At first blush, the censorship looks like 99.9% decisions by individuals to ban and throttle tweets they didn't like. The algorithm story is hard to swallow. If there ever was an algorithm, then disclose the code.
They told us who they are. Don't second guess their confessions. They had their thumb heavy on the scale. If not, then they should show their notes.
At first blush, the censorship looks like 99.9% decisions by individuals to ban and throttle tweets they didn't like. The algorithm story is hard to swallow. If there ever was an algorithm, then disclose the code.
They told us who they are. Don't second guess their confessions. They had their thumb heavy on the scale. If not, then they should show their notes.
I know. But there's a limit to how much I am ready to blame individual computer programmers without a case being made against them.
The algorithmic visibility control never made any sense and it was regrettable that Taibbi discussed it so much. Almost everything on the internet has a snitch (report) button. It takes you to a form. Form submissions go into a queue*. Maybe they have some automation for grouping form submissions to make processing them less laborious. They are reviewed against policy that's forever subject to change and a decision to modulate visibility is made. (And there's a review/appeal process but that's not used as much.)
It doesn't matter how much of this is handled by humans at computer terminals and how much is automated. What matters is the the policy, the power it represents, and who gets to define it.
*The FBI Belly Button's connection to the queue seems not very automated and often to have had high level human review on both sides of the public-private partnership.
I suspect computers and algorithms were lesser drivers of censorship. More likely, individual twitter employees and secret agents in the security state and Congress simply picked tweets that made them butthurt along with an unhealthy dose of ambition to control others and feel important and powerful. The official surveillance operatives were aided by self-appointed wokesters who wanted to see something, say something. I don't know any of this for sure.
But we may learn more--Captain Renault didn't invent the concept of "usual suspects."
There's more than individual actors here. Each organization has its culture and there is an overall ruling class culture across the bureaucracies, businesses, media, academia. The shared aspects of this culture don't care about woke or church, gunz or abortion, which are distractions to maintain the illusion of democratic electoral politics, they care about real power. And holding onto that power means making sure that aberrant threats to the power (like Trump or Sanders) are nipped in the bud. Hence the extreme escalation of narrative control across the board, left and right.
I just don't see 'right' media being anywhere near as preoccupied with censoring their political opponents as that of the Democrat-dominated mainstream legacy media.
It's not in step with American ideals of democracy. But I'm not sure how different things were, say, 70 or a hundred years ago. Narrative control has always be the American approach to social control. Matt Taibbi talks a lot about how this isn't how journalism is supposed to work. But did journalism ever work as it is supposed to? Is Matt's journalism just another exercise in maintaining our belief in an ideal that was only ever a fairy tail. I really don't know.
But you are right that, for example, the NYP can, under current conditions, make a strong political opposition story by just explaining a few facts. It doesn't mean they are morally better, it just means the Ds radical position has left this lane open.
At first blush, the censorship looks like 99.9% decisions by individuals to ban and throttle tweets they didn't like. The algorithm story is hard to swallow. If there ever was an algorithm, then disclose the code.
They told us who they are. Don't second guess their confessions. They had their thumb heavy on the scale. If not, then they should show their notes.
I know. But there's a limit to how much I am ready to blame individual computer programmers without a case being made against them.
The algorithmic visibility control never made any sense and it was regrettable that Taibbi discussed it so much. Almost everything on the internet has a snitch (report) button. It takes you to a form. Form submissions go into a queue*. Maybe they have some automation for grouping form submissions to make processing them less laborious. They are reviewed against policy that's forever subject to change and a decision to modulate visibility is made. (And there's a review/appeal process but that's not used as much.)
It doesn't matter how much of this is handled by humans at computer terminals and how much is automated. What matters is the the policy, the power it represents, and who gets to define it.
*The FBI Belly Button's connection to the queue seems not very automated and often to have had high level human review on both sides of the public-private partnership.
I suspect computers and algorithms were lesser drivers of censorship. More likely, individual twitter employees and secret agents in the security state and Congress simply picked tweets that made them butthurt along with an unhealthy dose of ambition to control others and feel important and powerful. The official surveillance operatives were aided by self-appointed wokesters who wanted to see something, say something. I don't know any of this for sure.
But we may learn more--Captain Renault didn't invent the concept of "usual suspects."
There's more than individual actors here. Each organization has its culture and there is an overall ruling class culture across the bureaucracies, businesses, media, academia. The shared aspects of this culture don't care about woke or church, gunz or abortion, which are distractions to maintain the illusion of democratic electoral politics, they care about real power. And holding onto that power means making sure that aberrant threats to the power (like Trump or Sanders) are nipped in the bud. Hence the extreme escalation of narrative control across the board, left and right.
I just don't see 'right' media being anywhere near as preoccupied with censoring their political opponents as that of the Democrat-dominated mainstream legacy media.
It's not in step with American ideals of democracy. But I'm not sure how different things were, say, 70 or a hundred years ago. Narrative control has always be the American approach to social control. Matt Taibbi talks a lot about how this isn't how journalism is supposed to work. But did journalism ever work as it is supposed to? Is Matt's journalism just another exercise in maintaining our belief in an ideal that was only ever a fairy tail. I really don't know.
But you are right that, for example, the NYP can, under current conditions, make a strong political opposition story by just explaining a few facts. It doesn't mean they are morally better, it just means the Ds radical position has left this lane open.