Social media censorship roundup

[Undertoad]

I'll put it all here so you can ignore it if you don't care.

Yesterday, alternative site Gab, which says it will not censor anything unless the government says it cannot be published, prohibited all porn from its site (which is not unusual) and published many tweets saying they did it because porn is bad for you.

[Undertoad]

Today, Twitter suspended several journalists for linking to the Pensacola shooter's manifesto.

[fargon]

Oh dear! We cannot offend anyone.

[lumberjim]

this thread has been incarcerated for it's own protection

[monster]

it's election season?

[xoxoxoBruce]

It appears now it's always election season.

[Undertoad]

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted that

"Twitter is funding a small independent team of up to five open source architects, engineers, and designers to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media. The goal is for Twitter to ultimately be a client of this standard."

Excellent and forward-thinking.

[Clodfobble]

"Like Mastodon, except we own it."

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

"Twitter is funding a small independent team of up to five open source architects, engineers, and designers to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media.

Nerds. Social media according to Garp? More separation?
If the teacher makes them play nice in school there'll be hell to pay on the playground.

[Undertoad]

Vimeo will ban content critical of vaccines, apparently joining Facebook and Twitter

[Undertoad]

Instagram is applying fact-checking censorship to memes and jokes.

[Undertoad]

Instagram and its parent company Facebook are removing posts that voice support for slain Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani to comply with US sanctions, a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement to CNN Business.

[Undertoad]

Reddit's /r/worldnews mods removed a top rated, multi-awarded comment that translated the Iranian protesters slogans... and then half a day later, re-approved it.

[Luce]

Wait. How do opinions violate sanctions?

[Undertoad]

They don't. So why is Facebook suppressing opinions? I'll tell ya....

I liked this part of the story:

As part of its compliance with US law, the Facebook spokesperson said the company removes accounts run by or on behalf of sanctioned people and organizations.

It also removes posts that commend the actions of sanctioned parties and individuals and seek to help further their actions, the spokesperson said, adding that Facebook has an appeals process if users feel their posts were removed in error.

Critical reading: "removing accounts run by or on behalf of sanctioned people and organizations" = required

"[removing] posts that commend the actions of sanctioned parties and individuals" = not required, but they do it "also".

Why?

Here's a real world example from 2019. 1) YouTube gets bad press because stories say it has Nazis. 2) YouTube advertisers panic. 3) YouTube modifies its algorithm to demonetize, and never recommend, all videos that contain the word "Nazi". 4) All history-teaching and anti-Nazi videos that mention the word are demonetized and never recommended.

Worst possible outcome. But Youtube can't algorithmically detect which videos are Nazi and which are anti-Nazi. Way easier to just shadowban them all.

If anyone is interested, here is a very stylish and entertaining video that details the Youtube approach to keywords. They have thousands of keywords! The investigators found, for example, that a video title with the words "gay" and "homosexual" would be automatically demonetized, but "straight" and "heterosexual" were fine.

OUR DISCOURSE IS NOW CONTROLLED BY SHITTY ALGORITHMS. This is a disaster.