December 9, 2022

"Why it matters: Musk has framed the 'Twitter Files' as an effort to show that his predecessors at Twitter engaged in censorship. Others, including experts in online platforms..."

"... say the documents just depict Twitter executives imperfectly but conscientiously struggling to apply complex policies in difficult cases."

Says Axios, seemingly trying to present things in a fair and balanced way. 

But who are these experts who are offered to counterbalance Weiss? And what did they say? Weiss presents evidence of her position, showing specific examples and methods. 

No experts are named or quoted.

39 comments:

exhelodrvr1 said...

Presenting both sides "equally," when the evidence shows otherwise, is not being fair and balanced.

Howard said...

It's not like we didn't know Twitter was shutting down deplorable accounts. The reportage from Weiss is precisely what was expected, no? It's all being fixed now. Controlling the narrative is hard, especially if you want to appear fairly balanced.

Readering said...

I have seen a number of folks commenting on Twitter. Don't know if they are online experts. The Axios reporter may have seen these or similar comments, but it's all happening so fast. And there really isn't a lot to make generalizations from yet, but BW says she has a team, and they are interviewing and soliciting more interviews in addition to reviewing files. Plus there's MT.

One twitter account is Mike Masnick of techdirt. On his own site he has a lengthy analysis from Wednesday of the Hunter laptop MT tweets. Generally dismissive. Perhaps in addition to his few BW tweets he is working on something for techdirt on those. He retweets Alex Stamos. Another is Ben Dreyfuss. Another Matt Binder.

But no rush for all this. Twitter has lots of internal records. If Musk wants to move beyond a vanity project, he will eventually make the same files generally available, not just to his favored journalists.

Several themes on the comments are that Twitter has disclosures on what it does, consistent with the internal docs BW picks apart, and Musk himself has said he plans to do stuff like what Weiss is complaining about. As I have pointed out before, he has promised continued moderation to comply with EU strictures.

And some day he will go back to earning his $55 billion Tesla compensation award.



Big Mike said...

But who are these experts who are offered to counterbalance Weiss? And what did they say?

No experts are named or quoted.


Nor will there ever be any experts named or quoted because Axios made it up.

Heywood Rice said...

Weiss presents evidence of her position, showing specific examples and methods. - Althouse

Cherry picking a few examples to control the narrative does not qualify as transparency and Musk has put in place similar policies with different names to replace the ones he's exposing. His "free speech" hustle is virtue signaling and his intended audience is eating it up.

Doubleplus Good. To celebrate this stunning revelation the chocolate ration will be increased by 5 units per week.

tim maguire said...

Does Axios really not understand that citing “experts,” especially unnamed experts, is a joke? Savvy readers see that as code for “I called around and found some people who agree with me.” The claim that they were honestly struggling with hard issues simply doesn’t comport with the fact of radically uneven application.

And as any woke activist will tell you, discriminatory outcome is evidence of discriminatory intent.

tim maguire said...

Howard said...It's not like we didn't know Twitter was shutting down deplorable accounts.

So long as you recognize that “deplorable” is code for “not sufficiently leftist,” I’ll go ahead and agree with you.

gilbar said...

Twitter executives imperfectly but conscientiously struggling to apply complex policies in difficult cases."

right! And the 'complex policies' were policies to help slant things the democrat way

typingtalker said...

No experts are named or quoted.

The hard work of finding and quoting sources is to be avoided at all costs. So it is and so it will ever be.

Kevin said...

struggling to apply complex policies in difficult cases.

Nothing to see here. That’s the message. Go on about your business.

At least “Deny. Deny. Deny. Old news” eventually acknowledged the truth.

Howard said...

timmaguire: I'm just giving voice to what your average libtard thinks but doesn't say in mixed company.

Howard said...

timmaguire: I'm just giving voice to what your average libtard thinks but doesn't say in mixed company.

RMc said...

Next time I screw something up at home, I'll just tell my wife, "Honey, I was just imperfectly but conscientiously struggling to apply complex policies in difficult cases." (Luckily, the couch is very comfortable.)

Enigma said...

Axios...consider the source. They claim to be centrists but routinely post highly partisan (left) headlines and then recast them in neutral language after a few hours or a day.

I'm not sure if this follows for the naivete of their staff or 'unconscious biases' or a secret agenda but the pattern is too routine to be accidental.

Iman said...

These experts talk a lot, but don’t say anything of any worth.

Temujin said...

Thank God they got the experts involved. I can rest assured now and go back to TikTok.

Mike of Snoqualmie said...

"Experts" is another convenient expression like "anonymous sources" for "we're just making sh*t up." That's because they want to express their opinion of how things should be but want to dress them up as facts, not unicorn farts.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Well I’m starting to think the declaration of Twitter’s imminent demise was perhaps premature.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Twitter had rubber laws like Indonesia does and stretched them to fit whatever their infallible instinct for censorship led them to. Of course it wasn’t shadowbanning, whatever that is, it was Visibility Futuring which is like totally different.

boatbuilder said...

Let's hear about all of the lefty accounts that got shut down. They ought to be outraged, and their colleagues should be outraged as well.

The silence is deafening.

Those lefties must be very well-behaved, and never express unapproved or edgy thoughts.

The dog that didn't bark tells a lot.

MikeR said...

Kinda fascinating to watch the denials. It's perfectly obvious from Weiss's presentation what was going on. They had a team working behind the scenes to "de-emphasize" points of view that they didn't approve of. The user had no way to know for sure that they were doing that, and indeed I saw threads last year (@alicefromqueens, for instance), where she was providing stats on her numbers, claiming that that was happening - and a lot of responses that she's probably just making it up, paranoid conspiracy theory, etc.
Politics is done in secret. They were doing politics, a massively important communications channel that massively favored one side, and didn't want anyone to know.
Presumably facebook and google and youtube etc. do the same. Or worse: At least Jack Dorsey doesn't seem to have been supportive of this stuff, largely going on behind his back.
If you are covering for them, it's because they're on your team and you don't care about anything but winning.

hombre said...

Lefties lying for lefties. Dog bites man.

~ Gordon Pasha said...

Whee were all the articles complaining about shadow banning from the left when it was going on? Answer, none. The left response to these revelations is classic gas lighting

Jamie said...

imperfectly but conscientiously struggling to apply complex policies in difficult cases

... and then deciding to censor their political opponents anyway.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

The @charliekirk11 confirmation is interesting. He went through his Twitter metrics in detail on his podcast several times over the last couple years. He’s a young tech-savvy guy who had the receipts all along and he could tell when and which stories were throttled back. It was obvious when his most popular podcast episodes suddenly had no reach or engagement on Twitter and Facebook and Google. We are just now getting a glimpse of Social Media’s purposeful Social Engineering on a grand scale. Big Media can ignore it for now but that will erode their credibility at a time when they have little left to lose.

rhhardin said...

The one who says it's being framed is framing it as being framed as.

Duke Dan said...

We all knew it was happening. The problem now is the favorite left media qualifier of “claimed without evidence” can no longer be used because Elon has the receipts.

iowan2 said...

We are supposed to ignore the actions taken were all exactly the same message as defined by the Democrat Party? Covid and the laptop messaging, are just two, but there are dozens of stories that twitter, etal, pushed the Democrat Party line. There is no such thing as a coincidence in politics.

Drago said...

"Marveling at the seamless transition from "Shadowbanning is ultra-MAGA paranoia" to "LOL of course they were de-amplifying the hard right, who thought this was news?"
--Megan McArdle

gahrie said...

The Left doesn't require evidence...assertions and emotions are more than enough, and all they really understand anyway.

TrespassersW said...

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!

https://youtu.be/YWyCCJ6B2WE

Meade said...

Drago @10:01 — pairs perfectly with Howard @3:58 AM.

stunned said...

https://www.axios.com/2022/03/25/leadership-good-lessons-bad-people-workplace

Yancey Ward said...

"Big Media can ignore it for now but that will erode their credibility at a time when they have little left to lose."

That is the problem, though, isn't it? They don't have credibility to defend any longer, thus they are free to serve only the Left at all times.

JLT said...

Liberal reporters use the term "experts" as a euphemism for "liberals".

JAORE said...

"...the documents just depict Twitter executives imperfectly but conscientiously..."

One would think the imperfections would be a BIT more evenly distributed if the actors were actually "conscientiously doing what they claimed.

Tomcc said...

Interesting things are coming to light. Somewhat related: the City of San Francisco is investigating illegal "bedrooms" at Twitter HQ. (You can't let people sleep at the office, when there's still plenty of room on the streets!)

Mikey NTH said...

When the affect of the rules only goes in one direction, intent is easily inferred.

Mikey NTH said...

When the affect of the rules only goes in one direction, intent is easily inferred.