Category: Media

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THE TWITTER FILES part 2, TWITTER’S SECRET BLACKLISTS

1. A new #TwitterFiles investigation reveals that teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users.
2. Twitter once had a mission “to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.” Along the way, barriers nevertheless were erected.
3. Take, for example, Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) who argued that Covid lockdowns would harm children. Twitter secretly placed him on a “Trends Blacklist,” which prevented his tweets from trending. Image

 

 

4. Or consider the popular right-wing talk show host, Dan Bongino (@dbongino), who at one point was slapped with a “Search Blacklist.” Image

 

 

5. Twitter set the account of conservative activist Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) to “Do Not Amplify.” Image

 

 

6. Twitter denied that it does such things. In 2018, Twitter’s Vijaya Gadde (then Head of Legal Policy and Trust) and Kayvon Beykpour (Head of Product) said: “We do not shadow ban.” They added: “And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.”
7. What many people call “shadow banning,” Twitter executives and employees call “Visibility Filtering” or “VF.” Multiple high-level sources confirmed its meaning.
8. “Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels. It’s a very powerful tool,” one senior Twitter employee told us.
9. “VF” refers to Twitter’s control over user visibility. It used VF to block searches of individual users; to limit the scope of a particular tweet’s discoverability; to block select users’ posts from ever appearing on the “trending” page; and from inclusion in hashtag searches.
10. All without users’ knowledge.
11. “We control visibility quite a bit. And we control the amplification of your content quite a bit. And normal people do not know how much we do,” one Twitter engineer told us. Two additional Twitter employees confirmed.
12. The group that decided whether to limit the reach of certain users was the Strategic Response Team – Global Escalation Team, or SRT-GET. It often handled up to 200 “cases” a day.
13. But there existed a level beyond official ticketing, beyond the rank-and-file moderators following the company’s policy on paper. That is the “Site Integrity Policy, Policy Escalation Support,” known as “SIP-PES.”
14. This secret group included Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust (Vijaya Gadde), the Global Head of Trust & Safety (Yoel Roth), subsequent CEOs Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal, and others.
15. This is where the biggest, most politically sensitive decisions got made. “Think high follower account, controversial,” another Twitter employee told us. For these “there would be no ticket or anything.”
16. One of the accounts that rose to this level of scrutiny was @libsoftiktok—an account that was on the “Trends Blacklist” and was designated as “Do Not Take Action on User Without Consulting With SIP-PES.” Image
17. The account—which Chaya Raichik began in November 2020 and now boasts over 1.4 million followers—was subjected to six suspensions in 2022 alone, Raichik says. Each time, Raichik was blocked from posting for as long as a week.
18. Twitter repeatedly informed Raichik that she had been suspended for violating Twitter’s policy against “hateful conduct.”
19. But in an internal SIP-PES memo from October 2022, after her seventh suspension, the committee acknowledged that “LTT has not directly engaged in behavior violative of the Hateful Conduct policy.” See here: Image

 

 

20. The committee justified her suspensions internally by claiming her posts encouraged online harassment of “hospitals and medical providers” by insinuating “that gender-affirming healthcare is equivalent to child abuse or grooming.”
21. Compare this to what happened when Raichik herself was doxxed on November 21, 2022. A photo of her home with her address was posted in a tweet that has garnered more than 10,000 likes.
22. When Raichik told Twitter that her address had been disseminated she says Twitter Support responded with this message: “We reviewed the reported content, and didn’t find it to be in violation of the Twitter rules.” No action was taken. The doxxing tweet is still up. Image
23. In internal Slack messages, Twitter employees spoke of using technicalities to restrict the visibility of tweets and subjects. Here’s Yoel Roth, Twitter’s then Global Head of Trust & Safety, in a direct message to a colleague in early 2021: Image
24. Six days later, in a direct message with an employee on the Health, Misinformation, Privacy, and Identity research team, Roth requested more research to support expanding “non-removal policy interventions like disabling engagements and deamplification/visibility filtering.” Image
25. Roth wrote: “The hypothesis underlying much of what we’ve implemented is that if exposure to, e.g., misinformation directly causes harm, we should use remediations that reduce exposure, and limiting the spread/virality of content is a good way to do that.”
26. He added: “We got Jack on board with implementing this for civic integrity in the near term, but we’re going to need to make a more robust case to get this into our repertoire of policy remediations – especially for other policy domains.”

27. There is more to come on this story, which was reported by @AbigailShrier@ShellenbergerMD @NellieBowles @IsaacGrafstein and the team The Free Press @TheFP.

Keep up with this unfolding story here and at our brand new website: thefp.com.

28. The authors have broad and expanding access to Twitter’s files. The only condition we agreed to was that the material would first be published on Twitter.

 

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THE TWITTER FILES part 1, thousands of internal documents obtained by sources at Twitter

1. Thread: THE TWITTER FILES
2. What you’re about to read is the first installment in a series, based upon thousands of internal documents obtained by sources at Twitter.
3. The “Twitter Files” tell an incredible story from inside one of the world’s largest and most influential social media platforms. It is a Frankensteinian tale of a human-built mechanism grown out the control of its designer.
4. Twitter in its conception was a brilliant tool for enabling instant mass communication, making a true real-time global conversation possible for the first time.
5. In an early conception, Twitter more than lived up to its mission statement, giving people “the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.”
6. As time progressed, however, the company was slowly forced to add those barriers. Some of the first tools for controlling speech were designed to combat the likes of spam and financial fraudsters.

7. Slowly, over time, Twitter staff and executives began to find more and more uses for these tools. Outsiders began petitioning the company to manipulate speech as well: first a little, then more often, then constantly.
8. By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: “More to review from the Biden team.” The reply would come back: “Handled.” Image
9. Celebrities and unknowns alike could be removed or reviewed at the behest of a political party: Image
10.Both parties had access to these tools. For instance, in 2020, requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were received and honored. However:
11. This system wasn’t balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right. opensecrets.org/orgs/twitter/s…Image

12. The resulting slant in content moderation decisions is visible in the documents you’re about to read. However, it’s also the assessment of multiple current and former high-level executives.
Okay, there was more throat-clearing about the process, but screw it, let’s jump forward
16. The Twitter Files, Part One: How and Why Twitter Blocked the Hunter Biden Laptop Story
17. On October 14, 2020, the New York Post published BIDEN SECRET EMAILS, an expose based on the contents of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop:

18. Twitter took extraordinary steps to suppress the story, removing links and posting warnings that it may be “unsafe.” They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto reserved for extreme cases, e.g. child pornography.
19. White House spokeswoman Kaleigh McEnany was locked out of her account for tweeting about the story, prompting a furious letter from Trump campaign staffer Mike Hahn, who seethed: “At least pretend to care for the next 20 days.” Image

20.This led public policy executive Caroline Strom to send out a polite WTF query. Several employees noted that there was tension between the comms/policy teams, who had little/less control over moderation, and the safety/trust teams: Image
21. Strom’s note returned the answer that the laptop story had been removed for violation of the company’s “hacked materials” policy: web.archive.org/web/2019071714…Image
22. Although several sources recalled hearing about a “general” warning from federal law enforcement that summer about possible foreign hacks, there’s no evidence – that I’ve seen – of any government involvement in the laptop story. In fact, that might have been the problem…
23. The decision was made at the highest levels of the company, but without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, with former head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde playing a key role.
24. “They just freelanced it,” is how one former employee characterized the decision. “Hacking was the excuse, but within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn’t going to hold. But no one had the guts to reverse it.”
25.You can see the confusion in the following lengthy exchange, which ends up including Gadde and former Trust and safety chief Yoel Roth. Comms official Trenton Kennedy writes, “I’m struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe”: Image
26. By this point “everyone knew this was fucked,” said one former employee, but the response was essentially to err on the side of… continuing to err. Image
27. Former VP of Global Comms Brandon Borrman asks, “Can we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy?” Image
28. To which former Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker again seems to advise staying the non-course, because “caution is warranted”: Image
29. A fundamental problem with tech companies and content moderation: many people in charge of speech know/care little about speech, and have to be told the basics by outsiders. To wit:
30. In one humorous exchange on day 1, Democratic congressman Ro Khanna reaches out to Gadde to gently suggest she hop on the phone to talk about the “backlash re speech.” Khanna was the only Democratic official I could find in the files who expressed concern. Image
Gadde replies quickly, immediately diving into the weeds of Twitter policy, unaware Khanna is more worried about the Bill of Rights: Image

32.Khanna tries to reroute the conversation to the First Amendment, mention of which is generally hard to find in the files: Image
33.Within a day, head of Public Policy Lauren Culbertson receives a ghastly letter/report from Carl Szabo of the research firm NetChoice, which had already polled 12 members of congress – 9 Rs and 3 Democrats, from “the House Judiciary Committee to Rep. Judy Chu’s office.” Image
34.NetChoice lets Twitter know a “blood bath” awaits in upcoming Hill hearings, with members saying it’s a “tipping point,” complaining tech has “grown so big that they can’t even regulate themselves, so government may need to intervene.” Image
35.Szabo reports to Twitter that some Hill figures are characterizing the laptop story as “tech’s Access Hollywood moment”: Image
36.Twitter files continued:
“THE FIRST AMENDMENT ISN’T ABSOLUTE”
Szabo’s letter contains chilling passages relaying Democratic lawmakers’ attitudes. They want “more” moderation, and as for the Bill of Rights, it’s “not absolute” Image
An amazing subplot of the Twitter/Hunter Biden laptop affair was how much was done without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, and how long it took for the situation to get “unfucked” (as one ex-employee put it) even after Dorsey jumped in.
While reviewing Gadde’s emails, I saw a familiar name – my own. Dorsey sent her a copy of my Substack article blasting the incident Image
There are multiple instances in the files of Dorsey intervening to question suspensions and other moderation actions, for accounts across the political spectrum
The problem with the “hacked materials” ruling, several sources said, was that this normally required an official/law enforcement finding of a hack. But such a finding never appears throughout what one executive describes as a “whirlwind” 24-hour, company-wide mess. Image

 

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Factors That Affect LED Screens Advertising Cost, Advantages to the Advertiser

Billboard advertising costs are referenced in cost per mille (CPM), or cost per thousand impressions, and are affected by circulation, demographics, and impressions. Together, these factors inform the billboard’s out-of-home (OOH) rating, as determined by Geopath, an audience location measurement tool.

A billboard’s OOH rating is based on three factors:

  • Circulation: Circulation is the total volume of traffic that passes the billboard, as derived from transportation authorities. The circulation does not take into account whether passersby see your ad.
  • Demographics: A billboard’s demographics are a breakout by age, gender, and income level of people who typically pass a billboard. Expect to pay more to advertise to people with higher income levels.
  • Impressions: Impressions are the likely number of people who actually see the ad, based on the size of the billboard, visibility, the speed at which people are passing, and other factors. This is derived from the circulation and the location of the billboard.

Advantages to the Advertiser

  • Zero production cost (with a static billboard the advertiser has to be pay to produce a vinyl to post)
  • Quicker posting time/no posting window (with a static billboard, you need to account for a few days to a week to print your vinyl and then the outdoor company technically has a 5 day posting window to get you up) – with digital they can “post” you almost immediately
  • Creative rotations, copy changing & day-parting – with a digital bulletin you run multiple different creative executions, or change them out hourly/daily/weekly or even by day-part (i.e. different creative in the morning vs afternoon vs evening)
  • Additional creative flexibility for dynamic creative – digital boards can do countdowns, live score updates, weather triggers and so many other things
  • More flexibility for short-term flights (typically billboards are sold in 4-week flights but with digital you can easily buy a shorter duration)

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What is Digital Outdoor Advertising? Traditional Billboards vs Digital Billboards, Who Billboard Advertising Is Right For

Digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising is a part of out-of-home (OOH) advertising. It is powered by digital technology that allows tracking, flexibility, personalization, and interactivity.

Digital outdoor advertising encompasses various formats, including digital outdoor signage, billboards, mall kiosks, digital boards, etc. A Nielsen study showed that OOH advertising delivers quadrupled activity on a dollar spent compared to its offline competitors – TV, radio, and print.

How does DOOH benefit brands?

The outdoor medium forms a significant part of any brand’s marketing campaign. DOOH advertising is now interactive and employed for better brand-customer relationships.

One of the biggest advantages of outdoor advertising is its non-interfering quality. Unlike online ads or TV ads, digital outdoor advertising can be artistic without being an inconvenience. For advertisers, too, it provides advantages. The user cannot skip a DOOH since ad blockers cannot function in this medium.

In the pandemic world, digital outdoor advertising has proven to be very useful as it is the ideal channel to provide real-time communication to the masses in a contactless world. Digital outdoor signage became the go-to option to display safety measures and public health messages.

Traditional Billboards vs Digital Billboards

Physical billboards have a lot of advantages over digital billboard advertising. Placement of physical billboard ads is widely available because the infrastructure has existed for several decades. Additionally, printed advertisements are not subject to glitches and power outages like digital billboards.

Traditional Billboards
Digital Billboards
Typically less expensive
More dynamic ads, which make ads more effective
More existing inventory
Better targeting with the ability to display ads during specific hours of the days or days of the week
Not subject to glitches
More flexibility as you can update and optimize ads quickly

Who Billboard Advertising Is Right For

Billboard advertising works best for businesses boosting brand awareness or advertising specific store locations. Billboards located on highways that advertise local businesses are extremely actionable because the audience is already nearby. In addition, billboards are a great way to promote your brand if you don’t need immediate conversions.

If you’re still on the fence about whether or not billboard advertising is right for your business, consider the following questions:

  • Does your product pass the eight-second rule? If you can’t make your pitch in eight seconds, then billboards are not for you. The stagnant nature of traditional billboards is also ineffective if your message requires interpretation.
  • Is your product relevant to a mass audience? If your product is only relevant to 10% of the population, you’ll waste a lot of money on “unnecessary” billboard impressions. For example, a distributor of vegan food products likely only appeals to the 7% of Americans who identify as vegan.

The main benefit of Digital advertising is that you can reach a large number of people within a specific geographical area. This is great for those starting a business or local businesses in general, whose target audience is very broad, yet within one geographic area. For example, everyone eats, so restaurant digital ads are effective.

  • Restaurants and shops
  • Real estate agents
  • Law firms
  • Local financial institutions
  • Medical facilities
  • Fitness centers
  • Location education providers
  • Home services (e.g., heating and oil, landscaping, construction)
  • Nonprofits and public service announcements

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Telegram is launching Sponsored Messages – a tool that allows anyone to promote their channels and bots. Here is what you should know

1. There will be no ads in chats on Telegram. If you use Telegram as the messenger that we launched in 2013 – you will never see a sponsored message. Sponsored messages can’t appear in your chat list, private chats or groups.

2. User data will not be used to target ads. As with everything we do, our main priority is protecting the private data of our users. That’s why unlike other apps we will not use your private data to display ads.

Sponsored messages on Telegram are shown only in large public one-to-many channels with 1000+ members – and are based solely on the topic of the public channels in which they are shown. This means that no user data is mined or analyzed to display them.  

3. Sponsored messages will be unobtrusive. Official sponsored messages are limited to 160 characters of text – without media or external links. You may see a maximum of one sponsored message per channel – and only after you’ve finished reading any new posts.

4. We are fixing ads that are already here. Some admins of one-to-many channels on Telegram already post ads in the form of regular messages. We hope that Sponsored Messages will offer a more user-friendly and less chaotic way for people to promote their channels and bots.

Sponsored messages are currently in test mode and are not available to everyone. Once they are fully launched and allow Telegram to cover its basic costs (such as equipment and data centers that are used by channel admins to deliver their content to our hundreds of millions of users), we plan to start sharing ad revenue with the admins of the channels where Sponsored Messages are displayed – because it is fair.

5. With Telegram you’re more ad-free than with WhatsApp. WhatsApp already shares user data with advertisers [1] [2] – even though they don’t show ads themselves. On Telegram, however, advertisers will never get your private data. Besides, if you use Telegram the way you use WhatsApp, you will never see a single ad. Sponsored messages can only appear in channels, which are a unique social networking feature Telegram added several years after launch. If WhatsApp introduces a similar feature, they are likely to also display ads there, like their parent company already does on Instagram and Facebook.

Online ads should no longer be synonymous with the abuse of user privacy. We’d like to redefine how a tech company should operate by setting an example of a self-sustainable platform that respects its users and content creators.

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The Social Dilemma – The Official Trailer – Cloud Breaking Big Tech Companies – Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram etc.

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Social Networks – secure, decentralized – have you deleted Facebook, Twitter and Instagram yet?

 These token-enabled communication platforms may help you take the leap.

  • Minds: A censorship-resistant social network that integrates ERC-20 tokens

  • Peepeth: Like Twitter, but decentralized and token-integrated.

  • Akasha: A decentralized social network built on Ethereum.

  • Numa: A no-frills, distributed social media platform.

  • Indorse: Coding assessment platform and online code review for programmers, by programmers.

  • Cent: The income-generating social network, enabling anyone to earn money by sharing their wisdom and creativity.

  • Livepeer: Open source video infrastructure services for live video broadcasting.

  • Refereum: Earn rewards for playing games, watching streams, and sharing gaming content with your friends.

  • VouchForMe: A distributed insurance platform based on social proof built on Ethereum.

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Facebook Libra 2.0 Explained in 5 minutes, planned for World Payments Systems Disruption in 5 years

What is Libra

Libra is a permissioned, blockchain-based stablecoin payment system.

The Libra payment system will support single-currency stablecoins and a multi-currency coin (LBR) that will be a digital composite of some of the single-currency stablecoins available on the Libra network.

All Libra coins will be fully backed by cash & cash equivalents and short-term government securities held by a geographically distributed network of custodian banks.

History

Libra’s origins can be traced back to 2017 when Libra co-creator and Calibra head of strategy, Morgan Beller, became the first person at Facebook’s secret blockchain initiative. Month’s later, CEO Mark Zuckerberg expressed his desire to “go deeper and study the positive and negative aspects of” cryptocurrencies in his New Year’s resolution post.

On May 8, 2018, Facebook Vice President David Marcus announced that he would be moving from Facebook’s Messenger division to lead Facebook’s blockchain initiative, kicking the initiative into high gear. By February 2019, there were more than 50 engineers working on the project.

In May 2019 it was confirmed that Facebook planned to launch a stablecoin backed by multiple currencies as part of a payments network designed to enable billions of users to make online purchases and transfer money between each other.

Announcement

On June 18, 2019 Facebook officially unveiled Libra: it’s permissioned blockchain-based payment system. It’s token, Libra, would be a stablecoin fully backed by a basket of fiat currencies and government securities, held in the “Libra Reserve.” Facebook also announced that it would develop a digital wallet for the project under its new subsidiary called Calibra, led by Libra co-creators Morgan Beller, David Marcus and Kevin Weil.

The Libra blockchain and Libra Reserve would be governed by the Libra Association: a Swiss based membership organization responsible for the governance of the Libra network and development of the Libra project. The 27 members planned to invest $10 million a piece to receive Libra Investment tokens and become validators of the Libra network.

Although the project would be permissioned at launch, the association aimed to begin transitioning to permissionless governance and consensus within five years.

Regulatory Pushback

Libra received immediate pushback from regulators around the world who expressed concerns over privacy and the potential challenge to various nation’s monetary sovereignty. As a result, just one month after the project was announced, Facebook assured that Libra would not launch until all regulatory concerns were fully addressed. Facebook executives proceeded to go through a series of hearings and meetings with US Congress and various governments in an attempt to alleviate regulatory concerns.

In September 2019, it was reported that the Libra reserve basket would consist of 50% US dollars, 18% Euro, 14% Japanese Yen, 11% Pound sterling and 7% Singaporean dollars. This US friendly composition wasn’t enough to quell anxieties and regulatory pressures persisted. In October 2019, PayPal became the first company to walk away from the Libra Association, with several other high profile founding members following suit, including Visa and Mastercard.

In January 2020, it was reported that the Libra Association was weighing a shift to a multiple stablecoin framework with each backed by their own individual currencies. This differed from their initial approach of a single stablecoin backed by a composite basket of fiat currencies.

Libra’s Revised Plan

On April 16, 2020 Libra unveiled its revised plan. As rumored, Libra transitioned to a framework featuring multiple single-currency stablecoins, in addition to its multi-currency Libra coin. Under the new model, each single-currency stablecoin will be backed by its respective fiat currency and government securities – i.e. the US dollar stablecoin will be backed by a reserve of US dollars and US government securities.

The multi-currency Libra coin on the other hand would be a composite of some of the single-currency stablecoins available on the Libra network. This differs from the initial proposal for a standalone currency backed by a basket of various fiat currencies and government securities sitting in a single reserve. The new Libra Coin proposal looks less like a currency and more like the SDRs maintained by the IMF. Libra Coins represent a claim on stablecoins held in various reserves within the network. This is one step removed from representing a direct claim on multiple fiat currencies and government securities sitting in the Libra Reserve.

According to the revised white paper, these changes were made to address policymaker’s key concerns. The revised plan further includes a more comprehensive compliance framework, the abandonment of plans to transition to a permissionless system and plans for strengthening the Libra Reserve design. Also to the delight of policymakers, t will allow for easier integration of central bank digital currencies to replace corresponding single-currency stablecoins.

According to the head of policy for the Libra Association, Dante Disparte, the Libra network is working toward a late 2020 launch.

Go Deeper

To learn more about Libra’s roadmap, regulatory history, team and participating organizations, the Libra Coin, launch, consensus and emission, underlying technology and governance, read our full Libra profile page.
— Citește pe messari.io/article/libra-2-0-explained-in-5-minutes

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MyEtherWallet to Offer ‘.Crypto’ Blockchain Domains to 1 Million Users

Unlike with traditional domain registration, custody of the domain is tied to the specific wallet and is not controlled by any centralized entity.

The .crypto domain is based on Unstoppable Domains’ smart contracts on Ethereum, which are responsible for assigning the domains and looking up the addresses.

It is separate from the Ethereum Name Service (ENS), which assigns .eth domains, but the functionality is similar. Unstoppable Domains can tie the .crypto domain to an Ethereum wallet, making it possible to send money to human-readable addresses.

Building an uncensorable web

The company is also pushing the .crypto domain as an uncensorable alternative to existing web addresses.

Since it falls outside of the traditional domain name infrastructure, normal browsers cannot open .crypto websites. As reported by Cointelegraph in March, the Opera browser entered into a partnership with Unstoppable Domains to accept blockchain-based domains. 

Opera nevertheless only holds 2.2% of the global market share. For Chrome users, Unstoppable Domains released a browser extension.

The company stresses that blockchain domains are not going to make the web uncensorable by themselves, but they help users bypass restrictions when publishing content.
— Citește pe cointelegraph.com/news/myetherwallet-to-offer-crypto-blockchain-domains-to-1-million-users