[HN Gopher] Instagram, Twitter blame glitches for deleting Pales...
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Instagram, Twitter blame glitches for deleting Palestinian posts
Author : tareqak
Score : 186 points
Date : 2021-05-12 20:48 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| It's been interesting to see how the Israel/Palestine conflict
| falls outside the normal lines of left/right divide. You'd expect
| most of the lefties to side with the Palestinians since they're
| the most analogous to the protected groups these people are
| usually so concerned with. But it turns out if you're a leftie
| who happens to also be Jewish, you're far more likely to support
| government violence than your political views might suggest.
| temp8964 wrote:
| Is Hamas rocket attack considered as "government violence"?
| yamrzou wrote:
| Not necessarily. See for example _Jewish Voice For Peace_ :
|
| https://twitter.com/jvplive https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/
| ttmb wrote:
| The most likely explanation is that coordinated mass reporting of
| these posts is triggering removal algorithms.
|
| In that sense, the "glitch" is that the removal algorithms are
| susceptible to being gamed.
| newsclues wrote:
| Or there is someone(s) within the organization that has
| moderation privilege and they are exploiting their access for
| ideological reasons.
|
| I think both are occurring in social media networks to some
| extent
| bern4444 wrote:
| I highly doubt that individuals at each company are actively
| manually deleting tweets or instagram posts.
| Afforess wrote:
| Twitter literally did exactly that:
| https://twitter.com/swolecialism/status/1392262652156592144
|
| More context:
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj8b4x/twitter-said-it-
| restr...
|
| The censored tweets were _hand edited_.
| FDSGSG wrote:
| Maybe not, but they certainly do worse:
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-insiders-saudi-arabia-
| sp...
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/former-
| twit...
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Heck, it even happens on TV ... look up "A staffer at local
| Fox affiliate Q13 has been fired after the station aired
| what appears to be a doctored video of President Donald
| Trump's Tuesday night speech from the Oval Office."
| Sometime in 2019.
| teclordphrack2 wrote:
| israel has done more than that, so has the usa. Heck, you
| can get a check on the side to be an inside mole.
| abeppu wrote:
| Asymptotically as the size of the staff that can delete
| things grows, the probability that at least one of them
| would be willing to delete things for "ideological
| purposes" will approach 1, right?
| TheGuyWhoCodes wrote:
| Or keep posts up if they fit their ideology
| snakeboy wrote:
| The internal monitoring and codified repercussions also
| grow at the same time, I'd hope..
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| For sure, and we may well end up seeing some number of
| content moderators fired. As with any major crisis,
| there's gonna be people who feel that it's worth losing
| their job over.
| inputError wrote:
| wonder if it's the same squad that sanitizes wikipedia articles
| vaguely critical of israel
| slg wrote:
| Which is already a "glitch" known, abused, and complained about
| by people all over the political spectrum in the US.
| prestigious wrote:
| I mean lots of these posts are anti Semitic and pro terrorism.
| They perma banned trump for less.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| Palestinians are Semites. If you weren't aware, consider why.
|
| Israeli, Jewish, and zionist are not all different words for
| the same thing.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Arab Israelis are also Semites, and are just as much a
| target of anti-Israeli attitudes as Israeli Jews. The
| Palestinian identity is historically bound up with
| opposition to Israel which has often gone as far as
| outright hate, e.g. in Palestinian mass-media propaganda
| and early school education. This is what Israel has to work
| with, while seeking some sort of durable peace in the
| region. It's not an easy situation for them.
| goatsi wrote:
| The Israeli government has a specialized unit specifically for
| reporting posts on social networks:
| https://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/10292
|
| If it has been given the "trusted reporter" status that similar
| organizations have it could certainly be abused at times like
| this.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| When it comes to hot-button geopolitics, is there such a thing as
| a reverse Hanlon's Razor? Where you should be attributing such
| "glitches" to malice and not stupidity?
| nelsondev wrote:
| My wild guess is JIDF [1], or a similar organization, is using
| multiple accounts to flag posts as violating community standards.
| Once it reaches a certain threshold of "downvotes", some
| algorithm by Twitter/Instagram hides the content.
|
| 1 -
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Internet_Defense_Forc...
| ars wrote:
| That doesn't exist anymore.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| The Guardian has recently written a series of articles about
| social media manipulation but it seems to go under the radar
| because it doesn't affect rich countries. This issue is very
| pernicious and deadly, that's why "glitches" is not enough of an
| explanation. I think it's worth investingating for inside
| operations.
|
| > https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/13/facebook-...
|
| Social media will continue to be important for societies, but the
| commercial ones failed to the point of being dangerous. We need
| to decentralize that
| munk-a wrote:
| The geographic description offered in the article is interesting
| to me... well, except for Columbia who knows what's going on
| there - it sounds like this may actually have been a legitimate
| tool accident since American Indigenous peoples and Palestinians
| are likely to register as existing in one nation and then
| frequently border hop in quick succession. If an automatic tool
| saw tweets from a certain user coming from IP Addresses in
| Australia and the UK interleaved during the same day it might
| mark that activity as spoofing - the palestinian border is
| incredibly complicated so I would be amazed if some users didn't
| constantly bounce back and forth during a daily commute.
| Indigenous communities are probably in a similar situation - they
| might have a cell tower or two marked as being within the rez
| with several other surrounding ones being marked as being in
| america proper and, due to hills, trees and whatever - their
| phone constantly bounces back and forth between the two.
| 07121941 wrote:
| You're joking, I swear they've used this excuse before.
|
| Also, can an algorithm be Zionist?
| vmception wrote:
| It takes a lot of naivete to at least not even acknowledge the
| misaligned incentives
|
| The Jewish CEO of Facebook/Instagram _not_ participating in the
| gaslighting of everyone that questions Israeli judicial
| processes and outcomes?
|
| Thats literally what is happening! We perceive one reality and
| they say thats not valid, the exact thing you think is
| happening is a glitch!
| bobthechef wrote:
| Any news on the YouTube/Susan Wojcicki front? I know that the
| ADL was "advising" them wrt censoring supposedly antisemitic
| posts (i.e., posts the ADL doesn't like). I wouldn't be
| surprised if we saw similar videos disappear there as well.
| We have precedent in both cases.
| darig wrote:
| AI tends towards the logical truth, so probably not.
| pydry wrote:
| The algorithm will likely reward whomever spends the most
| effort and money trying to game it.
| whatshisface wrote:
| An algorithm can't be anything-ist, but a company can
| prioritize finding and fixing some bugs over finding and fixing
| others.
| legulere wrote:
| Statistical algorithms like in machine learning can reproduce
| human racism that is fed to them. That does not mean that the
| creator or user of such algorithms is racist, but it is their
| responsibility.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Like airplane accidents, algorithms accidents are products
| of whole organizations, which include engineers, but are
| not only engineers. I don't condone blaming individual
| engineers for incidents when there is an entire system of
| quality control and management surrounding them that is
| supposed to proactively prevent these kinds of things.
| Nonetheless, it is possible for the _whole system_ to be
| negligent, and it 's also possible for the whole system to,
| if not be racist (because organizations don't have
| sentiments), to act collectively in a way that aligns with
| what a racist would do, if they were an organization. I
| admit that it's a stretched analogy and borders on
| anthropomorphizing organizations, but at the same time it
| could be a useful conceptual tool.
|
| For a concrete example, imagine that a company was
| prioritizing investigation of moderator actions based on
| the average emotional reaction of twelve or so people on an
| accountability board, when presented with each case. If the
| accountability board has any biases that don't average to
| zero across the dozen, the diverse stream of injustices
| will get corrected more in one direction than another, and
| the result will be injustice even in the absence of any
| individual with bad intentions.
| b-x wrote:
| > An algorithm can't be anything-ist
|
| That's an unbacked claim, but reality says otherwise [1].
|
| [1]: https://youtu.be/XR8YSRcuVLE
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| Look, when these glitches are all in the same direction, there is
| something systemic going on - even if it is unintentional.
| rvz wrote:
| So it is _' gLiTcheS'_ now or was this another _' acCIdENt'_ with
| their 'bots' when they declared it was _"suspended in error by
| our automated systems"_? Which one is it? [0]
|
| Somehow it was not an accident when users were tweeting 'hammer'
| a few months back and getting suspended but this somehow falls
| under a 'glitch' (Yeah right).
|
| Perhaps, another 'accidental glitch' once again by those who give
| no explanation of how it happened other than a vague description
| of the 'issue'.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27127997
| seumars wrote:
| "We're sorry we have to censor you for profit" Oh great thanks
| Instagram.
| lenitabinol wrote:
| This topic generates so much negative discussion... I am still
| trying to wrap my head around it
| autismautarch wrote:
| It isn't that hard, just the follow up of 70+ years of
| deception.
| mvzvm wrote:
| you mean 70 years of attacks on Israel, a legitimate state,
| by terrorists and rogue nations that lose every time?
| bobthechef wrote:
| I'm not sure what's so difficult to understand. Unless you're
| extraordinarily naive and have been living in the Tubbytronic
| Superdome, it is pretty clear that this is likely another case
| of BigTech censorship. It might not be, of course, but very
| likely given what we know.
| dvt wrote:
| I'm no fan of the man, but banning Trump, in retrospect, will be
| a mistake. From now on, Instagram/Twitter/FB will have to start
| taking sides in civil wars, religious disputes, and geopolitical
| disagreements. The Israel/Palestine conflict now has a new front.
| The Ayatollah is literally calling for more missiles to be
| fired[1] at Israel on Twitter. The lingering question is how,
| exactly, do you deal with _this_?
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1392175039181623301
| [deleted]
| metalliqaz wrote:
| if one side is directly inciting violence, then yeah, they will
| have to "take sides"
| pjc50 wrote:
| And if both sides are inciting violence?
| asdfrewqzxcv wrote:
| ban/censor both sides, problem solved :)
| dvt wrote:
| > if one side is directly inciting violence
|
| Who determines this? If I ask my Jewish friends, they'll say
| Palestine is inciting violence. If I ask my Palestinian
| friends, they'll say Israel is. Who should Twitter ban?
| betterunix2 wrote:
| Maybe don't rely on the opinions of random people? Why not
| take a look at what the IDF has to say, and then compare
| with what Hamas has to say, and see if you can figure out
| which side is inciting violence? It is not all that
| difficult to figure this one out.
|
| (For the lazy people who would rather listen to a random
| stranger on the Internet: Hamas is the political party that
| current controls the Gaza Strip and is widely recognized to
| be a terrorist organization. Among other things, the first
| actions Hamas took after seizing power in the Gaza Strip
| included killing leaders from other Palestinian political
| parties. The Egyptian government has repeatedly closed the
| border with the Gaza Strip in response to Hamas using that
| border to import rockets and for trying to use Egyptian
| territory to fire rockets into Israel. The Palestinian
| Authority in the West Bank has sanctioned Hamas by refusing
| to pay for various things in the Gaza Strip. Obviously the
| Israelis have no patience for Hamas, but let's not pretend
| that this is the typical Zionists-vs-Palestinians dispute.)
| b-x wrote:
| > For the lazy people who would rather listen to a random
| stranger on the Internet:
|
| The not so much "random stranger" above is clearly taking
| the Netanyahu regime side and discrediting any humanity
| from the reaction that the other side is taking.
| legulere wrote:
| Your friends are not contradicting each other, we could
| also ban both.
| [deleted]
| pasquinelli wrote:
| it's always good to consider people's words and feelings in
| the context of material facts, things that can be meassured
| objectively, like, for instance, counting dead bodies.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It seems like a disastrously bad idea for Twitter to make
| moderation decisions based on how many dead people they
| think are on some particular tweet's side. "Sorry, we've
| only assigned you 5 bodies - only movements with 20 or
| more bodies are allowed to send this tweet."
| tryonenow wrote:
| Dead body count says nothing about instigation or
| justification.
| criddell wrote:
| Twitter could ban those inciting or responding with
| violence.
| mudil wrote:
| More than 1000 indiscriminately fired rockets been sent to
| Israel. Maybe you should ask yourself where's violence
| coming from.
| barneygale wrote:
| Israel has no legitimate claim over east Jerusalem. Even if
| they did, evictions based on ethnicity/religion can not be
| justified. Your Jewish friends are wrong.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Ultimately, the only legitimate claim any nation has over
| its territory is occupancy of it and ability to defend
| it.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| "Israel" is not claiming ownership of the property in
| question. A Jewish organization purchased the property
| and started developing it during the Ottoman period, and
| despite several changes in which country's government is
| in charge, there has not been any legal transfer other
| than a sale to another Jewish organization. The
| Palestinian families that currently live there were
| originally settled there as tenants, not owners, by the
| government of Jordan. They are not being evicted on the
| basis of their ethnicity; they are being evicted because,
| despite signing what amounted to a perpetual lease in the
| 1980s, they have made no rent payments and have made
| unauthorized modifications to the property (and ignored a
| court order to remove those modifications).
|
| More important than the actual facts of the case is this:
| HOW is a legal dispute, which is working its way through
| a civil court system -- the same court system that ruled
| in favor of these Palestinian families in the 1980s -- an
| "incitement to violence?" I am genuinely curious to know
| what the argument is here.
| sloshnmosh wrote:
| Thank you for this information. I had not heard this
| until now.
| amrrs wrote:
| Happened with LinkedIn as well.
| https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-6797910928844230656-...
| So, as somebody pointed out I guess it's the mass reporting with
| bunch of humans or bots knowing that the algorithm would trigger.
| Perhaps like DDoS on Social media posts
| charlesju wrote:
| To be fair to IG/Twitter there seems to be a spam campaign on
| behalf of the Palestinian people.
|
| For example, look at the top comments on any Justin Bieber post
| lately: https://www.instagram.com/p/COwqsQRH3Rj/
|
| This probably happening all over the internet and these posts got
| swept up with the latest bot catching algorithms.
| almog wrote:
| This just goes to demonstrate what might be triggering these
| false positive auto-moderation, but it shouldn't justify it.
|
| What I mean is that if the model they use for flagging would
| infer that legit spam (comments to a post by Justin Bieber
| AFAIK isn't related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) could
| mean that similar content when applied to relevant content is
| still spam (or marked for deletion for other reasons).
|
| It's a bit like if google page rank algorithm identified a
| website being copied by multiple websites and punished the
| website that was the first to publish that content instead of
| other way around. If that was the case, it would have obviously
| been exploited to bury competitors pages.
| meowface wrote:
| I have no idea what actually happened here (maybe a mixture of
| things), and I know a lot of people don't necessarily think
| some powerful billionaire deserves any pity, or think he's
| actually involved in censoring things himself, but I kind of
| feel sympathy for Jack Dorsey. What a mess.
| aparsons wrote:
| I remember a post here this year about Big tech being used as a
| tool of oppression. The poster was laughed out, but this is a
| very real issue.
|
| Found it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26117559
| SCUSKU wrote:
| After the liveleak shutdown, I was worriedly looking for
| alternatives. In the HN thread there was mention of theync.com
| which features many graphic videos. Viewing some of these
| videos reminded me that in the US we (white collared workers)
| live in a very safe and comfy bubble. I imagine these are the
| videos that are being filtered out by the low paid content
| moderators of Youtube/Facebook/Instagram, etc. I feel that this
| filter partially allows us ignore the severity of the issues
| occurring in the world. It is one thing to read about
| atrocities, but something completely different to witness them
| occur on video. Though traumatic, it is probably a good idea to
| expose ourselves to some of these videos to remind ourselves
| that we do in fact play a role, albeit small, in these events.
| When human rights violations occur in the world, we
| collectively need to respond. As technologists, I suppose one
| way to help would be to arouse public responses by supporting
| efforts to help distribute this content via federated platforms
| like PeerTube, Matrix, Mastodon. But then again, maybe this is
| completely naive as time and time again the US has turned a
| blind eye to many atrocities. Anyhow, I digress...
| artur_makly wrote:
| _.-._ ..-.. _.-._ (_-.-_) /|'.'|\
| (_'.'_) .\-/. \)\-/(/ ,-.-. __/ /-.
| \__ __/ ' ' \__ __/'-'-'\__ ( (___/___) ) ( (_/-._\_) )
| ( (_/ \_) ) '.Oo___oO.' '.Oo___oO.' '.Oo___oO.'
| see no evil hear no evil talk no evil
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Please leave the geotagged posts alone. Yours truly, IAF xoxo
| sneak wrote:
| Automated centralized censorship that fails closed and only gets
| fixed later, by human intervention, is the glitch here.
|
| It has not been fixed.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Its time to realize that Media companies have been lying their
| asses off for many years. So many people still believe what their
| TV tells them. And will grasp for any plausible explanation that
| still keeps their world view intact. No matter how many twists of
| logic it may be.
| curiousgal wrote:
| I mean YouTube was caught modifying uploaded videos and Reddit
| CEO was caught editing comments, it all has been obvious for
| years.
| CommanderData wrote:
| Accounts have been banned by Instagram with hundreds of thousands
| of followers.
|
| It's simply censorship not a glitch.
| kome wrote:
| For a few years, the internet helped the oppressed and the
| underdog to spread awareness, in contrast with mainstream media
| narratives.
|
| Now, the rich and powerful gamed the system to continue the
| oppression.
| oogabooga123 wrote:
| Follow the money (equity ownership). This isn't complicated
| jazu wrote:
| The glitch has a hooked nose
| Barrin92 wrote:
| reminds of the 'accidental glitches' after anti-Modi posts
| vanished in India, curiously enough shortly after India pressured
| social media companies into silencing dissent.
|
| People who think of centralised social media as an empowerement
| of voice of minority dissent have made a grave mistake. It's only
| contingently supportive as long as the position of the minority
| voices isn't in conflict with political or economic interests of
| the powers that be. And big anything be it government, business
| and so on is always run by people who come from the same power-
| centres that minorities are trying to speak up against.
| bobthechef wrote:
| Or the minority known as the American oligarchy.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| I think it is a LOT simpler than what you are suspecting. As
| someone in the comments has pointed out, mass reporting on
| certain types of articles or certain sources trigger automated
| review/removal of that content.
|
| Normally, consensus reporting is a good sign that something is
| undesirable. In this case it has clearly been weaponized. This
| is a TUNING problem and it seems like social media companies
| have to find a way to balance on this
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2021-05-12 23:00 UTC)