The Trump administration on Tuesday eliminated the top cybersecurity position on the National Security Council that develops policy to defend against attacks.
Twitter currently uses a combination of human review and AI to identify problematic tweets. Where a tweet violates the company’s policies, it is removed.
But the company is now aiming to use an innovative approach to dealing with tweets which don’t technically break the rules but are ‘unhealthy’ or detract from the conversation …
Conservative Twitter users are in an uproar over draconian new "behavioral filters" which will start hiding tweets that "detract from the conversation," and which CEO Jack Dorsey says are designed to "significantly reduce the ability to game and skew our systems" (less than six months before midterms, we might add).
Twitter will now use thousands of behavioral signals when filtering search, replies, and algorithmic recommendations. If it believes you are trying to game its system, or simply acting like a jerk, it will push your tweets lower down. It’s the biggest update so far in the company’s push to create healthier conversations, an initiative announced by its CEO Jack Dorsey in March.
Among the signals Twitter will use: whether you tweet at large numbers of accounts you don’t follow, how often you’re blocked by people you interact with, whether you created many accounts from a single IP address, and whether your account is closely related to others that have violated its terms of service. -BuzzFeed
“A lot of our past action has been content-based, and we have been shifting more and more toward conduct and behaviors on the system,” Dorsey said in a Monday briefing at the company’s San Francisco headquarters.
The push is meant to get out ahead of problems that might normally result in an abuse report under the existing system. In testing, Twitter said the changes led to an 8% drop in abuse reports on conversations (the discussions that happen in the replies to a tweet) and a 4% drop in abuse reports in search. These drops, the company believes, indicate that something is working.
“Directionally, it does point to probably our biggest impact change,” Dorsey said. “This is a step, but we can see this going quite far.”
lol, Twitter is going to start shadowbanning accounts who even follow/talk to people who violate their terms of service.
— DatNoFact (@datnofact) May 15, 2018
What a brilliant plan. pic.twitter.com/EI0T2J7FVn
Dorsey says he will do a periscope soon about the changes.
Will do a periscope about this soon.
— jack (@jack) May 15, 2018
Our ultimate goal is to encourage more free and open conversation. To do that we need to significantly reduce the ability to game and skew our systems. Looking at behavior, not content, is the best way to do that.https://t.co/r5mhES2riH
So now Twitter is planning to censor any tweets reported "for abuse?"
— Bill Mitchell (@mitchellvii) May 15, 2018
Really?
So armies of #Sorosbots can mass report any Trump supporter "for abuse," and just like that, we're gone?
No check to see if the tweet was actually "abusive," whatever that means?
No. The point of this is to stop such gaming of our systems.
— jack (@jack) May 15, 2018
Sounds great Jack!
Twitter:
— DatNoFact (@datnofact) May 15, 2018
"You get a shadowban, and you get a shadowban, and-" pic.twitter.com/4xgNI1aCSW
Facebook, meanwhile, is beefing up its reporting tools within the Messenger app.
An app update for Messenger includes enhanced reporting tools - allowing mobile users to report harassment or someone who isn't who they say they are (or jerk ex boyfriends). Users can find the new option in the Contact menu for each messenger conversation by tapping on the name of the person inside the chat, scrolling down to the "Something's Wrong" option, and choosing from a list of offenses to report.
“Providing more granular reporting options in Messenger makes it faster and easier to report things for our Community Operations team to review,” write Hadi Michel, Messenger product manager. “They review reports in over 50 languages. This means our community will see issues addressed faster so they can continue to have positive experiences on Messenger.”
One can imagine how much fun High Schoolers and your average Tinder users are going to have with this reporting feature every time they get dumped, doubled-crossed or otherwise made upset.
HuffPost |
FBI Search Of CIA Leak Suspect Turned Up Photos Of Sex Assault On Unconscious Friend HuffPost The government suspects that Joshua Adam Schulte gave documents to WikiLeaks, but they're holding him on child pornography charges. headshot. By Ryan J. Reilly. Toru Hanai / Reuters. WASHINGTON ― A 30-year-old former CIA employee the federal ... Who Is Joshua Adam Schulte? Ex-CIA Programmer Facing Child Porn Charges Is Suspect in Vault 7 LeakNewsweek Lawyer: Ex-CIA Employee in Leak Probe 'Deeply Saddened'U.S. News & World Report all 65 news articles » |
In what appears to be yet another ill-advised attempt to revive the Russia hysteria of early 2017, the Senate Judiciary Committee has released more than 1,800 pages of interview transcripts with Donald Trump Jr. and others who attended a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower that has become a key focus of the Mueller probe. However, instead of damning the Trumps, the transcripts offer more proof that Don Jr.'s account of the meeting - that Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya used the opportunity to lobby against the Magnitsky Act, prompting Trump, who had been promised dirt on Hillary Clinton, to end the meeting after 20 minutes - is, in fact, what happened.
Indeed, an excerpt published by the Washington Post notes that the attendees who answered the committee's request to testify largely corroborated Trump's story.
The excerpted testimony shows that attendees at the June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting largely agreed with Trump Jr.’s long-standing contention that the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, did not transmit dirt about Clinton. She has denied she was acting on behalf of the Russian government.
According to the Associated Press, Trump Jr. appeared to evade questions about discussions he'd had with the president - including whether the two men ever discussed the Russia probe. he also said he didn't think it was wrong to seek "dirt" on his father's rival, Hillary Clinton, even if the information came from Russian sources.
Donald Trump Jr.
The Senate testimony also reaffirmed that Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin had never met in person, despite what certain liberal conspiracy theorists would have you believe, before Trump became president.
Putin had apparently agreed to attend a rehearsal for Trump's Miss Universe pageant when it was held in Moscow in 2013, but the Russian leader canceled at the last minute.
The testimony also includes new details about Trump’s long interest in building business ties to Russia and a relationship with President Vladimir Putin.
An Agalarov employee testified to the committee that the Russian mogul tried to get Trump a meeting with Putin when the Miss Universe pageant, which Trump owned, was held in Moscow in 2013.
The employee told the committee that Agalarov "secretly requested" the meeting through a Russian government official.
Putin agreed to attend a pageant rehearsal, but canceled at the last minute. Though Trump periodically claimed during the campaign that he knew Putin, there is no evidence the two men met until after Trump took office.
Trump Jr. told the Committee that he was disappointed when Veselnitskaya failed to come through with the dirt she had promised.
The president’s son acknowledged he too was disappointed that the Russian lawyer did not provide more information that could be used in the campaign: "All else being equal, I wouldn’t have wanted to waste 20 minutes hearing about something that I wasn’t supposed to be meeting about," he told the committee.
Though panel Republicans conferred with their Democratic counterparts on point-by-point issues during the preparation of the transcripts, their release is expected to touch off a new wave of partisan bickering.
The committee interviewed several people who had attended the meeting eventually provided at least some testimony to the committee. UK Publicist Rob Goldstone, Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin and Russian businessman Ike Kaveladze all testified before the committee. While Don Jr. testified, Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort rebuffed the committee's requests.
Veselnitskaya only agreed to provide written answers from Russia to the panel’s questions. Neither Kushner, now a top White House aide, nor Manafort, who has been charged with a series of financial crimes related to his work before joining the campaign, sat for interviews. But the committee interviewed the five other men who took part in the session, including a Russian American lobbyist who once served in an Soviet counterintelligence unit.
Here are Paul Manafort's notes from the meeting...
Paul Manafort's notes from the Trump Tower meeting, just released by Senate Judiciary. pic.twitter.com/BnKr58yo6T
— Philip Bump (@pbump) May 16, 2018
The testimony also purportedly showed emails sent by Goldstone, who initially organized the meeting at the behest of Emin Agalarov, a Russian pop star and developer, saying the Trump Tower gathering was a "bad idea."
Music publicist Rob Goldstone, who arranged the meeting at the request of pop singer Emin Agalarov, said he thought the meeting was a “bad idea.”
"I believed it was a bad idea and that we shouldn’t do it. And I gave the reason for that being that I’m a music publicist. Politics, I knew nothing about," Goldstone said, adding that neither did Emin Agalarov nor his father, Aras.
Trump Jr. also said he wasn't aware of his father's role in drafting a White House statement that said the meeting was primarily focused on reversing Russia's restrictions on Americans adopting Russian children. According to Bloomberg, Trump Jr. said he also didn't tell his father about the meeting before it happened, adding that his "skepticism" about the "value" of the meeting was eventually proven to be justified.
The release of the transcript marks the first time that Trump Jr.'s account of the meeting has been released.
But mostly, the transcripts are a giant nothing burger - which will only reinforce the public's belief that there's "no 'there' there".
* * *
Full Transcript below...
(Daily Mail) Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano could have a major devastating eruption at ‘any time’, the US Geographical Survey has said.
The volcano has been erupting for 10 days, and more than 2000 residents have already been evacuated.
‘At any time, activity may become more explosive, increasing the intensity of ash production and producing ballistic projectiles near the vent,’ the USGS said on Tuesday afternoon.
The USGS also raised the volcano aviation alert level at Hawaii’s Kilauea to red – the highest level – which indicates a ‘major volcanic eruption is imminent, underway, or suspected with hazardous activity both on the ground and in the air.’
The Internet has erupted into a debate about whether a short audio clip features the word "Laurel" or "Yanny," and experts said they might both be correct.
