Twitter CEO blocked #whichhillary and is holding a HRC fundraiser this weekend??

[grasswire]

Is that so?

Read about it on facebook.

After #whichhillary broke the Internet twice, the CEO blocked it? And then we learn about his association with Hillary??

[FangedNoumenom]

1. He's the executive chairman

And the fundraiser was last weekend, not next weekend.

[arcane1]

5. There is a fundraiser this weekend too n/t

[FangedNoumenom]

12. Really?

Same guy? Hmm. My mistake then.

[Lucinda]

2. It's not blocked. There was a post with that # 4 minutes ago. n/t

[NWCorona]

7. Not from where I'm sitting. Can you post a screen shot?

[Lucinda]

13. The most recent is from Ashley Williams - direct link to the hashtag results:

https://twitter.com/hashtag/whichhillary?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Ehashtag

[NWCorona]

17. Sorry if I wasn't clear on that.

I meant a screen shot of it showing #whichhillary at #4 on the trends list. I'm not seeing it at all anymore.

[Fawke Em]

40. That poster doesn't understand Twitter.

She thinks only Ashley Williams can Tweet it and thinks because what she Tweeted wasn't Liked or ReTweeted a gazillion times that people have lost interest, which isn't the case at all. To anyone who doesn't understand, anyone can Tweet #WhichHillary and it counts toward the trending you have to look at this: https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=news&q=%23WhichHillary&src=tyah to see the effect.

But, as far as I can see, it is NOT trending even though it's being Tweeted at a steady clip. It probably wouldn't be trending today, anyway, but it abruptly stopped trending yesterday when it was still getting thousands of hashtags per second.

[nadinbrzezinski]

58. It is on my local trending and it did trend again, after the GOP debate

for a little while in the non specific list.

I got the lists as of 22:00 or so PST

http://reportingsandiego.com/2016/02/25/whichhillary-censored/

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. The hashtag is not blcoked

what was blocked was the trending aspect of it. And that can influence posters behaviors,

Read all about it.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511342777

This should trouble every poster here. TO be honest, I don't expect it.

[restorefreedom]

11. they took it off trending

don,t know Twitter enough to know how much this affects use, but it doesn't look good.

[Lucinda]

15. Well looking at the results of the search, it doesnt seem as active today. Maybe it fell off

on it's own? Ms Williams post has very few re-tweets.

[NWCorona]

19. It was at 280k the last I seen it.

It's not gonna fall that fast.

[Lucinda]

21. Not her most recent tweet. 39 retweets 50 likes n/t

[Fawke Em]

44. Ugh... this isn't about her!

The hash is #WhichHillary and anyone who Tweets it counts toward trending - not just Ashley Williams.

[Lucinda]

45. It was trending yesterday BECAUSE of her. And people seem to have moved on. n/t

[bigtree]

73. maybe Sanders should just go ahead and buy the top trending hashtag like he did before

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251684583

No, really, this is a national outrage. Highlighting snark and profanity from Berniebros. and Bernistas is our gawd-given right!

[Lucinda]

74. I forgot about that!

[ebayfool]

69. I think it's backfiring on 'em ...

“@SteveDear: Et tu, Twitter Executive Chairperson @omidkordestani? Did you really personally order a political censor of #whichHillary?”

[fun n serious]

3. They often block many hashtags. nt

[Lucinda]

23. It's not blocked...just not very active today. n/t

https://twitter.com/hashtag/whichhillary?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Ehashtag

[fun n serious]

39. It was blocked last night

but I have seen hashtags blocked many times on twitter.. This is no conspiracy.

[Marr]

47. What other hashtags have you seen blocked? /nt

[nadinbrzezinski]

54. Yesterday he told me a few from Ferguson

and I know #somos132 and #yamecanse were in Mexico, The difference is, their press did cover it.

http://notigodinez.com/y-cibernautas-desafian-la-censura-en-twitter-lanzando-ahora-el-ya-me-canse-2/

There have been reports from other places around the world. This is what should be troubling, Yes, twitter is great (and a private business, so 1 amendment does not need apply) but it is slowly becoming a tool for control.

Here, about Google by the way

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511342777

[Trajan]

4. I rarely use Twitter ...

But this seems a bit heavy handed ...

That who create these Twitter hashtags - surely they will create another, right? ... There is no stopping this train ...

No matter how many assholes try to detail it ...

[Ino]

41. Now there's #WhichHillaryCensored

Interesting graphic on there...

[arcane1]

6. "Twitter Exec Censors #WhichHillary in advance of Sunday Fundraiser, Key Primaries"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511345223

[bunnies]

8. Now the #whichhillary tweeters have added #whichtwitter

Damn. I might just have to get a twitter account after all.

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. Damn another one to follow!

[bunnies]

16. and #WhichHillaryCensored

uh oh!

[nadinbrzezinski]

24. That has been open

and that started to trend overnight and then poof

[bunnies]

26. huh. Imagine that.

So blatant though.

[nadinbrzezinski]

28. This has been done systematically in the past in other places

some might be algorithms, but not all.

The difference is that this will not be touched by our media, and by the way, here

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/2/5/1480592/-After-the-Debate-Last-Night-Twitter-Scrubbed-ReleaseTheTranscripts

and I posted the politico story here on DU as well

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511342777

Which incidentally the usual suspects are not touching.

[bunnies]

32. Wow. Thats very eye-opening.

They scrubbed #releasethetranscripts ?! I wonder how many more (less obvious) times they've done this. I hope someone does some serious digging. Id be interested to know who the scrubber is.

[nadinbrzezinski]

34. Our media will not even ask the question

We went from interesting, to likely happened overnight.

[bunnies]

37. You're right of course.

And its a real shame.

[JonLeibowitz]

76. already following you! (That's really not as creepy as it sounds lol)

[nadinbrzezinski]

77. I am followed, and I follow, it is social media

that is cool

[NWCorona]

22. I did awhile ago. Not bad

[bunnies]

27. Im afraid Ill get addicted.

Im like that.

[NWCorona]

29. Yeah, don't do it😉

[Todays_Illusion]

14. Don't throw your vote away on Hillary Clinton. It is like buying that old pig in a poke thing.

[Politicalboi]

18. They're ALL cowards like the GOP

Actually Hillary is the GOP. Just as racist and just as dumb.

[UglyGreed]

20. Yeah just saw that

No bias and we really do have a choice!!!

[nadinbrzezinski]

25. here somethign funny

:large

[bettyellen]

31. The guy said he loaded up the buffer for overnight- so that IS spamming right? was afraid he

would "overdue it" with the #, so slowed down, but it caught the manipulation going on. Is he being paid to do this?

I wonder how many tweets you can load into a buffer overnight, how many accounts you can spam with? If one person causes a trend, then it is not actually a trend. I can see why Twitter would not allow this.

[nadinbrzezinski]

33. And I wonder why you cannot get this

but this has been done in other countries as well, but our press will never ever, and I mean this EVER touch this. See Mexico for example

http://notigodinez.com/y-cibernautas-desafian-la-censura-en-twitter-lanzando-ahora-el-ya-me-canse-2/

And this started actually this campaign oh with the transcripts. Given that this is being done around the world now, this should concern you. I don't expect it.

By the way, it's not just twitter

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511342777

And again, I expect zero concern as long as my candidate wins. US Democracy, if it ever existed, is in a zombie state now.

[bettyellen]

35. I don't look at Twitter as anything more than a promotional tool, at least in the USA. It's not a

issue of freedom as much as it is stopping a few people from gaming it to make fake trends. That appears to be what they were doing with the loading the buffer stuff. They got a notice they were flagged for spamming.
There is so much vacuous PR crap on Twitter that it's damaged it relevancy.

But the idea that it censored this hashtag is nuts. It is still there. Sorry but that is crazy CT stuff.

[nadinbrzezinski]

36. If it was just that,

none would be too concerned to try to control it, and this is about control.

By the way, the transcript issue... guess where it truly took off?

I will grant you this... there is a breakdown by age. WAG here, but I would say how twitter is used and how, breaks at 45 or so. Older folks see it the way you see it. Younger folks, see it as much more than just that, and during Occupy and BLM marches it is used as a coordinated tool for freedom.

And right now, those kids, are not too impressed.

[bettyellen]

48. I think people spamming it is pretty much counter to it's purpose. Why give one techie the voice of

... of hundreds?
That is not "democratic".


I see it as watered down with boring promos- mostly of music and TV show crap. Trending reflects a lot of what gets covered in the rest of the info-tainment sphere in the USA. Good for jokes and memes or finding out what entertainment people are talking about.

It can be interesting if you know good people to follow, but the character limit always leaves me wanting. I get it can be used for organizing, but that is not what we are talking about here.

[nadinbrzezinski]

49. This is not about spamming

but about a pattern... a global pattern.

I posted a link to just one incident covered by somebody else's media. It is far from the only one. And this is what should trouble you. I don't expect it. I truly don't.

[bettyellen]

53. I don't see a CT when we are talking about one person who set their thing to auto-tweet constantly.

You maybe talking globally, and that's fine. This one guy though knew there was a possibility he would "over do it", and he did.

The tweets themselves were never censored. Words matter.

[nadinbrzezinski]

55. Again, pattern

and buffering is used by SONY for example, regularly. It is used by political parties regularly. It is not spam. Please do learn the difference.

[bettyellen]

56. So when it comes from one account, it is "buffering" and multiple- the same thing is called spam?

Same effect, no?

[nadinbrzezinski]

57. No, for starters Twitter does not allow you to post the same exact mesasage over and over again

You have to change the tweet. You can retweet, but you cannot post the same exact thing. So that takes work. It is not spamming.

And again, we are going down to a PATTERN of control. They are bringing the same tools they use abroad, and yes, they can tweak the system to do this manually. This dropped off during the GOP debate and it went back to trending after it, when it dropped off, it was at a much higher activity level than the GOP debate.

And why this matters, read the story I posted on google. They have tested this in the wild. Not twitter or google, who keep claiming they cannot influence squat, but scientists, in INDIA. They tested the theory. This should scare the pants off people. Not because your candidate, my candidate, whatever... but because of CONTROL. That is the big fucking picture here.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511342777

[bettyellen]

60. Gt it now- thanks Nadin! In my eyes though, it is basically the same as what people popularly call

spamming. Using tech abilities to make your message look more important or popular than others. As far as the trending goes, it seems few things last more than 24 hours? There are so many commercial campaigns these days for people to Tweet @ this and that every night that Twitter trends are not ....organic, for lack of a better word. It is a war for who gets the most attention.

Wow, do we really think Google can sway 25% of voters? That kind of blows my mind. I feel like I get a wide range of sources in my searches, but that is interesting.

[nadinbrzezinski]

61. And they tailor your searches for you

that is the big picture

[bettyellen]

62. Well, I don't generally use their suggestions, and do detailed searches myself. I find a lot of

diversity on the net, but it's interesting how it can be used. Thanks!

[Fawke Em]

46. No. That is not spamming.

Spamming is bulk by socks.

I use a buffer every day and don't get violated for spamming. A buffer simply allows you to write a handful of Tweets at once and then program them to automatically go out every few minutes or hours or days. It's not spamming. Businesses use it regularly.

[nadinbrzezinski]

50. Correct, but they are going to hang their hat on that

and ignore the real issue.

[bettyellen]

51. But when you buffer, you could do this with multiple accounts- having each send tweets every few

minutes. But if you were doing it with one account- flooding Twitter with Tweets, what is that called? Isn't that similar to setting up a bot? They could send a few hundred over night on each account.

I think the fact this guy tweeting was worried he "would overdue" it , and he got caught in a spam filter is kind of relevant. They have algorithms to detect this kind of ...overuse or whatever and stop it. I can see why Twitter would want to do that.

[Jitter65]

30. Just proves one shouldn't piss off rich, powerful people. nt

[AzDar]

38. Ick.

[nadinbrzezinski]

42. Let me throw this here

:large

Yup, from the twitter

[Matariki]

43. Question - how long to things generally trend on Twitter?

#WhichHillary was trending for a full day and slowly descended from the top spot to off the list.

I'm really not convinced that it was 'blocked'. But then I'm not a big twitter user, maybe hot topics trend for days?

[nadinbrzezinski]

52. It was still higher than GOPdebate which trended for a few hours

when it suddenly went poof.

And as I wrote above, we have seen things like this abroad, and it seems the first time this was deployed, at least this campaign, was during the Dem debate with the transcripts

Here a diary

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/2/5/1480592/-After-the-Debate-Last-Night-Twitter-Scrubbed-ReleaseTheTranscripts

He was poo poed, but we have seen this abroad as well.

As to how long, some trends last an hour, some last a day, a few last a few days.

[truthseeker1]

64. It did not slowly descend, it was at the top then went poof

and some tweets disappeared from the hashtag list as well.

[Matariki]

66. I watched it go down the list over the course of the day Thursday

It didn't go 'poof', unless they are serving up different lists to different people. Which is entirely possible.

I'm not saying it absolutely wasn't censored, or that Twitter definitely never censors or pushes specific trending hash tags, just saying that I saw #WhichHillary in the US trending list the better part of Thursday and asked about what the norm is for stuff staying on that list.

[truthseeker1]

70. I was actively posting #WhichHillary for the 24 hours that it was trending

(other than from about 3-9 AM to sleep) and then actively posting all day and keeping a very close eye on the TT status (and tweet number count) and it DID go from #1 to outright disappearing. If you weren't watching it vigilantly like some of us were, then you wouldn't have noticed it.

Of course there could be differences between computers/devices, but many of us that were active on that hashtag noticed it.

[Matariki]

75. I was also posting #WhichHillary

And retweeting and liking tweets w/ that hasttag, starting wednesday night before it was trending. It was in the top spot for a long time and then moved down. Again, we might have seen different things. Who knows what sort of algorithms Twitter uses

[senz]

59. This is where Bill Clinton's 1996 Telecom Act pays off.

It opened up ALL media, including electronic media, to monopoly takeover.

We need President Sanders to restore the FCC's original charter to preserve "the people's airwaves."

[Marr]

63. Pretty much Hillary's campaign in a nutshell, isn't it?

Appeal to the big money, and trust them to rig the whole process for you.

[truthseeker1]

65. The fundraiser was last Sunday with Twitter CEO Omid Kordestani

Clinton will make stops in Menlo Park, Atherton and Piedmont, California on February 21, headlining events with Rebecca and Mike Ghielmetti, founders of a private real estate firm; Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, a tech executive; and Gisele and Omid Kordestani, an executive at Google.
(Except he's not with Google anymore, he became Twitter's CEO last October.)

http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/04/politics/hillary-clinton-february-fundraising/index.html

#QUIDPROQUO

[TheFarS1de]

67. Twitter has been caught before hiding trending tweets .

And with the newly initiated censorship panel , there is plenty of ability to make mischief . But twitter is shedding users right now so it will be interesting to see how far this goes . People do not like big brother tactics when it comes to sharing information .

[sabrina 1]

68. Watched it happen. An amazing display of Censorship on Twitter. But they were too late. Saw the

fundraiser with the TWitter CEO and we witnessed the introduction of two hashtags imitating the #WhichHillary hashtag in an attempt to drown out the first one.

Peter Daou that old Hillary Third Wayer, was all over Twitter before that complaining about the outrage people were honestly displaying and lashing out at anyone who responded to him.

Shameful and has only hurt Hillary MORE to know just deep the corruption goes and how much that money BUYS.

[MariaThinks]

71. wow - he must really love Hillary to place his company at risk to

hide a hashtag (if it were possible) which could simplify be altered easily.

would love to hear the conversation between a CEO/chairman and the developer being asked to make a quick fix to hide a hashtag.

[shenmue]

72. Sorry, it's a free country, he can do what he wants