Twitter reduces reach of users it believes are abusive
More opaque censorship from Twitter:
Twitter has begun temporarily decreasing the reach of tweets from users it believes are engaging in abusive behaviour.
The new action prevents tweets from users Twitter has identified as being abusive from being displayed to people who do not follow them for 12 hours, thus reducing the user’s reach.
If the user were to mention someone who does not follow them on the social media site, that person would not see the tweet in their notifications. Again, this would last for 12 hours.
If the user who had posted abusive tweets was retweeted by someone else, this tweet would not be able to be seen by people who do not follow them, again reducing their Twitter reach.
… (emphasis in original)
I’m assuming this is one of the changes Ed Ho alluded to in An Update on Safety (February 7, 2017) when he said:
Collapsing potentially abusive or low-quality Tweets:
Our team has also been working on identifying and collapsing potentially abusive and low-quality replies so the most relevant conversations are brought forward. These Tweet replies will still be accessible to those who seek them out. You can expect to see this change rolling out in the coming weeks.
… (emphasis in original)
No announcements for:
- Grounds for being deemed “abusive.”
- Process for contesting designation as “abusive.”
Twitter is practicing censorship, the basis for which is opaque and the censored have no impartial public forum for contesting that censorship.
In the interest of space, I forego the obvious historical comparisons.
All of which could have been avoided by granting Twitter users:
The ability to create and share filters for tweets.
Even a crude filtering mechanism should enable me to filter tweets that contain my Twitter handle, but that don’t originate from anyone I follow.
So Ed Ho, why aren’t users being empowered to filter their own streams?