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Twitter can’t protect you from trolls any more, insiders say (bbc.com)
16 points by gnufx on March 6, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 9 comments


I would love to see actual data on this, Twitter claims hate impressions are down 30%.

This article is a bunch of hearsay with the only data point being a that of a single account, which could be caused by a lot of things.


Can't, or won't?


After the “Musk made everyone view his tweets” hoax two weeks ago I’m disinclined to believe articles about why Twitter is bad published by traditional news outlets that compete with Twitter, and are threatened by the direct access to journalists and other sources that Twitter provides.


But Musk says he was going to get rid of all the bots and trolls!


> state-co-ordinated disinformation

What was it before Musk? Battery Man Bad.

This is really missing perspective, not surprisingly. I personally found Twitter an absolute insufferable place before that was much less diverse. I still don't really care for it, but it does seem better. Can I be in the article?


Nearly all these "insiders" seem to be recently departed employees with obvious reasons to have a partial take on the current state of affairs.

There is also a passing reference to the "Twitter Files", which were dismissed at the time by most of the mainstream media - Panorama included?

In that context it's difficult not to see this as more establishment tears after Musk's slap across the face to it and its bias when he took over Twitter.

There are obviously going to be problems during such a turbulent time, and serious alleged cases like the troll victim discussed should not be an acceptable corollary of the new regime, but genuine improvement and insight will not be helped by weak or questionably-motivated "investigations".

I'd really like to see better and braver from the BBC on a flagship analytical programme.


> There is also a passing reference to the "Twitter Files"

That seems to be in the context of "you can't trust Musk because TTF were a self-serving PR exercise" given the immediately following sentence.

> > In December 2022, he released internal documents called the "Twitter Files" to explain why he believed the company hadn't been fairly applying its moderation and suspension policies under the old leadership.

> > But those who have been on the inside, feel like Mr Musk has used this to de-prioritise protecting users from harm altogether.

> genuine improvement and insight will not be helped by weak or questionably-motivated "investigations"

Do you think they are helped by firing content moderators et al?


Firing employees like Jim Baker and Vijaya Gadde who censored lawful content in order to push a biased political narrative absolutely helped. Good riddance.


If those are the content moderators responsible for the political bias and censorship we saw (and was discussed on HN many times) pre-Musk, yes.




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