Twitter co-founder: I’m sorry if we made Trump’s presidency possible • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter co-founder: I’m sorry if we made Trump’s presidency possible

#81

Post by kelnos » Mon, May 22, 2017, 8:25 AM UTC

broodbucket wrote: post #36

kelnos wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, your problem is that you have a country full of gullible morons who will believe anything if it's framed in a way that jives with their worldview and sense of self-preservation, even if it's mildly misleading to flat-out wrong at best. It's not unreasonable to combat that with moderation, which I don't consider to be "censorship" if done correctly.

"done correctly" = "in accordance with my ideas" If bad ideas are being communicated, then communicate better ones. I understand it's hard, that people can be idiotic and short-sighted, that 140 characters is very limiting, but thinking " only lost because of gullible morons" isn't how (in Trump's case) the Dems will end up winning in 2020. There's a fantastic article about this logic here: https://medium.com/@SeanBl…

Ideas are not necessarily neutral, innocent things. Some of them are good, and some of them are bad. Some of them are a judgment call and certainly fall under the "only good if in accordance with my ideas" bucket. And agreed, suppressing ideas just because you don't agree with them isn't sufficient reason to do so.

I've actually have read the article you point to, and while I don't disagree with it (it makes a lot of good points), it's just an opinion. And it's not even a great one sometimes: just because an opposing view point makes you angry, it doesn't mean you're not wrong to be angry. The opposing view point may actually be bat-shit insane. Sometimes it's hard to determine that sort of thing objectively, but... sometimes it's not.

For some supporting evidence to the contrary, this one: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/education-not-income-pre... -- that suggests, using per-county voting and education data, that low education and voting for Trump was strongly correlated.

Now the meat of the matter is, as you suggest, "what's the best way to win next time?" And yeah, telling Trump voters that they're idiots (even if/when they are) isn't a particularly great way to win over hearts and minds. But I don't think that's what we're talking about here: we're talking about how/why Trump won in the first place, and if it was a good idea to give him and his supporters a platform to easily spread lies to those who are more susceptible to believing them.

Re: Twitter co-founder: I’m sorry if we made Trump’s presidency possible

#82

Post by timthelion » Mon, May 22, 2017, 8:27 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #75

timthelion wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has anyone else noticed, that we are failing to distinguish between two very different rights: 1) Free speech 2) Free and anonymous speech All of the platforms that have big problems support the later. Maybe the problem is anonymity rather than freedom of speech. It is true that Facebook doesn't really support anonymous speech, but even there, most of the fake news spread was anonymously published. I imagine that whe…

I'm really torn on this. Plenty of non-anonymous people have posted some pretty horrible things on Facebook. And it goes the other way, too: there are plenty of people who would feel justifiably threatened and afraid to speak their true feelings if they could not be anonymous, and their contributions are often just as valuable as people who aren't anonymous.

I agree, at the same time, the Czech internet is filled with hate speech, absolutely virolic hate speech, and it is beleived by some that these comments are actually being posted by the Russian embasy in order to undermine Czech democracy. If that theory is true (and why wouldn't it be? They have the means, the incentive, and the anonymity) then how would one fight against that without breaking anonymity?

Would you prefer a situation in which secret police agents tracked down troll internet users, and if they found those users to be Russia agents, they would shoot them? I might prefer that actually ;) but I'm not in charge of the secret police and so therefore its not in my capabilities to make that happen.

Of course, it is possible that this conspiracy theory is false. That Czechs, or a large portion of them, actually are that hateful (also likely). If that is the case, than this country is on the edge of a genocide (against Muslims and Gypsies) far more brutal than Nazi germany. And in that case, anonymity would be a good thing for all the activists who try to fight against the hate.

So you're right, that it is a very difficult question.

Re: Twitter co-founder: I’m sorry if we made Trump’s presidency possible

#83

Post by kelnos » Mon, May 22, 2017, 8:33 AM UTC

timthelion wrote: post #82

kelnos wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really torn on this. Plenty of non-anonymous people have posted some pretty horrible things on Facebook. And it goes the other way, too: there are plenty of people who would feel justifiably threatened and afraid to speak their true feelings if they could not be anonymous, and their contributions are often just as valuable as people who aren't anonymous.

I agree, at the same time, the Czech internet is filled with hate speech, absolutely virolic hate speech, and it is beleived by some that these comments are actually being posted by the Russian embasy in order to undermine Czech democracy. If that theory is true (and why wouldn't it be? They have the means, the incentive, and the anonymity) then how would one fight against that without breaking anonymity? Would you p…

Yeah, it's definitely a difficult question, and I don't claim to have a good answer. I just know that there are good arguments for both sides, and I don't know where it'd be best to draw the line.

Maybe it's possible to just ignore the anonymous vs. non-anonymous question and target the speech itself: if it's hate speech, you kill it. If it's lies and misinformation masquerading as the truth, you kill it. If the poster has their real name attached to it, then you may have a legal means to ensure they stop posting things like that. If they don't, obviously it's harder, and you have to keep chasing after them as they create new anonymous accounts.

Re: Twitter co-founder: I’m sorry if we made Trump’s presidency possible

#84

Post by croon » Mon, May 22, 2017, 8:36 AM UTC

broodbucket wrote: post #18

Fede_V wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That Twitter, as it's currently designed, is an excellent platform for sharing cool links (science/ML twitter is fantastic), but it is downright deleterious for any subject where nuance is called for. I think Twitter had a net negative effect on political discussion not because of free speech, but because it rewards bombastic language, point scoring, cheerleading and makes substantial arguments impossible.

Twitter is definitely terrible for discussion not just because of the character limit but also because of the echo chambers it creates. I follow a lot of people on both "sides" and they love to make fun of the other through the most low hanging fruit possible. Both sides attack people for liking (or not being totally opposed to) some ideas of the other side. I don't think there's many popular forms of social media th…

I definitely agree on the first part, and would enjoy healthy bipartisan discussions, but I also think that "neutral( )politics" is an oxymoron.

What I mean is that I think the problem currently is as simple (but complex to fix) as people disagreeing over reality.

When I have coherent political discussions with friends of other leanings, we always see the others standpoint, but it ALWAYS boils down to simple disagreement on cost/values.

Let's take wealth inequality: I don't see the utility in the 0.X% population holding YY% of the wealth (instead of YY/2), and think it hurts the economy by stagnating monetary rotation on the market. My more conservative capitalist friend also doesn't see a particular added utility by it, but disagrees about it having the cost I describe, and distributing wealth that way would then be invasive.

We won't get further than that barring a real world experiment, but whether it's healthcare, schooling, infrastructure, etc, it always after 5 minutes or 2 hours boils down to a disagreement on a premise, core values or simply something unprovable (reasonably).

The problem I see publicly (social media etc) is people ignoring reality/facts/common sense in favor of tribalism. At that point there can be no discussion.

I venture into r/neutralpolitics at times too, but I've never once read something fruitful there. It's either entirely noncommittal, or legitimizes both standpoints on an issue that shouldn't reasonably have two sides (whether that's liberal or conservative).

Re: Twitter co-founder: I’m sorry if we made Trump’s presidency possible

#85

Post by timthelion » Mon, May 22, 2017, 8:57 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #83

timthelion wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, at the same time, the Czech internet is filled with hate speech, absolutely virolic hate speech, and it is beleived by some that these comments are actually being posted by the Russian embasy in order to undermine Czech democracy. If that theory is true (and why wouldn't it be? They have the means, the incentive, and the anonymity) then how would one fight against that without breaking anonymity? Would you p…

Yeah, it's definitely a difficult question, and I don't claim to have a good answer. I just know that there are good arguments for both sides, and I don't know where it'd be best to draw the line. Maybe it's possible to just ignore the anonymous vs. non-anonymous question and target the speech itself: if it's hate speech, you kill it. If it's lies and misinformation masquerading as the truth, you kill it. If the post…

I have another hypothesis, which is tangential to the hate speech, but rather relates to the low quality of internet information. I beleive that there is a lot of high quality content on the net, but it is hard to find. We're wading through pages and pages of low effort comments to find something that would be worth our time to read. Perhaps the problem there, is that google sucks. Google claims to organise the worlds information, but if they were actually doing so successfully, I'd almost never come across low quality content. Perhaps google needs to be more than just a search engine, perhaps chrome should actually offer the ability to filter out low quality content. Not really sure how that would work, would "reddit.com" render a blank page? But I think that it might be something like an agregator. Rather than visiting "reddit.com" you would visit "high quality memes and jokes filter" and you would get just that. And if google didn't suck, it would actually be high quality.

I'm not trying to hate on google. But everyone says that it is impossible to compete with google, because their product is perfect, that it would be impossible to make a better search engine. I don't think that's true. I think there is a lot of inovation that still can happen when it comes to sorting through the internet.

Re: Twitter co-founder: I’m sorry if we made Trump’s presidency possible

#86

Post by marklgr » Mon, May 22, 2017, 9:00 AM UTC

dorgo wrote: post #65

intended wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This idea of unfettered free speech is going to kick the bucket, and very very soon - I am sorry to say. Be well warned - the stuff happening on reddit, the tools being developed by moderators are the epitome of the road to hell being paved with good intentions. The old generalized ideological position of Free Speech is no longer tenable, whether we like it or not. I'm a proponent of Free Speech, and I've spent the t…

I don't understand why nobody came up with a technical solution for this problems yet. It can't be that complicated. Make a better Twitter. Add reputation management. Enforce strict rules on argumentation. Reduce/forbid redundant arguments. Add better structure for arguments. Arguments should be as short as possible but not shorter. Add ratings to arguments (a la hackernews).

Oh yes, it's hard. Reputation and ratings are abused by "brigades", groups of people who upvote all posts of other members and downvotes those of opponents. Eventually, it's a batlle of the most zealous and organized groups who are willing to put up the most time in this. These groups can be some volunteers on the Internet, but they can also be professionnal teams working on e-reputation/web-influence, and they know very well how to bypass the (mostly rudimentary) protections against astroturfing. It doesn't look like it, but it's a big business.

Re: Twitter co-founder: I’m sorry if we made Trump’s presidency possible

#87

Post by IanCal » Mon, May 22, 2017, 9:01 AM UTC

GuiA wrote: post #56

IanCal wrote: post #9

Somewhat concerning statements on their own. > “I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place,” Williams told the Times. “I was wrong about that.” I'd like to see a more detailed look at why Twitter might not have been a good idea. I don't think that free, easy communication is a bad thing and I think it's powered an enormous chan…

> I'd like to see a more detailed look at why Twitter might not have been a good idea. You've got the answer right in your post: > I just think that Twitter is a bad way of communicating anything vaguely complex. The medium is the message. Build a social network where the main mode of communication encouraged is short, eminently shareable quips, and the voices that dominate will be the ones like Donald Trump's.

I think there's more to it than that, which deserves a more thorough critique. How following and retweeting works, the difficulty of replying, search and more all play a role in this.

Re: Twitter co-founder: I’m sorry if we made Trump’s presidency possible

#88

Post by intended » Mon, May 22, 2017, 9:02 AM UTC

dorgo wrote: post #65

intended wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This idea of unfettered free speech is going to kick the bucket, and very very soon - I am sorry to say. Be well warned - the stuff happening on reddit, the tools being developed by moderators are the epitome of the road to hell being paved with good intentions. The old generalized ideological position of Free Speech is no longer tenable, whether we like it or not. I'm a proponent of Free Speech, and I've spent the t…

I don't understand why nobody came up with a technical solution for this problems yet. It can't be that complicated. Make a better Twitter. Add reputation management. Enforce strict rules on argumentation. Reduce/forbid redundant arguments. Add better structure for arguments. Arguments should be as short as possible but not shorter. Add ratings to arguments (a la hackernews).

Not sure if missing an /s

But any system can be gamed. The moment the community creates any value - political/advertising/creative

People will swoop in to take advantage of it.

This sets of a cycle

1) If no moderation, debate on the need of moderation - given time this will be resolved in favor of moderation

2) Moderators try to deal with attackers, posers, abusers

3) Attackers start masking their presence, they start debating the rules, they develop increasing sophisticated counter attacks to the rules

At this stage, its important to note that common sense is thrown to the window. People will argue incessantly whether X post/comment is within the scope of the rules or not. The term is forum lawyer.

4) Moderators have to start going to greater and greater lengths to deal with rule breaking, rule defining and disruption. The best case scenario is indifference and manageable rule breaking.

5) Eventually if the process escalates, we end up at profiling users based on words, either through mod experience, or worse - automated means. IP addresses are tagged, users are tagged.

Moderation is the intersection of being a debate adjudicator and a full fledged editorial board for a newspaper.

ANY technical solution should be looked at with DEEP discomfort. Any solution to this problem can and will eventually be used to suppress or modify behavior on forums.

Whats worrisome is that this arms race is escalating, if you see how mod tools have expanded on reddit, they have completely stopped entire methods of grass roots retaliation to mod power.

Earlier - if a forum had an issue, it could split organically into a subreddit. Users would vote with their feet. Famously the split of weed lovers to r/trees.

With the creation of automod, any mention of an opposing sub can completely be removed. Stopping that entire method of dealing with mods.

Sub splits do still happen, but its a lot harder to achieve and organize.

Re: Twitter co-founder: I’m sorry if we made Trump’s presidency possible

#89

Post by intended » Mon, May 22, 2017, 9:05 AM UTC

qb45 wrote: post #80

intended wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This idea of unfettered free speech is going to kick the bucket, and very very soon - I am sorry to say. Be well warned - the stuff happening on reddit, the tools being developed by moderators are the epitome of the road to hell being paved with good intentions. The old generalized ideological position of Free Speech is no longer tenable, whether we like it or not. I'm a proponent of Free Speech, and I've spent the t…

> Heinous ideas are important because at the very least - people can define themselves against it. Heinous ideas are useful for understanding heinous people. Defining oneself against them is what flamewars are made of. > That's how the brain is designed. I don't believe in creationism. It's super ironic that throughout the 19th and 20th century many self-proclaimed atheists kept working on the basis of things that ac…

I'm not sure how creationism got into this, but human brains react differently to different types of stimuli. In particular emotionally priming information tends to out perform rational or non-emotional complex information.

Even if we ignore that, you can simply see that if moderation and corrective action is not applied forums tend to become circle jerks of in-jokes and memes.

Re: Twitter co-founder: I’m sorry if we made Trump’s presidency possible

#90

Post by Grue3 » Mon, May 22, 2017, 9:24 AM UTC

As much as I dislike Trump (for being an obvious Putin shill) and Twitter (for the mindless 140-character "discourse" it propagates), it is absolutely not Twitter's fault Trump got elected. It's that Democratic Party has completely dropped the ball on messaging, strategy, and choosing the right candidate for the job. And they still won't admit it, which means they'll keep on losing. Blaming Twitter or other media won't solve anything.