{"id":177938,"date":"2019-04-26T19:40:00","date_gmt":"2019-04-27T00:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/04\/26\/this-explains-a-lot-2\/"},"modified":"2019-04-26T19:40:00","modified_gmt":"2019-04-27T00:40:00","slug":"this-explains-a-lot-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/04\/26\/this-explains-a-lot-2\/","title":{"rendered":"This Explains a Lot"},"content":{"rendered":"
Twitter has successfully set up algorithmic filters to stop posting by ISIS and al Qaeda, but they have not done the same for Nazis, Klansmen, and other violent white supremacists.<\/div>\n

No we know why: It turns out that white supremacists are indistinguishable from Republican Politicians<\/a>:<\/p>\n

At a Twitter all-hands meeting on March 22, an employee asked a blunt question: Twitter has largely eradicated Islamic State propaganda off its platform. Why can\u2019t it do the same for white supremacist content? <\/p>\n

An executive responded by explaining that Twitter follows the law, and a technical employee who works on machine learning and artificial intelligence issues went up to the mic to add some context. (As Motherboard has previously reported, algorithms are the next great hope<\/a> for platforms trying to moderate the posts of their hundreds of millions, or billions, of users.) <\/p>\n

With every sort of content filter, there is a tradeoff, he explained. When a platform aggressively enforces against ISIS content, for instance, it can also flag innocent accounts as well, such as Arabic language broadcasters. Society, in general, accepts the benefit of banning ISIS for inconveniencing some others, he said. <\/p>\n

In separate discussions verified by Motherboard, that employee said Twitter hasn\u2019t taken the same aggressive approach to white supremacist content because the collateral accounts that are impacted can, in some instances, be Republican politicians. <\/p>\n

The employee argued that, on a technical level, content from Republican politicians could get swept up by algorithms aggressively removing white supremacist material. Banning politicians wouldn\u2019t be accepted by society as a trade-off for flagging all of the white supremacist propaganda, he argued. <\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

Though Twitter has rules against \u201cabuse and hateful conduct,\u201d civil rights experts, government organizations, and Twitter users say the platform hasn\u2019t done enough to curb white supremacy and neo-Nazis<\/a> on the platform, and its competitor Facebook recently explicitly banned white nationalism<\/a>. Wednesday, during a parliamentary committee hearing on social media content moderation<\/a>, UK MP Yvette Cooper asked Twitter why it hasn\u2019t yet banned former KKK leader David Duke, and \u201cJack, ban the Nazis\u201d has become a common reply<\/a> to many of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey\u2019s tweets. During a recent interview with TED<\/a> that allowed the public to tweet in questions, the feed was overtaken by people asking Dorsey why the platform hadn\u2019t banned Nazis. Dorsey said \u201cwe have policies around violent extremist groups,\u201d but did not give a straightforward answer to the question. Dorsey did not respond to two requests for comment sent via Twitter DM.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

Though Twitter has rules against \u201cabuse and hateful conduct,\u201d civil rights experts, government organizations, and Twitter users say the platform hasn\u2019t done enough to curb white supremacy and neo-Nazis<\/a> on the platform, and its competitor Facebook recently explicitly banned white nationalism<\/a>. Wednesday, during a parliamentary committee hearing on social media content moderation<\/a>, UK MP Yvette Cooper asked Twitter why it hasn\u2019t yet banned former KKK leader David Duke, and \u201cJack, ban the Nazis\u201d has become a common reply<\/a> to many of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey\u2019s tweets. During a recent interview with TED<\/a> that allowed the public to tweet in questions, the feed was overtaken by people asking Dorsey why the platform hadn\u2019t banned Nazis. Dorsey said \u201cwe have policies around violent extremist groups,\u201d but did not give a straightforward answer to the question. Dorsey did not respond to two requests for comment sent via Twitter DM.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cMost people can agree a beheading video or some kind of ISIS content should be proactively removed, but when we try to talk about the alt-right or white nationalism, we get into dangerous territory, where we\u2019re talking about [Iowa Rep.] Steve King or maybe even some of Trump\u2019s tweets, so it becomes hard for social media companies to say all of this \u2018this content should be removed,\u2019\u201d Amarasingam said.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

Any move that could be perceived as being anti-Republican is likely to stir backlash against the company, which has been criticized by President Trump and other prominent Republicans for having an \u201canti-conservative bias.\u201d Tuesday, on the same day Trump met with Twitter\u2019s Dorsey<\/a>, the President tweeted that Twitter \u201c[doesn\u2019t] treat me well as a Republican. Very discriminatory,\u201d Trump tweeted. \u201cNo wonder Congress wants to get involved\u2014and they should.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I understand why any algorithm would flag some Republican politicians as white supremacists, it’s because some Republicans ARE<\/b> white supremacists.<\/p>\n

I am not sure if this is Twitter’s problem, or everyone else’s problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Twitter has successfully set up algorithmic filters to stop posting by ISIS and al Qaeda, but they have not done the same for Nazis, Klansmen, and other violent white supremacists. No we know why: It turns out that white supremacists are indistinguishable from Republican Politicians: At a Twitter all-hands meeting on March 22, an employee …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[506,367,382],"class_list":["post-177938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-bigotry","tag-internet","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177938"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177938\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}