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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   28506 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 24, 2024

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I'm not normally one for being suspicious, but... reddit /r/politics post-debate thread isn't showing any comments because of a "reddit error"...

I'm not normally one for being suspicious

Why? What would it take, at this point, to convince you that massively centralized services abuse their position to control discourse?

It's about the mechanisms and people, plus a dash of incentives. I find it hard to believe that some higher-up at reddit saw "oh that was a bad debate for Biden, better censor" and then ordered an employee to deliberately break their code for an hour. That's a lot of steps, very blatant, and doesn't fit my model for typically how censorship works in practice. Reddit censorship typically takes other forms, and institutionally, is usually incentivized to have more discussion/reactions in their threads, not less. A political agenda that's too explicit runs contrary to their profit-seeking motives, especially in an election year. They normally take action more to appease investors and make the platform avoid political headaches, especially along the left. My normal expectation for how reddit would censor debate stuff would be long-standing suspicions about manipulation of the voting algorithm and upvote displays. Or, institutional/organizational behavior around moderator selections or actions. However, I am a bit more open in this case because it seemed so abnormally timed. At least I don't typically remember threads breaking all of the sudden.

I find it hard to believe that some higher-up at reddit saw "oh that was a bad debate for Biden, better censor" and then ordered an employee to deliberately break their code for an hour. That's a lot of steps, very blatant, and doesn't fit my model for typically how censorship works in practice.

I've been hearing these arguments about Twitter shadowbanning, until some leaked screenshots showed that their mods literally have an entire frontend for various forms of throttling. In fact I kept hearing that argument well after those screenshots came out, because some people didn't get the memo.

A political agenda that's too explicit runs contrary to their profit-seeking motives, especially in an election year. They normally take action more to appease investors

A lot of these SocMeds were running at a loss for years. Twitter never made profit IIRC, Google keeps dumping money into YouTube, Amazon into Twitch, etc. There's no evidence that the primary motivation for running these services is profit, it's a claim repeated purely as an article of faith, that helps dismiss concerns over corporate interference in public discourse.

Reddit very specifically just had an IPO which is usually an especially profit-driven time for a company, even one that doesn't normally care. That's like an universal law. One single bad reveal can tank the stock price, and they are usually on the lookout for things to juice their numbers.

Twitter of course has throttle power, that's the nature of twitter, and sometimes they want to suppress things for good, good-adjacent, or legal reasons. And yes, probably sometimes bad reasons. But my expectation is that normally any Twitter employee who is caught manipulating a political hashtag they don't like and for partisan reasons alone would be fired very quickly. I'm also not sure why people would think shadowbanning doesn't exist. We were pretty sure it did, and ditto for reddit, but Twitter and Reddit work a little differently when it comes to how users engage with the platform. Again, reddit normally does any censorship on a mod or structural level, even social media companies more generally aren't very blatant or wide-ranging in their bias. For example, TikTok is thought to suppress pro-Palestinian content, but even that kind of makes sense, because a lot of the news is depressing and makes people mad and, at least beyond a certain threshold, that's bad for user retention and engagement. They don't completely shut down the conversation, either. So yeah, I'm not saying social medias don't lean on the conversations. But they are normally a little more nuanced about it. Another example of how reddit might be biased: they would simply take greater aggregate inaction on bot-like accounts that happened to be pro-Biden. This is an example of where the interests align: leadership political views, and juiced user numbers. Contrast this with an outage at a high-volume time in a high-volume sub, and it seems unlikely. Still plausible though!

Reddit very specifically just had an IPO which is usually an especially profit-driven time for a company, even one that doesn't normally care. That's like an universal law. One single bad reveal can tank the stock price, and they are usually on the lookout for things to juice their numbers.

And yet they still haven't made a single dime of profit in the entirety of their existence. I repeat: the "profit driven" nature of our system generally, or these companies specifically, is an article of faith. Every decision they make is justified with "they're just trying to make profit", even when their actions cause profits to drop. The whole idea is just a "lens" to view the world through, that can explain away any set of facts you throw at it. It's completely unfalsifiable.

and sometimes they want to suppress things for good, good-adjacent, or legal reasons. And yes, probably sometimes bad reasons.

I see no reason to believe they do it primarily for good-ish reasons. If nothing else, power corrupts so we should be extremely weary of giving so much of it to so few.

But my expectation is that normally any Twitter employee who is caught manipulating a political hashtag they don't like and for partisan reasons alone would be fired very quickly.

Now that Elon owns it, maybe, though I wouldn't oversell it. Before that? You have to be joking. The entirety of Twitter had the same progressive left ideology. No one would get fired for partisan throttling, because everyone higher up the chain held the same preferences and would agree what was being throttled is racist harmful disinformation, or whatever. No one ever got fired for that, let alone "very quickly".

I'm also not sure why people would think shadowbanning doesn't exist

It was commonly referred to as a conspiracy theory, until the evidence became undisputable.

We were pretty sure it did, and ditto for reddit, but Twitter and Reddit work a little differently when it comes to how users engage with the platform.

Sure. So the exact mechanism of throttling will be different. I don't have a strong opinion on how they do it, but I'd agree with the heuristic you mentioned earlier: suspicious timing is suspicious.

We have good reason to be suspicious. There's no way this is a coincidence.

Reddit frequently has these kind of issues, especially at high-traffic times. It might not be a coincidence in the sense that a presidential debate could put the servers on the fritz, but I highly doubt it's some kind of nefarious conspiracy.

Things are broken all over reddit, /r/neoliberal threads aren't working. The most functional conversation I'm seeing is in /r/pics

"Joe Biden holding a "Dark Brandon's Secret Sauce" can before the first 2024 presidential debate"

Fuck neoliberal. They banned me for being an origional Milton Friedman reading, Pinochet backing, University of Chicago neoliberal.

I checked that sub yesterday and the top threads were Chomsky dicksucking and a copy-paste from /r/fuckcars. Whatever it was at one point, it got eaten and shat back out by redditism worse than /r/ssc

I'm actually really curious to see the media headlines tomorrow. I like fact checks, don't get me wrong, even if they aren't always even-handed. But if fact checks are on top of the news feed, and not anything about such an abysmal, horrifically bad performance, I will be have some major doubts about the media environment.

It is current year plus nine, we don't need to wait until tomorrow.

Nyt: "Biden Struggles as Trump Blusters in Contentious Debate"

Wapo: "Biden struggles, Trump deflects questions"

No, you break out "embattled" for this one. I know it's only prescribed for when politicians you like are caught with dead/teen prostitutes, but surely someone has a stash.

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