Twitter improves API usage for researchers(blog.twitter.com) |
Twitter improves API usage for researchers(blog.twitter.com) |
It is true that the vast majority of "research" is done by non-academics. Lots of companies doing market research want to mine media data.
Still, I believe that this "social media research" is a bit overvalued. There was this wave of "social media is the primary source where information appear". But now many realized how freaking difficult to separate this data from the noise comparing to traditional news published by journalists.
Also, take a look on this article [2] about how Dataminr sells insights from Twitter data to foreign governments (2017). Seems like just a way to punish the opposition channels.
[1] https://newscatcherapi.com/
[2] https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/27/14412014/dataminr-twitter...
What evidence is there that read-only API access will make it significantly easier for them (enough to outweigh the other upsides)?
Are there ethical implications of working with Twitter to gather data? Despite Twitter TOS, legal, IRB ok, are there informed consent issues in studying the artifacts of social media use?
And the streaming API was terrible. Even if there was no data on the stream you could consume tens of gigabytes of bandwidth a day. Dreadful.
This is gross. Rather than using the internet as a democratizing force for education, they restrict the program to those already inside credential-granting institutions. So much great research has been done from outside the institution and yet Twitter is actively pushing outsiders to resort to scraping.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-twitter-product/twitter-g...
there's a lot of strong people especially in CS who do not work with academia and still work on interesting stuff
Similarly, if you're researching bots and spam and how they manipulate people & markets - this is still useful.
I'm not saying that API access is completely useless, I was raising the question of whether the potential (and relatively small) benefit to trolling outweighs the major upsides of API access being available for all.
Nobody here is silenced. You do not have a right to a twitter account. People can, and do, make accounts elsewhere.
Literally anything Trump does can and is covered by the media; this is exactly the opposite of being "silenced".
Many dissenting voices have been removed from the conversation, and you wouldn't even know they are missing.
How about asserting that men and women are different biologically? Is that a conspiracy theory?
Or is it simply a dissenting viewpoint from the group-think of Twitter that was silenced...
https://thefederalist.com/2018/11/25/twitter-permanently-ban...
Clear ToS violation. Which proves my point.
Sidenote: The Federalist itself got its account banned from twitter for spreading covid misinformation.
> And one might think liberals, putting liberty above order, would be aghast at silencing opponents to maintain order, and yet here we are.
You aren't liberal, that's OK, and Twitter isn't a liberal platform, and definitely has a political bias towards the progressive left.
I'd rather make decisions for myself than let Twitter tell me what is or isn't misinformation.
> Sidenote: The Federalist itself got its account banned from twitter for spreading covid misinformation.
Thanks for proving my point
[citation needed] seeing as your previous example fell flat.
> > Sidenote: The Federalist itself got its account banned from twitter for spreading covid misinformation.
> Thanks for proving my point
I fail to see your point. They spread misinformation that would get people killed, and were banned for it.
I've not in my 30 years on the internet spent more than a passing moment on a BBS, forum, social media that let anything go, nor would I want to as I've seen what it devolves into.
You have not displayed any basis for your assertion that the moderation enforcement on twitter is biased.
What point did I prove for you?
2. What misinformation was spread?
Was it something like masks work or don’t work or something like Black Lives are more important than stopping the spread or outdoor activities are safe?
Ok, first search result says:
* The article, titled “How Medical ‘Chickenpox Parties’ Could Turn The Tide Of The Wuhan Virus,” argued that a “controlled voluntary infection” program could allow young people to return to work after contracting and recovering from the virus.*
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/us/chickenpox-parties-fed...
The Times quotes the MD whose conjecture published by The Federalist caused so much twit-concern and then goes on to quote criticism of two not-MDs (using their title of “Dr.” but not establishing that they are academics and not medical doctors). [1,2]
To keep things fair the do cite an academic who is also an MD who “said he would not endorse intentionally infecting people, but added that it was worth considering ways to increase herd immunity while protecting vulnerable patients.” [3]
How is it you can claim that “they spread misinformation that would get people killed?” Something controversial, sure. “Would get people killed?” Thats silly.
1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Caplan
2 https://www.umass.edu/sphhs/person/faculty/andrew-lover
3 https://www.medschool.umaryland.edu/profiles/Morgan-Daniel/
Not all bans are permanent (but thanks for the sanctimonious flair).
> 2. What misinformation was spread?
1) That you can have safe infections (many otherwise healthy people have died from covid, including kids).
2) That "voluntary" is even an applicable term in an epidemic. You are not merely risking your life, but that of others, regardless of what you think are safety measures.
And speaking of masks as you mentioned, they are generally not for your safety, but for the safety of everyone else, so they work best if a critical amount of people use them.
I find it very curious that you dive deep into the (at least) three people opposing the article, and not the MD posting it. An unlicensed MD who's been a business man for 25 years and was a skin doctor.
> How is it you can claim that “they spread misinformation that would get people killed?” Something controversial, sure. “Would get people killed?” Thats silly.
People die from covid, even outside of risk groups. That's not silly, that's a fact.
Google internet search for “can you have a safe infection”:
Although for most people COVID-19 causes only mild illness, it can make some people very ill. More rarely, the disease can be fatal. Older people, and those with pre- existing medical conditions (such as high blood pressure, heart problems or diabetes) appear to be more vulnerable.Feb 25, 2020 www.who.int › situation-reports › 2... Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) Situation Report
Is it misinformation to assert that a person can have a “safe infection” when the vast majority of people do not experience life threatening infections? Isn’t that like calling all BLM demonstrations riots because a small number involved property destruction?
Your point about the potential for second order infections from an initial one is well taken but doesn’t change the definition of “voluntary” in that the first is voluntary. Now that I read the article in question, I see that the proposal does consider and address the concern of second order infections. You may have an idiosyncratic definition of “voluntary” but writing about subsequent infections as if the article didn’t address them is a mischaracterization.
Mea culpa about not checking the author’s credentials claim. I uncritically accepted The Times’ assertion since it didn’t seem a point of contention. This was an oversight in my part. It isn’t correct to call it a deep dive though, I just highlighted the name, touch Look Up, and scan the first CVish source, very simple, very easy, just like Chef Tell. Now that I’ve seen the licensing issue, it doesn’t seem fair to characterize the author as unlicensed either without acknowledging that the license expired just 3 months before the article was published. The Federalist and author should have disclosed it for sure. On the whole, the author’s business experience and medical training lends more credibility to the proposed solution than the academics with no skin in the game.
Again, there doesn’t seem a clear case for classification as misinformation. Without defining “safe” as a specific threshold within a continuum of risk, the author didn’t make a claim that purposeful infection was risk-free and much of the article is spent describing risk mitigation of prescreening, monitoring and quarantining. It isn’t much different from the steps I went through to be vaccinated. Aside from your nonstandard definition of “voluntary” the author specifically describes how to mitigate secondary transmission using the best information available at the time.
Going further I think the term “misinformation” is overused and has too many potential meanings, ranging from errors, misapprehensions, discovery-diffusion latency, parody, sarcasm, and lies (coverups, scams, National strategic influence operations, statistics), and differences in judgement, perception, and perspective.
Yes, because we don't know which particular human will die from it outside of statistics, which is statistics, not specifics.
Saying "safe infections" is circular reasoning, because if someone dies from it, it wasn't safe (even if outside of risk groups).
It sounds like other people have different ideas about acceptable risks and weigh them against the benefits. Is talking about their choices misinformation?