Twitter Rolls Out 'Quality Filter' to Block Abuse and Automated Content

Quality filter, hmm..right. Something tells me this filter will disproportionally affect conservative voices and immigration and Islam critics, but not extremist leftwing groups like Black Lives Matters, or subversive NGOs like George Soros-funded Open Society Foundations.

Quality filter, hmm..right. Something tells me this filter will disproportionally affect conservative voices and immigration and Islam critics, but not extremist leftwing groups like Black Lives Matters, or subversive NGOs like George Soros-funded Open Society Foundations.

If "conservative voices and immigration and Islam critics" roughly translates to "disrespectful people, xenophobes and racists", then yeah, you're probably spot-on. And that's kind of the point.

Right. Twitter is filtering FOR ME, regardless of what I think might be valuable.

Then don't use it. Quit crying baby. It's not a required feature, just one that those of us with large followings will find very useful.

They had to act..... the trolling and abusive tweets are getting outta hand and intolerable.

Speaking as a liberal, be awfully careful with that thought process. Maybe today, voices you dislike are censored, but tomorrow it could be yours and you'll have already supported the system to do so.

People should be allowed to express views so long as they aren't specifically advocating violence or for the soul purpose of harassing someone.

We've already seen the incredibly selectively-enforced ToS from Twitter so I don't have much confidence, especially considering the types of people they've been seeking advice from to deal with the issue.

It is entirely illiberal to censor opinions that we don't like rather than defeat them in the open arena of debate, provided it's done so respectfully.

I agree with you; I do not believe in censorship. A private system blocking abusive messages to its users is a far cry from "censorship". People can still go and read such messages if they really want.

I consider myself conservative in some ways, so it pains me when people equate "conservatism" with being hateful and disrespectful. I'm not saying, for instance, that being "Anti-immigration" is inherently xenophobic, but fears or concern about immigration so often tend to be rooted in a fear of other people and a belief that they are a threat because they are different.

Calling "Black Lives Matter" an "extremist left-wing movement" sounds like shades of racism to me. Yes, there are protests that have unfortunately resulted in violence that are associated with this movement, but BLM does NOT equal violence, and advocating against racism does not equal communism. Equating those sounds like being flagrantly dismissive and disrespectful of the real issues of racism and institutional abuse that it is attempting to bring to light.

There's nothing wrong with having a belief, but certain beliefs do seem conducive to manifesting torrents of abuse on people who do not deserve it. So if by "filtering abusive tweets" is interpreted as "censoring conservative opinions" maybe we should really go back to the drawing board and evaluate what we really mean when we label something as conservatism.

Quality filter, hmm..right. Something tells me this filter will disproportionally affect conservative voices and immigration and Islam critics, but not extremist leftwing groups like Black Lives Matters, or subversive NGOs like George Soros-funded Open Society Foundations.

It just removes spam from the notification list. It doesn't actually filter out tweets.

But I block all the people at the start of your list anyway as they add nothing to the world. No big deal. :)
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What problem

The massive amount of spam/troll accounts and bots.
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Speaking as a liberal, be awfully careful with that thought process. Maybe today, voices you dislike are censored, but tomorrow it could be yours and you'll have already supported the system to do so.

People should be allowed to express views so long as they aren't specifically advocating violence or for the soul purpose of harassing someone.

We've already seen the incredibly selectively-enforced ToS from Twitter so I don't have much confidence, especially considering the types of people they've been seeking advice from to deal with the issue.

It is entirely illiberal to censor opinions that we don't like rather than defeat them in the open arena of debate, provided it's done so respectfully.

Have you tried posting anything to your friends on Twitter and had a troll army monitoring search results (I.e. Completely outside your network) come and harass you for no reason? Because that happens every single day.

You're all missing the point anyway. This isn't censoring anything. It just removes low follower accounts that you're not connected to from the notification list. The article could be written better.

Well 1984 here we are. Milo will never be heard again unfortunately.

I understand Twitter, but creating a class-based service with verified accounts, tweet filtering even from people you know and all the other steps they try, it is becoming less useful over time.

It is an overcrowded shout box with no ability to create user based filters.
Blocking is not the answer, down-voting might, but this contributes to bullying.

I personally hate censorship, but throwing everything at you is also not practical.
In summary, I have no good advice for Twitter, but I deleted my account mid 2015, because I realised it is distracting and a literal waste of time.

You don't have to turn the filter on. It's not on by default.

Right. Twitter is filtering FOR ME, regardless of what I think might be valuable.

I hope this is made available to developers (Tweetbot for example). I would love to be able to filter out duplicate tweets.

I'd like that too but they've not made any new features available to the public API for a while AFAIK.