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Ask HN: Who’s manually flagging links in Twitter?

4 points by whb07 ↗ HN
Can anyone clue me in who exactly is flagging specific information to include filed court cases that support free and fair elections in the U.S?

Does anyone work or know someone who does this in Twitter? This isn’t all defined in code, but manually done.

It is getting so extreme that this is becoming dangerous, please see recent data regarding Democratic voters and their lack of information of critical news events.

6 comments

[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 28.4 ms ] thread
ratsmack
I believe that most of the manual moderation of both Facebook and Twitter is done through contractors.
nexuist
Do you have any examples? There is literally no way to identify what you are talking about or if the links are even being flagged for everyone (or if it’s just you, or a specific group, etc...)
whb07
I’ll take you to be an honest player:

https://twitter.com/pnjaban/status/1331850866442190850

Go ahead and let me know what you see following that url. They’ve begun flagging filed court cases brought on by voters in MI and GA.

nexuist
Warning: this link may be unsafe

https://defendingtherepublic.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/...

The link you are trying to access has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially spammy or unsafe, in accordance with Twitter’s URL Policy. This link could fall into any of the below categories:

    malicious links that could steal personal information or harm electronic devices
    spammy links that mislead people or disrupt their experience
    violent or misleading content that could lead to real-world harm
    certain categories of content that, if posted directly on Twitter, are a violation of the Twitter Rules
^

This is the prompt I see. I see a "back to previous page" button but also an "ignore this warning and continue" button. In addition to providing the ignore button, they also put the URL up front and center, so it's not like it's impossible to figure out how to get to it yourself.

I doubt they are flagging the lawsuit specifically. They are most likely flagging the URL https://defendingtherepublic.org, which is not filing lawsuits on behalf of voters, but rather on behalf of Sidney Powell (it literally says "Sidney Powell's Legal Defense Fund") who is Michael Flynn's attorney and a former member of President Trump's legal team [1]. This website is not an unbiased source of information and a lawyer has no incentive to present any information that would weaken their client's case.

Considering Twitter has decided that flagging the President's own tweets is acceptable policy, it is not surprising at all that the same thing is happening to his surrogates.

[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/22/trump-campaign-sidn...

sergiotapia
Their approved committees. It's a manual process and they bring with it biases and all, which is why I think we need to move away to totally open platforms and let individuals define what they want to see.
whb07
The worst part of all this, is that the people attempting to control this information and suppress what they don’t like for now don’t see how it will turn around on them.

But by that time it will be too late to raise the alarm.