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It's real. Twitter Shadowbanning is back. (blog.twitter.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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“Freedom of Speech, not Freedom of Reach - our enforcement philosophy which means, where appropriate, restricting the reach of Tweets that violate our policies by making the content less discoverable.”

Surprise! Our great 'X' CEO has brought back one more bad thing that we hated about twitter 1.0: Shadowbanning. And they’ve given it a new name: "Freedom of Speech, Not Reach".

Perhaps the new approach by X is an improvement? At least they would “politely” tell you when you’re being shadow banned.

I think freedom of speech implies that people have the autonomy to decide what they want to see, rather than being manipulated by algorithm codes. Now it feels like they’re saying, “you can still have your microphone... We're just gonna cut the power to it if you say something we don't like”.

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[–] 34 points 2 years ago (4 children)

People keep repeating this for easy self-righteousness. Again, what about small artists whose careers depend on their social media following?

Fuck Musk, but for better or worse this isn't just about him.

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  • [–] 22 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Artists whose whole career depends on the whims of social media giants have dug their own hole.

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  • [–] 33 points 2 years ago* (5 children)

    Easy for you to say. Are you even an artist?

    Small artists need a convenient way to get their work to the eyes of regular people. If their self-hosted gallery is seen by no one, it doesn't facilitate their career. They generally can't afford to buy ads and are not popular enough to get a fan made groups spreading the word everywhere else.

    Not to mention that this is such a callous attitude in general. Because you in particular aren't susceptible to this manner in which wealthy assholes are screwing people, then it's their fault for needing it?

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  • [–] 17 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    It's ouroboros.

    People don't leave which means there is an audience so people try to stay and capitalize on the audience that stayed.

    Seriously, fuck Twitter. It needs to die. That might mean that a lot of people need to change a lot of things to make their lives work.

    If you're successful you can pivot. If you're barely making ends meet and rely on Twitter to keep you afloat, I'm sorry to say this, but you're not successful yet.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    It's not ouroboros because it's not artists with 1k followers that are keeping most people on Twitter. They are just the small fishes caught in the turmoil. Rihanna and those at her level can move anywhere, anytime and they won't even notice the difference. They are likely not even handling their accounts personally.

    But I don't care to kill Twitter more than I care about smaller artists. What is it really being gained if you sacrifice them just for the satisfaction of killing a platform you don't even use? A lot of artists struggle but that doesn't make their work any less valid.

    I'd hope everyone manages to move over, ultimately it's their best hope because that place will only get worse, but even I see that not everyone will make it. The followers lost in the move might be the difference that ends the viability of their career. But it's tragic that this is the situation that they have to deal with. So, why rush them and shame them for it?

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    The problem is that the artist needs an audience to use arts as a means to survive. If there is no audience to pay or exchange goods for the art provided by the artist, the artist cannot use art as a sole means to survive. Like Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, etc. Twitter is just another platform providing a specific type of audience.

    Unfortunately, the artist doesn't get to dictate the audience they receive from the platform since they don't control it. In essence, an artist that starts relying on specific platforms for an audience is making a calculated risk that the audience will remain unchanged for the forseeable future.

    As for shadowbanning, even if it is a crappy tactic, in the end is just the platform owner(s) shaping their audience to the way they see fit. One can argue that it is just a tactic to go against the artist. The reality is that the owner(s) are looking at how their audience grows and shrinks and are making their own changes to maximise audience growth and, in the case of twitter, advertisement revenue growth.

    When someone relies on a service they provide (art) to pay the bills, pay for food, etc. it's devastating when your service loses customers/audience. Life is a constant risk prediction. Attempting to force change on circumstance outside of one's control is high risk of failure and, in my opion, an effort best used in finding better opportunities.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    I don't make money as an artist, but I live with two of them. They both migrated to Mastodon, with my technical assistance, and left Twitter before Elmo bought it.

    Bear in mind I'm not the previous commenter, but I believe what they were saying is that the writing was on the wall over a year ago, and there are alternatives. Artists and computer geeks tend to get along with each other, and so most artists should have a techy friend that can help them with exposure online. I understand that switching platforms is inconvenient, and tiresome. Looking at it from a tech perspective however, it's a better ROI.

    The worst of it is the ≈week of daily posts right before you shut down your Twitter account, linking to your new account. My friends were able to direct link, but I don't know if Elmo is allowing that any more.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    Moving over is definitely the right call, I know. But many people are still struggling with trying to find alternatives only to have few followers coming along, so they can't just cut it off and hope for it to work. The technical part is frankly the easiest part of it.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    they made a home on a platform once, they should be able to do it again. Staying on xitter or whatever is just kind of nonsense at this point.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago

    audiences will rarely move from platform to platform. For content creators, we have to go to where our audience is, or provide an incentive to move elsewhere. That's the main reason why there hasn't been a decent competitor to YouTube, Twitter, nor Twitch. The audiences there are entrenched.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    do you take pride in being the final stragglers left at the bar that's now a nazi bar? That's twitter now.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Fuck right off with that self righteous bulshit. A lot of people there are doing more to push back against Nazi propaganda than your sorry ass does here.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Fuck yourself right off with that self serving garbage mcfuckwit. A lot of people are doing more to push back against Nazis, but if you keep going to the platform that defends them and provides them avenues to attack the rest, they should get fucked sideways.

    cute conversation, gonna block you now.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    Self-serving to whom? I am not one of those artists, I am just supportive of them. You know, those people who even you are aware that are the targets of the nazis, the people who are trying to push back. So they should get fucked? Did you spend one second trying to consider what's like being in their position?

    Did you not actually block me or does blocking do nothing here? I'm still seeing your self-righteous nonsense.

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I'm not an artist but I know a lot of them and basically only use twitter to follow them. And honestly, the ball is in their court. I see a lot of them complaining about shadowbans and it being impossible to grow a following. But nobody wants to jump ship to a place without an audience.

    The problem being there will be no audience sitting around a new platform waiting for a show to start. They need to start double posting, IMO. Being the change they want in the world. They don't have to quit twitter, but posting content to twitter and mastodon (for example) would give their audience a reason to move, would give them a chance to grow, etc.

    There's even apps like PostyBirb that can do the multiposting for you.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    All the more reason to give their following a chance to find them elsewhere, and to follow them there when they do. There are other options; ideally standards-based federated options not susceptible to hostile takeovers by unstable billionaires

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago

    Of course, but there is a whole transition period. They can change platforms but getting their followers to join along with them takes a lot more effort. Especially given that Twitter is suppressing any links for alternative platforms.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    It doesn't work like this and you know it. If you're selling something you have to take it to the markets where people are. They don't come to you if they don't know who you are. You'd have to be Taylor swift levels to not give a fuck about the major socials.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    Yeah I disagree with OP that people still using X to make a living are a part of the problem. But I do think that if they’re not diversifying the platforms they use to make it easier for people to move then they are.

    It might seem like X is where everyone is but it’s relatively niche as social networks go. You can’t trust the metrics that they put on posts. When they rolled out view counts, people with newly created private accounts with zero followers were somehow getting dozens of views on their posts.

    I always viewed Twitter and Facebook as analogous to AOL - walled gardens. Eventually people ditched AOL for the web, and I hope that eventually they’ll do the same for those dinosaurs.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Again, what about small artists whose careers depend on their social media following?

    hope the artists like playing the Nazi bar, because that's twitter now.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    What a cool comparison to make towards all the minority artists who might be left without a living.

    But I guess you just want to moralize rather than have actual empathy.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    artists that think playing a nazi bar are fine aren't artists I want to succeed.

    If you don't love fascism you'd be in the same situation.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    Cool thought-terminating cliche. So you really don't give a single shit for minorities in a hard situation if they don't sacrifice their livelihood out of your weird sense of moral purity. I hope you pay Fediverse artists pretty well at the very least.

    Calling a platform of hundred millions of users a "nazi bar" as if they could pick a different venue the next street is a massive understatement. You also don't seem to realize that even if all these small artists move, those nazis can still have a lot of influence over clueless people who remain there because they haven't realized what's happening. But rather than seeing the risks of widespread radicalization and the value of challenging it, you'd rather call everyone a nazi and not think about it.

    If you want to blame anyone, you should point your outrage towards large media organizations and celebrities who keep posting there business as usual as if nothing changed. They are the ones keeping that place alive and giving it legitimacy. Not small artists and those denouncing the nazi shit.

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