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Draft:Online semi-censorship

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Online semi-censorship is Internet censorship carried out largely or entirely by non-governmental entities that does not remove or censor content, but only substantially limits or eliminates their reach.

Methods

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Deboosting

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This practice refers to hiding or demoting content to reduce its visibility. For example, a reply can be moved closer to the end of the replies section, which may be hidden behind a collapsible panel that requires a user to press a "show more" button instead of the usual infinite scrolling. This may also include blocking content from a platform's notification system. Theoretically such visibility restrictions can also be personalised towards specific audiences to hide an item from certain cohorts, IPs, or demographics but not from others.[1] Various techniques can be deployed to deboost specific posts or a specific user's posts such as involving delays.[2]

On Twitter, users only see a small note "Message failed to send" when they cannot contact a user for unspecified reasons.

Targeted drowning out of content

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Direct censorship can be supplemented or supplanted by private "troll armies" or bands of individuals and/or robots programmed to drown out disfavoured speech.[3] Unfair amplification of posts from select demographics, groups or individuals may also drown out other contents.

Removal of posts relating to specific subjects or claims

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For example, in the early 2020s, many online platforms such as Facebook censored or suppressed posts and information relating to the COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis which at no point has been scientifically refuted. This was later undone and caused substantial controversy.[4][5][6]

Research

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See also: Policy studies and Misinformation § Countermeasures

A 2018 study found there to be growing calls to regulate companies of major online platforms and to make them more accountable, outlining an interdisciplinary research agenda for platform governance.[7] The algorithmic accountability relates to both intrinsic opacity in computational processes and the lack of transparency in platform governance.[8] According to a 2023 book, the news and public information which citizens perceive "is no longer solely determined by journalists, but increasingly by algorithms", which "affect exposure to diverse information and misinformation and shape the behavior of professional communicators".[9] Key recommendations of an OSCE report includes "Make certain that robust remedy mechanisms against censorship and surveillance power are in place, including through human review and independent appeal mechanisms".[10] Many reports assume suppressed posts are largely constituted of misinformation or similar malicious contents. Research may also investigate alternative approaches to some of the more accepted rationales for semi-censorship, such as computer-assisted classification of, for example, misinformation-containing claims to enable large-scale correction – via approaches like Twitter Community Notes or replies beneath them – without outright hiding or removing the posts.[11][12] Semi-censorship was also found to be present in the scientific literature itself, where ideas that "challenge current scientific or publishing paradigms" are sometimes suppressed.[13]

By platform

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Twitter

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This section is an excerpt from Censorship of Twitter § Semi-censorship.[edit]
Posts are often hidden underneath "Show more replies". The semi-censorship can occur without the respective tweet violating any policy and without the user being given any explanation.
The content that is displayed instead of the hidden tweets. In many cases, tweets that do not contain any offensive language or e.g. inconvenient truths that offend some users are also hidden underneath this message.

Twitter's policies have been described as subject to manipulation by users who may coordinate to flag politically controversial tweets as allegedly violating the platform's policies, resulting in deplatforming of controversial users or users who made tweets they object to.[14] The platform has long been criticized for its failure to provide details of underlying alleged policy violations to the subjects of Twitter suspensions and bans.[15]

In 2018, the platform introduced hiding tweets from certain accounts in conversations and search results under "Show more replies". When Twitter's software decides that a certain user is "detract[ing] from the conversation", that user's tweets will be hidden from search results and public conversations until an unspecified change occurs, with the user not being made aware that they're being semi-censored in this way or why.[16] Studies have called the hiding 'reply deboosting' and found that 6.2% of the 41,092 existing accounts in their dataset had been shadow banned at least once during the study period.[17][18] As of 2023, there is no place to report unwarranted hiding of tweets, nor are there any measures to ensure hiding is not arbitrary or for questionable purposes such as commercial interests. Through these and other features, platforms like Twitter conduct an intransparent 'management of visibilities' that steers and nudges audiences in more or less subtle ways.[18]

For several years, many social media users have expressed concerns about algorithmic suppression.[19] A number of those users may have collected specific tweets that have been hidden. Nevertheless, according to a 2022 news report, "[s]ocial-media companies deny quietly suppressing content". A study crawled more than 2.5 million Twitter profiles and found that nearly one in 40 had their tweets hidden.[20][21] Tweets hidden this way do not show up in the notifications of the person replied to and most people browsing a Twitter thread may not click the button to see additional replies. A study about practices of 'silencing' users on social media suggests that that algorithms play a critical role in steering online attention on social media has implications for algorithmic accountability.[22] In 2022, it was reported that Musk didn't clarify what metrics Twitter might use to determine if a tweet may be "wrong and bad" or "destructive to the world".[23] He clarified "Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom of reach", which may underline how he and the platform can continue to hide or deboost any content for any unspecified reasons.[24]

Incidents

In 2018, Twitter rolled out a "quality filter" that hid content and users deemed "low quality" from search results and limited their visibility, leading to accusations of shadow banning. After conservatives claimed it censors users from the political right, Alex Thompson, a writer for VICE, confirmed that many prominent Republican politicians had been "shadow banned" by the filter.[25] Twitter later acknowledged the problem, stating that the filter had a software bug that would be fixed in the near future.[25]

In October 2020, Twitter prevented users from tweeting about a New York Post article about the Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory, relating to emails about Hunter Biden allegedly introducing a Ukrainian businessman to his father, Joe Biden.[26] Senators Marsha Blackburn and Ted Cruz described the blocking of the New York Post on Twitter as "election interference".[27] The New York Times reported in September 2021 that a Federal Election Commission inquiry into a complaint about the matter found Twitter had acted with a valid commercial reason, rather than a political purpose. The FEC inquiry also found that allegations Twitter had violated election laws by allegedly shadow banning Republicans and other means were "vague, speculative and unsupported by the available information."[28]

In 2023, under Elon Musk's ownership, posts containing the keyword "Substack" were temporarily restricted, and liking, sharing and searching for such tweets were prevented.[29] Matt Taibbi, a Twitter Files author, was also temporarily shadowbanned.[30]

Reddit

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Reddit deploys a decentralized approach to content moderation, combining its algorithmic spam-filter with moderators who can approve or remove any post as well as ban any user from their site – or "subreddit" – for any reason,[31][32] albeit users can send a message to the moderators asking for an explanation which they may sometimes receive.[33] Like on Twitter, a standardized process to appeal against content removal is lacking.[34] This means that large subreddits, often with no notable alternative, can also approve or remove posts, make narrow subreddit rules, or ban users based on their personal political views, commercial interests, or for any other undisclosed reason. A study found the "moderation brings with it the inevitable questions of notice and proportionality of sanction, not to mention the question of who adjudicates".[35]

TikTok

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Instagram

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Facebook

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ Leerssen, Paddy (1 April 2023). "An end to shadow banning? Transparency rights in the Digital Services Act between content moderation and curation". Computer Law & Security Review. 48: 105790. doi:10.1016/j.clsr.2023.105790. ISSN 0267-3649.
  2. ^ Rosen, Jeffrey (12 September 2018). "America Is Living James Madison's Nightmare". The Atlantic. Retrieved 19 September 2023. But these and other solutions could have First Amendment implications. "The democratic character of the internet is itself posing a threat to democracy, and there's no clear solution to the problem," Persily told me. "Censorship, delay, demotion of information online, deterrence, and dilution of bad content—all pose classic free-speech problems, and everyone should be concerned at every step of the government regulatory parade."
  3. ^ "Paradigm Shifts in ICT Ethics Proceedings of the ETHICOMP 2020" (PDF). Retrieved 19 September 2023.
  4. ^ Stephens, Bret (31 May 2021). "Opinion | Media Groupthink and the Lab-Leak Theory". The New York Times. Retrieved 19 September 2023.
  5. ^ Hern, Alex (27 May 2021). "Facebook lifts ban on posts claiming Covid-19 was man-made". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 September 2023.
  6. ^ Lima, Cristiano (27 February 2023). "Analysis | New report on covid-19 origin puts social media in GOP's crosshairs". Washington Post. Retrieved 19 September 2023.
  7. ^ Gorwa, Robert (12 May 2019). "What is platform governance?". Information, Communication & Society. 22 (6): 854–871. doi:10.1080/1369118X.2019.1573914. ISSN 1369-118X.
  8. ^ Kim, Kitae; Moon, Shin-Il (May 2021). "When Algorithmic Transparency Failed: Controversies Over Algorithm-Driven Content Curation in the South Korean Digital Environment". American Behavioral Scientist. 65 (6): 847–862. doi:10.1177/0002764221989783. ISSN 0002-7642.
  9. ^ Dalen, Arjen van. Algorithmic Gatekeeping for Professional Communicators: Power, Trust, and Legitimacy. ISBN 9781003375258.
  10. ^ "Spotlight on artificial intelligence and freedom of expression – A Policy Manual" (PDF). Retrieved 19 September 2023.
  11. ^ Coan, Travis G.; Boussalis, Constantine; Cook, John; Nanko, Mirjam O. (16 November 2021). "Computer-assisted classification of contrarian claims about climate change". Scientific Reports. 11 (1): 22320. doi:10.1038/s41598-021-01714-4. ISSN 2045-2322.
  12. ^ Zhu, Wanzheng; Bhat, Suma. "Generate, Prune, Select: A Pipeline for Counterspeech Generation against Online Hate Speech".
  13. ^ Shaw, David M.; Penders, Bart (1 September 2018). "Gatekeepers of Reward: a Pilot Study on the Ethics of Editing and Competing Evaluations of Value". Journal of Academic Ethics. 16 (3): 211–223. doi:10.1007/s10805-018-9305-6. ISSN 1572-8544.
  14. ^ Holt, Kris (June 12, 2012). "Dirty digital politics: How users manipulate Twitter to silence foes". The Daily Dot. Archived from the original on December 12, 2018.
  15. ^ Ohlheiser, Abby (July 22, 2016). "Here's what it takes to get banned from Twitter". Hamilton Spectator. Archived from the original on November 7, 2017.
  16. ^ Oremus, Will (May 15, 2018). "Twitter Will Start Hiding Tweets That "Detract From the Conversation"". Slate. Retrieved September 19, 2023.
  17. ^ Jaidka, Kokil; Mukerjee, Subhayan; Lelkes, Yphtach. "An audit of Twitter's shadowban sanctions in the United States". Retrieved September 19, 2023.
  18. ^ a b Leerssen, Paddy (April 1, 2023). "An end to shadow banning? Transparency rights in the Digital Services Act between content moderation and curation". Computer Law & Security Review. 48: 105790. doi:10.1016/j.clsr.2023.105790. ISSN 0267-3649.
  19. ^ Tiffany, Kaitlyn (January 17, 2023). "Elon Musk Can't Solve Twitter's 'Shadowbanning' Problem". The Atlantic. Retrieved September 19, 2023.
  20. ^ Nicholas, Gabriel (April 28, 2022). "Shadowbanning Is Big Tech's Big Problem". The Atlantic. Retrieved September 19, 2023.
  21. ^ Le Merrer, Erwan; Morgan, Benoit; Trédan, Gilles (2020). "Setting the Record Straighter on Shadow Banning". arXiv:2012.05101 [cs.SI].
  22. ^ Jaidka, Kokil; Mukerjee, Subhayan; Lelkes, Yphtach (April 1, 2023). "Silenced on social media: the gatekeeping functions of shadowbans in the American Twitterverse". Journal of Communication. 73 (2): 163–178. doi:10.1093/joc/jqac050.
  23. ^ Fung, Brian; Duffy, Clare (May 10, 2022). "Elon Musk says he would reverse Twitter's Trump ban | CNN Business". CNN. Retrieved September 19, 2023.
  24. ^ Francesco, Lomonaco. "Raising Teenagers' Awareness of Social Media Threats: A Theoretical and Empirical Study". boa.unimib.it.
  25. ^ a b Thompson, Alex (July 26, 2018). "Twitter appears to have fixed search problems that lowered visibility of GOP lawmakers". VICE News. Archived from the original on August 2, 2018. Retrieved August 6, 2018.
  26. ^ Mihalcik, Carrie; Wong, Queenie (October 14, 2020). "Facebook, Twitter limit reach of New York Post article about Hunter Biden". CNET.
  27. ^ Isaac, Mike; Conger, Kate (October 22, 2020) [October 15, 2020]. "Twitter Changes Course After Republicans Claim 'Election Interference'". The New York Times. Retrieved January 9, 2021.
  28. ^ Goldmacher, Shane (September 13, 2021). "The F.E.C. dismisses claims that Twitter illegally blocked a Hunter Biden article". The New York Times.
  29. ^ "Twitter ends Substack newsletter censorship, for now". The Hindu. April 11, 2023. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved April 25, 2023.
  30. ^ "Twitter Files journalist Matt Taibbi 'shadow banned' by Elon Musk". April 11, 2023. Retrieved April 25, 2023.
  31. ^ Garofalo, Emma (16 January 2022). "What Does a Reddit Moderator Do?". MUO. Retrieved 20 September 2023.
  32. ^ Sottek, T. C. (15 October 2012). "Reddit user banned, then restored, as mods struggle with stories critical of the site". The Verge. Retrieved 20 September 2023. While Reddit's owners may argue that their policies are conducive to growth and freedom — after all, any of the 1.9 million r/technology readers are technically free to break off and start their own subreddit — it's evident that a small group of volunteer moderators are systematically suppressing users and stories, drawing further attention to their ability to censor open discussion on the site. When asked about the recent uptick in censorship, Reddit GM Erik Martin told us that "moderators are free to ban whoever they want for whatever reason. We don't treat big subreddits differently from small ones." Martin admitted that "it's not a perfect system, it's not a fluid market, but we have seen instances where moderators of a certain subreddit take a subtle policy and people start new subreddits or move to other ones."
  33. ^ "Moderating online content increases accountability, but can harm some platform users". University of Michigan News. 27 July 2022. Retrieved 20 September 2023.
  34. ^ Juneja, Prerna; Rama Subramanian, Deepika; Mitra, Tanushree (4 January 2020). "Through the Looking Glass: Study of Transparency in Reddit's Moderation Practices". Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction. 4: 17:1–17:35. doi:10.1145/3375197.
  35. ^ Koh, Steven (1 January 2022). ""Cancel Culture" and Criminal Justice". Hastings Law Journal. 74 (1): 79.
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