Social Media: The God That Failed

[McParadigm]

So the financial hit from not being able to sell user data was so great that it destroyed Facebook’s value. Solid business model.

[96583UP]

whoa

that's a staggering drop

guess Zucko probably no longer 3rd richest in the world

wonder if this will impact any of the other FAANG

[BurtReynolds]

It seems that users are abandoning it in droves, too. I assume Instagram makes up some of the loss though, but apparently not that much.

[Bi_3]

https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/43paqq/twitter-is-shadow-banning-prominent-republicans-like-the-rnc-chair-and-trump-jrs-spokesman

[McParadigm]

https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/43paqq/twitter-is-shadow-banning-prominent-republicans-like-the-rnc-chair-and-trump-jrs-spokesman

It’s no surprise, then, that a Vice article claiming that Twitter is “shadow banning” Republicans has already taken hold in the minds of the most online right-wingers. At issue, though, is not “banning” but Twitter’s search mechanism. Usually, Twitter will automatically complete a search query and suggest an account when a user begins typing in Twitter’s search bar. If you type in “Donald,” for example, brings up Trump’s account as an easily accessible hyperlink, so that you don’t have to click through to the results page; if you type in “Hillary,” you’ll get a similar autocomplete suggestion of Hillary Clinton.

And what happens if you type in, as one so often does, “Andrew Surabian,” Donald Trump Jr.’s spokesperson and, in Vice’s words, a “prominent Republican”? According to Vice, Surabian and other “prominent Republicans”—like Republican Party chair Ronna McDaniel and a number of GOP lawmakers—are not being automatically suggested when you type in their names. All of these accounts, importantly, are still shown atop the search results page. The only problem is that you have to click through to it, instead of being given an easy autocomplete link. (Vice’s report is essentially a more partisan-focused repackaging of an article published by Gizmodo on Sunday, which covered how alt-right figures like Richard Spencer and Jason Kessler were also not appearing in auto-populated fields on Twitter. In some instances, parody accounts were featured in their stead.)

To start with, and to state the most obvious, this sort of moderation isn’t shadow banning. Users following the affected accounts will still see their tweets; those accounts still appear in search (just not in the search-bar auto-population). “Shadow banning,” as generally imagined and described by the activists who claim they’ve been affect, would actively suppress user content even to followers, not just make accounts one click more difficult to find.

Which is why, to the extent that this is even a problem, it’s pretty easy to buy Twitter’s explanation that this is a side effect of a minimal measure designed to make sure that people aren’t preemptively encouraged to consume bad information from dubious sources. New York Law School professor Ari Ezra Waldman told Vice that, “This isn’t evidence of a pattern of anti-conservative bias, since some Republicans still appear and some don’t. This just appears to be a cluster of conservatives who have been affected.” He added, “If anything, it appears that Twitter’s technology for minimizing accounts instead of banning them just isn’t very good.”

That’s a more likely scenario than a cabal of secretive Twitter employees trying to suppress the speech of … Donald Trump Jr.’s spokesperson. As HuffPost’s Ashley Feinberg pointed out on Twitter, well-known left-wing podcast hosts—surely, in the grand scheme of things, around the same level of “prominence” as Don Jr.’s spokesperson—are suffering from the same “problem” of being marginally more difficult to be searched out. Is it bad? Sure, the way a hangnail is bad. But it’s not censorship, and it’s certainly not “shadow-banning.”

[Bi_3]

https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/43paqq/twitter-is-shadow-banning-prominent-republicans-like-the-rnc-chair-and-trump-jrs-spokesman

It’s no surprise, then, that a Vice article claiming that Twitter is “shadow banning” Republicans has already taken hold in the minds of the most online right-wingers. At issue, though, is not “banning” but Twitter’s search mechanism. Usually, Twitter will automatically complete a search query and suggest an account when a user begins typing in Twitter’s search bar. If you type in “Donald,” for example, brings up Trump’s account as an easily accessible hyperlink, so that you don’t have to click through to the results page; if you type in “Hillary,” you’ll get a similar autocomplete suggestion of Hillary Clinton.

And what happens if you type in, as one so often does, “Andrew Surabian,” Donald Trump Jr.’s spokesperson and, in Vice’s words, a “prominent Republican”? According to Vice, Surabian and other “prominent Republicans”—like Republican Party chair Ronna McDaniel and a number of GOP lawmakers—are not being automatically suggested when you type in their names. All of these accounts, importantly, are still shown atop the search results page. The only problem is that you have to click through to it, instead of being given an easy autocomplete link. (Vice’s report is essentially a more partisan-focused repackaging of an article published by Gizmodo on Sunday, which covered how alt-right figures like Richard Spencer and Jason Kessler were also not appearing in auto-populated fields on Twitter. In some instances, parody accounts were featured in their stead.)

To start with, and to state the most obvious, this sort of moderation isn’t shadow banning. Users following the affected accounts will still see their tweets; those accounts still appear in search (just not in the search-bar auto-population). “Shadow banning,” as generally imagined and described by the activists who claim they’ve been affect, would actively suppress user content even to followers, not just make accounts one click more difficult to find.

Which is why, to the extent that this is even a problem, it’s pretty easy to buy Twitter’s explanation that this is a side effect of a minimal measure designed to make sure that people aren’t preemptively encouraged to consume bad information from dubious sources. New York Law School professor Ari Ezra Waldman told Vice that, “This isn’t evidence of a pattern of anti-conservative bias, since some Republicans still appear and some don’t. This just appears to be a cluster of conservatives who have been affected.” He added, “If anything, it appears that Twitter’s technology for minimizing accounts instead of banning them just isn’t very good.”

That’s a more likely scenario than a cabal of secretive Twitter employees trying to suppress the speech of … Donald Trump Jr.’s spokesperson. As HuffPost’s Ashley Feinberg pointed out on Twitter, well-known left-wing podcast hosts—surely, in the grand scheme of things, around the same level of “prominence” as Don Jr.’s spokesperson—are suffering from the same “problem” of being marginally more difficult to be searched out. Is it bad? Sure, the way a hangnail is bad. But it’s not censorship, and it’s certainly not “shadow-banning.”

https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/vbj7w3/twitter-appears-to-have-fixed-search-problems-that-lowered-visibility-of-gop-lawmakers

[Jorge]

https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/43paqq/twitter-is-shadow-banning-prominent-republicans-like-the-rnc-chair-and-trump-jrs-spokesman

It’s no surprise, then, that a Vice article claiming that Twitter is “shadow banning” Republicans has already taken hold in the minds of the most online right-wingers. At issue, though, is not “banning” but Twitter’s search mechanism. Usually, Twitter will automatically complete a search query and suggest an account when a user begins typing in Twitter’s search bar. If you type in “Donald,” for example, brings up Trump’s account as an easily accessible hyperlink, so that you don’t have to click through to the results page; if you type in “Hillary,” you’ll get a similar autocomplete suggestion of Hillary Clinton.

And what happens if you type in, as one so often does, “Andrew Surabian,” Donald Trump Jr.’s spokesperson and, in Vice’s words, a “prominent Republican”? According to Vice, Surabian and other “prominent Republicans”—like Republican Party chair Ronna McDaniel and a number of GOP lawmakers—are not being automatically suggested when you type in their names. All of these accounts, importantly, are still shown atop the search results page. The only problem is that you have to click through to it, instead of being given an easy autocomplete link. (Vice’s report is essentially a more partisan-focused repackaging of an article published by Gizmodo on Sunday, which covered how alt-right figures like Richard Spencer and Jason Kessler were also not appearing in auto-populated fields on Twitter. In some instances, parody accounts were featured in their stead.)

To start with, and to state the most obvious, this sort of moderation isn’t shadow banning. Users following the affected accounts will still see their tweets; those accounts still appear in search (just not in the search-bar auto-population). “Shadow banning,” as generally imagined and described by the activists who claim they’ve been affect, would actively suppress user content even to followers, not just make accounts one click more difficult to find.

Which is why, to the extent that this is even a problem, it’s pretty easy to buy Twitter’s explanation that this is a side effect of a minimal measure designed to make sure that people aren’t preemptively encouraged to consume bad information from dubious sources. New York Law School professor Ari Ezra Waldman told Vice that, “This isn’t evidence of a pattern of anti-conservative bias, since some Republicans still appear and some don’t. This just appears to be a cluster of conservatives who have been affected.” He added, “If anything, it appears that Twitter’s technology for minimizing accounts instead of banning them just isn’t very good.”

That’s a more likely scenario than a cabal of secretive Twitter employees trying to suppress the speech of … Donald Trump Jr.’s spokesperson. As HuffPost’s Ashley Feinberg pointed out on Twitter, well-known left-wing podcast hosts—surely, in the grand scheme of things, around the same level of “prominence” as Don Jr.’s spokesperson—are suffering from the same “problem” of being marginally more difficult to be searched out. Is it bad? Sure, the way a hangnail is bad. But it’s not censorship, and it’s certainly not “shadow-banning.”

https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/vbj7w3/twitter-appears-to-have-fixed-search-problems-that-lowered-visibility-of-gop-lawmakers

https://metro.co.uk/2018/07/24/another- ... a-7755343/

[McParadigm]

A large deposit

[bada]

Now that's news not all this Trump crap.

[BurtReynolds]

Twitter doesn't seem to know what shadow ban means.

[B]

This was cool. Lebron didn't pay for all of that school. He has a FOUNDATION! They SOLICITED FUNDS from individuals and groups and combined that money with some of Lebron's own money to pay for that school! It's a PUBLIC school! Not a private school! So Akron City Schools even paid for part of it!

I'm pretty sure that's how foundations work. Until The Lebron James Foundation buys a portrait of Lebron James and uses it to decorate one of Lebron's golf courses, I think they're probably cool.

[Norris]

Why do you follow Obama is the Worst President in US History?

[B]

Some dickwad I used to work with shared it.

[bune]

You should punch that dickwad in the dick.

[BurtReynolds]

Myspace was superior to Facebook anyway



Never rearranged my fucking timeline either

[E.H. Ruddock]

Yeah bring back MySpace, Burt

[BurtReynolds]

I'll check to see if the domain name is available.

[Jammer XCI]

Tom probably has more money in the bank than Zucks does right now.

[bune]

[Let's all laugh at Rangers]

Social Media isn't the problem. Internet on phones is.