’m talking about—then this might seem like a gratuitous matter for an article. Sadly, it is not.

Because among Republican members of Congress, leading conservative media commentators, contrarian substackers, conservative tech bros, and friends of Donald Trump, the ability to post Hunter Biden’s cock shots on Twitter is the number-one issue in America this weekend. They believe that if they are not allowed to post porno, our constitutional republic may be in jeopardy.

I truly, truly wish I were joking.

Here’s a synopsis for the blessedly uninitiated:

On Friday, Elon Musk promised to reveal “what really happened with the Hunter Biden story suppression by Twitter.” It turns out that he had provided a trove of internal corporate documents to the Tulsi Gabbard of Substack, Matt Taibbi, who said they amounted to a “unique and explosive story”—revealing the juicy details inside Twitter’s decision to suppress the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story, which had previously been rejected by such liberal outlets as Fox News and the Wall Street Journal due to its suspicious provenance. Taibbi agreed to divulge these private emails on Twitter itself rather than via his Substack as part of a “few conditions,” which he does not detail, that were imposed on him, presumably by Musk or a Musk factotum.

[Suranis]

Politics USA is not impressed.

https://www.politicususa.com/2022/12/03 ... -edge.html

Elon Musk’s Big Hunter Biden Laptop Fail Pushes Trump Over The Edge


Elon Musk’s promised release of Twitter documents related to the Hunter Biden laptop story was a giant dud, but it pushed Trump to a new place.


Musk promised proof that the government pressured Twitter to not allow the Hunter Biden laptop story to be shared.

Instead, CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale put the Musk claim beside Musk PR guy Matt Taibbi’s tweet of what the documents showed:



Trump in a completely unhinged manner on his social media platform, “Wow! That’s a really big story about Twitter and various forms of government Fraud including, specifically, Election Fraud. The same level of Fraud took place with the other Big Tech companies, if not even worse (if that’s possible?). We are living in a VERY CORRUPT COUNTRY &, AS THEY ARE SAYING ALL OVER THE INTERNET, “NOTHING WILL BE DONE ABOUT IT BECAUSE THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT & FBI ARE TOTALLY CORRUPT.” But they’ll keep investigating “boxes” that were legally & openly taken from the W.H.”

Several points need to be made. The government didn’t commit election fraud. The government had nothing to do with Twitter’s decision on the Hunter Biden laptop story.

Secondly, the government isn’t investigating Trump for taking boxes but for illegally stealing classified documents. The failed former president left out the important part about what was inside the boxes that he stole.

The documents were not legally and openly taken from the White House because the National Archives had no idea where the boxes were.

Republicans have been looking for something that will elevate their Hunter Biden conspiracy into a mainstream story, but the media looked at the laptop story years ago and found nothing.

The GOP thought that Elon Musk would save their conspiracy, but all that his flop did was push Trump further into his dark place.

[Kriselda Gray]

What dos the Bill of Rights and First Amendme t have to do with any of this. The GOVERNMENT wasn't involved in the censorship near as I can tell from reading that. It was a decision made internally by a company.

Even if members of a political party were involved in the decision making, that's *still* not government censorship and that's the ONLY thing the First Amendment applies to.

Dipshits.

[Slim Cognito]

Just my arrogant opinion but, if musk thought this was the way to bring advertisers back, I believe he may be mistaken.

[Foggy]

The GOP thought that Elon Musk would save their conspiracy, but all that his flop did was push Trump further into his dark place.

This is going to make woodworker very sad.

[Phoenix520]

I read a lot a fair amount of and about Taibbi in the early 00s. He grew up mostly in Russia; his dad was a reporter for ABC (everyone assumed CIA) and the family was among the first Westerners allowed after the breakup. He was wild, lots of drinking and whatever goes with it in Russia - being chased by police, for one thing. I have assumed without evidence for quite some time that Taibbi is part of the Russian disinformation push. I lost interest in him before he turned on the left, so I’m not sure if there was an incident or a wife or what caused it.

But turn he has. Like Greenwald turned. Greenwald lies about people quite a bit, always has, and that contributes to his bitterness against former colleagues who publicly call him on the lies. Not sure if Taibbi lies or just has selective beliefs.

I no longer believe his reporting.