You’re a typical X user. You answer questions, give opinions and advice, get in arguments, encourage people you support, give condolences when people die, etc. Nothing is very remarkable about any of it. You’re not posting spam, or porn, or scams, not posting excessive profanity, not threatening other users, not posting racial hatred.
I came to the same conclusion several months ago - X are not aware of the censorship going on, or are unable to correct it. It is either external malevolent sources or, as you say, the previous administration of X.
But you say the censorship normally lasts a week or so ? Mine has been permanent for a year.
Posts that used to get dozens (sometimes hundreds) of responses now get one or two at best, sometimes zero. Often they don't even appear in my own timeline.
I recently had two suspicious attempts to log in to my account.
The locations were - Norton Shores MI. and Meridian MS. (I'm in England.)
Both of these locations are close to 'Departments Of Homeland Security.'
Their Mission Statement says -
'Responsible for Cyber Security, disaster prevention.
To protect against threats from individuals who are non native to the USA.'
(I have been critical of the USA government and its various wars etc.)
Could the 'interference be coming from over zealous 'agents' blocking any critisism of the USA or people simply not swallowing the propaganda ?
I tried to share this information with 'Twitter Support' but got an auto message that they don't respond to their support email any more and I must go through the 'complaints' procedure.
But it proved impossible to complain about something that doesn't exist in their pre-written questions & answers.
When you say "posts", it sounds like you mean you're posting new threads, right? X is undoubtedly doing underhanded stuff about posts, but I only have a little bit of insight about their system that's focused on replies.
I totally agree that the "support" stuff is useless, at least for unverified users. People often write to the "Support" account, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone get an answer -- that account is just for making proclamations, not answering questions. Like you say, the pre-written questions don't apply.
The "complaints" procedure could be interesting for paying customers. In my opinion, some users could make a strong case that they're being defrauded. Remember, what's happening is that users are paying to be able to take part in an online forum, and then someone somewhere is using some secret mechanism to cause X to secretly throw all that user's posts in a trash can, but the system is working hard to prevent the user from realizing that they're being persecuted. I mean, perhaps it says that X can do this in the EULA, but to most people, this is still fraud.
Lots of good reasons to be skeptical of X in general. I'm a fan of the fediverse but there are other decentralized alternatives. Ultimately the answer lies in people proactively choosing to stop getting their information from controlled platforms and moving to open protocols.
I totally agree. Centralization is one of our main enemies. We used to have thousands of independently-administered systems, and we can and should go back to that. I favor something even simpler than any federation system, just a large number of modern HTTP-based BBSes, basically.
But I see two reasons to pursue this thing anyway, at least for the moment. The first is that if we can get at least a few months of X uninhibited by a secret censorship system, it could matter for the upcoming US election, which seems likely to be the most consequential one in a long time. The second reason is that Elon himself is still something of a mystery, and if we can see that something is wrong, and then, with a lot of effort, get through to him and see improvement on that thing, this would help us understand his real role in the world.
I suspect my account is censored too. I went from a steady increase in followers and post interactions, mostly blocks, to zero increase in followers and no interaction to my posts? And it doesn't get reset at intervals, it's like it's permanent?
I'm pretty sure there are simply topics that can't be challenged or refuted, usually the ones being pushed by left politics?
Social media and tech platforms have outflanked our ability to create rules and regulations preventing this kind of censorship, manipulation, banning, blocking, and suppressing of information someone in charge decides to go after. Imagine if the phone company wouldn't allow your phone to connect to someone IT didn't think you should be talking to! We need to stop the press and create rules and regulations designed to protect us from this savagery. And special courts to which offenders can be taken expeditiously. As long as the Democrats don't get to run those courts.
Personally I see the core problem as centralization. On the old internet, there were many thousands of totally independently administrated sites. Currently, all human interests are supposed to fit into maybe 10 apps, all of which are run by gigantic companies. We can and should go back to the old way.
But for the immediate future, if we provisionally believe that Musk actually believes in freedom of expression, it seems plausible that he simply does not know that X is currently written to do this kind of persecution even to paying customers. If we push hard, I think it's probably possible to get his attention about it. Whatever happens as a result of that would at least be interesting.
I don't know of any way to check on your account's censorship mode without a second account. Basically, you post something innocuous, and then use the second account to see where it ended up in the thread, i.e., the main section, "more replies", or "offensive content".
There's probably value in assessing comments as low-quality or offensive, but the system should indicate to you somehow what it decided (one idea for doing this is to put an icon in the corner of a post).
I think you're right about which subjects typically get punished, but it's speculation built on top of speculation, because I don't know exactly how anybody gets put in censorship mode. I think we have to focus hard on causing an investigation to be done internally, almost certainly at Elon Musk's behest.
I came to the same conclusion several months ago - X are not aware of the censorship going on, or are unable to correct it. It is either external malevolent sources or, as you say, the previous administration of X.
But you say the censorship normally lasts a week or so ? Mine has been permanent for a year.
Posts that used to get dozens (sometimes hundreds) of responses now get one or two at best, sometimes zero. Often they don't even appear in my own timeline.
I recently had two suspicious attempts to log in to my account.
The locations were - Norton Shores MI. and Meridian MS. (I'm in England.)
Both of these locations are close to 'Departments Of Homeland Security.'
Their Mission Statement says -
'Responsible for Cyber Security, disaster prevention.
To protect against threats from individuals who are non native to the USA.'
(I have been critical of the USA government and its various wars etc.)
Could the 'interference be coming from over zealous 'agents' blocking any critisism of the USA or people simply not swallowing the propaganda ?
I tried to share this information with 'Twitter Support' but got an auto message that they don't respond to their support email any more and I must go through the 'complaints' procedure.
But it proved impossible to complain about something that doesn't exist in their pre-written questions & answers.
Good luck with your battle.
When you say "posts", it sounds like you mean you're posting new threads, right? X is undoubtedly doing underhanded stuff about posts, but I only have a little bit of insight about their system that's focused on replies.
I totally agree that the "support" stuff is useless, at least for unverified users. People often write to the "Support" account, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone get an answer -- that account is just for making proclamations, not answering questions. Like you say, the pre-written questions don't apply.
The "complaints" procedure could be interesting for paying customers. In my opinion, some users could make a strong case that they're being defrauded. Remember, what's happening is that users are paying to be able to take part in an online forum, and then someone somewhere is using some secret mechanism to cause X to secretly throw all that user's posts in a trash can, but the system is working hard to prevent the user from realizing that they're being persecuted. I mean, perhaps it says that X can do this in the EULA, but to most people, this is still fraud.
Lots of good reasons to be skeptical of X in general. I'm a fan of the fediverse but there are other decentralized alternatives. Ultimately the answer lies in people proactively choosing to stop getting their information from controlled platforms and moving to open protocols.
https://libresolutionsnetwork.substack.com/p/social-media
I totally agree. Centralization is one of our main enemies. We used to have thousands of independently-administered systems, and we can and should go back to that. I favor something even simpler than any federation system, just a large number of modern HTTP-based BBSes, basically.
But I see two reasons to pursue this thing anyway, at least for the moment. The first is that if we can get at least a few months of X uninhibited by a secret censorship system, it could matter for the upcoming US election, which seems likely to be the most consequential one in a long time. The second reason is that Elon himself is still something of a mystery, and if we can see that something is wrong, and then, with a lot of effort, get through to him and see improvement on that thing, this would help us understand his real role in the world.
I suspect my account is censored too. I went from a steady increase in followers and post interactions, mostly blocks, to zero increase in followers and no interaction to my posts? And it doesn't get reset at intervals, it's like it's permanent?
I'm pretty sure there are simply topics that can't be challenged or refuted, usually the ones being pushed by left politics?
Social media and tech platforms have outflanked our ability to create rules and regulations preventing this kind of censorship, manipulation, banning, blocking, and suppressing of information someone in charge decides to go after. Imagine if the phone company wouldn't allow your phone to connect to someone IT didn't think you should be talking to! We need to stop the press and create rules and regulations designed to protect us from this savagery. And special courts to which offenders can be taken expeditiously. As long as the Democrats don't get to run those courts.
Personally I see the core problem as centralization. On the old internet, there were many thousands of totally independently administrated sites. Currently, all human interests are supposed to fit into maybe 10 apps, all of which are run by gigantic companies. We can and should go back to the old way.
But for the immediate future, if we provisionally believe that Musk actually believes in freedom of expression, it seems plausible that he simply does not know that X is currently written to do this kind of persecution even to paying customers. If we push hard, I think it's probably possible to get his attention about it. Whatever happens as a result of that would at least be interesting.
I don't know of any way to check on your account's censorship mode without a second account. Basically, you post something innocuous, and then use the second account to see where it ended up in the thread, i.e., the main section, "more replies", or "offensive content".
There's probably value in assessing comments as low-quality or offensive, but the system should indicate to you somehow what it decided (one idea for doing this is to put an icon in the corner of a post).
I think you're right about which subjects typically get punished, but it's speculation built on top of speculation, because I don't know exactly how anybody gets put in censorship mode. I think we have to focus hard on causing an investigation to be done internally, almost certainly at Elon Musk's behest.