Censorship or incompetence?
I don’t have the information to decide, but this is just a random example that signals the norm of what can be observed, not the exception.
Just a random post, really (and very, very stupid replies, but the content is not the topic here).
https://x.com/BuzzPatterson/status/1881927690028286416
The attention goes to this one, that shows 141 replies.
Yet, only three are shown. There’s a button at the top of the page that many don’t even know exists, but you can sort these replies by “relevancy”, “latest” or “likes”. No matter what you select, only these three replies are shown.
(You can see one of the posts here has another 9 replies to itself listed. You can open that too. There is only one single direct reply. But also more follow it. Even when you expand every single one, the total number of nested replies is only six.)
It could be a simple server hiccup, but I tested a few of these by bookmarking them and checking again after a few days, and the same behavior is shown. It could STILL be a server hiccup that doesn’t get addressed.
It is also again the norm.
The point is obvious. Is this “free speech”? In this case it’s not even merely an algorithm that decides what to boost and what to suppress. This is complete omission. Posts that are supposedly written and no one can actually see and read (or, these are just fake inflated random numbers).
(The more plausible guess is that the network is organized in bigger clusters that only occasionally sync to each other, and only for certain flagged segments, considering that the situation is stable across weeks. Which means that only certain people have access to the real public town square, while most of everyone is limited to an arbitrary limited slice, depending on where you live and who you are. That once again confirms why Musk is so focused on the matter of “merit” while hating the concept of “equality.” It’s all part of the manipulative game. Securing for oneself more opportunities so to boast about the merits of the results. Like Capitalism, it self feeds, it proves itself right by securing the context of the observation. A self preserving machine. Just like cancer.)
But there’s an even more general consideration to make. If this is the worldwide “public town square”, what’s scary is that the rules are UNKNOWN. The rules that explicitly regulate “free speech” are not simply a private property, but regulated with hidden mechanisms that you have to trust. Imagine participating to a sports match, and the rules are only known to the referee, but unknown to the players.
Yes, other social platforms also have the same problems, but they also do not claim explicitly to represent free speech, nor to be the source of correct information with the intention of replacing all other media, and even less declared to represent the absolute “truth.”
It should be obvious, without differentiation of judgement or political affiliation, that this is not free speech, nor correct or fair information.
On BlueSky, the number of replies listed is the number of replies you find.
EDIT: I’m checking the same link several hours later. I can still see the one reply with the other nine count under it, but the other two replies in the picture above are now missing. And I see a brand new one. So now the total count of visible comments has gone from three down to two, the shown count is instead now 142. The Schrödinger social, what you write both exists and not.