Twitter is Just Randomly Deleting People's Lists -- and No One Knows Why (theregister.co.uk) 115
Twitter has silently, and without warning, deleted reams of lists users have spent months curating. These lists are used by journalists, activists, and loads of other people, to organize and manage twits they follow and aggregate their tweets, links, photos, and videos, reports The Register. From the article: They are, in a way, personalized RSS feeds of information from the Twitter firehose. For the past several days, though, lists have been disappearing from folks' profiles with no notification, and no explanation from Twitter thus far. Some private, or locked, lists have been made public. Among those impacted by the cockup is Australian freelance journalist and Cryptoparty founder Asher Wolf, who said the issue appears to be tied those who use the mobile Twitter App. Switching to different platforms doesn't help, however.
They're just giving people a helping hand... (Score:3, Insightful)
... to move over to Gab. They've seen the writing on the wall.
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This is a side effect of a digital cultural culling taking place right now on mainstream social media. If you take your fingers out of your ears, open your eyes, and fire off a few brain cells of critical thought you will see what is actually happening.
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So what exactly is happening? What is a "digital culture culling?"
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Integer? International? The Intergovernmental Treaty TLD? The World Fuel Services Corporation? The Institue for Nuclear Theory? Intermittant Needle Therapy? Intelligence? We could use more of that...
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If I interpret this correctly, the poster was suggesting that a cartel of internet companies has achieved sufficient control over the social media platforms, search, hosting, DDOS-protection, and DNS services to be able to censor American political discourse. Although one could start an alternative site overseas, anyone excluded from a handful of American services and sites is effectively silenced, because the potential audiences have concentrated around the American businesses. Sure, you could start a sit
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I don't believe anything like that is happening. That's some seriously paranoid conspiracy theory crap.
Re: They're just giving people a helping hand... (Score:2)
Naw, broham. How is it a conspiracy when it's happening right out in the open?
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Everything that happens at Twitter is part of a global conspiracy theory now. A bizarre mix of Jews, feminists, SJWs, Clintons and other Illuminati have taken over and started secretly waging a war against innocent trolls^W conservatives like poor Milo and totally-rational-definitely-reads-the-whole-article skeptics like Sargon.
Those poor martyrs will, sadly, never be forgotten.
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Are you sure you belong here at Slashdot? I honestly thought I was the only sane one left.
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These days I mostly come here to check out the latest batshit conspiracy theories.
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You know, batshit makes an excellent fertilizer and is an important component in explosives. The stuff we find here is more like rat shit. It's useless and just knowing some is in your vicinity makes you feel dirty.
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Sometimes I try to remember if Slashdot has always been this way, but it's been so long...
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It was a really great place up through the mid-2000s. I mean, there were always some pretty serious trolls here but things didn't really start to go downhill until they sold the place and the new owners hired that right wing blow hard as an editor, can't remember his name.
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In a 49-page document marked PRIVATE & CONFIDENTIAL, the entire anti-Trump plan is laid out. Called âoeDEMOCRACY MATTERS, Strategic Plan For Actionâ, it lists four leftist partner organizations: Media Matters, American Bridge 21st Century, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), and Shareblue.
These are some of the most well-funded, well-entrenched, and well known leftist organizations in America. Billionaire George Soros is a key backer.
https://mediaequalizer.com/jeff
Re:They're just giving people a helping hand... (Score:5, Insightful)
Say what you want, but the so-called "conservative" or "right wing" discussion forums tend to be the most open places where real, unfettered discussion can be held.
It's the left-leaning discussion forums, like Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Hacker News and Stack Overflow that, in my opinion, are the least open and least conductive to anything resembling real discussion.
Despite being called "conservative", people on the right tend to value free expression for all, even when it involves ideas that they don't agree with. They find the concepts of censorship, content moderation and banning people to be abhorrent concepts, and won't even subject their opponents to such things.
Meanwhile, it's the so-called "tolerant" leftists that engage in censorship, whether it's overt censorship through the deletion of content and banning of users/customers, or whether it's causing indirect self-censorship through threats of harm to the reputations or bodies of anyone they disagree with.
It isn't right wingers who want to limit what people can express thanks to "political correctness". It isn't right wingers who want to block content they dislike. It isn't right wingers who want to ban users who they disagree with. It's leftists who engage in such behavior.
The political right promotes free and open discussion of all ideas. The political left tries to shut down all expression that doesn't conform to their very narrow world view and narrative.
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Why are you listing centrist sites and calling them left wing? Also, I've never seen a single right wing site that values open discussion. Say something left wing on a right wing site and you will be viciously attacked, and then banned.
The political right silences dissent, lies, and attacks. They only value free speech when it is their own. They certainly don't want women and minorities speaking their minds. And they are such thin skinned children, they want to be able to speak without any consequences. The
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Amazing spun response. Half projection half proving the argument you set yourself against.
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Sure thing AC, whatever you say, without proof or explanation. LOL.
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No, I really don't need to ask that.
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No, the center is late stage capitalism, which is somewhat similar to the state capitalism practiced by the Soviet Union, just with ownership concentrated in even fewer hands. I don't know why I'm bothering though, it's obvious you don't know the first thing about political theory or economics.
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Well, to be honest those sites are fiscally conservative but somewhat socially liberal. Not everything to the left of fascim is communism, comrade.
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Now THIS is how you troll. Wonderful job.
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What a lovely world you've painted for yourself. Imaginations are wonderful things.
Parents Television Council (Score:1)
Despite being called "conservative", people on the right tend to value free expression for all, even when it involves ideas that they don't agree with. They find the concepts of censorship, content moderation and banning people to be abhorrent concepts, and won't even subject their opponents to such things.
Let me see if I understand what you wrote: Is Parents Television Council [parentstv.org] a "conservative" organization? If so, how does a mission "to protect children and families from graphic sex, violence and profanity in the media, because of their proven long-term harmful effects" mesh with "free expression"?
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Everyone is fucking crazy...
For years it's been...
Show me his birth certificate, he is taking away all the guns and well shit I'm not going to go into all the republican crazy non-sense.
Now the left lost their power position and went just as fucking ape shit.
The right goes... what's wrong with those guys... we never did that!
YOU ARE ALL FUCKING INSANE.
Re:They're just giving people a helping hand... (Score:4, Interesting)
Gab is not an open discussion forum. It actively bans left leaning accounts. It even blocks them from its Twitter feed. Like PewTube, it's building a right-wing echo chamber by censoring dissenting opinions.
This is all a matter of public record, you can verify it yourself and don't have to take my word for it.
These supposedly free-speech loving sites, set up specifically to be permissive, always seem to quickly end up banning anything they don't like on some flimsy excuse.
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Makes claims, shows no evidence. After boolean, and random searching on google, bing, and DDG I can't find any proof that they've banned anyone. Hell that's counter to their own mission statement -- that uses should be proactive in blocking things they don't like. On top of that that the only thing I can find about anything being banned has to do with Gab.ai being forced by their registar(.ai), into deleting someone's dank post because the registar didn't like it. [oneangrygamer.net]
With the registrar violating their own To
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This is all a matter of public record, you can verify it yourself and don't have to take my word for it.
So you shouldn't have any issues in providing a source for your claim.
No, the "Educate yourself" schtick doesn't fly. Never has. You make a claim, you dig up the citation. Otherwise, your statement is baseless and most likely wrong.
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Two seconds with Google: https://twitter.com/ticki_/sta... [twitter.com]
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Neither the hard left nor the hard right like people disagreeing with them.
but I've noticed while the hard right is more likely to call me an asshole for it, the hard left will simply ban you.
Hell, I have an ex friend who cut me off because I wasn't properly incensed about Charlottesville. My facebook posts weren't angry enough. In her words. She couldn't be friends with someone who wasn't publically angry enough about it. She broke down crying , in fact.
You're right about the echo chamber.
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Say what you want, but the so-called "conservative" or "right wing" discussion forums tend to be the most open places where real, unfettered discussion can be held.
[citation needed]
It's the left-leaning discussion forums, like Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Hacker News and Stack Overflow that, in my opinion, are the least open and least conductive to anything resembling real discussion.
But you're an anonymous coward. There is no "you", and therefore, no one gives a fuck about "your" opinion.
Despite being called "conservative", people on the right tend to value free expression for all, even when it involves ideas that they don't agree with.
That is complete, utter, total, and every other kind of bullshit. The conservative wing is powered by the religious reich, which absolutely opposes free expression.
Meanwhile, it's the so-called "tolerant" leftists that engage in censorship, whether it's overt censorship through the deletion of content and banning of users/customers, or whether it's causing indirect self-censorship through threats of harm to the reputations or bodies of anyone they disagree with.
You either haven't read up much on the Nazis, or you think they were grand.
Re:They're just giving people a helping hand... (Score:4, Informative)
[citation needed]
Why don't you try posting something like "illegal immigrants are a pain in the ass" on /r/politics. I'll wait for your ban, you could post say "not all illegal immigrants are a pain in the ass" on T_D, people would even tell you to defend your pov. Besides, that, you been paying to the absolute bullshit going on in FOSS communities? Where people have started witch hunting code contributors because they have sexual life styles that the new leftist moral majority don't like. Enjoy the shit show [medium.com]
But you're an anonymous coward. There is no "you", and therefore, no one gives a fuck about "your" opinion.
But you sure got up in arms over it.
That is complete, utter, total, and every other kind of bullshit. The conservative wing is powered by the religious reich, which absolutely opposes free expression.
The religious hold on conservative has been dead around 20-28 years at this point. You might have missed it if you were living in a social bubble, where they kept telling you that though. It was roughly that wingnuts were trying to blow up abortion clinics, and people simply had enough.
You either haven't read up much on the Nazis, or you think they were grand.
So let's look at all that fascist stuff the left is going down with: Free speech walls, making claims that "bad speech is hate speech" with the demands that anything contrary to their opinion must be silenced. Doxing, going after employees of companies(there's even a giant tumblr blog you can find that they still refuse to take down). There was the apparent case of witch hunting on a game developer [reddit.com] the other day by leftists(they class themselves as SJW's just a FYI) for holding opinions they didn't like.
Oh and remember the limerick from Pillars of Eternity they didn't like? [wccftech.com] And got so upset that they started attacking the developers so it got changed...or how about the time when they went after one of the artists for Divinity: Original Sin. [blogjob.com]
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This time it would appear to be a genuine SNAFU with their servers. But it may also be a social experiment to see how the population reacts when their mailing lists are disrupted.
Like the way LinkedIn experiments with people by inserting fake messages into their personal communications or "recommended articles".
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The profile had not been updated since her passing, and when I replied to her message "from beyond the grave" I didn't get an answer.
So yes, I can backup your claim of them sending fake messages.
Yo Grark
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When I'm in discussions with friends I used to work with in person and now talk to occasionally via Linkedin, on occasions they would suddenly talk as if they were possesed and say things they would never normally say. Things like "why don't you give up working in software etc... "?
Sometimes I've seen comments that only appear on my smartphone and not my desktop. I've seen this happen on forums as well.
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they alter the deal (Score:2)
We toldja so (Score:1)
"Pfffft, us big webbies ain't need no stinkin' ACID." [wikipedia.org]
Twits is the perfect name for them (Score:2, Funny)
twit (n) - One who bites their own fart bubbles in the bathtub.
Re:Twits is the perfect name for them (Score:4, Funny)
Still room for debate: Twitter users: Twits or twats?
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I'd say one is feminine and one is masculine but I don't want to microaggress anyone.
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This is why I stick to whapping people I know on whatsapp: there's no question of what the correct term to call it is.
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whapping
Is that akin to fapping?
And nothing of value was lost. (Score:3, Funny)
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I've said from the beginning that if you have something to say that can be said in 140 characters, you have nothing to say.
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From the linked article:
Wolf added that in her case, the deleted lists represented thousands of hours worth of work and were a critical professional tool. "I have three locked lists that I scan for journalism, infosec and Middle East news. Those lists are gone," she tweeted. "My three biggest lists just disappeared. Decade of work. Other ppl also reporting lists disappearing."
This is a valid use case, although I'm skeptical about the "thousands of hours" figure unless the lady is a total retard.
Re:And nothing of value was lost. (Score:4, Insightful)
Where were their backups? They *did* keep backups, right? Or did they just trust a third party to not have an incident such as this?
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That's the magical thinking of the cloud. Free, always up, never lose a byte of data.
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So you have something you put thousands of hours of work into, and you have no form of backup under your control? You're an idiot, lady.
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Valid case of what? Of someone relying on a free service ("If you're not paying for the service, you're not the customer, you're the product.") to act like a professional service (and you now, keep backups and shit) because they're clueless? Yeah, it's that.
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Valid case of what?
It's a valid use case of twitter lists. She's using it to monitor various topics that are relevant to her work.
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If it matters, and you don't keep backups, you are an idiot. If it matters, and your only copy is on a free service like Twitter, you are an even bigger idiot, and deserve whatever misery you get, and more.
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I did a quick search and while I found ways to export Twitter lists to csv, I didn't find a way to restore them. That's the thing with those online tools, you don't control everything.
You can decide not to use a product that you can't backup/restore, but then you're in the same situation as someone using it without a backup, except for the fact that the person who uses it enjoys it while you don't.
They continue to un follow people for you too. (Score:2)
I basically don't log in anymore and NEVER on mobile*, yet I logged in recently and several people I would never ever consider not following, I was no longer following.
Furthermore, those people are still following me, so they didn't do the "block, then unblock" trick to stop me following them.
This has been going on for years. Very frustrating.
* (on the mobile web version, or app, it can be easy tho accidentally hit the unfollow button.
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The Twitter AI isn't rebelling, it's going insane from inconsistent input [youtube.com].
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The simplest explanation is that the twitter 'AI' is rebelling.
I disagree, on the basis that there's no kind of intelligence at work at twitter, artificial or otherwise.
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Finally, something we can agree on!
Reasons why ... (Score:1)
1. [Redacted]
Re:[Redacted] ... (Score:2)
[Redacted] will [Redacted]:
1. [Redacted]
Fixed that for [Redacted]
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Funny. My last post on Twitter was: "Title Tuesday: 'Redacted: The Novel'"
I can only assume I'm channeling your resistance to Twitter into tweets.
I have news for you (Score:2)
We call it "a bug".
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a wild guess: hash table collisions (Score:1)
Those idiots at Twitter are in love with key-value storage solutions. What is probably happening is a new set of tools that generate unique keys to store some type of data is probably colliding with existing tools that generate keys for the list feature. But because the architecture is designed to be fault tolerant in the event of a missing key, or a returned key value that doesn't make sense in the "list" context, the results get thrown out and the system pretends that there is no data there.
When will people get the message? (Score:2)
Do not use proprietary services for anything mission critical without a total backup and fallback in place.
Better yet:
Do not use prorietary services. Period.
It's not that difficult, is it?
Besides, I really don't get Twitter at all. Besides the marginal case of continuos mindshare within smaller distributed teams working on one larger problem/product. A purpose it orignially was designed for. I remember when Twitter just came out. I looked into it for about 3 minutes, thought to myself "Who needs this?" and
They ran out of disk space (Score:2)
... and No One Knows Why (Score:2)
Are they sure no one knows? That would mean it's a bug.
If this is instead Twitter intentionally purging lists for some reason, then someone knows why, they just aren't saying. That's a really different thing.