SoylentNews

Mastodon Users Embrace Columnist's Funny Error About a Fictitious "John Mastodon"

upstart [soylentnews.org] writes:

████ # This file was generated bot-o-matically! Edit at your own risk. ████

Mastodon users embrace columnist's funny error about a fictitious "John Mastodon" [boingboing.net]:

Mastodon users love the platform's founder, John Mastodon. They're writing sea shanties about their hero, generating AI art in his likeness, and creating all manner of memes about the reclusive genius. The only thing is, there is no one named John Mastodon, at least not until Mediaite columnist Isaac Schorr accidentally conjured him out to thin air two days ago in an opinion piece titled, "Hypocrisy and Fear All the Way Down at Twitter." Schorr misread the Twitter account @joinmastodon as "John Mastodon," and when Twitter's Chief Karen Officer Elon Musk suspended the account, Schorr wrote:

Then, the platform removed John Mastodon, the founder of a competing social media company named after himself, for posting a link to the jet tracker's Mastodon account.

Schorr's column has since been corrected, but the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine has a copy of the original [archive.org].

By the way, many of the Boingers have Mastodon accounts: Carla Sinclair [mastodon.cloud], Rob Beschizza [mastodon.cloud], Jason Weisberger [mastodon.cloud], Cory Doctorow [mamot.fr], and Mark Frauenfelder [mastodon.cloud].

• Twitter Blue, Elon's newly relaunched subscription service to buy one's way into a blue checkmark, now has a logo. Look, I take no pleasure in ripping apart anyone's design work but I'm sitting here asking myself, "How is this even real?" I'm not alone. Fast Company had some scathing words for it, calling it an…

• After banning journalists from The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and elsewhere last night, Elon Musk hopped into a Twitter Spaces chat being held by other journalists discussing the bans. He reiterated his claim that posting publicly-available data about air travel, such as his private jet's, is "doxxing". Drew Harwell of The Washington Post—banned…

• A number of prominent journalists' accounts were suspended on Twitter this evening, including those of correspondents from CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post. Aaron Rupar, Ryan Mac and Drew Harwell were among those to go dark at about 7:30 p.m—Rupar reports that he was given no explanation or notification about his permanent…

• We thank our sponsor for making this content possible; it is not written by the editorial staff nor does it necessarily reflect its views. Computers: can't live with 'em… can't live with 'em (and, to some degree, shouldn't live with 'em). It's become near impossible to do lucrative work without a sturdy processor and trying to…

• We thank our sponsor for making this content possible; it is not written by the editorial staff nor does it necessarily reflect its views. If you're looking to treat either you or your loved ones for the holidays, there are probably few gifts they would really enjoy or need as much as a new phone.…

• We thank our sponsor for making this content possible; it is not written by the editorial staff nor does it necessarily reflect its views. Every year, without fail, there are a few outliers on your list of gifts to buy. These may be people you forgot you'd even see over the holidays, the people who…

Twitter Will Require Phone Number Verification to Purchase a Twitter Blue Subscription

upstart [soylentnews.org] writes:

████ # This file was generated bot-o-matically! Edit at your own risk. ████

Twitter will require phone number verification to purchase a Twitter Blue subscription [techcrunch.com]:

After announcing the relaunch of Twitter Blue [techcrunch.com] over the weekend, Twitter updated its terms [twitter.com] to require phone number verification for users who want to purchase the subscription. The company said that if you haven’t verified your phone number [twitter.com], you will be prompted to do so while buying the subscription plan.

What’s more, the company may also prevent users who have changed their handle (username), display name or profile picture within the last seven days from purchasing the Twitter Blue subscription.

“Twitter accounts that haven’t been active within the last 30 days or that have changed their profile photo, display name, or username (aka @handle) within the previous seven days may also be unable to sign up. Subscribers will also need a verified phone number,” the company’s updated terms stated.

This is in addition to the previous requirement that newly created accounts can’t sign up for Twitter Blue for 90 days [techcrunch.com]. Twitter said that folks who subscribe to the Twitter Blue plan may not see the checkmark immediately as it plans to check if the account doesn’t violate its requirements [twitter.com] for verification. Apart from the above-mentioned conditions, these requirements say that the account shouldn’t show “signs of being misleading or deceptive” and shouldn’t engage in “platform manipulation and spam.”

“All Twitter Blue features will be available immediately except the blue checkmark, which may take time to appear to ensure review of subscribed accounts meets all requirements,” Twitter said on the FAQ page for Twitter Blue.

Last month, Musk mentioned that all accounts undergoing verification will be manually verified [techcrunch.com] — which was exactly the process Twitter followed with legacy verification.

All these steps are aimed at preventing impersonation and spam. When Elon Musk’s version of Twitter Blue with a verification mark first launched in November, a ton of accounts began to ape brands, celebrities and athletes [techcrunch.com]. The mayhem caused by that forced Musk to pause the program until there were steps in place to prevent that from happening again.

Twitter Condemned by UN and EU Over Reporters’ Ban

upstart [soylentnews.org] writes:

████ # This file was generated bot-o-matically! Edit at your own risk. ████

Twitter condemned by UN and EU over reporters’ ban [bbc.com]:

The United Nations has joined the European Union in condemning Twitter's decision to suspend some journalists who cover the social media firm.

Reporters for the New York Times, CNN and the Washington Post were among those locked out of their accounts.

The UN tweeted that media freedom is "not a toy" while the EU has threatened Twitter with sanctions.

Twitter spokesman told a US tech news website the bans were related to the live sharing of location data.

Melissa Fleming, the UN's under secretary general for global communications, said she was "deeply disturbed" by reports that journalists were being "arbitrarily" suspended from Twitter.

"Media freedom is not a toy," she said. "A free press is the cornerstone of democratic societies and a key tool in the fight against harmful disinformation."

Earlier on Friday, EU commissioner Vera Jourova threatened Twitter with sanctions under Europe's new Digital Services Act which she said requires "the respect of media freedom and fundament rights".

"Elon Musk should be aware of that. There are red lines. And sanctions, soon," she added.

Mr Musk has not commented directly on the suspensions, but said in a tweet that "criticising me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not".

He also tweeted that accounts which he claimed engaged in doxxing - a term to describe to the release of private information online about individuals - receive a temporary seven-day suspension.

"Same doxxing rules apply to 'journalists' as to everyone else," he added.

A spokesman for the New York Times called the suspensions "questionable and unfortunate".

• Twitter blocks users from sharing links to rival [bbc.co.uk]
• Twitter Files spark debate about ‘blacklisting’ [bbc.co.uk]
• Elon Musk no longer world's richest man [bbc.co.uk]

The suspensions come after Mr Musk vowed to sue the owner of a profile that tracks his private jet.

He said a "crazy stalker" had used live location sharing to find and accost a vehicle carrying his children in Los Angeles. [bbc.co.uk]

But following the suspensions, the German Foreign Office warned Twitter that "press freedom cannot be switched on and off on a whim".

'A town square'

Mr Musk took control of Twitter in October in a $44bn ($36bn) deal.

When he completed his takeover, the billionaire told advertisers he bought the site because he wanted to "try to help humanity", and for "civilisation to have a digital town square".

He has made a host of changes to its moderation practices. The moves have alarmed some civil rights groups, who have accused the billionaire of taking steps that will increase hate speech, misinformation and abuse.

Any sanctions placed on Mr Musk's business over the account suspensions could be applied under the bloc's new Digital Services Act, which is currently going through the EU Parliament but could be in force by next year.

Under the terms of the proposed new law, the EU Commission will be allowed to impose fines of up to 6% of the global turnover of a firm that it finds breaks its rules.

In extreme cases, the EU could ask a court to suspend a rogue service, but only if it is "refusing to comply with important obligations and thereby endangering people's life and safety".

Matt Binder, a journalist for Mashable and one of those suspended, said he didn't know why he had been banned.

"I've been very critical of Musk in my reporting," he told the BBC. But he said that Mr Musk's claim "that everyone that got suspended was doxxing him - due to the jet tracker", was not true.

He said he had never tweeted a hyperlink to the tracker, but had mentioned the account after it had been suspended.

"Clearly the people who were suspended were handpicked, because there are literally hundreds of accounts per minute who tweeted the link."

Mr Binder, who has been on Twitter since 2008 and has been reporting on the developments at the social media site, said he was surprised at the ban on journalists.

"I knew it was a possibility but really thought he wouldn't because it would entirely wreck the facade of being a free speech platform."

Twitter's head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, told The Verge website that bans are related to a new rule introduced on Wednesday that prohibits "live location information, including information shared on Twitter directly or links to 3rd-party URL(s) of travel routes".

"Without commenting on any specific accounts, I can confirm that we will suspend any accounts that violate our privacy policies and put other users at risk," Mrs Irwin told the outlet.

"We don't make exceptions to this policy for journalists or any other accounts."

At the heart of all this is a father raging about the sharing of location data of his private jet, which he claims led to a security incident involving his young son X. The Twitter feed that started it all was scraping publicly available flight data. Not very decent, perhaps, but not illegal.

His fury has now extended to journalists who he claims also shared his location.

But this is a fundamentally flawed approach to moderation. I bet many of us wish we could suspend or ban social media accounts that post content we dislike.

It's not the first time Elon Musk has taken a very personal approach to content moderation. He refused to allow Infowars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones back on Twitter because he had used the death of children to further his career - and mentioned the loss of his own child, 10-week-old Alexander.

He has also suspended accounts which impersonated him.

Fundamentally, Elon Musk has shot down in flames his much-trumpeted commitment to "free speech". Free speech as long as it doesn't upset him personally, appears to be the message.

Mr Musk later spoke to journalists on Twitter Spaces, part of the social media app that allows live audio conversations, but after answering a few questions about the ban he left and Twitter Spaces itself has since appeared to be suspended.

The technology tycoon later set up a poll asking whether he should unsuspend the accounts "now" or "in seven days", suggesting the decision could be reversed sooner rather than later.

Twitter also suspended the official account of Mastodon, which has emerged as an alternative to Twitter since Mr Musk's takeover.

Links to individual Mastodon accounts also appeared to be banned. An error message notified users that links to Mastodon had been "identified" as "potentially harmful" by Twitter or its partners.

More on this story

• Elon Musk [bbc.com]
• Twitter [bbc.com]

• Elon Musk [bbc.com]
• Twitter [bbc.com]

Before Musk Riled Everyone Up With Misleading Twitter Files About ‘Shadowbanning,’ Musk Used the Too

upstart [soylentnews.org] writes:

████ # This file was generated bot-o-matically! Edit at your own risk. ████

Before Musk Riled Everyone Up With Misleading Twitter Files About ‘Shadowbanning,’ Musk Used The Tool To Hide Account Tracking His Plane [techdirt.com]:

Before Musk Riled Everyone Up With Misleading Twitter Files About ‘Shadowbanning,’ Musk Used The Tool To Hide Account Tracking His Plane

Overhype [techdirt.com]

from the a-shadowban-by-any-other-name dept

So, yeah, I wrote a big long thing debunking the first round [techdirt.com] of the “Twitter Files” but there’s no way I’m going to make myself do more of that for every stupid thread of the “Twitter Files” being tweeted out. Just know that, having read all of the released “Twitter Files” threads so far, they are all just as ridiculous as the first one. They are all written by people who appear to have (1) no idea what they’re looking at (2) no interest in talking to anyone who does understand it and (3) no concern about presenting them in an extremely misleading light in an effort to push a narrative that is not even remotely supported by what they’re sharing.

So far, to anyone who actually has been following the trust & safety / content moderation space over the last five to ten years, what the actual files have shown is a supremely competent trust & safety team, that was put in an impossible position [techdirt.com], and actually bent over backwards to try to be thoughtful and careful about their decision making, rather than ad hoc and emotionally driven. Over and over and over again, the files seem to show not (as a bunch of people insisted) a bunch of “woke” ideologues suppressing opposing ideologies, but (as we’ve highlighted) a careful, thoughtful team, trying only to figure out the best way to stop assholes from being assholes [techdirt.com] — and doing so by trying to follow the rules they had set for themselves, though (as ALWAYS is the case in trust & safety) realizing that assholes are always evolving [techdirt.com] and policies sometimes have to change to evolve with the latest variant of asshole.

I did want to call out, though, that one of the ridiculously laughable “big reveals,” this time from Bari Weiss, was the well known fact that Twitter would “deboost” some users from trending and algorithms, and have them appear lower in replies. That wasn’t new. The company announced it. It was covered in detail in the media [slate.com].

Much of the controversy last week was over the term “shadowban.” A lot of people insist that it has always meant any effort to limit the visibility of a user. But… that’s wrong. Historically [vice.com], the term was really only used to mean a very particular type of limited visibility: one where those hit with it (trolls, spammers) could post, and think they’re posting normally, but only they could see their own posts.

The problem is that, as with so many things, a bunch of Trumpist grifters took a word that meant something real, and turned it into any kind of de-amplification. That happened in 2018 when Trump flipped out about a Twitter bug that accidentally downranked a bunch of people, including but not limited to some prominent Republicans in search results. Back in 2018, I wrote about how that was the wrong use of the word [techdirt.com]. Soon after, Twitter came out with its own explainer, which also clearly defined the original meaning of shadowbanning [twitter.com] and said “that’s not what we do,” but explained (again pretty clearly) that tweets do get ranked and can be minimized in the algorithm, search, and replies. But those who follow them will still see them (unlike in a shadowban).

So much of the “controversy” over this was focused on the fact that a bunch of people only learned about the term “shadowban” from the misrepresented story in 2018, and none of them bothered to educate themselves in the half-decade since then. Now, language changes over time, so you can argue that the new definition of shadowbanning is how it’s commonly used today (though, I’m not convinced that’s true). However, even then you can’t say that Twitter somehow “misled” people, because (again) it very clearly stated which definition it was using and at the same time explained that users could get downranked in the algorithm and search.

But Bari Weiss misleadingly presented these features, which internally Twitter referred to as “visibility filters,” as Twitter lying about not shadowbanning. But… that’s wrong. And it’s obviously wrong to anyone who bothered to read what has already been publicly stated quite clearly.

Elon himself seemed to make a big deal out of this, and even falsely claimed that Weiss showed that this tool was only used against conservatives (it wasn’t and she showed nothing at all to support that). But the really bizarre part in all of this is Elon himself has claimed that he wants to do the same thing as his grand solution to content moderation, saying the company’s “new” policy “is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach” and that “negative” tweets “will be max deboosted.”

Except… as noted, that wasn’t a new policy at all. It was the old policy, which Twitter had been very public about. So it seems particularly disingenuous to claim that the old Twitter was doing something nefarious when it’s literally (1) the same thing they talked about publicly and (2) the same thing Elon says is his own brilliant solution.

But the story gets even dumber. You see, one of the Twitter accounts that Elon absolutely hates is the “@ElonJet” account that tracks where Elon’s private jet is flying based on public data. Elon has long hated this account, and once offered the guy behind it $5k [thedailybeast.com] to take it down. Last month, he also claimed that he would leave the account up to prove his “commitment to free speech.”

However, Jack Sweeney, the guy behind the account, has now revealed via leak from a Twitter employee that just a few days before Bari Weiss’s “big reveal” about the “evil old Twitter shadowbanning,” Twitter’s new trust & safety boss, Ella Irwin, demanded that the Elonjet account be, well, max deboosted (in Elon’s terminology). In internal Twitter terminology it was “apply heavy VF to @elonjet immediately.” “VF” standing for “visibility filter.”

Here’s the thread from Sweeney:

So, uh, yeah. Based on all that, as reported by the Daily Beast [thedailybeast.com], it sure looks like Musk absolutely knew that this tool was already available to Twitter, and used it against an account he didn’t like.

And while it’s only a single line screenshot, and perhaps there is more context, I’ll just note how different that appears from the screenshots being revealed in the official “Twitter files,” in which there don’t seem to be random “suppress this account!” commands like what we see from Irwin above, but rather open discussions about “does this violate the rules?” and pushback from other employees to make sure that they’re being as fair and reasonable as possible.

We keep pointing out that Elon seems to be on the path of reinventing every innovation [techdirt.com] Twitter already had done, but doing it much, much worse [techdirt.com], but this one seems particularly nefarious. Because just as he’s trying to whip everyone up into a frenzy by (misleadingly) claiming that this evil tool was secret and used to silence people not for rules violations, but personal whims… he was apparently using the very same tool based on his personal whims and feelings.

Filed Under: ella irwin [techdirt.com], elon musk [techdirt.com], elonjet [techdirt.com], shadowban [techdirt.com], shadowbanning [techdirt.com], visibility filters [techdirt.com]
Companies: twitter [techdirt.com]

Thursday Night Purge: Elon Musk’s Twitter Bans Tons of High Profile Journalists

upstart [soylentnews.org] writes:

████ # This file was generated bot-o-matically! Edit at your own risk. ████

Thursday Night Purge: Elon Musk’s Twitter Bans Tons Of High Profile Journalists [techdirt.com]:

Thursday Night Purge: Elon Musk’s Twitter Bans Tons Of High Profile Journalists

Content Moderation [techdirt.com]

from the today-i-settled-all-family-business dept

Well. Just after finishing that last post about Twitter banning the official Mastodon account [techdirt.com] on Twitter for tweeting about the ElonJet tracking account existing on Mastodon, it seems that whatever brakes or controls were in place at the new “free speech absolutist” Twitter have really come off. In quick succession, a whole bunch of high profile reporter accounts were suspended, including Aaron Rupar (who famously covers and quotes videos of high profile politicians), Drew Harwell from the Washington Post, Ryan Mac from the NY Times, Donie Sullivan from CNN, and Matt Binder from Mashable.

It’s not entirely clear what “policy” these accounts violated. For all of Elon’s talk about transparency, there doesn’t seem to be very much here. A few of the accounts had talked about the ElonJet controversy but it’s not clear that they linked to it.

In Donie’s case, his last tweet had been posting the police report from the LAPD in response to questions about Elon Musk’s claim that a stalker had jumped on a car with one of his children inside. The LAPD statement said:

LAPD’s Threat Management Unit (TMU) is aware of the situation and tweet by Elon Musk and is in contact with his representatives and security team. No crime reports have been filed yet.”

And then he got banned.

Binder’s final tweet was noting what Donie’s final tweet was before getting banned.

So, look, again, content moderation at scale is impossible to do well [techdirt.com], yada yada yada. But, uh, I’d sure like some Twitter Files on what’s going on here.

Either way, it would be nice if Musk’s supporters began to realize that (1) maybe this isn’t as easy as “no moderation” and (2) maybe the old Twitter wasn’t really evilly censoring their ideological viewpoints after all… but I fear that most are going to instead not care at all and (1) cheer on this removal of “the corporate media fake news elite” and (2) come up with some ridiculous excuse about how it’s not really a free speech issue at all.

But, of course, all of that is bullshit. Elon is free to do what he wants. Just as the old Twitter was. But, we can still call out what appears to be hypocrisy.

Update: The purge continues. Micah Lee, Tony Webster and Keith Olbermann are three more reporters now gone from Twitter.

Filed Under: aaron rupar [techdirt.com], content moderation [techdirt.com], donie sullivan [techdirt.com], drew harwell [techdirt.com], elon musk [techdirt.com], matt binder [techdirt.com], reporters [techdirt.com], ryan mac [techdirt.com]
Companies: twitter [techdirt.com]

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2  Original Submission #3  Original Submission #4  Original Submission #5