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“Twitter has an algorithm that creates harassment all by itself”

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Re: “Twitter has an algorithm that creates harassment all by itself”

#71

Post by trickstra »

omegaworks wrote: post #51
freehunter wrote: post #7

My business does a lot of posting on Facebook of sometimes controversial things (we're a news site and we sometimes cover local politics). By far the most engaged stuff is the most controversial where people begin to fight and attack each other. I have ~3k followers on one of my pages. Usually ~200-300 people see any given post if it has no engagements. If it has normal engagement, it might get to 1000-2000 views, st…

The surprising thing about all of this is that sentiment analysis--machine learning algorithms that can interpret the feeling you're trying to convey with your words--is a fairly solved problem. These companies can easily put a filter over this engagement maximization algorithm and they are choosing not to.

But why would they do it? They have some pretty solid data to support the argument that more engagement, whatever the quality, equals more money to the poster, and more money to the platform. There is no bad publicity. The question is what can we do about it? It exploits basic human psychology.

Re: “Twitter has an algorithm that creates harassment all by itself”

#72

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

omegaworks wrote: post #51
freehunter wrote: post #7

My business does a lot of posting on Facebook of sometimes controversial things (we're a news site and we sometimes cover local politics). By far the most engaged stuff is the most controversial where people begin to fight and attack each other. I have ~3k followers on one of my pages. Usually ~200-300 people see any given post if it has no engagements. If it has normal engagement, it might get to 1000-2000 views, st…

The surprising thing about all of this is that sentiment analysis--machine learning algorithms that can interpret the feeling you're trying to convey with your words--is a fairly solved problem. These companies can easily put a filter over this engagement maximization algorithm and they are choosing not to.

Sorry, can you provide some citations to "sentiment analysis being a solved problem". Last time I looked, it was decidely non-trivial, though I admit I haven't followed the topic in a few years.

And it is worth noting that if these companies could stop this with limited engagement impact, they totally would as it would get them out of the horrible political hole they are in right now.

Re: “Twitter has an algorithm that creates harassment all by itself”

#73

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

moorhosj wrote: post #31
izzydata wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still not very convinced that replying without liking is an indicator of negativity. Maybe in most cases, but definitely not all cases. I don't use the like feature on the website at all and often comment on artwork saying how nice it is or whatever.

They have all the data to be able to make a relatively simple change like this. They don't want to, likely because it "drives engagement".

In general, whenever people say something is relatively simple, and yet this thing has not happened, it can often be a sign that we are missing some hidden complexities.

Not always, but often.

Re: “Twitter has an algorithm that creates harassment all by itself”

#74

Post by whenchamenia »

numbers wrote: post #11

It might be just me but wow, it's really hard to read multiple tweets as a timeline since I don't know where to start and where to end.

Yup, i skip, and often flag any twitter link and come to the comments. Unreadable and not a valid source for tech news imho. Its literally people screaming on digital streetcorners.

Re: “Twitter has an algorithm that creates harassment all by itself”

#75

Post by whenchamenia »

laughinghan wrote: post #41
vqdwj wrote: post #3

>The experience of having made a viral tweet is The Worst Fucking Thing. If you make a "viral tweet", don't read the replies. You have the tools to do so, since Twitter allows you to mute a thread.

Most people use social media not with the intention of shouting into the void, but with the intention of getting replies that they want to read, that they then do read, and perhaps reply in turn. If that's what usually happens, but sometimes randomly they get tons and tons of replies that they don't want (as claimed by this post), that's an interesting and noteworthy flaw that I've never seen specifically discussed.

Im not sure I agree with your rather chatitable interpretation of most twitter users. Most seem firmly in the void shouting camp to me.

Re: “Twitter has an algorithm that creates harassment all by itself”

#76

Post by spectre256 »

jupp0r wrote: post #62
spectre256 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The missing piece which the Twitter thread author only touched on is that how a tweet is received by a reader depends a lot on whether or not they come from similar communities and have similar context to the author. By surfacing tweets to people that the author doesn't know at all, it's likely the responses will be more negative in general. Anyone with a large twitter following knows roughly what the makeup of their…

I get what you are saying, but isn't this what everyone was screaming for years ago when the filter bubble terminology came up? Now we are criticizing networks for showing things outside of our filter bubbles? You can't have it both ways.

Yeah, this definitely is a way to break the filter bubble.

But thinking about it a bit more, it might be one of the worst ways to do so.

For example, assuming roughly that both favorites and retweets represent general agreement, using those mechanisms to surface new tweets to people makes sense. If someone you follow (and presumably respect) quote retweets someone you don't follow with "Yes this!" or something similar, then you're already primed to agree with the person you follow.

But, often at least, replying and not faving/retweeting could very well bais for DISagreement. Now instead you're going to see someone you follow and respect arguing about something, and you're primed to agree with them, and potentially pile on to the original tweet author even though you might not have cared about the topic a minute ago.

Twitter ALREADY has a way to signal that you want all your followers to see a tweet you saw: retweet. And even showing your followers things you favorited at least means they'll see things you probably like. But it seems there's at least a reasonable argument that showing your replies to your followers is setting up a situation where pile-ons to the original tweet are likely.

Re: “Twitter has an algorithm that creates harassment all by itself”

#77

Post by lonelappd »

benj111 wrote: post #47
freehunter wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not talking about banning these posts, or hiding them, or censoring them. Just not showing them as widely as they do other posts. It doesn't even need to go as deep as "this is hateful", but rather "this has the potential to be hateful" or giving the author the ability to control how widely the message is being shared. I see these people here trying to debate solutions like good engineers, but unless they work…

What's the line between censoring and "not showing them as widely as other posts"?

For every mean-spirited hate post that gets promoted, another tweet about knitting is not promoted. Why is censorship only bad if the content is hateful?

Re: “Twitter has an algorithm that creates harassment all by itself”

#78

Post by nyuszika7h »

333c wrote: post #34
vqdwj wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right-clicking the heart button and clicking "block element" is much easier and faster than downloading an extension, reviewing its code, then overriding whatever safeguards Chrome has to make it hard to install 3rd party extensions. Just my two cents.

I think you misunderstood me. I want to block everything other than tweets and retweets from my timeline. No "so-and-so liked" or "so-and-so follows."

On the new Twitter PWA, you can just switch from "Home" to "Latest Tweets", though it has a habit of automatically switching back once in a while. Also, they use React with obfuscated class names that change whenever they update the site so customizing the appearance (e.g. hiding the like button) is pretty hard to do.

Re: “Twitter has an algorithm that creates harassment all by itself”

#79

Post by nyuszika7h »

laughinghan wrote: post #41
vqdwj wrote: post #3

>The experience of having made a viral tweet is The Worst Fucking Thing. If you make a "viral tweet", don't read the replies. You have the tools to do so, since Twitter allows you to mute a thread.

Most people use social media not with the intention of shouting into the void, but with the intention of getting replies that they want to read, that they then do read, and perhaps reply in turn. If that's what usually happens, but sometimes randomly they get tons and tons of replies that they don't want (as claimed by this post), that's an interesting and noteworthy flaw that I've never seen specifically discussed.

You can also mute notifications from people who don't follow you / who you don't follow, though it may not be desirable to keep it like that all the time.

Re: “Twitter has an algorithm that creates harassment all by itself”

#80

Post by em-bee »

muckrakerz wrote: post #60
ASalazarMX wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By far the most engaged stuff is the most controversial where people begin to fight and attack each other. Well, duh. If people are fighting they are definitely "engaged", but not in a good way. Defining that more engagement equals more success is what made social networks so toxic. The current state that more eyeballs equals more ad money needs to change.

Why do you state that? Some of the largest advances in our society have come from what would be seen as toxic or hostile engagements.

examples?
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