It's a propaganda platform since Musk bought it.

Im saying this for ages and never joked.

Plenty of real situations happening like blocking certain people, stoping of fact checking, bot protection and detection etc.

There is a reason why Twitter needed more people before

It was a propaganda platform long before that. Before Musk bought it you could get banned for saying that men can't get pregnant.

I doubt you have any proof of that happening...

Suspended not banned. Also, in context the tweet was saying that the trans man was not a man and that was against the policy at the time. The pregnancy was just a detail there.

surely you realize that this is entertainment outlet is not a news organization, nor does this entertainment outlet have any obligation to report anything on a factual, truthful or verifiable basis? and that this entertainment outlet is famously bigoted?

Yeah I mean, if the only reason you said that was to "piss off the libs" and hate on transgender men, you really shouldn't be shocked that a platform doesn't want that. Being unable to say hateful things without consequence on social media isn't the same as it being a propaganda machine.

To those that feel the urge to flag this comment: please take a moment to think about whether it is actually breaking HN guidelines, or it just contains thoughts you disagree with.

important notes from the essay, this not unique to twitter:

> And if you think this only happens on one social network, you’re already caught in the wrong attention loop.

> The most effective influence doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t censor loudly, or boost aggressively. It shapes perception quietly — one algorithmic nudge at a time.

FWIW, I don't think the person you are responding to said it only happens on Twitter. Just that it happens on Twitter.

This definitely happens on other platforms as well but there is a key difference in noting that twitter is now privately owned by a single person who has shown themself to be insecure and prone to lashing publicly at critics.

I think twitter is uniquely concentrated in its influence by its owner and willingness to do things so blatantly, other platforms need to at least pretend to not steer things so directly as not to upset shareholders.

Yeah, artificial delays in content delivery is silently spreading. It's not just Twitter.

Edit: is this why 4chan was hit with the disruption - because there's no room for this delay mechanism?

No, 4chan was hacked because hideyuki has terrible security hygiene and didn't update shit. Same thing happened to 2channel a decade prior.

>It looks like Twitter is suppressing posts until they are spammed by hate bots and then making those posts visible.

>https://bsky.app/profile/willhaycardiff.bsky.social/post/3lk...

This could also very well be explained by a ranking algorithm that optimizes for "engagement". Getting spammed by hate bots = "engagement". This would be perfectly consistent with what the guy is experiencing, minus the accusation that the platform is suppressing anti-ukraine posts, which is totally unsubstantiated.

As I understanding the timing, the post was suppressed until the hate bots spammed it.

Given the post was suppressed, how did the hate bots know about it to spam it?

It seems to me Twitter suppressed the post until they had time to spam it with hate posts.

Bear in mind here also this suppression did not happen for other posts - only for the pro-Ukraine post - so Twitter at the least is specifically suppressing pro-Ukraine posts.

>It seems to me Twitter suppressed the post until they had time to spam it with hate posts.

Twitter can't spam hate posts in real time? They're literally an AI company.

>Bear in mind here also this suppression did not happen for other posts - only for the pro-Ukraine post - so Twitter at the least is specifically suppressing pro-Ukraine posts.

There's scant evidence of this, besides the vague assertion that "I have 5k more followers there and regularly have posts which are viewed over 100k times". If he normally posts informative and substantive content that gets good engagement, is it really surprising that a generic "I support Zelensky" post would get poor engagement?

I’d bet that their tech is weaker than what people expect. Perhaps a better term would be “not as robust as expected”.

> Twitter can't spam hate posts in real time? They're literally an AI company.

I would expect they have a certain capacity and the flow of posts is very, very, very great.

Also, I would imagine a delay of some sort anyway - people would notice if a post immediately received hundred of one line generic "I hate this" replies. In this case, the hate posts began after 12 hours.

> is it really surprising that a generic "I support Zelensky" post would get poor engagement?

I may be wrong, but as I understand it, what you've described here is not what was described by the author.

As I understand it : one guy, two accounts, both long term, one BSky, one Twitter, same content. Approx same and large number of followers. On BSky, the test post has immediate, large-scale and positive response. On Twitter, this and this only post suppressed for IIRC 12 hours, then a massive number of hate-bot posts and then post made visible.

Billionaire buys social network for instant cultural and political influence. Including amplifying his own posts. Yet, hardly any alarm from the tech or mainstream

social media is either making money via ads, or making money by shaping consensus.

what approach do you think HN takes, and how many bots do you think are here? Cuz I don't see any ads...