Yes, the secrecy does matter. I think can immediately think of two big reasons:
1) We should censor for how things are said, instead of what is said. When censorship is carried out secretly it will inevitably trend towards abuse. One of the examples given in these leaks is that @DrJBhattacharya [1] was secretly put on a trends blacklist because of what he was saying. He's a well spoken doctor and Stanford epidemiologist, but he publicly spoke against the political measures being taken against COVID, such as lockdowns. So he was blacklisted. That's just so incredibly wrong, and enabled only by secrecy.
2) Again with the goal of adjusting how things are said, instead of what is said: If you think somebody is an idiot, saying that accomplishes absolutely nothing besides sending discourse to the level of a dumpster dive at a cheap seafood joint on a hot summer day. By contrast, engaging in good faith and simply discussing the topic not only keeps the conversation healthy, but might even actually change some minds. Secretly censoring the shitposter does not really encourage him to engage in a more productive fashion, because he may not even realize he's behaving a way that's not really considered acceptable, let alone attempt to correct it.
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Literal spam is a different topic, and I think conflating the two is disingenuous. Doing things like blacklisting doctors because of what they say has little to do with banning somebody trying to impersonate other accounts and spamming 'give me 1 and I'll give you 2' crypto scams.
You are using phrases like "blacklisting doctors" and "censorship" while discussing (essentially) a message board that is used to sell advertisements. I don't think that's a reasonable position.
Twitter is a private company that wants to sell advertisements by enabling people to have happy conversations. Fundamentally, they are going to optimize for that, and not whatever high-minded ideals of censorship that we hold dear to our hearts. If a scientist is yelling about mysterious conspiracies and causing arguments on the site, they will use whatever least harmful tool is available to them to shut up said scientist.
It's certainly possible that Musk-owned Twitter will similarly pivot to selling advertisements for MAGA hats and guns or whatever; and censor all talking points that run counter to their views. This would also be a reasonable course of action for them, and many of us have prepared our migrations away from the site in case this happens.
Well, as long as you are in fact consistent about the position that it is "(essentially) a message board that is used to sell advertisements", with the presumable implication being that it is unimportant, replaceable and/or not an important venue for political discussion - and therefore in particular it is not a big deal if it is run into the ground or flipped towards the cause of a political group you are opposed to - then your position is sensible enough. However, this whole discussion is happening against the backdrop of a seemingly overwhelming majority of people in this community and the wider political sphere in the US asserting that it is in fact a big deal, which is inconsistent with dismissing allegations of wrongdoing by an argument from fundamental irrelevance. The majority position on the importance of Twitter is surely worth addressing, and if you disagree with that, you'd do better to raise your objection about relevance to that, rather than to a minority opposition arguing against the majority about a different aspect under the shared premise of relevance.
> However, this whole discussion is happening against the backdrop of a seemingly overwhelming majority of people in this community and the wider political sphere in the US asserting that it is in fact a big deal
I disagree with this, you are clubbing two groups together here. Yes, the wider political sphere in the US might be concerned because a billionaire can upend their carefully orchestrated social media campaigns. And I personally couldn't care less about that. For that matter, do you care about how well your favorite politician's next Twitter ad campaign goes?
Users in this community, on the other hand, are almost certainly technically proficient enough to back up their Tweets and quickly migrate to Mastodon or Tumblr or their favorite social network, should the need arise. In fact, dozens of us have already done so! For us, Twitter turning into Truth Social tomorrow would not be a Big Deal. This is consistent with my statement that the (probably) slightly left-leaning moderation on old Twitter was also not a Big Deal.
I’m fairly certain that the majority of people don’t give a damn about Twitter. The numbers I’ve seen say that less than a quarter of adults in the US use Twitter. It does appear to be very popular among journalists and politicians though.
> Twitter is a private company that wants to sell advertisements by enabling people to have happy conversations.
No, Twitter's mission statement is "to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly without barriers" [1]
Nothing in there about 'happy conversations' and, while selling advertising has been and may continue to be a means to fund this mission, it is not part of their mission. Means are not ends. Companies must run at a profit to survive but they must also work towards and for the mission they serve and the reason they were formed. The Twitter Files have shown that they were failing at this mission (especially the 'without barriers' part), either because they lost focus or were corrupted, or both.
Your previous comments are also correct. This has been the case with YouTube's empty 'mission statement':
> Our mission is to give everyone a voice and show them the world.
> We believe that everyone deserves to have a voice, and that the world is a better place when we listen, share and build community through our stories.
Despite their ridiculous bans to those that never broke their ToS and YouTube never explaining what ToS did they break.
> If a scientist is yelling about mysterious conspiracies and causing arguments
"Mysterious conspiracies" by who? By the moderators who couldn't spell mitochondria or couldn't tell the difference between gene vs allele? Insults aside, didn't history give us so many "conspiracies" that turned out to be true? Like Heliocentrism，like climate change (in case people forgot how many people denied the climate change decades ago), like the theory of continental drift, like Darwin´s evolution theory, like captalism in a communist state, like the opposite view of McCarthy in the 50s.
I mean, how can Twitter's moderators, many of whom could barely understand college-level STEM or any subject, be so sure that they are on the right side of the history?
> I mean, how can Twitter's moderators, many of whom could barely understand college-level STEM or any subject, be so sure that they are on the right side of the history?
They don't need to be, in order to preserve the peace on their platform (for whatever definition of peace).
If you start yelling about mitochondria or climate change at Disneyland, you will be unceremoniously ejected for disturbing the peace at the Magic Kingdom. On the other hand, you can yell about mitochondria or climate change to your heart's content in the local town square all you want, courtesy of the First Amendment.
I don't understand why people think that Twitter, a private company, should be more like the town square than Disneyland.
> I don't understand why people think that Twitter, a private company, should be more like the town square than Disneyland.
In a way I agree with you. Twitter is a private company, and it does not necessarily have legal or moral obligation to be neutral or be a town square. Its staff should be perfectly safe to be biased towards left or right, or moderate content with or without facts or consistency.
I also agree with you that Twitter's staff needed to consider brand safety and how to retain advertisers. That's also the theory of Stratechery and why Ben Thompson thought that Elon needed to find revenue stream other than ads to really push his ideal of free speech on social media.
On the other hand, I do wish that Twitter a town square and they do have neutral or at least consistent moderation policies for practical reasons: millions of people do get news or information from Twitter on a daily basis. Millions of people do engage in discussion on Twitter on a daily basis. As a result, Twitter does become essential for facilitating and spreading information. In that regard, moderating debates, especially the controversial ones, can be harmful to the public. Imagine what it would be like if you were Botzmann yet you couldn't discuss your theory, or you were John Snow yet you were silenced for thinking cholera was not spread by miasma. Miasma was the mainstream theory in the late 1890s, no? In the eyes of the people in 1895, Snow was spreading "misinformation" that "could danger people's lives", no? We could safely bet that if there were Twitter at that time, the staff would be sided with the miasma theory, no? Another reason is in the spirit of "veil of ignorance". Society changes. People change. We're progressive today, but we can be conservative tomorrow. We can be left-leaning today and love projecting and attacking people's motives, but we can be right-leaning tomorrow and declare heresy this and evil that. I bet Robespierre believed that no one he guillotined was innocent and he could stay in power for long enough. I bet many people believed that the protestants in St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre deserved the death. I bet the elementary school students in China believed that they were righteous when they beat their teachers and school principals to death with knuckled belts. Without us believing that we can expressive our opinions in public safely, there will be guarantee that truth could come out quickly, and there will no guarantee that your group of people will be safe, no matter how dominant you are for now.
> We should censor for how things are said, instead of what is said.
What? No. Platforms can censor whatever they want. The point is that users should be told when their content is actioned. Mod actions shouldn't be kept secret from the authors of content.
Therefore, we should be concerned with how platforms are censoring, and not what they are censoring. That is, a platform who tells you when they censor is more desirable than one who keeps their censorship secret from you.
> We should censor for how things are said, instead of what is said.
No, there are certain topics that are simply outside of the bounds of acceptable discourse. For example, Holocaust denial is inherently uncivil and should be off limits from every general discussion forum, regardless of the wording the denier chooses to use.
1) We should censor for how things are said, instead of what is said. When censorship is carried out secretly it will inevitably trend towards abuse. One of the examples given in these leaks is that @DrJBhattacharya [1] was secretly put on a trends blacklist because of what he was saying. He's a well spoken doctor and Stanford epidemiologist, but he publicly spoke against the political measures being taken against COVID, such as lockdowns. So he was blacklisted. That's just so incredibly wrong, and enabled only by secrecy.
2) Again with the goal of adjusting how things are said, instead of what is said: If you think somebody is an idiot, saying that accomplishes absolutely nothing besides sending discourse to the level of a dumpster dive at a cheap seafood joint on a hot summer day. By contrast, engaging in good faith and simply discussing the topic not only keeps the conversation healthy, but might even actually change some minds. Secretly censoring the shitposter does not really encourage him to engage in a more productive fashion, because he may not even realize he's behaving a way that's not really considered acceptable, let alone attempt to correct it.
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Literal spam is a different topic, and I think conflating the two is disingenuous. Doing things like blacklisting doctors because of what they say has little to do with banning somebody trying to impersonate other accounts and spamming 'give me 1 and I'll give you 2' crypto scams.
[1] - https://twitter.com/DrJBhattacharya
[2] - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/04/briefing/american-childre...