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Miguel de Icaza shadowbanned from X for posting about Gaza

twitter.com

103 points by cornercasechase 2 years ago · 44 comments

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TheAceOfHearts 2 years ago

I saw this earlier today, it was really weird. A pg post showed up in my timeline, so I opened his reply and it said the post to which pg was replying was unavailable [0]. Then I went back and copied the name of the person to which pg replied, and opened his page in order to see both posts [1].

Not really sure about the details, but the lack of transparency around issues of this nature is what bothers me the most. At some point Elon claimed he would be more transparent about accounts receiving limited reach and other such deboosting, but so far it appears to remain pretty opaque.

[0] https://i.imgur.com/mBiBU8W.png

[1] https://i.imgur.com/2WQ7zFv.png

  • captn3m0 2 years ago

    Didn’t Twitter supposedly publish the algorithm to let users re-create their feed and notice if Twitter is doing something shady?

    • rsynnott 2 years ago

      No; I can see how one might get that impression from how they advertised that, but no, that's not what they did at all.

bluefishinit 2 years ago

So much for “free speech”. Ever since Musk met with Netanyahu, X has been heavily censoring pro-Palestine content.

  • za3faran 2 years ago

    We see accounts on twitter openly call for genocide on the Palestinians, to turn Gaza into a parking lot, posts comparing the Palestinians to rats (classic genocide 101, and sadly ironic given what happened in WWII germany), and utter dehumanization of Palestinians and Muslims in general, yet the accounts are not banned nor reprimanded.

    That meeting was extremely suspicious to say the least, and no doubt what we're seeing is a result of it.

    • quotz 2 years ago

      My opinion is that he got seriously blackmailed. Musk meets Netayahu 27 Nov, and on 12 December its announced that SpaceX loses appeal for 1B in funding from the FCC regarding Starlink. There's probably lots of variables for losing the appeal, but considering how far the isreali lobby goes I really wont be surprised that they had influence, considering he was making Starlink available in Gaza for free.

      And this is just the surface we can see, I wonder how far the rabbit hole goes, hes probably in the top 5 most famous people in the world, whatever he says online will reverberate far, hence the israeli top priority being to change his mind carrot or stick. In addition, he admitted to having a mild form of Aspergers, so I guess social pressure and persuasion definitely impacts him differently than neurotypical folks.

      • za3faran 2 years ago

        Exactly. God knows what happened behind closed doors. I hope the truth emerges one day.

        • francoispon 2 years ago

          since when we do politics on HN ? those discussions are not going to resolve anything, maybe we should stick to you talk about hacker news ?

          • quotz 2 years ago

            Theres all kinds of political articles on the front page coming up daily. From Russia and China, to Iran, to Republicans and Democrats, and Latin American politics. Whats been missing lately is Palestine. And thats mostly because they get flagged to oblivion because of the obvious overrepresentation of zionist voices on this platform and the tech community

          • hypeit 2 years ago

            Politics came to the tech community in the form of Israeli manipulation of tech platforms and militant, blacklisting Zionism from the VCs. Israel caused this.

        • quotz 2 years ago

          I doubt that the truth will come out

  • dzhiurgis 2 years ago

    How come he’s being called antisemite then.

    Or like being blamed for not supplying but also supplying starlink to Russian territory

    • bluefishinit 2 years ago

      Antisemitism and Zionism aren’t mutually exclusive. Zionism != Judaism.

    • candiodari 2 years ago

      It's really quite simple, he endorsed a post that blamed NON-Israeli Jews for being attacked outside of Israel due to Gaza.

      Specifically this one:

      https://twitter.com/breakingbaht/status/1724892505647296620

      This is racist, first because it's close to justifying violence against Jews, because of their religion, because of something a country did. Again, nobody would doubt "muslims deserve to be attacked because of what is happening in Sudan" is extremely racist. This is close to that.

      And let's please make one thing clear: physically attacking zionists, or justifying that, because of Gaza is also extremely racist.

      Secondly it's accusing "those hordes of minorities that support flooding their country" (ie. muslim immigrants) of being violent racists.

      What DOESN'T matter is whether either of these are true behaviors seen in those groups. You're a racist if you say that either attacking Jews because of Israel is valid (obviously) and you're a racist if you say that muslim immigrants (even veiled) are antisemitic as a group.

      Saying SPECIFIC Jews are going too far, or SPECIFIC muslim immigrants are a serious piece of racist asshole is not racist.

      • khokhol 2 years ago

        A post that blamed NON-Israeli Jews for being attacked outside of Israel due to Gaza.

        It was definitely a piece of obnoxious drivel, the post. But that's not what it said.

    • clipsy 2 years ago

      > Or like being blamed for not supplying but also supplying starlink to Russian territory

      Gosh, I wonder if there was some other difference that people were concerned about /s

bratsche 2 years ago

“Free speech absolutist”. What a joke.

senectus1 2 years ago

there is essentially no way to hold X accountable for this behavior. So, boycott it. just uninstall it and pretend it doesn't exist.

drivingmenuts 2 years ago

Freedom of Speech, but only if Elon feels like it today.

Despegar 2 years ago

I would guess this policy is the result of ADL, other pro-Israel lobbying groups, and Israel itself, pressuring social media groups as part of their hasbara operation. And perhaps Elon Musk is a Zionist himself (he's certainly friends with many VCs who are).

Miguel de Icaza is a random person to censor. I'm sure it's just a crude, automated policy that goes off the content of the tweet and his account having a large follower count.

quotz 2 years ago

Why is this flagged @dang?

quotz 2 years ago

Why is this flagged? @dang ?

kazinator 2 years ago

Staying on X and complaining about it is getting old.

BryanLegend 2 years ago

Browsing thru his feed, it does seem pretty negative.

Search probably just ranks in part by a sentiment analysis (positivity) score and there's probably a minimum cutoff.

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