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Twitter to de-rank ‘trolls,’ provokes conservative anger over ‘censorship’
Twitter’s announcement that it will limit the visibility of tweets from what it calls ‘troll accounts’ was met with anger by conservatives and free-speech advocates, who see it as another turn of the screw towards censorship.
The platform’s new policy was revealed in a blog post on Tuesday, which promises to make sweeping changes to the way conversations work. Twitter will use algorithms to analyze not just the content of individual tweets, but the way users behave in general. If the system deems a user’s online behavior unfair, their tweets will be ranked lower in threads or hidden altogether.
In deciding who to de-rank, Twitter will analyze whether a user tweets at large numbers of accounts, how many reports an account has against it, whether several accounts are created from the one IP address, and whether an account is closely related to another that has already violated its terms of service.
“Twitrer [sic] says it will start hiding tweets from those accounts that have the most reports against them. What! No investigation? Good news for the Pentagon funded full time sock puppet social media unit,” tweeted Christine Assange, mother of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Twitrer says it will start hiding tweets from those accounts that have the most reports against them
What! No investigation?
Good news for the Pentagon funded full time sock puppet social media unit#Censorshiphttps://t.co/wHdXa0TMQ7
— Mrs. Christine Assange (@AssangeMrs) May 16, 2018
The announcement provoked outrage from users, many of whom have already been punished by Twitter for terms of service violations.
Dear @Twitter and @Jack I never complain about how you run your business, but your new “Hiding Tweets” policy has me concerned about censorship. I understand your goal is to stop bullying, but I’ve found the ‘Block’ feature works incredibly well for that. https://t.co/Blgfr5Zb0P
— Robbin Young (@Robbin_Young) May 15, 2018
As a Jew, i find Twitter’s new policing of speech on their platform to be similar to what the Nazis were doing to my ancestors before the Holocaust. Speak up before it is too late!#censorship#Shadowban
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