Twitter Censorship - Round 2

I woke up this morning to see more ‘notifications’ than I’ve seen at any stage over the past few weeks. As I didn’t really post anything significant over the w/e, I found this somewhat strange, so I clicked on said notification box to see ‘likes’ and comments in relation to a variety of posts and tweets of yore. Very strange. As though a cloud had been lifted.

I tweeted as such, and within a few minutes, quickly passed 100 ‘impressions’ mark - and without a single r/t - and it kept climbing. Very, very strange. Usually, around the 50-100 mark, they suffer an instant death, with ‘impressions’ slowing to an absolute trickle.

Elon Musk did post that they’d discovered code to, in effect, censor people for wrongthink, but as he laid out no timeline in regards to removing said, my expectation was for this to be temporary, rather than permanent.

So, my initial thought was to use the opportunity to post a new thread, chock-full of wrongthink. But as I don’t have any ready to go, this would likely be hours. And who knows - perhaps the internal counters measure your wrongthink level not in terms of your tweets alone, but in terms of the impressions, and hence, the amplification of the overall message. So, as I in the past have posted plenty of thoughts on wrongthink, I didn’t think I had that level of time.

I also realise that the censors will use any opportunity to throttle your visibility. Consequently, I should not flame anyone, nor post any naughty words, as they’d so obviously be jumped upon.

In the past, I’ve seen my tweets immediately get buried under two ‘see more tweets’ buttons, of which, the second is generally a warning that these tweets are ‘offensive’, which ties into my second thought up there - do not post swear words, or anything inflammatory.

I replied to a Malhotra tweet, expecting this to be hidden when browsing with different device, not logged in. But, surprisingly, it wasn’t. It showed up at the top along with other ‘blue’ subscribers. Confirmed via a few other replies, McCullough being one, and all the same.

I then went back to posting as regular; commenting on and linking to wrongthink, and it didn’t take long before my ‘freedom’ was curtailed yet again. Back to being censored.

Finally, I went to a few of the tweets posted with the ban temporarily removed, and yes, they were hidden once again.

Now, before anyone questions whether this runs afoul the Twitter guidelines - no. No, it does not. I’m not trying to circumvent their filtering. I am trying to understand how it works. I’m not taking any steps to get around it, because that would be giving them an excuse.

A few lessons learned from all of this;

• The censorship is absolutely real. And it can be removed just as well as it can be applied.

• The censorship applies to the account, not the individual tweet. Had it been the other way around, my earlier (Malhotra) replies would not have been censored after the filter was yet again activated.

• The censorship applies to the content posted. It has nothing to do with ‘offensive’ language, because I for sure didn’t post any. While this was obviously always going to be the case, these things need explicit testing, or someone arguing the other side will make some false claim in that regard. Without this explicit test, it’ll turn into he-said-she-said. All of this needs to be documented to highest level possible.

From all of this (+my prior post on topic) I have some thoughts on how the censorship works, in effect. But this is pure speculation, so take with truckload of salt.

• The likelihood of your tweet being impressed to someone relevant hinges upon your reputational score.

• Your immediate tweet will carry with it said reputational score, and serve as an early indicator as to how ‘problematic’ it is. The more problematic, the more monitoring.

• This will mean if you’re a regular offender of ‘wrongthink’, then your tweet will quickly be clamped down upon if it gathers too much attention early on, and hence, it will no longer be shown (which would explain rapid impressions, only then to drop off cliff).

• To carry on with impressions not entirely dying, it will start serving your tweets to people who could care less. Followers-of-followes will certainly have some link to people who could be useful in that regard. This would require some user-to-user link score (or, alternatively, the user being mapped to certain groups, which would then be useful for exclusion filtering), essentially meaning the likelihood of users A and B between them committing even more ‘wrongthing’ if they were to communicate. This would explain why I see ie EWoodhouse7 and TDBSubstack entirely removed from my timeline for a week or two when even communicating once. No ideas, prole!
  It also explains my timeline this morning, as I saw heaps of really interesting tweets from follows, who I otherwise rarely see in my timeline.
  This is deliberate throttling of ideas.

• If your tweet is sufficiently egregious that it cannot be display in order to protect you, but the algorithm insists that the user must be displayed, it will dig for some neutral, pointless prior tweet. This would explain why I often see complete irrelevanies gaining traction immediately after posting ‘problematic’ content.

I still have a few experiements to run - but those are for next time I’m given an hour outside the censorship filter. More to come on that, assuming I’m ever let out again.

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I also noticed via Clare Craig a paper posted, about ‘social media & COVID vaccine hesitancy‘. I actually think these papers will prove counterproductive in the end, because it shows exactly who clearly have never heard the other side of the argument, and consequently, where to deliver the ‘anti-vaxxer’ message . But in saying so, play according to rules. Do not do anything dumb which will land you in the Twitter jammer, or worse - banned. Do not respond to provocation. Those who do provoke - block and move on.

And the primary communities here? I, personally, would look at the younger age groups. I spent years and years debating the point in taking the flu vaccine with my father, and never got through. Focus on the younger population, would be my suggestion. Those of age are less likely to change their minds.

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